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Abstract

Novel as a literary genre emerged from ancient narrations only in modern times. In its structures, one can recognize affinity with antique and newer narrations – with descriptions of the travels of Herodotus or Marco Polo. The second of the former narration genres which influenced the novel was represented by The Lives of Outstanding Men by Cornelius Nepot, The Lives of Famous Men by Plutarch, and the Lives of Saints that were abundant in the medieval times. The Polish journeys to the Orient – Peregrination to the Holy Land by Mikołaj Radziwiłł from the 16th century, Voyage en Turqie et en Egypt fait en 1784 by Jan Potocki, and the four years later Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Egypt, some Oriental and Southern Countries by Józef Drohojowski, to mention just the most important ones – belong to the “literature of fact.” Drohojowski made a clear distinction between the “truth tellers” and the “fairytale tellers” (tellers of fictitious travelogues, thus “fairytales”). The voyage matrix was especially popular in the novel of the 18th century, it also had its extension in the Romanticism period, just to mention Dead Souls by Gogol, and in Poland – The Sorcerer Lighthouse by Kraszewski and Wanderings of an Eccentric by Korzeniowski. Journey as the plot of the feature sequence was domesticated in the contemporary historical novel – in Teodor Parnicki (The End to the “Concord of the Nations, Only Beatrix, Circles in the Sand, The Muse of Far Journeys, and other), in Andrzej Stojowski (Carriage, Emperor’s Gate, In God’s Hand), in Andrzej Kuśniewicz (State of Weightlessness, Conversion), and in Władysław Terlecki (James’s Ladder or a Journey). However, it ceased to serve the presentation of the historical background, realistic presentation of the past. In the new novels, the journey has become a metaphor, a quest of the memory into the past, a recognition of not so much the historical facts as the collective consciousness, a search for the reasons of national failures and anomalies.