Romance at the Health resort
Hell at the health resort
Even if Ostatnia miłość was, in the author’s eyes, an imperfect work, the very idea of setting the piece in a fashionable health resort had literary appeal. Orzeszkowa was familiar with this environment, having travelled to many health resorts for health and relaxation (Druskininkai, Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, Ostenda, Wiesbaden, Bad Kissingen, Marienbad, Bad Nauheim). Exactly forty years after her Druskininkai romance, at the end of her life, she wrote a work that strikingly alluded to her debut novel and was also one of her last important texts. In 1907, she set the action of her Na wspaniałej Wilhelmstrasse in Wiesbaden. These two health resort works: the debut and the epilogue, are connected not only by their setting – a fashionable health resort – but also by the themes of technological progress and the development of civilization. In 1867, Orzeszkowa awaited inventions and access to the amenities of civilization with hope and enthusiasm. She had no doubt that the engineers’ intentions were righteous and their mission worthy of approval. A short distance from the construction site of the “brave new world” of railway (which only the simpletons of the novel fear), a romance blossomed between an engineer and a modern woman.
Meanwhile, Na wspaniałej Wilhelmstrasse offers a radically different vision. It does not serve the purpose of social and moral observations. It is a violent attack on an aggressive and dehumanized civilization, nor on a false vision of progress. The health resort is not associated with romance or relaxation. It captures humanity’s impending tragedy like a lens. Engineers, technocrats, and industrialists have created an “earthly hell.” The world is, therefore, heading toward inevitable destruction. The message is the antithesis of the program of her debut novel. It is unclear whether Orzeszkowa consciously employed a refrain similar to the one in Ostatnia miłość. As Regina gazed with loving eyes at engineer Rawicki, she whispered, “You are great” (chapter V). Behind her, the narrator repeated this refrain several times, analysing the true and apparent hallmarks of human greatness. In the short text Na wspaniałej Wilhelmstrasse, the motif recurs repeatedly, but this time as a mocking cry of helplessness and rage: “Great, great is man.” Yet this greatness is already apparent and ambivalent: what man has created turns against him.
Ostatnia miłość – romance at the health resort – is a work of an inexperienced debutant, not free from shortcomings and full of idealistic visions; yet within it lies the germ of a great talent and a harbinger of later achievements. And although Regina Różyńska was largely Orzeszkowa’s self-portrait, it was Stefan Rawicki who became the exponent of her spirit, as when he repeated after Emerson: “Rely on yourself and climb ever higher!…” (chapter VI).
Przekład na język angielski Biuro Tłumaczeń Advance
