Background
Wladyslaw Reymont had a rather adventurous life for a failed tailor. He scrupulously studied his family’s struggles with money, but rather than try to provide for them, he ran off to join a travelling theater group (don’t get any ideas Owen). When he failed there he returned to Warsaw, wrote somewhat successfully and then got his big break when he got in a train accident and landed a nice settlement. With that financial independence, he had more time to write, and delivered his award winning works including the specifically namechecked: “great national epic, The Peasants“. (I read the first volume of The Peasants)
Works
‘The wind is always blowing in the face of the poor’
“In front of the crowd, and of the twinkling sinuous lines of tapers moving on, there gleamed a silver crucifix; following this came the holy images, dimly seen through a haze of cambric, and surrounded with flowers and lace and ornaments of tinsel. The procession arrived at the great church door, through which the sun irradiated the clouds of incense that it pierced; and the banners stooped to pass, the breezes made them float and flutter and flap, like the wings of some great green and purple birds”
Wladyslaw Reymont (trans. by Michael Dziewicki) p. 68
“Ah me! for in this world there is naught but trouble, and wailing, and woe!
Wladyslaw Reymont (trans. by Michael Dziewicki) p. 179
“And evil increases and multiplies, as doth the thistle in the woodlands!
“All things are vain and to no purpose…like tinder-wood, and like the bubbles which the wind maketh on the water and driveth away.
“And there is no faith, nor hope, save in God alone”
Message
Is it possible to have the message that everything stinks? It seems overly simple, but that’s the biggest takeaway I had from reading Reymont. I’m not alone, the Nobel website itself notes that his other work presents a similarly “dark vision of man”. The whole book I read seemed to obsess with pointing out how the “simple farmers” were petty, venal, greedy, bitter and cruel to one another. Sadder still, the volume of The Peasants that I read might have been his peppiest, even though the climactic celebration of a wedding allows people to ignore the brutal and lonely death of a farm hand (yeah…it gets worse for characters after that). Just to ice the stink cake, he makes sure to throw in a healthy dollop of anti-Semitic stereotypes that go beyond the general “everyone stinks” to really castigate (and in other works specifically blame) people of a different faith.
Position: #5 Center Back
Reymont’s cynicism brings to mind the brutality of Central defenders whose primary value seems to lie in fouling other people right before they score. Like the legendary Spanish Cynical-Foul Folk hero Sergio Ramos…only, you know…much, much worse…and injured…and even more unlikable. Man, I’m hoping I can find literally anyone who will replace this schmo.
Did I totally misread Reymont? Is his writing more anti-capitalist than anti-Semitic? Did I get a cruel translation? Come on Polish literary scholars…let me hear from you.
MacKenzie's Boot Room 