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.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
See them all presented here.
