[16084] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: French overseas, Warsaw's Zaluski
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Thu Sep 15 20:29:20 2005
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Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 07:25:20 -0700
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From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
FYI France: French culture overseas, Warsaw's Zaluski
French is spoken other places than just France, and these places
have had libraries... One of the greatest, during the 1700s, was
in Poland. Herewith a paper on that one, by Maria Witt, telling a
fascinating and engagingly-European and often-dramatic story:
"The strange life of one of the greatest European
libraries of the eighteenth century: the Zaluski
collection in Warsaw"
by Maria Witt, Instructor, Paris X Nanterre*
Summary
During the eighteenth century, the French language conquered
Poland. This period saw the creation and development of the
largest French-language library in the world outside of France:
"a giant collection containing 400,000 volumes, consequently one
of the two or three most important libraries in Europe".
The Zaluski Library, founded by two brothers: Andrzej Stanislaw
Kostka (1695-1758) and Jozef Andrzej (1702-1774), which opened in
Warsaw in 1747, was in existence for about 50 years. It was
subsequently "transferred" to Saint Petersburg, in 1795, as a war
prize, where it served as the basis for the Imperial Public
Library. Around 50,000 of the Zaluskis' books were returned by
Russia, then by the USSR, over the course of the nineteenth
century and between 1923 and 1935, but the Second World War
reserved a final tragedy for them.
Because of this strange and tragic fate, it is difficult now to
reconstruct a complete picture of the Zaluski collection, and of
how the library functioned. Too many documents, letters, archival
resources, catalogs, and inventories have been lost forever.
Nevertheless, a certain picture can be reconstructed thanks to
secondary documents, which have preserved information about their
contents, among them the documents presented at the 1933
Exposition at the National Library of Warsaw, historical and
biographical works published between the two World Wars, and the
recent research of J. Kozlowski.
French-speaking Poland
During the eighteenth century, the French language finally
conquered Poland. Up to that time, the pre-eminent language was
Latin, which served as the official language. In the second half
of the seventeenth century, however, the Polish court came under
French influence due to the efforts of two women: Marie-Louise de
Gonzague, daughter of the Duke de Nevers, who married King
Ladislas IV in 1645, and her confidante Marie-Casimire d'Arquien
(Maryienska), the daughter of a Nivernais gentleman, married to
Jean Sobieski. In 1645 all the princes and all the nobles of the
Court spoke French more often and more willingly than they did
their own language.
The height of French influence was attained during the reign of
Stanislas Auguste Poniatowski (1764-1795), who received his
esthetic education in Paris, in the salons of Madame Geoffrin.
He expressed himself in French better than in Polish, he
conducted his correspondence in French, and it was in French that
he wrote his Mémoires. French became the customary language of
Polish society.
A curious example of this evolution is provided by the mixture of
languages in two letters of Joseph Zaluski. The first, a mixture
of Polish and Latin written in Paris at the age of 19: "My tu
horas et monumenta mamy disposita i wszelkiej zazywamy
apllikacja..." -- and the second, written in Polish and French at
the end of his life in Russia, "Jezlim byl zarliwy przy wierze
swietej, toc w tym zgrzeszylem [If I was loyal to my holy faith,
then I did not sin], for I have only done my duty as a bishop.
Every gentleman does the duty of his office..."
An exceptional library (1747-1795)
The Zaluski library was created by two brothers with uncommon
destinies.
These two ecclestiastical aristocrats, high functionaries of the
Church, conceived of an entirely democratic and astonishingly
liberal institution. Through their library, an elite knowledge
reserved only for initiates was to become accessible to all, with
great freedom and without censorship.
The Zaluski brothers, Andrzej Stanislaw Kostka (André, 1695-1758)
and Jozef Andrzej (Joseph, 1702-1774), were book-lovers from
earliest youth. Descendants of an old noble Polish family, they
received princely educations, including voyages throughout Europe
with long sojourns in Rome and Paris. Through their uncle, the
Bishop of Plock, they were destined for the Church.
