"Historia i biografia. >>Opowieści biograficzne<< Wacława Berenta", Włodzimierz Bolecki, Wrocław 1978 : [recenzja]

Włodzimierz Bolecki

"Historia i biografia. "Opowieści

biograficzne" Wacława Berenta",

Włodzimierz Bolecki, Wrocław 1978 :

[recenzja]

Literary Studies in Poland 9, 141-144

Book Review

Compte rendu de livre

W ł o d z i m i e r z B o le c k i, Historia i biografia. “Opowieści biogra­

ficzne” Wacława Berenta (History and Biography. Wacław Berent’s “Biographical Stories”), O ssolineum , W rocław 1978, pp. 164. The series :

Z D ziejów F orm A rtystycznych w L iteraturze Polskiej (A H istory o f A rtistic F orm s in Polish L iterature), vol. X L IX .

This w ork b o rd ers u p o n “the sociology o f literary form s,” the history o f literary form s and the history o f literature. It concerns W acław B erent’s (1873— 1940) last three novels: N urt (The Current) — 1934, Diogenes vc kontuszu (Diogenes in a N oblem an’s Coat) — 1937, and Zm ierzch wodzów (The Decline o f the Leaders) — 1939, all three referred to as “ biographical stories.”

In the in tro d u ctio n the a u th o r presents a profile o f the writer, who to d ay is only know n to historians o f literature. He discloses the p aradoxes o f the reception o f B erent’s works.

T he first ch ap ter “H ow ‘biographical sto ries’ were read between 1934 and 1939”) is devoted to the “styles o f reception ” o f bio­ graphical stories, th at is the ways o f reading these w orks as recorded in historical docum ents. The au th o r studies three collections o f reviews published before 1939. He investigates the m echanism o f evaluation o f B erent’s novels by his first readers an d arrives at the conclusion th at there were incom patible “reception n o rm s” pertaining to literary texts. Som e o f them m ade readers class B erent’s novels as scholarly prose (“historical sketches” ), others as literary (“artistic” ) prose. D epending on the ad op ted premise, they were either tho ug ht to be a great literary achievem ent, or else they were considered o utd ated and altogeth er a failure. This fact leads the a u th o r to m ake a d i­ stinction between “ styles” and “types” o f reception. The “type o f recep tio n ” is the set o f convictions which m akes literary com ­ m unication possible w ithin a definite span o f tim e in the historical/

142 Book Review

literary process. The “style” is then the particular, individual instance o f im plem enting the reception type. The relationship between the “ style” and “ty p e ” o f reception resem bles F. de S aussure’s distinction between

parole and langue. The various styles o f reception are in co nstant

conflict and determ ine literary co m m unication at a given point in history. T he presence o f these norm s and styles o f reception proves th at a book is never read “directly,” th at there is always an interm ediate sphere which separates a text from its reader, and this sphere is the literary culture o f the period. The a u th o r in tro ­ duces the idea o f “social b o u n d s” , which cause certain elem ents to recur in the individual receptions o f literary w orks. T he m ain thesis pu t forw ard in this ch ap ter is th at historical changes in li­ terary culture leave their im print on the reception o f a text. M en­ tion is m ade o f J. Slaw m ski’s book Dzieło, ję z y k , tradycja (The L i­

terary W ork, Language, Tradition, W arsaw 1974) and in this context

the a u th o r affirms th a t the “literary fact” (i. e. the literary work and its receptions) is the basic unit for research into the history o f literature. The historian o f literature should synchronize the re­ ception o f a text with all its elem ents.

In ch a p te r 2 (“ B erent’s n a rra tio n s” ) the a u th o r em ploys th e ca­ tegory o f “quoted w o rd s” introduced to literary theory by R ussian scholars: V oloshinov and B akhtin. Bolecki draw s atten tio n to the fact that B erent’s novels are m ade up o f specific kinds o f q u o ta ­ tions: from letters, diaries, m em oirs, scientific studies, literary w orks, etc. B erent was interested in social rem em brance and lasting values in history. His w orks do n o t have a strictly d o cum entary ch a­ racter, for he gives docum ents a literary form , and th at also m eans a new m eaning. T he au th o r con fron ts his analysis o f B erent’s narrative technique with the ideas o f the first readers o f his novels. He poin ts out that v arious elem ents o f the text allowed com pletely different in terpretations.

