In a labyrinth of own biography : Ludwik Sztyrmer - Wincenty Pol - Eleonora Sztyrmer

Streszcz. po ang. Recenzowane materiały z konferencji naukowej: Oblicza Narcyza : obecność autora w dziele, dn. 17-19 października 2007 r., Kraków

In the article the author confronts a problem which in the works of a slightly forgotten 19th century writer, Ludwik Sztyrmer is a game of the artist with his own biography. This trace is hinted by numerous analogies noticeable among the characters, situations, and places depicted both in the novel and on the pages of the memoirs written in the artist’s adolescence (its fragments have been saved by Piotr Chmielowski). It is not a simple transfer. The writer treats his biography as a script; it becomes both the canvas of the literary work, and a source of infi nite variations improvised in the following novels. In this context of Sztyrmer works, the puzzle remains of how to reconcile honesty and integrity of the memoirist and a gesture of the artist who "endows" fictitious characters with fragments of his own fate. Are then his heroes like Pantofel, Jacek or Karol the literary self-portraits or the autonomous creations? An open question is also the status of a figure of Eleonora Sztyrmer in this literary world. To what extent did she accord him her name as a pseudonym with which he consistently used to sign his works, and to what extent did femininity serve him as a mental or identity alternative?