Wladyslaw Reymont
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1924
Born: 7 May 1867, Kobiele Wielkie, Russian Empire (now Poland)
Died: 5 December 1925, Warsaw, Poland
Residence at the time of the award: Poland
Prize motivation: “for his great national epic, The Peasants”
Language: Polish
Prize share: 1/1
Life
Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont was born in Radomsko, Poland. He grew up with his aunt and uncle in Warsaw and passed his exam to become a tailor in 1885. However, he never worked a day as a tailor. Instead, he ran away to work in a travelling provincial theatre. He returned to Warsaw in 1892 when his Correspondence was accepted for publication. After that, he dedicated his life to writing, and travelling.
Work
Reymont’s best-known novel is The Promised Land, a social panorama of the city of Lodz, Poland during the industrial revolution. The novel is a dark vision of man, where ethics, noble ideas, and holy feelings turn against those who believe in them. His last work, Revolt (1924), describes a revolt by animals that take over their farm to introduce equality, but this quickly generates to abuse and terror. The novel was banned in communist Poland between 1945 and 1989.
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