Contents: | JULIUSZ SLOWACKI'S KRZEMIENIEC | ON THE EXHIBITION | Entrance (Hall) | Room I - Krzemieniec | Room II - Vilno | Room III - Warsaw | Room IV - Letters to Mother | Room V - Living Room | Sala VI - Ukraine. Journey to the Orient | Room VII - Paris | Room VIII - Ad Memoriam |
JULIUSZ SLOWACKI'S KRZEMIENIEC
Once called the Athens of Volhynia, Krzemieniec is situated at the foot of Queen Bona's Hill in the Ikwa River valley, punctuated with deep gorges. It is here that Tadeusz Czacki founded the famous Krzemienieckie Lycee in the beautiful eighteenth-century buildings of the former Jesuit college. Initially called the Volhynian Gymnasium, the Lycee soon attained standards that put it almost on a par with universities, and its tutors included the distinguished historian Joachim Lelewel, the excellent painter Jozef Pitschmann, writers Alojzy Felinski and Jozef Korzeniowski. Yet it owed its fame primarily to having Juliusz Slowacki as a first-former in 1817/18.
Juliusz's father, Euzebiusz, a teacher of poetry and enunciation at the Volhynian Gymnasium, married Salomea Januszewska and, a year later, in August 1809, bought a plot of municipal land in Ogrodowa Street in order to build a house modelled on eastern Poland's 18th-century manors.
Across the street stood a wooden manor house with a high foundation and a porch, a property of the Lycee used by Salomea's parents, Teodor Januszewski, the Lycee's property administrator, and his wife Aleksandra neé Dumanowski. The house, claimed by Juliusz Slowacki's biographers to be the poet's birthplace on 4 September 1809, was demolished in 1921.
The manor built by Euzebiusz Slowacki and used by his family until 1811, when Euzebiusz was appointed to the chair of Polish literature at Vilno University, has, however, survived. The Slowackis sell it in 1813 and when Euzebiusz dies the following year, mother and son move in with Salomea's parents. In 1818 Salomea marries August Bécu, Vilno University professor, at the Krzemieniec Jesuit church, and they move to Vilno. Salomea will return to Krzemieniec in 1827, then a second-time widow, while Juliusz will stay on in Vilno for another year to complete his studies at the Department of Moral and Political Sciences and to graduate as a candidate iuris utriusque.
"I left Krzemieniec on a sledge, by a post coach - and arrived in Warsaw two days later", noted the poet in his diary in the winter of 1829. In the summer he came back to visitof 1830 he visited his family in Krzemieniec. Slowacki was never to see his home town again. He would, however, write many a letter to his beloved mother, addressing them to "Madame de Becu à Krzemieniec (en Volhynie)". Salomea continued to live in Krzemieniec until her death.
Over the years Slowacki, condemned to the fate of an émigré, came to idealize the town on the Ikwa, time and nostalgia contributing. What Nowogrodek and Vilno, "the land of childhood" was to Mickiewicz, so was Krzemieniec to Slowacki. Both poets created a romantic myth of a land of eternal happiness, where everything will remain "beautiful and pure as the first love". Slowacki referred to it as "paradise lost", as a place particularly close to his heart for the reason of his mother, his pastoral childhood, and his lost homeland.
Despite a series of ups and downs, different users and uses, the manor house built by Juliusz's father has survived to date. Now, under the auspices of the National Heritage Department of Poland's Ministry of Culture, it has been thoroughly remodeled, furnished and adapted to house the Juliusz Slowacki Museum.
ON THE "JULIUSZ SLOWACKI'S 'HOUR OF THOUGHT' " EXHIBITION
The exhibition housed in the manor house owned by Professor Euzebiusz Slowacki in 1809-11 is devoted to the life of his only son, the poet Juliusz (1809-1849). A collection of Juliusz's manuscripts and books is accompanied by paintings and graphics relating to his works, all displayed in interiors reconstructed to reflect the intentions of Professor Slowacki and his young wife, Salomea, who had both wanted their Krzemieniec home to resemble the manors of the Polish gentry. A frequent sight in the eastern territories of the former Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, such manors were praised for their traditional, yet arranged to individual tastes, interiors.
