Henryk Rzewuski

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Henryk Rzewuski
Drogosław

Henryk Rzewuski (3 May 1791 – 28 February 1866) was a Polish nobleman,

Romantic-era
journalist and novelist.

Life

Count Henryk Rzewuski was a scion of a Polish

Nikolai Repnin, who was effectively running the Commonwealth.[2]

Henryk Rzewuski was, further, the brother of Karolina Sobańska (who became an agent of the Russian secret service and mistress of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz),[3] Ewelina Hańska (who married Honoré de Balzac),[4] and Russian General Adam Rzewuski.[2]

In his youth, Rzewuski served in the army of the

St. Petersburg, Russia, with Michał Grabowski he headed a conservative, Russian-aligned "St. Petersburg coterie" and contributed to the Polish Tygodnik Petersburski (The St. Petersburg Weekly).[5]

In 1850–56 Rzewuski, an advocate of the closest Polish-Russian political collaboration, worked with

Viceroy Ivan Paskevich, and in 1851–56 he edited Dziennik Warszawki (The Warsaw Daily).[5]

Rzewuski had traveled much—in 1825, to

historical novels set in Poland (The Trilogy).[2]
The same influence he had in historical novels wrote by Teodor Jeske-Choiński. The
memoirists. The gawęda is a discursive fiction in which the narrator recounts incidents in a highly stylized personal language. It was this genre of which Henryk Rzewuski was the past master.[7]

Czesław Miłosz characterizes Rzewuski as a literary figure:

A picturesque personality, he worshiped Old Poland in its most

Mickiewicz
, who knew it in manuscript form long before its publication.

Another of Rzewuski's works of fiction, November (1845–46), deals again with the eighteenth century and gives a panorama of social and political life. The author's... sympathy for the old-fashioned

historical novel than a gawęda, though [its loquacious] style with all its baroque humor and prodigality of colloquialisms
links it to the author's preceding work.

The vein of Sarmatian gentry buffoonery that runs throughout all Rzewuski's writings was also typical of other [Polish] writers who, like him, cannot be said to have contributed anything to the formation of a disciplined, economical language in fiction.[8]

Works

  • Pamiątki Soplicy [pl] (The Memoirs of Soplica; full title: Pamiątki JPana Seweryna Soplicy, cześnika parnawskiego; 1839, 4 volumes; critical edition by Zygmunt Szweykowski, 1928); revised for the censors as Pamiętniki starego szlachcica litewskiego (Memoirs of an Old Lithuanian Nobleman; 1844–45)
  • Mieszaniny obyczajowe (Assorted Customs; 1841–43), published under the pen name "Jarosz Bejła"
  • Listopad (November; 1845–46), 3-volume novel; critical edition by K. Wojciechowski, 1923; translated into Czech, Russian, German, English; a superb picture of Polish society, artfully styled and constructed, with masterfully crafted characters.
  • Zamek krakowski (The Kraków Castle; 1847–48)
  • Teofrast polski (A Polish Theophrastus; 1851)
  • Adam Śmigielski (1851)
  • Rycerz Lizdejko (The Knight Lizdejko; 1852)
  • Zaporożec (The
    Zaporozhian
    ; 1854)
  • Pamiętniki Bartłomieja Michałowskiego (The Memoirs of Bartłomiej Michałowski; 1855–57)
  • Próbki historyczne (Historic Samples; 1868)
  • Uwagi o dawnej Polsce przez starego Szlachcica Seweryna Soplicę Cześnika Parnawskiego napisane 1832 r. (Remarks about Old Poland Written in 1832 by the Old Nobleman Seweryn Soplica...; manuscript, published in 2003)

See also

  • Polish Romanticism

Notes

  1. ^ a b Jan Zygmunt Jakubowski, ed., Literatura polska od średniowiecza do pozytywizmu (Polish Literature from the Middle Ages to Positivism), p. 480.
  2. ^ a b c Information from the Polish Wikipedia article, as of 00:47, 15 March 2009.
  3. ^ Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, p. 218.
  4. OCLC 1298969
    .
  5. ^ a b c "Rzewuski, Henryk," Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN (PWN Universal Encyclopedia), vol. 4, p. 106.
  6. Encyklopedia Polski
    (Encyclopedia of Poland), p. 175.
  7. ^ Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, pp. 254–55.
  8. ^ Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, pp. 255.

References

External links

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