The aim of this article is to trace the relationship between time and dead bodies or human remains in selected works of the Romantic period featuring Poland’s legendary (pre)history, notably Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s Stara baśń ( An Ancient Tale), ‘Lech’ from Deotyma’s Polska w pieśni ( Poland in Song), Cyprian Norwid’s Wanda and Krakus, and Juliusz Słowacki’s Balladyna, Lilla Weneda and Król-Duch ( The Spirit King). As Polish state was effaced from the political map of Europe (“laid in the grave”) the Romantics sought to affirm Poland’s indelible cultural and historical continuity by blurring the hard bound-ary between past and present. Hence a new interest in all kinds of burial sites – tombs, mounds and barrows – and the human remains interred there. Their continued presence undermines simple notions of life and death.
The article examines the poetic elaborations of the idea of temporality, especially the imagery used to challenge the official narrative of Poland’s history. If the dead (con-ceived realistically or symbolically) do not cease to exist, the historiography of the victors does not have the last word. Moreover, by reanimating the dead, investing them with a bodily form and giving each of them a voice to tell their story, the Romantic writers produced a new way of history writing based on a radical revision of the relationship between past, present and future.