Chlopi
Encyclopedia
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
written by Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
-winning Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
author Władysław Reymont in four parts between 1904 and 1909. Władysław Reymont started writing it in 1897, but because of a railway accident and health problems it took seven years to complete. The first fragments of the story were published in the newspaper titled “Tygodnik Ilustrowany”.
Description
Each of the four parts represents a season in the life of the peasants — Autumn (published in 1904), Winter (published in 1904), Spring (published in 1906), and Summer (published in 1909). This division underlines the relationship of human life with nature.Analysis
Reymont decided to write about peasant life because of historical events, which took place in Polish villages in the early 20th century. The fact that the author was brought up in a village has a significant influence on the novel’s plot.In Chłopi, Reymont created a more complete and suggestive picture of country life than any other Polish writer. The novel impresses the reader with its authenticity of the material reality, customs, behaviour and spiritual culture of the people. It is even more authentic in that it is written in the local Łowicz dialect. Not only did Reymont use dialect in dialogues but also in narration, creating a kind of a universal language of Polish peasants. Thanks to this, he presents the colourful reality of the "spoken" culture of the people better than any other author. He set the action of the novel in Lipce
Lipce Reymontowskie
Lipce Reymontowskie is a village in Skierniewice County, Łódź Voivodeship, in central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Lipce Reymontowskie. It lies approximately south-west of Skierniewice and east of the regional capital Łódź.The village has a population of 1,200.-References:...
, a real village which he came to know during his work on the railway near Skierniewice
Skierniewice
Skierniewice is a town in central Poland with 49,132 inhabitants , situated in the Łódź Voivodship , previously capital of Skierniewice Voivodship . It is the capital of Skierniewice County. The town is situated almost exactly half-way between Łódź and Warsaw.Skierniewice gained municipal rights...
, and restricted the time of events to ten months in the unspecified "now" of the nineteenth century. It is not history that determines the rhythm of country life, but the "unspecified time" of eternal returns.
The composition of the novel astonishes the reader with its strict simplicity and functionality. What is easier than writing a novel about village life, restricting its plot to one year and one place? The titles of the various volumes signal a tetralogy in one vegetational cycle, which regulates the eternal and repeatable rhythm of village life. Parallel to that rhythm is a calendar of religion and customs, also repeatable. In such boundaries Reymont placed a colourful country community with sharply drawn individual portraits. The repertoire of human experience and the richness of spiritual life, which can be compared with the repertoire of Biblical books and Greek myths, has no doctrinal ideas or didactic exemplifications. The author of Chłopi does not believe in doctrines, but rather in his own knowledge of life, the mentality of the people described, and his sense of reality. It is easy to point to moments of Naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
(e.g. some erotic elements) or to illustrative motives characteristic of Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
. It is equally easy to prove the Realistic values of the novel. None of the "isms" however, would be enough to describe it.
The novel has been translated into at least 27 languages.
Main characters
- Maciej Boryna – the richest man in the village and the main hero in the novel.
- Antek Boryna – Maciej’s son, husband of Hanka
- Hanka Boryna – Antek’s wife and a mother of three children
- Jagna – a beautiful, 19-year old girl and the main female character in the novel.
Main themes and events
- The conflict between Antek and his father which is connected with a piece of land and the beautiful woman – Jagna.
- Hanka’s struggle to salvage her marriage and family.
- The poignant story of the farmhand – Jakub.
- The passionate and stormy love between Antek and Jagna.
Customs and traditions
Chlopi deals not only with the everyday life of people, but also with traditions connected with the most important Polish festivals.1. Traditions connected with wedding and marriage:
- preparation for a wedding and a marriage
- decoration of a dance-hall
- the cutting of a brideBrideA bride is a woman about to be married or newlywed.The word may come from the Proto-Germanic verb root *brū-, meaning 'to cook, brew, or make a broth' which was the role of the daughter-in-law in primitive families...
’s hair (symbolic of starting a new life) - the first dance during a wedding is dedicated to bride
- wedding games etc.
2. Traditions connected with Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
:
- baking cakes, cooking Christmas meals
- selling of holy wafer by carolCarol (music)A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and often with a dance-like or popular character....
singers - Christmas supper
- going to the church for midnight massMassMass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
3. Traditions connected with Easter
Easter
Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...
:
- dying eggs
- “wet Monday”
4. Traditions connected with everyday life:
- picklingPicklingPickling, also known as brining or corning is the process of preserving food by anaerobic fermentation in brine to produce lactic acid, or marinating and storing it in an acid solution, usually vinegar . The resulting food is called a pickle. This procedure gives the food a salty or sour taste...
of cabbageCabbageCabbage is a popular cultivar of the species Brassica oleracea Linne of the Family Brassicaceae and is a leafy green vegetable... - spinning of woolWoolWool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
Art movements included in the novel
ImpressionismImpressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
- a style in painting developed in France in the late 19th century that uses colour to show the effects of light on things and to suggest atmosphere rather than showing exact details. In the book we can find impressionism in the descriptions of nature.
Naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
- a style of art or writing that shows people, things and experiences as they really are. In the book naturalism is used to present everyday life. The most famous fragment of the book when naturalism is shown is when Jakub – the farmhand - is cutting his leg.
Realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
- a style in art or literature that shows things and people as they are in real life (detailed descriptions of nature, traditions, everyday life and heroes).
Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
- the use of symbols to represent ideas, especially in art and literature (the scene of the Maciej’s death, which symbolises a strong relationship between people and nature).
Film and television adaptations
A filmFilm
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
was made of the novel (directed by E. Modzelewski) in 1922, as well as a television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
mini-series in 1972 (directed by J. Rybkowski).
External links
- The Peasants: Autumn, first volume in English, via Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Chłopi, full text in Polish
- Critical Essay by Per HallströmPer HallströmPer Hallström was a Swedish author, short-story writer, dramatist, poet and member of the Swedish Academy. He joined the academy in 1908, and served as its Permanent Secretary from 1931 to 1941. Before devoting himself to writing, Hallström worked in London and Chicago as a chemist...
, Chairman of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy - Profile of Reymont