DEATH IN FORUM BOARIUM; SOME REMARKS ON CANTO XXIV OF NORWID’S QUIDAM

Canto XXIV should be considered the central part of Norwid’s long poem Quidam. It is also a parable. Quidam is an epic picture of Rome in the times of the Emperor Hadrian and the birth and ‘maturing’ of Christianity. This canto, as we remember, the death scene of the protagonist, the son of Alexander from Epirus, who, as Norwid wrote in his introductory commentary, was “killed [...] almost by accident, and in a carnage!” (III, 79).1 In the poem “Do Walentego Pomiana Z.” (“To Walenty Pomian Z.”), in which Norwid once again ‘explained’ the sense and summarized Quidam, he recalled this crucial event and added: