[REYMONT Wladyslaw Stanislaw]. A handwritten eight-page letter from Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont to an unnamed...

[REYMONT Wladyslaw Stanislaw]. Handwritten eight-page letter from Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont to an unnamed Walery Karwaciński, dated. 24 III 1897 in Ouarville.
Double-sided manuscript on four cards form. 17.6x11.3 cm. Reymont thanks for the letter ("it gave me one brighter moment, of which I now have so terribly few") and writes, among other things: "unable to stand it any longer in France, beaten to the ground by this terrible winter, full of rain, mud and fog, bitten through by this stupid Polish nostalgia - I escaped for a romp to Switzerland [...]. Yes, I miss the Country, because not the people [...]. How this homeland here hypnotizes everyone [...]. I know simple peasants, ordinary working cattle, who fled the country driven by the instinct of ordinary movement, for whom country, homeland, were words as mysterious as differential calculus - and who today, after several years of breathing foreign air, give a significant portion of meager earnings for necessary purposes, this homeland only learned abroad, to whom there is never enough stories about the country, never enough dreams of rebuilding it [...]. And everyone is battered by nostalgia like dogs with rabies." He devotes a large part of the letter to literary work: "I used to dream about literature, while I was still a steamroller on the railroad, and it seemed to me at the time that if I entered it, if only into its anteroom, I would be as unreservedly happy there as I had ever been in my life. I entered [...] into the parade of literature, and this did not give me the anticipated happiness, but instead gave me a great deal of bitterness unknown before, even more sorrow, and a more fervent desire for that happiness which I found only in love." At the end he mentions "Promised Land" published in episodes. The letter is long, poignant in its sincerity of expression, and important. Published in: W. S. Reymont "Correspondence 1890-1923" (War. 2002, p. 163). Traces of folding, two pages torn.
W. S. Reymont (1867-1925) - considered "one of the most outstanding and important writers in the history of Polish literature" (Wikipedia), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1924.