Refleksja metaliteracka w twórczości Stanisława Samuela Szemiota

Abstrakt

Stanisław Samuel Szemiot (about 1657–1684) is an author of Sumariusz wierszów, a collection written between 1674 and 1684, characterized by a big genre and thematic heterogeneity. The collection includes didactic, religious, occasional and satirical works, as well as epigrams, aphorisms, songs or rhymed narrative samples. One of the topics dealt with by the poet is a meta-literary one. As early as in first works of his Sumariusz, Szemiot presents his poetic programme and declares originality. A poet in the act of writing is, according to him, unlimited, and creates for his own pleasure, waiting for neither approval or disapproval on the part of his readers. Poetry, on the other hand, even the lowest one, is a way for being inscribed into the history. One should make it clear here that “writing for oneself” means writing literature for one’s own use. The very expression suggests an intimate tone addressed to the circle of close relatives: family, friends or neighbours. Szemiot was not ambitious enough or too shy to publish his poems. Further considerations of the writer from Przegaliny correspond with metaliterary views by Jan Kochanowski, Jakub Kazimierz Haur or Łukasz Opaliński. Voicing his own literary programme, Stanisław Samuel Szemiot proclaims above all an artistic freedom of the poet-landowner. Poetry that is the effect of “a non-idle idling”, as he claims, should not be subject to evaluation as constitutes the values in itself as an intellectual entertainment, and allows for avoiding what the 17th century writers call a very harmful idleness. Meta-literary reflections made by the author of Sumariusz wierszów go beyond the horizon of the “Sarmatian province” or at least prove that his literary awareness bears a comparison with such landowner poets as Wespazjan Kochowski or Wacław Potocki.