Land is a major theme in the novel such that the fields themselves are elevated to an almost sacred level, with the apogee of success and happiness in the eyes of the novel’s characters being to own at least a small piece of the farmland. The conflict between Antek and his father which is connected with a piece of land and a beautiful woman – Jagna. Because it was adapted from Reymont’s beloved novel, which was recently released in a new English-language translation by Penguin, “The Peasants” marks a radical departure from its predecessor. “We approached ‘Loving Vincent’ as a story built around very particular paintings of Vincent Van Gogh — we created the story around it,” says D.K. “Here, we had the story and the whole film structure built first, and then we had to find the visual key to represent it.” Reymont’s epic novel, for which he received the Nobel Prize, is considered the most credible chronicle of the Polish peasant community ever written. The novel has recently been newly translated and published by Penguin Classics. Reymont’s numerous and colourful characters provide ample intrigue and contribute to a great many subplots throughout the novel.

The scale of the two films is incomparable. Loving Vincent is an intimate film, with a lot of static scenes and dialogue. The Peasants is much more spectacular. There are breath-taking dance scenes and even a pitched battle,” she explained. Reymont was born in the village of Kobiele Wielkie, near Radomsko, as one of the nine children of Józef Rejment, an organist. His mother, Antonina Kupczyńska, had a talent for story-telling. She descended from the impoverished Polish nobility from the Kraków region. Reymont spent his childhood in Tuszyn, near Łódź, to which his father had moved to work at a wealthier church parish. Reymont was defiantly stubborn; after a few years of education in the local school, he was sent by his father to Warsaw into the care of his eldest sister and her husband to teach him his vocation. In 1885, after passing his examinations and presenting "a tail-coat, well-made", he was given the title of journeyman tailor, his only formal certificate of education. [2] Accordingly, the novel touches on the national question, namely that of Poland’s nationhood and independence from tsarist Russia. The score is by Łukasz Rostkowski [3] (aka "L.U.C."), a Polish MC, rapper, activist, and music producer based in Wrocław. [5] As founder of the international Rebel Babel Ensemble [6] (aka Rebel Babel Film Orchestra), he has created a "Multimedia concert" with Rebel Babel for the film. [7] The score will be released on November 3, 2023. [8] 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine impact [ edit ]As a result, her translation is a remarkable testament to her exceptional skill and expertise in translation, and it stands as a significant achievement in the field of Polish literature in translation.” I also found the level of antisemitism disconcerting. A Jewish tavern-keeper is an agent of evil in the plot. But he is only one of several such agents, so I can accept that. It wasn't so easy to accept frequent use of the term, "Jew", in a pejorative sense. The novel's setting was destined to be the center of the Holocaust only 15 years later, so the antisemitism was a fact of life in that time and place. Zaranko’s translation approaches this language with a light touch, utilising colourful informal speech that avoids any reliance on British dialects, while still retaining its northern rhythm at times.”

Władysław Reymont was popular in communist Poland due to his style of writing and the symbolism he used, including socialist concepts, romantic portrayal of the agrarian countryside and toned criticism of capitalism, all present in literary realism. His work is widely attributed to the Young Poland movement, which featured decadence and literary impressionism.Critics admit a number of similarities between Reymont and the Naturalists. They stress that this was not a "borrowed" Naturalism but rather a record of life as experienced by the writer. Moreover, Reymont never formulated an aesthetic of his writing. In that, he resembled other Polish autodidacts such as Mikołaj Rej and Aleksander Fredro. With little higher education and inability to read another language, Reymont realized that it was his knowledge of grounded reality, not literary theory, that was his strong suit. Originally published in four volumes between 1904 and 1909, The Peasants earned Reymont the 1924 Nobel Prize for Literature and has since been translated into 27 languages.

Over the course of four seasons – Autumn to Summer – the tangled skein of their story unravels, watched eagerly by the other peasants: the gossip Jagustynka, pious Roch, hot-blooded Mateusz, gentle Witek … Richly lyrical and thrillingly realist, at turns comic, tragic and reflective, Wladyslaw Reymont’s magnum opus is a love song to a lasting dream of rural Poland, and to the eternal, timeless matters of the heart. While being crude, superstitious and largely oblivious of the world outside their village, Lipce’s peasants are also imbued with noble qualities and a naive innocence that arouses sympathy and respect from the reader. The Peasants", one of Poland's most engrossing twentieth-century epics, by the 1924 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Władysław Reymont, is now available in English translation. Władysław Stanisław Reymont ( Polish: [vwaˈdɨswaf ˈɾɛjmɔnt], born Rejment; 7 May 1867 – 5 December 1925) was a Polish novelist and the laureate of the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature. [1] His best-known work is the award-winning four-volume novel Chłopi ( The Peasants).

Reymont decided to write about peasant life because of historical events, which took place in Polish villages in the early 20th century. The fact that the author was brought up in a village has a significant influence on the novel's plot. The Peasants ( Polish: Chłopi) is a novel written by the Polish author Władysław Reymont in four parts between 1904 and 1909. He started writing it in 1897, but because of a railway accident and health problems, it took seven years to complete. The first parts of the story were published in the weekly magazine Tygodnik Illustrowany. The novel has been translated into at least 27 languages. Wladyslaw Reymont received the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature for this work. Aware that oppression can be imposed from within as well as without, our peasant adds: “In Polish times their only care for the people was to drive them to labour at the end of a whip and oppress them, while they partied until they’d partied the whole nation away.”