Writing evolution
Dąbrowska’s book debut was a collection of short stories, Gałąź Czereśni [The Cherry Branch] (1921). She later published a volume of heavily processed autobiographical prose, Uśmiech Dzieciństwa [The Smile of Childhood] (1923). At the time she was working on these works, the writer was not yet sure whether to tie her future to literature or rather to her broader social involvement (journalism, work at the Ministry of Agriculture, activity for the Co-operative movement).
Parallel to the process of maturing into a writer, a fundamental reformulation of poetics took place: the early works were still influenced by the Young Poland aesthetics, and it is not until the major reworking of People from Yonder, which concerns not the plot but only the language, that there is evidence of a liberation from it. From then on, the poetics of realism dominated, with time becoming more psychologically nuanced. Dąbrowska’s literary creations tended to remain close to the real, factual material – from her own biography and that of her family, through her youthful ethnographic notes and her later observations in her Dzienniki [Journals], to external sources such as Pamiętniki Chłopów [Boys’ Diaries].
Her creative method involved gradually saturating the text with detail. A note from Dzienniki, written while she was working on Nights and Days, testifies to this:
I am writing the whole thing in first drafting, without elaborating on any of the details, everything is in such a form that if someone were to read it by accident, they would have a classic example of graphomania in front of them.
There were usually three editors, and Dąbrowska spent an unusually large amount of time rewriting her texts.
While she is only the author of one complete novel series (Noce i Dnie [Nights and Days]) and one unfinished attempt at it (Przygody Człowieka Myślącego [Adventures of a Thinking Man]), Dąbrowska seems to specialize in this form exactly. Her short stories almost always suggest the existence of a presented world that does not fit within them, or even directly refer to the reality of the novel – for example, in the text Ksiądz Filip [Filip the Priest] from the collection Znaki Życia [Signs of Life], the geographical names Serbinów and Pamiętów, known from Nights and Days, appear.
Of the post-war short stories, Na Wsi Wesele [Wedding in the Countryside] (1955) is particularly significant. It is a realistic portrayal of the countryside at the time – including the threat of collectivisation and submission to pressure from urban culture. On the positive side, however, it explains the agricultural reform, for which the author had already spoken out before the war.
It would be appropriate to make a brief mention here of texts not considered central to Dąbrowska’s body of work. She authored two historical dramas – Stanisław i Bogumił and Geniusz Sierocy [The Orphan Genius]. The former retells the story of the death of St Stanislaus, while the latter, published in 1938, presents an original historiosophical concept. The titular ‘orphan genius’ is supposed to mean concepts that are right but not accepted by society – in the text, the example is the Polish-Cossack reconciliation in the 17th century.
In what follows, I will discuss four key examples of Dąbrowska’s work: the short story series Ludzie Stamtąd [People from Yonder], the novel series Noce i Dnie, [Nights and Days] the unfinished final book and the Journals.
Ludzie Stamtąd [People from Yonder] was published by Mortkowicz in 1926, and the book was well received, although in retrospect the critical reaction seems fragmentary and inadequate. All of the short stories (only Noc Ponad Światem [A Night Above the World] and Zegar z Kukułką [The Cuckoo Clock] have the structure of a classic novella) take place on a farm in Rusocin before World War I. The homogeneity of the depicted world is suggested by mentions of characters and events described earlier. This series of short works is in fact epic in scope, as it depicts human life from youthful love elations to death, with the whole spectrum of accompanying emotions, using a dozen or so examples. The fact that the first story begins early in the morning and the last one ends in the evening is symbolic. To better characterise this prose, I will summarise a few of the pieces here.
Łucja z Pokucic [Łucja from Pokucice] describes the woes of a woman who cheats on her husband, who has left for the Russo-Japanese War, who is in conflict with her elderly parents and with those around her, and who takes poor care of her daughter Zosia. Physical desire – as in the much more optimistic previous work, entitled Dzikie Ziele [Wild Herbs] – is portrayed as an irresistible force. ‘Let them make it so, [...] those who talk... Make it so it’s possible to live without it. So that what is nice is no longer nice. So that another thing could be as enjoyable’ – says the title character. She soon gives birth to an illegitimate child, who – deprived of proper care – dies as an infant. Her husband, returning from captivity, abandons Łucja.
