„The description of my life, my dear Urszulka, is so detailed that, I presume, its candour surpasses that of J. J. Rousseau’s confessions”: Images of Individual Lives and the Social Life of the 1840s Based on Gustaw Zieliński’s Correspondence

Abstract

Gustaw Zieliński was a poet, novelist, November Insurgent, exile, landowner, social worker, bibliophile and patron of culture, who is nowadays most often associated with his most popular text, the poetic novel titled Kirgiz, or else as an entry in encyclopaedias. It is known that he was a patron and lover of culture, but nothing more can be said. This article is an attempt to present a broader view, based on epistolography, going beyond the bare facts, presenting the realities of a colourful, but also difficult, life in mid-19^th century Warsaw and Mazovia. It is an attempt to remind us of the original epistologist, whose correspondence presents economic and social relations, and the cultural realities, not only of the capital of that time, but of the whole Mazovian region, and, with the passage of time and the changing personal life of the author, of both the country [Poland] and Europe of that time.