The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Comedienne, by Wladyslaw Reymont,
Translated by Edmund Obecny, Illustrated by Frederick Dorr Steele

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Title: The Comedienne

Author: Wladyslaw Reymont

Release Date: June 11, 2008 [eBook #25760]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMEDIENNE***

E-text prepared by Andrew Leader of polishwriting.net

THE COMEDIENNE

by

WLADYSLAW S. REYMONT

Translated from the Polish by Edmund Obecny

Frontispiece by Frederick Dorr Steele

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London

The Knickerbocker press 1920

Copyright, 1920
by
G. P. Putnam's Sons

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

The provincial actors of Poland are sometimes colloquially called
"comedians," as distinguished from their more pretentious brethren
of the metropolitan stage in Warsaw. The word, however, does not
characterize a player of comedy parts. Indeed, the provincials,
usually performing in open air theatres, play every conceivable
role, and as in the case of Janina, the heroine of this story, the
life of the Comedienne often embraces far more tragedy than comedy.

Wladyslaw Reymont is the most widely known of living Polish writers.
The Academy of Science of Cracow nominated him for the Nobel Prize
for Literature. He is the author of numerous novels dealing with
various phases of everyday life in Poland, many of them translated
into French, German, and Swedish. The Comedienne is the first of his
works to appear in English.

Reymont himself was a peasant, rising from the bottom until to-day
the light of his recognized genius shines in the very forefront of
the Slavic intellectuals.

It is interesting to note that for several years the author was
himself a "Comedian," traveling about what was then Russian Poland
with a company of provincial players.

The Comedienne

CHAPTER I

Bukowiec, a station on the Dombrowa railroad, lies in a beautiful
spot. A winding line was cut among the beech and pine covered hills,
and at the most level point, between a mighty hill towering above
the woods with its bald and rocky summit, and a long narrow valley,
glistening