Zasługujący na przywrócenie do pamięci? Rzecz o pisarstwie Walerego Wielogłowskiego (1805–1865)

Abstract

Walery Wielogłowski was a very prolific author, which is usually not compatible with quality. Between 1846 and 1865, he wrote a few hundred articles and about a dozen novels and short stories, which expressed his interests in economic and social issues, and aimed to create citizens’ awareness of their place in the society, tirelessly working towards the free and prosperous Fatherland. These issues are presented in a particularly interesting manner in Wielogłowski’s literary works, especially those addressed to peasants: the novel Komornica (“Landless tenant”), five collections of short stories, and a few shorter works. Today’s researchers of the 19th century literature deny Wielogłowski’s work considerable literary value; indeed, his stories written for the peasants have simple plots and present a well-known reality, populated by everyday characters with common names, whose speech is full of dialectal expressions, and their protagonists are simple personifications of flaws and misdeeds, while no attempt is made to describe their motives and dilemmas. However, in view of Wielogłowski’s didactic ambitions, the accusations on the limited artistic value of his works appear to be less justified. His writings do not belong to the “high” literature, but rather to a “service” literature”, which aimed first of all to be understandable to their peasant readers, and to produce the desired effects. Wielogłowski’s contemporaries recognised the fact that his stories faithfully described the peasants’ lives, appealed to the peasant imagination, and vividly recorded the language of the Krakow region. With all this in mind, does Wielogłowski deserve to be restored to memory? He certainly does, as one of the pioneers of the organic work in the Galicia region, but also as an author of literature for the people, in which he implemented, in a novel way, the conservative vision of educating Polish peasantry.