Kunsthaus Dresden / robotron-kantine

Maria Konopnicka was born in 1842, she wrote short poems, narrative poetry, short stories, fables, critical sketches, she left behind a plethora of letters. At the age of twenty, she married an impoverished aristocrat and moved to the countryside in order to run a house. Over the following years, she gave birth to eight children; six survived. After 14 years of marriage she decided to leave her husband, moved to Warsaw and began to earn her living by teaching and translating literature.

She was the author of Rota (The Oath), a patriotic song that found a staying place in Polish national thought and was the main competition for Dąbrowski’s Mazurka to become the official national anthem. Lena Magnone, a researcher of Konopnicka’s body of work, writes in 2011: For the last hundred years, Konopnicka practically was not read – she was used. 1

They meet in about 1886 and since then, until Konopnicka’s death, they are practically inseparable. Maria Dulębianka is a painter, younger from the poet by about 19 years; Konopnicka calls her “Piotrek” (Pete) or “Pietrek (Petey) with worn-out elbows”. In a letter to her children, describing the crowd that almost trampled her when she was alighting a ship, she notes: Pietrek was pale and brave, he feared nothing, just defended me.

In 1902, the Lviv committee organizing the 25th anniversary of Konopnicka’s literary work decides to donate to her a jubilee “national gift” – buy her a house together with a patch of land; they choose a manor house in Żarnowiec. Together with Dulębianka, they move there the following year.

When the poet dies seven years later, her daughter forbid Dulębianka from continuing living in Żarnowiec. It is said they never accepted the relationship between their mother and Maria –

Zofia and Laura were put off by the nonchalant manners of Miss Dulęba and the touch of scandal that had to accompany such a persona in such a time, in such a country. She ran for elections to the Diet of Galicia. She made long and radical speeches. She left the armchair if she disagreed with something. She threatened people with her umbrella. She also painted. Quite well. Quite interestingly. 3

In 1908, Maria Dulębianka runs for a seat in the Diet of Galicia. It is a purely performative gesture, a radically political act, as women do not have active or passive rights in the elections; although Dulębianka receives 512 votes in the elections, they are invalidated immediately after the count. Konopnicka thus describes the anxiety of the final moments before the speech:

Chaos, turmoil, writing the candidate speech in a hurry (…) Issues of agriculture, schools, local government of the cities, etc., and additionally presenting her attitude to the issue of Jews and Russians.” Two days – the speech is ready. Dulębianka is flushed, does not eat, does not sleep, only fills herself with bromine, which helps her none. She leaves – goes to Pest, in Pest she stays a day to get a hold on herself and on the speech. After two days of traveling, she arrives in Lviv on Friday morning, she has her speech at 4 pm. on Friday. I receive a cable on Saturday: “Fine.” (1. 03. 1908). 5

I have a memory in my head, a piece of information read in a mini-brochure on Polish manor houses and palaces of the nobility, which stood on the shelf in my mother’s house. For important celebrations that took place outside (probably weddings) the impoverished nobility would cover the damaged walls with spruce branches, so as to at least temporarily cover the dilapidated building. The worn manor houses would transform into bristly green hybrids, only to return to flat daily life after a few weeks.

At the end of the spruce alley, leading up to the White Gate, where the White Lady would emerge from under the bridge and ring the bells at midnight so that all the crows would wake in the spruces (later people would say that it was Konopnicka piggybacking on Dulębianka’s shoulders, that they would cover themselves with a sheet, they had a bell hanging up on an oak tree, and they would ring it, not as much to keep up the fable, but to scare away the manor flower and vegetable thieves) (…). 8

Maria Rodziewiczówna was born at an estate near Grodno in 1864; her parents were exiled to Siberia for helping the January Uprising fighters, and when they manage to come back, as a result of an amnesty, they move together to the inherited estate of Hruszowa in Polesia.

At 17, she pays off her sister and brother and begins to run the household on her own; she cuts her hair and, in a short skirt and male jacket, she takes care of the estate management. She begins to write short stories and novels which quickly become popular; she publishes her first texts under the male pen name “Mario”. The books start to be one of her sources of income, so she writes fast and a lot. She never marries.

