L E T T E R S

XIXQuite often the letters of Janski contain real gems of thought on many mattersof life-concern. They reveal both the breadth of his horizons, and the depth ofhis thought. Most often he expressed himself in living language. He was moreof an orator, a proclaimer of the truth, than a writer. Since he was involved inso many practical affairs, it was hard for him to write. Nevertheless, there weretimes when he was forced to write, either to respond to certain questions or toclarify a situation. However, he had more occasion to speak to his disciplesthan to write. Since he only wrote from time to time, Janski’s letters take on agreater value today because they preserve the views of the Founder on varioustopics, especially the topic of his new Catholic Community.Many of the letters of Janski are available only in rough draft, filled withcrossings out, corrections, and abbreviations. Sometimes they are preserved onbits of brittle paper. There are imprecisions in style with regard to sentencerelationship or even sentence structure. The author himself would haveeliminated these in his final copy. Hence, there is often need on the editor’spart to reconstruct an abbreviated word or fill in missing words. These areincluded in the text with slash marks [ ]. Important content in the rough draftwhich has been crossed out or otherwise eliminated is included in the text inparentheses. These will also be used to indicate footnotes. Of course the 19 thcentury Polish text has been modernized with contemporary spelling andpunctuation.Since the author of this edition of the letters of Bogdan Janski is also theauthor of an extensive monograph on the Founder of the Resurrectionists, thenotes provided for the individual letters are based on all the known preservedmanuscript sources as well as the published sources which relate to this period.As one begins to read the entire corpus of Janski’s letters which have beenpreserved to this point, it should be remembered that the letters from 1828 to