The Zaluskis. Paris and France (1716-1717, 1720-1723)
During their first journey the two brothers spent almost a year
in Paris, from the fall of 1716 to the summer of 1717, under the
tutelage of Cardinal Melchior de Polignac, the former French
ambassador to Poland. They pursued their studies in dialectic,
rhetoric, Roman history, geography, the Bible and -- although
they were preparing themselves for the priesthood -- they had a
dancing master. "It is not to dance, but to learn how to bow,
according to the fashion here."
>From earliest youth, the brothers collected books: the first
inventory that Joseph drew up in 1720, at the age of 18, listed
3000 books. One year later, after the death of their uncle the
bishop, they inherited a large and valuable collection of books
to which was added the collection of an ancestor, Primate Olszowski.
>From 1720 to 1723, Joseph again was in Paris. He pursued advanced
studies at the seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris. He spent time at
Issy-Les-Moulineaux, visited the Cistercian abbey of Carnoët in
Brittany, gave homilies in French at the church of St. Sulpice,
visited la Trappe, spent time with Melchior de Polignac, and at
the same time he constantly visited libraries and bookstores. He
bought books and manuscripts; in libraries, he copied unknown or
unpublished sources on the history of Poland.
It must be remembered that the fourth public library in Paris,
"the Caroline", library of the priests of the Christian Doctrine,
was opened just before his arrival in Paris, on November 24,
1718, according to the bequest of a doctor of theology at the
University of Paris, Miron.
Return to Poland (1723-1736)
Named Bishop of Plock, Joseph considered founding a public
library in his episcopal palace, but finally in 1723 the two
brothers decided to combine their own collections, with those
they had inherited from their ancestors, in order to open a
public library in Warsaw.
According to the Leipzig newspaper in 1728, Zaluski already owned
8000 volumes, from all over Europe, and he planned the
publication of a complete bibliography of Polish and foreign
writers who had written about the history of Poland.
Thus in 1732 Joseph, in _Programma Literarium_, announced his
plan to open a public library, and he presented a vast publishing
program based on his collections, calling on all persons
interested in collecting documents and preparing bibliographies
and other reference sources. The political upheaval in Europe
after the death of King August the Strong (August II), in 1733,
would make this project unrealizable, delaying the creation of
the public library for 20 years.
Lorraine (1736-1742)
In the struggle over the succession to the Polish throne, France
supported as its candidate Stanislas Leszczynski, who for eight
years had been father-in-law to the king of France. Eventually it
was the son of August II who would seize the crown of Poland,
with the support of Russia and Austria.
Bishop Zaluski -- francophone, francophile, and partisan of
Leszczynski -- decided to leave Poland, in 1736, to go the court
of his king in exile in Lunéville. His library by that time
already was famous. Polish scholars begged him at his departure
to leave it in the country, at the service of science.
In Lunéville, from 1736 on, he began to complete his collection.
He frequently went to Paris and Versailles and visited libraries.
According to a list he drew up himself, Zaluski made the
acquaintance in Paris of 180 men of letters -- learned men,
bibliophiles, collectors, and booksellers -- and he visited
numerous libraries, "more than in any other city". Several
authors offered him their works for his library. Certain books
given to him by Jean Paul Bignon, librarian of the Royal Library,
have been preserved up to the present.
In exchange, the Bishop offered gifts of Polish books: to Buffon,
he sent _Auctuarium historiae naturalis_, to Gabriel François
Coyer, he gave books and sources for his research on Jan III
Sobieski. To the famous heraldry specialist d'Hozier, he offered
the family tree of the Ossolinski princes. Réaumur, the famous
inventor of the thermometer, received from Zaluski collections of
Polish observations of grasshoppers, for his work in progress.
The passion for books led the bishop sometimes to the limits of
the acceptable. He did not hesitate to exchange books with
Pierre-Jacob Sepher, the owner of an excellent collection of
books, "which questioned the faith, dubious, paradoxical,
fanatical, condemned to the pyre".
At least five books from the library of the Abbey of St.
Germain des Prés fell into the escarcelle [a monk's leather
purse] of the Zaluski Library, as did at least one from the
Dominican establishment on the rue St. Jacques. Numerous books
come from the library of the Jesuits at the Collège Louis le
Grand, from the canons of the Church of St. Genevieve, from the
Royal Library, from the Sorbonne, from the Congregation of St.
