Art or Arts? Ways of Defining Relations betweenPoetry, Painting, and Music in Juliusz Słowacki’s Correspondenceand Notes, 1842–1849,

The article discusses Juliusz Słowacki’s defi nitions of art with respect to the Romantic conceptof correspondence of the arts. Słowacki focused on the spiritual origins of poetry, painting, andmusic, born from vision and not from the imitation of nature. The various arts have a commonfunction: they are tools in the process of moral improvement. The correspondence of the arts ispossible thanks to the artist who remembers the creative techniques he used in his previous incarnations.Moving through successive lives, artists fi nally become poets, because Słowacki sawin poetry the fullest form of the correspondence of the arts – their synthesis. His idea is deeply rootedin Romantic philosophy and is particularly close to views of the early German Romantics. It shouldbe seen as an original voice in Polish and European discussions on the correspondence of the arts.