„Epifanie w końcu muszą mieć jakiś sens”. Wokół ironii Juliusza Słowackiego i Zbigniewa Herberta

The article is devoted to irony as one of the common interpretative denominators of the works of Juliusz Słowacki and Zbigniew Herbert. Taking into account the fact that at least several types of irony are distinguished in literary studies (an elementary division includes rhetorical irony, socratic irony, and romantic irony), the author focuses on the linguistic element(s) of irony. The author sets out various functions of irony in Słowacki and Herbert, and with this procedure — presents the attitude of both poets to the heritage of Mediterranean culture as the eternal source of existential dilemmas. As the starting material for analysis and interpretation, two texts were used — Słowacki’s digression poem Podróż do Ziemi Świętej z Neapolu (read in the context of the genre) and a collec-tion of Herbert’s short narrative forms, Król mrówek.