Project Gutenberg's The Argonauts, by Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

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Title: The Argonauts

Author: Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

Translator: Jeremiah Curtin

Release Date: February 6, 2007 [EBook #20537]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARGONAUTS ***

Produced by Andrew Leader of www.polishwriting.net

Introduction

Eliza Orzeszko, the authoress of "The Argonauts," is the greatest
female writer and thinker in the Slav world at present. There are
keen and good critics, just judges of thought and style, who
pronounce her the first literary artist among the women of
Europe.

These critics are not Western Europeans, for Western Europe has
no means yet of appreciating this gifted woman. No doubt it will
have these means after a time in the form of adequate
translations. Meanwhile I repeat that she is the greatest
authoress among all the Slav peoples. She is a person of rare
intellectual distinction, an observer of exquisite perception in
studying men and women, and the difficulties with which they have
to struggle.

Who are the Slavs among whom Eliza Orzeszko stands thus
distinguished?

The Slavs form a very large majority of the people in
Austria-Hungary, an immense majority in European Turkey, and an
overwhelming majority in the Russian Empire; they are besides an
unyielding, though repressed, majority in that part of Prussian
territory known as Posen in German, and Poznan in Polish.

The Slav race occupies an immense region extending from Prussia,
Bohemia, and the Adriatic eastward to the Pacific Ocean. Its main
divisions are the Russians, Poles, Bohemians (Chehs), Serbs,
Bulgarians; its smaller divisions are the Slovaks, Wends,
Slovinians, Croats, Montenegrins. These all have literature in
some form, literature which in respect to the world outside is
famous, well known, little known, or unknown.

The Slavs have behind them a history dramatic to the utmost,
varied, full of suffering, full also, of heroism in endurance or
valor.

The present time is momentous for all nations, the future is a
tangled riddle; for the Slavs this seems true in a double
measure. To invo