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Eliza Orzeszkowa – 5 Novels
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Five Easy Pieces? - Grażyna Borkowska
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Five Easy Pieces? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose

Five Easy Pieces? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose
Grażyna Borkowska

Five Easy Pieces? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose
Grażyna Borkowska

Five Easy Pieces[1]? What Eliza Orzeszkowa’s early works presuppose

Eliza Orzeszkowa’s prose and letters have been viewed through various interpretative lenses. Having dominated for years, the literary-historical perspectives that situate her works in the context of cold reason[2] gave way to structuralist views[3] that focused on the poetics of her novels only to be followed by poststructuralist approaches[4] that called into question interpretations that considered realism and mimesis as self-evident. There have also been readings that have focused on motifs connected to nature and history,[5] others that have been inspired by feminist criticism,[6] as well as interpretations offering subtle approaches to selected works by applying unorthodox psychoanalytical perspectives,[7] or those underscoring confrontations with either the canon of religious imaginaries[8] or social sensibilities. An excellent example of setting up a “clash” between Orzeszkowa’s writing and approaches employed by historians of ideas is Maria Żmigrodzka’s now dated but still indispensable monograph[9].

Our challenge here is to find unclaimed territory among this long list of approaches, enabling us to develop a distinct position. The motivation is not to emulate the discoverers of previously undocumented islands but rather to find a way of pointing to less obvious, overlooked or underappreciated ways of introducing through research extra-textual, contextual and historical knowledge into a novel. There seems to be an obvious answer to the question of how the outside world resonates in literary works: through the complete, authentic, i.e. verified, experience of readers, which refers to social, economic and situational realities.[10] However, it is impossible to get around the fact that fiction, too, plays a part in constructing the real world while the world outside a novel is something that is both spoken about and also presupposed.

Let us start by providing a definition of presuppositions. The most common illustration comes from Bertrand Russell: the King of France is bald. This statement only makes sense if France is a monarchy. A key trait of presuppositions is that they cannot be contradicted. The statement “the King of France is not bald” does not change the conditions for understanding this sentence. It only makes sense for times when France was a monarchy. These intriguing traits of presuppositions have attracted scholars’ attention for a long time already, with the logician Gottlob Frege writing about them in the nineteenth century already, while philosophers including Robin George Collingwood, and British analytical philosophers, such as Frederick Strawson, also turned their attentions to them. The study by Polish the literary theorist Erazm Kuźma produced some interesting findings as he followed up his complaints about the fuzziness of the concept by highlighting two literary scholars who had enjoyed some success in analysing presuppositions.[11] Kuźma referred to the work of the poststructuralist Jonathan Culler,[12] noting his conceptual imprecision, and Umberto Eco, the well-known Italian medievalist, semiotician and novelist. Kuźma argued that they each employed idiosyncratic approaches to the concept of presupposition. For Kuźma, Culler associated it with intertextuality, with presuppositions considered to be deep-lying and indeed still hidden references to other literary texts, ones hidden unintentionally and without demonstrating awareness that a certain motif had evoked an active reaction in the author in the form of an unconscious, silent reference. Eco, meanwhile, in his book Lector in fabula[13] took the idea of presupposition in the direction of textual pragmatics, i.e. reception. He deemed texts to be “presuppositional machines” that force readers to fill in blanks. This interpretation led Kuźma to the interesting yet somewhat under-developed idea that the philosopher and literary theorist Roman Ingarden had employed presupposition, albeit unconsciously, when writing about underdefined points and concretizations conducted on behalf of receivers. This is not quite the case, since for Ingarden, filling in the blanks of underdefined points involved completing details in readers’ imaginations that writers had omitted when creating their protagonists, objects and spaces because no description can, by definition, be complete. It is an act of closing the circle. Instead, highlighting presupposition can open up the horizons that a novel, particularly a realist novel, carries in its “deep” memory in the form of traces of belonging to both the real and fictional worlds. Perhaps it is thanks to this dual affiliation that works of fiction avoid coming into direct conflict with realism since it is immediately subject to the presuppositional horizon that serves to stabilize the novel.

