Karły : o wierszu Andrzeja Buszy

The paper offers a contextual and critical reading of Busza’s poem. The author begins with a survey of the “dwarf” topos in Polish poetic tradition, underscoring the motif’s semantic rather than ontological essence, based upon the binary opposition with the connotations of the concept of “giant”. Kisiel then questions the degree to which the “dwarf” image in Busza’s poem be-longs to the Polish tradition, in that it does not function allegorically (which is the case in most of the Polish texts he cites) but instead partakes of the irrational imaginary of such poetic traditions as symbolism or surrealism. The critic then relates the poem intertextually to two modernist works with a similar apocalyptic theme: Alexander Blok’s Scythians and Cavafy’s Wait‑ ing for the Barbarians. Like Blok’s and Cavafy’s poems, Busza’s Dwarfs is a powerful poetic reflection on the theme of the crisis of Western culture and civilization