Novel
The Peasants
Chłopi
Władysław Reymont · 1909
Opening lines
— Niech będzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus!
“Praised be Jesus Christ!”
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from wolnelektury.pl
Synopsis
In the village of Lipce, the richest of the peasants, Maciej Boryna, a widower of nearly sixty, asks for the hand of Jagna, a beautiful girl with a light reputation, whom his own son Antek, married and a father, also desires. The father refuses to share his land, marries Jagna and drives Antek out of the house. Around them the village ploughs, celebrates, prays and quarrels through the year, while the lord sells a cutting of the forest that the peasants consider their own.
Context
As early as 1897 the author had promised the Tygodnik Ilustrowany a peasant novel; dissatisfied with a first version, he burned it and rewrote the book between 1901 and 1908, largely in Paris, where he said he could concentrate better. The novel appeared as a serial in that weekly from 1902 to 1908, then in volumes from Gebethner and Wolff, Autumn and Winter in 1904, Spring in 1906, Summer in 1909. The author acknowledged that the idea had come to him from his indignation at Zola's La Terre. Translated into at least twenty-seven languages, it has been adapted for the screen, most recently in 2023.
Who it is for
A long novel in four parts with nearly ninety characters; the dialogues reproduce the speech of the villages. Franck-Louis Schoell's French translation was reissued in 2009.
Prizes and reception
The 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to its author for this “great national epic”, in the words of the Swedish Academy.
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