Romance at the Health resort

Beneath the surface

Hidden beneath Regina Różyńska’s portrait is a self-portrait of Eliza Orzeszkowa, and in the young divorcee’s fate we find reflections of many aspects of the writer’s life. This convergence, in its broad outlines, was likely no secret even when the novel was published. Over time, as the author herself revealed certain facts about her life in confessions written to various recipients, and her biographers later confronted them with sources, even more pieces of the biographical puzzle could be found in Ostatnia miłość and in several subsequent novels. Its elements include names and characters, places and atmospheres, events and circumstances depicted in her debut novel.

Why did Orzeszkowa decide to make her first novel so alarmingly close to her own life? Perhaps because at the time she had no other significant experiences that could serve as a canvas for her story. The only available material was her own biography: on one hand, sparse in interesting events, even boring (several years confined to a boarding school, followed immediately by several years in a mediocre marriage in distant Polesie), and on the other, full of dramatic events and grim experiences of the post-uprising reality, which, however, were forbidden to write about. All that remained was creating a drama out of her own home life, melodrama, and stirring up emotions, a practice she was prone to until the end of her days. The novel is also a kind of reckoning with those guilty of entangling the young woman in an unhappy relationship. Moreover, transforming the biography into a narrative may have helped the writer process the marital crisis and life upheaval (such as the collapse of the relationship, the failure of the uprising, and the loss of stability in Polesie) and served as a form of self-therapy. Writing was a response to the grief after the catastrophe, which, in fact, had always been associated with Orzeszkowa’s life (since childhood) as a way to cope with sadness or the feeling of defeat. The mourning must have been truly overwhelming and combined with a sense of multifaceted loss. Regina is la dame noir, a lady in black – it is unclear why she always wears black: is mourning a symbol of her spirit and her state of hope, or information about a stage of emotional development, a sign of stability, or perhaps a way of remaining invisible? Finally, could “rewriting” certain episodes of her own biography into a novel (episodes selected and processed in a specific way) have served as a kind of “alibi” for Orzeszkowa when she was officially about to seek a divorce? She granted Regina a monopoly on the truth. She portrayed her marriage in an unequivocally disastrous light, and made her husband, Alfred, unequivocally guilty (even if this “guilt” arouses some disbelief in the reader). Regina’s “last love,” Stefan, appears on the scene like a knight-saviour to a persecuted virgin. The reader is meant to get the impression that love, like compensation, is finally due to the unhappy woman. However, the novel’s Regina had already been divorced for four years, and its creator was only planning a divorce. The novel could therefore have been a kind of public relations manoeuvre to shape her own positive image for the future and gain public acceptance of her divorce plan – a procedure that, at the time, was subject to social disapproval, speculation, and gossip. Orzeszkowa, therefore, wanted to pre-program and process what others would say about her and what she would like to say in response.

Beneath the surface of Ostatnia miłość, the writer conceals much of her life. Regina, who shortly after graduating from school enters into a marriage, arranged by her aunt, to a wealthy landowner she barely knows, is Eliza herself. The cold and unforgiving aunt-guardian of young Regina, who drives her away from home through a hasty and coldly calculated marriage, is Franciszka Pawłowska, née Kamieńska, the writer’s mother. Moving after their wedding to remote Różanna in Volhynia, the writer spends her time in her husband’s Ludwinów in Polesie. Alfred, a horseman, hunter, card player, and cigar smoker, Regina’s husband, is, we are supposed to guess, Piotr Orzeszko. The portrait of Regina and Henryk’s father, an image they both cultivate with a kind of cult, conversing with, “praying” to, and treating as a confidante, is the image of Benedykt Pawłowski, the writer’s father, whose portrait and memory she herself treated in a similar way. Regina’s paternal estate, Miła, is Eliza’s paternal Milkowszczyzna. Regina’s father’s tomb “on a hill among the fir trees” (chapter VII), venerated by the writer, is the tomb of Benedykt Pawłowski in Zaleśna. Finally, the town of D*** is the famous resort town of Druskininkai, which the author frequented from childhood.

The most important figure in the novel, however, is Stefan – Regina’s last and first true love. Orzeszkowa invested his character with all her dreams of the ideal man, “the first and last,” masculine yet delicate, an engineer with the soul of an artist, noble, devoted, loved by friends, yet admired by opponents. This figure represented Zygmunt Święcicki, a doctor she met in Ludwinów, at the time her hope for a happy relationship after the annulment of her previous marriage. She hid this important name in the novel, bestowing it on Stefan’s best friend, who tells him about Regina in his letters; in turn, she secretly assigned the medical profession to the noble Dr. K., who was secretly in love with Regina. She even commemorated Zygmunt’s singing talent and tenor voice, describing Alfred’s “strong, pure, tenor singing” (chapter VII) and her own feeling of delight when listening to him. Orzeszkowa shared a discreet but profound bond with Zygmunt Święcicki. When she was writing the novel, she was almost certain that after the imminent annulment of her marriage, she would marry him. However, this did not happen. Her hopes were dashed even before the divorce was granted, in the late spring of 1869. Years later, Orzeszkowa again made a small (though this time malicious) “memorial” of her would-be husband in another novel.

