Zesłane pokolenie: filomaci w Rosji (1824-1870)

ENBetween October 10/22 and November 25/December 7, 1824, twenty Philomaths and Philarets left Vilnius and the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after being convicted in a trial. This trial followed an investigation led by Novosiltsev, which had been initiated in the autumn of the preceding year. The sentence which was rendered then and which was confirmed by Tsar Alexander on August 14, 1824, ordered the deportation of twenty young members of the Society of Philomaths and that of Philarets deep into the Russian territory. Most of them were put at the disposal of the ministry of education (i.e. Heydatel and Sobolewski, who declared that they were ready to train to become river transportation officers with the ministry of communications) or local educational authorities in their respective guberniyas. Only Czeczot, Suzin and Zan were to be first transferred to a fortress in Orenburg Oblast (Czeczot and Suzin for six months and Zan for a year). Afterwards they were to be put under the command of the Governor-General in Orenburg. A different procedure was reserved for Jan Jankowski who actively cooperated with Novosiltsev's investigation committee - he was sent to Vologda where he remained under the command of the local administrative body. This book deals with the fates of many of those who were deported as well as their writings. [...] The writings and biographies of the Philomaths in exile were analyzed and interpreted within a framework of four areas that provided a basis for each part: the phenomenology of Philomathic writing and reading (part one), the exiles' "description" of Russia (part two), the attitudes and fates of the deportees (part three), and finally their attitude to their national past and identity which was expressed in the writings from the deportation period (part four).The abundance of writing that the Philomaths created provokes a reflection on the acts of writing and reading, i.e. practices that were the source of this generation's identity. Part One presents the following works: Mickiewicz's occasional verse and dispersed poems that he wrote between 1825 and 1829 (with special emphasis on their subjectivity, and the poet's tendency to use a melancholic and allegorical tone), Tomasz Zan's poems and exile's diary as well as Jan Czeczot's and Feliks Kulakowski's several poetical pieces (the image of crying and an elegiac and lamentable tone which is a way of expressing the experience of exile). The final section of this part of the book presents a discussion about the concept of an imagined generation, with emphasis on it being based on the acts of writing and reading, especially the Philomaths' letters and other writings whose recurring theme was friendship and love; these were the two fundamental elements of the Philomaths' self-definition. The category of "description" which appealed to the Philomaths both in Vilnius and during deportation is the central topic of the second part of the book. This part is devoted to analyzing the Philomaths’ encounters with Russia's social and political reality as well as culture and nature, based on the Philomaths' letters and literary works. The subsequent sections of this part discuss the reception, among the Philomaths and the Russian Decembrists, of the images of Sparta in ancient Greece, which was a source of heroic education patterns and a model for patriotic poetry based on Tyrtaeus' works. Both of these matters were very intriguing for the Philomaths and the Decembrists, who combined their literary passions with conspiracy practices.The tsarist apparatus of violence and control is described through the prism of Mickiewicz's and the Philomaths' struggle with censorship and other forms of repression against the deportees, who had literary and social ambitions. Finally, another insight into the deportees' world is provided in Tomasz Zan's letters that he wrote while in exile. These letters are discussed as an expression of his Romantic geological meditations on the mysteries of nature. [...] In the course of writing, the author of this book tried to follow a direction that was determined by two fundamental assumptions. The first one is that the Philomaths and the idea of this group in exile was based on written legacy, more than anything else, which at the same time was a manifestation of their experience and a record of more than ten biographies. Writing and reading, which was closely related to writing, were at the core of the Philomaths' lives during the years they spent in the Russian empire. Writing practices allowed them to maintain the memory of their friendship and generational bond. Another important assumption that was made in this book was that the Philomaths in Russia were the representatives of the deported generation, i.e., members of a peer group which, in spite of being dispersed over a large territory and forced to live in an alien culture and society, nurtured an image of a community in their minds (and texts). The generation of Philomaths in exile was an imagined generation, whose members constantly referred to their old community that was based on common experience and looked, through the prism of this community, at their own fate as well as the fate of their peers who had been deported deep into Russia and subjected to constant control by the tsarist state apparatus.