Uwagi o stylu staropolskich relacji pamiętnikarskich

Abstract

The study presents the diary style of two centuries (17th and 18th). Several texts were analysed (among others, diaries of Mikołaj Jemiołowski, Jakub Łoś, Joachim Jerlicz, Jakub Sobieski). The style of each of the recollections is conditioned by diverse factors, such as the place of birth, residence and education of the author, type of depicted reality, vastness of account, literary giń, etc. There are differences between descriptions of battles, marches, legation, and everyday living. In the first case, military vocabulary is exploited, in the last one everyday common speech. Diary writers use different areas of vocabulary (mixture of “high” and “low” lexis, presence of poetic language, co-appearance of lexical items from law, diplomacy, war craft, etc.), which has an impact on stylistic heterogeneity of the majority of texts. Baroque writers follow the tradition of the rhetoric period more than once. The use of such period in recollections does not always coincide with the choice of “high” lexis. Diary writers frequently use structural rhetoric, which consists in filling in the syntactic frame of the period with “low” contents. Diary writing, which used to record both important and trivial events, was an excellent material for style blending. The analysis of selected recollections indicates that the colloquial style was dominant in the old Polish diaiy writing. The reports also include elements of both the rhetorical and the artistic style. Thus the style of diaries can be characterised as a syncretic one and its essential indicator is stylistic diversity and heterogeneity (with the domination of the colloquial style).