Oko, okulary, autografy – przyczynki do historii literackiej Zygmunta Krasińskiego

Early works by Zygmunt Krasiński were full of travel reports and descriptions of acknowledged landscapes. They demonstrate a particular visual sensitivity of the young writer. Starting in 1832 an eye disease prevented the development of this writing. The poet saddled with amblyopia wrote about his difficulty in letters to family and friends. The illness was treated by him as a psychosomatic – the effect of disturbances on the way between the eye and the heart that was wounded by the inability to participate in the November Uprising. The consequences of the disease (restrictions of social life, loneliness, inability to read) were recognised by Krasiński as circumstances conducive to intellectual work (in his writings the role of internal dialogue and philosophical debate systematically increased). The disease, however, imposed unnatural conditions on the writer’s work (the need for a secretary assistance), which limited the number of autographs, further reduced by the family in the course of organizing the family archive.