2025 Issue №4

The article continues research on the internal organization of the corpus of prayers by the well-known statesman and writer of the first half of the 17th century, Prince Simeon Shakhovsky. The structure and thematic organization of this corpus of Shakhovsky’s eu­chological compositions are identified based on a study of the tradition of private prayer rules (the so-called bedtime prayers) of the early 17th century. It is established that three clearly distinguished groups of prayers in this corpus reflect both the personal circumstances of the author’s life and his diverse literary interests; possible models for these hymnographic compo­sitions of the prince are indicated, showing his familiarity with the traditions of the Trinity Monastery and the influence of the early compilers of the Moscow Printing House. Particular attention is paid to Prince Shakhovsky’s acquaintance with the prayer practices of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, including editions of the Vilnius Brotherhood. It is shown how the rela­tively new tradition of compiling collections of private prayer books, not included in the litur­gical cycle, could have served as a stimulus for Shakhovsky’s independent creation of a corpus of small daily petitions. The prerequisites for the creation of two unusual concluding prayers of the corpus are examined in detail. The result of the study is the substantiation of the special character of Prince S. I. Shakhovsky’s daily petitions (which can be termed “travel prayers”) and the hypothesis regarding the compositional editing of the collection of the author’s pray­ers for inclusion in his collected works.

The essayistic tradition of Old Polish prose is examined, represented by authors of the Re­naissance (Rey, Górnicki, Modrzejewski), Baroque (Pasek, B. Chmielowski), and Enlight­enment (Krasicki) periods. The creator of the Polish essayistic canon was Mikołaj Rey, the author of the book Zerciadło, which Mickiewicz compared to Montaigne’s Essays. The role of the essayistic element in the literary diaries of 20th-century Polish writers (Andrzejewski, Gombrowicz, Herling-Grudziński) is considered. It is stated that the tradition of Polish essay­ism, spanning the Modern and Contemporary periods, is based on the dominance of the “gen­re block silva” (S. Skwarczyńska), whose genesis in the world literary context goes back to Antiquity, and which in the postclassical period marks a new stage of literary self-consciousness, where the use of “silva” forms acquires the character of artistic play with the reader. In Gombrowicz’s Diary, the Old Polish forms of silva rerum are presented in a parodic aspect. Herling-Grudziński’s Diary Written at Night, as a collection of comments on what was read, preserves the genre memory of lucubrationes — nocturnal “reflections” presented in the works of the philosopher of Late Antiquity, Aulus Gellius.