In the third ch a p te r (“ M yths, spaces and varieties o f R o m an ­ ticism ”), Bolecki investigates the relatio nsh ip between p articu lar novels and the full range o f book s w ritten by Berent. C ritics agree th at his last novels are quite different from his earlier w orks (Fachow iec—

The E xp ert, 1895, Próchno— The R o t, 1901, O zim in a— Winter Corn,

1911, Ż y w e kam ienie— Live Stones, 1918). A stylistic analysis carried out by the a u th o r reveals in all o f B erent’s novels a system o f

C o m p te rendu de livre 143

specific m eanings, a set o f codes superim posed on the language o f the n arratio n . Tw o o f these codes are connected with G reek m y th o ­ logy and the C h ristian religion. The third code is m ade up o f q u o ta ­ tions o r allusions to w orks o f literature from the Polish R o m an ti­ cism. In this way B erent's “ biographical stories” have an “ in tertex tu al” character, consisting in an interplay o f q u o tatio n s and various n ar­ rative planes. The a u th o r o f the present w ork treats the three novels as one text an d shows th at the three codes generate a specific model o f the world. These codes m ust influence the reception o f B erent’s w orks. F o r th eir first readers, the “biographical stories” were all quite different from one an o th er, and this was so because each code o r system o f m eanings was perceived differently. Bolecki m akes an attem p t at synchronizing the specific features o f the text with its reception. He believes th at the historian o f literatu re should try to explain why these literary w orks were in terpreted an d evaluated in so m any ways, taking into consideration the social (i. e. not subjective) d eterm inants o f reception and then p utting forw ard his ow n m etalanguage.

In this p art o f his book Bolecki also investigates the m eaning o f space in B eren t’s novels; he points to the great variety o f m eanings in p articu lar novels and to the fact th at there are also som e invariable m eanings which allow B erent’s w orks to be seen as an artistic and ideological whole. The m ain sem antic/axiological o p po sition which constitutes the spacial m odel o f the w orld in B erent's novels is the opposition between open space and closed space. His m odernistic works are dom inated by closed space, his later o n e s—by open space. Berent associates the category o f “openness” with the affirm ation o f an active attitu d e, with people w ho p articip ate in an active way in the m aking o f culture, an d finally w ith the problem o f history and individual destinies. Bolecki concludes th at B erent’s con tem p o rary readers fo un d in his novels only those item s which interested the reading public before 1939. The existing “social b o u n d s” determ ined which elem ents o f the codes used in the novels were to be b ro ug ht to the surface in the literary aw areness o f those people.

In the next ch a p te r (“ B iography, culture and historic tim e”), the a u th o r analyzes the chief contexts o f W aclaw B erent's “b io g rap h i­ cal stories.” He shows th a t the very conception stem s from the antipositivist tren d the w orks o f the “ph ilosophers o f life” :

144 B ook R eview

D ilthey. Simmel, B urckhardt. N ietzsche. Bergson. The sam e inspiration m ay be detected in the “biographical novels" or vies romancées o f M aurois, Zweig or Strachey after W orld W ar I.

The second context which participates in bulding u p the central issues o f the “biographical stories” is “group psychology,” which was very p o p u lar tow ards the close o f the 19th centu ry (G. Tarde, G . Le Bon). Bolecki concentrates on the psychology o f the crowd, an d he refers to Polish research in th a t field. The third context which explains the sem antic side o f B erent’s novels is the tren d o f Polish an d E uro pean catastro ph ism from the tu rn o f the century. It was concerned with the philosophy o f culture, and these sam e issues may be found in B erent’s prose. Finally, the subject-m atter o f the “bio­ graphical stories” was influenced by the historical an d jo urnalistic discussions on the form ation o f the Polish nation in the 18th and 19th centuries. The a u th o r tries to show to what extent Berent m ade reference to those discussions. He concludes that Berent in his “ biographical stories” argued against nationalistic and chauvinistic tendencies in the interpretation o f P o lan d 's history. Bolecki also studies the conceptions o f history and culture which m ay be d e­ tected in B erent’s prose. In this way the book is an analysis o f the “ literary fact,” for the au th o r describes the text, its co n ­ texts and its reception as the coordinates o f the process o f com ­ m unicatio n in literature. It is not a critical m o no graph in the tra ­ ditional sense. The a u th o r has chosen only one subject (history and biography) out o f all o f B erent’s w orks and he studies it using various m odern critical m eth od s; he borrow s his term inology from stylistics, semiotics, genealogy, he m akes reference to the history o f literary form s and the history o f ideas.

In the closing ch ap ter (“ Instead o f a conclusion”) the a u th o r shows how the issues he has studied m ay be investigated in other Polish novels connected with “history and bio graph y.”

Su m . by the author