One Body with Two Souls Entwined: An Epic Tale of Married Love in Seventeenth-Century Poland, 85: Orphan Girl: The Olesnicki Episode

A page-turner featuring one of literature’s earliest female protagonists.

Written in 1685, Transaction or the Description of the Entire Life of an Orphan by Way of Plaintful Threnodies, often referred to as Orphan Girl, is a valuable, long-lost, seventeenth-century poetic text that documents women’s writing in the early modern period. In this autobiographical account, Anna Stanislawska speaks confessionally and unsparingly about her life, from her infancy to her widowhood and withdrawal from the world. Stanislawska was an incomparable memoirist, revealing the depths of her private life in a manner not to be matched until modern times. One Body with Two Souls Entwined brings together this spirited poetic account with an in-depth introductory and literary commentary by Barry Keane. Together the book offers a remarkable piece of scholarly, translational, and dramaturgical work and puts it in context amid the backdrop of Polish history. 
 

Anna Stanisławska (1651–1700) was a Polish aristocrat popularly regarded as the first woman writer in Polish literature, with her unique autobiographical epic poem improbably titled Transakcyja albo Opisanie calego zycia jednej sieroty przez zalosne treny od tejze samej pisane roku (1685) [A Transaction, or an Account of the Entire Life of an Orphan Girl by way of Plaintful Threnodies]. The backdrop of Stanisławska’s life was one of war and turmoil, but the account of her life reveals a woman at odds with her clamorous and exacting age, wanting traditional happiness (grounded in a spiritual conviction and an engagement with religious devotion), but not seeking, as was often the case, wealth, title, entitlement, and prominence, all of which Stanisławska happened to possess in abundance.

Barry Keane, professor in translation and comparative studies in the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw, is the editor and translator of Anna Stanisławska, Orphan Girl, the “Aesop” episode; the “Olesnicki” episode; and the entire work, including the final “Zbaski” episode. He is the author of the monograph Irish Drama in Poland: Staging and Reception, 1900–2000 and books on the Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski, the Polish Renaissance and Baroque, and the modernist Skamander poets. He has also penned a wide range of scholarly articles and several volumes of poetry.