Entrance (Hall)
{C}The exhibition opens with a reference to GODZINA MYSLI / HOUR OF THOUGHT, Slowacki's reflexive poem written in Switzerland in 1833. The poet, by then compelled to emigrate, paints a vision of his adolescent experiences closely knit with scenes of his home town. Visitors to the manor are greeted in the hall by the panorama of the old Krzemieniec - based on a nineteenth-century graphic - and by the words of his poem. The hall is indeed "full of pallid faces" of the poet's kin, as if awaiting his return from the distant world.
Room I - Krzemieniec
First mentioned in the eleventh century, Krzemieniec owed its development to the wise management of Queen Bona. The castle on the hill named after her was turned into ruin by the internal wars which were fought by the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania in the seventeenth century and which had left the area of Volhynia in ravages. The early nineteenth century saw a great revival of Krzemieniec, largely thanks to the opening of the Volhynia Gymnasium in 1805. The Gymnasium, turned into a Lycee in 1819, was renowned across Volhynia, Podolia and Ukraine, and was closed by Tsar Nikolai after the fall of the Polish rising in 1832. The Lycee owed its high standards to its founders, Tadeusz Czacki and Hugo Kollataj, as well as to its teachers, Juliusz Slowacki's father among them. The poet himself joined the Lycee's six hundred pupils on the 6th of September 1817.
Born on 4th September 1809, Juliusz Slowacki spent his first two years in Krzemieniec. His mother, Salomea nee Januszewska (1792-1855), was the daughter of the Gymnasium's property manager. Juliusz's father, Euzebiusz Slowacki (1772-1814), a nobleman of Leliwa coat of arms, owning no land, obtained a royal surveyor certificate in 1792 and worked as a private tutor prior to his appointment (through a competition) as professor of poetry and enunciation at the Gymnasium. Euzebiusz was to earn fame as a theoretician of literature, author of published occasional speeches and of two tragedies, "Wanda" and "Mendog" (the latter was staged in Warsaw in 1813). Upon Euzebiusz's death, Juliusz and his mother returned from Vilno to Krzemieniec to live the following four years, 1814-18, with Salomea's parents. It was the Januszewskis' manor and lifestyle that came to be the embodiment of the gentry ways and tradition to the poet. Later Juliusz would visit Krzemieniec on holidays or when traveling, such as to the Michalskis' manor in Wierzchowka in Podolia or to Odessa in 1827. His only longer stay in Krzemieniec took place after graduation and before leaving for Warsaw (July 1828 - February 1829), and his last visit occurred in the summer of 1830. Krzemieniec remained, though, the place to which the poet's thoughts went at times of nostalgia.
The walls of Room I are decorated with portraits of Slowacki's family, painted by Klembowski, Pitschmann and Rustem, among them Juliusz depicted as a Cupid with a bow by Jan Rustem (1814). There are copies of Salomea's and Euzebiusz's effigies, made for the Anniversary Exhibition of 1939, portraits of the Lycee's celebrities and, inside a Biedermeyer glass cabinet, works by Euzebiusz. Of note is a beautiful old samovar owned by Professor Willibald Besser, the prominent naturalist who taught botany and zoology at the Gymnasium and was the director of the school's magnificent botanical garden. On display are also two graphics - the oldest nineteenth-century views of Krzemieniec - by P. Gregor.
Room II - Vilno
In the summer of 1811, upon Euzebiusz's appointment to the chair of Polish literature, the Slowackis moved to Vilno. The town's university, founded eight years prior, had at the time Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski as its curator in charge of the Vilno district (was replaced by Nikolai Novosiltzov in 1824), with Jan Sniadecki as the Chancellor and Rustem and Franciszek Smuglewicz as teachers of painting and drawing. Visitors to Room II will see a view (an enlargement of a nineteenth-century graphic by Benoist and Bayot) of the University seen from the courtyard, previously named after Piotr Skarga and nowadays called the Great, with St John's Church in the background.
