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BOLESŁAW PRUS (1847–1912) was born Aleksander Głowacki in the provincial town of Hrubieszów, Poland. His mother died in 1850; his father, an estate steward of noble birth (the author’s pen name is a reference to the family’s origin near the Prussian border), died six years later, leaving him in the care of relatives in Puławy and Lublin. In 1862, he moved to Kielce with his older brother Leon, a Polish patriot. The next year, the teenaged Aleksander joined in the January 1863 uprising against Russian rule. Wounded in battle, he was imprisoned in Lublin Castle, but released when he was discovered to be underage. He then finished high school and enrolled in university, but lacked the funds to graduate. Instead, he worked several odd jobs, including a stint in a metallurgical factory, before taking up journalism. Prus eventually made a name for himself as a writer of feuilletons, publishing his much-admired Kroniki in the Kurier Warszawski between 1875 and 1887 and also achieving some success with his short stories. The Outpost, published in 1885, was the first of four novels that secured his literary reputation. It was followed by The Doll (1890), Emancipated Women (1894), and The Pharaoh (1897). A respected but no longer fashionable writer, Prus dedicated his last years to social reform and philanthropic work.

STANISŁAW BARAŃCZAK is a poet, translator, and literary critic. He won the 2007 Nike Award for the best work of Polish literature published in the previous year and the 2009 Silesius Poetry Award for lifetime achievement. He is a professor of Polish language and literature at Harvard University.

THE DOLL

BOLESŁAW PRUS

Translated from the Polish by

DAVID WELSH

Revised by

DARIUSZ TOŁCZYK and ANNA ZARANKO

Introduction by

STANISŁAW BARAŃCZAK

NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

New York

Contents

Cover

Biographical Notes

Title Page

Introduction

The Doll

I The Firm of J. Mincel and S. Wokulski Seen Through a Bottle

II The Reign of an Old Clerk

III The Journal of the Old Clerk

IV The Return

V The Democratisation of a Gentleman and Dreams of a Society Lady

VI How New People Appear on the Old Horizon

VII The Dove Goes Out to Encounter the Serpent

VIII Meditations

IX Footbridges on which People of Various Worlds Meet

X The Journal of the Old Clerk

XI Old Dreams and New Acquaintances

XII Travels on Behalf of Someone Else

XIII Gentlefolk at Play

XIV Girlish Dreams

XV How a Human Soul is Devastated by Passion and by Common Sense

XVI ‘She’, ‘He’ and the Others

XVII Germination of Certain Crops—and Illusions

XVIII Surprises, Delusions and Observations of the Old Clerk

XIX First Warning

XX The Journal of the Old Clerk

XXI The Journal of the Old Clerk

XXII Grey Days and Baneful Hours

XXIII An Apparition

XXIV A Man Happy in Love

XXV Rural Diversions

XXVI Under the Same Roof

XXVII Woods, Ruins, Enchantments

XXVIII The Journal of the Old Clerk

XXIX The Journal of the Old Clerk

XXX The Journal of the Old Clerk

XXXI Ladies and Women

XXXII How Eyes Begin to Open

XXXIII A Couple Reconciled

XXXIV Tempus Fugit, Aeternitas Manet

XXXV The Journal of the Old Clerk

XXXVI A Soul in Lethargy

XXXVII The Journal of the Old Clerk

XXXVIII … ? …

Appendix: A Censored Passage

Notes

Copyright and More Information

Introduction

THE GREATEST realist in the history of the Polish novel suffered all his life from acute agoraphobia. Not that this curious piece of trivia will unlock any mystery about his writing. At first glance, it may even seem that the reader who enters the novelistic world of Boleslaw Prus (1847–1912) is in no need of any special key at all, and most certainly not of a psychopathological one. This is the work of a supremely sane mind, produced in an epoch which, while in reality as much affected by human aberration as any other period in recorded history, at least put the principle of sanity relatively high on its list of priorities.

Still, the fact of Prus’s agoraphobia is curious. The typical narrator in the realistic novel of the nineteenth century was, as a rule, one who blithely