Freud, Orzeszkowa, zimowe epifanie – i zgliszcza

Abstract

The inspiration to my paper was a new edition of four autobiographical texts by Eliza Orzeszkowa, prepared by Danuta Danek. Her Preface presents a subtle interpretation of Orzeszkowa’s works in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis. She showed that the writer suffered occasionally from a deep melancholy. The unconscious source was Orzeszkowa’s childhood, her father’s early death and her mother’s strong emotional distance. The young girl lived “in an empty nest”, as she wrote later. These four short texts have the form of memoirs and reminiscences written to be published. In my paper, I confront them with other autobiographical forms like her secret diary written after her husband’s death and with some private letters sent to particular people. I have found an interesting pattern which appears three times as three variations of the same theme. I could name it “a story about late love”. A lonely woman, getting older, lives in an emotional void after someone’s death. She meets a man so young that he could be her son. Her social position is clearly higher but she sees some personal values in him and falls in love. He pays her respect, admiration, gratitude, friendship – but not love. Such pattern appears not only in Orzeszkowa’s private life but has a more general existential meaning which can be found also in literature. I have found it in short stories by S. Zweig, S. I. Witkiewicz and J. Iwaszkiewicz.