Sulpice, in short from all the libraries of Paris.
In Lorraine, Zaluski maintained relations with all of the
important abbeys and colleges, and with learned men around
Lunéville. At the time of his stay in Lunéville, Antoine
Lancelot, his friend and partner in bibliophilic exchanges, drew
up the inventory of the archives of Lorraine at the request of
Louis XV.
Stanislas Leszczynski, who founded a public library which was
open every day (1750), certainly discussed his project with his
friend the bishop. Their ideas on this subject, on which they
were passionate, were not always the same. Disagreements arose.
It was during one of these estrangements that the bishop decided
to return to Poland, in 1742. Several years later, his
collections also were sent home from Lunéville: "several thousand
volumes packed in 84 crates".
At the library of Nancy was left only, "the small Zaluski
collection". The bishop offered certain of his volumes to the
Academy of Nancy, in order to be admitted as a foreign associate
there in 1756, on the request of the King. It should be
remembered that the academy founded by Stanislas was a French
language academy, "which was not a given in a duchy where part of
the population spoke a German dialect. During the life of
Stanislas, all written and oral communication was in French, with
the sole exception of a text in Latin by the famous astronomer
Father Boscovitch. The idea was to prepare the return of Lorraine
to France." (*)
The mobility of the itinerant bishop can be astonishing: at a
time when each voyage involved laborious preparation and fatigue,
he traveled everywhere in Europe -- Italy, Germany, Austria,
Holland and Russia found themselves in his path. He was a member
of scholarly societies in Italy (Rome, Florence, Bologna) and
Germany (Leipzig, Berlin, Grifie, Jena); he belonged to the
academies of St. Petersburg, Nancy, Stockholm and Olomouc
(Olomuniec). But his attempts to obtain a chair in the French
Academy were unsuccessful.
His personal contacts were a very small part of his activities as
a librarian: booksellers affiliated as his agents were to be
found in all the large and not-so-large cities of Europe.
Poland and Warsaw
The elder brother of Joseph, André, also collected books from his
youth. It was said that even while hunting he was inseparable
from his books. When he became a bishop at the age of 28, he
gathered his books in his immense episcopal palace at Putulsk.
Before his departure for Europe in 1736, Joseph prepared his
future library, concerned about his books being stored in
inappropriate places and being made inaccessible to researchers.
(Remember his _Programma Literarium_ of 1732, mentioned above).
Around 1734 the brothers sent their collections to the cloister
of the Carmelites, in Warsaw, where some of the books scattered
in the cells were eaten by rats.
On April 7, 1736, André bought the Danilowiczowski Palace, in the
center of Warsaw, as a possible site for his future library.
While his brother Joseph was staying in Europe, André received
the library of the deceased Jean III Sobieski (800 volumes), who
had bequeathed it to him in 1740. This collection became the
principal treasure of his library. It included several books
inherited from the kings Sigismond August, Batory, Sigismond III,
and Ladislas IV.
The preparation for the opening of the library would last ten
years, at first because of construction in the Palace which was
intended to receive the collections. In 1744 Joseph devised and
founded the "Society of Readers" (Towarzystwo Czytelnicze), the
purpose of which was the purchase and reading of books. After
being selected by its members, the books were to be donated to
the library.
In 1745, the brothers used the press "Polish News" (Kurier
Polski) to call on printers to give them new works, so that they
could establish a national library. This appeal was renewed twice
in the same newspaper.
CIVIUM IN USUS
Finally the library "CIVIUM IN USUS" (FOR THE USE OF CITIZENS)
was inaugurated, on August 8, 1747, although construction still
would continue for 15 years. At the opening, there were about
180,000 volumes. (*)
At the entrance of the Palace, over the doorway, were the
following inscriptions: "Adolescentibus illicium" (an attraction
for the young), "Senibus subsidium" (an aid to the old),
"Studiosis negotium" (a mission for the curious), "Occupatis
diverticulum" (a diversion for workers), "Otiosis spectaculum" (a
spectacle for the idle), and "Conditori gloriosum monumentum" (a
glorious monument for its founder). Under these inscriptions was
the coat of arms of Junosza de Zaluski, with the motto, "Sic vos,
non vobis".
