Vittorio Alfieri in the context of Poles’ literary journeys through Italy over the last two centuries

Abstract

The article concentrates on the analysis of mostly unknown memories of journeys through Italy and their role in shaping the literary and cultural awareness in Poland at the turn of 18^th and 19^th century, and at the turn of the 19^th and the 20^th century. The texts contain interesting insights on the father of Italian drama, Vittorio Alfieri. Alfieri, well-known in Poland in the first three decades of the 19^th century as an inspiration for Polish playwrights (Bogusławski, Feliński, Słowacki), is virtually forgotten nowadays. In the article I shall attempt to present the perception of the memories and accounts on the Italian journeys by members of Polish intellectual elite, starting from 19^th-century diaries by Stanisław Dunin-Borkowski, Łucja Rautenstrauchowa, Michał Wiszniewski and Lucjan Siemieński, and finishing with 20^th-century texts by Stefan Żeromski and Herling-Grudziński. A review through different periods poses some formal difficulties related to defining the term of travel diary, but if the character’s (Vittorio Alfieri’s) role is perceived as the key, it allows to grasp the dynamics of the genre, as well as observe the role of edition of particular memories in creating the history of reception of Italian literature in Poland. A thorough analysis proves that one can boldly claim the existence of the phenomenon of “set texts”, in this case by Alfieri, since it seems that an unknown and unread author was also- apart from Dante and Machiavelli- a summarized history of Europe at that time, which was enabled by various editions of Polish travel texts (editions of collected works by particular authors, multi-volume editions of travel notes, memories included on occasion of publishing a separate work).