Mój Petersburg

The author discusses his emotional attitude to Petersburg, which evolved not through direct contact, but as a result of indirect influence, primarily of his Russian grandmother. Thanks to her he developed a mental image of the city, which in his old age he was able to confront with the reality. Recalling Adam Mickiewicz’s poetic vision, he presents three Poles who were active in Petersburg and who were close to him for various reasons: the lawyer and publisher Włodzimierz Spasowicz, the linguist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and the entrepreneur Antoni Kulczycki, the author’s grandfather. His family, living in Petersburg, on the Russian-Polish cultural frontier, became completely Polonised after moving to Poland, although fate could have decided otherwise. Translated by Anna Kijak