Little-Known Polish Fairy Tales
The imagined worlds of fairy tales offer not only entertainment for children but also reflections on contemporary times. Polish writers such as Henryk Sienkiewicz, Eliza Orzeszkowa, Bolesław Prus, and Wladysław Reymont were aware of the narrative power of fairy tales and wrote their own largely overlooked fantastical stories.
Reflecting on the possibility of wonder and magic in the work, Eliza Orzeszkowa noted in 1888,
There are resurrecting waters, singing trees, birds that speak like men, and people who love like gods; but to see and possess all this, one must cross the seven seas, seven mountains, seven forests and enter the land of Fairy Tales.
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In 2019, when the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Olga Tokarczuk, the laureate said, ‘we lack the language [...], metaphors, myths and new fairy tales’ to describe the contemporary world. Though Tokarczuk realises a return to such storytelling is impossible today, she recognises the need to find another way of talking about reality. In her Nobel speech, she also mentioned Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, which as a child she listened to with a flushed face because she believed the stories of ‘objects [that] have their own problems, feelings, and even a kind of social life’ are a parable of human destiny. Similarly, she saw animals, rivers, and celestial bodies as living beings.
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Joanna Concejo's illustration for 'The Lost Soul' by Olga Tokarczuk, photo: Format publishing house
Tokarczuk situates her stories between the tangible and real, and the spiritual and oneiric. Fairy-tale motifs and symbols can be found in her debut novel, The Journey of the Book-People, as well as in Primeval and Other Times, The Books of Jacob and, finally, The Lost Soul – a book (not only) for children, illustrated by Joanna Concejo. Drawing on folk truths, ancient parables, and legends, the Nobel Prize winner comments on the present and looks into the future in a balanced way, without unnecessary shouting. Thanks to elements taken from the world of magic, her voice becomes more audible, reaching readers from every corner of the globe, raised in different cultures.
This universalism of fairy tales was also used by other Polish Nobel Prize winners and leading writers, even at a time when realism dominated popular literature.
When folk wisdom becomes literature: Henryk Sienkiewicz
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'Baśń Tatrzańska' (A Tatra Tale), 'Pocztówki' (Postcards) series by Eliasz Walery Radzikowski Eliasz Walery, 1908-1920, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona
As the late-19th-century positivist slogans of science, progress, and work slowly faded away, people began to take an interest in metaphysics and paranormal phenomena. A turn towards magic was visible in literature even before the modernists rose in prominence. Not everyone remembers that Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz, who is mainly associated with ‘heart-lifting’ literature, also wrote fairy tales, fables, and legends. His interests included esotericism and Eastern religions. He used characters and motifs from folk tales from the Wisła River region and referred to Hindu, Egyptian, Greek, and Phoenician cultures to offer his readers timeless values. He broke the usual didacticism with colourful language, treated genre boundaries with ease, and stories, which we would today treat as fairy tales, in his rendition sounded more like popular fairy tales you tell by a bonfire than moralising teachings.
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'Bajarz polski: Baśnie, Powieści i Gawędy Ludowe' (The Polish Storyteller: Fairy Tales, Stories & Folk Stories) , 'Swarm' by Józef Gliński, Księgarnia Stow. Naucz. Polskiego, Warszawa, 1928, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona
In today's uncultured times, one sometimes wants so much to escape from barbarism into the Greek temples, and from obscure curves to straight lines, and finally, from pompous and dark platitudes to clear and noble speech – that one day I could stand it no longer and ran away, and from this was born the ‘Athenian Tale’.
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The motif of mortals' futile search for truth became for Sienkiewicz not so much a form of escape from modernity as a reaction to it. He shows the values that should guide a person in life. He does the same in Bajka (A Tale) – a story referring not to Greek mythology, but to Charles Perrault's fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. Sienkiewicz's princess, still in her cradle, is visited by fairies, each giving her a different gift: beauty, sparkling eyes, a slender figure, and wealth. The fairy queen plays the role of a moralist, discarding perishable gifts and offering the girl goodness.