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Przypisy

  1. Five easy pieces is the title of a 1970 film by Bob Rafelson. The central character cannot find pleasure in life even though he is a talented piano player. Playing and interpreting great musical works seems easier than the art of life. Orzeszkowa’s early works seem like fairly transparent and simple pieces, yet they do not lack surprises that demand explanation.
  2. Such qualifications appeared during her lifetime already in reviews by Piotr Chmielowski, Waleria Marrené-Morzkowska and Józefa Sawicka (Ostoja), while over time it became one of the key pillars of Henryk Markiewicz’s classic essays discussing “the dialectics of Polish positivism.”
  3. Here most notably the studies by Anna Martuszewska (Pozycja narratora w powieściach tendencyjnych Elizy Orzeszkowej, Gdańsk–Wrocław 1970; Poetyka polskiej powieści dojrzałego realizmu (1876–1895), Wrocław 1977); indirectly related are the studies by Józef Bachórz, who rarely wrote about Orzeszkowa (with a notable exception being the essay Pozytywistka na rozdrożu, [in:] Przełom antypozytywistyczny w polskiej świadomości kulturowej końca XIX wieku, ed. T. Bujnicki, J. Maciejewski, Wrocław 1986), since, as Bachórz noted jokingly, he did not like this woman, although he did apply knowledge of her works in other outstanding pieces of research; and the book by Janusz Barczyński (Narracja i tendencja. O powieściach tendencyjnych Elizy Orzeszkowej, Wrocław 1976).
  4. An impressive exception is Krzysztof Kłosiński’s Mimesis w chłopskich powieściach Orzeszkowej, Katowice 1990.
  5. The role of nature and botanical specimens in Orzeszkowa’s works has been discussed by Bolesław Hryniewiecki (Przyroda w twórczości Elizy Orzeszkowej, AEO, sygn. 794), Alina Kowalczykowa (Czy natura ma duszę, [in:] Eliza Orzeszkowa. Pamięć kultury. Studia i głosy, ed. J. Ławski, S. Musijenko, Białystok–Grodno 2019), Tadeusz Budrewicz (Ptaki Orzeszkowej, [in:] Sekrety Orzeszkowej, ed. G. Borkowska, M. Rudkowska, I. Wiśniewska, Warszawa 2012), Barbara Noworolska (Eliza Orzeszkowa. Trwanie, pamięć, historia, Białystok 2005), Małgorzata Chwedczuk (Drzewa Elizy Orzeszkowej, Toruń 2007); her herbaria have been studied not only by literary scholars but also by researchers working in the history of science, biology and pharmaceutics: Barbara Kuźnicka (Zielniki i albumy florystyczne Elizy Orzeszkowej, “Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki” 2006, no. 2), Ewa Kamińska (Ziołoznawstwo i ziołolecznictwo w publikacjach etnograficznych Elizy Orzeszkowej, [in:] Historia leków naturalnych, ed. B. Kuźnicka, vol. 1: Źródła do dziejów etnofarmacji polskiej, Warszawa 1986), Anna Maria Kielak (Zielnik Elizy Orzeszkowej. Nieznany zabytek botaniczny przechowywany w zbiorach Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, Poznań 2004); see also Aneta Narolska, “Puszcza starożytna” Elizy Orzeszkowej, “Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza” 2013.

    The themes of the nation, uprisings and history have been taken up by those emphasizing the epic nature of Nad Niemnem, including Jan Ludwik Popławski (Dwa światy, “Głos” 1888, no. 43), Aureli Drogoszewski (Eliza Orzeszkowa, Warszawa–Kraków 1912), Stefan Kołaczkowski (Epika Orzeszkowej, “Tygodnik Ilustrowany” 1937, no. 13), Julian Krzyżanowski (Epos Orzeszkowej, [in:] idem, W kręgu wielkich realistów, Kraków 1962), Janina Kulczycka-Saloni (Bohaterscy wychowankowie pieśni (Literatura piękna a powstanie styczniowe), “Kwartalnik Historyczny” 1963, no. 4), Maria Żmigrodzka (Dwie powstańcze legendy Orzeszkowej, “Pamiętnik Literacki” 1963, iss. 4), Jan Detko (Dziedzictwo powstania styczniowego w twórczości Elizy Orzeszkowej, [Warszawa 1964]).

