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ESZTER TARJÁNYI
and its connection with orality. It is only recently that a closer link between
the Hungarian anecdote and the gaweda has been presumed." Ihe gaweda
originally appeared as a “nobleman’s tale”:
[It] is a loose, informal narrative, told by a speaker in the manner of someone’s remi¬
niscing. It is often involved and full of digressions. Little attention is paid to chronol¬
ogy. At first, seemingly unimportant details and fragmentary episodes come to the
fore, then gradually a coherent picture emerges. By the time the speaker has finished,
everything has fallen into place. This form of narration, originating from an oral
tradition, first appeared in Polish literature during the Romantic period. It was used
both in poetry and prose. [...]. In the nobleman’s house and the lord’s castle the water
that we nobles drank was the gaweda [...][which]was an academy and a school, es¬
pecially given the social life of our fellow landowners [...]. The gaweda gave one the
exact history of each family and even that of national events.°
The gaweda is a relative of the Hungarian anecdote in that both literary genres
are closely linked to a sort of social and national class consciousness as well
as adhering to orality, with a special regard to its socially adhesive character.
Just as a strong connection was formed between the gentry and the anecdote
in Hungary, so it also appeared for the Poles with the gaweda and the noble
Sarmatian tradition.’ The common features the gaweda and the anecdote
share, logically suggesting a meditation on comparative social and literary
history, rely on their being embedded in ideologically influenced societies
and determined by tradition. This form of narrative in both cultures was
regarded as an adequate literary manifestation of national feeling and self¬
reflection on their cultural heritage. The anecdotal novel, however, also differs
from the gaweda. While the former in our country was mostly dismissed
by contributors to Nyugat (1908-1941), the leading journal of Hungarian
literary modernity, the latter found its way directly to a modern intellectual
literary forum thanks to a number of outstanding twentieth-century Polish
of the eighteenth century are related in humorous essays connected by the personality
and colourful speech of the narrator. [...] The gaweda remained popular up to the
second half of the nineteenth century.
Lajos Palfalvi: A Transz-Atlantik megdlldi (The Stops of the Trans-Atlantyk), Pozsony,
Kalligram, 2015, 28-29.
Andrzej Busza’s and K. W. Wöycicky’s definitions are quoted: Marek Pacukiewicz:
Cultural Aspects of Joseph Conrad’s Autobiography. On the Digressive Structure of Some
Reminiscences, Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Krakow, Vol. 7, 2012, 78, 80.
As Andzrej Wasko put it: “The centerpiece of Sarmatism is the political ideology of the Polish
gentry, with its strong republican preferences and opposition to absolutism of either Western
or Muscovite type, love of liberty and chivalry, excessive disregard for trade and craft, and
simplicity and austerity of morals.” — Andzrej Wasko: Sarmatism or the Enlightenment:
The Dilemma of Polish Culture, Sarmatian Review, Vol. 17, Issue 2, 2006, www.ruf.rice.edu¬
sarmatia/497/wasko.html (Accessed 2 February 2017).
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