Hidden traces of distance, irony and disintegration

The story canvas

The plot of Cnotliwi is simple: in the world of hypocrisy and gossip that fuel everyday life, urban society masks its own sins and abominations by talking about others. Thus, among other things (among various subplots: foundlings, neglected children, secret affairs, lying within families, the need to penetrate others’ privacy, but also the importance of foster care) the happiness of two people comes to the fore. Young and beautiful piano-playing Wanda Rodowska (a name that will play a role in a novel about the power of family – Pamiętnik Wacławy) lives with her mother across from the tenement building where August Przybycki, a former talented pianist and current clerk (delighted by Wanda’s playing), lives with his ailing wife, whose behaviour betrays her disapproval of fate and poisons the daily life of her husband, ten years younger than her. Knowing them both is a source of nourishment for the environment, which has many sins on its conscience, which feeds on the story of their love, and ultimately leads to sad consequences: separation in the name of reason and observance of the norms of the Decalogue. Przybycki and Rodowska undoubtedly share a love of art, a similar way of spending their free time, and an emotional delight (befitting sensitive souls) in the natural world and music, which serves as an antidote to everyday life and a therapy for the stagnant effects of small-town life. August lends Wanda books (including serious, high-art literature), teaches her to speak Italian, and play four-handed songs on the piano – the tradition of intimate social games becomes significant here, art and its power intertwined with the need for self-fulfilment, but also with space for freedom and eroticism stemming from satisfying a desire for the abject and the object of the game (a dozen or so years before the piano lessons in Gabriela Zapolska’s Przedpiekle). Music is a way of experiencing and providing the impetus to find happiness amidst the monotony of life in a provincial town (Wanda) and the oppressive sadness of home (August caring for his elderly, paralyzed, and unloved wife), a happiness that can be achieved with someone with whom one shares passions. Music can also be heard by the water, as fishermen sing in their boats. It is meant to provide a sense of understanding and be a symbolic language of love. Reflecting on the genius of art, it draws inspiration from the literary imagery of Juliusz Słowacki. It functions similarly to the Italian language (not French, as in much later, brilliant works of world realism: Karen Blixen’s Babettes Gæstebud and Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg, or English in Lalka), which August teaches Wanda – possibly following the example of his Italian musical masters. The musical Wanda, benefiting from lessons given to her by the art connoisseur (the humanist official), processes her daily life with him and, using a drawing board, paints the ravine where she was with August and a third figure who appears in the novel – Edward Gaczycki. This is a kind of anticipation of Justyna and Jan’s experience of nature in Nad Niemnem and the later forms of speaking to living nature (trees, meadows, flowers) in their own language in the miniatures from Chwile and Przędze and in Gloria Victis. The ravine is narratively skilfully reconstructed and could serve as a proto-Impressionistic literary landscape for the young writer. But its role in demonstrating awesomeness does not end there. Despite the characters’ epiphanic delight in its beauty and vastness, it can evoke anxiety and certainly introduce a sense of ambiguity. On the opposite wall of the chasm in the ravine, there is a cross. It is not known whether this is a sign of a patriotic death (throwing heroes, for example those who fought in the uprising, down a hillside) or rather a symbol of a tragic, suicidal death out of love (in the Wertherian style). Since the text is essentially devoid of crypto-patriotic references to historical and political events (the exception being the figure of Joanna Starowolska unseated), it should be considered a clear (though silent) sign of a disturbance in the tranquillity of this pastoral and idyllic space. The cross at the beginning of the novel introduces a sense of disintegration and forces us to examine with suspicion the subsequent features painted on the landscape of nature and the city that Orzeszkowa meticulously smuggles in. The ravine is also the space where August subjects the “virgin to the dissection of critical reason,” and this reference to Kant demonstrates the narrator’s distance from the person he bestows such a term on, as it introduces a sign of rationality into the non-rational world of shared daydreaming, envisioning the future, and communing with nature, which is no stranger to the rules that prevail in the common-sense world of customs and norms (and these belong to a person living in a city).

