Raymont, Vladislav

Born in the family of the rural organist Joseph Reiment in the village of Kobele Velke. In addition to Vladislav, the family had eight more children. His mother Antonina Kupchinska came from an impoverished noble family from Krakow and had the ability to write. Vladislav spent his childhood in Tushino , not far from Lodz , where his father moved to work, since there was a richer parish. He was educated at a local school. Parents wanted him to become a priest . However, Vladislav was stubborn; he dropped out of school, often changed professions, traveled extensively in Poland and Europe, was a student of a tailor in Warsaw ( 1880 - 1884 ), where his father sent him away, but from where he was sent under house arrest for participating in a strike in Lodz. Due to the severity of his father and the excessive piety of his mother, he fled from home and became an actor in vagrant troupes ( 1884 - 1887 ), and also worked as a railway employee.

After a trip to Paris and London, he made his last attempt to engage in theatrical activities, but, having not achieved success, returned home again. I could not find something to my liking, and even cut my hair as a monk, worked as an auditor on the railway, and in my free time I read and began to write.

In 1893 he settled in Warsaw and lived in literary work. High compensation after a traffic accident in 1900 helped him gain financial independence.

In November 1924 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the outstanding national epic novel" The Men "." At this time, he could not attend the award ceremony, as he was treated in France, as he had heart problems.

In 1925, after a relative recovery, Reymont returned to Poland, where the Polish Rural Party invited him to join him.

Since that time, the writer’s health began to deteriorate rapidly, and in December 1925 Vladislav Reymont died in Warsaw, where he was buried.

He made his debut in literature in 1893 . Creativity combines the traditions of critical realism with elements of naturalism and symbolism . A small part of the creative heritage is poetry. The author of short stories, novels, novels, diverse in thematic and genre respect.

In the collections of "Meeting" ( 1897 ), "Before Dawn" ( 1902 ), in the story "Fair" ( 1899 ), the life of the village is shown. The novels “The Comedian” ( 1896 ) and “Fermentation” ( 1897 ) depict the life and customs of provincial bureaucracy and the acting environment.

After the success of his first published stories, Raymont has the idea of ​​writing a novel. One of his first novels was the novel "Komediantka" (Comedian) (1895), about a girl from the province who escaped with a theater troupe, trying to escape from lying in her surroundings, but found only intrigue and pretense. The second novel, “Fermenty” (Fermentation) (1896), is a continuation of the first novel, where the main character after an attempted suicide returns to her family, taking the burden of existence. After making sure that dreams never come true, she marries a rich man who has fallen in love with her.

The Warsaw newspaper Kurier Codzienny ordered Raymont a new novel. After collecting the necessary materials, after traveling to Lodz, he published the novel "The Promised Land" (1897).

The multi-story novel “ The Promised Land ” (parts 1–2, 1899 ), one of Raymond’s best works, recreates the formation of the capitalist Lodz , depicted from anti-urban perspectives, and the life of the Lodz textile magnates. The novel shows how the city destroys those who accept the laws of profit, and those who do not accept them. Moral gangrene strikes three main characters: a German, a Jew and a Pole. The novel shows the cynicism and animal nature of a person who lives according to the laws of the jungle, and nobility, morality and kindness begin to serve against the people who follow them. The novel is filmed ( Andrzej Wajda , 1975 ) and translated into 15 languages.

The peak of Raymont’s work is considered to be the novel “The Men ” (t. 1-4, 1904 - 1909 ; the first Russian translation - 1910 - 1912 by Vladislav Khodasevich , the second - 1954 ), which depicts rural life in social contradictions and psychological conflicts. The plot of the book tells the story of a father and son who fell in love with the same woman. The novel, written in a local dialect, amazes the reader with its realism, depicting the traditions, behavior and spirituality of the common people. Using the spoken dialect, the author creates the universal language of the Polish peasantry. Thus, he represents the rich culture of the common people. This novel reflects the true life of the village in Lips, and the action takes place within ten months, in the unspecified year of the 19th century. Each part of the novel corresponds to the time of the year, thus showing the cyclical nature of time in the Polish countryside. Along with the calendar cyclicality, the cyclic ritual is shown. The novel does not have moralizing and logical conclusions, but simply shows life as it is. For this novel, as for “an outstanding national epic,” Raymont was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1924 .

Vladislav Reymont is also the author of the novel “The Vampire” ( 1911 ) and the historical trilogy “1794” ( 1913 - 1918 ) about Poland at the end of the 18th century and the national liberation uprising led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko .

The last work of the author is “Uprising” (Polish Bunt), published in 1924. It describes the uprising of animals on the farm, with the goal of becoming equal, but the result is bloody terror (a work similar to George Orwell's “ Farmyard ” published in 1945 ) The book expresses Raymond's attitude to the 1917 revolution, and therefore was banned from printing in the NDP from 1945 to 1989. The novel again appeared in print only in 2004.

The name in Wladyslaw Reymont is the square in Lodz , the avenue in Warsaw , streets in the cities of Bialystok , Volkovysk , Wroclaw , Gdansk , Krakow , Lodz , Poznan , Grodno .

• Promised land
• Men (1922)
• Men (1972), mini-series
• Men (1973), a television film based on a mini-series

• Vl. Raymont. At dawn. - Appendix to the newspaper Priazovskiy Kray, No. 43 (November 23). - Printing house of the newspaper "Priazovskiy Krai", 1903. - S. 197-200.
• Collected works. T. 1-12. - M. , 1911-1912.
• Stories. - M. , 1953.
• Vampire. / Sat "Vampires." - M .: Renaissance, 1992. - (World of mysticism) - ISBN 5-8396-0015-6
• Guys: a novel in 2 vols. - M .: DAS, 1993. - 367 + 416 pp. - ISBN 5-7016-0863-8 ; 5-7016-0862-X; 5-7016-0864-6
• Last Diet of the Commonwealth. Historical novel. - Mn. : Belarus, 1994. - ISBN 5-338-01100-X
• Promised land. - M .: Panorama, 1997. - (Nobel Prize winners) - 605 p. - ISBN 5-85220-411-0

• Yatsimirsky A.I. Vladislav Reymont, his novels and short stories (literary characterization) // Bulletin of foreign literature. 1906. No. 6.
• Fritsche V. Vladislav Raymont // New Journal for Everyone. - SPb. , 1911. No. 32.
• Bogomolova N.A. Vladislav Reymont // History of Polish literature. T. 2. / Editorial board: V.V. Witt, I.S. Miller, B.F. Staheev, V.A. Khorev . - M. , 1969.
• Tsybenko E.Z. Creativity of Vladislav Stanislav Reymont in Russia / Studia polonica. On the occasion of the 70th birthday of Viktor Aleksandrovich Khorev. - M .: Indrik, 2002 .-- S. 312-324.

• Raymont, Vladislav // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.