Novel
Tylko Beatrycze
Not translated into English
Teodor Parnicki · 1962
Synopsis
In 1317, at Avignon, the deacon Stanisław, a bastard raised by the Cistercians of Wieleń, talks with Pope John XXII, Cardinal Napoleone Orsini and Master Giraldus. What begins as an inquiry into the monks burned in 1309 during a peasant revolt at Mochy gradually turns into an analysis of the soul, in which the murder of King Przemysł II in 1296 recurs, together with the love that Stanisław has felt since childhood for the king's daughter, Ryksa, the Beatrice of the title, whom he glimpsed only as a child and with whom he corresponded for years.
Context
The author gathered the documentation in the last months of 1959 and in 1960, in Mexico, and found his subject in a study by Gerard Labuda on the peasant revolt of 1309 against the Cistercians of Greater Poland. He finished the novel on 4 August 1962 and sent it to the PAX publishing house, which published it the same year. The title comes from a poem by Jan Lechoń, in which Dante says that there is neither heaven nor earth, only Beatrice. The book has no third-person narration: it consists only of dialogues, letters, treatises and glosses.
Who it is for
A novel reputed to be very difficult, with no continuous narrative, in which the reader reconstructs the story himself from the dialogues. No French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
One of the only two works by the author to remain in the canon of Polish literature, with Srebrne orły; it represents his maturity.
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