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Rating: 
Summary: An important tale of desire without love
Review: Boleslaw Prus' The Doll falls into a category of books which could be described as peripheral realism. They are late 19th century novels which share nothing in common except that they are written in countries which are in the "periphery" of world literature. This is not a comment on their quality, but on the lack of curiosity of the Anglo-American mind to take the trouble to encounter them. Other examples of this trend are the Spaniard Benito Perez Galdos, the Portuguese writer Jose Maria de Eca de Quieros and the Italians Giovanni Verga and Antonio Fogazzaro. "The Doll" is not of the same quality as such works as "Fortunata and Jacintha", "The Maias," or even "The Little World of the Past." Supposedly it is the story of a successful businessman who tries and fails to win the heart of a shallow, spoiled, aristocratic girl--the doll of the title. It is this story, but there is more to it than that, more than what Prus thinks. When the protagonist Stanislaw Wokulski is not worrying ineffectively over Izabela Lecki, he is a smashingly successfully businessman. Why he is so succcessful is not really made clear, Prus does not have Balzac's eye for describing complex financial transactions in compelling ways. Wokulski is obviously a good employer and obviously a man of charitable and humane impulses. The woman he assists, and whom his clerk thinks would be a better wife, Mrs. Sawatska, is a rather conventional portrait of female virtue. If there is anything truly "Dickensian" in this book, as the dust jacket promises, it is not Prus' sense of detail, which is meagre, or a fine talent for grotesquerie or wit, but instead the conventional, rather vapid portrait of his heroes. The style is prosaic, the social atmosphere rather narrow, and people wanting to learn about the urbanity or religious life or common people or entertainments of 19th century Warsaw should look elsewhere. There is one passage that is an exception to this. It really is remarkable, the one that portrays Izabela's complete isolation from the real world. "If anyone had asked her point-blank what this world is, and what she herself was, she would have certainly have repled that the world is an enchanted garden full of magical castles, and that she herself was a goddess or nymph imprisoned in a body. "From her cradle, Izabela had lived in a beautiful world that was not only superhuman but even supernatural. For she slept in feathers, dressed in silks and satins, sat on carved and polished ebony or rosewood, drank from crystal, ate from silver and porcelain as costly as gold. "The seasons of the year did not exist for her, only an everlasting spring full of soft light, living flowers and perfumes. The times of day did not exist for her either, since for whole months at a time she would go to bed at eight in the monring and dine at two at night. There was no difference in geographical location, since in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Berlin or London she would find the same food--soups from Pacific seaweed, oysters from the North Sea, fish from the Atlantic or Mediterranean, animals from every country, fruits from all parts of the globe. For her, even the force of gravity did not exist, since her chairs were placed for her, plates were handed, she herself was driven in carriages through the streets, conducted inside, helped upstairs." As for other parts of the novel, there is a continuing theme of anti-semitism as Wokulski and his colleagues notice with some concern its rise. Unfortunately it is not entirely clear whether Wokulski or Prus fully recognize its evil or whether they share some of it themselves. On a first glance Wokulski is a hard working businessman, the kind that Poland obviously needs, who is not appreciated by its inefficient aristocracy. They look down on him as an arriviste and the selfish, vapid Izabela either ignores him or toys with his feelings. But on another level Wokulski is not really attracted to her. He is in more in love with the concept of matrimony than with an actual person. It is not simply the conservative atmosphere around courting that hampers him, but Wokulski's own lack of force. This portait of Wokulski's ambiguity, an almost Hamlet like quality of indecision, does not make compelling reading. But it is an important portrait of impotent masochism and it is expertly done. It is this that establishes Prus' claim to greatness.
