Vladislavas Sirokomle’s poem Margiris: archetypical aspects of the poetic structure

Abstract

The article investigates the poem Margiris (1855) by Vladislavas Sirokomle, a poet of Lithuania who wrote in Polish. Margiris interprets the heroic fight with Teutonic knights in Lithuania’s history: according to historiographical data, in 1336, in Pilenai, Lithuanians chose a collective suicide instead of slavery. The poem combines several archetypical narratives: the historical one of Pilenai, the mythological folk narrative about a dying snake-king, and the narrative of the biblical sacrifice. Sirokomle modifies the mythological and the biblical narratives so that the historical enemy of Lithuania acquires demonic features while the historical sacrifice of Pilenai is given the metaphysical dimension and forms an allusion of the Christian sacrifice. Sirokomle’s poem has strongly influensed the poetic imagination of Maironis, the main Lithuanian Romanticist.