Love in Stefan Żeromski’s Diary: Between Album, Letter and Novel Cover Image

Miłość w dzienniku Stefana Żeromskiego: między sztambuchem, listem i powieścią
Love in Stefan Żeromski’s Diary: Between Album, Letter and Novel

Author(s): Paweł Rodak
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: Stefan Żeromski; Stefan Żeromski’s diary; Ludwika Borkowska; Helena Skierska; Helena Radziszewska; Oktawia Rodkiewiczowa

Summary/Abstract: The article is an analysis of love-erotic-romance trend in Stefan Żeromski’s diary made up of the four successive periods of the life of a young middle school pupil, a student, and a novice writer: his love to Ludwika Borkowskia and Helena Skierska, a few year relationship with a married woman Helena Radziszewska of the Zeitheim family, the time of numerous love affairs when Żeromski worked as a tutor in estate manors, and the arising love to his future wife Oktawia Rodkiewiczowa. The first and the second trend are characterized by notes made with the language soaked with lyricism and based on the romantic model of romantic loftiness, often also shaped as poems written into a diary. The diary in this case resembles an album and a letter with one of its function being autotherapy. The third trend refers to the medium characteristic of literature (short story, description, dialogue) which makes Żeromski’s diary a "story about himself." In conclusion the author states that the clash between everyday writing practice and non-everyday practice of producing literature decides about the specificity of the diary in question.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 49-63
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Polish
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