The university professors were at the forefront of Vilno social life, its meetings held also at the Slowackis. Euzebiusz died of tuberculosis on 10th November 1814, leaving his wife and son well provided for, yet anxious about Juliusz's health. In 1818 Salomea decided to marry the surgeon August Bécu, professor of hygiene, and so Juliusz was brought up with his step-father's daughters, Aleksandra (who married Mianowski in 1831) and Hersylia (who got married to Teofil Januszewski, Salomea's brother, in 1827). Juliusz is said to have been a keen listener of the conversations taking place in his mother's living room. Professors appeared again, but so did young poets, notably Antoni Edward Odyniec and Adam Mickiewicz, whose first volume of poetry was ordered by Salomea in 1822. In 1819 Juliusz went to gymnasium and had a private tutor, too. In June 1824 August Bécu was fatally thunderstruck and Salomea stayed in Vilno for another three years, looking after her son, a student of moral and political sciences from 1825. Salomea watched closely her sensitive boy's literary attempts inspired by fashionable reading and intense experiences, notably the friendship with Ludwik Spitznagel, the enchantment with Julka from Wierzchowka and the romantic love of Ludwika Sniadecka, his senior, who can be seen at the Museum in a painting by W. Proszynski. Sniadecka, with whom the poet got acquainted in Jaszuny, her father Jedrzej's property, on the Christmas of 1822, will be remembered for many years in his letters and poems.
It is worth remembering, though, that Slowacki grew up in hard times for Vilno, for it was then that associations of university students were detected and investigations and court cases were started. The town watched young people being exiled to the Russian interior. These incidents were recalled by Lelewel in his 1831 brochure "Novosiltsov in Vilno" and by Mickiewicz in the Dziady czesc III / Forefathers' Eve Part 3, where the Doctor, whose death was caused by a lightning, was recognizable as Professor Bécu, and Pelican as the future chancellor of the University.
Slowacki left Vilno, having graduated as the second-best student, in July 1828.
Room III - Warsaw
Plac Bankowy (Bank Square) in Warsaw (after F. Dietrich's etching of 1829). It was here that Slowacki, having arrived in the town (with a letter of recommendation from Jan Sniadecki to Prince Czartoryski) in February 1829, started his internship at the Treasury Commission. On 31st January, having moved to the Audit Board, Slowacki writes down his BIEG ZYCIA [The Course of Life] then prepares for print the poems SZANFARY, HUGO, and the drama MINDOWE. Slowacki meets two men of letters: Bohdan Zaleski and Seweryn Goszczynski, the author of ZAMEK KANIOWSKI [The Castle of Kaniow]. When the rising breaks out on 29th November, the poet writes his patriotic poems HYMN, ODA DO WOLNOSCI [The Ode to Liberty] (published anonymously the same year) and KULIG POLAKOW [The Poles' sleigh Ride]. Quoted in cafes and in the streets, they immediately earn him fame and recognition among his compatriots. The Museum displays their copies side by side with the first issues of his adolescent poems. The early 1831 sees the creation of MNICH [The Monk], JAN BIELECKI, ARAB [The Arab] and the tragedy MARIA STUART.
The poet's cast bust is a copy of his first statue, designed by Marcinkowski and unveiled in 1899 in Miloslaw near Poznan. On the display are also portraits of the leaders of the rising, notably Prince Czartoryski and Julian Niemcewicz. The latter was also depicted as the Chairman from Slowacki's drama KORDIAN by Leonard Piccard in his painting "Kordian in the Basement of St John's Cathedral in Warsaw" (late nineteenth century). KORDIAN, Slowacki's masterpiece drama about a "coronation plot" against Tsar Nicholai, with a few scenes taking place in Warsaw, was written in Switzerland and published anonymously in Paris in 1834, for Slowacki had left Warsaw on 8th March 1831, having officially released himself from the service of Prince Czartoryski's insurgent Diplomatic Office.
Room IV - Letters to Mother
{C}One hundred and thirty {C} of all of Slowacki‘s letters to his mother were published before World War II (their first edition came out in 1874-6), and so we have the privilege of knowing them. Salomea's prized possession and a treasure of historians of literature, the much larger collection of original letters got burnt down inside the Krasinski Ordinance Library in Warsaw. In the late nineteenth century the correspondence came to be seen as the poet's autobiography and a poignant diary of filial love, as shown in his letter of 10th July 1838: "Be my guide, by the light on my way - I have long called you my tenth muse...". Sent from Dresden, Paris, Geneva, Florence, "on the Nile", the letters were a compensation for the parting and a tribute to Salomea's devotion.
Then comes Slowacki's contribution - through his poetry of the time of rising and emigration - to the discussion on the fate of the captive people. His poems hit directly at Russia's politics against the Poles, and were clandestinely distributed in his country, including Krzemieniec. Ever since leaving Warsaw Slowacki was afraid that Russia's revenge might reach his dearest, and, driven by care for his mother, put a premium on his literary fame, keeping his heart "at bay".
