ABSTRACT
Szymanowski’s interest in the culture of Ancient Greece is reflected in the programmatic titles and inspirations of several of his works, but this is just the most obvious manifestation of an infatuation that must be rated as one that profoundly informs the artistic ambitions of much of his musical and literary output. His explorations of Greek drama and myth were initiated and influenced by the discussions of these sources in nineteenth-century literature (especially Goethe, Heine, Wagner, Nietzsche and Pater) and in the work of leading artists in Polish modernism (Tadeusz Miciński and Stanisław Wyspiański). In particular, Szymanowski continues the tradition of turning to ancient Greece as the origin of European culture whose truth, vitality and unity might be regained in modern art. His belief in this project was confirmed by reading, in 1911, Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, and in particular its description of the heroic individual embodied in the ‘many-sided men’ such as Leonardo da Vinci who united the knowledge of antiquity with modern genius, and by the experience of subsequent travels in the Mediterranean (Italy, Sicily and North Africa).