Rating:
Summary: An important tale of desire without love
Review: Boleslaw Prus' The Doll falls into a category of books which could be described as peripheral realism. They are late 19th century novels which share nothing in common except that they are written in countries which are in the "periphery" of world literature. This is not a comment on their quality, but on the lack of curiosity of the Anglo-American mind to take the trouble to encounter them. Other examples of this trend are the Spaniard Benito Perez Galdos, the Portuguese writer Jose Maria de Eca de Quieros and the Italians Giovanni Verga and Antonio Fogazzaro. "The Doll" is not of the same quality as such works as "Fortunata and Jacintha", "The Maias," or even "The Little World of the Past." Supposedly it is the story of a successful businessman who tries and fails to win the heart of a shallow, spoiled, aristocratic girl--the doll of the title. It is this story, but there is more to it than that, more than what Prus thinks. When the protagonist Stanislaw Wokulski is not worrying ineffectively over Izabela Lecki, he is a smashingly successfully businessman. Why he is so succcessful is not really made clear, Prus does not have Balzac's eye for describing complex financial transactions in compelling ways. Wokulski is obviously a good employer and obviously a man of charitable and humane impulses. The woman he assists, and whom his clerk thinks would be a better wife, Mrs. Sawatska, is a rather conventional portrait of female virtue. If there is anything truly "Dickensian" in this book, as the dust jacket promises, it is not Prus' sense of detail, which is meagre, or a fine talent for grotesquerie or wit, but instead the conventional, rather vapid portrait of his heroes. The style is prosaic, the social atmosphere rather narrow, and people wanting to learn about the urbanity or religious life or common people or entertainments of 19th century Warsaw should look elsewhere. There is one passage that is an exception to this. It really is remarkable, the one that portrays Izabela's complete isolation from the real world. "If anyone had asked her point-blank what this world is, and what she herself was, she would have certainly have repled that the world is an enchanted garden full of magical castles, and that she herself was a goddess or nymph imprisoned in a body. "From her cradle, Izabela had lived in a beautiful world that was not only superhuman but even supernatural. For she slept in feathers, dressed in silks and satins, sat on carved and polished ebony or rosewood, drank from crystal, ate from silver and porcelain as costly as gold. "The seasons of the year did not exist for her, only an everlasting spring full of soft light, living flowers and perfumes. The times of day did not exist for her either, since for whole months at a time she would go to bed at eight in the monring and dine at two at night. There was no difference in geographical location, since in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Berlin or London she would find the same food--soups from Pacific seaweed, oysters from the North Sea, fish from the Atlantic or Mediterranean, animals from every country, fruits from all parts of the globe. For her, even the force of gravity did not exist, since her chairs were placed for her, plates were handed, she herself was driven in carriages through the streets, conducted inside, helped upstairs." As for other parts of the novel, there is a continuing theme of anti-semitism as Wokulski and his colleagues notice with some concern its rise. Unfortunately it is not entirely clear whether Wokulski or Prus fully recognize its evil or whether they share some of it themselves. On a first glance Wokulski is a hard working businessman, the kind that Poland obviously needs, who is not appreciated by its inefficient aristocracy. They look down on him as an arriviste and the selfish, vapid Izabela either ignores him or toys with his feelings. But on another level Wokulski is not really attracted to her. He is in more in love with the concept of matrimony than with an actual person. It is not simply the conservative atmosphere around courting that hampers him, but Wokulski's own lack of force. This portait of Wokulski's ambiguity, an almost Hamlet like quality of indecision, does not make compelling reading. But it is an important portrait of impotent masochism and it is expertly done. It is this that establishes Prus' claim to greatness.
Rating: 
Summary: Empty calorie realism
Review: I got half-way through and quit; the book just didn't work for me. Prus obviously intended to write "realistically", and his rather disconnected deployment of scenes and character development does mimic the complexities of real life. So, in that sense, he was a success. However, he completely fails on much more important levels. For example, the plot lacks even a hint of conflict. Wolkulski (the main character) faces no conflict as he gives in to his obsession for Izabella, nor does he seem to have any particular difficulty in achieving any of his foolish stunts to try to win her. Since it's obvious from the start the relationship is doomed, there's not the tension of "will he get the girl?" Not even the obvious potential friction of his being a class-crossing social climber creates any conflict (other than a few characters commenting on his boorish manners). A 600+ page book needs more conflict than that to justify itself. I could not uncover the purpose of reading (or of having written) the book. Prus endows "The Doll" with the trappings of realist novels: frightening descriptions of the lowest of the poor, moral angst of rich do-gooders over the poor in their midst, endless analogies between streetwalkers and Mary Magdelene or poor men and Christ, and a vast panorama of characters representing all levels of society. However, Prus does not use these devices to move his story. They seem more like window dressing put in place to make the novel look and smell like the work of a realist. Worst of all, Prus' story and characters don't seem to have any relevance beyond the pages of his book and there's no whiff of meaning anywhere. The best example of this odd characteristic is the anti-Semitism in the book. There are lots of cuts (broadly and with subtle acid) at the Jewish characters, however (as another reviewer mentions) Prus never addresses anti-Semitism in even the most vague way. He presents society only and makes no comments or suggestions to the reader. A newspaper article works as better fiction than that! Reading this book was a bit like watching a movie you already know the ending to. It can be entertaining if the ride is interesting. Unfortunately, Prus' narrative is too dry and dispassionate and his plotting too erratic and minimalistic for the ride to pull you in. As a result, I just didn't care what was going on and didn't find any of the characters worthy of my attention. I didn't feel there was any purpose in reading the rest of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Empty calorie realism
Review: I got half-way through and quit; the book just didn't work for me. Prus obviously intended to write "realistically", and his rather disconnected deployment of scenes and character development does mimic the complexities of real life. So, in that sense, he was a success. However, he completely fails on much more important levels. For example, the plot lacks even a hint of conflict. Wolkulski (the main character) faces no conflict as he gives in to his obsession for Izabella, nor does he seem to have any particular difficulty in achieving any of his foolish stunts to try to win her. Since it's obvious from the start the relationship is doomed, there's not the tension of "will he get the girl?" Not even the obvious potential friction of his being a class-crossing social climber creates any conflict (other than a few characters commenting on his boorish manners). A 600+ page book needs more conflict than that to justify itself. I could not uncover the purpose of reading (or of having written) the book. Prus endows "The Doll" with the trappings of realist novels: frightening descriptions of the lowest of the poor, moral angst of rich do-gooders over the poor in their midst, endless analogies between streetwalkers and Mary Magdelene or poor men and Christ, and a vast panorama of characters representing all levels of society. However, Prus does not use these devices to move his story. They seem more like window dressing put in place to make the novel look and smell like the work of a realist. Worst of all, Prus' story and characters don't seem to have any relevance beyond the pages of his book and there's no whiff of meaning anywhere. The best example of this odd characteristic is the anti-Semitism in the book. There are lots of cuts (broadly and with subtle acid) at the Jewish characters, however (as another reviewer mentions) Prus never addresses anti-Semitism in even the most vague way. He presents society only and makes no comments or suggestions to the reader. A newspaper article works as better fiction than that! Reading this book was a bit like watching a movie you already know the ending to. It can be entertaining if the ride is interesting. Unfortunately, Prus' narrative is too dry and dispassionate and his plotting too erratic and minimalistic for the ride to pull you in. As a result, I just didn't care what was going on and didn't find any of the characters worthy of my attention. I didn't feel there was any purpose in reading the rest of the book.
