Przez kresy. Literackie peregrynacje od mitu do rzeczywistości

Abstract

In the monographic volume entitled Through Kresy – Literary Peregrinations – from Myth to Reality, the author presents tvelve studies and sketches, which are the result of her long - term interest in the subject of Kresy and borderlands in Polish literature, mainly in the interwar period. The first part The Yearning for Harmony is opened by the study entitled Idyllic Images in Jozef Weyssenhoffs Novels, in which the author interpreted the “Lithuanian” novels of the writer. Jozef Weyssenhoff was tied to Kresy through his birthplace and he described houses, natural landscapes and everyday life in Zmudz and Polesie with passion.What is interesting in Weyssenhoffs prose are the ways of presenting life in Kresy based on the patterns of the old Polish idyll, referring to the romantic conceptions of the depicted region. The sketch entitled Images of Polesie in Polish Literature focuses attention on the literary and cultural myths used by traditional writers in the descriptions of the “charm of Polesie”. Presented figure of Wanda Niedziałkowska-Dobaczewska, an interwar writer and organizer of cultural life in Vilnius in the interwar period, opens a gallery of portrayals of women from Kresy – “kresowianki”. The text entitled Preserve in World… presents memoir prose of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Maria Dunin-Kozicka, and Elżbieta z Zaleskich Dorożyńska, in which the dramatic end of the Polish home in Wolyn and Podole, during the First World War and the Russian Revolution, is described. Presented “texts of life” of women living in Kresy contain elements of perseverance, heroism and because of these qualities are worth detailing. The second part Touch of Reality includes and extended study of the portrait of woman – Kresy woman, on the example of the life of Elżbieta Dorożyńska recorded in the journal On the Las Outpost (1925). Nostalgia for the lost “means” of existence gives way to the heroic process of personality reintegration and this female energy impresses. In the sketch about Artur Górski, an interwar critic analyzing conflicts on the territory of the south -eastern Kresy, a departure from the mythical image of the eastern regions of old Poland is shown. The study On the Duality of the Interwar Portrait of a Poleshuk. Literature – Journalism – Records of Field Research is an analysis of changes in the perception of Kresy: instead of harmony – obtained by the way of literary mythologization, there is a conflicting image of Kresy reality. In the analyzed journalistic and ethnographic statements, an encounter with the Other in the land of coexistence of many cultures is a predicament, not colorful “exoticism”. In the sketch On the Spatial Imagination of the Poets from Żagary Group, the author follows the motives of departing from the mythical representation of Wilno and the surroundings in the poetry of Cz. Miłosz, J. Zagórski and other representatives of “young Wilno”. The experience of living on the borderland and historiosophical sensitivity did not allow young poets from Wilno in the 1930s to look at the world as something concrete and lasting. Not a fixed point, but movement is the property of the existential experience of Kresy. The historical end of the Kresy world, which took place in Siberia and the “boundlessness” of exile, is expressed by the poems from the anthology Gulag of Polish Poets. The sketch closing the second part of the book is dedicated to these poems. The third part entitled On the Horizon of Metaphysics contains portraits of expressive, strong personalities, associated in varying degrees with Kresy. The author is interested in further encountered “texts of life” of Kresy, which are dominated by the theme of wandering, crossing the next border, with the most important one existing between the real and the unreal. Fragmentarily presented writer figures of E. Orzeszkowa, M. Zaruski and M. Kuncewiczowa combine the motif of inernal crossing of existential and historical determinants. In the conclusion of the last sketch the attention is drawn to the fascination of Maria Kuncewiczowa with the issues of the “contact of cultures”, which led to the reflection: “All human borders run through the land of imagination”. Peregrinations of the author of the book Through Kresy amid selected writers and their works related to the themes and problems of Kresy in the 20th century are linked by renewed contemplation of the phenomenon of Kresy and its presence in Polish culture.