The Argonauts

sheaf - Eliza Orzeszkowa

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Publié par	sheaf
Publié le	08 décembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	46
Langue	English

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Project Gutenberg's The Argonauts, by Eliza
Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the
terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Argonauts
Author: Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
Translator: Jeremiah Curtin
Release Date: February 6, 2007 [EBook #20537]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK THE ARGONAUTS ***
Produced by Andrew Leader of
www.polishwriting.net
IntroductionEliza Orzeszko, the authoress of "The Argonauts,"
is the greatest female writer and thinker in the Slav
world at present. There are keen and good critics,
just judges of thought and style, who pronounce
her the first literary artist among the women of
Europe.
These critics are not Western Europeans, for
Western Europe has no means yet of appreciating
this gifted woman. No doubt it will have these
means after a time in the form of adequate
translations. Meanwhile I repeat that she is the
greatest authoress among all the Slav peoples.
She is a person of rare intellectual distinction, an
observer of exquisite perception in studying men
and women, and the difficulties with which they
have to struggle.
Who are the Slavs among whom Eliza Orzeszko
stands thus distinguished?
The Slavs form a very large majority of the people
in Austria-Hungary, an immense majority in
European Turkey, and an overwhelming majority in
the Russian Empire; they are besides an
unyielding, though repressed, majority in that part
of Prussian territory known as Posen in German,
and Poznan in Polish.
The Slav race occupies an immense region
extending from Prussia, Bohemia, and the Adriatic
eastward to the Pacific Ocean. Its main divisions
are the Russians, Poles, Bohemians (Chehs),
Serbs, Bulgarians; its smaller divisions are theSlovaks, Wends, Slovinians, Croats, Montenegrins.
These all have literature in some form, literature
which in respect to the world outside is famous,
well known, little known, or unknown.
The Slavs have behind them a history dramatic to
the utmost, varied, full of suffering, full also, of
heroism in endurance or valor.
The present time is momentous for all nations, the
future is a tangled riddle; for the Slavs this seems
true in a double measure. To involved social
problems is added race opposition in the breasts of
neighbors, a deep, sullen historic hostility. Hence
when a writer of power appears among the Slavs,
whether he takes up the past or the present, he
has that at hand through which he compels the
whole world to listen. Sienkiewicz has shown this,
so has Tolstoy, so have Dostoyevski and Gogol.
The present volume gives in translation a book
which should be widely read with much pleasure.
The winning of money on an immense scale to the
neglect of all other objects, to the neglect even of
the nearest duties, is the sin of one Argonaut; the
utter neglect of money and the proper means of
living is the ruin of the other.
Darvid by "iron toil" laid the basis of a splendid
structure, but went no farther; he had not the time,
he had not the power, perhaps, to build thereon
himself, and his wife, to whom he left the task, had
not the character to do so. By neglect of duty
Darvid is brought to madness; by neglect of moneyKranitski is brought to be a parasite, and when he
loses even that position he is supported by a
servant.
The right use of wealth, the proper direction of
labor, these are supreme questions in our time,
and beyond all in America.
Friends have advised Madame Orzeszko to visit
this country and study it; visit Chicago, the great
business centre, the most active city on earth, and
New York, the great money capital. If she comes
she will see much to rouse thought. What will she
see? That we know how to win money and give
proper use to it? Whatever she sees, it will be
something of value, that is undoubted; something
that may be compared with European conditions,
something to be compared with the story in this
book.
Eliza Orzeszko writes because she cannot help
writing; her works, contained in forty-odd volumes,
touch on the most vital subjects in the world about
her. She tells the truth precisely as she sees it. We
may hope for much yet from the pen of this lady,
who is still in the best years of her intellectual
activity.
Madame Orzeszko was born a little more than fifty
years ago in
