Zofia Nalkowska

Born Nov. 10, 1884, in Warsaw; died there Dec. 17, 1954. Polish writer.

The daughter of the scholar and publicist W. Nałkowski, Nałkowska studied the humanities in Warsaw. She participated in demonstrations against the sanacja regime in the 1930’s, and was elected a deputy to the Sejm in the Polish People’s Republic. Nałkowska’s first works appeared in 1898. Her early works, notably Women (1906; Russian translation, 1907) and Narcyza (1910), explore the psychology of love and are written in the lyrical and symbolic style characteristic of the Young Poland movement. In her mature realistic social and psychological novels—Teresa Gennert’s Love Affair (1923; Russian translation, 1926) and The Boundary Line (1935; Russian translation, 1960) —Nałkowska depicts various aspects of social and political life in bourgeois Poland. She returned to the themes of her early works in the novels Unwholesome Love (1928) and The Impatient Ones (1938) and in the play The House of Women (1930).

Nalkowska’s novel Knots of Life (1948; revised edition, vols. 1–2, 1950–54) exposes the bourgeois rulers who brought Poland to the national catastrophe of 1939. Her collection of essays Medallions (1946) describes the atrocities of the fascist occupation forces. She is the author of the collections of publicistic and critical articles Far and Near (published 1957) and Diaries of the War Period (published 1970). Nalkowska was awarded the State Prize of the Polish People’s Republic in 1953.