Seeing the Sound, Hearing the Image, Dancing the Myth: Musicalness of the Midsummer Night Ritual in Some Polish Iconography of the Second Half of the 19th century

The aim of this article is to present and analyse the selected iconographic documentation concerning the summer solstice ritual from the second half of the 19th century. The documentation contributes new information about the ritual, especially about the musicalness of the Midsummer Night, which is shaped primarily by dance and instrumental music. Furthermore, visual works of art are regarded as a testimony to the epoch in which they were created, and not necessarily as ethnographic source material. The author proposes a semiotic methodology for interpreting this type of documentation.