Zygmunta Glogera "Baśnie i powieści" – kompozycja, bohaterowie, aksjologia

Zygmunt Gloger (1845–1910) is in Poland sometimes called “a preserver (ocalacz) of collective memory”, a collector of national heritage, a propagator of folk culture, a scholar-excursionist, and a writer-archaeologist. While reading his numerous works (over 800 publications in his bibliography), it is hard to ignore his patriotism and love for his homeland – Podlasie. His goal in life was to understand the problems of the people (understood as a Slavic community), their mentality and worldview, and to record their legacy in a way comprehensible to future generations. Gloger was aware that preserving the cultural heritage of a passing world, its textualization, was an effective method of maintaining Polish national unity in the period of Partitions. In this text I will attempt to present one of Gloger’s works – Baśnie i Powieści, published in 1889 in Warsaw and containing 13 stories which, as suggested by the very title page, were drawn from folk tales and some earlier books (“Baśnie i powieści z ust ludu i książek zebrał Zygmunt Gloger”). I will analyse the genesis of these stories, their literary genetics, composition, and character. I will pay attention to their axiology (e.g. the virtue of thrift, which is particularly stressed by Gloger) and the unique features of the collection (e.g. numerous proverbs, elements of traditional rituals of the Polish region of Podlasie,).