Starość między mitem a historią (chłopska rzeczywistość od połowy XIX w. do 1939 r.)

Abstract

Old age between myth and history (peasant reality from the mid-nineteenth century until 1939) The article deals with the reception of old age in folk culture. In terms of its content, it can be placed between history and ethnology. The author analyses the perception of old age in peasant culture in the post-emancipation period until the outbreak of the Second World War. His interdisciplinary analysis is based on modern historical and anthropological findings. Polish historians became interested in the history of old age in our times, although a major turn in the study of the phenomenon came in the 1980s in connection with research conducted by the authors of the Annales school. The present author stresses the placing of peasants’ old age in magical culture, its existence in myth. He focuses on demographic determinants, before moving to the reception of old age between loneliness and community, and pointing out that of importance in its reception was the stigma alienating this age group. It is harder to speak of positive old age in the case of old people. The space in which seniors were present was daily life. This element of reality is confirmed by life contracts — rarely analysed by historians — concluded between seniors and their children inheriting their farmsteads. Comparing the practices from the inter-war period, the author juxtaposes two regions contrasting in terms of their traditions of inheritance: Wielkopolska and Małopolska. He cites fragments of life contracts from the border region between Kuiavia and Wielkopolska, and refers to last wills as well as registers of deaths. In the conclusion the author confirms the thesis that among peasants old age was perceived in terms of thinking that was both binary and extreme; he observes that there was a noticeable weakening of violence against seniors, and a limitation of brutality as well as its condemnation in the social discourse. In addition, he points to a growing tabooisation of old age, typical of modern culture.