In the story Szklane Konie [Glass Horses], the coachman Paterek loses his sight due to alcoholism and soon dies. His position is taken over by his son, Pietrek, who soon starts drinking like his father. The boy begins to hallucinate – glass six-legged horses appear to him. The story ends with a scene in which the master, himself driving, brings the drunk Pietrek to his mother. The comedy, however, gives way to concern for the boy’s health. There is an interesting psychological observation connected with the character of Pietrek’s mother – the locals have the impression that she extends ‘a strange care over the decay of her house’.
Tryumf Dionizego [The Triumph of Dionizy] is about people full of hope despite the misfortunes they have endured. The title character, a hunchbacked milkman struggling with his disability, brings to the manor a boy nicknamed Szatan, perceived in the countryside as the embodiment of evil (because he beat his mother and then unexpectedly disappeared for two years). Despite the milkman’s difficult character, a friendship is forged between them – Dionizy even agrees to act as matchmaker. The titular triumph is supposed to be the understanding of the following philosophy by the man afflicted by life: ‘when a man loses all his hopes, he only sees that he has lost nothing, because other people’s hopes enter his heart’.
Najdalsza Droga [The Farthest Road] opens with a scene of a family of landless foragers moving house. Initially, things are going well for them in Rusocin, but soon misfortune befalls them – Julka is left by her fiancé, Kaczmarczyk is accused of setting fire to a wheat field (from tobacco) and fears that this suspicion will follow him for the rest of his life. So the family makes the decision to move to the city. As at the beginning of the story, they are accompanied on the cart by a cat in a bag, bringing to mind a well-known Polish proverb.
The fierce vitalism of these stories is mixed with images of death, misery and devastation (as in the short story Noc Ponad Światem [A Night Above the World] depicting the old age of Nikodem, ulcerated from syphilis, who cuts off his infected fingers with an axe). The energy and social mobility of the characters is emphasised. Every now and then there is a motif of leaving for America or at least Prussia, the Kaczmarczyk family goes to the city, Łucja’s betrayed husband from Pokucice goes to Hamburg, where he gets together with a German woman. Difficult conditions do not dampen human energy.
The writer was opposed to an exclusively ethnographic or class-based reading of Ludzie Stamtąd [People from Yonder]. The collection of novellas manifests serious philosophical ambitions. The difficult and primitive conditions in which the landless peasants live are meant to approximate the existence of the ‘natural man’ and show his primal impulses all the more clearly – without cultural coverings. This is the deeper meaning of the vitalism, reconciliation with fate and a kind of acceptance of death that characterise these works. This inevitably raises the question of the primary or secondary nature of moral impulses, which the author resolves in a decidedly optimistic manner (Tryumf Dionizego). Tadeusz Drewnowski, publisher of Dąbrowska’s short stories and diaries, wrote:
It was not through salons that Dąbrowska referred to Rousseau’s model. In her search for Rousseau’s "natural state", she did not need to reconstruct an "artificial nature" – she returned to Russowo, to the local animals, the colony and the vicarage.
The quoted fragment was evidently considered important by the researcher, since the play on words contained in it gave the monograph its title. The local colouring of the stories in question is emphasised by the fact that the opening 'Wild Herb' contains many quotations from folk songs (collected by Dąbrowska near Russowo in the summer of 1908).
Another possibility for a broader understanding of the collection is proposed by Andrzej Mencwel (Przedwiośnie czy Potop): ‘The hunchbacked dairyman Dionizy glorified with his firm dialect the same idea of universal brotherhood, the proper philosophical expression of which one of Dąbrowska’s inspirers, Edward Abramowski, sought throughout his life.’
The history of the creation of this work is rather complicated – the first draft of the second volume, entitled Domowe Progi [Homey Thresholds], was printed in episodes in the magazine Kobieta Współczesna in 1927-1928, and also separately in book form. The first statement about the sketching of the novel is made in the diary under the date 1July 1926. In Alchemia Słowa [The Alchemy of the Word], Jan Parandowski quotes an anecdote according to which the first impulse for the work was supposed to come from a box seen in a shop with the inscription ‘Niechcic’. The title, in turn, alludes to Hesiod’s poem Works and Days, the first work of European culture on the cultivation of land.
