This paper argues that while writing about the works of other authors Bolesław Leśmian made use of the same ironic approach he employed in his own writing. A close analysis of his ironic strategies, which can be found in his reviews, theoretical refl ections, practical criticism and metacritical texts, leads to the conclusion that Leśmian’s irony is a stylistic trope in a literary poetics of dance, an aesthetic category as well as an artistic and existential concept akin to the ‘permanent parabasis’ of the Romantics.

This article focuses on paralogical figures (amphibology, equivocation, hypallage and syllepsis) in the poems of Jan Zych. Paralogicisms are phrases in which the combination of logical and syntactical form produces an irresolvable semantic conundrum. The article is divided into three parts, each dealing with one aspect of Zych’s handling of the opposition of distance and proximity: air metaphors expressive of the channel of poetic speech; communication by post (letters); and images of the labyrinth. The paralogical figures are discussed in terms of their function as textual building-blocks, a mark of the author’s subjectivity, and an invitation for performative reading. In this way, Zych’s poems, in particular Labirynty (The Labyrinths) are reconstituted as literary performances, analogous to the labyrinthine prose of J. L. Borges and Octavio Paz.