Historiografia polska doby romantyzmu

ENThe plain truth is that romanticism made the history sanctified in a special way, seeking in it the roots of the contemporary reality as well as patterns and values a man should always respect. However, Poland deprived of its autonomy, divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria, was attracted to the past by additional lures. It was so because not so long before the Polish Republic had been counted among the most powerful states of Europe, and it seemed almost yesterday that, although clearly growing weaker, it had been able to defend the Old Continent against the Turks, relieving besieged Vienna (1683). The irredentist romanticists looked for support mainly in the glori fied vision of their national history - and such history (although not solely) could be found in the representative trends of the current literature. These problems were tho roughly analysed and presented by Maria Janion and Maria Zmigrodzka in the out standing work Romanticism and History. The authoresses, however, focused their attention on the historical-literary material, leaving the historiography sensu stricto beyond the scope of their interests. In other words, they neglected the history cultivated by those considered to be “approved” historians or researchers gaining their knowledge about the past in the purely scholarly way. The present work aims to complete the picture of the “romantic” history, including in it historiographic visions as well. This is not the only target. Perhaps the most important one is to present the state and changes the Polish historiography underwent in the romantic period, especially in the period between the November uprising (1831) and the January uprising (1863). Although the romantic trend prevails, the post-Enlightenment and the pre positivistic historiography has also found its place in this chronological frame. It was necessary to leap back to the times before 1830 and forward to those after 1863.It is obvious, however, that in the history of learning or the “domain” thought - not only historical but also philosophical, political etc. - the caesuras expressed in years are just approximate and conventional. In the five chapters preceded by an introduction, typical in its structure (target, scope and character of the work, state of research), and followed by a less typical ending there is presented a picture consisting of quite varied elements. Beside the chapters concerning the so-called factography which, to the reader’s boredom and the author's torment, is a kind of tribute paid to the convention of a historiographic book, there are chapters written more freely, sometimes even with pleasure. The first category includes Chapter 1 - Conditions of the development of historiography and its infrastructure where the wearying descriptions of colleges, university departments, seminars, societies, archives, libraries, periodicals are unfortunately multiplied for formal reasons due to distinctive features of each of the three sectors of partitioned Poland and, additionally, of emigration. Maintaining the same structure scheme in the succeeding subsections was necessary although tiresome. Chapter 3, partly similar in its “factographic” structure, tackles the historical “branches” developing in the historiography, some of them - such as the theory of literature or archaeology - becoming independent scholarly disciplines later on. The other category is two chapters dealing with various theories, conceptions, theses, hypotheses. Their aim is mainly to systematize and interpret the output of the Polish historians. It turned out necessary, however, to go beyond the historiography and even beyond widely understood historical thought.To present the so-called ontological space of the historiography and epistemological conventions determining the most general theoretical-methodological frame of the current historical knowledge it seemed proper to refer to the ideas of the leading Polish thinkers of that period, even though their contact with the standard historiography - accepted by professional circles - was negligible or none. This approach can be found in Chapter 2 In the sphere of history and the philosophy of history. Theoretical aspects of the historical thought and knowledge comprising a characteristic of the Polish historical thought on the background of the European thought. The focus is historism as a kind of individualization of the course of national history. In this chapter there is tackled, among others, the question of cognitive metaphors of the history (i. e. revolution, evolution), the subject of the history, reasons and “historical laws”, the relation between history and philosophy etc. The last two chapters of the book are incomparable to each other in many aspects. In the range of general historiography (Chapter 4) the Poles did little, with the exception of marvellous Joachim Lelewel - a historiographer who was a real polyhistorian. Thus there is nothing to go into raptures over. However, if the notion “general history” be understood also as the history of the Slavs and multiethnic provinces of the former Polish state, the opinion has to be changed considerably. All this indicates the division into the “general history” and the “national history” to be often not useful in the case of multiethnic or multinational states. [...].