Odessa w polskich dziewiętnastowiecznych relacjach z podróży odbytych między rokiem 1814 a 1843

Abstract

Travel descriptions of Odessa before the famous Wspomnienia Odessy, Jedysanu i Budżaku (Memoirs from Odessa, Yedisan and Budjak) by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1845) remain little known. They usually belong to two varieties of travel: oriental, because an ordinary track of Polish travellers to the Crimea and on to Istanbul led through Odessa; and national – to the borderlands of the former Polish statehood and nationality, while Odessa was a port of export of for the wheat cultivated in Volyn and Podolia. Some of those especially noteworthy ones, will allow us to show Odessa as the subject of multilateral interest of Poles already in the first half-century of its existence. These are: Dziennik podróży do Turcji odbytej w roku 1814 (Diary of a Journey to Turkey, held in 1814) by Edward Raczyński (1821), Podróż po Wołyniu, Podolu aż do Odessy w roku 1818 (A Journey around Volyn, Podolia and Odessa in 1818), which is the 5th part of Podróże historyczne po ziemiach polskich między rokiem 1811 a 1828 odbytych (The Historical Travels throughout the Polish Territory Held between 1811 and 1828) by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (1858), Dziennik podróży z Wilna przez Odessę do Stambułu (Diary of a Journey from Vilnius through Odessa to Istanbul) by Józef Sękowski (printed in Dziennik Wileński [Vilnian Daily] in 1820) and Karol Kaczkowski's Dziennik podróży do Krymu odbytej w roku 1825 (Diary of a Journey to Crimea, Held in 1825; 1829). There is also another text in the given chronological framework, in which the author explicitly dissociates himself from the foregoing method of presenting Odessa by our travel writers. It is the excellent Wspomnienia z podróży po Krymie Edmunda Chojeckiego (Edmund Chojecki's Memoirs from a Journey to Crimea; 1843, ed. 1845) written with humour and ironic detachment and passion to unmask the stereotypes established in literature