The Peasants — Volume IV: Summer

Chłopi: Lato · The Peasants: Summer · published 1909 · ISBN

Władysław Reymont — Władysław Reymont (1867 – 1925) — Poland, writing in Polish. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1924.

“for his great national epic, The Peasants” — The Nobel Committee citation

About Władysław Reymont

Polish novelist born into a large village family near Kobiele Wielkie, where his father played the church organ. He had almost no formal schooling: he left home to apprentice as a tailor, joined a travelling theatre troupe, then worked as a gatekeeper on a remote stretch of railway — and those years among labouring people became his literary capital. Reymont wrote slowly and from direct observation rather than from books. The 1924 Nobel Prize went to him for The Peasants, over candidates such as Thomas Mann and Thomas Hardy; he died little more than a year later.

How it came to be

The final volume appeared in 1909, closing the cycle of seasons and a cycle in the life of the village. It was the completed work that formed the Swedish Academy's main grounds for the 1924 prize.

Summary of The Peasants — Volume IV: Summer

Harvest arrives, and with it the reckoning for all four seasons. The village deals with Jagna in the village's own way. The old order in Lipce has lost the man at its head, and those left must arrange themselves anew on soil that goes on yielding as though nothing had happened.

Analysis & legacy

The ending of The Peasants is not an ending in the ordinary sense: no moral verdict is delivered, no one is vindicated, and the harvest continues. The village's punishment of Jagna is the cruellest passage in the whole cycle, and Reymont narrates it with a calm that chills — not a word of condemnation is added, because the calm itself is the point. Only after all four volumes does it become clear why the seasonal structure is more than a formal trick: it says the village will go on, that the round of sowing and reaping is larger than any fate inside it. That is at once the vitality and the ruthlessness of the world Reymont built.

Themes: Communal punishment · The turning year · Order after the head is gone · Harvest · The price of difference

Frequently asked questions

What is The Peasants — Volume IV: Summer about?

Harvest arrives, and with it the reckoning for all four seasons. The village deals with Jagna in the village's own way. The old order in Lipce has lost the man at its head, and those left must arrange themselves anew on soil that goes on yielding as though nothing had happened.

Is The Peasants — Volume IV: Summer worth reading?

The ending of The Peasants is not an ending in the ordinary sense: no moral verdict is delivered, no one is vindicated, and the harvest continues. The village's punishment of Jagna is the cruellest passage in the whole cycle, and Reymont narrates it with a calm that chills — not a word of…

When did Władysław Reymont win the Nobel Prize, and why?

Władysław Reymont won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1924: “for his great national epic, The Peasants”

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• The Peasants — Volume I: Autumn — Władysław Reymont
• The Peasants — Volume II: Winter — Władysław Reymont
• The Peasants — Volume III: Spring — Władysław Reymont