Ponadczasowa satyra na galicyjski sposób uprawiania polityki lokalnej w Jana Zachariasiewicza "Królewskim krześle. Powieści współczesnej"

Positivist Jan Zachariasiewicz, remembered in 2023 through an academic session in Radymno on account of the 200th anniversary of his birth, rebelled against his Galician origins as a quintessence of political stalling. He devoted a lot of space in his prose to reviewing it critically in the sarcastic spirit of the twilight of the period. He directed the edge of his satire at the conservatism of noblemen, self-interest of the largely Jewish burghers, separatism of the Ruthenians and the perversity of the Austrian rulers who played out those groups against each other in an anti-Polish way, including the mostly submissive commons. The author of the paper deems the 1878 novel Królewskie krzesło a representative of the motif of reconciling with the past in Zachariasiewicz’s work. He himself called that novel “contemporary”. What was also in keeping with the times was the analogy between the pre-election situation in the novel and the political context of the anniversary session – it simply had to be emphasized. The recalled collective portrait of the community of a district Galician town written by a Radymno-born positivist hence acquired the value of a timeless satire on provincial politics. The prose of an old era, seemingly fit for being dusted off by a literary historian only, has proved to be surprisingly topical, which has been happily presented by a local specialist in Polish studies.