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  • Starring Madame Modjeska: On Tour in Poland and America by Beth Holmgren
  • Kazimierz Braun
Beth Holmgren. Starring Madame Modjeska: On Tour in Poland and America. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012. Pp. 432, illustrated. $30.36 (Hb).

This is an excellent and meticulously rendered book. As the subtitle explains, it focuses on the touring side of the eponymous great actress’s career. Yet, because Modjeska was on tour from her youth almost until shortly before her death, the book, in fact, encompasses all aspects of her art and life. The author’s precise and beautiful English, as well as her good command of the Polish language, garner respect for her work and confidence in her assertions. Holmgren rightly places Helena Modrzejewska (Modjeska) in an elite group of both European and American stars of the nineteenth-century theatre. She includes, in her study, the successive theatre companies of which Modjeska was a member; the managers who organized her circuits; her acting; her personal life (men, children, family, friends, and enemies); her peers, adorers, and defamers; her stage partners and the critics who wrote about her; and finally, her Polish patriotism and her love of America.

The book is clearly structured. It is divided into eight chapters with an epilogue. “The Debut” recounts the beginning of Modjeska’s American career. The chapters that follow – “The Making of a Polish Actress,” “Warsaw’s State of the Stars,” “A Colonial Party and the California Dream,” “On the American Road,” and “Farewell Tour” – narrate Modjeska’s way from her native Kraków, via Warsaw, to America, and through the next, roughly thirty years “on the road.” Chapters on “The Roles of Madame Modjeska” and “The Polish Modjeska” contain both summaries and repetitions of already presented material but from two specific, thematically focused angles: Modjeska’s repertoire and Modjeska’s “Polishness.” In the former chapter, the author rightly selects Shakespearean characters Rosalind and Lady Macbeth as the jewels in the star’s diadem. In the latter, Modjeska’s Catholicism is appropriately highlighted. In this chapter, though (and earlier too), the terms patriotism and nationalism (as understood today) seem to be used without sufficient distinction. It should be very clear that the mature Modjeska was a staunch and true Polish “patriot,” while she was not a “nationalist.” The last chapter, “Epilogue: Finding Modjeska Today,” lists and briefly characterizes some evidence of Modjeska’s popularity and [End Page 250] position both in Poland and in America: works of fine arts and literature devoted to her, her portraits, memorabilia, “Modjeskiana,” and her Arden mansion. Illustrations, well and logically selected and placed, augment the book’s historical and aesthetic value.

This outstanding book is not without flaws, however. Holmgren’s knowledge of Poland’s and Polish theatre’s history is commendable, but there are shortcomings. First, Poland was never an “empire” (18) and Kraków was not an “imperial capital” (19) – Poland was first a kingdom and then a republic. As Holmgren writes, Poland indeed provided “safe haven for Jews, Muslims, and Protestants as well as Catholics” (18), but it is awkward to treat Catholics as an addendum when considering a nation that was baptized in 966 and that, for all the following centuries, has been mostly Catholic, generously tolerating other creeds. Second, the author describes in length the theatre in which Modjeska performed in Warsaw, but she doesn’t say clearly that it was actually Poland’s National Theatre. It was created in 1765 and functioned under this name in different buildings and locations. In the late 1820s, the construction of a new and magnificent theatre building for the National Theatre began. It was opened in 1833, after the fall of the November uprising against Russia (1830–31). As part of their persecution of Poland following that uprising, Russian authorities proscribed the name “National Theatre.” The big stage was named “The Grand Theatre,” and the small one “The Variety Theatre.” The failure to consult fundamental works on the history of Poland and the history of Polish theatre that issued in this omission is evident in the book’s bibliography. Also, some books on Modjeska are not listed.

Regarding the spelling of Polish names, Holmgren must be praised...

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