Brakujące kartki. Kłopoty z biografistyką emigracyjną na podstawie kilku kwerend, czyli zmagania ze scalaniem źródeł

The paper focuses on the difficulties underlying the research on some aspects of Polish history and literature abroad, due the high dispersion of documentary materials and pointing out how unusual, perilous, and accidental their survival sometimes was. In order to exemplify this the author reconstructs the story behind three postcards sent from Poland to Italy in the last century, one connected with the presence of a Polish Army Camp in Piedmont in 1919, addressed to the future Polish Honorary Consul in Turin Attilio Begey and the other two sent by a well-known poet, Kazimiera Illakowiczwna, to his daughter Maria Bersano Begey. Those postcards luckily did not get loose thanks to a Polish emigre, Wojciech Fudakiewicz, who bought them from a bouquiniste.