August Bielowski’s “romantic” travels

Abstract

In the second half of the 1920s and in the 1930s Lviv had more and more to offer for young people. The buoyantly developing university, reactivated in 1817, attracted Galician youth, wanting to obtain academic education in order to have a stable existence in the future. Although the fully Germanised Lviv university was far from cultivating patriotic attitudes, thanks to several professors, gradually but efficiently, the deeply hidden desires were awaken. The first literary journals published by the Chłędowski brothers, the Lviv theatre managed by Jan Nepomucen Kamiński, the works by Aleksander Fredro – all of this created an atmosphere which fostered self-education and the first independent literary attempts made by students among whom leaders emerged, able to gather a group of friends and to motivate them to work in the field of literature and historic past. August Bielowski was one of such organisers of cultural life in Lviv and, consequently, the literary group in later years called “Ziewonia” was created around his figure. The present study is dedicated to the initial period of Bielowski’s literary activity, who, along with his friends, looked for new and original sources of national literature. He noticed them in folk and Slavic works. The study describes Bielowski’s travels in Galicia, the aim of which was to prove the validity of his thesis and to gather source materials (songs, folk stories, beliefs, customs which preserved traditions cultivated throughout centuries, sometimes even from pagan times). Subsequently, they were used as the basis for the poets’ literary activity. The descriptions of travels reflect the atmosphere, character and conditions in which they took place. They show virgin nature, abound in poetic depictions of landscapes, show genuine fascination of folklore and reveal the beginnings of the formation of professional ethnographic, archaeological and historic research.