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- Title
Lietuvos lenkų istorinė savimonė.
- Authors
Juzala, Gustaw
- Abstract
The Polish of Kaunas District are mostly of noble descent. They make up a specific group of the population who have kept their customs, language, rich traditions and historical folklore. The group's particularity that singles them out among others is that they pass their historical traditions on from generation to generation of the Polish nobility in the region. The Lithuanian-Polish margin in Kaunas District and Lithuanian-Polish-Belarusian margin in Vilnius Region differ not only in their ethnic constitution and language, but social status too. In Kaunas District the old distinction between Polish nobility and Lithuanian peasantry remains. This distinction is especially clearly revealed by the local inhabitants' respective relationships with history, and their different song repertoires. In Kaunus District historical war songs are especially valued and sung with pleasure at šlėktų akalyčios (noblemen's settlements). The inhabitants of Kaunas District šlėktų akalyčios are very conscious of protecting the memory of their ancestors. They collect family reliquaries and documents as well as pass their family story from one generation to another. The memory is easy to record as it is protected and cherished. Besides, all efforts are made to perpetuate it. Family memoirs and memories of its noble descent have become an important part of the historical consciousness of the šlėktų akalyčios. It is interesting that such family histories were at the origin of the prose genre, the so called landowners' stories, characteristic of Polish literature only. It is a kind of noble folklore that is transmitted not only from mouth to mouth, but also in script. Numerous memoirs of the representatives of this particular social stratum have thus been recorded. Peasants enjoy a rather different relationship with their historical memory. It is considerably shorter. The eldest surviving generation, that is born before the war, at best remember the names of their grandparents, but mostly only those who they knew when alive. These tellers have not retained specific, individual traits of their grandparents. They are often remembered simply as industrious, respected or smart, that is only as character types. Such a trend has been detected in Vilnius Region too, where peasants villages and šlėktų akalyčios are situated side by side. Although everybody living there thinks of themselves as Polish, people of peasant or noble descent have respectively different relationships with the past.
- Subjects
KAUNAS (Lithuania); VILNIUS (Lithuania); LITHUANIA; POLISH people; NOBILITY (Social class); SOCIAL status; PEASANTS; WAR songs
- Publication
Folk Culture, 2008, Vol 119, Issue 2, p37
- ISSN
0236-0551
- Publication type
Article