Adolf Dygasinski

Born Mar. 7, 1839, in Niegosławice, Kielce Województwo; died June 3, 1902, in Grodzisk, near Warsaw. Polish writer and teacher.

The son of an impoverished nobleman, Dygasiński took part in the Polish Uprising of 1863. He was a leading representative of the naturalist school in Polish literature and an outstanding writer about animals. His most important works are short stories and novellas depicting the everyday life of peasants and stories about animals and birds, notably “For a Cow” (1883), “A Wolf, Dogs, and Men” (1883), “The Hare” (1898). Dygasiński’s sympathies were on the side of the unfortunate; in the novella Von Molken (1885) and the novel Pan Jędrzej Piszczalski (1890) he portrays the degeneration of the nobility, which he attributes to heredity. In his exposure of social oppression (the novel Vodka, 1894), Dygasiński was harsher than the Polish realists of the 19th century. In 1890, Dygasiński visited America. In Letters From Brazil (1891) and the novella Headlong (1893) he described the tragic fate of peasant immigrants.