Dilemmas of a traditionalist - doubts of a reformer - loneliness of a creative artist : Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s "Wieczory wołyńskie"

The essay tries to formulate an interpretation of a forgotten and, apparently, underestimated literary piece of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski - "Wieczory wołyńskie" [‘Volhynian soirees’]. The study’s first section, offering an afterthought on the historical and biographical determinants behind the work, precedes the core analytical section. Taken into consideration has also been the ideological background of the writer’s conflict with the landed-gentry milieu - an occurrence known today as the ‘Volhynian wrangle’. Studies have shown that "Wieczory wołyńskie" is a deliberately ambiguous work: one that by means of its shape, oscillating between ad-hoc journalism and literary meditation, tries to render a dramatic experience of decomposition of the known world and uncertainty of any assessments of the future to come. The work also appears to be a piercing personal document, recording the emotions conceived out of the experience of ideological loneliness, and, a testimony of a radical breakthrough in Kraszewski’s writing activity: it was in 1859 - the yar "Wieczory wołyńskie" was published - that he decided to switch from a landowner-author status into an uncertain condition of a modern intellectual