Mapy romantyków

Overview & Synopsis

The book by Dorota Siwicka is terrific for several reasons. Firstly, it combines cartography (geography) with historical and literary thought and a Humanist imagination, which is not common in our times. Secondly, the metaphor of ‘cartographical pact’ as an equivalent of Lejeune’s ‘autobiographical pact’ seems particularly accurate. Cartography always becomes an image of the soul, which Benjamin knew very well when he attempted to write Parisian Passages and when he quoted eighteenth-century French authors. In her exquisite book, Dorota Siwicka demonstrates the way in which maps became the landscape of the soul of Polish Romantics. Thirdly, a fantastic culinary metaphor reigns in Maps of the Romantics, which cements the ‘interdisciplinarity’ of the whole project: gâteau des rois. For sharing. A theme analysed by Dorota Siwicka with rigour and consistency. In contemporary French, it is referred to as galettes des rois. Inside the galette there is feve: a grain. The analyses of Dorota Siwicka have reached the feve, that is the hearth of Romantic cartography. (Prof. Krzysztof Rutkowski)