ДО ПИТАННЯ УГОДОВСТВА: ҐАБРІЄЛЯ ЗАПОЛЬСЬКА — ВАЦЛАВ ҐОНСЬОРОВСЬКИЙ

Abstract

The article refers to different socio-political issues, in particular the issue of agreement, in the works of Gabriela Zapolska and Wacław Gąsiorowski. During her five-year stay in Paris, Gabriela Zapolska was influenced by various trends in politics and literature, but it is difficult to attribute the writer to any socio-political ideology. From 1900 until the end of her life she did not identify herself with any political force. Under the influence of socialist ideas, the novel “Janka” was written (“Yanka”, 1895). The period from 1892 to 1899 was the time of the writer’s greatest interest in revolutionary ideology. However, in some dramatic works of this period, Zapolska wanted to implicate a sense of “national solidarity” within social themes. These are primarily dramatic works, which she signed by the pseudonym Joseph Maskoff — “Tamten (“Those”, 1898), “Sybir” (“Siberia”, 1899), “Car jedzie” (“The King’s ride”, 1900), where she refers to the problems of Polish-Russian relations relevant at that time, and the issue of agreement as a central. Another Polish writer, Wacław Gąsiorowski, signed his accusatory novel “Ugodowcy”, which appeared in 1901 (Słowo Polskie) and was also a response to the visit of Tsar Nicholas II to Warsaw in 1897, not by his own name or even a nomen, but by a socially derogatory noun, in addition in Latin – Wiesław Sclavus (which means ‘slave’). Polish scholar A. Schwartz, calling these facts, overlooked the nuance of why Zapolska also has a number of works of various genres also signed by a polysemous noun, although not Latin (rather, with retro-Germanic inflections on -ff-, for example, Muscoff), but with derogatory connotations in tune with Gąsiorowski’s Sclavus. He also pointed out that Zapolska “actually signed her works in this way, including the so-called anti-Russian ones”. The researcher also claimed that Zapolska was in a hurry to deny her involvement in the “Ugodowcy”, although she later allegedly admitted her authorship of the novel. Gabriela Zapolska and Wacław Gąsiorowski are related only by the fact that they signed their works on similar topics by the pseudonyms. Thus, there are no grounds for conducting separate research on the alleged “plagiarism” of Gabriela Zapolska (after “Malaszka”). It can be stated that they could be united only by the presence of polemical, sharply exposing socio-politi- cal problems, including issues of the agreement.