Selected Polish Tales Part 1

Selected Polish Tales.

by Various.

PREFACE

My friend the late Miss Else C. M. Benecke left a number of Polish stories in rough translation, and I am carrying out her wishes in editing them and handing them over to English readers. In spite of failing health during the last years of her life, she worked hard at translations from this beautiful but difficult language, and the two volumes, _Tales by Polish Authors_ and _More Tales by Polish Authors_, published by Mr. Basil Blackwell at Oxford, were among the first attempts to make modern Polish fiction known in this country. In both these volumes I collaborated with her.

England is fortunate in counting Joseph Conrad among her own novelists; although a Pole by birth he is one of the greatest masters of English style. The Polish authors who have written in their own language have perhaps been most successful in the short story. Often it is so slight that it can hardly be called a story, but each of these sketches conveys a distinct atmosphere of the country and the people, and shows the individuality of each writer. The unhappy state of Poland for more than 150 years has placed political and social problems in the foreground of Polish literature. Writers are therefore judged and appraised by their fellow-countrymen as much by their patriotism as by their literary and artistic merits.

Of the authors whose work is presented in this volume _Prus_ (Aleksander Glowacki), the veteran of modern Polish novelists, is the one most loved by his own countrymen. His books are written partly with a moral object, as each deals with a social evil. But while he exposes the evil, his warm heart and strong sense of justice--combined with a sense of humour--make him fair and even generous to all.

The poignant appeal of _Szymanski's_ stories lies in the fact that they are based on personal experiences. He was banished to Yakutsk in Siberia for six years when he was quite a young man and had barely finished his studies at the University of Warsaw, at a time when every profession of radicalism, however moderate, was punished severely by the Russian authorities. He died, a middle-aged man, during the War, after many years of literary and journalistic activity in the interest of his country. Neither he nor Prus lived to see Poland free and republican, an ideal for which they had striven.

_Zeromski_ is a writer of intense feeling. If Prus's kindly and simple tales are the most beloved, Zeromski's more subtle psychological treatment of his subjects is the most admired, and he is said to mark an epoch in Polish fiction. In the two short sketches contained in this volume, as well as in most of his short stories and longer novels, the dominant note is human suffering.

_Reymont_, who is a more impersonal writer and more detached from his subject, is perhaps the most artistic among the authors of short stories. His volume ent.i.tled _Peasants_, from which the two sketches in this collection are taken, gives very powerful and realistic pictures of life in the villages.

_Kaden-Bandrowski_ is a very favourite author in his own country, as many of his short stories deal with Polish life during the Great War. In the early part of the War he joined the Polish Legions which formed the nucleus of Pilsudski's army, and shared their varying fortunes. During the greater part of this time he edited a radical newspaper for his soldiers, in whom he took a great interest. The story, _The Sentence_, was translated by me from a French translation kindly made by the author.

Mme _Rygier-Nalkowska_, who, with Kaden-Bandrowski, belongs to the youngest group of Polish writers, is a strong feminist of courageous views, and a keen satirist of certain national and social conventions.

The present volume only contains a short sketch--a personal experience of hers during the early part of the War. It would be considered a very daring thing for a Polish lady to venture voluntarily into the zone of the Russian army, but her little sketch shows the individual Russian to be as human as any other soldier. This sketch and the first of Reymont's have been translated by Mr. Joseph Solomon, whose knowledge of Slavonic languages makes him a most valuable co-operator.

My share in the work has been to put Miss Benecke's literal translation into a form suitable for publication, and to get into touch with the authors or their representatives, to whom I would now tender my grateful thanks for their courteous permission to issue this volume, viz. to Mme Glowacka, widow of 'Prus', to the sons of the late Mr.

Szymanski, to MM. Zeromski, Reymont, Kaden-Bandrowski, and to Mme Rygier-Nalkowska, all of Warsaw.

MARIE BUSCH.

THE OUTPOST

BY

BOLESLAW PRUS

(ALEKSANDER GLOWACKI)

CHAPTER I

The river Bialka springs from under a hill no bigger than a cottage; the water murmurs in its little hollow like a swarm of bees getting ready for their flight.

For the distance of fifteen miles the Bialka flows on level ground.

Woods, villages, trees in the fields, crucifixes by the roadside show up clearly and become smaller and smaller as they recede into the distance. It is a bit of country like a round table on which human beings live like a b.u.t.terfly covered by a blue flower. What man finds and what another leaves him he may eat, but he must not go too far or fly too high.

Fifteen to twenty miles farther to the south the country begins to change. The shallow banks of the Bialka rise and retreat from each other, the flat fields become undulating, the path leads ever more frequently and steeply up and down hill.

