Polskie mitologie Odessy

Abstract

The article presents Polish mental images of Odessa. The researcher tries to register the state of modern consciousness, the mythical, stereotypical ideas about the city and about southern Ukraine. At the same time he analyses 19th-century texts on Odessa. It turns out that the first great writer of Polish literature who incorporated Odessa in his masterpiece, was Stanisław Trembecki, the author of a descriptive poem Sofijówka. After him, the list of authors who created the myth of the city-harbour included: Adam Mickiewicz, Józef I. Kraszewski, numerous Polish travellers, travelling to Crimea, the Caucasus, Turkey, the Middle East, and even to Egypt. The author also incorporates historical, political and geopolitical myths, present in the Polish collective consciousness, such as the perfect image of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Republic of Both Nations, the phantasm of Poland "from sea to sea" or the ideas: Intermarium and The Black Sea Doctrine as separate political, cultural and historical spaces. The researcher points out that, in the minds of a twenty-first-century Polish citizen, Odessa is always associated positively, its mental image is solid and strong, changing rather slowly. The last important change happening in it was assigning the city to the territory of Ukraine as an independent state.