POST-PARTITION POETRY (1793-1806). AN ATTEMPT AT DESCRIPTIVE DEFINITION

The paper is a presentation of this trend of the 1793-1806 Polish poetry whose inspiration and main theme was the fall of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. The author's considerations are based on extensive literature and plentiful documentation papers derived from the available anthologies, Warsaw and Cracow periodicals of 18th and 19th c., as well as archive materials. Initially, the author provides an explanation and literary-history motivation of the term 'post-partition poetry', which due to its issues and artistic structure belongs to so-called occasional political poetry, also referred to in the study. Then, the 1793-1806 poetic creativity was divided into two periods. The first dates from 1793 till the fall of the Kosciuszko uprising, and the second - from the end of 1794 till the last months of 1806. Verses and poems of the former are seen as a poetic chronicle of events, while the latter brings mostly literary expressions of ideologic-moral attitudes, the state of political awareness, and experiences and sensations of the Polish peoples - patriots, opportunists and openly collaborating with the partitioners, and finally those who occupied a conciliatory-safeguarding position. The remarks, reflections, and general conclusions drawn in the paper cover not only poetic creativity of recognized figures (among others Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, Jan Pawel Woronicz, Józef Morelowski, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Kajetan Kozmian) but also anonymous texts, and they were additionally set in a broad historical and cultural context.