Affect versus lack. Poetry by Bolesław Leśmian

Abstract

The article explores multi-dimensional sensitivity to the void as a major feature of Bolesław Leśmian’s poetry. The author distinguishes those stylistic devices which extract, on the level of language, the the feeling of non-fullness, absence, or nonexistence in Leśmian’s poems. Apophatic language translates itself into the issue of nonexistence seen as meaningful lack. The article focuses not so much on the category of the negation of existence as on independent, fixed, affective type of experience. The author inquires what happens with the poetic voice confronted with the Other in a situation experiencing pain resulting from lack. Empathetic co-feeling of “I” with the other turns out to be the most important state. The moment someone else’s pain is discovered, feelings change into the affective state which cannot be either realized or described. The I-Other-void confrontation brings about an affect. The empathetic “I” meets the Other who experiences various kinds of absence. The Other’s feelings become recognized and even, to some extent, defined by the person who speaks in the text but the affect happens afterwards. The emphatic confrontation and co-feeling destruct the coherent voice and the text itself for it causes that kind of unspeakable experience that cannot be realized, expressed or represented. This is an experience not-to-be-named.