Ностальгия по ушедшему времени в подляшской литературе – на примере книги Яна Максимюка Trava zabytia

Abstract

This article explores the role of nostalgia as a significant narrative device in the contemporary Podlachian literature, focusing on Jan Maksimjuk’s Trava zabytia (2023). The study investigates how individual and collective memory, language, and autobiographical reflection intersect in a text written in the Podlachian microlanguage. By employing interpretive methods from hermeneutics, narratology, and sociolinguistics, the article demonstrates how sensory imagery, local toponymy, and linguistic specificity serve to reconstruct a disappearing rural world and its cultural identity. Maksimjuk’s work is framed as a linguistic and emotional archive that not only preserves disappearing dialectal forms, but also embodies a broader act of cultural continuity in the face of modernization and assimilation pressures. The text is thus understood not as pure reminiscence, but as an intentional strategy to encode identity and linguistic memory within literary space.