Achievements of the Vilna Literary Scholars in the Study of Norwid

Abstract

Basing on the Norwid Bibliography compiled by Wacław Borowy (1946), the author observes that one-fifth of all studies on Norwid in the years 1920-1939 were the work of Vilna people. The author starts his review with Stanisław Cywiński, a Norwid student par excellence. Cywiński worked on a study of Norwid for the monumental publication Wiek XIX. Sto lat myśli polskiej [`The 19th Century. A Hundred Years of Polish Thought'], but vol. 10, which was to have included Norwid, never appeared. What did appear, however, was Cywiński's edition of Norwid's selected poems (Wybór poezyj, 1924) in the Biblioteka Narodowa series, which made it possible to introduce Norwid into schools. The bibliography of Cywiński's Norwid studies, both major and minor ones, comprises thirty-six items. The author continues by reminding the reader of Stanisław Pigoń's source notes on Norwid from the time of Pigoń's Vilna professorship and of the publications on Norwid written during his Cracow professorship and reviewed in the Vilna press. The author then goes on to list the works on Norwid written by graduates of the Stefan Batory University: Wanda Nowodworska(-Achremowiczowa), Zygmunt Falkowski, Władysław Arcimowicz, Janina Budkowska. The new Stefan Batory University professor who succeeded Pigoń in the Vilna chair, Manfred Kridl, accorded Norwid the position of the fourth great Polish poet in his Literatura polska XIX wieku [`Polish Literature of the 19th Century']. Konrad Górski, who lectured by the side of Kridl, contributed somewhat to Norwid studies, too. It was such climate that surrounded Irena Sławińska, later an eminent Norwid scholar, in her formative years.