Stefan Żeromski (Maurycy Zych) Do swego Boga Gryf Do swoich Aleksander Krasicki Ojczyzna Kraków 1894 Groszowe Wydawnictwo Imienia Tadeusza Kościuszki Nakładem Dra Z. Kostkiewicza i K. Wojnar Druk. Wł. Ł. Anczyc i Spółka 24s. o. contemporary with preserved original booklet o. p. bdb For. ca: 17x11.5 cm "Stefan Żeromski's works are dominated by fundamental Polish issues national and social issues. A little imperceptibly scrolls the so-called national-religious issue of the Polish-Eastern Slavic borderland, related to the Russian-Orthodox expansion in the Bug River lands in the second half of the 19th century1. It was touched upon, among other things, in the novel The Beauty of Life, the novella Ananke, but it found its most perfect artistic expression in "folklore sketches": To His God and The Pagan. In these two just a few pages Stefan Żeromski included the enormity of the tragedy of the Podlaskie Chelm Unitarians, forced by force to adopt Orthodoxy. Both works, although less known, are undoubtedly among the highest literary achievements of their author, and one can also risk saying that they are also among the best achievements of Polish literature. (...) The plot of the novella To His God takes place in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The work opens with a scene of metaphorical description of nature one March morning, which will serve as a backdrop for future events. Against an ominous and lyrical backdrop, the narrator portrays two pilgrim protagonists: old peasant-unite Felk and his granddaughter Teofilka, who surreptitiously annually wander to make their Easter Catholic confession from Podlasie all the way "somewhere beyond Warsaw." And all this because Felek once, as a result of the Russian soldiers' torture of his family, defending his Catholic character, signed a declaration to embrace Orthodoxy. His son, beaten to death with shackles, persevered in Catholicism to the end, dying crying that he "Pole, on Polish soil born." Now Felek regarded these pilgrimages 'beyond Warsaw' as penance for his betrayal of the Catholic Uniate Church." [in:] Witold Kolbuk, STEFAN ŻEROMSKI WOBEC KWESTII PRZESLADOWANIA UNITÓW PODLASKO-CHEŁMSKICHICH |