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„Konopielka” - is a novel written by Edward Redliński in 1973. The novel belongs to a broader current of Polish novels focusing on the peasant and provincial experience.

Content

The action takes place in the village of Taplary, an isolated place surrounded by forests and marshes to form an inaccessible world of its own sealed from external influences. People's lives follow the natural rhythms. They are mistrustful of strangers and reluctant to try anything new. One day, a young female teacher comes to the village and lodges in the house of a character named Kaziuk, the novel's narrator. The villagers are reluctant to embrace change, but the narrator becomes increasingly interested in the teacher’s words owing to his growing erotic fascination with the woman, which he himself does not realize. Paradoxically, his sexual desire becomes the catalyst for the teacher's educational efforts in the village. After the teacher’s departure Kaziuk becomes a spokesman for progress and modernity, becoming the first farmer to use a scythe for harvesting (instead of the customary sickle). The community watches the old ways disappear and become replaced with new ones.

Critical reception

The Redliński’s novel was criticized and accused of being a parody of the wider trend of literary explorations of the peasant experience, if not outright mockery of the peasant life. Some have seen it as Żeromski’s parody of “Siłaczka”, others appreciated its masterful depiction of a small community. In actual fact, a village like Taplary in the 1970s would not have been able to resist agricultural modernization. The depiction is a distortion, a kind of impossible quintessence of peasant life to show its inevitable demise under the pressures of seductive urban civilization.