Autoportret przybysza na Wschodzie. Stambuł w dziewiętnastowiecznych polskich i słowackich relacjach z podróży (Adam Mickiewicz – Gustáv Zechenter-Laskomerský – Henryk Sienkiewicz)
Self-portrait of a Visitor to the East: Istanbul in Nineteenth-Century Polish and Slovak Travel Accounts (Adam Mickiewicz – Gustáv Zechenter-Laskomerský – Henryk Sienkiewicz)

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses three accounts of journeys to Istanbul by Adam Mickiewicz (1855; letters to his daughter, Maria Mickiewiczówna and friend, Vera Chlustin), Gustáv Zechenter-Laskomerský (1864; travel diary From Slovakia to Constantinople) and Henryk Sienkiewicz (1886; letters to sister-in-law and confidante, Jadwiga Janczewska). Two central themes emerge from these texts: responses to eastern cultural difference – the oriental “Other”, and the processes of self-fashioning as revealed in the narratives, both shaped by their intended recipient. Each traveler confronts the otherness of the Turkish city and the oriental culture it represents in a distinct way, negotiating a tension between identification and distance. While their travel accounts reveal fundamental differences in their perceptions of Istanbul and in the emotions accompanying those perceptions, they also point to unexpected similarities in how the city is observed and described.

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