Noc Tarasowa (proza)

Abstract

Another volume published in the Scientific Publishing Series “Dark Romanticism” is a publication issued thanks to a grant from the National Programme for the Development of Humanities for 2012–2017, entitled “Continuation of the critical edition of the outstanding, yet forgotten works of nineteenth­ century Polish romantic literature”. The project is implemented by researchers from the Department of Philological Research “East – West”, University of Białystok. The edition is lead by Prof. Halina Krukowska and Prof. Jarosław Ławski. This volume is an attempt to bring back the prose achievements of a writer who had been completely forgotten for almost 150 years, Zenon Fisz (1820–1870), usually writing under the pseudonym of Tadeusz Padalica. During his lifetime he was valued as a writer who described the difficult history of the Polish­ Ukrainian borderland, and as a travel writer. He was born in the province of Mogilev (Belarus), but already as a child he moved with his parents to Ukraine. And Ukraine will be a great theme of his prose. However, it was in St. Petersburg where Fisz (along with Jakub Jurkiewicz and Antoni Marcinkowski) founded the conservative magazine “Gwiazda” (“Star”), later published in Kiev. Fisz was a traveller, who visited France, Germany, England and Turkey, and the reports from his trips were printed in “Gazeta Warszawska” [“Warsaw Newspaper”] and “Kurier Wileński” [“Vilnius Courier”]. He loved ethnography. His not very extensive collection of writings consists mainly of prose works – short stories, novellas, novels (Noc Tarasowa, 1841; Zosia Żytkie­wiczówna, 1855; Nestor Pisanka, 1856), one drama written in 1841–1844, Konaszewicz w Białogrodzie. Tragedia oryginalnie po polsku z dziejów Ukrainy [Konaszewicz in Belgorod. A Tragedy, Originally Written in Polish, About the History of Ukraine], the great Opowiadania i krajobrazy [Stories and Landscapes]. Szkice z wędrówek po Ukrainie [Sketches from Hiking Trips Around Ukraine; vols. 1–2, 1856], and also very interesting Listy z podróży [Letters from Trips; vols. 1–3, 1859]. In the last years of his life Zenon Fisz developed a mental illness. He died in the estate of Prusy near Cherkassy, in Ukraine. Fisz created away from the centres of Polish literary life. His works quite quickly fell into oblivion. Noc Tarasowa was resumed in Cracow in 1901, whereas earlier Piotr Chmielowski published „Zosia Żytkiewiczówna” and „Nestor Pisanka” together in 1898 in Warsaw, under the title „Powieści ukraińskie” [„Ukrainian Novels”]. In the times of communism hardly anyone wrote about Fisz. The Ukrainian theme was under censorship. But in recent years there have been new readings of Fisz’s prose (including Marek Kwapiszewski’s, „Późny romantyzm i Ukraina” [„Late Romanticism and Ukraine”], Warsaw 2006). The volume brings a collection of almost all the fiction (apart from “Opowiadania i krajobrazy” [“Stories and Landscapes”], “Listy z podróży” [“Letters from Trips”], the drama and the writer’s letters). Fisz’s work demands to be restored as an important and artistically outstanding record of Polish presence in the Ukrainian lands and a certificate of Polish­Ukrainian history, which Fisz described with talent and linguistic mastery. The volume was preceded by an introduction written by Dr. Marek Szladowski, the author of i.a. a book about old age in the writings of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (Białystok 2012). The volume has been edited by Prof. J. Ławski and Iwona E. Rusek (Ph.D.). In the edition of Fisz’s writings, also researchers from the Department of Polish Studies at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv took part.