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Stefan Żeromski (Maurycy Zych) To His God Griffin To His Own Aleksander Krasicki Homeland [1894].

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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