>>>  YOU ARE VIEWING A 200 LINE SAMPLE OF EBOOK# E00724  <<<

TITLE: SELECTED POLISH TALES
AUTHOR: VARIOUS
EBOOK: E00724 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

SELECTED

POLISH TALES

TRANSLATED BY

ELSE C. M. BENECKE

AND

MARIE BUSCH

_This selection of Tales by Polish authors was first published in
'The World's Classics' in 1921 and reprinted in 1928, 1942, and
1944._

CONTENTS

PREFACE

THE OUTPOST. By BOLESLAW PRUS

A PINCH or SALT. By ADAM SZYMANSKI

KOWALSKI THE CARPENTER. By ADAM SZYMANSKI

FOREBODINGS. By STEFAN ZERKOMSKI

A POLISH SCENE. By WLADYSLAW ST. REYMONT

DEATH. By WLADYSLAW ST. REYMONT

THE SENTENCE. By J. KADEN-BANDROWSKI

'P.P.C.' By MME KYCIER-NALKOWSKA

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 entitled _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 butterfly 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 shines 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

<<<  END OF SAMPLE... (THE FULL EBOOK HAS 527173 TOTAL CHARACTERS)  >>>