The Doll by Boleslaw Prus (1890, translated by David Welsh)

I offer my great thanks to Max u for the Amazon Gift Card that allowed me to read The Doll

The Doll by Boleslaw Prus is considered by many the greatest achievement of Polish literature in the 19th century.  I previously read and posted on his shorter novel, The Outpost, set among country peasants in Czarist Poland being forced from their land by Germans. I also read his very good long short story "The Recurring Wave"  centering on a factory owner, his spoiled son, and the factory workers.  I would first suggest those new to Prus start with "The Recurring Wave" and then read The Outpost.  A practical advantage of this is both of these works can be found online, for free.  The Doll is a much grander work, encompassing much of Warsaw society in the period. 

It sort of centers, with lots of excursions, on the life of a shop worker who becomes rich  and his progress up and down the social scale.  He starts as waiter, comes into an inheritance and then makes huge money as a war profiteer in partnership with a Russian. Like most all novels of the sort and period, a great deal of time is devoted to the marriage lottery.  He wants to enter upper class society through marriage to a baroness.  There is a second narrative thread around a journal kept by an older store clerk, set back in time twenty years.  We meet people of all social levels as we walk the streets of Warsaw.  

As I read the story I was struck by the many references to Jews in the narrative, by my count 249. Almost all portray Jews in a very negative way as grasping venal money grubbers taking advantage of the trusting Poles with sharp business practices, forcing people into poverty.  In one disturbing scene that I still am not sure how to take a character says the centuries of prosecution of Jews has made them worse and worse as they do what they must to survive.  The continual comments on Jews, from people of all parts of society, are presented without irony as if they are just commonplace truths.  I do not know if we should see this as an anti-Semetic work or a portrayal of the pervasive hate for Jews in Late Czarist Poland or as an expose of ignorance and pernicious evil. Much of the hatred seems based on jealousy and envy.  Of course for us now we read these references with the knowledge of the coming Holocaust and of the horrible pograms against Jews in Czarist Poland. 

Bolesław Prus (1847–1912) was born Aleksander Głowacki in the provincial town of Hrubieszów, Poland. His mother died in 1850; his father, an estate steward of noble birth (the author’s pen name is a reference to the family’s origin near the Prussian border), died six years later, leaving him in the care of relatives in Puławy and Lublin. In 1862, he moved to Kielce with his older brother Leon, a Polish patriot. The next year, the teenaged Aleksander joined in the January 1863 uprising against Russian rule. Wounded in battle, he was imprisoned in Lublin Castle, but released when he was discovered to be underage. He then finished high school and enrolled in university, but lacked the funds to graduate. Instead, he worked several odd jobs, including a stint in a metallurgical factory, before taking up journalism. Prus eventually made a name for himself as a writer of feuilletons, publishing his much-admired Kroniki in the Kurier Warszawski between 1875 and 1887, and also achieved some success with his short stories. The Outpost, published in 1885, was the first of four novels that secured his literary reputation. It was followed by The Doll (1890), Emancipated Women (1894), and The Pharaoh(1897). A respected but no longer fashionable writer, Prus dedicated his last years to social reform and philanthropic work.  From the NYRB webpage.

I am very glad I read The Doll. It is structured in a very interesting fashion, there are lots of wonderful small vignettes, and well done characters.    Before you buy it, read the two works I mentioned first.  

Mel u

The Outpost by Boleslaw Prus (1886)

Earlier this month I read an excellant short story "The Recurring Wave" by Boleslaw Prus, one of Poland's highest regarded writers.  Set in rural Poland, it depicts a time of coming social change and different social classes in rural society. 

The Outpost is one of four major novels by Prus.  It is also set in rural Poland in a time where the people are unsettled by changes they see coming and fear.  There are basically four sorts of people in the world of The Outpost.  There are the peasants, almost all illiterate and just a generation or so from being bound serfs, the gentry, the Jews who control much of the trade, and the newly arriving Germans.  I tried to decide how I should take the treatment of Jews in the novel, there is no rampant hatred but they are consistently dealt with in a negative way.  I really could not come to any conclusions concerning this.  The Germans arrive in droves, trying to buy up land at higher prices than the old market, financed by Bismark who has his hidden motives.  Poland was under the Russian Czar at this time and I enjoyed it when the lead character talked about how much a better man the Czar was than the Kaiser. Of course the irony is the Czar could care less about Polish peasants.   The peasant whom the novel centers on will not sell his land no matter what.  Everything is further unsettled as there are land reformations coming that are said to place more land in the hand of the peasants.

