The recording of social memory in various artefacts, including literary texts, regardless of the intention or purpose of their creation, may also involve the desire to commemorate events or individuals. Collective memory influences individual memory. During the conference held at ILiJ UJK in Kielce on 3-4 June 2025, “Gallery ofcharacters. Map of places. To Edmund Niziurski on his 100th birthday”, thanks to the presence of the writer’s family, we were able to experience this transfer of memory.
As researchers argue, such transmission is born out of asense of connection with previous generations. In the social sphere, it refers to the creation of structures (communities) that enable closer bonds to be developed. With the passing of people who took part in certain events or witnessed various situations, communicative memory can disappear or transform into cultural memory. The conference dedicated to the 100th birthday of the Kielce-based writer stopped such possible disappearance, but also contributed to activating the cultural memory initiated in the past. For it is cultural memory as acognitive and interpretative category that makes it possible, above all, to reread cultural texts, including literary texts, such as the writings of Edmund Niziurski (…).

This monograph is aform of returning to books from childhood, to texts that may have been somewhat forgotten, to authors’ sometimes hidden or unconscious longings, to places of encounters with the great themes of literature, to the need to explicate the so-called fourth state of art. etc. Addressed to literary researchers, teachers, students, educational and library staff, parents, therapists and others interested in literature, culture, their study and social functions, it can also become akind of guide to selected aspects of Edmund Niziurski’s work and the anthropology of culture and memory. The diversity of the subject matter, the breadth of the issues dealt with and the multidimensionality of the approaches presented mean that, even many years after the author’s debut, Niziurski and his legacy are not without their appeal to readers and researchers. Certainly, not many authors, whether contemporary or well-known in literary history, would wish to make such along and lasting mark on the public’s memory as the writer from Kielce.