The lights of a big city in the poetry of the Young Poland movement

This article concerns itself with the motif of light - not only depictions of street lights but also evocations of the urban radiance (or its lack) - in the work of Tadeusz Miciński, Ludwik Szczepański, Jan Wroczyński, Zenon Przesmycki, Stanisław Miłaszewski, Władysław Orkan, Edward Leszczyński, Stanisław Brzozowski, Aleksander Szczęsny and Leopold Staff. It appears that all of them used the imagery of light to construct and position their poetic personas. It is the glaring light that is best suited to underline surfeit, decadence, ennui, the horror of death and the fascinating, restless urban dynamic frozen to sudden stillness. It is that type of light that exposes both the artificiality and unreality of the urban space and deprives the poetic persona of his ability of stand away from it. He is caught up in the false reflections and the penetrating beam of the urban light