The American West as a Space of Re-Inscription: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz's Polish Adaptation of Mayne Reid's The Headless Horseman

Abstract

The American West as a Space of Re-InscriptionJarosław Iwaszkiewicz's Polish Adaptation of Mayne Reid's The Headless Horseman Marek Paryz (bio) The Polish literary fascination with the American West dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century, which saw, among others, the publication of Władysław Anczyc's adaptation of Robert Montgomery Bird's Nick of the Woods under the title Duch Puszczy [Forest Ghost] (1872) and Maria Julia Zaleska's adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales in one volume under the title Mieszkaniec puszczy [The Man of the Wilderness] (1884). Individual works from Cooper's cycle, especially The Last of the Mohicans, were subsequently adapted for Polish readers by several other authors (cf. Paryz 224-28). At the close of the nineteenth century adventure stories set in the American West began to appear in Polish virtually on a mass scale, attesting that the imaginary West was becoming a local cultural phenomenon. Exemplary titles from that time include: Marcin Mizera's Do Ameryki po złoto. Z opowiadań wędrowca [To America in Search of Gold: A Traveller's Tales] (1888), Teresa Prażmowska's W dziewiczych lasach Ameryki. Powieści dla młodzieży [In America's Primeval Forests: Tales for Young Readers] (1894), Artur Lubicz's W lasach dziewiczych Ameryki [In America's Primeval Forests] (1898), Kazimierz Kalinowski's Wielki Orzeł. Przygody myśliwego w Ameryce [Great Eagle: A Hunter's Adventures in America] (1902) (Bobowski 22). At the same time, a number of anonymous novels on analogous topics came out, often based on foreign sources (22). The publication of the translations of the major novels from Karl May's Winnetou cycle—Winnetou in 1909-10, Old Surehand in 1910, and The Treasure of the Silver Lake in 1925—further boosted [End Page 141] the demand for literary Westerns in Polish. The popularity of such novels in interwar Poland can be described in terms of a craze; Halina Skrobiszewska writes, "It was a mass-scale production. In the interwar years, bookshop shelves bent under the weight of 'Indian novels.' Educators lamented, critics laughed, and literary heroes lost their scalps in one chapter only to punish the victimizer by a torture tree in the next" (300).1 The Polish variety of the literary Western, analogically to some of its European counterparts, was thus established as a genre of juvenile literature, relying on the sensational adventure formula and exploiting the exoticism of the depicted places and peoples. More serious narrative representations of the American West, for example travel accounts of the United States containing extended descriptions of the region and its inhabitants, were too rare to influence the reading public's imaginings about the West and expectations as to its literary portrayal. For obvious reasons, writers who considered themselves serious and ambitious literary artists ignored the Western; however, there was one notable exception—Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, whose flirtation with the genre resulted in the publication of his adaptation of Mayne Reid's The Headless Horseman (1866) in 1928. Iwaszkiewicz belongs to the most prominent Polish writers of the twentieth century; he was prolific as much as versatile and produced poems, novels, short stories, plays, essays, biographies, and travel books. He wrote the libretto for Karol Szymanowski's King Roger (1926), an internationally recognized masterpiece of modern opera. Iwaszkiewicz (1894-1980) was born in the countryside near Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, in a family that cultivated the tradition of the Polish landed gentry. In 1918 he moved to Warsaw and quickly established connections with the local literary circles, becoming one of the leading members of the poetic group Skamander, beside Julian Tuwim, Antoni Słonimski, Kazimierz Wierzyński, and Jan Lechoń. The Skamander poets helped define some of the key directions in modern Polish poetry. Iwaszkiewicz published his first book, a collection of poems, in 1919 and his first novel four years later. After World War II he became a celebrated and influential man of letters. He served as the chief editor of the literary monthly Twórczość for two and a half [End Page 142] decades and as the president of the Polish Writers' Association for several terms. He...