Three Bards - History

History

The concept of a bard was a Polish approximation of the Ancient Latin term poeta vates, denoting a poet to whom the gods granted the ability to foresee the future. Imported to Poland in the 16th century along with many other Sarmatist ideas, initially the term wieszcz was used to denote various poets. However, with the advent of Romanticism in the 19th century, the term started to be applied almost exclusively to denote Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński. Though the poets did not form a particular poetic group or movement, all of them started to be seen as moral leaders of a nation deprived of political freedom. They also often used the local folklore, which somehow linked the term wieszcz with folk wisemen, often found in legends and folk tales.

After the failed second revolt against the Russian Empire known as the January Uprising, and especially in the 1870s, the term was used only to denote the three mentioned poets. However, in the early 20th century the rediscovery of the works of Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–1883) gained him the name of the fourth bard. Some literary critics of the late 20th–century–Poland were skeptical as to the value of Krasiński's work and considered Norwid to be the Third bard instead of Fourth. Other literary critics mainly from between the World Wars claimed Stanisław Wyspiański to be the fourth. However, the group referred to as the bards or wieszcze almost always consists of only three out of five candidates.