The Inconvenient Romantic – the Forgotten Oeuvre of Count Henryk Rzewuski

Abstract

The study proposed here contains a vast elaboration on Iwona Węgrzyn’s monograph entitled "In the World of Henryk Rzewuski Novels" (Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków 2012, 386 pages). The author deals with the forgotten and barely examined oeuvre of Henryk Rzewuski. She notices that, for many years, Rzewuski’s works have been neglected due to his controversial political views. The author treats these stereotypes with criticism and offers an in-depth analysis of the individual works, trying to understand the political, ideological and artistic choices Rzewuski made. The author depicts the count as an original writer, whose line of thinking was very much different from those of the majority of contemporary writers who condemned him to general isolation and incomprehension. Iwona Węgrzyn discusses almost all the works by Rzewuski and relates them to their contemporary social, political and cultural contexts. Much space has been given to the author’s activities in the literary community at that time. The study proposed by Iwona Węgrzyn is very illuminating. It is characterized by a multitude of the issues addressed and by insightful academic investigations.