Norwid and the exiles to Siberia

Abstract

The exiles to Siberia had a profound influence on Norwid’s consciousness already in his middle school years (i.e. in the 1830s) as the next wave (following the one after the failure of the November Uprising) began at that time. The subject of exile and martyrdom was often discussed by Norwid in conversations and correspondence with his friends. Even among the poet’s close and distant relatives, there were many people who were affected by the deportation to the East (Józef Hornowski, the Kleczkowski family, Konstanty Jarnowski). The list of Norwid’s friends who were deported to Syberia is horribly long: Karol Baliński, Maksymilian Jatowt (pseud. Jakub Gordon), Agaton Giller, Karol Ruprecht, Stefan Dobrycz, Andrzej Deskur, Bronisław Zaleski, Antoni and Michał Zaleski, Anna Modzelewska and her brother, Aleksander Hercen, Piotr Ławrow. There were also some occasional meetings with the exiled or their families (Aniela Witkiewiczówna, Aleksander Czekanowski). Norwid attentively listened to oral accounts of those who returned, he also read publications on Siberian themes published from the early 1950s (among others, by Giller, Gordon, B. Zaleski). In his speeches and letters he repeatedly drew attention to the necessity of commemorating the “Siberian exiles” and providing them with support – both spiritual and material – as well as establishing the Siberian Society, “where all single sufferings and conquest would come to balance”. Providing the exiled with state protection and enabling them to return to their homeland became even one of the points of Norwid’s project for the political and social principles of future Poland.