„Wspomnienia z Kornwalii” Zofii Kossak-Szczuckiej – splot historii i pamięci

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to analyse the relationship between memory and history in Zofia Kossak-Szczucka’s memoir prose written in the emigration period. It would appear that in “Memoirs from Cornwall” there is hardly anything more than meets the eye – barely plain memoirs with a dominant use of anecdotes. However, the author is evidently challenging our attitude to the past, and she is doing it at that particularly difficult moment when the Polish nation became painfully aware of its alienation during the post-war emigration. In her prose history is not the “teacher,” as it can be unfair, whereas memory is a two-fold force: on the one hand it offers support by counterbalancing the struggle of mundane everyday life, on the other hand though, it triggers the dangerous mechanism of nostalgia. The author exhibits an ironic distance to the passive subjugation to these mechanisms.