A contribution to the portrait of the editor and publisher of „Kwartalnik Litewski“. Notes on the margins of Jan Konrad Obst’s editorial letters to Eliza Orzeszkowa

Abstract

This article covers the edition of three preserved (so far unpublished) letters of Jan
K. Obst to the author of Nad Niemnem, deposited in the Archives of Eliza Orzeszkowa at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A small block of letters concerning the organisation of the new Vilnius periodical, “Kwartalnik Litewski”, illuminates the spiritual portrait of its editor and complements the epistolary duo: Orzeszkowa and Obst. This correspondence confirms not only the journalistic panache and culture-creating ambitions of the editor of “Kwartalnik Litewski”, but it also allows to reconstruct his views on the so-called “Lithuanian question”. In the light of the definition of a nation that was adopted by Obst (according to which a national status was determined by origin, territory inhabited and common past), in Lithuania there was a place for Poles, Lithuanians and Belarusians, where the unique ethnic, cultural and religious diversity of the borderland population made this region exceptional. The declarations contained in the letter to Orzeszkowa show that Obst considered publishing a magazine documenting the presence of Poles in Lithuania as a patriotic duty. The names of the future collaborators of “Kwartalnik Litewski” mentioned in the correspondence foreshadowed the direction taken by the editors who clearly promoted historically conditioned multi-ethnic nationalism.