The book by Urszula M. Pilch, which is being handed over to readers, is dedicated to Polish lyric poetry of the Romantic, Positivist, and Young Poland periods, encompassing the works of, among others, Juliusz Słowacki, Adam Asnyk, Felicjan Faleński, Maria Konopnicka, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Jan Kasprowicz, Leopold Staff, Wacław Rolicz-Lieder, Stanisław Korab-Brzozowski, Bronisława Ostrowska, Maria Komornicka, and Bolesław Leśmian. The ambition of this dissertation is to present an innovative approach that demonstrates the continuity of poetry in its unique sensitivity to lack (in the various understandings of this concept presented in the book), its experience, and articulation, considered as an experience. New analytical readings of the lyrics allow for identifying points of contact linking the poetics of experience with, for example, the poetics of symbolism or expressionism.
An important aspect of the research presented in the book on the diversity of Polish lyric poetry is its placement in the context of the most significant aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural transformations of 19th-century Europe.