From the addressbook and planner of a poetess. On the trail and through the letters written by Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna currently held in Polish libraries

Abstract

The present article discusses the correspondence of the distinguished poetess and translator, Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna. In the literature of the subject these issues have not yet been addressed adequately and satisfactorily. An analysis of the nature of the written legacy of the poetess, currently housed in four large Polish libraries: Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Raczyński Municipal Library in Poznań, Public Library in Bydgoszcz and Poznań University Library, allows us to have a broad outlook to issues related to the incomplete and fragmented biography of the poetess. At the same time, it makes it possible to integrate somehow this dispersed legacy. The rich and varied literary output of Kazimiera Iłłakiewiczówna has been finally integrated with the edition of a collection of her poems (Toruń, 1998, ed. Jacek Biesiada and Aleksandra Żurawska-Wołoszyńska. Unfortunately, this is not the case with Iłłakiewiczówna’s biography. The mysteries of the biographical past of the nearly forgotten “Wilno nightingale” still remain to be discovered in archives and library collections. Without Iłłakiewiczówna, the colourful epoch of the literary interwar period seems though to be incomplete. It clearly lacks the mistress of the singular discreetness, methaphorization of realities and her irony light as a breath.