Franciszka Arnsztajnowa

Family

Franciszka Arnsztajnowa was the daughter of the Lublin-based novelist Malwina Meyerson (real name, Małka Meyerson, née Horowicz or Horowitz; 1839–1921), a Lublin native, and Bernard (Berek, or Ber) Meyerson (b. 1837), a native of Tykocin, an international trader and a major Lublin financier. Her brother was the French philosopher, Émile Meyerson, based in Paris. She attended high school for girls in Lublin, and went to Germany for higher studies in biology, travelling extensively in Europe. On 7 January 1885 she married Marek Arnsztein (alternative spellings: Arnsztejn, Arnsztajn, Arnstein; 1855–1930), a physician educated in Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, and a political and social activist, a native of Kazimierz Dolny based in Lublin from 1884. They had a daughter, Stefanja Arnsztajnówna (c. 1890–1942; married name Mieczysławska), and a son, Jan Arnsztajn (1897–1934), much beloved of Arnsztajnowa and whose death from tuberculosis left her devastated.

Life and work

As a poet Arnsztajnowa debuted at the age of 23 with the poem "Na okręcie" (On Board a Ship) published in the newspaper Kuryer Codzienny of 1 October 1888. She issued her first collection of poetry in book form in 1895 under the title Poezye, a volume which she dedicated to her mother, the novelist Malwina Meyerson. The book is divided into six distinct sections under such headings as "Sonety" (Sonnets), "Melodye" (Melodies), "Historye" (Histories), and "Z gór Tyrolu" (From the Mountains of Tyrol). The opening poem, untitled but beginning with the words "O nie płacz..." (Weep thou not...; p. 7), sets the tone for the entire collection as she tries, with uncommon tenderness and filial piety, to soothe her mother's pain at having her own songs dispersed by the winds of time to the farthermost recesses of the soul: the implication is that the poems in this collection will become her mother's own, which the daughter will now sing for her, the lute in hand, sitting at her feet. (In the very last poem of the collection the poet again addresses her mother directly, "O mother, why give me a heart so | Tender...") The chief characteristic of the collection, thematically speaking, was however the preoccupation and love she evinced for the people living close to the land, their ordinary lives and folkloric customs. At the same time she delicately touched upon the social questions of the day employing language in the balladic-melancholic key. The volume will instantly establish Arnsztajnowa as a major voice in Polish poetry among those exploring the nation's folk themes.

Her next collection appeared in 1899 under the title Poezye: serya druga ("Verses: Second Series"; 2nd ed., 1911). The latter volume contains the poem "Z nocy bezsennych" (Out of the Sleepless Nights) dedicated to her husband, Marek Arnsztein, as well as the memorable "Wspomnienie Meranu" (A Remembrance of Merano) that evokes her travels in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy, and which begins:

Wacław Gralewski (1900–1972), a poet and prominent Lublin littérateur, cites a report (which he qualifies as uncorroborated) that Arnsztajnowa was supposed to undergo a (successful) therapy for tuberculosis at Merano, an option open only to the very rich.

The First World War

During the First World War Arnsztajnowa (nom de guerre Ara) participated in armed struggle for the independence of Poland as a member of the secret Polish Military Organisation in Lublin (her town house in the Old Town of Lublin served as a secret archive of the POW and a hub for other organizations, such as the Union of Armed Struggle and the clandestine Polish boy scout movement; the expansive basement served as an arsenal). Some of the patriotic feelings and motivations that actuated her participation in the freedom struggle will later find an echo in her collection of poetry entitled Archanioł jutra ("The Archangel of the Morrow"), comprising verses written during the war, which she will publish in 1924 dedicating it to the alumni of the Lublin schools who had fallen in that struggle. With two compositions included in the volume Arnsztajnowa paid tribute to the luminaries of Polish literature, Marja Konopnicka and Bolesław Prus, both recently deceased then. However, it is to Stefan Żeromski (after his death in 1925) that Arnsztajnowa will in the latter part of her life acknowledge her indebtedness for the general character of her oeuvre and the direction she followed in creating it.

Archanioł jutra contains verses of great strength and incisiveness, unparalleled in her prior work, the composition "O Dniu Jutrzejszy" (O, Thou Day of the Morrow!), written in 1914, belonging to the most beautiful among them in the opinion of the historian of literature, Feliks Araszkiewicz. The poem speaks of the brethren's (comrades-in-arms') blood shed in the struggle, whose rising vapours conceal the mystery of tomorrow (the day is personified in the poem, addressed as "you", and conceived of as a day of reckoning, indeed, as a metonymy for retributive justice itself): the mystery of tomorrow will be revealed once we tear down your deadly veil to look you directly in the face, without the sort of fear that makes the victim bow his head before the executioner: for tomorrow we know full well will be the day of payback for today. (The poem, heavily dependent on stylized linguistics and medieval vocabulary (e.g., gzło, line 3, a medieval term for a kind of female garment, here used figuratively in the sense of "veil"), does not lend itself easily to verse translation but is reproduced in the original to the left.) Thus the archangel of the title of the entire collection, Archanioł jutra ("The Archangel of the Morrow"), can easily be construed as the avenging angel.

