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Introduction Introduction Narcyza Zmichowska (1819-1876) was born in Warsaw in the Congress Kingdom of Poland on 4 March 1819. The Congress Kingdom was a political entity created within the Russian partition following the Congress ofVienna in 1815 and based on the territory of the former Napoleonic Duchy ofWarsaw. Throughout Zmichowska 's lifetime Poland remained partitioned between the empires of Russia, Prussia and Austria ( 1795-1918). She was a Russian subject. She was born in the same year as Queen Victoria and British novelist George Eliot ( 1819-1880) and the same year in which a very different Polish writer Klementyna Tanska ( 1798-1845), whom Zmichowska would later take to task in a vigorous polemic ( 1876), made her debut with the influential but conservative guide to female education, Keepsake Left by a Good Mother (Pamiqtka po Dobrej Malee). Zmichowska is remembered mainly as a teacher and governess, and in some quarters as an early emancipationist and feminist. She is also the author of several novels, of which The Heathen (Poganka, 1846) was the first. She began her literary career as a poet. One of her best-known early poems, published in the Warsaw journal Primrose (Pierwiosnek)-which had already published poetry and short stories by several women including Zmichowska's untitled debut poem in 1839-was The Poets Happiness (Szczfscie poety, 1841). The Poets Happiness has been compared by, among others, critic and biographer Marian St<;pien (1968) to Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz's Ode to Youth ( Oda do mlodosci, 1822) as X Introduction a similar programmatic declaration of youthful intent; indeed, it is a kind of female answer to Mickiewicz. A collection of her poems entitled Gabryella 's Free Moments ( Wolne chwile Gabryelli) appeared in 1845 in Poznan. She also wrote short prose pieces, most of which appeared in journals in the early to mid-1840s. Many of her longer prose texts are hybrid constructions, consisting of several levels of narration and even commentary, composed of letters, novels and other shorter prose pieces all contained within a higher structure, as Ewa Owczarz (1993) and Grazyna Borkowska (2001) have discussed. Her two earlier novels-The Heathen and A Book of Memories (Ksiqika pamiqtek, 1847-1849)-form part of one such structure, while a third novel White Rose (Biala RO:ia, 1858) forms part of the structure of texts published in 1861 under the collective title Several Writings of an Anonymous Female Author Published by a Completely Unknown Editor (Niekt6re pisma bezimiennej autorki przez zupelnie nieznanego lrydawcf ogloszone). The strategies adopted here by Zmichowska's narrator, concealed behind several different personae (the "anonymous" authoress, the "unknown" editor, various other authors of letters or persons discussed in them), address the prejudices and criticisms a female author typically had to face in the mid-nineteenth century in order to be published and fairly appraised-a situation similar to that experienced by contemporary women across Europe. In this context, it is interesting that Zmichowska chose a female and not a male pseudonym, but a pseudonym nevertheless, even though it was generally known who Gabryella was. The name may be a reference to the French poet Gabrielle Soumet ( 1814-1886), as Borkowska (2001) suggests drawing on the memoir of Lucja Rautenstrauchowa ( 1798-1886), another Polish writer resident in Paris at the same time as Zmichowka (1838-1839)-hence a hidden reference perhaps to Zmichowska's self-identification with Soumet's "Sapphic" leanings-but it could simply reflect a desire to distance her public persona as a writer from her private self, which she felt was threatened with exposure through published writings. Zmichowska's final novel, which remained unfinished (though she left an outline of its planned structure) is an autobiographical text-not autobiography as such, but a fictional text whose explicit Introduction XI purpose was to reflect "the life of a female type living between the second and seventh decades of our century"; the completed part of the novel, however, stretched back in time to cover the histories of female family members living in earlier centuries; its unstable generic status is reflected in the title itself: Is this a Novel? (Czy to powiesc? 