Anna Stanisławska (1651 – 2 June 1701) was a Polish author and poet known for her sole work, ''Transakcja albo opisanie całego życia jednej sieroty przez żałosne treny od tejże samej pisane roku 1685'' (Transaction, or a Description of the Whole Life of an Orphan Girl through Doleful Laments Written by the Same in 1685). The unpublished manuscript was discovered in a public library in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

, Russia, nearly two centuries later, in 1890, by Slavic studies professor

Aleksander Brückner Aleksander Brückner (; 29 January 1856 – 24 May 1939) was a Polish scholar of Slavic languages and literature (Slavistics), philologist, lexicographer, and historian of literature. He is among the most notable Slavicists of the late 19th ...

, who declared Stanisławska the earliest known Polish woman poet. The work was finally printed in 1935.

Life

Early life

Stanisławska was born in 1651 to Michal Stanisławski, a military commander and one-time

governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...

of Kiev Province, and Krystyna Borkowa Szyszkowska (née Niszczycka). Stanisławska was a member of the ''

szlachta The ''szlachta'' (; ; ) were the nobility, noble estate of the realm in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Depending on the definition, they were either a warrior "caste" or a social ...

'', the noble class, and her family bore the

Piława coat of arms Pilawa () is a Polish coat of arms. It was used by many noble families known as ''szlachta'' in Polish in medieval Poland and later under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, branches of the original medieval Piława Clan (''Pilawici'') family ...

, connecting them to the powerful Potocki and Zebrzydowski families. Following the death of her mother when she was three, Stanisławska was sent to a cloister near

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

to be educated by Dominican nuns. Her maternal great aunt, Gryzelda Dominika Zebrzydowska, was the prioress there until she died of the

bubonic plague Bubonic plague is one of three types of Plague (disease), plague caused by the Bacteria, bacterium ''Yersinia pestis''. One to seven days after exposure to the bacteria, flu-like symptoms develop. These symptoms include fever, headaches, and ...

, at which point Stanisławska was placed in the guardianship of her maternal grandfather.

"Aesop" episode

Stanisławska's young brother Piotr died in 1667, prompting her father to bring her back home. He had remarried in 1663, to Anna Potocka Kazanowska-Sluszka, and under pressure from his new wife, he arranged his daughter's marriage to Jan Kazimierz Warszycki. Warszycki had powerful connections, being the son of Stanislaw Warszycki, a senator and

Castellan A castellan, or constable, was the governor of a castle in medieval Europe. Its surrounding territory was referred to as the castellany. The word stems from . A castellan was almost always male, but could occasionally be female, as when, in 1 ...

of Kraków, but he was also mentally disabled, physically abusive, and completely uninterested in Stanisławska sexually. In ''Transaction'' Stanisławska refers to him almost exclusively as "

Aesop Aesop ( ; , ; c. 620–564 BCE; formerly rendered as Æsop) was a Greeks, Greek wikt:fabulist, fabulist and Oral storytelling, storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as ''Aesop's Fables''. Although his existence re ...

" for his ugly appearance, but ultimately she takes pity on him as the "slave" of his conniving and "tyrannical" father. Much of the piece recounts her misery in her marriage to Warszycki and her attempts to secure a divorce from him. Shortly before their wedding she became deathly ill, and the marriage ceremony was conducted in her home rather than in the church, as was traditional. After her father's death in 1669, Stanisławska gained ownership of the family's estate. Her great uncle

John III Sobieski John III Sobieski ( (); (); () 17 August 1629 – 17 June 1696) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1674 until his death in 1696. Born into Polish nobility, Sobieski was educated at the Jagiellonian University and toured Eur ...

, who would become king of Poland in 1674, became her new guardian. With his assistance, Stanisławska repaired her relationship with her stepmother and fled to a convent, claiming sanctuary from her husband and his family. She sought an annulment in court, which was finally granted around 1670. Her stepmother's testimony, in which she claimed that she and Stanislawska's father had forced the girl into marriage against her will, was crucial in securing the annulment.

Later life

Once divorced, Stanisławska swiftly married a distant relative, Jan Zbigniev Oleśnicki. According to ''Transaction'', they were happily married until Oleśnicki's death from cholera in 1675 while on a military expedition during the

Second Polish–Ottoman War The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Un ...

. In 1677 she married again, to Jan Boguslaw Zbąski. In 1683, Zbąski died from an injury he sustained at the

Battle of Vienna The Battle of Vienna took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna on 1683 after the city had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman Empire (led by the Habsburg monarchy) and the Polish–Li ...

during the Third Polish–Ottoman War. It was at this point that Stanisławska began writing ''Transaction''. Little is known of Stanisławska's life after 1685. At some point in the 1690s, she was sued in court after leading a group of servants and villagers against the new owners of a neighboring estate, which had been seized due to unpaid debts. She donated much of her wealth to various missionary groups and to the Piarist monks at Dunajgrod, leaving her estate to the latter in her will. She died on 2 June 1701, in Kurów.

