Poetry
Don Juan Poznański
Not translated into English
Ryszard Wincenty Berwiński · 1844
Synopsis
A provincial gentleman, a failed poet, goes at night to a rendezvous with Miss Amélie, who is no longer in the first flush of youth. The narrator keeps interrupting this slight story to comment on what he is writing, address his readers and mock the society of Poznań, its salons, its nobility and its cautiousness, then returns to his tale as if he had forgotten it.
Context
A digressive and satirical poem, it parodies Byron's Don Juan and follows the manner of Słowacki's Beniowski. Published in Poznań in 1844, in the first volume of the author's Poems, it designates the province there by a long-winded formula that has remained famous, “Polono-Germano-Aristo-Democratic”, and caused a scandal by its allusions; the conservative camp, through the pen of Józef Łukaszewicz, attacked it harshly. A Parabasis of the poem, more radical, appeared the same year in Brussels, in the second volume, to escape censorship.
Who it is for
A long and discontinuous poem, full of allusions to the notables of Poznań in the 1840s. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
The literary scandal of its province in 1844, and one of the works usually remembered from its author.
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