It is difficult to establish a precise date of when the first woman moved in with Rodziewiczówna, but it is known that it was Helena Weychert, with whom they worked together in the Society of Women Land Owners (…) 12

Weychert lived in Hruszowa for several years. Then she moved to Warsaw; there, together with the writer, they bought an apartment on Bracka Street, and they also purchased together a small estate near Falenica, called Wyraj. It is not known what caused the move, perhaps the enterprising Weychert was not very fond of the atmosphere of the Borderland wilderness (…). Despite this, Maria and Helena stayed in touch until the end of their lives, although in 1919 Weychert’s place at the writer’s estate was taken by another woman, introduced as a distant relative – Jadwiga Skirmunttówna.

Pachucka characterized Weychert thusly:

The most similar to the male kind, not only due to her clothing, but also due to her boyish body, which she additionally emphasized by a male haircut, with only small fringe over her forehead, an English costume, a white vest, a high white collar and a long tie. 14

The issue of the Rodziewiczówna’s appearance was so uncomfortable for her scholars that even the attempts at studying her literary body of work were made difficult by it. Tomasik describes how the author of her only biography avoids showing Rodziewiczówna’s appearance:

In the first edition of Głuszenia’s biography there are thirty four pictures, among them several houses, a plethora of landscapes, cottage interiors, even a picture of “playing a tuba”. There is one (!) portrait of the book’s heroine, in addition there are several reproductions of documents and group pictures, in which, due to their size and quality, the author of »Wrzos« (»The Heather«) is poorly visible. A still more amusing situation occurred when the second edition of this book was published. The cover contained a drawing based on Rodziewiczówna’s most famous picture. Only her clothing was substituted – instead of a tie, a shirt and a dress jacket, a patterned dress was drawn; her hair was lengthened. 15 

In December last year I went to conduct workshops in Katowice. The market square was filled with three-dimensional Christmas scenes, each of them moving, singing songs, glimmering with light and put on neverending loop. There were also a few motionless mangers, one of which had been made out of traditional straw weave, Madonna of the weave, and around her all those people, animals, horses and sheep in the shade of late August, the harvest and bales of pressed straw. In such folk weaving, one uses dried ears of grains, long and hard, preferably rye or oat, and bunches are wrapped together with jute string.

I decided to learn weaving, starting with the way animals are woven, but using dried meadow for my work: mixed species of plants, more fragile, greenish (less monoculture, more weeds). And then the pandemic began, so I created a temporary workroom-shed in my apartment, I bought 25 kilos of straw perfect for rabbits (a mix of grasses, dried meadow without pesticides), and for the two months of self-isolation straw was everywhere, the entire apartment smelled of hay, and I wove my dried straw totems.

The Cheerers write hundreds of letters to each other, frequently these are group letters, not written to a single person.

Directed to one addressee, they were intended for all spending time in the given area, fragments transcribed from one letter were sent on to other people, confirming the formula of community appearing so frequently in Żmichowska’s correspondence: “we all” 17

The letters were written in the tone, as one Żmichowska scholar put it, of “friendship-love”: “I kiss your blue-grey bright eyes and remember to tell Tekla authentically that I also kiss her black hair” 18

“Sistering” – according to Żmichowska’s expression – is considered to be the most perfect expression of affections. At a certain point of the Enthusiasts’ prime, this society resembles a kind of a hive in which Gabryella is the queen bee69. For you will make love to your friends so much that there is no love left for your husbands. 19

says a husband of one Enthusiast about them.

Her novels are also created under the influence of the women she meets – in his introduction to the first book edition of the novel Boy-Żeleński shows how Żmichowska’s most famous text, The Pagan, was written due to her broken heart after the relationship with Paulina Zbyszewska ended. In the book, Zbyszewska is transformed into the eponymous “Pagan”, and Żmichowska places herself in the persona of Benjamin (after all, only boys can have such adventures).

In 1849, she ends up in prison for unproven activities in conspiracy; the police takes over her correspondence with Zbyszewska and arrests them both for democratic comments. She leaves prison after a year and a half, and the officials make her live in Lublin, where she remains under the supervision of police for several years. When finally, after 8 years, she manages to come back to Warsaw, she starts a kind of a free university for women in her humble apartment, where the Enthusiasts come to meet.

She gives up writing for many years, and returns to it only at the point of her death. The letters she writes to the Enthusiasts take the place of literature for her; the exchange of letters with Bibianna Moraczewska lasts 32 years, with Wanda Grabowska – over a dozen years, the correspondence is so vast that many years after her death, these letters will be published in 5 thick volumes.

This is how Boy describes Narcyza in his foreword to The Pagan:

In that era, among us, Żmichowska was so unique that she was almost a monster. (…) For the white, she was red, for the red – she was white; for some she was too much of a poet, for others – too much of a Positivist. 21