Mieczysław Kamieński – testament żołnierza
Mieczysław Kamieński’s Last Will of a Soldier

Summary/Abstract: Born in Lvov and brought up in France, a son of a Polish colonel, Mieczysław Kamieński set off in 1859 on a voluntary fighting route in the Italian campaign. He eventually died in Milan of injuries sustained during the battle of Magenta. The Polish Library in Paris (BPP 480) keeps an extant text expressing the father’s reflections on the life and warfare deeds of his son. Childhood and youth-years memories are interspersed with a general afterthought of a soldier, former adherent of Towianism. The father, watching at the hospital by his dying son, asks him, out of soldier’s curiosity, about his attitude to killing. Quite unexpectedly, the reply given by the son becomes a powerful coda crowning this ‘unfinished’ text.

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