It was planned to be open "Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, morning
and evening". From its opening in 1746, the library had internal
rules instituted by André. Certain rules had, in addition to
their role in the codification of principles, a didactic purpose:
they taught appropriate behavior in a public library.
The Zaluski Library was a lending library: it permitted patrons
to consult the collection on site or to borrow books, in the
capital as well as in the provinces, which was extraordinary for
that time (an ancestor of today's interlibrary loan).
The Danilowiczowski Palace and its collections
>From this time forward, the Danilowiczowski Palace became an
obligatory place to visit for any cultivated foreigner visiting
Poland in the last years of the monarchy. The detailed
descriptions that they left witness their admiration for the
collection and the organization of the library.
It was a large and ancient palace, with an elongated quadrangular
floor plan, and it was embellished with statues. "The interior,"
says Jacques Bernouilli in his description of his trip to Poland
in 1778, (*) "is a great labyrinth of rooms full of books, some
two hundred thousand. The largest room, sumptuously decorated,
contains numerous French works, and the others are exceptional
either because of their bindings or the numerous engravings they
contain. That room, long, beautiful and with very high ceilings,
is also decorated by numerous statues that the eminent Zaluski
brothers have commissioned in memory of the worthiest and most
noble men of their country... The Latin books on the third floor
also occupy a very large room, completely full of shelves; next
to it there are several more rooms completely crowded with books.
In the attic are placed the duplicates of the Polish books; I
doubt however that all the duplicates are stored there, for
sometimes the founders of the library have acquired five, six, or
even seven copies of these 'rare works'."
Acquisitions
The Zaluski collection was put together in the same spirit as the
information for the Great Encyclopedia: a representation of the
totality of human knowledge. Zaluski wanted to bring together all
written texts, for, "only posterity will be able to judge the
usefulness of certain manuscripts or printed works." Using the
press, from 1745 on he requested printers to send him their
books, "even the most slender, because what will not serve one,
can be useful to another."
The brothers were the first to set themselves the goal of
collecting all Polish printed works. It was an enormous task,
given that printers in Poland became active by 1473 (among the
first in Europe, three years after Paris). From that date on the
production of printed works continued to increase. And,
nonetheless, the Polish collections of the Zaluski Library in
1740 were already so rich that the bibliophile bishop sought only
authors who were, "forgotten, unknown, or lost".
It is known that the Zaluski Library contained small-format books
and pamphlets, which was rare since librarians of former times
disdained these types of documents. The two brothers never
agreed: the elder reproached his younger brother for a penchant
for loose pamphlets and small books, "worthy of bric-à-brac". In
their place, he wanted to see in the library, "autores classicos
et in biblioteca pernecessarios" (classical authors and those
thoroughly necessary for a library).
Printers, scholarly societies, or individual authors responded
willingly to the appeals of the Zaluskis, who continued to search
through Polish and foreign libraries and follow auctions, buying
personal collections at the death of scholars. In the collections
of the National Library in Warsaw are found, for example, the
catalog of the public sale of the Mylius firm in Berlin (1767),
carefully annotated by Zaluski, and the bill for some sixty books.
When the acquisition of a book was not possible, Joseph Zaluski
ordered a copy of the document, which was then prepared at his
request. (The magnates employed "scriptores" -- whenever the
demand for a document was rare, it was more profitable to
re-write the book than to publish a few copies).
At the end of its existence, the library had doubled its
collection and it contained more than 400,000 volumes. The
collections moved to St. Petersburg were counted twice (by
Bogdanov in 1796 and Antonovskij in 1806), and reflect these
statistics.
Disciplines and their classification
Joseph presented the library's collection through the principal
disciplines such as theology, philosophy, scholastics and
history. Law and medicine were not his principal preoccupations.
But Olenin, director of the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg,
described the library at Warsaw as "absolutely encyclopedic" and
possessing books of all disciplines, human sciences, and arts.
