"Dim autobiography" by Władysław S. Reymont – around the problems of edition

Abstract

The article is devoted to the project of autobiographic text by Władysław S. Reymont, with a number of different titles: Na przebój!, Historia jednego żywota, Żywot człowieka poczciwego. Documentation of that composition includes twenty-two pages of manuscripts, which are stored at the Ossolińskis’ National Department in Wrocław. The materials represent the stage before the rough copy and vary in terms of their form: plans, chapter summaries, narrative samples, recommendations, loose notes made by the Nobel Prize winner between 1918 and 1925. The primary goal of the transcription of the writer’s manuscript ineditas is to provide new information concerning the self-creation actions performer by the author of Chłopi (Peasants), as well as to inscribe that unrealized autobiographical composition into Reymont’s creative accomplishments from the 1920’s. The factor which encourages work on manuscripts from different stages of work on a composition (even an unrealized one) is genetic criticism, which also provides tools for critical arrangement of the manuscript material.