Another Polish Lit Nobel laureate, Orwell's inspirer - Reymont born 150 yrs ago
May 7 marks the 150th birth anniversary of Polish 19th/20th-century novelist Wladyslaw Reymont, best known for his Nobel-winning epic novel Chlopi (The Peasants), depicting the life of serfs in 19th-century feudal Poland.
Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont (May 7, 1867 – December 5, 1925) was born in the village of Kobiele Wielkie, near Radomsko, as one of nine children. Reymont spent his childhood years in Tuszyn near the central-Polish metropoly Lodz, where his father was a church organist. After a few years he was sent to Warsaw to live with his elder sister and her husband and learn a trade. In 1885 he received the title of journeyman tailor, which remained his only formal education.
Shortly afterwards Reymont took up work in a travelling theatre, subsequently working as a gateman at a railway crossing, a spirtual medium in Paris and London, and again with a theatre troupe. For a time he also considered joining the Pauline Order in southern Poland's religious sanctuary Czestochowa.
Reymont debuted as a novelist with the 1895 Komediantka (The Deceiver), followed a year later by Fermenty (Ferments). His third book, The Promised Land (1897), brought him wider renown and served as the basis for a well-received 1974 film of the same name by the late Polish director Andrzej Wajda.
Reymont wrote his Nobel-winning 4-volume epic novel The Peasants between 1901 and 1908, it was published successively from 1904 to 1909. The work, an introspective narrative about serfdom in feudal Poland, won him the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature over Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Hardy.
Reymont's literary output covers about 30 volumes of prose, ranging from reportages and short stories to full-length novels.
Reymont's last book, the 1924-published Bunt (Revolt), tells the story of a revolt by animals which take over their farm with plans to introduce equality. However, the new order soon dissolves into abuse and bloody terror.
According to some the novel, a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and banned from 1945 to 1989 in communist Poland, may have inspired George Orwell to write his 1945 novella Animal Farm.
In 1991, Reymont was depicted on an old PLN 1 mln banknote. (PAP)
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