Ksyloteki, czyli patroszenie lasu
Xylotheques: evisceration of the forest

Summary/Abstract: Taking as a starting point the German tradition of creating xylotheques, i.e. libraries containing wood samples disguised as books, I recall the biography of Wiktor Kozłowski (1791–1858), the first Polish creator of xylotheques, forester, collector and author of dictionaries of forest terminology against the backdrop of the history of the organisation of the governmental forest service in the Kingdom of Poland. I put forward the thesis that the reorganisation of forestry in the spirit of the Enlightenment’s project of dominating nature caused anxiety, which found expression, among other places, in Karol Kurpiński’s opera Leśniczy z Kozienickiej Puszczy [The Forester from the Kozieniecka Primeval Forest]. In the first half of the 19th century, the figure of the “young” and “old” forester was juxtaposed, already heralding the rift between the Enlightenment and romantic approaches to the natural world. Wiktor Kozłowski’s xylotheques represent the Enlightenment approach – related to the passion for cataloguing, preparing and objectifying as tools of control over the natural world.

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