Pamiętnik by Juliusz Słowacki A project of a draft reading

Abstract

Pamiętnik 1817–1832 is a realization of a theological concept (when referring to autobiography explained by among others John Sturrock). It was written by Słowacki “from the end” as a document and evidence proving the choice of his life-path. The very choice was considered by the poet (and this is a statement he stack to) as the ultimate, mainly he made a conscious decision to become a poet, not only in a creative and artistic sense, but also in a professional one, which was connected with many life consequences concerning him, his relatives and the evaluation of facts from the past. Apart from a theoretical-literary frame of the article (the poet’s theological attitude to life experiences) there is also a historio-literary frame – an interpretation of Pamiętnik as an example of a draft (diary) work. The author distinguishes a separate place for this type of works, introduces the notion of a draft (diary) Romanticism covering a large portion of various types of texts which, because of decisions made by their authors, were not published in the epoch, but remained in drafts, diaries, pieces of paper or other manuscripts. A draft Romanticism is a different proposal of interpretation of epoch texts than the “open” Romanticism, that is, an interpretation based on texts published in the epoch. The third part of the study is an attempt to make a detailed analysis, according to theoretical assumptions of a draft reading, of a Sonnet written down by Słowacki in Pamiętnik about 1832 in a different form than the canonic version from 1827. The author does not treat the Sonnet included in Pamiętnik as a text edition from 1827, but as a meaningfully different (separate) literary work.