Next to Salomea's portrait of 1810-11 by Pitschmann there is Juliusz's portrait painted by Tytus Byczkowski in Dresden in the spring of 1831. Before moving on to London on a mission for the Polish rising, Slowacki made sure the portrait reached his mother, as if sensing that it would be long before they saw each other again. Indeed, they did not meet until 20th June 1848 in Wroclaw. All those years it was Slowacki's strongest yet unfulfilled desire to "get down to Krzemieniec, open the gate at night and wake up Grandpa, be taken for a burglar, and in the morning meet Mum, all in tears. The things I would give for such a moment!" (Paris, 20th October 1831).Quotations from letters are accompanied by Slowacki's most beautiful poem devoted to mother, ROZLACZENIE. "NAD JEZIOREM LEMAN", D. 20 LIPCA 1835 R. [Separation. "By the Leman lake", on July 20, 1835]. Initially interpreted as a love poem, it was believed to have been written either for Ludwika Sniadecka or Maria Wodzinska. Indeed, Slowacki met Wodzinska in 1833 and made her the heroine of his love poem W SZWAJCARII [In Switzerland]. Wodzinska's little portrait hangs side by side with a view of Geneva.
Visitors to Room III will see also a portrait of another of Slowacki's flames, Joanna Bobr-Piotrowicka. The portrait hangs next to a painting of Dresden, the city in which the poet first met Miss Bobr in 1831, though did not fall in love with her until ten years later, in Paris, when she had already had a stormy love-affair with Zygmunt Krasinski.
Of particular note in Room IV is also a rug embroidered by Salomea Slowacka-Bécu - one of the few objects related to the poet's mother to have survived to-date.
Room V - Living Room
The story of Slowacki's life gets suspended in this room - just like the poet does in his poem of Marycy Beniowski, leaving the protagonist time and again in the steppes of the Ukraine to reminisce about his Krzemieniec or to reflect bitterly on the fate of Poles at the "age of captivity", on romantic poetry or on his personal and artistic inspirations and dreams of fame.
Located centrally in the house, the living room has been furnished with a set of mahogany furniture from Salomea's later dwellings. There is a rare specimen of an old-fashioned clavichord called the "giraffe" and a cabinet topped with a copy of Juliusz's bust by Waclaw Szymanowski, brought over from St Stanislaus parish church built in Krzemieniec in the late nineteenth century. The sculpture, cast in bronze in Paris in 1909 to mark the poet's birth centenary, was set in marble with an engraved inscription "Lecz zaklinam, niech zywi nie traca nadziei" [But (I) will take an oath - may the living not lose hope (transl. by Walter Whipple){C}] (Testament moj [My Testament]).
A true gem in this part of the exhibition is a large-size oil on canvas "Misty Morning on the Coast". The painting, believed to have been made in 1827, is attributed to Slowacki. If this attribution is true, it would have been painted in Krzemieniec. The poet's passion for drawing and painting is a known fact, and one frequently mentioned by himself in his letters to mother. Indeed, Slowacki would paint while in Geneva, though did not do it as often as he used to in his home town. His early drawing of Queen Bona's Hill as well as his sketch book and works from the journey to the East have been preserved, but the authorship of the canvas remains a mystery.
Room VI - Ukraine. Journey to the Orient
"I am parting with Teofil and his wife and leaving for the Orient in a few days, to visit Greece, Egypt and Jerusalem. I will pray at Christ's grave..." In August 1836 Slowacki caught an Otranto to Corfu courier ship in Naples and set out on his exotic, adventurous journey to the Orient. It was a journey of his dreams when still an adolescent in Krzemieniec, inspired by reading Lord Byron and France's Chateaubriand and Lamartine, the instigators of the romantic interest in the Middle East. Slowacki's fascination with the Orient was also fuelled by the climate of his home town, hailed the gate to the Orient during the years of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. What is more, Krzemieniec was a part-time domicile of the famous emir of the Arabs, nobleman Waclaw Rzewuski, a horse trader and trouble-maker, explorer and enthusiast of the Orient in one person, who would not give up the Arab ways in Volhynia. Interestingly, Rzewuski's grandfather's property was managed by Juliusz's grandfather. Slowacki's imagination was set on fire by the prospect of wandering across the steppes of the Ukraine to Odessa, then a truly "Oriental" town. His early poems MNICH and ARAB as "two Oriental stories", as well as LAMBRO. POWSTANCA GRECKI [Lambro. The Greek insurgent] are a point in case. Rzewuski, whose portrait in Arabic dress, with a javelin and a horse is displayed in Room VI, was immortalized by Slowacki in DUMA O WACLAWIE RZEWUSKIM [Elegy for Waclaw Rzewuski] and in the novel LE ROI DE LADAWA, written when in Paris (1832), and had been earlier the title protagonist of Adam Mickiewicz's FARYS from 1828.
