Dwie Odessy, czyli Kraszewski i Niemcewicz. Obserwacje powieściopisarza a relacja historyka w podróży

Abstract

The article focuses on Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s notes – taken during his 1843 travel, and published years later as The Remembrance of Odessa, Yedisan and Budzhak – and the fragments of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’s Historical Travels Throughout the Polish Land, which describe his sojourn in Odessa, the culmination of his 1818 journey to Volhynia and Podolia. Both texts are contrasted as providing different representations of the city and its environs, as well the reception of that urban world by each travel writer. The differences are not only the result of dissimilar historical contexts within which Niemcewicz and Kraszewski visited the port located on the shores of the Black Sea, but run much deeper, reflecting their distinct narrative perspectives, which, in turn, had a decisive impact on the kinds of descriptions and reflections that constitute both literary accounts.