Niedaleko pada książka od jabłoni. O symbolach biograficznych dwóch ustrońskich bibliofilów

The article contains an analysis of autobiographical narratives of Jan Wantuła (1877–1953) and Józef Pilch (1913–1995) – two bibliophiles, amateur historians and folk writers from Ustroń (Cieszyn Silesia). The topic of the analysis are the ways in which they retrospectively structure their lives in the context of being suspended between the time of nature (growth cycle) and culture (historical, involving individuality, but also passing). Their understanding of the nature-culture dichotomy is influenced by their status of being self-taught men, who, aspiring to high culture, kept ennobling (their own) nature in the image of the gardener’s work. The figure of the orchardist (both Pilch and Wantuła were orchardists) belongs to the central symbols on which the representations of the authors’ biographies focus; the others are: apples, books, and the library understood as an interpersonal sphere. From the hermeneutics perspective, the article presents the use of these symbols, and extracts from the analyzed narratives a project of grafting nature and culture together through, on the one hand, grafting trees (literally and metaphorically), and, on the other hand, grafting oneself into books.