Władysław Syrokomla i tradycje Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego w świetle studium Черты из исторiи и жизни литовскaго народа (1854)

Abstract

In the year 1854, a Vilnius-based printing house run by J. Zawadzki published a collective work titled Черты из исторiи и жизни литовскaго народа, composed by A.H. Kirkor (a writer and an officer of the Statistical Commission), P. Kukolnik (a censor and a historian) and a poet L. Kondratowicz aka W. Syrokomla. Syrokomla’s contribution was a lesser known historical essay about Barbara Radziwiłł (translated into Russian, the original saved in a copy made by W. Korotyński), corresponding with earlier works by M. Baliński. The present paper analyses the picture of the tradition of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the perspective of each contributor, investigates the Russian translation of Kondratowicz’s essay and its original version, examines the scope of censor intervention, studies how the work handles the problems compared to other similar publications, assesses the degree of originality of selected historiographic theses and scrutinizes the intersemiotic message of the accompanying graphic designed by W. Dmochowski.