Rating:
Summary: When Things Fall Apart
Review: In literary terms, "The Doll" struggles to stand on its own-which is not to say that it is a bad novel, just that you need to place it in its historical context, and, really, shouldn't you do this with just about any novel? As for whether it's Dickensian, well, "The Doll" was originally published as a serial, and it shows. In novel form, it is repetitive and about three hundred pages overlong. Still, if Pip were to wait until middle age before aquiring great expectations, he'd have been much like Wokulski, Prus's protagonist experiencing unrequited love for an unattainable beauty (the plot is also reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieslowski's hilarious film "White," the most Polish of the "Three Colors" trilogy). But the more interesting comparison between Dickens and Prus lies in noting how much more political Prus is than Dickens. As Orwell notes in his perceptive essay on Dickens, the English author was not a political writer, even if all sorts of political movements tried to paint their stripe on him. Orwell emphasizes that Dickens didn't belong to any of these ideologies: he was a moralist. Prus, on the other hand, is quite political (his ancient-Egypt epic "Pharaoh" has as much to say about how political power works as Foucault or Robert Caro). At first, this does not make sense, as Prus, living in an occupied nation, had to contend with Russian censors. But this is actually what made him-and Polish writers in general-so political. Under imperial rule, political dissidents ended up in Siberia; as a result, literature was the only avenue for political discourse in Poland (though the more radical writers got booted even for veiled statements). Further, pragmatic political concerns weighed heavily on Prus's mind in a way they did not on Dickens's. Dickens had the luxury of sitting in London, the heart of empire, and waxing metaphysical. While Dickens clearly is the genius of the two, it's not only his gravity that allows him to dig so deep into the human condition. If Prus does not dig as deeply, it's partly because he's more grounded by Poland's grave reality. Prus was a Positivist (reformer, not revolutionary), burnt out by the failures of the radical politics of Romanticism. He had even taken part in the Rising of 1863 before becoming, as historian Norman Davies elegantly puts it, "a repentant revolutionary." But by the time he wrote "The Doll" in the late 1880s, he seems disillusioned by Positivism (perhaps realizing that reform is impossible in an autocracy) and all forms of idealism. "The Doll" presents a world choking on decay. Despite what other reviewers say, "the (broken) doll" in the title is not Wokulski's love interest Izabela, but Poland (or even Europe, or if you want to get really ambitious, civilization). With "The Doll," Prus mocks ideals, showing how ridiculous, dangerous even, they are in a disintegrating world. Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Prus presages problems that would make for European horrors in the twentieth century: tensions among declining empires, the profiteering of war, and anti-Semitism. As another reviewer notes, anti-Semitism runs virulently through the world Prus presents. Reading it on the other end of the Holocaust, Prus's straight-forward matter-of-factness is shocking. While the other reviewer seemed to see a sort of journalistic distance in Prus's lack of commentary on his characters' anti-Semitism, I see Prus as so disconsolate, so demoralized by decay that he no longer cares. It is the most haunting aspect of the book. But Prus's straight-forward cynicism makes "The Doll" difficult to recommend, because it is so out of place with the militantly hopeful Polish canon. Even Prus's Positivism is the lesser strain of Polish literature to Romanticism. To "get" Polish literature, read Mickiewicz's poetry, Sienkiewicz's novels, or Wyspianski's drama. These folks never gave up the dream of revolution, of a second coming of the Republic of Poland. Even when the Poles got down, they usually didn't find cynicism; they found despair, like in the work of Stefan Zeromski, Adam Szymansi, and Nobel Prize winner Wladyslaw St. Reymont. So "The Doll"'s place isn't really in the Polish tradition. Better to think of it as a valuable piece of world literature. "The Doll" captures Europe's first stumblings into the free fall of the twentieth century. Prus wrote that his aim was "to present our Polish idealist on the background of social disintegration." He added that the 1800s "began with chivalry and dedication, and has ended with capitalism, corruption, and the pursuit of lucre." Prus was probably better off dying in 1912, before millions of Europeans died on battlefields and in gas chambers and prisons, a century so filled with horror that at its end, Poles gladly settled for "capitalism, corruption, and the pursuit of lucre."
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