Orzeszkowa - Rydel - Reymont. Korespondencyjne uwagi o nowej literaturze

Abstract

Critical and literary output belongs to a subsidiary linę of writing achievements of Eliza Orzeszkowa although, for example opinions about artisfs tasks and art in forming so- cial and national attitudes have not lost their validity even today. For Orzeszkowa, the critic, it was especially Romanticism and Modernism that she was interested in. It is characteristic that, with reference to writers and ideological and artistic phenomena at the break of the 20th century, Orzeszkowa avoided public formulation of judgements, specifying them in private correspondence. In spite of their private tonę, they are valuable for double scholarly inspection. Their analysis allows us to tracę the character of “unofficial” battles of the writer with the pressure of phenomena that were alien to her generation, assuming the authofs will- ingness to get to know those phenomena, understand them and evaluate them. It also makes it possible to outline personality features of Orzeszkowa, who created a kind of ideological and artistic “flirt” with carefully selected Young Poland’s artists. The article is an attempt to define the described assumptions based on references to a narrow data base, which is comprised of the author of Excelsior’s letters to writers of incompatible talents, that is Lucjan Rydel from 1895-1900 and Władysław Reymont from 1908-1909.