Novel
The Spring to Come
Przedwiośnie
Stefan Żeromski · 1925
Opening lines
Nie chodzi tutaj — u kaduka! — o herb ani o szeregi przodków podgolonych, z sarmackimi wąsami i przy karabelach — ani wydekoltowane prababki w fiokach.
What we are talking about here is not, deuce take it, a coat of arms, nor rows of shaven-headed ancestors with Sarmatian moustaches and sabres at their sides, nor décolleté great-grandmothers in towering coiffures.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from wolnelektury.pl
Synopsis
Cezary Baryka grows up in Baku in a well-off Polish family; the Bolshevik revolution and the massacres between Turks and Armenians sweep away the world of his childhood, and his mother with it. His father, who takes him back towards Poland, describes to him a country of “glass houses”, modern and just. Arriving in the reborn Poland, Cezary discovers poverty and inequality, passes through a country manor, Nawłoć, and its love affairs, then listens in turn to a moderate reformer and a communist.
Context
The novel appeared in Warsaw from Jakub Mortkowicz in 1924, dated 1925, in three parts, “The Glass Houses”, “Nawłoć” and “The East Wind”. Although the author criticises the revolution in it, the book was at once read by some as a communist-leaning novel and caused a debate. Henryk Szaro made a silent film from it. It was translated into English by Bill Johnston in 2007; in French, after extracts translated by Jean Delaperrière in 2016, the first complete translation appeared in 2018.
Who it is for
A novel in three parts, where adventure and love affairs alternate with long political debates. Complete French translation since 2018.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the most important and most debated novels of its author, and included in the canon of school reading.
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