Powroty do Russowa Marii Dąbrowskiej
Maria Dąbrowska`s Returns to Russów

Summary/Abstract: The family home related to childhood and growing up is a model of culture and a fundamental matrix for shaping of human personality. In literature and the arts it makes an important point of reference in biographical and reminiscence-based narrations. All images from childhood are subject to diverse mechanisms of individual and collective memory and are used to work out certain events in the subconsciousness, thanks to the oneiric activity of the mind. The experiences from childhood should be interpreted taking into account the cultural images and patterns, e.g. a family home representing Arcadia, childhood as a land of happiness. From the psychological perspective, the elderly often come back to the time of childhood and show a tendency to reproduce the past events and writing memoirs. Particular events may be subjected to all kinds of transformations because of the subjective perspective, tendency to idealization and selective memory. spent her childhood in Russowo, school years in Kalisz, then she made her home in a Warsaw tenement house. Many times she visited the places she knew from her childhood, as documented in her Dzienniki. Her visits were of real character (travels to Kalisz), imaginary (when writing the novel Noce i dnie), of reminiscent character (a hot summer in Russowo), oneiric ones (during the war she dreamt of a full larder in Russowo), intuitive ones (she dreamt of coming back to her family home shortly before her death). Everything that has been left from her past life, transformed and confronted with reality, helps understanding her struggles and affections, her identity and helps making her biography.

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