Dating Norwid's letters

Abstract

The article is concerned with the edition of Cyprian Norwid's letters that is being prepared as part of his Complete Works. The edition comprises 1060 letters written to 145 different people. The subject of the description are the poet's private letters, comprising – apart from their artistic value – quite a lot of information about his everyday life. In the editor's work dating those letters presents a considerable problem, since many of them do not have a full date – they are marked only with the day and the month, with the month and the year, only with the year, or with the day of the week. Quite a lot of letters do not have a date at all. In setting the dates the events are helpful that are described in the letters, as well as – in some cases – the dates they were received by the addressees who noted them down. An important role is also played by the postmarks. Dating Norwid's letters would be easier if we had their complete set. Unfortunately, only about 50 per cent of them have been preserved till the present day.