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'Baśń Tatrzańska' (A Tatra Tale), 'Pocztówki' (Postcards) series by Eliasz Walery Radzikowski Eliasz Walery, 1908-1920, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona
Sabałowa Bajka (Sabała's Fairy Tale), inspired by Podhale folklore and the vernacular of Zakopane, turns out to be less cloying. Instead of princesses and fairies, we have the real highlander Sabała (singer and storyteller Jan Krzeptowski’s nickname) and the Grim Reaper cast in the main roles. In the first part of the story, the Grim Reaper, in the guise of an old woman, is annihilated by a clever gazda (highlander). In the second, the Grim Reaper learns a valuable and rather brutal (he’s slapped by Jesus) lesson of mercy. Perhaps these are two separate fairy tales folded into one?
Sienkiewicz probably wrote Sabałowa Bajka in the summer of 1889 at Czarny Staw Gąsienicowy, a lake in Zakopane. Sienkiewicz was anxious not to let fellow Zakopane artist Stanisław Witkiewicz beat him to print with the story conveyed by the highlanders: ‘Never mind about it, but I don't know why Wit[kiewicz] should have a monopoly, especially since I think I can write better than him’. He warned magazine editors not to correct the dialect spelling. Two manuscripts of the tale have survived: one in the National Library, the other in the Warsaw Public Library. They differ in the length of the introduction and stylistic nuances, which confirms the widespread opinion that Sienkiewicz constantly improved his works.
When magic flirts with realism: Eliza Orzeszkowa and Bolesław Prus
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Radzikowski Eliasz Walery, "Baśń Tatrzańska", "Pocztówki" series, 1908-1920, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona
What is a fairy tale? Eliza Orzeszkowa offers an answer in her 1888 Baśń (Fairy Tale):
It is the daughter of memories that lie under the deafening oblivion in the soul of memory, and premonitions that lead the soul into the blue, unknown, invisible distance, over the seas, over the mountains, through the forests...
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This work marks the beginning of the last stage of Orzeszkowa's work, when the author of On the Niemen finally lost her optimism and faith in the possibility of solving social problems. She turned to metaphysics and her characters began to escape into an imaginary world. Even Emilka, the unhappy woman from her 1871 Pamiętnik Wacławy (Wacława's Diary), lives with an illusion of ideal love, which she loses irretrievably. In 1902, Orzeszkowa reached for the fairy tale convention, inviting the reader into the world of the novel ...I Pieśń Niech Zapłacze (... And Let the Song Cry). In presenting the protagonists, she uses the motif of two brothers – one sets off into the world, the other stays at home – which is present in many magical fairy tales.
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Józef Gliński, "Bajarz polski: baśnie, powieści i gawędy ludowe", "Rój": Księgarnia Stow. Naucz. Polskiego, Warszawa, 1928, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona
The collection Baśnie Największych Pisarzy Polskich (Fairy Tales of the Greatest Polish Writers) included Orzeszkowa's work Źli Bracia i Dudka (Bad Brothers and the Quill). The plot is reminiscent of Juliusz Słowacki's Romantic drama Balladyna. On their father's orders, the two sensible sons and the third, a fool, go to the forest to pick berries. Whoever collects more will be the first to marry. The jealous brothers kill the less clever one, bury him and plant a cherry tree on his grave. Soon a man passes by and makes a quill out of the branch, which sings the story of the murdered boy in a human voice. It is a short parable about justice and truth, which sooner or later always comes to light.
The novel by Orzeszkowa and Tadeusz Garbowski Ad Astra: Duet also refers to the poetics of fairy tales. The Białowieża Forest, which the writer planned to visit many times (she succeeded in doing so for the first time in 1898), became the literary setting for a story of Polish-Lithuanian history interwoven with legends. The change from a pine forest to a mixed one is interpreted as the invasion of Poland by the partitioners, the spruces have knightly coats, and the light competing with darkness is nothing other than the eternal struggle between good and evil. The author herself points to the convention of this story, and the phrase ‘a fairy tale – maybe not a fairy tale’ shows her attitude to the genre treated not as pure fantasy, but as containing a grain of truth.
