Published: 2019-12-31

Konarski Conspirator Again Conspired. The Watchmaker’s Cipher in Interesting Men by Leskov

Jan Zieliński
Cultural Studies Appendix
Section: Artykuły
https://doi.org/10.21697/zk.2019.6.20

Abstract

The starting point is Interesting Men, a novel by Russian prose writer Nikolai Leskov, in which the motif of 18th-century English inventor Graham’s clocks plays an important role. The novel contains a quotation in Polish thas is attributed by Leskow to Zygmunt Krasiński, but in fact it comes from a poem by Szymon Konarski, a Polish conspirator, who was shot in 1839. By profession, Konarski was a watchmaker specializing in the so-called Graham’s escapements. The article puts forward a hypothesis that Leskov knew the biography of the victim and wanted to commemorate his fate in his novel, omitting the tsarist censorship.

Keywords:

watchmaking in literature, George Graham (watchmaker), Szymon Konarski, Zygmunt Krasiński, Nikolai Leskov

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Zieliński, J. (2019). Konarski Conspirator Again Conspired. The Watchmaker’s Cipher in Interesting Men by Leskov. Cultural Studies Appendix, (6), 387–407. https://doi.org/10.21697/zk.2019.6.20

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