The novel, awarded the State Literary Prize in 1934, was a great reading success. ‘Next to Stefan Żeromski’s “Przedwiośnie” , “Noce i Dnie” became the most popular novel of the inter-war period.’ – wrote Tadeusz Drewnowski.
The book’s language was praised by Julian Przyboś with the phrase ‘the centre of Polish language’ taken from Pan Tadeusz. The post-war reception of Noce i Dnie was consolidated by a feature film made in 1975 and a twelve-episode TV series, both directed by Jerzy Antczak.
The awards, the popularity, the comparison with Żeromski, and last but not least the exemplary nature of the language, all point to a rather traditional character of the work. Henryk Markiewicz claims that ‘we enter the social and moral landscape of “Noce i Dnie” as if we were entering an area well known to us from literature’, and then goes on to enumerate possible analogies, thanks to which this work joins the current of novels treating of the end of the nobility and the formation of the intelligentsia. This view may be echoed in the words of Helena Zaworska (Miłość Życia Przecierpianego, Twórczość 7-8/1970): ‘Dąbrowska’s whole view of the world, of history, of society, of matters of psychology, morality and art, grew out of the intellectual and aesthetic traditions of the nineteenth century.’ What sets Noce i Dnie [Nights and Days] apart from this tradition, however, is the strong affirmation of action and work regardless of one’s position in life or ideological stance. Critics noticed this rather quickly – in a 1932 review, Stefan Kołaczkowski wrote of a novel filled with 'a striving or longing for a new alliance with life, without grimaces of superiority towards reality, a longing for the affirmation of life after emptiness and misery'.
Essentially, the novel describes the fate of a peculiarly mismatched yet complementary marriage between an introvert and an extrovert. Both come from the declassed, propertyless gentry, but are characterised by a diametrically opposed approach to life. While Barbara, née Ostrzeńska, ‘wants to achieve something in life’ (although she never specifies the goal), Bogumił Niechcic seems to be completely fulfilled by managing the estate first in Krępa and then in Serbinów. ‘I sow so that it grows, the rest I don’t care about’ – he says at one point. And these words should not be seen as an expression of restriction – for they refer to the still positivist ideal of organic work. In fact, the author considered Bogumił to be her representative in the world of the novel, which is all the more peculiar as Bogumił is presented as a man who speaks little and reluctantly.
The first parts of the novel are mainly about life and problems concerning the property – the death of Piotruś, Bogumił’s and Barbara's first child, the fate of her detailed family, and finally the threat, stubbornly ignored by Bogumił and quite happily averted, of the clandestine sale of Serbinów by its owners who are in Paris. When the clandestine transaction finally takes place, Bogumił nevertheless receives his due compensation. Serbinów’s new owner, Count Owrucki, is murdered on a train from Russia to Kaliniec.
The range of issues dealt with in the novel widens as Bogumił and Barbara’s children grow up, very different from each other. We witness the progressive degeneration of Tomaszek, still defended by his mother (lies, theft, alcohol and gambling), or the turbulent personal life, political involvement and studies of Agnieszka, whose biography shares several points with the writer’s life. Let the scale of the plot complications be shown by the fact that Agnieszka eventually binds herself to Mariusz Śniadowski, a fighter for independence and socialist active in Switzerland, having previously had relations with Ksawera Wojnarowska, her father’s former neighbour and lover. Much more space is devoted here to the formation of Agnieszka’s life philosophy. Like her father, she respects work, understanding it much more broadly, however, and not limiting herself to Bogumił’s cult of the land.
Let us quote here a commentary by Henryk Markiewicz from a typescript in the collection of the library of the IBL PAN:
Unlike many European and Polish works that could be compared here, the structural axis of "Noce i Dnie" is not "the story of a family’s downfall", nor the protagonists’ growing up to social rebellion or revolutionism. Rather, it is the process of man’s inner liberation from the need to accumulate and possess material goods, from the "idolum proprietatis" that weighs down on him.
