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

Following on from The Aesop Episode, where Anna Stanisławska (1651–1701) in poetic verse relates the traumas of her later marital bondage to a deranged husband, a bondage from which she heroically manages to free herself, this episode sees the poetess recounting what was a hoped-for felicitous future. For soon after her divorce, Anna is courted by the handsome Jan Oleśnicki, a candidate outstanding in his vigorous suitability, his venerated lineage, and his determination to win his bride. However, this is an age of tears and personal calamities; and war, broken faith, and Stanisławska’s resolve to maintain agency over her life will ultimately lead to marital conflict. Heartbreakingly, before the lovers have achieved some semblance of accord, callous Misfortune visits herself upon them. This spirited poetic account is also accompanied by an in-depth introductory and literary commentary.

"The Oleśnicki Episode, the second part of Anna Stanisławska’s autobiographical Orphan Girl, is a remarkable scholarly, translational, and dramaturgical achievement. Introducing the historical contexts of Stanisławska’s masterpiece, Barry Keane writes her biography into Polish history’s most important events, counterpointed by the themes of love, oppression, and personal struggle. Keane’s choice to keep the strong rhythmical pattern and the meaningful rhyming scheme of the source reminds one of the work’s literary imperatives, while his contemporary English vocabulary pushes the work toward the present moment, bridging the past and present, and conveying the unique rawness and honesty of Stanisławska’s voice."
-Dr. Kasia Lech, Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts, School of Creative Arts and Industries, Canterbury Christ Church University

"After the publication of The Aesop Episode, I can only welcome Barry Keane’s superb translation of the second episode of Anna Stanisławska’s Orphan Girl, a valuable, long-lost seventeenth-century poetic text documenting women’s writing in the early modern period. Keane, a poet in his own right, should be applauded not only for successfully rendering the poem into convincingly modern, idiomatic, and highly readable English, but also for his admirable contextualization of the work with an informative introduction and commentary."
-Jerzy Jarniewicz, Professor of British Language and Culture, The University of Łódz

BARRY KEANE, Associate 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 (2016) and author of Irish Drama in Poland: Staging and Reception, 1900–2000 (2016).

REVIEW

The Polish Review 69.2 (2024): 119–121. Reviewed by Magdalena Ożarska.