  6. See U. Phillips, The “Jewish Question” in the Novels and Short Stories of Eliza Orzeszkowa, “East European Jewish Affairs” 1995, vol. 25, no. 2; eadem, Glory to the Vanquished or Tribute to Lived Experience: Eliza Orzeszkowa’s Recreation of 1863 in her Cycle “Gloria victis” (1910), [in:] Mapping Experience in Polish and Russian Women’s Writing, ed. M. Rytkӧnen et al., Newcastle upon Tyne 2010; eadem, “Thesis Novel” or Pastoral Elegy: Key Tensions in Eliza Orzeszkowa’s “Nad Niemnem”, [in:] Another Canon. The Polish Nineteenth-Century Novel in World Context, ed. G. Borkowska, L. Wiśniewska, Wien–Zürich 2020; B. Shallcross, Between Desire and Inaction: On Domestic Interiority in Orzeszkowa’s “Nad Niemnem”, [in:] Another Canon. The Polish Nineteenth-Century Novel in World Context, ed. G. Borkowska, L. Wiśniewska, Wien–Zürich 2020; G. Borkowska, Cudzoziemki. Studia o polskiej prozie kobiecej, Warszawa 1996 (English translation: Alienated Women. A Study on Polish Women’s Fiction 1845–1918, trans. U. Phillips, Budapest–New York 2001; Russian translation: Чужеземkи, перев. И.Е. Адельгейм, Н.В. Романовский, Москва 2007); eadem, Rwąca rzeka, [Wprowadzenie in:] E. Orzeszkowa, Publicystyka społeczna, introduction and ed. G. Borkowska, ed. Iwona Wiśniewska, vol. 2: Rozprawy, studia, artykuły, Warszawa 2021; eadem, The Feminism of Eliza Orzeszkowa, [in:] Gender and Sexuality in Ethnical Context: Ten Essays on Polish Prose, ed. K.A. Grimstad, U. Phillips, Slavica Bergensia 5, Bergen 2005; K. Szczuka, Nuda buduaru, “Res Publica Nowa” 1998, no. 5.
  7. See Danuta Danek’s subtle biographical analysis. D. Danek, Melancholia i poznanie. “Autobiografie” Elizy Orzeszkowej, introduction and ed. D. Danek, photos K. Hejke, Warszawa 2014, and the monograph by Aneta Mazur, Pod znakiem Saturna. Topika melancholii w późnej twórczości Elizy Orzeszkowej, Opole 2010.
  8. An important contribution on religious myths in the works of Orzeszkowa is: Jerzy Cieślikowski, (Nad Niemnem Elizy Orzeszkowej: rozważania nad semiotyka mitów religijnych, “Pamiętnik Literacki” 1969, iss. 2); the fairy-tale-like nature of the world in Nad Niemnen was noted, often critically, earlier by Aleksander Świętochowski (“Prawda” 1888, no. 22). The ethical and thus social sensibilities of the writer were discussed by Stanisław Brzozowski (Eliza Orzeszkowa, “Przegląd Społeczny” 1906, no. 12–13). More recent insights are available in the edited volume Problematyka religijna w literaturze pozytywizmu i Młodej Polski. Świadectwa poszukiwań, ed. S. Fita, Lublin 1993.
  9. Żmigrodzka, Orzeszkowa. Młodość pozytywizmu, Warszawa 1965.
  10. Michał Głowiński describes the narrative truth similarly, while adopting a different approach, in his discussion of the role of the reader in accepting the authenticity of the world represented; ultimately, Głowiński accepted that truth is a position adopted by a statement towards a statement, thus reducing the significance of extratextual knowledge in shaping readers’ consciousness. M. Głowiński, Powieść i prawda, [in:] idem, Gry powieściowe. Szkice z teorii i historii form narracyjnych, Warszawa 1973.
  11. E. Kuźma, Presupozycja w odbiorze i interpretacji dzieła literackiego, “Nowa Krytyka” 1997, no. 8.
  12. J. Culler, Presupposition and Intertextuality, “Comparative Literature” 1976, vol. 91, no. 6.
  13. U. Eco, Lector in fabula. Współdziałanie w interpretacji tekstów narracyjnych, 1979, trans. P. Salwa, Warszawa 1994. The work has not appeared in full in English, but was partly reformulated and published as part of the essay collection The Role of the Reader. Umberto Eco, Lector in fabula: Pragmatic Strategy in a Metanarrative Text, [in:] idem, The Role of the Reader, Bloomington 1979.