1876). All of her novels attracted limited critical interest during her lifetime. Three (The Heathen, White Rose and Is this a Novel?) were republished in 1929-1930, The Heathen by publisher Ossolineum in the National Library (Biblioteka Narodowa) series. These editions ofZmichowska's novels were edited and introduced by critic Tadeusz Boy-Zelenski (1874-1941), who was the son of Zmichowska 's former pupil, close friend and correspondent Wanda Grabowska-Zelenska (1841-1904); Boy also published Narcyza's letters to Wanda ( 1930, republished 2007). These publications inspired a more positive reception by leading critics in the 1930s. Since the publication of Grazyna Borkowska's study Alienated Women ( Cudzoziemki, 1996; English translation 200 I) and research inspired by feminism and gender studies, interest in Zmichowska's work has grown among recent scholars. Mention should also be made ofZmichowska's correspondence, now available in five volumes. One point especially deserves emphasis: despite the vast knowledge and worldly wisdom contained in these letters written throughout Zmichowska's life, mainly to close female correspondents, they reflect her sense of her own marginalization, lack of recognition as a writer by conventional criticism, search for a suitable language in which to express her everyday concerns, life-long struggle against poverty and lack of a space (a room ofher own?) to fully develop her career. They reveal something of her depression and sense of resignation and waste, though this rarely slips into bitterness, rather a feeling of being out of her time. Her almost compulsive letter-writing might even be said to be the place where she wrote out what could not otherwise be expressed or would not be accepted by conventional, critically acclaimed forms of"literature"-in this sense it was her alternative to "art." This is not the place, however, for a general analysis of Zmichowska's entire work. While I shall offer a few suggestions towards interpreting the novel translated here, first, I would like to XII Introduction briefly discuss her biography and ideas as important context and background to these suggestions. Zmichowska's family had once been modest landowners, originally from the Grand Duchy of Posen/Poznan-in the Prussian partition-but at the time of her birth her father, Jan Zmichowski, held an administrative post in a salt-mine. She was the youngest of nine children. Her mother, Wiktoria Zmichowska (nee Kiedrzynska) died a few days after the birth. Subsequently rejected by her father, Narcyza was raised by various aunts and older siblings. Close relationships with her brothers and sisters and later with their offspring, were to prove the emotional backbone of her life. She never married. Her relationships with two of her three brothers: Erazm ( 1809?-1868) and Janusz ( 1814-1843) were extraordinarily intense. Janusz was a budding writer and literary critic who encouraged her early career and whose untimely death came at a crucial moment in her own life. Erazm fled Poland after the November Uprising (1830-1831) against the Tsarist authorities. Of democratic and socialistic persuasion, he was a member of the Polish Democratic Society and other patriotic leftwing organizations. Permanently resident in France, he was an important guide to Narcyza's intellectual development, advising her on what to read of contemporary European literature and thought, sending her books, and influencing the ideological bias of her own sympathies. Something of the unusual intimacy of these relationships (which may be compared perhaps to George Eliot's closeness to her brother Isaac), as well as Zmichowska's conviction that a well­ disposed brother is an important factor in a woman's cognitive development and emotional security, is clearly reflected in two of her novels: White Rose and Is this a Novel? For a woman from a poor background, Zmichowska received a good formal education. Education-both her own phenomenal self-education and her dedication to the teaching of the young, especially girls and young women-was to become the chief preoccupation of her life. She was unable to earn a living from literary activities. As a small child, she was raised by her uncle J6zef Zmichowski and aunt Tekla Zmichowska (nee Raczynska, Introduction XIII who was also the sister of Narcyza's maternal grandmother, Maria Raczynska) and then by her maternal uncle and aunt, J6zef Kiedrzynski and his wife Maria. Her very early, happy experience of living with her aunt Tekla on a small country estate at Siodlo in Mazovia, near Minsk Mazowiecki, is reflected in her story The Spinning Women (Przqdki, 1844). Aged six, she moved to Kuflew, to the home of J6zef Kiedrzynski, where her older sister Wanda and brother Janusz were also living, to begin her education. At seven, she was taken by her aunt Maria Kiedrzynska to Pulawy, the Czartoryski estate on the Vistula, where she is said to have so impressed Izabela Czartoryska (1749-1835) with her precocious intelligence and vast knowledge of Polish history that Izabela invited the child to dine with her. From 1826 Zmichowska attended Zuzanna Wilczynska's boarding school for girls in Warsaw, and in 1832 entered the recently established Institute for Governesses, from which she graduated in 1833 at the age of fourteen. It was at the Institute that she first encountered Klementyna Tailska, now under her married name: Hoffmanowa, who was one of the teachers there-Hoffmanowa made a bad impression on the new pupil, who found her to be snobbish and patronizing towards girls from poorer backgrounds, especially those who were not beautiful, and her views on women to be traditionalist and confining.
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