One of Zofia Nałkowska’s most important novels, engaged with contemporary issues of morality and socio-political reality. At its centre are three protagonists – Zenon Ziembiewicz, Justyna Bogutówna and Elżbieta Biecka – whose actions and intentions are subjected to ethical evaluation by readers.
Nałkowska began work on the novel in 1932, as evidenced by an entry from her Diaries dated May 20:
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In the morning I am writing, lying in bed, pencil notes for this ‘The Frontier’, which should be different, should be better than all my books.
The Frontier was published in the late summer and early autumn of 1935 in Warsaw by the Gebethner and Wolff publishing house. It quickly became apparent that against the background of Nałkowska’s work, it was indeed a different publication – and quickly placed the author among the literary elite. On the one hand, it could be read in a straightforward manner, as a novel of manners with a clearly defined romantic plot, but there were prevailing opinions that it was a psychological, social, as well as political and philosophical novel. The aesthetics and ideological aspects of The Frontier were commented on again and again, as its rich and complex content allowed.
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In terms of plot, it can be considered a story about a love triangle: During his studies, Zenon Ziembiewicz, begins an affair with a servant girl, Justyna Bogutówna. The woman he has loved since his youth, however, is Miss Elżbieta Biecka. He later becomes engaged to her, but resumes his affair with Bogutówna, who becomes pregnant as a result. Ziembiewicz gives her a certain amount of money, which Bogutówna interprets as an attempt to persuade her to have an abortion. She terminates the pregnancy, but cannot find peace. Having deteriorated mentally, she decides to take revenge on Ziembiewicz for her misfortune. She douses him with caustic acid, causing the man to lose his sight – after which he soon takes his own life with a revolver shot to the mouth.
Nałkowska introduces the reader to the story at its end. This was not a new narrative device, but she used it effectively, in a carefully thought-out manner. From the very beginning, the narrator (clearly identified in interpretations of the novel with the author herself) gives a general overview of the story’s finale, which in the long run makes the story not about what happened, but how and why it happened. Ziembiewicz is introduced into the narrative after his suicide, while we get to know Bogutówna in the very first pages as the imprisoned lover blamed for his death. Despite discovering the ending early in the novel, Nałkowska did not deprive the story of tension. She managed to keep the attention of readers, who replay the chronological sequence of the story as they read. Moreover, as Manfred Kridl notes, the passage of time in the novel is dramatic insofar as each moment inevitably brings the main characters closer to disaster.
The essential subject of the novel is the morality of the characters. Nałkowska aims to present their truth, the complications of their lives and attitudes towards them. On the one hand, she describes the issue of guilt and punishment, but on the other hand, the most important are the reactions of the characters to the reality they find themselves in. The novel doesn’t settle anything, doesn’t justify or judge anyone unequivocally – the reader is the one put in the role of a judge.
In addition to the thread of the fate of Zenon, Justyna and Elżbieta, the story also includes many secondary and secondary characters. Among them are Elżbieta’s aunt Cecylia Kolichowska, her son Karol Wąbrowski, Zenon’s parents Joanna and Walerian Ziembiewicz, Jasia Gołąbska and Czechliński, the county governor. There are both representatives of the elite and the aristocracy, and of the bourgeoisie and the poor. The whole society is shown, the various social spheres, and the city and the events associated with it, but the fate of individuals, individual characters and their psychology remain in the foreground. The outline of society as a whole is therefore only a background for individual affairs.
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The Frontier, dir. Józef Lejtes, 1938, film still, photo: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe/Zbiory NAC on-line
Frontiers
In the article Commentary on ‘The Frontier’, which Nałkowska wrote in 1936 at the request of the biweekly magazine Oblicze Dnia, the author refuted the theory that the novel was originally to be called ‘Schemes’. She pointed out that from the beginning her chosen title was precisely Granica, translated to The Frontier (though more in the sense of a border). It encapsulates the ideological and artistic sense of the novel, and opens the way to various interpretations and considerations. Indeed, there is no single comprehensive answer as to what the ‘frontier’ in the title represents. On the one hand, it could be a social barrier, separating the proletariat from the elite: Justyna’s mother, Bogutowa, from the Tczew counts, the crowd of unemployed from the owner of the steel mill, the demonstrators from Zenon Ziembiewicz. The boundaries of morality are also strongly marked in the novel, which take away Justyna’s hopes for love with Zenon in advance. Nałkowska also shows psychological and moral boundaries, which shape the characters’ sense of identity. Nałkowska puts the following words into Elżbieta’s mouth:
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No, the point is that something must exist after all. Some boundary beyond which one is not allowed to pass, beyond which one ceases to be oneself.
