"Pomoc własna" w piśmiennictwie Królestwa Polskiego po powstaniu styczniowym

Książka "Self-Help" Samuela Smilesa, po raz pierwszy opublikowana w 1859 roku, była popularnym wykładem liberalnej koncepcji państwa i jednostki, zbudowanym na kanwie ponad 400 biografii i anegdot z życia uczonych, wynalazców, pisarzy, inżynierów i prostych rzemieślników. Otwierała ją jedna z najsłynniejszych fraz XIX wieku: Bóg pomaga tym, którzy pomagają sobie. W języku polskim wydana została w roku 1867 nakładem „Przeglądu Tygodniowego” i szybko zyskała uznanie jako lektura szczególnie ważna dla czytelników drugiej połowy lat 60., dotkniętych klęską powstania styczniowego i doświadczających gwałtownych zmian związanych z reformą uwłaszczeniową, wymuszającą samodzielność i zaradność pośród wszystkich warstw społecznych. Nie tylko oryginalna koncepcja „self-help”, w Polsce upowszechniona pod nazwą „pomoc własna” lub „samopomoc”, ale i forma, w jakiej została przedstawiona, oddziałały na program społeczny i wyobraźnię postyczniowych publicystów we wszystkich zaborach. Niniejsza praca jest próbą odczytania sensu i znaczenia polskiej wersji książki Smilesa dla społeczeństwa Królestwa Polskiego, a zwłaszcza dla kształtowania się postyczniowych projektów modernizacji społecznej. Wyrasta ona z przekonania, że Pomoc własna odegrała ważną rolę w formowaniu się światopoglądu „młodych postępowców”, jak również z dostrzeżenia jej silnych związków z kulturowym kształtem europejskiego wieku XIX jako epoki emancypacji i demokratyzacji. Treść przygotowana przez polskich tłumaczy okazała się dobrą okazją do autorefleksji dla społeczeństwa dotkniętego klęską, ale jednocześnie próbującego rozwijać się jako nowoczesny naród. Jednocześnie spolszczenie książki Smilesa miało wpływ na kształtowanie się samowiedzy i etosu polskiej inteligencji.

Among the titles which captured the minds of intellectuals after 1863 are inter alia History of Civilisation in England by Henry Thomas Buckle, On Liberty by John Stuart Mill and The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin. Some of the titles became legendary, others were unjustly omitted by historians. This is exactly what happened to the book Self-Help (With Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance) by Samuel Smiles. The book, issued in Polish in 1867 by Przegląd Tygodniowy (The Weekly Review, the first periodical of the Warsaw positivists), was widely known and read, yet in the works of literary historians or historians of the idea, not much has been said about it so far. The book by the British author, first published in 1859, was a popular lecture on the liberal conception of the government and the individual, based on more than 300 complete biographies or sketches taken from the lives of scholars, inventors, writers, engineers and simple craftsmen. It begins with one of the most famous phrases of the 19th century: God helps those who help themselves. For the Polish readers of the 60’s of the 19th century this book was especially important just after the defeat of the January Uprising and the enfranchisement reform, which exacted self-reliance and enterprise from all the social strata. Not only the original conception of “self-help”, popularized in Poland as “pomoc własna” or “samopomoc”, but also the form in which it was presented, influenced the social programme and imagination of the post-January journalists in all the partitions. This doctoral dissertation is an attempt to analyse the meaning and significance of the Polish version of the book by Smiles for the society of the Polish Kingdom, especially for the creation of post-January projects of social modernisation. It stems from the conviction that Pomoc własna played an important role in the formation of the world view of “young progressives” after January Uprising, as well as from noticing its strong connections with the cultural shape of the European 19th century as an age of emancipation and democratization. The wording prepared by the Polish translators turned out to be a great opportunity for self-reflection of the society afflicted by defeat, yet trying to develop as a modern nation. At the same time, translating Smiles’s book into Polish affected forming the self-knowledge and ethos of the Polish intelligentsia. The dissertation is divided into six chapters which consecutively present the British and Polish social context, then describe the launch of Smiles’s book on the Polish market and direct reception of the idea of self-help in Polish writing, and lastly indicate some individual and social practices inspired by the idea of self-help. Chapter I introduces the reader to the context of the original, British version of the idea of self-help as a social movement as well as a conception of individual development and self-improvement. It also presents the 19th-century social and moral changes, such as forming a modern society, processes of social democratization, development of education, and popularization of biography as a genre. Chapter II presents Polish social and political conditions from the fall of the November Uprising to the 60’s of the 19th century, which determined the fact that Smiles’s conception played a different role in domestic conditions than it did in the British context, for which it was originally designed by Smiles. In this chapter I introduce issues relating to the development of the stratum of intelligentsia and the process of democratization of the social relations of the period in between the uprisings. At that time trends of democratic thinking were being formed alongside some strong tensions which occurred in relation to the sources of the social prestige which were no longer related to the noble origin. Chapter III talks about forming the circles of young intellectuals in Warsaw of the 60’s of the 19th century, and reveals civic practices of the generation of Szkoła Główna (The Main School), for which the book Self-Help by Smiles became an ideological manifesto. In this chapter I also present the circle of the future translators of Self-Help. Chapter IV is devoted to the attempts of introducing the book into domestic circulation and also to the role played by the press of that time in the initiative of translation. In this part I also reconstruct the very process of creating the book, which was actually a joint initiative of a few people who not only translated the book but also supplemented it with Polish biographies and achievements. The analysis of the content of Pomoc własna in chapter V shows what role was played by biography as a genre in creating national self-knowledge of the second part of the 19th century. It is also reconstruction of the image of the Poles created in the book in comparison with developing civilisations of European countries. Chapter VI is devoted to the presence of the idea of self-help in post-January journalism and in social practices. As the main context for describing the reception of Pomoc własna I take the positivist project of the new model of culture, especially the idea of cultural self-reliance, whose example was self-made man in the Western Europe and United States, and ‘samouk’ in Poland. With some examples of individual testimony of reading of Pomoc własna at the end of this dissertation, I illustrate why a book originally meant for emancipating British working class became, in the Polish edition, one of the most significant books for the generation of the post-January intellectuals, and how it influenced the development and self-awareness of this social group.