August Przybycki is twenty-two when he meets a thirty-two-year-old widow. Anastazja is described as “flirtatious, cunning, passionate” (chapter XI). A career awaits the musician in love with the older woman; he is talented and praised. His feelings for Anastazja are not love at that point, but madness. But Orzeszkowa slips in information here that is crucial to the characters’ later fate, indicating a distance from this knowledge of the protagonists. August and Anastazja constitute a contrasting pair: a woman of dubious provenance (as revealed by these three clearly marked adjectives) and a man genuinely experiencing love for music and his mistress, who, as a result of domestic experiences, becomes a civil servant out of economic necessity and common sense. Orzeszkowa also demonstrates a strong contrast throughout the plot. Augustus’s masculinity and youth are at odds with the appearance of his paralyzed wife. Anastasia has black hair, wears a black flannel, a black woollen blouse, a white cap, and a white collar. Her room smells musty (as if she were rotting in life), the furniture is covered in dust, and the chairs are covered in white linen (evidence of disuse). A piano with Chopin’s funeral march open on the stand clearly indicates that we are in a “room resembling a tomb” (chapter II). Although August’s room is “modest and austere” (chapter IV), it contains a bookcase, a desk, “two bronze busts, one of a famous poet, the other of a famous musician” (chapter IV), and “several portraits of great men on the walls” (chapter IV). It’s unclear exactly who they represent, but one can surmise that the presence of these objects establishes a dialogue with the tradition and past of “national altar souvenirs.” Anastazja’s and August’s rooms are undoubtedly contradictory places where everyday life is acclimated and intimacy is experienced. The Przybycki house is sad, marked by monotony and boredom, also synonymous with a mortuary where one slowly rots (because it doesn’t dry out).

The opposite of this house is the meeting place of Wanda and August. United by their love of music and mutual fascination, they envision each other outside the city, in a ravine, on a mountain – as if authentic feelings had no place in the urban world. As if one wanted to bracket the city as a hotbed of evil and relocate the scenes to a space expressing the need for authenticity, to the realm of nature (which also reveals traces of difficult and painful experiences), as if true and sincere feelings needed an enclave.

In this social and moral setting, a third figure appears (as in a romance triangle) – Edward Gaczycki – a strange and suspicious figure, a man who exposes the behaviour of the community and, under the guise of a Chinese-Japanese story, discovers how people operate and what unites them. A tycoon and wealthy man, the builder of a post office, delving into the material and moral realities of this world, he always tries to intervene at crucial moments in the action to disrupt its order and normalization. He appears to be a heroic man, wanting to help a slandered woman and taking responsibility for ensuring that no harm comes to her in the community, but it’s clear from the outset that he’s someone who arrives too early in this triangle, someone who demands attention, someone who intrusively questions, trying to use this knowledge to his advantage. Consequently, Edward will help August find a job and move to another city, but he will do so to satisfy his own needs and build a relationship with Wanda based on a sense of dependence. It is precisely the concept of dependence that constitutes this relationship, and therefore, by definition, it is suspect and false, just like Gaczycki himself – a disturbing and overly structured figure. Edward is a step behind the characters, as if on cue, providing ready-made solutions, whispering, unravelling mysteries, and explaining the meaning of the story. This wealthy man, with a vast fortune worth 2,500,000 Polish zloty, collaborates intensively with the caretaker of the disadvantaged and the poor – Senora Starowolska. This camaraderie seems tinged from the outset with ambiguity stemming from Gaczycki’s strange intentions, which the novel’s oldest protagonist fails to understand. When Orzeszkowa writes about Gaczycki’s wealth, she uses Polish złoty, not rubles, even though these have been in use since the turn of the 1840s and 1850s.

Little is known about Gaczycki’s motivations. He has a head for business and has amassed a vast fortune, which he knows how to multiply. He reconciles quarrels and disputes, becomes a mediator, and tries to repair the world. However, from the outset, he is determined to break up August and Wanda and win her. The methods of this acquisition are suspect. It’s true that at the novel’s conclusion, he speaks to Wanda about the importance of mercy and work, which should be the hallmarks of human life, even at the cost of one’s own happiness, since helping others brings self-fulfilment. These words stem from a desire to constantly maintain his image as a noble and selfless man. During their hikes to the river, Gaczycki speaks like a researcher, a naturalist, taxonomizing virtue and pointing out the areas it encompasses and what it might involve. He demands to be shown as a man locked in a quiet room over books, because this man exemplifies the role of a learned and responsible scientist, whose strength lies in the fact that his thoughts serve science and bring salvation and fulfilment. Orzeszkowa intelligently plays on the well-known Augustinian and Goethean thesis that he who does not work should not eat, and that he who works will be saved (St. Augustine and Faust), but this statement is an example of missing the protagonist’s intentions. And here, another trace of disintegration and hidden irony appears in the character’s mechanism of action and deduction. Furthermore, in the penultimate chapter of the novel, the writer incorporates into Gaczycki’s statement a reflection likely transferred from Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea – when the protagonist discusses truly virtuous people, he points to workers of the earth. He also discusses the project of liberating the Kuderski children (the eldest, Michasia, ten-year-old Staś, eight-year-old Oleś, five-year-old Andzia with a headache, and a one-year-old boy whose name is unknown), but his statement lacks any reflection on Froebel’s gardens and school. And this is surprising, because a person so familiar with the socio-educational and cultural issues of that time should have paid attention to this institution of proto-kindergartens.