Pieśń burszowska u progu powstania listopadowego. Wokół Guslara Gwardii Honorowej

Abstract

Songs are one of the most important elements of the literature of the November Uprising. Among them, the students’ songs deserve special attention. Students who attacked the Belvedere Palace and formed the Academic Guard later set out for the battlefields of the Polish-Russian war and developed a specific academic culture, based on the German idea of the Burschenschaft, freemasonry, philomaths and philarets. This article discusses selected works from the anthology Guslar Gwardii Honorowej (Songbook of the Academic Guard) issued in December 1830. The songs seem to have no relation to the forthcoming uprising. However, through the presence of certain motifs or allusions to specific historical events (such as the murder of August von Kotzebue by Karl Ludwig Sand), they call for action and anticipate the future struggle.