Where Is Poland? | The Countryside

Chapter 7

The Countryside

For a long time, two different Polish cultures co-existed alongside one another: folk culture and noble culture. The relations between the village and the noble manor were frequently tense. At the same time, Poland experienced successive waves of high-society interest in the common people.

Harvest festival in Łowicz region, postcard from 1906. Source: Polona.pl

Folk culture goes mainstream

Up until the nineteenth century, Polish-speaking culture functioned in two different cycles in parallel, rarely interacting with one another: the elite (and written) noble culture, vs. the (spoken) culture of the common folk. In the nineteenth century, however, the rich and regionally diverse folklore made its way into high-society salons – a change that occurred in tandem with Romanticism.

In the 1820s, Polish folk culture was ‘discovered’ by the Romantics. Interestingly, it was initially Belarusian and Ukrainian folk culture that served as inspiration for them. The local legends, stories, and rituals of the Belarusian people in the region of Nowogródek were what inspired Mickiewicz to write his ballads and poetry. In Ukraine, in turn, the ‘Ukrainian school’ of Polish Romanticism developed, based on the dark local history – in the form of the Byronic verses of Antoni Malczewski.

Folk music also inspired classical composers. It was in fact the folk mazurkas that Frederic Chopin heard in the Masovian countryside that provided him with inspirational material he was able to turn into artistic masterpieces. Folk themes were also later drawn upon by Stanisław Moniuszko, the composer of national operas.

Peasants' misery

The accounts told by foreign travellers from the pre-partition era frequently include descriptions of the terrible condition of the rural population; one of them even called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth a ‘hell for peasants’. The peasants had a saying: ‘The fate of a peasant in hell is also terrible, because even there he has to serve tar to his feudal lords.’

Progressive ideas of granting the peasants citizenship and abolishing the feudal system began to appear in the final days of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but were never put into effect. Tadeusz Kościuszko, commander of what would become a legendary rebellion against the designs of the partitioning powers, is said to have declared: 'I will not fight for the sake of the nobility alone, for the freedom of the whole nation will I risk my life’. In the midst of the insurgence, he issued the ‘Proclamation of Połaniec’ granting the peasants their personal freedoms, but it never came into legal force as Poland ultimately disappeared from the map.

As a consequence, for a long portion of the nineteenth century many peasants no only lacked civil rights, but were also forced to serve their feudal duties, in other words to work a certain number of days for their lord, the owner of the land. Enfranchising the peasants and recognizing their rights as citizens was a recurring question in Polish politics, rising to the fore especially in connection with the successive insurrections – when the nobility, seeking support for their rebellion, would promise the peasants their personal freedoms.

However, these privileges – the abolishment of the feudal system and the granting of land ownership to the peasants – would not actually come to Polish peasants until the occupying powers granted them: Austria did so in 1848, Russia in 1864 (after the January Uprising). In Prussia the process began the earliest, in 1807-1811, when the peasants were granted personal liberty and long-term enfranchisement procedures were initiated, and it ultimately reached its completion in 1872. As a result of enfranchisement, Polish peasants became owners of their own farms and could move about freely.

To the wider masses, then, the concept of ‘Poland’ meant a kind of captivity. This was most evident in Galicia in 1846, when democratic activists tried to incite the peasants to start a national insurrection. The peasants treated them with mistrust or even outright hostility, and such sentiments were further fanned by Austrian officials, spreading rumours that the Polish uprising was actually intended to bring about a massacre of the peasants and the restoration of the feudal system. Such propaganda fell on fertile soil: there was often great animosity between the peasants and the nobility, and moreover the region had recently experienced famine. This situation had indeed given rise to a peasant rebellion (called the Galician Slaughter), as a result of which from 1,200 to 3,000 nobles had been murdered and some 500 manors were set aflame.

Peasant-mania

Soon after the partitions, a certain theory began to gain popularity among the educated elite. Dovetailing with the evolutionistic ideas that remained popular throughout the whole nineteenth century, this theory maintained that the ancient ‘original traditions’ defining the Polish nation were actually still lingering on in the peasant culture, and so such folk culture should be viewed as the ‘receptacle of national traditions’.

The Romantics, weary with the Enlightenment-age rationalism, therefore tried to return to these folk roots. They sought inspiration in folk songs, and they introduced a whole pleiad of heroes from folk stories and legends into their verses. In his programmatic poem 'Romantyczność' [Romanticness], Adam Mickiewicz invokes the folk belief that spectres sometimes return from beyond the grave, and juxtaposes the 'lens and eye' of educated people, the empirical perception of the world, against the common people’s sensitivity and faith.

Romanticism and the interest in the Slavic past were precursors to the beginnings of a new science – ethnography. Zorian Dołęga Chodakowski, one of the pioneers of Polish ethnography, wrote:

We need to go duck under the villager's thatched roof in varied far-off regions, to rush to his feasts, entertainments and various adventures. There, in the smoke hanging overhead, old customs still linger, old songs are sung and, among dances of simplicity, the names of forgotten gods are uttered.

The most outstanding nineteenth-century ethnographer was Oskar Kolberg. He devoted nearly 50 years to travelling throughout successive regions of Poland, going from village to village and collecting folklore: songs, stories, legends, customs. His works also offer numerous details concerning a whole cross-section of social life in the village: from construction techniques to cooking. He published his lifework in the monumental Lud [Folk]; he printed 33 volumes of it before his death, and 86 were collected in total. This is a treasure-trove of information about Polish folk culture that remains unparalleled to this day (for example, the songs collected alone number 12,000).

The end of the nineteenth century ushered in a true boom in folk culture, sometimes called ‘peasant-mania’. Village life was depicted in contradistinction to the urban decadence and depravity. The rediscovery of folk culture was perceived as opening up a fresh opportunity for social transformation, or even for the restoration of the Polish state. Folk culture began to be perceived as the national culture, with inspiration being drawn from it in the visual arts, design, and architecture. Artists from this trend, usually high-born, well-educated city-dwellers, would ostentatiously dress up in peasant outfits, marry peasant women, move out into the countryside. Folk motifs featured heavily in the art of the times of the ‘Young Poland’ movement (as turn-of-the-century Polish modernism was known).

Włodzimierz Tetmajer, Musicians in front of a tavern in Bronowice, 1891. Photo: National Museum in Warsaw

Wincenty Wodzinowski, Peasant wedding, 1906-1915. Photo: Polona.pl

Aleksander Gierymski, Peasant coffin, 1894-1895. Photo: National Museum in Warsaw

Teodor Axentowicz, Kolomyika dance, 1895. Photo: National Museum in Warsaw