The plain has disappeared and given place to a ravine; you are surrounded by hills of the height of a many-storied house; all are covered with bushes; sometimes the ascent is steep, sometimes gradual.

The first ravine leads into a second, wilder and narrower, thence into a succession of nine or ten. Cold and dampness cling to you when you walk through them; you climb one of the hills and find yourself surrounded by a network of forking and winding ravines.

A short distance from the river-banks the landscape is again quite different. The hills grow smaller and stand separate like great ant-hills. You have emerged from the country of ravines into the broad valley of the Bialka, and the bright sun s.h.i.+nes full into your eyes.

If the earth is a table on which Providence has spread a banquet for creation, then the valley of the Bialka is a gigantic, long-shaped dish with upturned rim. In the winter this dish is white, but at other seasons it is like majolica, with forms severe and irregular, but beautiful. The Divine Potter has placed a field at the bottom of the dish and cut it through from north to south with the ribbon of the Bialka sparkling with waves of sapphire blue in the morning, crimson in the evening, golden at midday, and silver in moonlit nights.

When He had formed the bottom, the Great Potter shaped the rim, taking care that each side should possess an individual physiognomy.

The west bank is wild; the field touches the steep gravel hills, where a few scattered hawthorn bushes and dwarf birches grow. Patches of earth show here and there, as though the turf had been peeled. Even the hardiest plants eschew these patches, where instead of vegetation the surface presents clay and strata of sand, or else rock showing its teeth to the green field.

The east bank has a totally different character; it forms an amphitheatre with three tiers. The first tier above the field is of mould and contains a row of cottages surrounded by trees: this is the village. On the second tier, where the ground is clay, stands the manor-house, almost on top of the village, with which an avenue of old lime-trees connects it. To the right and left extend the manor-fields, large and rectangular, sown with wheat, rye, and peas, or else lying fallow. The sandy soil of the third tier is sown with rye or oats and fringed by the pine-forest, its contours showing black against the sky.

The northern ridge contains little hills standing singly. One of them is the highest in the neighbourhood and is crowned by a solitary pine.

This hill, together with two others, is the property of the gospodarz[1] The gospodarstwo is like a hermitage; it is a long way from the village and still farther from the manor-house.

[Footnote 1: _Gospodarz_: the owner of a small holding, as distinct from the villager, who owns no land and is simply an agricultural labourer. The word, which means host, master of the house, will be used throughout the book. _Gospodyni_: hostess, mistress of the holding. _Gospodarstwo_: the property.]

Josef Slimak.

Slimak's cottage is by the roadside, the front door opening on to the road, the back door into the yard; the cowhouse and pigsty are under one roof, the barn, stable, and cart-shed forming the other three sides of the square courtyard.

The peasants chaff Slimak for living in exile like a Sibiriak.[1] It is true, they say, that he lives nearer to the church, but on the other hand he has no one to open his mouth to.

[Footnote 1: Sibiriak: a person of European birth or extraction living in Siberia.]

However, his solitude is not complete. On a warm autumn day, when the white-coated gospodarz is ploughing on the hill with a pair of horses, you can see his wife and a girl, both in red petticoats, digging up potatoes.

Between the hills the thirteen-year-old Jendrek[1] minds the cows and performs strange antics meanwhile to amuse himself. If you look more closely you will also find the eight-year-old Stasiek[2] with hair as white as flax, who roams through the ravines or sits under the lonely pine on the hill and looks thoughtfully into the valley.

[Footnote 1: Polish spelling, _Jedrek_ (p.r.o.nounced as given, Jendrek, with the French sound of _en_): Andrew.]

[Footnote 2: _Stasiek_: diminutive of Stanislas.]

That gospodarstwo--a drop in the sea of human interest--was a small world in itself which had gone through various phases and had a history of its own.

For instance, there was the time when Josef Slimak had scarcely seven acres of land and only his wife in the cottage. Then there came two surprises, his wife bore him a son--Jendrek,--and as the result of the servituty[1] his holding was increased by three acres.

[Footnote 1: _Servituty_ are pieces of land which, on the abolition of serfdom, the landowners had to cede to the peasants formerly their serfs. The settlement was left to the discretion of the owners, and much bargaining and discontent on both sides resulted therefrom; the peasants had to pay percentage either in labour or in produce to the landowner.]

Both these circ.u.mstances created a great change in the gospodarz's life; he bought another cow and pig and occasionally hired a labourer.

Some years later his second son, Stasiek, was born. Then Slimakowa[1]

hired a woman by way of an experiment for half a year to help her with the work.

[Footnote 1: Slimakowa: Polish form for Mrs. Slimak.]