Problems with critical edition of "Pamiętnik" by Wacław Sieroszewski

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a number of difficult problems which must be faced by the editor of the new, critical edition of Pamiętnik by Wacław Sieroszewski, written in 1939–1944. The problems of editing this document include: the hybridity of the main text (placing it on the borderline between personal document literature, fiction, journalism and non-fiction), the mental repetitions of the same content, the coherent and logical ordering of the internally varied and chaotic structure, and above all the completion and publication of all the documents attached to the main text and those to which the diarist only referred. This heterogeneous material, which the aged historian intended to incorporate into his narrative, constitutes the greatest difficulty in preparing for publication the complete text of the last four volumes: 10, 11, 12 and 13. A critical edition of Sieroszewski’s Pamiętnik is not possible, as the author of the article argues, without first publishing all of Sieroszewski’s surviving correspondence with his wife, i.e. not only those letters to which the diarist referred in volumes 10 and 11, but also those which he did not plan to include, but whose contents are directly related to the memoir record (this is very extensive material – as many as 160 letters of Wacław and Stefania Sieroszewski have survived).