The author of the article interprets Antoni Malczewski’s poetic novel “Maria” as a Romantic work that records the cultural polyphony of the Polish eastern frontier, employing the research instruments developed by Patrick Chamoiseau and John Simmons Barth. The world presented in their essays and short stories is recounted by various literary and cultural contexts, due to which multifacedted ahistorical realia of the 20th century earn double identity.
Malczewski, a witness and a participant of the Polish eastern frontier many-sided culturalism, found his subjectivity in such a literary tradition which, as one of its modes of arranging the reality, consisted in revealing the writer’s autonomy by introducing footnotes to the narration and employing allegories to the text and commentaries to the work of art.
The narrator of “Maria” is reticent in that it involves limiting the freedom of his imagination considering the author’s knowledge he discloses, as well as the aura created here by melancholy.

The article explores the issues of cognition in Antoni Malczewski’s “Maria”, especially those of sensual perception: visual and auditory. Both in the cases of seeing and hearing, the poet reaches the knowledge about the destruction of the universe: existence, value, and even life. Two problems, unnoticed in the interpretations carried out to this day, prove vital. The first is that Malczewski shows the work of the two senses as complementary. Worth mentioning at this point is that, according to the Romantic gnoseology, it is hearing that allows to reach the deep, metaphorical meanings. Listening to the crashing world becomes the experience that leads to the truth that is more certain that a mere observing the phenomenon. The second consists in the fact that Malczewski gives a different image of perceiving the world in “Maria” and in the commentaries added to fragments of the poem. While in the latter we face cognitive experience that reminds of a mystic vision, in the poem itself the experience is inaccessible and largely limited, even in the famous scene of Maria’s glance up.

The paper is devoted to female characters of Antoni Malczewski’s “Maria” and their broader representation of “woman effect” in this epic poem. The study focuses on a few secondary woman figures of folk and local genealogy, and proves that nameless statistics are linked with the title Maria by the “Ukrainian” location besides religion, as the women are Uniates. The main protagonist is depicted here through the prism of hysteria understood in the feminist mode as symptoms of resistance and at the same time pre-linguistic corporal expression. Maria, a hysteric, on the one hand expresses a situation of (not only “Ukrainian”) women—both Maria’s historical ancestors (Zofia Rucińska, Gertruda Komorowska) and romantic women readers—and, on the other hand, she personalises, in line with “woman effect,” the war trauma of Malczewski, a former Napoleonic solider. Danuta Zawadzka discerns male hysteria also in the characteristics of other figures and in the narration of “Ukrainian novel” that displays body language, including the semantics of “womb.”

This essay explores the conceptual dichotomy between literature from the South and literature from the North, first introduced by Madame de Staël in her 1800 seminal work “De la literature” (“On Literature”). Marian Maciejewski was the first to suggest that the opening lines of the second canto of “Maria” contain a subtle allusion to Baroness de Staël-Holstein’s vision of the European literary landscape. While the author of the paper also considers it likely that Antoni Malczewski was familiar with the work of the Franco-Swiss writer, the focus here is on the distinctive way in which the Polish poet engages with the North–South opposition. This interpretation is situated within the broader context of the then aesthetic debates, the liberalisation and relativisation of aesthetic norms, the rise of modern national identities, and the invention of national traditions. From this perspective, the Volhynian poet’s approach to this construct emerges as both strikingly original and eerily relevant.

The author or the paper makes an attempt at describing the contexts of Antoni Malczewski’s stay in Switzerland in 1818, focusing her attention on the sources that have to this day been neglected in archive, book, and press research tradition. It reconstructs the realia of Malczewski’s two hikes to Aiguille du Midi and to Mont Blanc, confronting the content of his letter to Marc-Auguste Pictet with the then guidebooks to the Alps. She also observes the echoes of Malczewski’s achievement, namely climbing the summit of the highest mountain in the Alps, sorting out the short passing references about this matter. By contrast, when discussing the consequences of the unfaithful translation of Malczewski’s journey account, the author points out that that he supervised the works of Étienne Seneg’s work on an important relief (bas relief) of the mountain range and traces the history of the object. Sikorska-Krystek additionally concentrates on the references to Malczewski made in guidebooks and accounts from journey, eagerly read in the 19th century, as well as in satirical commentaries to journeys in the Alps of that time.

