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| Birth Name(s) : Wladyslaw Reymont |
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Full Wladyslaw Reymont Biography
Władysław Stanisław Reymont (May 7, 1868 – December 5, 1925; born Stanisław Władysław Rejment) was a Polish author. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924.
He was born in the village of Kobiele Wielkie, near Radomsko as one of nine children to Józef Rejment, an organist. He spent his childhood in Tuszyn near Łódź, to which his father had moved in order to work at a richer church parish. Reymont was defiantly stubborn; after a few years of education in the local school he was sent by his father to Warsaw into the care of his eldest sister and her husband to teach him his vocation. In 1885, after passing his examinations and presenting "a tail-coat, well-made", he was given the title of journeyman tailor — his only formal certificate of education.
When his Korespondencje ("Correspondence") from Rogowo, Koluszki and Skierniewice was accepted for publication by Głos ("The Voice") in Warsaw in 1892, he returned to Warsaw once more, clutching a group of unpublished short stories along with a few rubles in his pocket. Reymont then visited the editorial offices of various newspapers and magazines, and eventually met other writers who became interested in his talent. On a Mr. Świętochowski's advice, he went on a pilgrimage to Częstochowa in 1894 and wrote a report on his experience there. The report remains a classic example of travel writing.Manuscript of opening of The Peasants: Autumn.
Rejmont proceeded to send his short stories to different magazines, and, encouraged by good reviews, decided to write novels: Komediantka ("The Deceiver") (1895) and Fermenty ("Ferments") (1896). No longer poor, he would soon satisfy his passion for travel, visiting Berlin, London, Paris, Italy. Then, he spent a few months in Łódź collecting material for a new novel ordered by the Kurier Codzienny ("The Daily Courier") from Warsaw. The earnings from this book — Ziemia obiecana ("The Promised Land") (1897) — enabled him to go on his next trip to France where he socialized with other exiled Poles (Jan Lorentowicz, Żeromski, Przybyszewski, Rydel, etc.).
His earnings did not allow for this kind of life of travel. However, in 1900 he was awarded 40,000 rubles in compensation from the Warsaw-Vienna Railway after an accident in which Reymont as a passenger was severely injured. During the treatment he was looked after by Aurelia Szacnajder Szabłowska, whom he married in 1902, having first paid for the annulment of her earlier marriage. Thanks to her discipline, he restrained his travel-mania somewhat, but never gave up either his stays in France (where he partly wrote Chłopi between 1901 and 1908) or in Zakopane. Rejmont also journeyed to the USA in 1919 at the (Polish) government's expense. Despite his ambitions to become a landowner, which led to an unsuccessful attempt to manage an estate he bought in 1912 near Sieradz, the life of the land proved not to be for him. He would later buy Kołaczkowo near Poznań in 1920, but still spent his winters in Warsaw or France.
In 1925, somewhat recovered, he went to a farmers' meeting in Wierzchosławice near Kraków, where Wincenty Witos welcomed him as a member of PSL "Piast" (the Polish Peasant Party) and praised his writing skills. Soon after that event, Reymont's health deteriorated. He died in Warsaw in December of 1925 and was buried in the Powązki Cemetery. The urn holding his heart was laid in a pillar of the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw.
Reymont's literary output includes about 30 extensive volumes of prose. There are works of reportage: Pielgrzymka do Jasnej Góry ("Pilgrimage to Jasna Góra") (1894), Z ziemi chełmskiej ("From the Chełm Lands") (1910 - about the persecutions of the Uniates), Z konstytucyjnych dni ("From the Days of the Constitution") (about the revolution of 1905) and some sketches from the collection Za frontem ("Beyond the Front") (1919). There are numerous short stories on life in the theatre, village life or work on the railway: Śmierć ("Death") (1893), Suka ("Bitch") (1894), Przy robocie ("At Work") and W porębie ("In the Clearing") (1895), Tomek Baran (1897), Sprawiedliwie ("Justly") (1899) and a sketch for a novel Marzyciel ("Dreamer") (1908). Then there are the novels: Komediantka, Fermenty, Ziemia obiecana, Chłopi, Wampir ("The Vampire") (1911), which was sceptically received by the critics, and a trilogy written in the years 1911 - 1917: Rok 1794 ("1794") (Ostatni Sejm Rzeczypospolitej, Nil desperandum and Insurekcja) ("The Last Parliament of the Commonwealth", "Nil desperandum" and "Insurrection").
Ziemia Obiecana has been translated into at least 15 languages and two film adaptations; one directed in 1927 by A.Węgierski and A. Hertz and the other in 1975 by Andrzej Wajda.
The story was a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and was banned 1945-1989 in communist Poland, along with George Orwell's similar Animal Farm. It is unknown whether Orwell knew of Reymont's Revolt. The Polish author's novel was reprinted in Poland in 2004. |
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