Abstract
‘The Tatras’ was originally published in the periodical Przegląd Zakopiański in 1902. The
poem evokes an apocalyptic landscape dominated by the personifi ed Tatras and an emerging community
(a rare example of a collective making an appearance in Miciński’s poetry), whose ways
leave little room for optimism. The world, destroyed in a global confl agration, is being harried
by a vicious Spectre, whose ravages are highlighted by the poem’s rhythmic structure. In spite of
the similarities between it and some of Miciński’s best-known verse from the volume W mroku
gwiazd (In the Twilight of the Stars) – i.e. the choice of imagery and colours, the infl uence of
expres sionism) – ‘The Tatras’ remains a strikingly odd poem. It is that peculiar quality which may
have made one of the less popular of Miciński’s poems.
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