Rzeźba i ruina jako metafory formy artystycznej u Gautiera i Norwida

This article examines the presence of sculpture and its peculiar characteristics in selected poetic texts by Gautier and Norwid. Sculptures, which belong to the world represented in their poetry, can also be regarded as metaphors of the perfect artistic form (in the Hegelian sense). The obverse of this embodiment of the aesthetic idea of perfection is the ruin as a metaphor of the futility of all ambitions to create universal perfection. While for both Gautier and Norwid sculpture functions as a figure elevating and ennobling the creative endeavour, ruins are treated an antithesis of a work’s spirit, a reminder of its inability to penetrate and transform matter. The article argues that this polarity, and especially its constitutive negativity, opens the way for the construction of a new type of ontology of the work of art, based on an acknowledgement of a weak, residual presence which faces the creative artist with a demand of ethical care.