Autorzy nowożytni w wykładach lozańskich Mickiewicza : z dygresją o prowincjach i prowincjonalizmach

Abstract

In the Lausanne lectures Adam Mickiewicz quoted not only a huge number of ancient authors (a few hundred names, most of which are no longer remembered, but for the specialists) but also a considerable number of modem authors. Mickiewicz discussed them either in a positive or in a polemic way. Among them one can find poets and writers who are „between the elder day / Ark of the Covenant, an younger times”. The first part of this article is devoted to the author’s reflections on the phenomenon of the creation of the Lausanne lectures. From this part one can also learn about a fact from Mickiewicz’s life that is usually omitted by the biographers, namely that Mickiewicz pressured the Vilnius schools superintendent duke Adam Jerzy Czartoryski into confirming that the poet had graduated from the classical philology of the Imperial University of Vilna with the degree of „MA in literature”. Although Mickiewicz had passed all the final exams (which were very detailed) he neither wrote nor defended his master’s thesis (he was working as teacher in Kaunas at that time). The second part of the text - comprehensive Dygresja o prowincjach i prowincjonalizmach [The digression the on provinces and provincialisms] - is not only an account of these final exams, but also an interpretation of some of Mickiewicz’s inferiority complexes (but also his feeling of superiority) concerning his place of birth and place of residence. In favourable circumstances the source of his complexes was transforming istelf into the source of his feeling of strength. In the third part of the article - Kłopoty z Grotefendem [Trouble with Grotefend] the author shows - metonymically, on one example - problems encountered by an interpreter of the lectures who is trying to ascertain which works created by modern writers were used by Mickiewicz in the preparation for his lectures, which were after all devoted to the classical philology. In the fourth part the text the author presents his conclusion that Mickiewicz needed the contemporary writers, or to be precise the modem ones, (the ratio of the ancient writers to the modem ones stands at 2 : 1) for the second part the modem comparison: the revival of Greek writers in the Renaissance made the Romans the imitators of the Greeks, the modem writers (at least the greatest of them) turn out to be inheritors of Latin artists.