„Bo i w górach pamięć mają […]”. Góry Kaukaz jako romantyczny mnemotopos
“Because Even in the Mountains They Cultivate Memory Well”. The Caucasus Mountains as a Romantic Mnemotopos

Summary/Abstract: Mountains occupy a prominent place in romantic mnemotopi. For historical and politicalreasons, mountains became a mnemotope in Polish literature of the 19th century(exile literature), especially the Caucasus mountains. The variety of memorial themesin Caucasian texts is enormous: from the motif of memory of the “beginning” (biblical,mythical), geological “fossil memory” through the historical memory of humanity, individualpeoples and nations (here, among others, the “memory” of the Caucasian lineageof Poles), the foundational memory of the exiled community, to poetic and prose(auto)biographies treated as a form of memory (mimetically “imitating” the structureof memory, arranged according to its rules and order), and generally crowned with the“memory (of) death.” Also noteworthy is the metaphor of the “hill of memory” (fromthe poem Kaz-beg by W. Strzelnicki), directly identifying the genius loci of the Caucasuswith memory. These mountains are permanently embedded in Polish collective memory,in the history of Poland written on the basis of the individual experiences of witnessesand victims of tsarist terror.

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