"Distance without a cause” : introduction to Leśmian’s theology of poetry

This text attempts to highlight those elements of the presented world in Bolesław Leśmian’s poetry (as well as the metapoetic and anthropological reconsiderations that they imply), which turn the poetic theology of the Polish writer into a kind of theology of poetry. Leśmian is not immune to the fear of making God seem all-too-human, which was characteristic of the Young Poland movement. Nonetheless, he does not succumb to idolatry of an unknown, infinitely remote deity, as for example Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer did. Interpretation of Leśmian’s early poetry (primarily poems from the cycle Oddaleńcy), lead me to the conclusion that the future author of Napój cienisty sees the death of God as a source event, which is responsible both for the constitution of modern subjectiveness and its crisis. The awareness of the death of God manifests in Leśmian’s poetic world as suspension of the creative act, which cannot be entirely incorporated into the constructed reality. Although poetry is incapable of soothing the ontological uprooting of the human being that parallels the death of God, it nevertheless connects the poet with hat which is different (the substantially non-human), thus allowing to experience the unembodied remnants of God, which preclude the reconciliation of lyrical autoreferentiality with subjective emancipation. Therefore, Leśmian’s path to God unwinds from inside of the poem and corresponds with the experience of emptiness that is idden beyond the veil of poetic reflections and repetitions