From peasant to nation. On the autograph of Pan Balcer w Brazylii

Abstract

The author analyzes the amendments made by Maria Konopnicka in subsequent versions of the narrative poem Pan Balcer w Brazylii and the differences between the original text from “Biblioteka Warszawska” (1891–1901), and the book version (1910). The basis for the analysis are 1500 pages of the autograph stored at the National Museum in Cracow. Konopnicka was writing and editing the poem for more than two decades. During this period both the composition’s concept and the readers’ ideological and political situation changed. In the first part, it has been established that the poet’s amendments concerned accessories, whereas the picture’s original motif was constant, and re-written a number of times. The amendments created a uniform stylistic field, which treated a Polish peasant as a part of biological environment. The author’s amendments in terms of anthroponymy were the result of the poet’s assumptions concerning peasants’ socio-cultural characteristics, but amendments resulting from the need of euphony. The article’s second part analyzes the amendments in the contexts of terms such as: peasant, people, nation. The order of amendments made indicates that the Polish peasant was depicted by the poet as a model of local biological determinants and a part of nature. The experience of economic immigration provided him with a crash course in historical awareness. The former individual peasant became a part of a community with shared historical memory and the awareness of being a modern ideological nation.