Ogrody cudze, ogrody własne. Ogrody Juliana Ursyna Niemcewicza

J.U. Niemcewicz spent his life travelling around the world not excluding Poland. He saw numerous gardens and described many of them in his diaries, letters and travel journals. Niemcewicz was also familiar with English treatises on designing and planting gardens and he held Delille’s narrative poems in high esteem. Polish gardens are always for Niemcewicz lonely islands emerging from the panorama of ruined, poor and devastated Polish provinces. They are an alien but attractive phenomenon. The creation of gardens is interpreted by Niemcewicz as a way of escaping: the reality of extreme poverty (Helena Radziwiłłowa’s Arkadia), the torment of wasted life (Szczęsny Potocki’s Sofiówka), the history (the Bystry family’s Iwańczyce) and the never-ending patriotic duties (Ludwik Kropiński’s Woroczyn). They are also an attempt at realizing a dream, an attempt doomed to fail (Niemcewicz’s Ursynów).