This article tries to outline the history of the theater of the absurd in Poland by focusing on the metaphor of theatrum mundi (a device which is characteristic feature of this type of drama) and its use by Tymoteusz Karpowicz in his dramas Dziwny pasażer [A Strange Passenger], Charon od świtu do świtu [Charon from Dawn to Dawn], Kiedy ktoś zapuka [When Somebody Knocks], Człowiek z absolutnym węchem [The Man with an Absolute Sence of Smell], Przerwa w podróży [A Break in a Journey]. This metatheatrical device enables the dramatist to create a world of play-acting for its own sake, a world without God, with characters unable to look beyond the exigencies of their role and thus to express his disenchantment with the 20th century and his estrangement from the post-World War II reality. It also enables him to explore the mechanisms of theatrical performance and the role of language in the creation of reality.
This article is an attempt to confront the autothematic refl ection in Leopold Staff’s (Ars poetica and The Artist’s Sadness) with two poems, inspired by a somewhat similar approach, by Tymoteusz Karpowicz and Krystyna Miłobędzka. What they seem to have in common are textual signs of welcome with ‘open arms’ and ‘the outstretched hand’. These emblematic gestures invite the reader/the Other to a diffi cult dialogue and at the same time indicate the nature of the authors’ poetic ambition. The analysis of the two pairs of poems is set in the context of the 20th-century evolution of the idea of poetic genius and the poet’s self-awareness. Crucial to this comparative study of the poetic practice of Leopold Staff, Tymoteusz Karpowicz and Krystyna Miłobędzka is an appraisal of the authenticity of their vision and the language they used to express their maximalist ambitions.