The most numerous was the theology collection, and after that
history and literature.
According to several sources the books were classified first by
language, then by theme, next by format, and finally by
alphabetical order. The principles of thematic classification
established by Joseph well before the library's opening remained
in effect until 1787. Then this thematic classification was
replaced by the systematic classification of Konopczynski, which
identified five areas of knowledge: Religion, Thought, Memory,
Imagination, Language.(*) This classification scheme would last
only seven years.
Preservation
The sources contain some information about the preservation of
the collection. To guard against rats, the books were put in
trunks and a cat was bought: it was allowed to circulate freely
in the Palace, thanks to openings specially devised. To avoid
dust, special slipcovers were put on the globes. During the
renovation of the building, André asked his brother Joseph to
demolish the adjoining storage building, so that, "the sun and
wind might circulate around the library". He also asked him to
avoid putting books against the walls until they were completely dry.
After the death of the Zaluskis, in order to reduce the humidity,
it was decided to put crushed stone beneath the floor. In the
courtyard there was a canopy under which dusty books were shaken
and damp ones were dried. "Rotten or worm-eaten books" which
threatened to infect the others were buried (burning them was too
dangerous and could cause a fire), or isolated far from the rest
of the collection.
Catalogs and processing
The document collections of the library were described in
numerous catalogs, manuscripts and printed works. During the
eighteenth century, nearly one hundred manuscript catalogs of the
collection were produced. At the beginning of the 1760s, when
there already were more than 50, a list was drawn up that later
was included under the title _Cataloghi Bibliothecae meae
inservientes_ [Catalogs used in my library] in the _Bibliographie
Zalusciana_ of Janocki (1763-1766).
The list was soon out of date, since new catalogs continually
were developed. In addition to catalogs, throughout the life of
the library guides or selected lists of the collections of books
were devised, beginning with _Titles of the Public Library of
Zaluski_ and _Encyclopedic Library of the BestAuthors in Each Subject_.
In the library, processing was mainly the responsibility of
Joseph Zaluski who, book in hand, made decisions about
classification, adding letters and numbers to the title pages.
These symbols were a sort of shelf number, which allowed the
arrangement of the books in a given order as well as their
retrieval from the shelf.
Zaluski analyzed the documents carefully: on the title page, he
underlined the elements necessary for cataloging -- name of the
author, title, and date of the work. If these data were lacking,
he added his own title based on the provenance of the document.
He thus engaged in a real effort of bibliographic control and,
when necessary, completed the record with a commentary, with
missing first name, title of nobility or profession (dignité),
membership in a religious order, nationality, etc. Very often,
especially for Polish documents, he expanded or identified
pseudonyms, cryptonyms, or anonymous authors.
Sometimes, particularly for precious manuscripts, he added a note
of evaluation. In the same way rare and precious books were
indicated by stars or by the expressions "liber rarus" (rare
book), "perrarus" (very rare), or "rarissimus" (extremely rare).
[End of Part 1. Part 2 of 2, covering the dispersals and
reconstruction of the library, will appear here on October 15.]
--oOo--
* Maria Witt, witt_m04@yahoo.com
Expert certifié en information et documentation (LIS) ADBS
Spécialité normalisation bibliothéconomique
Original appearance of this paper: in French --
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla71/papers/128f-Witt.pdf
-- and in English, translated from the French by Robert O. Steele --
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:8WJJ_Kgth40J:www.ifla.org/IV/ifla71/papers/128e_trans-Witt.pdf+zaluski+library&hl=en
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla71/papers/128e_trans-Witt.pdf
This paper first was presented at the World Library and
Information Congress, 2005, at Oslo, Norway (71th IFLA General
Conference), and is reproduced here with permission.
Special thanks to Jan Kozlowski and Halina Tchorzewska-Kabata for
information and documents.
