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2. Polishing the Grimms’ Tales for a Polish Audience: Die Kinder- und Hausmärchen in Poland
- Wayne State University Press
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39 2 Polishing the Grimms’ Tales for a Polish Audience Die Kinder- und Hausmärchen in Poland MONIKA WOZNIAK While today the name Grimm is almost synonymous with the classic fairy tale, the Grimms’ canon in Poland is by no means identical to the original German canon or the Grimms’ canon in other countries.1 Of the more than two hundred German tales, only a small portion became really popular in Poland. Furthermore, they reached the Polish audience mainly in the form of retellings and adaptations. This fact, by itself, is not unusual, since fairy tales are generally subject to retellings and transformations, but for a long time Polish readers did not have access to the alternative of (reasonably) faithful translations of the Grimms’ work. The first, by Zofia Kowerska, appeared in 1896, but since it was intended as an academic publication, it did not reach a broader audience and was never reprinted; the second complete edition of the Grimms’ tales in Poland was published as late as 1982. These faithful translations have not played a decisive role in the Grimms’ assimilation into Polish culture. Furthermore, many Polish retellings of the most popular tales had been literally appropriated by the adaptors and became known as “Anczyc’s Sleeping Beauty,” “Porazińska’s Cinderella,” “Krüger’s Snow White,” and so forth. Until very recently, the development and outlook of children’s literature in Poland was in fact heavily conditioned by extratextual factors of various kinds, and they all contributed to the Polish reception modes of the Grimms’ work. In what follows I will present a diachronic survey of the Grimms’ 40 Monika Wozniak reception in Poland, split into two parts, the first covering the period until 1918, and the second stretching from the 1920s to the present. The reason for choosing this precise delimitation mark is very simple: although both periods are by no means internally homogenous and can be further divided into different phases, Poland’s nonexistence as an independent state was a factor of decisive importance for Polish literature up to 1918. The Grimms’ Reception in Poland before 1918 In the eighteenth century, the French literary fairy tales that had first amused adults of the upper classes were appropriated by a young audience and began to penetrate other European countries successfully, first of all England and Germany.2 At that time, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which had fallen into decline and was threatened by powerful neighbors, concerned itself with an attempt at radical internal reforms, especially in the field of education. Polish reformers were intent on creating an efficient learning system , with the primary aim of raising a new generation of enlightened citizens conscious of a patriotic obligation toward their motherland. They had little patience for texts ill suited to such purposes. The Commission of National Education, created in 1773 in order to enact a radical reform of the Polish education system, generally did not approve of works of fiction and explicitly forbade reading texts at school that were not included in the imposed curriculum (Kaniowska-Lewańska 29–49). Most publications for young readers reflected this general educational trend. The publishers favored books with a clear moral message and didactic purpose that conformed to the official education policy. Therefore, although some French writings for young readers , for example, François Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque, fils d’Ulysse (The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses), had been rapidly translated and not only became popular but also inspired a conspicuous number of imitations, others, among them fairy tales, remained virtually absent in the panorama of Polish literature.3 In 1795 a major political disaster struck: after the third partition undertaken by the three neighboring countries of Prussia, Austria, and Russia, the Polish state effectively ceased to exist and would not regain its independence until 1918. It was a long period of desperate struggle to preserve a national identity within the increasingly repressive policies of the partitioning powers. In the face of the failure of several military rebellions and uprisings as well as [44.197.114.92] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:17 GMT) Die Kinder- und Hausmärchen in Poland 41 the fiasco of diplomatic attempts to restore self-government, cultivating the cultural and literary heritage became of crucial importance to safeguard the Polish language, traditions, and sense of nationhood. Children’s literature that could function as a tool of patriotic education assumed, therefore, even more weight in the nineteenth than it had...