The exotic adventures and the hardships of "voyage en Oriente" inspired Slowacki to write his HYMN as well as such gems of the Polish poetry as PIESN NA NILU [Song on the Nile river], OJCIEC ZADZUMIONYCH. W EL ARISH [The Father of the Plague-Stricken. In El Arish] and the unfinished PODROZ DO ZIEMI SWIETEJ Z NEAPOLU [Journey to the Holy Land from Naples] (including the famous "Piesn VIII" [Song VIII] - GROB AGAMEMNONA [Agamemnon's tomb]). The places visited by Slowacki can be seen in the time's graphics, some dating from exactly the years, as well as in the poet's sketches. His stay in Egypt and the visit to Giza on 2nd November 1836, was commemorated in his poems ROZMOWA Z PIRAMIDAMI [Conversation with the Pyramids] and NA SZCZYCIE PIRAMID [On the Top of the Pyramids] and in Maciej Gaszynski's "Slowacki on the Pyramids" oil painting displayed in the room.
However, Slowacki's key poetic project carried out during the journey was to become a work inspired not by his Oriental experiences and thoughts, but by the "Polish case", the fall of the November rising and the suffering of the Siberian exiles. In the spring of 1837, in the early Christian ambience of the Maronite Monastery at Betheshban near Beirut, Slowacki wrote ANHELLI, his masterpiece work which came out in Paris a year later. Thus Slowacki's journey along the routes taken by Europe's famous romantics, ended with a quarantine in Livorno in June 1837, was in fact a soul-searching exercise.
Visitors looking at the board will find the poem MELODIA [Melody] (1826), a variation on Thomas Moore. This little literary portrait of Slowacki as a young man walking on the "flowery meadows of the Ukraine" and dreaming of fame is exhibited side by side with the nostalgic view of the Podolian steppe by Jozef Chelmonski. MELODIA is a prelude to ZMIJA [The viper], the "poetic romance after Ukrainian legends" written by Slowacki in Paris in 1831. With ZMIJA as well as KSIADZ MAREK [Father Marek] (1843) and SEN SREBRNY SALOMEI [The silver dream of Salomea] (1844), the two dramas published in Paris in 1843 and 1844, respectively, the Ukrainian theme, so close to Slowacki's heart from his very first literary attempts, now "flourished lushly and gorily". "Gorily", for both dramas feature episodes of fratricidal, destructive fighting taking place in the Ukraine in the years of the Confederation of Bar (1768-1772) and the following peasant rising known as kolischtchina.
These works added Slowacki to the group of the so-called Ukrainian School, represented by Antoni Malczewski, the author of the poetic novel MARIA, Jozef Korzeniowski (KARPACCY GORALE [The Carpathian highlanders]) - both with ties with Krzemieniec - as well as Jozef Bohdan Zaleski - the glorifier of the steppe and the Cossacks, and Seweryn Goszczynski. Slowacki made friends with them in Paris in the 1849s, and their effigies can be seen between rooms VI and VII of the exhibition.
