Selected Polish Tales

Selected Polish Tales

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Title: Selected Polish Tales
Author: Various
Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8378] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 4, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

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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 _Szymánski'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