Distorted image of Romanticism

Abstract

In terms of collected editions of the works of the Romantics, scholarly editions of individual works and their elaborations the situation is not bad in Poland. One can mention many valuable editorial initiatives (scholarly and popular) completed with a positive result. However, despite this apparent “cornucopia” in publishing, one gets the impression that there is not enough of something. While we are successfully publishing selected works of individual authors from the circle of emigrant and domestic literature, one cannot encounter the collected editions of the latter writers. We do not have contemporary books by many of the Romantics who shaped the collective imagination of Poles in the 19th century. There is a lack of new collected editions of the writings of, among others. Józef Bohdan Zaleski, Seweryn Goszczyński, Józef Korzeniowski, Teofil Lenartowicz, Józef Dzierzkowski, Ludwik Sztyrmer, Józef Bohdan Dziekoński, Lucjan Siemieński and many, many other authors. Domestic Romanticism is not a collection of secondary epigone texts modeled on the great Romanticism in exile, but an equally important part of the Romantic literary output, often fully original and rich, but usually simply unknown. When editing catches up with the backwardness in this field, then the listed authors will regain the place they deserve in literary-historical syntheses.