Another important thread is the memory of the January Uprising – important to Barbara, passed over in silence by Bogumił, who took part in the fighting at the age of sixteen. Barbara’s brothers are also veterans. During discussions with representatives of the younger generation, swept up in the whirlwind of the 1905 revolution and subsequent independence activities, comparisons with that uprising emerge.
The fates of at least some of the several hundred (!) supporting characters would deserve a mention. It is worth mentioning, for example, Celina Mroczkówna, a governess fascinated by Przybyszewski (otherwise an untalented pedagogue), who married Katelba, a writer working for the Niechcice family and spying on them for the benefit of the estate owners, and then had a hopeless affair with another representative of decadence and Barbara’s relative, Janusz Ostrzeński. The criticism of attitudes associated with modernism must have been important to Dąbrowska as the author of an essay on Stanisław Przybyszewski with the telling title Piewca Niedojrzałości Duchowej [The Bard of Spiritual Immaturity]. The fate of Jadwiga, Barbara’s mother, in Serbinów, is a moving study of old age, disability and mental issues.
Both the variety of fates presented in the novel and the author’s peculiar attitude make it difficult to grasp a clearly formulated main idea in Noce i Dnie. Paradoxically, however, this does not indicate any deficiency in the text. On 22 March 1929, Dąbrowska noted the following in her journal:
To have nothing to prove. To spread a picture of the world before astonished eyes. This is how I want to write. Let this be my motto before starting the second volume. I no longer worry now that I have no greater idea.
A literary reflection of this assumption is the fact that most of the events presented in the book are not commented on by the narrator. Neither are the characters’ ideological or religious dilemmas explicitly resolved, as the depiction of the element of life itself is more important than their presentation. Views can be expressed, and even in a strong and beautiful way – as can be seen in Agnieszka’s conversation with Father Komodziński – but they always remain relativised by being attributed to one character or another. The narrator remains ostentatiously silent at such moments.
Writing the novel at a fast, publisher-dictated rhythm and the range of subject matter covered exhausted the writer. From the moment she finished Noce i Dnie, there would be ongoing expressions of a writing crisis in Dzienniki practically until the end of her life. Twenty-seven years of struggling with her last novel would become testimony to it.
Kompozycja Istnienia [The Composition of Existence] – one would look in vain for a novel going by this title in the bibliography. However, it is known from the journals and from Anna Kowalska’s memoirs that this was supposed to be the title of the work published posthumously as Przygody Człowieka Myślącego [Adventures of a Thinking Man] (the title Gopło was another option that was considered). Even in its existing but incomplete form, the work testifies to great, if discreetly manifested, writing ambitions. The author herself wrote in the preface:
I build this thing up a little with a system known in painting as “papiers collés”, and used by Braque, Picasso and other painters of various varieties of Cubism, who paste different forms into their compositions or decompositions: prints, letters, pieces of fabric and other objects from authentic concrete reality. The difference is that with me there will be no decomposition of forms or any novelty.
However, the style of Dąbrowska’s late writing has much more to offer the reader than just documentary fidelity to reality and old-fashioned charm. What stands out above all is her mastery of the vast material and her ability to encapsulate it into compact, almost self-contained chapters. In the 1950s, the writer even planned to publish the finished fragments in the form of short stories – which, however, was only realised by Tadeusz Drewnowski as editor of the work A Teraz Wypijmy [And Now Let’s Drink].
The penchant for compositional closure can also be seen on a micro-scale – the text of the unfinished novel is teeming with local punch lines, summarising individual strands of thought. For in this work, reality is not only described, but also constantly commented on. The way in which the narrative is conducted here harmonises perfectly with the intelligent qualities of the characters.
After all, the announcement that ‘there will be no decomposition’ must be seen as an ambitious intention, but one that was ultimately unfulfilled, or perhaps unworkable from the start. I would not, however, like to agree here with Drewnowski’s harsh opinion, according to which Przygody… ‘as a whole are crumbling into ruin’, as this is a judgement made from the perspective of Noce i Dnie, not the new whole.