Another ‘frontier’ is a boundary in the philosophical sense. In the novel, apart from the narrator’s statements, it is revealed particularly in the conversation between Father Czerlon and a young scientist, Karol Wąbrowski. In their dialogue, metaphysical rationales (there is an unknown, a darkness in front of man) clash with materialistic, rational ones (man’s horizons are expanding more and more). The narrator comments on the conversation:
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In a sense of its own imperfection, human thought has dug a chasm between subject and object, between the knower and the mystery. It has set an impassable limit to cognition, not remembering that all its authorities have grown out of the same qualities that constitute the object of cognition.
Finally, according to critics (including Skiwski and Fryde), the title can be understood as the limit of Nałkowska’s work, the culmination and boundary point in her development to date. Skiwski noted:
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Because it is also the frontier of writing excellence, the distant and difficult to reach limit of the profession. Beyond this ‘frontier’ there is already a ‘great risk’. The possibility of crossing it is determined by factors so important and so individual that the critic does not dare to talk about them, giving voice to the gods.
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The Frontier, dir. Józef Lejtes, 1938, film still, photo: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe/Zbiory NAC on-line
Echoes of the novel
The publication of the book was a major literary event, commented on vividly and widely. As early as December 1935, Nałkowska received the State Prize for Literature, and within a year of the novel’s publication, more than sixty reviews of the novel appeared – these were both approving and critical opinions, which overall shaped the ambivalent reception of the work. The novel was looked at by critics of different political options and worldviews. As Lucyna Marzec wrote:
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Nałkowska’s novel cannot be reduced to being written to the order of any authority or ideological orientation, although its political message cannot be reduced either. Only a cursory reading makes it possible to shift the novel’s critical worldview from an ethical to a moralising position. ‘The Frontier’ does not so much educate and moralise, as it teaches pluralistic thinking and urges metaethical distance, which in itself has ‘anti-moralising’ and ‘anti-didactic’ potential.
On 11th May 1936, Wanda Melcer of the Union of Polish Writers organised a literary and artistic event in Warsaw for an audience of nearly two hundred, entitled ‘The Trial of Justyna Bogutówna’. It was a mock trial, for which the texts intended for the trial were prepared by Nałkowska herself, while the actress Karolina Lubieńska played the role of the accused Justyna. The opportunity to judge Justyna fell to the audience – the heroine was acquitted. As Marzec wrote:
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The majority of the audience ruled that the current letter of the law does not harmonise with social rationale, that Justyna’s case demands acquittal – private (personal harm) and public (social harm) considerations are behind it. However, there were those who voted to convict Justyna without mitigating circumstances.
The scale of the discussion around The Frontier, the multitude of evaluations of both the novel and the author herself, placed the work on a par with Stefan Żeromski’s Przedwiośnie or Juliusz Kaden-Bandrowski’s Generał Barcz. According to Marzec, until the publication of Jerzy Andrzejewski's Ashes and Diamonds in 1947, no other Polish novel had received so much publicity and critical-literary discussion.
The film adaptation of the novel, directed by Józef Lejtes, was a major commercial success, premiering in 1938, just three years after the publication of Nałkowska’s work. Thanks to such rapid realisation, we can see on the screen the world in which the author herself lived and created. The screenplay, based on the novel and in consultation with Nałkowska, was created by Lejtes, Stanisław Urbanowicz and Eugeniusz Bunda. The film also boasted an outstanding cast of actors, with performances by Elżbieta Barszczewska (as Elżbieta Biecka), Lena Żelichowska (as Justyna Bogutówna), Jerzy Pichelski (as Zenon Ziembiewicz), Aleksander Zelwerowicz (as Walerian Ziembiewicz, Zenon’s father) and Mieczysława Ćwiklińska (as Joanna Ziembiewicz, Zenon's mother). A second adaptation of the novel was released in 1977, directed by Jan Rybkowski. The film, based on a screenplay by Józef Hen, was not faithful to the original – first of all, the political plot was expanded and the ending was changed. The leading roles were played by Krystyna Janda (Elżbieta Biecka), Sławomira Łozińska (Justyna Bogutówna) and Andrzej Seweryn (Zenon Ziembiewicz).
The Frontier has been widely discussed by literary critics over the years, contributing to many valuable and comprehensive studies. Among them particularly noteworthy are the works of Jan Emil Skiwski, Manfred Kridel and Ludwik Fryde. Commentaries on the novels were also written by Jerzy Andrzejewski, Kazimierz Wyka and Witold Gombrowicz. A valuable study of commentaries on Nałkowska’s novel is the 2019 critical-literary polemic Spór o ‘Granicę’ Zofii Nałkowskiej by Lucyna Marzec, which reliably examines the reception of the work to date.
In 1951, The Frontier entered the canon of school reading and has remained on the curriculum ever since, now as a suggested supplementary reading.
Sources:
Wójcik, W. (1973). Zofia Nałkowska. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna.
Lucyna, M. (2019). Spór o ‘Granicę« Zofii Nałkowskiej’. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk.
