Reflecting on Ancestral Tombs – Dei Sepolcri by Ugo Foscolo, Graves by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and their provenance

Abstract

The article discusses the reception of the Polish translations of Ugo Foscolo’s work Dei Sepolcri. Image of graves as the ruins of ancestors’ former glory frequently appeared in the literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Nevertheless, the Italian context is crucial for Foscolo’s work as it not only employs the theme of the tomb as a vehicle of memory, but also addresses the issue of the possible unifi cation of the state, the idea that Poles could relate to. In the Polish context, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz’s adaptation of Foscolo’s poem is best known, but there are other Polish renditions of this work, all of them credited to Vittorio Alfieri.