Room VII - Paris
Jardin des Plantes, shown in Jean Jacottet's enlarged lithograph from the first half of the nineteenth century, is one of the symbols of the romantic Paris, in which Slowacki spent a total of thirteen years. His first stay began on 6th September 1831 and ended just over fifteen months later. The young poet spent that time discovering Paris, the town becoming home to increasing numbers of Poles arriving in France after the final fall of the rising, and, famous as the bard of Warsaw, he was invited to the homes of the Polish émigrés, took part in scholarly sessions, frequented theatres, the opera and the fashionable gardens, and prepared his two first volumes of poetry for print. The first volume included, apart from the "Oriental" and "Ukrainian" works (see the notes on Room VI), HUGO, POWIESC KRZYZACKA [Hugo, the Teutonic story] and JAN BIELECKI, POWIESC NARODOWA POLSKA [Jan Bielecki, the Polish national story], while volume two was composed of two historical dramas: MINDOWE, KROL LITEWSKI [Mindove, the Lithuanian King] and MARIA STUART (Paris 1832). Mickiewicz, who arrived in Paris in late June 1832 and met Slowacki a week later, is reported to have said that those works were like a magnificent, though empty, for Godless, church. For years this opinion had a negative impact on the reception of Slowacki's works among Poles. Slowacki would often be underestimated and remained in the shadow of the quickly rising in fame Adam Mickiewicz - the prophetic bard who by the end of 1832 had written DZIADY CZESC III / Forefathers' Eve Part 3 and KSIEGI NARODU I PIELGRZYMSTWA POLSKIEGO [The Books of the Polish Nation and of the Polish Pilgrimage], and by 1834 also the epic PAN TADEUSZ. It did not help that Slowacki, writing his story of the Greek insurgent Lambro prior to leaving Paris, took the side of patriotic poetry, nor that while very fond of letting his imagination run wild, he would stay faithful to the national cause till the end of his life.
Slowacki left for Switzerland on 26th December 1832. He took the publication of Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve Part 3 as a personal insult and an attack on his mother, Doctor Bécu's widow. Nevertheless, he was quick to decide to settle down in Paris for good upon his return from Italy in December 1838. When still in Florence, he would progressively send his works to Eustachy Januszkiewicz, the Paris-based bookshop owner and publisher, the way he did from Geneva. 1839 saw the publication of BALLADYNA, TRZY POEMATA [Three poems], HYMN ("Smutno mi, Boze..." [I am sad, Saviour...]), and the following year came out MAZEPA and LILLA WENEDA. In 1841 Slowacki finished and oversaw the printing of five parts of BENIOWSKI. Both the work and the author got a lot of publicity. From that time comes James Hopwood's steel engraving after Jozef Kurowski's subtle drawing of 1838 (interestingly, Kurowski made a similar portrait of Slowacki in 1841, too). Some of the copies were circulated with the poet's signature, and in the second half of the nineteenth century an unknown artist produced an oil version of the portrait.
Ever since returning to Paris, Slowacki's creativity was enormous. At the same time he was very critical of the surrounding realities, and although he may have sought the approval of the émigré circles, he would chastise them for all sorts of vices and shortcomings, driven by his sober perceptions. This was true also of his attitude to Mickiewicz. While there were several attempts to set the two poets at odds with each other and while Slowacki may have envied and been ironical of "Monsieur Adam's" fame, he truly admired and praised him for Pan Tadeusz. And like Mickiewicz, Slowacki cautiously saw the hope for a victory of the "Polish cause" in the politics of Prince Czartoryski's and so went to the meetings and balls at the Hotel Lambert, just like did Fryderyk Chopin, with whom the poet had made acquaintance back in 1832.
The poet maintained various relationships with other Polish men of letters. He was at odds with Stefan Witwicki and Stanislaw Ropelewski (with whom he is supposed to have had a duel in July 1841, due to some slights in BENIOWSKI), but found a devoted friend in Leonard Niedzwiecki, the first secretary of Prince Adam Czartoryski. Slowacki mocked Jozef Bohdan Zaleski as the author of simplistic Ukrainian poems, seeing in him a supporter of Mickiewicz's, but offered housing for a few months to the poverty-stricken Goszczynski, a fellow member of the Warsaw meetings and a "brother" in their common Divine Cause. In a rhymed letter he jocularly addressed Januszkiewicz, the publisher he had known from the Vilno times, as "My Eustachy...". He resumed a cordial relationship with Zygmunt Krasinski, with whom he had made friends in Rome in the spring of 1836, but it broke down when in 1845 Slowacki produced a violent ANSWER... to Krasinski's very conservative PSALMY PRZYSZLOSCI / PSALMS OF THE FUTURE. Konstanty Gaszynski translated his ANHELLI into French, and it came out in a journal edited by George Sand, the writer, in 1847. At the end of that year Slowacki made friends with the young poets arrived from Poland, Kornel Ujejski and Zygmunt Szczesny Felinski (the son of a Krzemieniec friend of Salomea Slowacka's). Both were to become his great admirers, and Slowacki made Ujejski the addressee of his poetic letter, its manuscript surviving to date. Ujejski's effigy can be seen next to two poems: USPOKOJENIE [Reassurance] from 1845 and TESTAMENT MoJ from 1839. Last but not least, in February 1849 Slowacki was visited twice by the young Cyprian Norwid, who gave him his Egyptian drawing, a moment remembered in CZARNE KWIATY [Black Flowers].