Lithuania, that part of the Commonwealth which
produced
Mickiewicz, the great poet, and Kosciuszko the
hero.THE ARGONAUTS
By Eliza Orzeszko (Orzeszkowa)
Translated by Jeremiah Curtin
Bristol, Vt., U.S.A.
September 12, 1901.CHAPTER I
It was the mansion of a millionaire. On the furniture
and the walls of drawing-rooms, colors and gleams
played as on the surface of a pearl shell. Mirrors
reflected pictures, and inlaid floors shone like
mirrors. Here and there dark tapestry and massive
curtains seemed to decrease the effect, but only at
first sight, for, in fact, they lent the whole interior a
dignity which was almost churchlike. At some
points everything glistened, gleamed, changed into
azure, scarlet, gold, bronze, and the various tints
of white peculiar to plaster-of-Paris, marble, silk,
porcelain. In that house were products of Chinese
and Japanese skill; the styles of remote ages were
there, and the most exquisite and elegant among
modern styles, lamps, chandeliers, candlesticks,
vases, ornamental art in its highest development.
Withal much taste and skill was evident, a certain
tact in placing things, and a keenness in disposing
them, which indicated infallibly the hand and the
mind of a woman who was far above mediocrity.
The furnishing of this mansion must have cost
sums which to the poor would seem colossal, and
very considerable even to the wealthy.
Aloysius Darvid, the owner of this mansion, had not
inherited his millions; he had won them with his
own iron labor, and he toiled continually to increase
them. His industry, inventiveness, and energy were
inexhaustible. To him business seemed to be whatwater is to a fish: the element which gives delight
and freedom. What was his business? Great and
complicated enterprises: the erection of public
edifices, the purchase, sale, and exchange of
values of various descriptions, exchanges in many
markets and corporations. To finish all this
business it was necessary to possess qualities of
the most opposite character: the courage of the
lion and the caution of the fox, the talons of the
falcon and the elasticity of the cat. His life was
passed at a gaming-table, composed of the whole
surface of a gigantic State; that life was a species
of continuous punting at a bank kept by blind
chance rather frequently; for calculation and skill,
which meant very much in his career, could not
eliminate chance altogether, that power which
appears independently. Hence, he must not let
chance overthrow him; he might drop to the earth
before its thrusts and contract a muscle, but only
to parry, make an elastic spring, and seize new
booty. His career was success rising and falling like
a river, it was also a fever, ceaselessly bathed in
cool calculation and reckoning.
As to the rest, post-wagons, railways, bells at
railway stations, urging to haste, glittering snows of
the distant North, mountains towering on the
boundary between two parts of the world, rivers
cutting through uninhabited regions, horizons
marked with the gloomy lines of Siberian forests,
solitary since the beginning of ages. Then, as a
change: noise, glitter, throngs, the brilliancy of
capitals, and in those capitals a multitude of doors,
some of which open with freedom, while others areclosed hermetically; before doors of the second
sort the pliancy of the cat's paw is needed; this
finds a hole where the broad way is impossible.
He was forced to be absent from his family for long
months, sometimes for whole years, and even
when living under the same roof with the members
of it he was a rare guest, never a real confiding
companion. For permanence, intimacy, tender
feeling in relations, with even those who were
nearest him, Darvid had not the time, just as he
had not the time to concentrate his thoughts on
any subject whatever unless it was connected with
his lines, dates, and figures, or with the meshes of
that net in which he enclosed his thoughts and his
iron labor.
As to amusements and delights of life, they were at
intervals love-affairs, flashing up on a sudden,
transient, fleeting, vanishing with the smoke of the
locomotive which rushed forward, at times luxuries
of the table peculiar to various climates, or majestic
scenery which forced itself on the eye by its
grandeur and disappeared quickly, or some hours
of animated card-playing; but, above all, relations
with social magnates, who were on the one hand of
use, and on the other an immensely great honor to
his vanity. Money and significance, these were the
two poles around which all Darvid's thoughts,
desires, and feeling