Ostatnia miłość is primarily a novel about marital relationships: failed (Regina and Alfred), successful (Klara and Adam Milecki), and dreamed-of. The concept of the ideal marriage is presented in Regina’s diary and in the words and reflections of the characters. Its aphoristic equivalent is the motto from Les Misérables, which recurs repeatedly and in various variations throughout the novel, as if a warning to those who love only bodies, shapes, and appearances, and not the soul, were meant to be deeply and effectively etched in the reader’s memory. However, the imperative of the spirit’s dominance over the body is not consistently justified in the novel. Indeed, after the failure of her first love, Regina tames her body (she wears black, she doesn’t dance), but in her relationship with Alfred, she still longs for the physical closeness (and motherhood) that he doesn’t give her. Then, after a very brief acquaintance with Stefan and his proposal, she falls into his embrace in a kiss full of desire, which the narrator, however, tries to temper to reduce its significance, saying that “between the lips joined in the kiss, not physical pleasure alone vibrates, but alongside it and above it, a stronger spirit breathes, self-aware, wise and strong, and united with its kindred spirit” (chapter VIII).

The theory of ideal marriage as a spiritual, fraternal affinity is consistent with the concept that Orzeszkowa (living at the time between her first and second relationship) expounded in a letter to Aniela Sikorska shortly after the first edition of Ostatnia miłość. Zygmunt Święcicki, “a beautiful man – beautiful in soul and body – in substance and external forms” (which sounds consistent with Victor Hugo’s postulate from the motto), is like the embodiment of the ideal, and marriage with him appears at times as a “Holy Altar” and at other times as an “earthly paradise.” The letter, full of exalted visions of future happiness, proved that its author – despite several years of experience – still knew little more about marriage than Miss Izabela Łęcka, to whom Bolesław Prus attributed an equally illusory way of thinking: a strange and at times bizarre mixture of naivety and affectation, stupidity and pathos. Orzeszkowa wrote a letter to Sikorska as a continuation of her already completed novel, which, as she thought, could be her once in a lifetime project.

Yet even cataloguing biographical counterparts in the novel leaves a disturbing impression of partiality. It seems that Orzeszkowa also subconsciously registered her own unfulfilled longings. She included facts that were not biographical truth, but were not merely fiction, for they were the truth of dreams, the truth of fantasies. The strong stamp of autobiography imprinted in the text allows us to assume that facts placed between the lines that had no basis in life, but were part of an “imagined biography,” a perfected project of herself, can also be truthful. This is the case, for example, with Regina’s beauty. If she is meant to be a reflection of the writer, then she endowed her dream woman with extraordinary beauty, something she herself was rather deprived of (which by the way, was a sensitive subject for her). Regina dazzles with beauty, grace, and a regal bearing, with her singing talent and wealth. Everything about her is perfect. It has what its creator may have lacked.

The second fact Orzeszkowa “corrected” in her life was her dream sibling: Regina’s brother, Henryk. The deaths of her older sister Klemunia and younger brother Jaś were a loss she felt painfully for the rest of her life, a deficit that intensified her sense of loneliness and “onlyness,” the fragmented nature of her family. The void left by her siblings could not be filled. Therefore, she creates an imaginary portrait of the perfect older brother, who combines brotherhood with fatherhood, because he is also a “father” to her younger sister. Henryk is a more modest version of the ideal Stefan: unlike him, he underwent a period of sinful trial but survived a metamorphosis and was saved from moral decline (not without Stefan’s significant help and positive influence). Henryk’s main characteristics are those that define him towards his sister (and later also towards the sick Wanda): care and responsibility, intuition, seriousness, and love – devoid of any erotic element in relation to Regina. The more perfect Regina’s brother seems in relation to his sister, the more the writer’s hidden “hunger for brotherhood” and the lack of bonds with close relatives become apparent.

Finally, the third component of the dream biography: a man. Stefan Rawicki is the perfect man. Seriousness and “exceptionality” (chapter II), “magnetic influence” (chapter II), “powerful nature” (chapter II), “profound reason and a warm heart” (chapter VI), “a worthy man” (chapter II) – he is portrayed as a hero both in the words of the narrator and other characters, and in his own mind. Sometimes, however, he seems downright cold and repulsive in this perfection, as when he makes sarcastic remarks about his acquaintances, who, after all, treat him with respectful distance; when he seems somewhat conceited (as a scientist and as a man) and stiff (“even Rawicki laughed at this comic scene” – chapter V), or when he insults Regina while she is talking to the men around her in the living room. Stefan, “standing on a mountaintop, with a precipice at his feet, surrounded by clouds, or on the deck of a threatened ship, calmly contemplating the capriciousness of the raging elements” (chapter II), is not a man of flesh and blood, but a man conceived of fantasy, an archetypal animus, drawn from the depths of his creator’s unconscious. Attempts to adapt real men (Zygmunt Święcicki, later Stanisław Nahorski, Franciszek Godlewski, Tadeusz Bochwic) to the archetype inevitably ended in failure for Orzeszkowa.