The Image of Power in the Past and Present in the Writings of Jozef Szujski

The focus of this work is an attempt to identify images of power with the help of individual works by the Polish historian, writer, publicist, and social and political figure Józef Szujski (1835–1883), leader of the Krakow Historical School and one of the Stańczycy, a loyalist political grouping that formed in Galicia in the second half of the nineteenth century. The multi-genre creative heritage of Szujski represents fertile material in terms of determining whether it is generally valid to speak about images of power in relation to complex, multi-genre samples: historical works, dramaturgical works, journalism, and even satire. Among other questions which arise in the context of the stated theme are, “How meaningful and emotionally saturated is the image depending on the genre?” and “Can we say that the use of the category of the image guarantees a more adequate picture of the past and present created by the author?”. The conducted study convinces us that, as a rule, our author remains consistent in creating this or that character and this or that picture, whether we are talking about a historical work, a drama, or a satirical opus. In Szujski’s rich creative legacy, a cross-cutting theme is the problem of the perception of the national past and the impact of this past on the present, effectively the presence of the past in the present. Even taking into account the conventionality and arbitrariness of the images of power revealed in Szujski’s works, it should be recognised that the development of this theme has potential.