Edmund Chojecki
Encyclopedia
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, from 1844 he resided in France, where he wrote under the pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Charles Edmond.
Early on, Chojecki participated in leftist intellectual and political movements and edited Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ) was a Polish poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature...
's political weekly magazine La Tribune des Peuples
La Tribune des Peuples
La Tribune des Peuples was a Polish-led French-language radical and romantic nationalist political weekly magazine, published in Paris between March and November 1849 - except for a hiatus caused by censorship...
(The Peoples' Tribune). In time he entered elite Parisian learned and literary circles, became secretary to Emperor Napoleon III, and co-founded the Paris daily Le Temps
Le Temps (Paris)
Le Temps was one of Paris's most important daily newspapers from April 25, 1861 to November 30, 1942.Founded in 1861 by Edmund Chojecki and Auguste Nefftzer, Le Temps was under Nefftzer's direction for ten years, when Adrien Hébrard took his place...
, predecessor to Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
.
Chojecki wrote a notable Polish-language novel, Alkhadar (1854) and translated into Polish (1847) Jan Potocki
Jan Potocki
Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki was a Polish nobleman, Polish Army Captain of Engineers, ethnologist, Egyptologist, linguist, traveler, adventurer and popular author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a legendary figure in his homeland...
's celebrated novel, The Saragossa Manuscript
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa , is a frame-tale novel by the Polish Enlightenment author, Count Jan Potocki...
.
Life
Edmund Chojecki spent his youth in WarsawWarsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, where his leftist political views crystallized. He was a friend of the poet Cyprian Norwid
Cyprian Norwid
Cyprian Kamil Norwid, a.k.a. Cyprian Konstanty Norwid is a nationally esteemed Polish poet, dramatist, painter, and sculptor. He was born in the Masovian village of Laskowo-Głuchy near Warsaw. One of his maternal ancestors was Polish King John III Sobieski.Norwid is regarded as one of the second...
, wrote for the monthly Przegląd Warszawski (The Warsaw Review), Echo (The Echo) and the monthly Biblioteka Warszawska (The Warsaw Library, 1840–42), and was secretary of the Board of Directors of the Warsaw Theaters (Dyrekcja Warszawskich Teatrów).
In 1844 Chojecki moved to France and after 1845 became active in European leftist movements. In 1846 he wrote Czechja i Czechowie (Czechia and the Czechs), a book about the history of the Czech lands
Czech lands
Czech lands is an auxiliary term used mainly to describe the combination of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia. Today, those three historic provinces compose the Czech Republic. The Czech lands had been settled by the Celts , then later by various Germanic tribes until the beginning of 7th...
. In 1848 he took part in a Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
congress in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and was expelled for radicalism. In 1849 he became editor of La Tribune des Peuples
La Tribune des Peuples
La Tribune des Peuples was a Polish-led French-language radical and romantic nationalist political weekly magazine, published in Paris between March and November 1849 - except for a hiatus caused by censorship...
(The Peoples' Tribune), a Polish-led French-language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
romantic-nationalist
Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
political weekly magazine that had been founded by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz ) was a Polish poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature...
. In this capacity, Chojecki came into contact with many prominent Russian and German émigrés. His La Tribune des Peuples
La Tribune des Peuples
La Tribune des Peuples was a Polish-led French-language radical and romantic nationalist political weekly magazine, published in Paris between March and November 1849 - except for a hiatus caused by censorship...
was published in Paris between March and November 1849, with a hiatus (14 April – 31 August 1849) caused by censorship. Chojecki also wrote for the progressive Revue Indépendante (Independent Review), co-edited by George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...
, and for the socialist newspaper La Voix du Peuple (The Voice of the People). For his pains, he was expelled from France. He visited Egypt, Turkey (where he enlisted in the army during the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
) and Iceland (where he went as secretary to Prince Louis Napoleon).
Until the 1850s, e.g. in Rewolucjoniści i stronnictwo wsteczne w r. 1848 (The Revolutionaries and the Reactionaries in 1848, published in 1849), Chojecki had promoted revolutionary-democratic and utopian-socialist
Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists and were looked on favorably...
ideas.
In time, he entered elite Parisian learned and literary circles. In 1856 he became secretary to Louis Napoleon, who in 1852 had become Emperor Napoleon III of France. In 1861 Chojecki co-founded the Paris daily, Le Temps
Le Temps (Paris)
Le Temps was one of Paris's most important daily newspapers from April 25, 1861 to November 30, 1942.Founded in 1861 by Edmund Chojecki and Auguste Nefftzer, Le Temps was under Nefftzer's direction for ten years, when Adrien Hébrard took his place...
, predecessor to France's most popular modern newspaper, Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
. He became director of the Senate Library. In later years, as a French citizen, he wrote novels and plays under the pen name "Charles Edmond" and enjoyed the friendship of the Goncourt brothers
Goncourt brothers
The Goncourt brothers were Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt , both French naturalist writers. They formed a partnership that "is possibly unique in literary history...
and Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
.
Chojecki is remembered in the history of Polish literature as the author of a fine realistic novel, Alkhadar (1854), about the vicissitudes of a romantic conspirator against the backdrop of Polish Galicia's landed gentry, which was being brought to ruin by capitalism.
Chojecki also translated into Polish many French-language works, including (in 1847) the novel The Saragossa Manuscript
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa , is a frame-tale novel by the Polish Enlightenment author, Count Jan Potocki...
by the Polish polymath aristocrat Jan Potocki
Jan Potocki
Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki was a Polish nobleman, Polish Army Captain of Engineers, ethnologist, Egyptologist, linguist, traveler, adventurer and popular author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a legendary figure in his homeland...
. After sections of Potocki's novel had been lost (other fragments having been published as separate parts in 1804 and 1813–14), the missing sections were restored by back-translation into French from Chojecki's Polish translation.
See also
- List of Poles
- Translation
External links
- Polskie Tradycje Intelektualne (Polish Intellectual Traditions): Edmund Chojecki, "Patriotyzm i objawy jego u niektórych narodów" ("Patriotism and Its Manifestations among Various Nations")—a fragment of a paper presented by Chojecki in Paris on 27 January 1870.