''Transaction''

The ''Transaction, or a Description of the Whole Life of an Orphan Girl through Doleful Laments Written by the Same in 1685'', is an autobiographical (according to the author) poem describing Stanisławska's life and three marriages between 1668 and 1685. It comprises 77 threnodies, or laments, each containing a varying number of eight-line stanzas. It also contains a 22-line introduction "To the Reader"; a 12-line "Conclusion – to the Reader of This Book"; and numerous marginal

glosses A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal or interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different. A collection of glosses is a ''glossar ...

. It is a

Polish Baroque The Polish Baroque lasted from the early 17th to the mid-18th century. As with Baroque style elsewhere in Europe, Poland's Baroque emphasized the richness and triumphant power of contemporary art forms. In contrast to the previous, Renaissance styl ...

piece, characterized by dramatism, swells of emotion, and strict form. It also reflects Stanisławska's intense Catholicism, typical of the period's

Sarmatism Sarmatism (or Sarmatianism; ; ) was an ethno-cultural identity within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was the dominant Baroque culture and ideology of the nobility () that existed in the time from the Renaissance to the early 18th ce ...

and reflective of her convent education. Stanisławska's

rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final Stress (linguistics), stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (''perfect rhyming'') is consciou ...

s follow an ''AABBCCDD'' scheme, known as Częstochowian rhymes, which were unpopular with Polish poets and were thus an unusual choice. Her primary inspiration was likely

Jan Kochanowski Jan Kochanowski (; 1530 – 22 August 1584) was a Polish Renaissance poet who wrote in Latin and Polish and established poetic patterns that would become integral to Polish literary language. He has been called the greatest Polish poet before ...

's ''Laments'' (also known as ''Threnodies''), written in 1580 on the death of his two-year-old daughter. Like Kochanowski, Stanisławska personifies and addresses Fortune, in addition to referencing a Christian god. She may also have drawn for her narrative upon the traditions of "courtly theatre". Ożarska notes that while describing Stanisławska's life and the death of her three husbands, the manuscript does not mention any of the principals by name; in fact, the title page credits the authorship of the book to "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph". The names of the principals are recorded in the author's glosses. Thus Ożarska believes that the work is not meant to be autobiographical, but a depiction of 17th-century Polish culture, including "courtship, betrothal, wedding or funeral customs which are depicted in considerable detail". For reasons unknown, ''Transaction'' was never published, and was not discovered until 1890, when the manuscript was found in a

public library by Slavic studies professor

. Brückner declared Stanisławska to be Poland's first woman poet in his 1893 study "The First Polish Woman Writer and Her Rhymed Autobiography". Later research, however, has disproved Brückner's assertion. Even after ''Transaction'' was published in 1935, Stanisławska was surpassed in fame by her contemporaries

Elżbieta Drużbacka Elżbieta Drużbacka (née Kowalska, 1695 or 1698 – March 14, 1765 in Tarnów) was a Polish poet of the late Baroque period. Little is known of her life. She learned French at the court of Elżbieta Sieniawska. She married a Jewish man, and ha ...

and Antonina Niemiryczowa, both historically and in the Polish literary canon. ''Transaction'' was only able to be published after years of negotiations with St. Petersburg, which were complicated by the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

in 1917. The work was finally sent to Poland as part of a larger exchange in 1935, and edited and published in that year by Ida Kotowa. Though Stanisławska's identity as the author was in question for a time, Kotowa included in her edition a 1699 letter written by Stanisławska, which matched the handwriting in ''Transaction''. Stanisławska's original manuscript was either destroyed or lost during the

Warsaw uprising The Warsaw Uprising (; ), sometimes referred to as the August Uprising (), or the Battle of Warsaw, was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from ...

in 1944.

Criticism

In her introduction to ''Transaction'', Ida Kotowa heavily critiqued Stanisławska's clarity and imagination, writing that the marginal notes often had to be relied upon for the "true sense of a stanza" and that her rhymes were "usually … strained, and sometimes simply forced". Brückner agreed, repeatedly calling the poetry "poor" or even "terrible", but going on to praise Stanisławska's "feminine wit". Though later scholars were more forgiving, calling ''Transaction'' "a sincere and artistically valuable confession" as well as "detailed and lifelike", ultimately the work has been celebrated more for its social implications than for its style.Wilczek, Piotr and Chuilleanáin, Eiléan Ní, "Orphan Girl: A Transaction", back cover. It was the "first strictly personal woman's memoir for the readers' enlightenment and admonition" in the region, and one of many recently discovered "'other' and certainly 'forgotten' voices of the Baroque era".

References

Sources

* * *