The paper traces the relation between August Antoni Jakubowski (1816–1837), a poet, prose writer and translator, to the work of his father Antoni Malczewski (1793–1826)—an outstanding Romantic poet and author of the epic poem “Maria. Powieść ukraińska” (“Maria. A Ukrainian Story”). Jakubowski, an émigré to the USA, a tragic melancholic and a suicide, is an original lyric poet and an ambitious though unfulfilled prosaist. He translated short fragments of his father’s masterpiece, but in his writings he never admitted to be Malczewski’s illegitimate son.

The paper includes unknown to this day fragments of correspondence between Filip Hauman and his son Edward, which clarify neglected episodes from Antoni Malczewski’s biography, especially his possible involvement into the preparation of the escape of his younger and elder brother from the army of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The paper employs the sources that were not earlier connected with the author of “Maria.” The subsequent parts of the study sketch the life of Edward Hauman and Konstanty Malczewski in the New World—in Mexico and Haiti. The study also explicates the interrelation between the brothers’ escape and the decisions made by Antoni, namely disposing of property, leaving the post, and departure to Switzerland. The author of the paper formulates a new hypothesis about this period of the poet’s life that the mentioned departure was rather a planned emigration from Poland. In the coda the author poses a question concerning the purpose of Malczewski’s return to Volhynia in 1821.

The paper attempts to insight into the phenomenon of “the Ukrainian school” in the Polish Romanticism in order to examine it as a critical project expressing the ideological stance of writers from the circle of “Tygodnik Petersburski” (“Petersburg Weekly”). Viewed from this perspective, “the Ukrainian School” discloses its conservative and retentive character; it turns out to be a “discovered tradition” updated in the times of post-November trauma by national literature writers. This endeavour arose in opposition to the model of Romanticism developed by the emigration.

The article attempts to describe the unofficial part of Archiwum Filomatów (Philomaths’ Archive) from the perspective of performance studies. As its starting point, it adopts the recognition that a marked number of the Philomaths’ manuscripts is linked with name day celebrations, ‘radiant’ May festivities, and other forms of get-together meetings, and thus the handwritings can be analysed as performance documentation. The Philomath pieces underwent examinations with the categories derived from performance or theatre studies, particularly script, liveness, performative documentation, and ephemerality. Performativity included into the text is highlighted: manuscripts are interpreted broader than only within the framework of mediation of past events.

Due to exceptionally long duration of Romanticism in Polish culture and expansiveness of the motif of the vampire in 20th and 21st century pop-culture, Grzegorz Uzdański’s “Wypiór” is penetratingly attractive as a research problem. In this piece Adam Mickiewicz is presented as the title demon. The interpretation of the artistic phenomenon and the analysis of the protagonist’s creation requires not only reminding about the connection between the Slavonic folklore and Romanticism and subsequently referring their culture to contemporary culture, but also reaching for the Freudian conception of cognitive dissonance that proves vibrant to Romanticism—das Unheimliche. Pointing at other Romantic codes present in “Wypiór” that turn it into a pastiche are significant: imitating the style of Mickiewicz, thirteen syllable line and placing the poet-prophet—the vampire—in the present-day Warsaw.

In the introduction to the translation of the paper published in “Kievskaja Starina” (“Kievskaia Starina”) from the year 1888, entitled “Leonard Sovinskij. Opyt’ posmertnoj harakteristiki” (“Leonard Sowiński. An Attempt at a Posthumous Characteristics”) written by Andrii Storozhenko, the figure of Michał Koroway-Metelicki, a poet, inhabitant of the Kyiv region and populariser of Ukrainian literature in the Polish press, holds a special place. As an active member of circles devoted to culture of Southern Ruthenia, he corresponded with Adam Wiślicki whom he recommended the Kyiv monthly and a sketch about Sowiński in such a way so that he were its author. At the same time, he sent a description of this sketch to “Przegląd Tygodniowy” (“Weekley Review”), disclosing that he authored it under the name of Storozhenko. The role of Koroway-Metelicki in the production of this publication remains today hypothetical, thought his appraisal of the paper about Sowiński, who was characterised as a representative of Polish Ukrainian school, allows to insight into the school from a cross-generational perspective.