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Władysław Skoczylas, "Bajka", wydawnictwo Artystycznych Reprodukcyj "Podhale", 1912-1936, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona
Orzeszkowa's naturalism is most fully evident in Wesele Wiesiołka (Wiesiołek's Wedding), a fairy tale set in a world of plants and animals. Wiesiołek and Malwa are preparing for their wedding in the forest, but the participants of the ceremony start a riot. When the conflicts are resolved, the ceremony is interrupted by an uninvited guest. Meticulous descriptions of nature in a metaphorical layer refer to the human world. Both the story’s characters and readers are lulled by the somewhat sentimental and baroque language of this fairy tale. Orzeszkowa was not only a fairy tale writer, but also a lover of folklore and a sensitive observer of cultural phenomena.
Bolesław Prus also tried combining realism with fantasy, with good results. His novel The Doll finds its characters Izabela Łęcka and Stanisław Wokulski listening to a fairy tale at the ruins of the castle in Zasław. The story, O Uśpionej Pannie i Zaklętych Skarbach na Dnie Potoku (About a Sleeping Maiden and Enchanted Treasures at the Bottom of a Stream), is an obvious allusion to the novel’s two main characters, though it also functions outside the pages of the novel as a children's fairy tale. In the magical story, a blacksmith tries to rescue a sleeping maiden trapped in a chest at the bottom of a stream, but his mission fails. Similarly, Wokulski, who is in love, cannot overcome adversity – social differences, his chosen one's resistance – although he is able to sacrifice everything for love. Folk wisdom, then, is directly reflected in the realistic novel as an allegory for the fates of the heroes.
When a fairy tale is a metaphor for freedom: Władysław Reymont
O obecności elementów baśniowych w "Chłopach"
No one needs to be convinced of the presence of fairy tale elements in Nobel Prize winner Władysław Reymont's The Peasants. It is enough to look at Roch, who plays the role of a folk taleteller in the novel, telling incredible stories to the inhabitants of Lipiec:
Rocho told tales of various miracles and stories of fierce wars, of mountains where enchanted armies sleep [...], of huge castles with golden chambers where princesses enchanted in golden garlands lament on moonlit nights and wait for their saviour [...], where the profusion of treasures are protected by dragons of hell [...].
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Józef Gliński, "Bajarz polski: baśnie, powieści i gawędy ludowe", "Rój": Księgarnia Stow. Naucz. Polskiego, Warszawa, 1928, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona
It is perhaps more interesting to consider Komurasaki, the story of a Japanese puppet, thinking and feeling, living among other animated figures in a Parisian antique shop. Obviously, Reymont was not the only young Polish writer to engage the conventions of puppet theatre, but due to the marginality of the fairy-tale stylisation in his writing, this work deserves special attention. The modernist fairy tale did not divide its audience into adults and children. It focused on a universal message, and the unhappy ending contrasted with the usual formula of ‘they lived happily ever after’.
Reymont's porcelain heroine is endowed with human sensitivity; she experiences loneliness, love, separation from her beloved, lack of acceptance, and fear. Her sense of alienation results from being distanced from her country, which we see through the projection of a happy land where ‘cherry orchards are blooming’ and ‘streams murmur on golden sand’. Dream poetics further emphasise the fairy-tale atmosphere of the story, written at the request of the editor of Chimera. Jan Lemański, who also reviewed Reymont's work for this magazine, remarked that,
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…the author, as if a ruler, after conquering the world of reality, breathed, allowed himself a seventh day of creation, which he filled with the adoration of beauty [...] that is why the purest lyricism resounds in the fairy tale […].
Reymont made his last attempt to tackle the world of fantasy in 1924. Bunt (Revolt of the Animals) – identified by the author in the title with the word ‘fairy tale’ – portrays the struggle animal heroes face with the people ruling the world. Amidst this struggle, a doll (who is actually an enchanted princess) appears. Offering an interpretation of the depiction of the enchanted princess, Barbara Kosmowska suggests:
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This plot moment can be read as Reymont's view on the essence of fairy tales. The message that a fairy tale, even when it kills, protects from death. [...] The mute who rides off into the unknown together with the rescued princess is a symbol of the freedom offered by fairy tales, which is hard to find in the real world of threat and violence.
Originally written in Polish, translated by Agnes Dudek, Dec 2021. Hover mouse for sources.