Homely or New? Nature and Culture in "Puszcza Białowieska" by Wacław Sieroszewski

Abstract

This article analyses Wacław Sieroszewski’s fictionalized reportage, Puszcza Białowieska [The Białowieża Forest], in the parallel with the texts about this forest complex written by other authors, above all Henryk Sienkiewicz and Eliza Orzeszkowa. This makes it possible to compare contexts in which their works concerning the Białowieża area functioned. Sienkiewicz’s reportage was considered hunting literature, while Orzeszkowa’s—but also other authors’—was included in the patriotic canon, in which the forest is a reservoir of Polishness (through nature and preserved buildings) and immaterial Polish culture (customs of the population). Such overtones are sometimes reinforced by references to Adam Mickiewicz’s national epic. This is also the case in Orzeszkowa’s Ad Astra, to whom Sieroszewski dedicated his short story, calling her the author of Cham [A Peasant]. The article verifies whether and in what way Sieroszewski’s reportage references Pan Tadeusz, and points out that this occurs primarily in the descriptions of nature. However, despite the fact that the narrator of Puszcza Białowieska visits the same symbolic places that appear in the texts by Sienkiewicz, Orzeszkowa or Bohdan Dyakowski, he places more emphasis on talking to the local inhabitants, quoting their opinions and problems. This draws more attention to the cultural diversity of the Białowieża Forest, making it impossible to reduce it to a symbol of Polishness. It can be assumed that Sieroszewski’s reporter’s attitude stems from his experiences as an exile and ethnograph.