The Argonauts

Argonauts, by Eliza Orzeszko
(AKA Orzeszkowa)

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Title: The Argonauts
Author: Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
Translator: Jeremiah Curtin
Release Date: February 6, 2007 [EBook #20537]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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ARGONAUTS ***

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Introduction
Eliza Orzeszko, the authoress of "The Argonauts," is the greatest

female writer and thinker in the Slav world at present. There are keen
and good critics, just judges of thought and style, who pronounce her
the first literary artist among the women of Europe.
These critics are not Western Europeans, for Western Europe has no
means yet of appreciating this gifted woman. No doubt it will have
these means after a time in the form of adequate translations.
Meanwhile I repeat that she is the greatest authoress among all the Slav
peoples. She is a person of rare intellectual distinction, an observer of
exquisite perception in studying men and women, and the difficulties
with which they have to struggle.
Who are the Slavs among whom Eliza Orzeszko stands thus
distinguished?
The Slavs form a very large majority of the people in Austria-Hungary,
an immense majority in European Turkey, and an overwhelming
majority in the Russian Empire; they are besides an unyielding, though
repressed, majority in that part of Prussian territory known as Posen in
German, and Poznan in Polish.
The Slav race occupies an immense region extending from Prussia,
Bohemia, and the Adriatic eastward to the Pacific Ocean. Its main
divisions are the Russians, Poles, Bohemians (Chehs), Serbs,
Bulgarians; its smaller divisions are the Slovaks, Wends, Slovinians,
Croats, Montenegrins. These all have literature in some form, literature
which in respect to the world outside is famous, well known, little
known, or unknown.
The Slavs have behind them a history dramatic to the utmost, varied,
full of suffering, full also, of heroism in endurance or valor.
The present time is momentous for all nations, the future is a tangled
riddle; for the Slavs this seems true in a double measure. To involved
social problems is added race opposition in the breasts of neighbors, a
deep, sullen historic hostility. Hence when a writer of power appears
among the Slavs, whether he takes up the past or the present, he has
that at hand through which he compels the whole world to listen.

Sienkiewicz has shown this, so has Tolstoy, so have Dostoyevski and
Gogol.
The present volume gives in translation a book which should be widely
read with much pleasure. The winning of money on an immense scale
to the neglect of all other objects, to the neglect even of the nearest
duties, is the sin of one Argonaut; the utter neglect of money and the
proper means of living is the ruin of the other.
Darvid by "iron toil" laid the basis of a splendid structure, but went no
farther; he had not the time, he had not the power, perhaps, to build
thereon himself, and his wife, to whom he left the task, had not the
character to do so. By neglect of duty Darvid is brought to madness; by
neglect of money Kranitski is brought to be a parasite, and when he
loses even that position he is supported by a servant.
The right use of wealth, the proper direction of labor, these are supreme
questions in our time, and beyond all in America.
Friends have advised Madame Orzeszko to visit this country and study
it; visit Chicago, the great business centre, the most active city on earth,
and New York, the great money capital. If she comes she will see much
to rouse thought. What will she see? That we know how to win money
and give proper use to it? Whatever she sees, it will be something of
value, that is undoubted; something that may be compared with
European conditions, something to be compared with the story in this
book.
Eliza Orzeszko writes because she cannot help writing; her works,
contained in forty-odd volumes, touch on the most vital subjects in the
world about her. She tells the truth precisely as she sees it. We may
hope for much yet from the pen of this lady, who is still in the best
years of her intellectual activity.
Madame Orzeszko was born a little more than fifty years ago in
Lithuania, that part of the Commonwealth which produced Mickiewicz,
the great poet, and Kosciuszko the hero.

THE ARGONAUTS
By Eliza Orzeszko (Orzeszkowa)
Translated by Jeremiah Curtin Bristol, Vt.,