Przestrzeń historii, przestrzeń tekstu – paralele Lelewela i Mickiewicza
Space of History, Space of Text – Mickiewicz’s and Lelewel’s Parallels

Summary/Abstract: The article offers a reflection on the changes of early-romantic historical narration in Poland, which the author discusses as based on Joachim Lelewel’s and Adam Mickiewicz’s texts. The main subject of interest in the paper is “Historyczna paralela Hiszpanii z Polską (A Historical Parallel of Spain and Poland)” (written in 1820, published in 1831 and continued in the 1830s) and historicism based on parallelism and synchrony. It finds its expression not only in a comparative thinking about history but also in a narrative and graphic “parallelizing” (J. Lelewel). A similarly comparative type of historism is found both in the then scientific and popular historical writing and in literature which, in Mickiewicz’s writing rests on a figural presentation of history and Messianism. The success of the parallel at the beginning of 19th c. is by the author linked with a search for a narrative form for a new perception of history conceived as an all-pervasive, multilevel and progressive process, which hardly undergoes a simple diachronic order.

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