Pomnik nagrobny jako znak pamięci (na przykładzie XIX-wiecznych cmentarzy wileńskich)

Abstract

The issue of death played an important role in the consciousness of romanticism, its aesthetics and conventions stemming from them. The turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the period of establishment of new, non-urban cemeteries, which, as a specific set of signs, were reminders of past human existence. The memory of the deceased, which was given the shape of a material sign, appeared in the very word ('pomnik', i.e. 'memory', is the Polish word for 'tombstone'). The inscription on the tombstone in its turn provided clarity and deprived of anonymity, as well as encouraged the need to erect a tombstone as a token of memory. These phenomena have been discussed in the context of Polish inscriptions on gravestones in the cemeteries of Vilnius.