The revolt of the animals by Wladslaw Reymont

Polish Fiction

Original title – Bunt

Translator – Charles S Kraszewski

Source – Review copy

I was sent this ages ago, and it wasn’t til just before I went away that I had read the book by Laxness. I wanted to try another old Nobel winner I remembered I had been sent this: the last book by the Polish writer Wladyslaw Reymont. A writer from a down-at-heel noble family, trained as a tailor, but then drifting through work as a gatekeeper and actor. This variety led him to try his hand at writing: he began with short stories, then moved to longer works of social realism, where he saw how disadvantaged the poor classes were. This is his final novel, often compared to Orwell’s Animal Farm, although he wrote it before that book.

 

She was roaring so, as was the boy, screaming his head off in a vain attempt to free himself from her iron claws.

It was such a furious to-do that the whole manor grounds erupted in a chaos of terror. The dogs began to yank at their chains and howl. A riot of terrified clucking shook the hen-houses.  With a screech, all the guinea fowl flapped up to the roof, and the pigeons took cover in the trees near the well. The tom turkeys, wattles and tails ruffled, gobbled like mad, hopping in place from foot to foot, menacingly. The peacocks rushed near from beneath the porch, throwing a fit with their contemptuous cries. The lady of the manor herself emerged from her rooms; the young master ran up with a flintlock; the little misses too, clutching their dolls, and two ruddy dachshunds, squirming like snakes.

At last she let him go, giving way to the flood of tears

and protests.

Rex watches this

The book is often compared to Orwell’s Animal Farm, even though this was written before that book

The book was written shortly after the events in Russia with the Bolshevik revolution. He uses a dog called Rex that, when the book opens, is attacked by his masters and is cast out of the manor where he has lived as he recovers in the wild from his injuries, we see him decide the humans are the problem for the animal world.  As he talks to his fellow animals, a plan, an idea, slowly forms for him to lead.  Well, he isn’t initially keen to lead them, but when he does, he becomes the leader of the animals, both those in the manor he knew and those wild animals. But as with the actual events in Russian and later in Animal Farm, things turn dark after they take over. It is a study on how power holds and changes people or a dog called Rex

 

The days that followed were hard ones, and Rex hovered between life and death. His wounds bit inward at him, the sun gnawed at him mercilessly, the flies gave him no peace

– but neither did the fatal sorrow he felt at his abandonment.

Only the nights brought the sacred grace of cool and relief. Dummy would run up with food and water, passing long hours weeping over their common wretchedness. For he had learned that they were on the hunt for Rex, to kill him, and he too was to be driven away from the manor.

Tll just go off to the ponds. What do I care?’ the boy decided. But I feel bad for you, you orphan. You’ve got to go off into the wide world — what’ll you do?’ he said in despair.

“Let me just get well again, Rex moaned, licking the boy out of gratitude

Rex is the main character in this book and could easily be compared with Napoleon, though he starts off like Boxer in Orwell’s book.

I did go down a rabbit hole when I read this to see whether Orwell had read or known of this book when he wrote Animal Farm, some twenty years after the book came out.  But there is no evidence he owned or read the book; there is a question of whether he heard of it through Polish friends, but no evidence to back that up.  But the two books are different.  This book is more like the first section of Animal Farm, The Uprising, but it also shows how power and leadership can corrupt those in power. It doesn’t have a third act in it. Then there are the different classes of the two writers: Reymont is from the nobility, and that may shine a light on his take on how revolution goes, as it may show it is just a change of leader, not always how people or animals are treated.  This is also near Eastern European fables and traditions in the way it is written.  It also captures the events of 1917 soon after they happened, from someone closer to the events than Orwell was.  That said, the book was banned for many years by the communists. A lesser-known Nobel winner, and thankfully we have a recent new edition of his best-known work, The Peasants, from Penguin in the last couple of years. Have you read any of hisd works?