Prawdziwsza Eliza Orzeszkowa w świetle nowego wydania autobiografii pisarki
A More Genuine Orzeszkowa in the Light of a New Edition of Her Autobiography

Summary/Abstract: This text focuses on three problems, with the first part containing reflections about a phenomenon that Eliza Orzeszkowa regarded as the ”secret of her life and soul” and, simultaneously, as the destructive fatalism of her life: extreme suffering, recurring from early childhood, whose sources she could not fathom and which, as well as her helplessness, she confronted to the very end of her days. The article proposes an attempt at comprehending this torment in the light of contemporary psychoanalytical knowledge about man’s psychic life, thus providing a new depiction of the writer’s personality and the biographical events shaping it. The second part of the study concerns the discovery of up to now unknown documents associated with Orzeszkowa’s biography as well as iconographic material relating both to her person and to the region of Grodno. Finally, the last part proposes a detailed analysis of the existing editions of four autobiographical texts by Orzeszkowa: Wspomnienia, Autobiografia w listach, Pamiętnik and Zwierzenia as well as their new edition based on a manuscript: Melancholia i poznanie. «Autobiografie» Elizy Orzeszkowej (2015).

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