Michała Leona Obuchowicza teksty z moskiewskiej niewoli

Abstract

A diary and a few letters and poems have been preserved from the time when Michał Leon Obuchowicz (circa 1630–1669) was in Moscow slavery (1660– 1662). These various texts, which illuminate one another, express the difficult experience in ways characteristic of their genres. The diary was published twice (1859 and 2003) and the contemporary edition was enriched with official and private correspondence. The basis of the last edition of the diary is an eighteenth-century copy of Obuchowiczes’ silva rerum book (MS BK 358). The book contains also unpublished poems related to slavery, which can be attributed to Obuchowicz. The most interesting of them is Lament więźnia (see Annex). It is, similarly to Zbigniew Morsztyn’s Duma niewolnicza, an example of autobiographical lyric created by a soldier. Genologically, it forms a variation of the lamentation on Fortuna‘s instability.