There's not enough hate for Dewajtis online so I thought I would tear into it for a bit of fun. I'm not a stranger to old books or exalted language, but this was surprisingly bad for how eagerly read (and even adapted) it seems to be. I rarely find so little to like inside a novel.
the atmosphere is unbearably twee. Storks are like "kaznodzieje", the village people sing "pieśń pobożną". The work in the village is hard and animated by money, but even so, this kind of life feels largely romanticised.
the nature talks: the animals and the trees comment on the characters and the world. This can, of course, be done well, but here it just had the effect of further detaching me from the narration. Also, I was not prepared for Ragis's disney princess moment when various wild animals literally flock to him as he plays a tune on his flute. It was supposed to be endearing, but I found it insufferable. Maybe I just hate fun and whimsy.
it's a slog, especially in the first part, before Irena appears. I found it hard to keep track of characters and places in the beginning (which admittedly may be a me problem). The dialogues are sometimes stiff and forced. The prose is not very interesting.
there are clearly designated good guys and bad guys, which could work if the characters were more compelling
the characters aren't very compelling. I didn't believe in Irena, an American, leaving everything she's ever known behind and instantly falling in love with this distant country because it was her fatherland, even given her backstory. I did not believe in her rapidly learning a new language with little difficulty (for example, her pronunciation is never remarked upon). I did not believe in Witold, a notorious fop who's bad with money, being given a position in America by other characters.
it's very conservative — moreso than some other contemporary books. The land is everything. Servants adore their benevolent masters. If you stay true to God and work hard, you will be rewarded with riches. The bad people just can't manage their fortune and will lose it in the end. The world is simple, but more caricatural than comforting.
the antisemitism is very overt. Apart from the way Jewish people are talked about, our main character (Marek) physically assaults a Jewish person. Later on, he's on trial and loses some sleep, but neither is connected to this assault at all and no one mentions it again because another Jewish person commits a crime which hurts Marek. An American character calls for the lynching of the Jew, a practice largely unknown in Żmudź.
there's a clear hierarchy of values at play here and I do not like it. A big ancient tree which is the symbol of local history and the spirit of the people is more important than the life of an animal (Marek kills a horse while trying to save it) and the life of a Jewish man.
I think I felt disappointed by Dewajtis (1889) all the more because I read it straight after finishing Orzeszkowa's Cham (1888), which was a simple yet wonderful tragedy containing:
equally interesting details of XIX-century rural life in a neighbouring area
a character who makes bad choice after bad choice being sympathetically depicted by the narrative
a character who keeps making noble choices arguably ruining his good, peaceful life
other morally grey areas (like domestic violence being not only supported, but prescribed by the local community)
So while I know the aims of both books were very different, the contrast between the nuanced world of Cham and the black and white one of Dewajtis was hard on my eyes.
(I also think Cham was much better written on a technical level. Orzeszkowa's sentences are usually load-bearing; each one tends to do something to the story and push it forward. Rodziewiczówna's writing feels more lightweight and meandering, which is not my preference.)
