Syłgudyszki, less commonly Sołdaciszki (Lithuanian: Saldutiškis), is a small town in Aukštovė (Upper Lithuania) in the Republic of Lithuania. It is located between the towns of Uciana (Lithuanian: Utena) and Novi Svetiany (Lithuanian: Šnenčionėliai). It is associated with the Witkiewicz family, above all with Stanislaw (1851-1915) - painter, writer and creator of the so-called Zakopane style in construction - and his son Stanislaw Ignacy (1885-1939), Witkacy - painter, playwright and philosopher.

Jałowiecki Palace in Syłgudyszki

Syłgudyszki belonged to the family of the princes of Pieriejasławski-Jałowiecki of the Bozeniec (Yelovitski) coat of arms from the late 18th century. A prominent landmark is the Jałowiecki Palace, which at the turn of the 19th/20th century belonged to Bolesław (1846-1918) and his wife Aniela (1854-1918) - sister of Stanisław Witkiewicz. The young Witkacy visited there four times, during his holidays in 1900-1903, "drinking in Lithuania", painting landscapes from nature and taking photographs. From Syłgudyszki, he went with his aunt to St Petersburg for a few days to visit the Hermitage, while during another stay he went to the Baltic Sea to Lipawa (Liepāja) in Latvia. Summer stays at the Jałowiecki aunts' in picturesque Syłgudyszki, situated among forests and lakes, and the journeys made at that time had a significant influence on the formation of Witkacy's personality and creative sensitivity. It was then, as his father noticed, that Stanisław Ignacy was becoming, despite his still very young age, a mature painter.

The palace was built on a local landmark on the outskirts of the village. Its construction in a more modest form probably took place in 1828, and although the building was successively extended over the decades, it did not lose much of its original shape. The building belonged to the Jałowiecki family until 1921. - Its last host was Bolesław's son, Mieczysław (1876-1962; graduate of the Riga Polytechnic, marshal of the nobility of the Swieciany district, agronomist, polyglot, diplomat - after World War One, the first delegate of the Polish government in Gdansk); later it housed a school and even a religious house. By then, it no longer had its former furnishings, as the last owner had taken them abroad.

The palace is a brick building with a basement, a single-storey central part and now two storey sides. It is surrounded by a former park, now reduced in size but nevertheless amounting to just over 2 hectares. The south-oriented central part features an ornamental portal with the Jelevicki coat of arms in it, while the veranda of the eastern wing on the front side has not been preserved. The building is now completely covered with sheet metal, the central part used to be tiled. In 2007, the new owner acquired the building and carried out a complete renovation, including the interior, where the old wall paintings were uncovered under the later layers of plaster and paint.

It is interesting to note that in May 2013, two letters with the date 21 August 1919, handwritten in Polish on field paper of the 2nd Battalion of the 6th Infantry Regiment of the Legions, were found hidden in the floor. An international delimitation commission was stationed in the palace at the time, and Syłgudyszki was then located on the demarcation line established in the aftermath of the Polish-Lithuanian battles, and eventually became part of the Lithuanian state.

The cemetery in Syłgudyszki

Another important memento connected with the Witkiewicz family is the small manor cemetery with the tombstone of the Jałowiecki family, located on a hill outside the town. On a metal (zinc?) slab, placed on a massive plinth bearing a lofty iron cross, we find, among other things, the parents of the creator of the Zakopane style, symbolically commemorated on it: Ignacy Witkiewicz (1814 or 1817-1868), a November insurgent buried in Tobolsk in Siberia, and Elvira of Szemiot (1822-1895), whose tomb is in the now Belarussian city of Minsk.

Railway station in the Zakopane style

In Syłgudyszki, there is also a trace of Stanisław Witkiewicz's attempt to propagate his Zakopane style in the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He believed that the preserved Podhale folk architecture and ornamentation contained elements of authentic Polish art, which would make it possible to create the foundations of a broad-based national architecture capable of uniting the lands of a country torn apart by partitions. The Jałowiecki family built the railway station building in Syłgudyszki in 1899 in the Zakopane style, designed by Stanisław Witkiewicz. Somewhat exaggeratedly, the building was referred to as the station in many later studies, and was intended for a local narrow-gauge railway line (gauge 750 mm) of economic importance, which connected Postawy (Паставы, now in Belarus), via Novo-Svičany, with Panevėžys. The line was built in the years 1895-1898 by the First Russian Underground Railway Company, founded by Bolesław Jałowiecki. The construction was erected, with the help of local workers, by two builders specially brought from Zakopane, and the event is recalled by Stanislaw Witkiewicz in a letter of August 1899: "Only the highlanders from Lithuania, who had built the railway station there, had returned."

The station was a two-storey building with an elaborate block of wooden logs covered with shuttering on the outside. It had a spacious attic, lit by a row of windows, under a slender shingled roof with "pazdura" (vertical wooden decorations placed) in the ridges. Intricately modelled gabled roofs covered the facades. There were also lofty brick chimneys. Many elements of decoration testified to their Podhale provenience. These included wood-carved stars, which formed a horizontal decorative band in the lower part of the ground floor. Studded arches were seen above the windows and entrance doors, and wood-cut leylings under the windows of the second storey. This was complemented by decorated pegged window frames and 'bevelled' gables.

The station was severely damaged during the First World War and during the Bolshevik War, and later reconstructions have basically stripped it of its former character. Only on one side of the station can one see the old features - the ceiling supports of the eaves part of the roof with a modest moulding. Today, the station is a single-storey residential building. The old narrow-gauge railway line has also not survived - its relic is a dilapidated brick tower with a water supply tank for the steam locomotives of the time - the "samovars". In place of the narrow-gauge track now runs a normal-gauge railway line.

Today, the Witkiewicz family name is completely forgotten in Syłgudyszki.