I would like to write to you, my dear friend, with greater frequency, but with my daughter in childbed, all the administration of the estate has fallen onto little old me, my son-in-law being on the road at present, a journey that has lengthened in duration by more than a month on account of the terrible snows, which have made a portion of the great highway completely impassable, while the rivers have all overflowed, isolating a good many settlements completely.
From early morning on I am up and running around—cowsheds, pigsties, henhouses, making preserves out of whatever the servants have brought in; from dawn, all the effort it takes to obtain any dairy, lumps of cheese for soup, cheese pancakes and quark, smoked meat, fattened poultry, lard, flour, kasha, bread, mushrooms, dried fruits, confections fried in honey, wax and tallow for candles, oils for the lamps and for fasting days, wool, yarn, leather for shoes, sheepskins for coats. In order for bread to make it to the breakfast table, a million things must happen first, and I must personally ensure they happen, often in cooperation with many other people, most of them women. Women are the ones who operate the querns, the spinning wheels, the looms. It is on their watch that the smokehouses smoke, that dough rises in the kneading troughs, bread bakes in the ovens, candles are pressed into shape, herbs are dried for home pharmacies, lard is salted, vodka is distilled and spiced, beer is brewed, meads fermented, stores placed in the larders and the granaries. For three of any home’s quoins rest upon the woman of the house, and the fourth upon God.
I have not written a single line in months, and I would be glad at this point, to tell you the truth, to take a little rest from this old mill. I have two daughters, as you know, and one of them has so taken to giving birth that she has now produced a fourth little girl. Things are going well for her, she has a good husband with a good career, and it is obvious that they are very close. What more could a person want than such human closeness?
I try to look upon everything with good humor, tho’ there are many things awry. Why is it, for instance, that some have such an excess in life, while others such a lack? And not only of material goods, but also of activities, time, luck, or health. If only everything could be divided evenly . . .
I have already asked Countess Denhoff once to help me sell my wine, for I make good wine, tho’ not from grapes, but rather out of berries, or, perhaps most of all, wild rose. It is strong, and the fragrance and flavor of my wine are widely praised. I will send you, too, dear friend, some bottles.
As I write, the doors have crashed open, and the little girls are racing in, chasing Firlejka, who came inside with muddied paws that need to be wiped off, but the dog keeps escaping between the legs of the tables and chairs and everywhere leaves filthy tracks, mud seals, as it were. Whenever I look at her, at this crumb of God’s creation, I think of you, my dear friend. How are you, how is your health, and—above all—how is your great work going? The girls squeal and holler, the dog doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about, and when the youngest falls down on the floor, the dog, thinking it’s a game, eagerly begins to grab her and shake her by the dress. Oh, there is a great laundering in store.
Kindly include, in your letter to me, some interesting little tales, that I might shine in society when at last I return to it. In May I will be going to the Jab?onowskis’ again, at their invitation . . .
Father Chmielowski to El?bieta Dru?backa
It was so generous of You to send Your Wine, and I truly love the Taste of it. I drink it in the Evenings, when my Eyes have tired and are no longer capable of working, but what I can do, and with great Pleasure, is look into the Fire and sip Your Wine. I thank You for it from the very Bottom of my Heart, just as I do for Your Books of Poetry.
Of all of Your Poems I like best the one that praises the Forests and a Life of Solitude, on which Point I completely agree. I leave aside the Poems on Love, for such Things I neither understand nor have the Time for, and in any Event, it would hardly be befitting of my spiritual Station to attend to Vanities of this Kind. All this mortal Loving is valued too highly, and it sometimes seems to me that when People do attend to it, what they really mean is Something else, that this “Love” of which they speak is some kind of Metaphor, the which I simply cannot grasp. Perhaps only Women have access to it, or maybe Men with more feminine Traits. Is the Meaning Caritas, or rather Agape?
I admire the Spontaneity of Your Poetry, which seems to flow like Beer from a Tap. Where does all that fit within You? And how are You able to just invent all of those beautiful Sentences and Notions? I see, dear Friend, that my Work is of an altogether different Nature. I invent Nothing, offering instead the quinta Essentia of several hundred Authors whom I have read from Cover to Cover.
You, my Friend, are completely free in what You write, while I must stand on the Foundations of that which has already been written. You draw from the Imagination and the Heart, scrupulously reach into Your Feelings and Your Fantasies as tho’ into a Purse, and scatter gold Coins all around You, where they gleam, luring the Masses. I contribute Nothing of my own, merely citing and compiling. I mark my Sources very carefully, which is why I place throughout a sort of “Teste,” which advises the Reader to go and see for himself in the Mother Book, to note how Information weaves together, gathering across the Centuries. In this Manner, when we quote and cite our Sources, we build an Edifice of Knowledge, and we enable that Knowledge to proliferate as I do my Vegetables or Apple Trees. Quoting is like grafting a Tree; citing, indicating a grafted Quote’s Source, like sowing Seeds. Consequently we need not fear Fires in Libraries, a Swedish Deluge, or the Uprisings of a Khmelnytsky. Every Book is a Graft of new Information. Knowledge should be useful and readily available. Everyone should have at least the Rudiments of every indispensable Subject—Medicine, Geography, Natural Magic—and they ought to know a Smattering of Facts about foreign Religions and Nations. One must obtain the guiding Principles and have them settled in one’s Head, for et quo Modo possum intelligere, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi? And instead of having to pore over Volume after Volume, having to purchase whole Libraries, the Reader, thanks to my Work, has it all without multa Scienda.
I often stop to wonder how to encapsulate it, how to handle such Vastness? Whether to just choose a few Passages and translate as faithfully as possible or to summarize the Authors’ Arguments and simply indicate where they have been taken from, so that the more curious Reader might track them down, if he is able to locate the Volume in Question in some Collection.