Eliza Orzeszkowa – Enthusiast of Physiognomic Portraits (Part I)

Abstract

The article concerns the physiognomic portrayal in Eliza Orzeszkowa’s novel In the Provinces (Na prowincji). The writer used Johann Caspar Lavater’s treaty as well as his views on beauty and ugliness. Lavater’s theory was an example of the relation between soul and body; man became beautiful thanks to a particular type of professed morality. Orzeszkowa’s literary heroes always possessed more or less extensive physiognomic portraits, which explained their character. The observation of the “outer man” allowed the author to guess from bodily signs (head shape, mouth line, eye size, forehead, wrinkles, etc.) the “inner man”, his nature, character, strengths and  weaknesses. The first part of the novel In the Provinces (Na prowincji) analyzed in a physiognomic manner shows the writer’s sensitivity for true and false beauty and the Greek kalos kagathos.