Notes to Part 1: [Part 2 will contain a general bibliography]
La Lorraine (1763-1742)
(*) Zaluski's stay in Lunéville: P. Boyé. _The Polish Court of
Lunéville (1737-1766)_ (Nancy: 1926); Same author. "The small
Zaluski collection in the Nancy Public Library", in _ Bulletin of
the Archeological Society of Lorraine_ (1920); Maria
Manteufflowa. "Ksiegozbiór Jósefa Zaluskiego w Lotaryngii i jego
droga de Polski [The Library of Joseph Zaluski in Lorraine and
Poland]", in _Rocznik Biblioteki Narodowej [Annual of the
National Library], 1966); Stefan Gaber. _Polacy na dworze
Stanislawa Lesczynskiego w Luneville w latach 1737-1766 [Poles at
the castle of Stanislaw Lesczynski in Lunéville in the years
1737-1766]_ (Czestochowa:1998). (References provided by Jan
Kozlowski).
Poland and Warsaw
(*) Information about the opening of the library in: Radlinski,
Jakub Pawel. _Corona urbis and orbis, gloria and gemma Regni
Poloniae universitatis scientiarum, publica, amplissima, &
celiberrima Biblioteca Zalusciana... illustrata [Crown of the
city and the globe, glory and jewel of the kingdom of Poland, the
public, most distinguished, most celebrated Zaluski Library of
all the sciences... illustrated]_ (Cracow: 1748). Copy preserved
in the National Library of Warsaw.
The Danilowiczowski Library and its collections
(*) Bernouilli, Johann. _Reisen durch Brandenburg, Pommern,
Preusses, Curland, Russland und Poland in der Jahren 1777 und
1778 [Travels through Brandenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, Curland,
Russia, and Poland in the years 1777 and 1778]_ (Leipzig:
1779-1780). Published in Polish in: _Poland in the time of
Stanislas in the eyes of foreigners_ (Warsaw: 1963) ed. Waclaw
Zawadzki.
Disciplines and their classification
(*) Kopsczynski's classification (1787-) at the Zaluski Library
(Source: Kozlowski, after Lodynski and Polska Stanislawiwska)
Religion Thought Memory Imagination Language
Bible Physics Sciences Poetry Grammar
Biblical Metaphysics assoc.with Painting and Rhetoric
commentary Ethics history: sculpture Poetics
Holy Fathers Logic Civil Eloquence
Councils Politics Chronology architecture Letters
Theologians Droit Genealogy Mythology Lexicography
Prophets Mathematics Geography Music Discourse
Ascetics Medicine Numismatics Criticism
Preachers Mechanics Heraldry
Rites Military
architecture
Economics History:
Astronomy Kings
States
Peoples
Scholars
Some Statistics
Collections of printed works and manuscripts in the Zaluski
Library by language (after Kozlowski)
Printed Works Manuscripts
Latin 39% Latin > 50%
French 28% German > 10%
German 18% French > 10%
Italian 6% Multilingual > 10%
English 2% Polish ca.10%
Greek 3% Italian ca.2.5%
Polish 2% Other ca.1.5%
Flemish 1%
Spanish 1%
Manuscripts by discipline
(According to the classification of the Imperial Library of St.
Petersburg, after Kozlowski)
Theology 34.9% Classics 0.5%
History 11.3% Natural history 0.4%
Law 9.7% Physics 0.3%
Philosophy 8.1% Calligraphy 0.2%
Polygraphy 7.5% Liberal arts 0.1%
Poetry 6.4%
Rhetoric 5.0%
Medicine 3.9%
History of literature 3.8%
Mathematics 3.5%
Music 1.8%
Linguistics 1.5%
Chemistry 0.6%
Technology 0.5%
Overview of the current state of the Zaluski collections in
Polish libraries
Printed works
* 12,000 -- Library of the University of Warsaw
* 7,000-8,000 -- National Library
Isolated printed works in the majority of large public or private
libraries, for example
* Public, Seminary (Warsaw)
* Jagiellonska Library (Cracow)
* Ossolineum, Library of the University of Wroclaw (Wroclaw)
Manuscripts
* 2000 -- National Library of Warsaw
* 46 AGAD
Isolated manuscripts in these libraries:
* Czatoryski, Jagiellonska (Cracow), Ossolineum (Wroclaw)
Correspondence
* 8,500 letters of Joseph Zaluski (from the period
1724-1773) -- National Library
--oOo--
