The Doll Read Free Page B

as well as an entire society’s attitude to the present and vision of the future.
    A vision of the future derived from an interpretation of society’s past and a critical assessment of its present state — this is actually what Prus’s
The Doll
is all about. This is the minimum that this novel demands from successive generations of its readers. It is also an old-fashioned yet still fascinating love story, a historically determined yet still topical diagnosis of society’s ills, and a forceful yet subtle portrayal of a tragically doomed man.
The Doll
is all this; but what is most enduring about it has been hinted at already by Prus himself.
    In our age of shattered utopias, amidst the overwhelming odour of ‘decay’, perhaps the most persistent question is the one that this agoraphobic, myopic, yet bold and far-sighted nineteenth-century realist felt compelled to ask: how, without being blindly naive, can one remain an ‘idealist’ in a ‘decayed’ world? Or, to put it another way, how to continue in the belief that we can become something better than we are, while almost all available evidence seems to point to the contrary?
    Stanisław Barańczak

The Doll

I
The Firm of J. Mincel and S. Wokulski Seen Through a Bottle
    E ARLY in 1878, when the political world was concerned with the treaty of San Stefano , the election of a new Pope , and the chances of a European war , Warsaw businessmen and the intelligentsia who frequented a certain spot in the Krakowskie Przedmieście were no less keenly interested in the future of the haberdashery firm of J. Mincel and S. Wokulski.
    In a celebrated restaurant where the proprietors of linen stores or wine shops, carriage- and hat-makers, solemn paterfamilias living on their incomes, and the owners of apartment houses with no fixed occupation met to partake of refreshments in the evenings, as much was said of the arming of England as of the firm of J. Mincel and S. Wokulski. Surrounded by clouds of cigar smoke, and sitting over dark bottles, some of the citizens of this neighbourhood bet that England would win — or lose; others bet on Wokulski’s likely bankruptcy; some called Bismarck a genius, others declared Wokulski an irresponsible adventurer; some criticised the behaviour of President MacMahon, while others declared that Wokulski was certainly a lunatic, if not something worse…
    Mr Deklewski, the carriage-manufacturer, who owed all his fortune and position to steady work in one and the same trade, and Councillor Węgrowicz, a lawyer who had for twenty years been member and patron of one and the same charitable institution, had known Wokulski longest and it was they who most vociferously predicted his ruin. ‘Ruin and insolvency’, said Mr Deklewski, ‘must finish off a man who never sticks to a trade and doesn’t know how to respect the gifts of Fortune.’ Whereas Councillor Węgrowicz added to each of his friend’s aphorisms: ‘A lunatic … a lunatic … an adventurer! Joe, another beer there! How many does that make?’
    â€˜â€™Tis the sixth, sir … Coming!’ replied Joe.
    â€˜The sixth already … How time flies, to be sure. He’s a lunatic, that’s what,’ Councillor Węgrowicz muttered.
    To those who ate in the same restaurant as the lawyer, to its proprietor, the clerks and the waiters, the reasons for the disasters about to fall upon Wokulski and his haberdashery store were as clear as the gas-lights that illuminated the establishment. These reasons were rooted in his restless nature, in his adventurous life, not to mention the latest act of this man who — though he had an assured living in his grasp and the opportunity to frequent this respectable restaurant — had nevertheless quit the restaurant of his own free will, left his shop to the care of Providence and gone off with all the cash inherited from his late wife to make a