Ojcostwo i macierzyństwo w świetle listów Zygmunta i Elizy Krasińskich

Abstract

If in Zygmunt Krasiński’s biography there appeared the word ‘father’, it most often referred to the Poet’s father, General Wincenty Krasińki. Subsequent researchers into the life and oeuvre of Poland’s third Bard, completely overlook Zygmunt Krasiński as a parent himself. Meanwhile, from the correspondence that Krasiński sent to his children, there emerges an extremely caring “Dad”. It seems that the Poet was interested in everything related to his off—springs. Both everyday things like being careful when walking on stairs or crossing roads, or small offences, when Marylka (Maria Beatrix) was jostled by Adzio (Władysław), as well as when reflecting on universal truths, beauty, and the history of the family and the country. The Poet aims in this way to shape the character features and world views of his children from afar. He is slowly “(…) becoming accustomed to performing the duty that is with each day becoming more important, in which no one else in the world could substitute him”. In her letters, Eliza Krasińska claims that “a child sanctifies a woman before God” and that it is “a woman’s crown, her most noble task, and her holiest goal in life”. These are the assumptions from which everyday children’s upbringing stemmed, and which are expressed in the letters. What can be found particularly moving is the letter addressed to Aleksandra Potocka, written on the day of Eliza’s second childbirth, when she fears that she might orphan her children. The exchanged letters also feature descriptions of games played together, such as searching for Twardowski’s treasures, preparing bigos of pressed cubes of sauerkraut supplied to the troops in Crimea, writing of farces humorously depicting the everyday life of the Krasińskis. On the other hand, the letters are not void of fears, particularly in the late 1860s and early 1870s being dominated by the concern for the sons suffering from TB. The article is an attempt at bringing together letter fragments related to the Krasińskis as parents, of which there looms the intriguing figure of Zygmunt as a father.