Soból i panna, czyli polski dwór na Auksztocie

Abstract

The fact that the Polish writer Józef Weyssenhoff (1860–1932) was considered to be “the last vaidelote of Polish gentry” in Lithuania is justified by his novel Soból i panna (The Sable and the Girl) (1912). By setting the plot of the novel in a precisely defined real space, the author gave it a generalising and symbolic meaning. This novel, like a lens, focuses on the main elements of the image of the Polish mansion and its residents in the ethnically “alien” Lithuanian environment, and reveals the conservative point of view on the national and social relationships in the area at the turn of the 19th and the 20th century. The image of a mansion of the Polish gentry in Aukštaitija created by Weyssenhoff manifested itself as a whole, integrated with the natural space of the country and its Polish and Lithuanian inhabitants who live together in harmony. This was the foundation of the community myth that was also patriarchal. It was treated as a value that was indestructible, modifiable at the most. The more painful was the destruction of the myth for Weyssenhoff , who responded with aggression to the emergence of independent Lithuania.