Wincenty Reklewski, *Krakow Idylls* [1850]

Title: Krakow Idylls.

Author: Wincenty Reklewski (1786–1812) [a poet of the Sentimentalist period, creator of the “national” variant of the idyll, and an officer in the army of the Duchy of Warsaw].

Edited by: Paula Żegota.

Publisher: Kraków, at the “Czas” Printing House at 369 Szczepańska Street.

Year of publication: 1850.

Format: 15 cm.

Volume: [10], 46 pp.

Binding: Paperback.

“Krakow Idylls” was published in Kraków in 1850, nearly forty years after the author’s death. It was published by Żegota Pauli (1814–1895), a Kraków historian, librarian, and collector of folk songs, who prepared the edition and edited it. The volume reprints some of the poems from the poet’s most important collection, *Pieni wiejskich* (1811), and adds several others. The volume opens with “A Brief Account of the Life of Wincenty Reklewski.” This is followed by, among others, “Krakowiaki,” “An Encouragement to Dance,” “Jolenta,” “The Four Seasons,” “Wiesław,” “The Search,” “Mutual Reproaches,” and “Highlanders.” The publisher dedicated the volume to Katarzyna Potocka (née Branicka), described in the dedication as “a zealous lover and patron of native literature.” Reklewski drew on the models of German pastoral poetry: Gessner, Kleist, and Uza. However, he went beyond mere imitation by introducing into the conventional form his actual observations of the customs, songs, and speech of the countryside near Kraków. In doing so, he made a significant contribution to the development of the “national” variant of the Polish pastoral, based on local color rather than mythological artifice. This is the only edition of this collection.

Wincenty Reklewski was born in 1786 in Obręczna near Opatów. He attended the Benedictine school in Nowa Słupia, and on November 12, 1804, he enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy at Jagiellonian University. In 1806, he secretly left Kraków to join the newly forming Polish army. He fought at Raszyn and Sandomierz, rose to the rank of captain, and in early 1810 was awarded the Gold Cross of the Virtuti Militari. The years 1809–1811, spent in Kraków, were the happiest and most creative period of his life. His poems appeared in the collection *Zabawki wierszem* (1808), published by his friend Andrzej Brodziński, and in 1811 he published *Pienia wiejskie*. In 1811–1812, he worked on the fortifications at Modlin and then set out on the Moscow campaign. He died in 1812 in a hospital in Moscow, likely of typhus, at the age of twenty-six.

Provenance: a piece with no ownership inscriptions or stamps. The pages have never been cut, so the volume has never been handled by a reader.

This is the only edition of the pastoral poems by the poet-soldier who fell in the 1812 campaign, in a completely uncut piece with its original cover. An item for collectors of early Polish poetry, enthusiasts of “Czas” publications, and collectors of Cracovian works.

A piece that has never been cut open. The paper publisher’s binding is in very good condition; the block is intact; the paper has numerous natural spots and discolorations.

Catalog ID: 8249-15-A-X