The gallery of the people surrounding Juliusz Slowacki in Paris in the 1840s - the portraits of most of them displayed at the museum - would not be complete without the mystic Andrzej Towianski. Towianski, who made a public speech to the Polish expatriate community in the autumn of 1841, urged the émigrés to "raise their spirits" and to fear God. The implicit reward would be the return to Poland, free by then. Slowacki approved of Towianski's ideas (as did Mickiewicz), met the Master on 12th July 1842 and attended the meetings of the Divine Cause Circle for nearly a year, until a conflict occurred in June 1843, followed by the entry of Slowacki's name on the list of "Sleeping Brothers". Ever since, however, the poet will translate his thoughts into the language of mysticism and will perceive history as a fulfillment of the Divine plan, as reflected in his dramas KSIADZ MAREK, SEN SREBRNY SALOMEI, KSIAZE NIEZLOMNY [The Steadfast Prince], all written in the period of spiritual transformation, as well as in GENEZIS Z DUCHA [Genesis from the Spirit], in which he outlined his vision of the development of the world.
Despite the Master's urge for humility, Slowacki felt himself an "Angel who can overcome everything...", whose "scream will be the scream of the whole country" (to use his words from his 1842 poem TAK MI BOZE DOPOMOZ [So Help Me God]). Slowacki's works from his last years are imbued with a belief in mission, in the sense of the ultimate, martyr-like sacrifices for the sake of the native land by an outstanding individual acting beyond the traditionally understood good and evil. The point in case is Slowacki's drama SAMUEL ZBOROWSKI as well as rhapsodic songs of KROL-DUCH [The Spirit King], a page of its manuscript exhibited.
Slowacki died in Paris on 3rd April 1849 and was buried at the Montmartre cemetery two days later. Both Euzebiusz Slowacki and August Bécu had been buried at the Vilno Rossa Cemetery. The grave of the poet's mother, who died on 20th July 1855, is located on the historic Tunicki Graveyard in Krzemieniec, managed by the Orthodox Church since 1891. It is that cemetery, referred to by the poet simply as "the Krzemieniec graveyard", that he wanted to lie down on, "under Granny's plum tree...".
Room VIII - Ad Memoriam
The "Ad memoriam" room displays a variety of proofs of spiritual presence of the author of BENIOWSKI in his home town. The town, which never forgot the poet, meticulously collected exhibits from anniversary celebrations attended by prominent politicians and celebrated artists. In 1969, for instance, Krzemieniec hosted Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, the writer and then chairman of the Union of Polish Writers. Occasional exhibitions were held at the former premises of the {C} Lycee and at the local museum, and exhibits for the future Slowacki Museum were collected. A major exhibition, put together by Maria Danilewicz-Zielinska, the then custodian of the National Library in Warsaw and the author of important studies of the Slowacki's Krzemieniec after World War II, was to open on 4th September 1939. The exhibits which have survived, such as the poet's bust, now in Room III, and copies of portraits, now in Room II, are a precious contribution to the present-day collection.
The town on the Ikwa River provided continued inspiration to painters, drawers and photographers across the centuries. While the older works were exhibited in the former parts of the exhibition, Room VIII boasts a collection of etchings by Jozef Pieniazek, printed in Lvov in 1927, with a foreword by Emil Zegadlowicz. The collection is exhibited next to a large photograph of Krzemieniec between the wars.
Exhibition scenario: Jolanta Pol and Tamara Sienina
Idea of rooms I-VII: Jolanta Pol
Idea of room VIII: Tamara Sienina
Exhibition curators: Jolanta Pol, Tamara Sienina
Artistic setting{C}: Krzysztof Burnatowicz
Exhibition assistant: Piotr Prasula
Tapestry design: Tamara Przygonska and Anna Renke-Gasparska