Tadeusz Bujnicki
SEWERYNA DUCHIŃSKA, THE 'PROPHETESS'
Summary
Seweryna Duchińska (1816-1905), today a forgotten nineteenth-century female author, enjoyed considerable popularity with readers of the post-1863 'Little Emigration'. At first associated with the circle round Narcyza Żmichowska, she made her debut with didactic stories and verse in the middle of the last century. As she had been deepty involved in clandestine activities, the Polish National Government, which saw the 1863 Insurrection peter out, advised her to leave for France. In exile she came to be known as a dedicated educationalist and prolific writer. Her poems and journalism were devoted primarily to patriotic and social themes. She was a traditionalist, quite content to employ stereotype versions of character and event, e.g. writing about history she gave precedence to motifs of national greatness. Her verses drew on the poetic achievement of the Great Emigration. In the Polish émigré community she was regarded as a 'prophetess', an inspired successor of the great Romantic poets. Her correspondence, deposited at the Polish Library in Paris, indicates that she maintained numerous links with the press back home. In fact, she was able to publish some of her verses and journalistic texts fairly regularly in Poland, in spite of the tight press controls. The situation in which a patriotic writer could combine high-profile activities in exile with low-profile public presence in the old country seems to have become a distinctive feature of the cultural and literary life after 1863. The problem deserves greater attention than it has received so far. Seweryna Duchińska, an undistinguished writer of second-rate verse and prose, is a case in point.