Jan Lechoń’s "Diary" and diary. Preliminary conclusions from a controlled reading of the autograph

Abstract

The article presents preliminary conclusions from a comparative reading of a fragment of Jan Lechoń’s (real name: Leszek Serafinowicz, 1899–1956) diary manuscript, held in the collections of the Polish Library of POSK in London (manuscript no. rps 191, vol. 3: from 26 December 1949 to 17 March 1950), alongside two published editions of the Diary: the London edition (1967–1973), prepared under the supervision of Mieczysław Grydzewski, editor of the London-based “Wiadomości”, and the Warsaw edition (1992–1993), edited by Roman Loth. The author examines the claims made by the editors of the London edition in light of omissions identified in the text, classifying them according to scope (ranging from individual words to entire entries) and intention (distinguishing between deliberate and accidental omissions). Additionally, the article highlights editorial inconsistencies (e.g. failure to verify all quotations), unauthorized interventions in the text (such as the addition of words not found in the manuscript or disruption of paragraph structure), and misinterpreted readings. The key conclusion drawn from this close reading of the autograph manuscript is the hypothesis that the publicly available versions of Lechoń’s Diary may contain as many as 480 editorial interventions – most of which remain unmarked in both the London and Warsaw editions.