«ДІВОЧІ ПРИРЕЧЕННЯ» ТА «ПОМСТА»:ГАЛИЦЬКІ ШЕДЕВРИ АЛЄКСАНДРА ФРЕДРА

Abstract

The most recognizable figure of Galicia in the 19th century for Polish cultural memory remains the creator of comedies Alexander Fredro. Already in the first quarter of the 19th century, the dramaturgy of Alexander Fredro gradually turned Galicia into a center of Polish culture. The theater was the center of cultural and social life in Lviv almost throughout the 19th century. Fredro’s comedies are surprisingly Galician. However, they are rooted not only in the Galician space, in the Galician noble tradition, but also in Moliere’s characters, Shakespeare’s passions in minor events against the background of the social and political life of Galicia at the end of the 18th - the first third of the 19th century. These dramatic works are an artistic reflection of that Galicia, which grows on the remains of the aristocratic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and adapts to the Viennese way of life and thinking, to the existence born of new mental maps in the province of the Habsburg Monarchy. Already during the lifetime of the playwright, it became clear that “Śluby panieńskie” (“Maiden Vows”) and “Zemsta” (“Vengeance”) were the peaks of his work. And although the events of the first of the comedies supposedly take place on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland, in fact, such a location is an attempt to place the actions of the work outside the Habsburg Monarchy. All of Fredro’s comedies, which were staged during his lifetime, except for the last “Dożyvocie” (“Lifetime maintenance”), create a special space of happy Arcadia – the noble world of Galicia, immersed in the manor’s courtyard. This courtyard becomes a limited space in which simple human happiness is possible, cherishing values that have been formed over dozens of generations who lived in it, nurturing noble virtues and culture. “Lifetime maintenance” changes the time-space of Fredro’s comedies, becomes a special upheaval of the aristocratic world, immersed in the dream world of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or to describe it more precisely, in the legends of the life of the Galician nobility.