Abstract

The author of the article aims to add his voice to the debate on the tangled historical and literary origin of Cyprian Norwid and methods of legitimising it: the romantic and modernist. Although the text is clearly seeking a new language to talk about Norwid’s association with the subsequent modernist era, the ultimate conclusion is the Polish poet should be placed in the contaminated trend. Also suggested is a need for a study of his literary works that would provide a double model of the nineteenth background of Norwid’s text: as romantic, and at the same time modernist. As a symbol of Norwid’s modernity’s the author chooses London’s Crystal Palace, a place that Norwid visited between 3 and 13 December 1852.