Miejsce tradycji. Refleksja autobiograficzna Wilhelminy Zyndram‑Kościałkowskiej

Abstract

The paper is an attempt at showing – through the prism of autobiographical reflection – the location of tradition, as understood by Wilhelmina Zyndram‑ Kościałkowska (1844–1926), a translator, writer and literary critic. The notion of location is understood by the author as a particular, restricted, time‑ spatial reservoir of meanings, perceived in a broader perspective, that is as a component of a larger whole. The location of tradition is a segment and stage concerning a problem residuum of meanings in culture and history, as well as in the history of thought, which has been located in the space of individual biography of Kościałkowska, constructed with an old hand of the writer and placed as a component of diagnoses in her contemporaneity. The research material includes manuscripts (notebooks with memories and other types of autobiographical archives), deposited in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives in Vilnius (Lietuvos Valstybės Istorijos Archyvas). The author shows various ways of conducting dialogue by the critic with the old tradition (history, politics, culture, portraits of people, literature, art, family history) and the meaning of the location of tradition in the process of recording oneself and one’s contemporaneity by Kościałkowska.