Parallel to the real history of Poland following the loss of independence in 1795, there was another history growing up - the history made up of the legends of the Polish national heroes, martyrs for the national cause.
Parallel to the real history of Poland following the loss of independence in 1795, there was another history growing up, without which the former would have seemed even more terrible and ominous. It was the history made up of the legends of the Polish national heroes, martyrs for the national cause. One of them was Tadeusz Kościuszko [Thaddeus Kosciusko], the "beloved Leader", the "reviver of liberty", the "instrument of God", whose figure has become the object of a cult both in Poland and the United States.
Unlike a biography, which explicates the facts relating to a life in terms of causes and time relations, legend has a discontinuous structure. It is more like a glossary of gestures, situations and behaviours, which may be arranged in a variety of sequences. The function of material used to describe the legendary is assumed by a lock of his hair, a piece of his shirt, his snuff-box, razor, and the bed on which he died, along with a copy of his saddle. All of them are provided with an emotional signature and that is what this book is about.
Bolesław Oleksowicz (b. 1951), a literary historian, is interested in the boundary between the Enlightenment and the Age of the Romantics, and in Romanticism, especially in poetic legend-formation and in the literary processing of biography.
- Bolesław Oleksowicz
The Kościuszko Legend / Legenda Kościuszki
Wydawnictwo slowo/obraz terytoria, Gdansk 2000
translation rights: slowo/obraz terytoria, rights available
166 x 225, 302 pages, illustrations, paperback
ISBN 83-88221-4-2