Veronika Girininkaitė

Vilnius University Library

Letters of a Nostalgic Expatriate as an Egodocument: The Correspondence of Remigiusz Korwin Kossakowski (1730–1780)

Reverend Remigiusz Korwin Kossakowski (1730–1780) was a former Jesuit, skilful preacher and professor of Vilnius Academy. From 1773 to 1780, he served as the correspondent for the Educational Commission of the Poland and Lithuania Commonwealth in Paris, helping guests from his homeland who came to Paris and gathering information needed by the Commission. From 1778 on, he wrote multiple letters to Vilnius. In those he was supposed to inform Vilnius Academy about the events related to the expected election of Marcin Poczobut as the membre correspondant of the Paris Academy of Sciences. However, he successfully transgressed this restricted pragmatic aim by using these letters to also express his nostalgia and opinions to a supposedly friendly listener. These letters, annoying for the addressee because of their verbosity, present an excellent example of an unexpected egodocument. The Catholic priest from Vilnius, who happened to spend his days among the intellectual élite of the French Enlightenment capital, was not a typical person of this epoch. However, his letters, if read as an egodocument, help us get a vivid picture of the epoch’s mentality and the author’s biographical data, his psychological portrait, and his subjective worldview. This case also provides an example, proving that egodocumentary traits can be found not only in intimate letters, but also in business correspondence.