An attempt is undertaken in this paper to demonstrate what traps are inherent in a biographical reading of Stefan Żeromski’s Zamieć (Blizzard). The author traces relations between Anna Zawadzka (the writer’s partner) and Xenia Granowska (the novel’s protagonist) and reconstructs the background to the text. The analysis implies it would be far safer to treat Zamieć as a broadly-defined autobiographical novel than to build straightforward parallels between Anna and Xenia.
The article attempts at a polemics with the widespread view on Zeromski’s Russophobia. The analysis of his Diaries – being a social life chronicle under Russian partition at the end of 19th century, a private document and at the same time Zeromski’s artistic technique – proves that Zeromski did not occupy an unambiguous position towards Russia and Russians. The diary is obviously dominated by the notes in which the future writer, as a Pole-patriot, views the czarist Empire and the Muscovites as uncompromising, hateful and often vulgar. However, on a private ground he proves to be ambivalent, full of contradictions, and torn between enchantment by casual meetings with Russian women and hostility to his Muscovite friends. To add, when commenting the writings by Pushkin, Lermontov, and Turgenev, he totally rejects national categories and assesses Russian literature as ambitious, modern and inspiring. Such clearly-cut disjoin of national and cultural presence of Russia in the Diaries leads to formulating a thesis that there is not one Russia in Zeromski’s work. Most noticeably represented is, naturally, the militant and radical Russia but there is also a “hidden” Russia acceptable and respected due to unquestionable value of the most eminent 19th century Russian works of art.
This article attempt to analyze Reymont’s writings, paying particular attentionto how he created urban space; most specifically, the author looksat the way in which Reymont used the palette of colours to depict the cityin general. The author starts with a quote from Reymont’s letter to AntoniWodziński: ‘Myself I consider everything I have written until “Chłopi” myliterary introduction. These are the things that are seen, now it is time forwhat is felt, and later for the thought out’.The interpretation of the urbancolour scheme in the novellas, “Ziemia Obiecana”, and “Wampir”, usingthree registers – a diachronic layout, referential optics, and in the context ofthe Young Poland mythology about the evils of the city – reveals that colourin Reymont’s prose on urban topics (with the exception of a few early texts)results from ‘the seen’ only to a limited degree, and that it is owed more to‘the felt’ and ‘the thought out’. All this bears witness to the antirevolutionaryviews of Reymont and the Young Poland’s ‘urbanophobia’ and is a palpablesign of the historico-literary affectability of the period.
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