Czyj to rewolwer? Historia fragmentu z pamiętnika Edvarda Muncha

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to identify problems faced by literary scholars, studying biographies and works of artists in the late nineteenth and early 20th century. Attempts to reproduce a comprehensive biography of the most famous members of the European bohemia are often hindered by legends that had overgrown the most ordinary events of their lives. The result of rumors, spread for over the years, is a version of events, which no one verifies anymore, because it is repeated by unquestionable authorities in culture. The most mythopoetic events were – in the era of the fin de siècle – the tragic ones, which have occurred behind closed doors and without witnesses, because the atmosphere of mystery was even more inspiring for imagination. It resulted in scenarios that were often very far from the truth but sometimes much more interesting than reality. Shots from a revolver, which went off on Tiflis, killing Dagny Juel and Władysław Emeryk, and then another one that left wounds on the body and soul of Edvard Munch, became heroes of the collective imagination. Especially in the latter case, on which the analysis of this paper focuses, fantasies sometimes took (and still take) priority over common sense.