On “youth turned into despair”. “Metamorphoses” by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski and “Zygmunt Ławicz and His Friends” by Eliza Orzeszkowa

Metamorfozy (Metamorphoses) by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski and Zygmunt Ławicz i jego koledzy (Zygmunt Ławicz and His Friends) by Eliza Orzeszkowa are treated here as two original works bearing the imprint of two separate creative personalities, although they are based on a similar creative idea and despite the fact that the structure of Orzeszkowa’s novel recalls Kraszewski’s artistic solutions. Both works are similar in content. Using similar metaphors, they attempt to portray metamorphoses in a group of young friends, which are to symbolize more than the passage of time and effects of biological and social laws − both are to express the experience of political bondage. They differ, however, in artistic solutions, which make Metamorphoses, a work based on a myth, a comforting story about the order of human existence; whereas in case of Orzeszkowa’s work they allow us to define it as a novel about dying out, a pessimistic diagnosis of social and political conditions