A Girl and Hermes. Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer’s "Posąg Hermesa" ("The Statue of Hermes")

Abstract

Posąg Hermesa (The Statue of Hermes), a poem by Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, features a myriad of references to the act of sculpting, the statue itself, the myth of Hermes, the myth of Pygmalion, images of fertility, female libido, and, last but not least, the possibility that the reader, the poet, and the girl in the text are ticked by Hermes. The symbols incorporated in the poem illuminate each other and, as a result, the myth is reenacted in the very act of reading the sonnet. At the same time, it is not possible to put forward a single interpretation of the text. The myth can only be actualized if all the interpretations or the poem are simultaneously combined.