From the bottom of my heart

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to analyze a unique fragment of the manuscript of the hetman’s Pylyp Orlylk’s „Diary” („Diariusz”) from May-June 1730. The methodological basis is the understanding of handwritten notes in terms of combining matters of public importance and private life. The dominance of private discourse in the fragment analyzed here is obvious. In the tenth year of his exile in Thessaloniki, when Hetman Pylyp Orlyk actually lost hope of escaping from „mourning Babylon”, the eldest son came to the father incognito under a disguised name. The hetman’s diary entries about his last meeting with his son in Thessaloniki are extremely sincere and touching. These notes represent picturesque figures of people whom fate brought to distant Thessaloniki. Not only father and son, but the whole environment – multi-ethnic, multifunctional, multi-religious, multilingual, but still able to understand the threat of pandemic and war. In general, the „Diary” of 1720–1732 pp. – which is one of the largest in the history of world literature – is the dominant motive is „discourses”: conversations, games, discussions, including theological and philosophical. The arrival of his son inspires a powerful anthropology of memory. The conversations refresh those experiences that are related to everything that happened before and after the Poltava battle. And it was this defeat that shocked the whole being of the hetman. According to Vladislav Tatarkevich, none of the other events gives as much suffering as wars, including lost ones. The hetman noted in detail the meetings and conversations with his son. They convincingly testify that his young diplomat is a new type of figure, a strategist of the European type. Hryhor (Grégoire) Orlyk is the successor of the project by the hetmans Petro Doroshenko and Ivan Mazepa, seeks to rely on France, which during the 18th century – which was almost the only great power in Christendom – opposed Moscow’s expansion in Europe.