Prus did an excellant job with the lead character, his wife, his family, and his home. We even get to know the names of his cows!  Soon we learn a railroad is coming through.  The family suffers a lot of terrible hardships.  It was very sad when Lyza, one of the cows, had to be sold to a butcher.  Peasants still very much depend on the local squires for work, income, and directions.  It creates a great social gap when the local squire sells his land to the Germans and moves to Warsaw.

The Outpost is very much worth reading, not just an item of historical interest.  It kept me interested throughout.

If you want to read this go to Manybooks.net and search for "Polish".  Two very good collections  from 1924, originally published by Basil Blackwell, can be downloaded for free.  

 

The Doll, set in Warsaw in the 1880s, is considered the author's masterwork and I hope to start it soon.

Mel u

"The Returning Wave" by Boleslaw Prus (1880, translated by Else Benecke)

Lately I have been getting into literature of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire countries and Yiddish literature.  I have felt a need to expand into Eastern Europe.  I looked for some reading ideas on the webpage of The New York Review of Books, always a good source.  One writer that caught my eye, I admit I had not previously heard of him, was Boleslaw Prus, from Poland.  I bit of Google searching soon exposed once again the depths of my ignorance when I discovered he is considered Poland's  greatest realistic writer.  He was very influenced by Mark Twain and Charles Dickens as well as the French leviathans Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, and Zola.   He wrote in addition to several novels a number of short stories.  

I prefer when possible to post on works others can easily read for free if they like so I was glad to find a near novella length work by Prus in a collection of Polish short stories on Manybooks.  "The Returning Wave" centers on three men, a factory owner and a cleric, in a small town in Poland who have been friends for decades. The third principal character is the playboy son of the factory owner.  As the years went by the factory owner got richer and richer.  He would always say once he got just a little more money he would sell the factory and enjoy life. A widower, all ever did was work and worry over his son.  He wanted his  son to enjoy life so he over indulged him and heard from him only when he needed money.  One day the son shows up after a long hiatus to his father's great joy.  He learns the boy has huge gambling debts.  He pays them and to make up for it he lowers the pay of the factory workers, makes them work longer, and drives himself harder.  Of course the son promises reform and goes to work as assistant factory manager.  Soon the workers figure out he is why they have lost pay and he actually ferments discontent among the workers.  To make it worst the son tries  to seduce the virginal daughter of the cleric.  The owner begins to drive the workers harder and harder and speculated in cotton.

"The Returning Wave" does a wonderful job of bringing the factory owner, easily a character that could have been created by Balzac, and his plans to enjoy life soon to an excellent realization.   We learn a lot about factory life.  Some of the long term workers just silently accept any abuse and others make us sense a great underlying social upheaval might be coming.  The ending of the story is really powerful and very shocking, in no way did I see it coming.  

There are a few more Prus stories online and I hope to read them and some of his novels.

You can download the story HERE

Winston's Dad, a blog focusing on quality literature in translation, which I have been following for a long time, is conducting an event devoted to Eastern European Literature this month.  This post is my initial participation in the event.  If you are at all interested in this rich reading life area, I suggest you look at the event page and participate if you can.

Eastern European Literature Month on Winston's Dad

From the webpage of the New York Review of Books.

Bolesław Pru

Bolesław Prus (1847–1912) was born Aleksander Głowacki in the provincial town of Hrubieszów, Poland. His mother died in 1850; his father, an estate steward of noble birth (the author’s pen name is a reference to the family’s origin near the Prussian border), died six years later, leaving him in the care of relatives in Puławy and Lublin. In 1862, he moved to Kielce with his older brother Leon, a Polish patriot. The next year, the teenaged Aleksander joined in the January 1863 uprising against Russian rule. Wounded in battle, he was imprisoned in Lublin Castle, but released when he was discovered to be underage. He then finished high school and enrolled in university, but lacked the funds to graduate. Instead, he worked several odd jobs, including a stint in a metallurgical factory, before taking up journalism. Prus eventually made a name for himself as a writer of feuilletons, publishing his much-admired Kroniki in the Kurier Warszawski between 1875 and 1887, and also achieved some success with his short stories. The Outpost, published in 1885, was the first of four novels that secured his literary reputation. It was followed by The Doll (1890), Emancipated Women (1894), and The Pharaoh (1897). A respected but no longer fashionable writer, Prus dedicated his last years to social reform and philanthropic work.