A Legend of Old Egypt
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"A Legend of Old Egypt" (Polish: "Z legend dawnego Egiptu") is a short story by Bolesław Prus, originally published January 1, 1888. It was his first piece of historical fiction and later served as a preliminary sketch for his only historical novel, Pharaoh (1895). "A Legend of Old Egypt" and Pharaoh show unmistakable kinship in setting, theme and denouement.
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[edit] German dynastic inspiration
The inspiration for the short story was investigated in a 1962 paper by the foremost Prus scholar, Zygmunt Szweykowski.
What prompted Prus, erstwhile foe of historical fiction, to take time in December 1887, in the midst of writing ongoing newspaper instalments of his second novel, The Doll (1887-1889), to pen his first historical story? What could have moved him so powerfully?
Szweykowski follows several earlier commentators in concluding that it was contemporary German dynastic events. In late October 1887, Germany's first modern emperor, the warlike Kaiser Wilhelm I, had taken cold during a hunt and soon appeared to be at death's door; by November 2 a rumor spread that he had died. He rallied, however. Meanwhile his son and successor, the reform-minded Crown Prince Frederick, an inveterate smoker, had for several months been undergoing treatment for a throat ailment; the foreign press had written of a dire situation, but only on November 12 did the official German press announce that he in fact had throat cancer.
Prince Frederick had been an object of lively interest among progressive Europeans, who hoped that his eventual reign would bring a broad-based parliamentary system, democratic freedoms, peace, and equal rights for non-German nationalities, including Poles, within the German Empire.
Szweykowski points out that the "Legend's" contrast between the despotic centenarian Pharaoh Ramses and his humane grandson and successor Horus was, in its historic German prototypes, doubled, with Prince Frederick actually facing two antagonists: his father, Kaiser Wilhelm I, and the "Iron Chancellor," Otto von Bismarck. In a curious further parallel, a month after Kaiser Wilhelm's illness, Bismarck suffered a stroke.
Bolesław Prus, who in his "Weekly Chronicles" frequently touched on political events in Germany, devoted much of his December 4, 1887, column to Prince Frederick and his illness. The latest news from Germany and from San Remo, Italy, where the Prince was undergoing treatment, had been encouraging. Prus wrote with relief that "the Successor to the German Throne reportedly does not have cancer." By mid-December, however, the politically-inspired optimism in the Berlin press had again yielded to a sense of despair.
"It was then [states Szweykowski] that Prus wrote 'A Legend of Old Egypt,' shifting a contemporary subject into the past. Prus must have found this maneuver necessary in order to bring to completion what had not yet been completed, avoid sensationalism, and gain perspectives that generalized a particular fact to all human life; the atmosphere of legend was particularly favorable to this.
"In putting Horus to death while Prince Frederick still lived, Prus anticipated events, but he erred only in details, not in the essence of the matter, which was meant to document the idea that 'human hopes are vain before the order of the world.' Frederick, to be sure, did mount the throne (as Frederick III) in March the following year (Kaiser Wilhelm I died on March 9, 1888) and for a brief time it seemed that a new era would begin for Germany, and indirectly for Europe."
But it was not to be. Frederick III survived his father by only 99 days, dying at Potsdam on June 15, 1888, and leaving the German throne to his bellicose son Wilhelm II, who a quarter-century later would help launch World War I.
The connection between the German dynastic events and the genesis of Prus' "Legend of Old Egypt" was recognized in the Polish press already in 1888, even before Frederick's accession to short-lived impotent power, by a pseudonymous writer who styled himself "Logarithmus."
As Szweykowski observes, "the direct connection between the short story and political events in contemporaneous Germany doubtless opens new suggestions for the genesis of Pharaoh."
[edit] Other influences
In addition to the German elements, there were other influences on the composition of the short story. These included astrological echoes from his own newspaper account of the solar eclipse that he had witnessed at Mława, north of Warsaw, four months earlier, on August 19, 1887; the history of Pharaoh Ramses II ("the Great"), who had lived nearly as long as the "Legend's" "hundred-year-old Ramses" (who is also referred to as "great Ramses"); and the Roman poet Horace's sentiment, "Non omnis moriar" ("I shall not die completely"), which Prus cites in Polish in the "Legend" and will cite in the original Latin at the end of The Doll, which he is writing just then.
[edit] Characters' names
It was axiomatic for Prus that historical fiction must distort history. Characteristically, his choices of characters' names in historical fiction at times show considerable arbitrariness: nowhere more so than in "A Legend of Old Egypt." The protagonist is assigned the name of the hawk-headed Egyptian god Horus; Horus' mother, the name of the Biblical Moses' wife, Sephora (Exodus 2:21); Horus' teacher, the name of Moses' father-in-law, Jethro (Exodus 3:1); and Horus' beloved, a Greek name that means "bearer of victory," Berenice (there were several Egyptian queens of that name in the Ptolemaic period).
[edit] See also
- "Mold of the Earth" (a micro-story by Bolesław Prus)
- "Shades" (a micro-story by Bolesław Prus)
[edit] References
- Zygmunt Szweykowski, "Geneza noweli 'Z legend dawnego Egiptu'" ("The Genesis of the Short Story, 'A Legend of Old Egypt,'" originally published 1962), reprinted in his book, Nie tylko o Prusie: szkice (Not Only about Prus: Sketches), Poznań, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1967, pp. 256-61, 299-300.
- Krystyna Tokarzówna and Stanisław Fita, Bolesław Prus, 1847-1912: kalendarz życia i twórczości, pod redakcją Zygmunta Szweykowskiego (Bolesław Prus, 1847-1912: a Calendar of [His] Life and Work, edited by Zygmunt Szweykowski), Warsaw, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1969.
- Christopher Kasparek, "Prus' Pharaoh and the Solar Eclipse," The Polish Review, 1997, no. 4, pp. 471-78.
