Preparing for printing and publishing three volumes of Stefan Żeromski's Diaries as part of a critical edition of his Collected Writings.

CO-FUNDED WITH STATE FUNDS

Program or Grant name:

NATIONAL PROGRAMME FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANITIES

Task name:

„Preparing for printing and publishing three volumes of Stefan Żeromski's Diaries as part of a critical edition of his Collected Writings.”.

CO-FUNDING: 504 400

Brief description :

Stefan Żeromski's juvenile diaries have so far been published only twice: first in 1953–1956, then again in 1963–1970; they have not been reissued for more than half a century The new edition of the diaries currently being prepared must differ from the previous ones – and will differ considerably. It will provide a much more complete text with richer explanations.

Żeromski wrote down his diaries in pocket notebooks of various sizes; as we know today, in the years 1882–1891 he filled 26 such notebooks with notes; the fate of these autographs was dramatic; a considerable part of them went missing in unknown circumstances; a few of the lost ones were fortunately found. In the first edition (1953–1956) 15 such notebooks-autographs were published, in the second edition 16, in the edition now being prepared there will be 18. In this new edition, the text will be fuller and in a different sense. In previous editions, – for political and moral reasons – numerous sections of the text were removed. In the first edition, these removed elements include dozens of pages; in the second edition there are fewer removed sections, nevertheless their number is significant. In the edition currently being prepared, all these removed fragments will return to their place.

The critical apparatus will also be much richer. In the two editions from the middle of the last century, the publishers, quite understandably, structured the explanatory notes to the text in such a way as to comprehensively shine a light on Żeromski's biography (not yet very well known at the time), his reading, his experiences and, in their wake, his social and political views, tracing the links between the diary entries and Żeromski's later novellas, novels, and dramas. This area of knowledge concerning the life and work of the author of The Spring to Come has been carefully recognised and aptly presented in the explanations of the text. The edition currently being prepared goes beyond this.

The diaries also make it possible to observe how Żeromski's language changed over time and as following notebooks were written. In his earliest volumes, he uses the language of his family home, that is, the language of the not very well educated minor nobility of the Świętokrzysko-Sandomierska region; it is full of dialect and archaic expressions, not infrequent russianisms, more often – common linguistic errors. In later volumes – under the influence of schooling, Polish language lessons, but above all as a result of greedy reading and writing – the language freed itself from provincialisms and errors, becoming enriched and beautiful. Each of the 18 volumes printed in this edition is accompanied by an extensive editor's note recording the features of the young Żeromski's language outlined above. Arranged in chronological order, these notes make it possible to follow this evolution. After all, years later Żeromski became a classic of Polish speech; in the editorial notes it is possible to see the beginnings of this path.

The diaries also provide an insight into the environment in which the young Żeromski grew up and matured. As is known, he was orphaned early, he did not maintain closer contacts with his cousins in Kielce; so he mainly turned first to the peer environment of his Kielce junior high school colleagues, then, when he moved to Warsaw, to his fellow students. He wrote in his diaries mainly about them. There is probably no other source document written in Polish that presents so fully the generation of Żeromski's peers. The last generation of the future Polish intelligentsia, which matured while still in the conditions of national captivity and which in adulthood formed the foundations of our independent state existence. In the edition being prepared, biographical explanations concerning most of his peers will appear – for the first time –; they will appear not only in footnotes, but also in a series of notes placed in the Biographical dictionary, printed, like editorial notes, at the end of each volume. There is sometimes -- unfortunately – only partial information concerning their social background, financial condition, later studies and following functions in adult life. But even so, it is an important source of information about the „świętokrzyskie” part of this generation.