Another composition belonging to this period is the poem entitled "Powrót" (The Return) published in a literary journal in April 1916. Comprising five ottava rima stanzas, the 40-line poem brought her the Silver Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature, a (now historical) body awarding the most prestigious literary honours of the land at the time.

The interwar period

During the Interbellum Arnsztajnowa collaborated with the newspapers and literary magazines Dziennik Lubelski, Kamena, and Kurjer Lubelski; she was the editor-in-chief of the literary supplement Dodatek Literacki to the newspaper Ziemia Lubelska. At the same time she was the moving spirit of the literary life of the city of Lublin, a fact recognized by outside observers, co-founding in 1932, together with the poet Józef Czechowicz, the Lublin section of the writers' union, the Związek Literatów (see Polish Writers' Union), of which she served as the president. To this period, in addition to the aforementioned collection Archanioł jutra (1924), belong also her volumes of poetry entitled Odloty ("Flying Away"; 1932), a compilation of verses published in literary journals between 1902 and 1926, and the collection produced jointly with Józef Czechowicz, Stare kamienie ("Old Stones"; 1934) which was at once a tribute to her beloved Lublin, a city in which she continued to reside until 1934, epitomized in the poem "Tobie śpiewam, Lublinie" (To You do I Sing, O Lublin!), and a form of a literary farewell. Contemporary critics observed that the unspecified nature of the collaboration between the two famous poets gave the publication an anonymous tinge, and although subsequent scholarship clearly differentiated between the pieces written by Arnsztajnowa and those written by Czechowicz mistakes of attribution did occur in succeeding years and decades.

Odloty represents a continuation of the modernist esthetics that dominated the first phase of Arnsztajnowa's literary life, as evidenced in the imagery employed and in the method of shaping of the lyrical persona, as well as in the return of the fairy-tale motifs favoured by the Young Poland poets, such as lakes, mirrors, and shadows. Although on occasion she adopts a new cadence closer to the spirit of the Skamander circle then gaining an ascendancy over Polish poetics, such diversions are rare. The title poem, "Odloty" (Flying Away), first printed in a literary magazine in 1905, is a mystical allegory on the inevitability of the departure, of parting despite the ties thereby shattered.

Arnsztajnowa was co-founder of the historically important Kraków periodical Życie famously associated with the artistic avant-garde and with the person of Stanisław Przybyszewski, for which she wrote a programmatic poem, and had close ties to the literary magazine Kamena (see Kamena), founded and edited by K. A. Jaworski: the journal began publication in 1933 with a poem by Arnsztajnowa, "Na Olejnej" (In Olejna Street), on the first page of the first issue.

Death

Published sources differ on the circumstances of her death, but there is a consensus that she did not die in Lublin, all the sources citing the Warsaw Ghetto — a place where she had gone proudly and of her own accord, "to be with everybody" — as either the place of her death or the place of her deportation immediately before her death. In some accounts she would have died in the Warsaw Ghetto of an infectious disease (typhus); according to other accounts she would have been violently murdered there by the Nazis, or have taken poison out of despair after seeing her daughter, Stefanja (who in all accounts accompanied her in the Warsaw Ghetto), shot dead by the Nazis. In some sources she would have been murdered after having been deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp (the most common narrative, but not invested with greater evidentiary credibility than the other versions). Most authorities agree that she died in 1942, at the age of 77, however one otherwise well informed writer cites 1943 as the year of her death. In what is perhaps the most reliable eyewitness report, that of the poet Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa (1905–1968), at the moment of her death — during the mass murder of patients at a hospital near All Saints' Church in Warsaw where she lay ill — Arnsztajnowa had two books with her, Dante's Divine Comedy and her own collection of poetry published in 1932, Odloty ("Flying Away"), on the poetics of departure.

Arnsztajnowa's first book, Poezye (1895), published when she was 30, contains this reference to Dante Alighieri:

Postscript

Franciszka Arnsztajnowa was decorated by the government of the Second Polish Republic with the Cross of Valour (Krzyż Walecznych), the Cross of Independence (Krzyż Niepodległości), as well as the Knight's Cross (Krzyż Kawalerski) of the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of the country's highest honours. She was the recipient of the Silver Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature in 1936. She has a street named after herself in Lublin, the ulica Franciszki Arnsztajnowej.

Works

Poetry

Poezye (1895)

Poezye: serya druga (1899)

Archanioł jutra (1924)

Odloty (1932)

Stare kamienie (1934)

Drama

Widmo: Ballada w I akcie (1905)

Luxoniolo (1911)