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Alexander Fredro and His Anti-romantic memoirs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Wiktor Weintraub
Wiktor Weintraub*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The splendid growth of Polish Romantic poetry in the second quarter of the nineteenth century almost overshadowed concurrent achievements in artistic prose, which are considerable and diverse.

It is true that the prose fiction of the period did not especially flourish. Nevertheless, Polish Romanticism brought forth one interesting and original prose genre, that of gawęda. Gawęda is a kind of short story which has as narrator an old, rather simple man, telling in a loose way and in colloquial language stories from old Polish life. It is true, the genre quickly degenerated into a stale traditionalism, but at its peak gawęda could boast a volume as noteworthy as Rzewuski's The Memoirs of Soplica. The realism of detail, vivid local color, humor, and raciness of this work command a high position for it in the history of Polish fiction.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1953 , pp. 535 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1953

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References

1 The latest and best edition: Fredro, Aleksander, Trzy po trzy, ed. by Mościcki, H. and Borowy, W. (Cracow, 1949).Google Scholar

2 I discussed this problem at greater length in a Polish paper “Fredro—klasyk,“ Kultura, No. 5 (Paris, 1948), pp. 36–44.

3 “Nowa epoka poezji polskiej” in Dzieia zbiorotve, ed. Z. Wasilewski (Lvov, s. a.), III, 226–30.

4 In “Uwagi o ‘Trzy po trzy,’” published for the first time in the volume Ze studiów nad Fredrq (Cracow, 1921), reprinted in 1949 in an altered and amplified version in the abovementioned edition of Fredro's memoirs, pp. 183–216.

5 Mickiewicz, Adam, Poems, translated by various hands and edited by Noyes, G. R. (New York, 1944), p. 415.Google Scholar

6 L'Église et le Messie (Paris, 1845), II, 107.

7 Gercen, A. I., Volnoe sobranie sočinenij, Lemke, ed. (St. Petersburg, 1019), XIII, 312.Google Scholar

8 Trzy po trzy, p. 5.

9 Ibid., p. 11.

10 Ibid., p. 18.

11 Ibid., p. 37.

12 Ibid., pp. 83–84.

13 See Janik, Michal, Dzieje Polakow na Syberii (Cracow, 1928), pp. 72–76.Google Scholar

14 Lectures of May 6 and May 10, 1842.

15 Trzy po trzy, p. 165. Italics are Fredro's.

16 Ibid., p. 70.

17 Ibid., p. 42.

18 Ibid., p. 35.

19 Ibid., p. 91.

20 Wacław Borowy, “Uwagi o ‘Trzy po trzy,’” op. cit., p. 198. Borowy refers there to his essay “Z tajników sztuki pisarskiej: Fredro i Conrad,” published in Tygodnik Wileński in 1924, which was not available to me.

21 See Grzegorczyk, Piotr, “Z dziejów J. Conrada-Korzeniowskiego w Polsce,” Ruch Literacki, II (1927), 137–38.Google Scholar

22 It is listed among books for sale from Conrad's library in Heffner's and Sons' from Cambridge Catalogue No. 283 of 1927.

23 P. 121 of the London edition of 1946.

24 Op. cit., p. xviii.

25 It is interesting to notice that Conrad refers to adverse criticism in terms similar to those of Fredro: “There is a gentleman, for instance, who, metaphorically speaking, jumps upon me with both feet” (p. 106). In Fredro's memoirs we read: “Since once such an outspoken person trod on my heart and broke it for ever“ (p. 12).