The paper aims to include such sources as certificates of origin (birth/baptising, marriage and death) referring to Tomasz Olizarowski (1811¬–1879) as well as to his family (parents, siblings, nephews) to studies in the poet’s biography. Analysis of the sources allows to verify and to supplement the presently accessible information, namely Olizarowski’s birthplace, names of his parents, and identification of other members of his family. It also indicates a new, unnoticed to this day, direction of archive search queries: registers of certificates issued in the parishes of the former district of Hrubieszów.

The paper presents unpublished to this day Soter Dederko’s memories as a testimony to the Philomath-Filaret legend. It falls into two parts. The first one takes a form of a broadened bibliographical note that recalls the key factors from the author’s life as well as depicts his relations with the Zan family. Tomasz Zan’s participation in the process of young Soter’s education and the memory of “the most radiant poet” in Dederko’s adult life, spend mostly on exile, are essential in this part. The second one is built of four selected fragments from his diary based on autographs. They describe the circumstances of Zan’s arrival to the property of the Dederkos and the three years he spend there with his wife and children. Two last excerpts refer to the life of the January insurgent. Most crucial is the acquaintance of the author of the memories with Aleksander Walicki and their shared cherishing of the Filaret memory.

The article reconstructs the contemporary state of knowledge about the poem “Do matki Polki” (“To the Polish Mother”) by Adam Mickiewicz. It recalls the history of the autograph and the surviving copies of the work, indicates first editions (unauthorised and authorised) and against this background assesses the nature of the find of the Bloch Family Foundation, which is a document (two sheets) purchased at an auction in Tel Aviv, being a record of a shortened version of Mickiewicz’s poem. The article puts forward the thesis that in this case we are dealing with a copy of a work made by an unknown person, probably in the second half of the 19th century. The author highlights the negative impact of censorship on the cultural life of Poles; at the same time, she signals its provocative dimension, contributing to the development of conspiratorial forms of action, such as copying the poet’s illegal works. She also places emphasis on the positive nature of Polish-Jewish relations in the second half of the 19th century, to shaping of which contributed Rabbi Markus Jastrow, the owner of the collection of Polish studies, from where the document with the text of “To the Polish Mother” was obtained by the Bloch Family Foundation, marks his contribution.

The paper contains Wincenty Korab-Brzozowski’s unknown poems: one in Polish and six in French, the manuscripts of which are found in a copy of the volume “Dusza mówiąca” (“Speaking Soul”) given to the National Library by Celina Whitfield, a woman of Warsaw origin. Some of the handwritings were written by the poet directly on blank pages, a few other on separate sheets sewn into the printing block. Since they also include the author’s emendations and proofreader’s interventions, it is assumed that they belonged to Korab-Brzozowski. The handwritten dedication, however, added to the translation of a poem by Jean Moréas indicates that the book belonged to a person named Stefan. The author of the article makes an attempt at reconstructing the history of the book, identifying its owner the circumstances of his friendship with Korab-Brzozowski, and ultimately incorporates to the article the unknown lyrical pieces alongside of their translations from French into Polish that he himself prepared.

The review covers Marcin Król’s book “Podróż romantyczna” (“A Romantic Journey”) released in 2024 as a republication of the Paris 1986 volume. The study poses numerous important questions about the Polish reception of Romantic literature in the context of the changing civilisational and political circumstances of the 19th century and 20th century. It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of 20th century essay writing. The review discusses Król’s most vital issues: anti-intellectualism, anti-individualism, trivialised understanding of Polish Romantic masterworks, separate pathways of Polish intellectual history and postromantic West-European thought.