Emilijos Beniovskytės-Vrublevskienės rankraštinis paveldas

Abstract

Emilia z Beniowskich Wróblewska (1830–1886) is the mother of the founder of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Tadeusz Stanisław Wróblewski (1858–1925). She was an educator, a litterata, and the wife of Tadeusz Wróblewski’s father, the homeopathic doctor Eustachy Edward Wróblewski (1826–1908). Owing to the efforts of Wróblewska’s son, her memory is immortalized at the name of the Library of Eustachy and Emilia Wróblewski established in 1912 in Vilnius. Kept in the Manuscripts Department of the Wroblewski Library (F9 and F75), the manuscript legacy of Emilia Wróblewska is of importance for the history of the establishment and activities of the Wroblewski Library, and will take a place of honor in Bibliopolis, the future museum of the Lithuanian book. A total of seven diary notebooks written by Emilia Wróblewska are extant today. Two of them are dedicated to her three children: Tadeusz Stanisław, eldest daughter Maria Wróblewska (1860–1878), and another son, Augustyn Anicety Wróblewski (1866–after 1913). The largest in length (175 entries), longest in time (27 years) and most consistently written diary is devoted to her eldest son Tadeusz. It is as if it were a long conversation with her son, a series of letters to him, continued until the diarist’s death (1886). The diary for the eldest daughter Maria contains 77 entries by her mother. She started writing it when Maria was five years old, but after the girl’s death (1878), the mother did not write anything in this diary for a long time, and only eight years later, in 1886, she put in an only entry for her son Augustyn on the eve of his 21st birthday – the mother used the same notebook as a diary for Augustyn. Of the seven Wróblewski children, only Tadeusz Stanisław and Augustyn lived to a mature age. Kazimierz took his own life at seventeen, Maria died at eighteen, and three other children died in childhood. As to five remaining diaries, Wróblewska wrote them for herself (ad se ipsam). In them, the diarist gives account of her emotional experiences in chronological order. Writing for her is spiritual therapy. This is especially obvious from the diary entitled “Moje myśli” (“My thoughts”), which also shows the diarist’s literary talent. Emilia Wróblewska also expressed herself in other literary works, besides the diaries: she translated her father’s works into Polish, attempted to translate literature for servants and even wrote for them a textbook herself. Her entire manuscript legacy not only testifies to her having been a versatile creator, but also represents an attractive object for Bibliopolis – Emilia Wróblewska is a symbol of a creative, but dramatically-fated woman of the late 19th century. Keywords: diaries; 19th-century Polish-language literature in Lithuania; Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; Emilia z Beniowskich Wróblewska; Tadeusz Stanisław Wróblewski; Maria Wróblewska; Augustyn Anicety Wróblewski.