THE PEASANTS – Romance by Władysław Reymont

He was a Polish novelist (and the 1924 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature). His best-known work, is the award-winning four-volume novel The Peasants. He was born in the village of Kobiele Wielkie, near Radomsko. His mother, had a talent for story-telling. Władysław Reymont spent his childhood near Łódź, to which his father had moved in order to work at a richer church parish. In 1885, he was given the title of journeyman tailor, his only formal certificate of education. In 1900, after an accident he was severely injured, and during the treatment he was looked after by Aurelia Szacnajder Szabłowska, whom he married in 1902. Reymont’s last book, Revolt, published in 1924, describes a revolt by animals which take over their farm in order to introduce equality (the story was a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and was banned 1945–1989 in communist Poland).

The novel has been translated into at least 27 languages. The composition of the novel astonishes the reader with its strict simplicity and functionality. It is a novel written in four parts, between 1904 and 1909. Each of the four parts, represents a season in the life of the peasants, and this division underlines the relationship of human life with nature. Władysław Reymont decided to write about peasant life, because of historical events, which took place in Polish villages in the early 20th century. The titles of the various volumes signal a tetralogy in one vegetational cycle, which regulates the eternal and repeatable rhythm of village life. Parallel to that rhythm is a calendar of religion and customs, also repeatable. In such boundaries Reymont placed a colourful country community with sharply drawn individual portraits. In The Peasants https://www.amazon.com/Peasants-Chlopi-Wladyslaw-Hancza/dp/B000JMK6TY  the writer created a suggestive picture of country life than any other Polish writer. The novel deals not only with the everyday life of people, but also with traditions connected with the most important Polish festivals.