Wspomnienia wojenne jako literatura i źródło historyczne w wybranych pamiętnikach okresu II wojny światowej

Abstrakt

Memories of War as Literature and Historical Sources in selected diaries of II World War

This paper aims at defining the features of literature of reminiscence, especially of works related to the Second World War. The analysis is based on two memoirs: „Mój wrzesień 1939” [„My September 1939”] by Marian Jędo and „Inną drogą” [„Another way”] by Wiesław Widloch. The texts shows how the authors share their experiences/stories with recipients. As noted by Hayden White, it is impossible to get an objective image of past events, but one can analyze the way these events were experienced and described. As a consequence, the paper starts with theoretical considerations about the functioning of both historical narration and narration of reminiscence in contemporary historical and Literature theses, and also among the recipients of historical books. In fact it is worth mentioning the connection between the research on literature of reminiscence and microhistory studies. In both cases the key issue is to focus on the life of a selected person and to see the world from his or her perspective. Among the research methods used in the present work one can find not only methods defined in the literature dedicated to memoirs analysis but also methods created by historians representing historicism.