#Grażyna is used as an actual given name in Poland and he. completely. made it up

[thunderboltfire]

@rayless-reblogs (hope You don't mind me using Your tags to ramble a bit about Polish art history again, haha)

Actually it's the other way around! The standing figure is Eloe, and the sleeping (dead) is Ellenai. The death of Ellenai seems to be one of the favourite topics of Malczewski, and he shows it on many different paintings. My favourite one (and also one that I've seen in the original) is this one:

but there's also one with a different composition:

Now, a little bit of backstory: all three paintings are illustrations to Juliusz Słowacki's poem Anhelli. I'll put some more context under the cut, because explaining what is going on here will take some time.

Juliusz Słowacki was one of the giants of Polish romantic literature. Poland at the time didn't exist as a political body. It was under partitions and Poles were under jusridiction of either Imperial Russia, Kingdom of Prussia or the Austro-Hungary. Language and literature was a significant factor in upholding the national identity, so romanticism, full of national sentiment, inventing the concept of artists as transcendental chosen ones worked perfectly with the existing sentiments, which made romantic poets hugely popular.

One of the characteristic points of Polish romanticism was its weird, mystical and borderline blasphemous usage of religious motives. As a heavily messianistic take on the Zeitgeist concept, the Polish romanticists saw the suffering and struggle of their nation as a way to redemption, that was supposed to culminate in a glorious resurrection of the country, in a way paralleling the figure of Christ. (Hugely megalomaniac, but what can you do.)

Anhelli is a long poem, stylised specifically to mimic biblical style. It describes the fate of a fictional group of Polish exiles, sent to Siberia as a punishment. Hugely pessimistic work, the light of hope is dim. Słowacki never was in Siberia - but he probably had accounts of people who served their time there. The most important part of it though, is symbolism, and the whole poem, as befits the style is heavily metaphysical.

The exile in Siberia is an only non-fantastical part of it: relocation was a very common type of punishment administered to the families deemed problematic by the Russian Empire - a lot of people involved in uprisings and their families were forcibly relocated to the complete unknown - in the best case, as settlers, in the worst case, as prisoners to work in the mines. Many of them died, unsuited to harsh climate and provided with very little resources. That's however, where the historical facts end, and the licencia poetica begin.

Słowacki shows the group of exiles in way reminescent to the chosen people in the Bible - they are led by a prophet (who's, somehow also an indigenous shaman - don't ask me why) wielding divine power. He leaves them to show his apprentice and successor the fate and suffering of different groups of exiles, which leads to the main group going astray with catastrophic cosequences. All in all, a pretty wild ride full of objectionable mysticism.

The man shown in the paintings of Ellenai's death is the eponymous Anhelli - the main character and the apprentice of the prophet, who accompanies him in his journey throughout the struggles of his people, shown as a set of mythical parables. In the end, when the exiles kill the prophet, he leaves them to live alone, accompanied only by a single woman, Ellenai.

Ellenai was originally sentenced to exile because of commiting murder, but throughout acts of mercy and faith she redeems herself. She's a sister figure to Anhelli, and the only company he has while living in solitude, but after some time she also dies, leaving him completely alone and awaiting his own death.

While dying, Ellenai pleads that Anhelli wouldn't forget her - as he's her only companion aside from reindeer she kept, and promises that her soul will visit their country again and will keep watch over his family. She dies while praying with the Loretan litany.

Something about the scene had to have moved Malczewski so much, he approached the topic multiple times. In both of the pictures Ellenai is usually shown surrounded with animal skins, in a dark place similar to a pit-house, with an icon of Virgin Mary above her bed - and it's a particular depiction from Częstochowa, often considered to be of a special meaning to Poland as a country. It points both to the nationality of the characters and the devotion of Ellenai to Virgin Mary. She's always shown relaxed, almost as if sleeping.

It's Anhelli who's different every time Malczewski paints him - and I think I like the first depiction the best. In the second one, he's shown struck by grief, but he's also stylised to be a typical nobleman, a lot older than her - more of a father figure than a brother. In the first one, his static, shocked and absent expression conveys his loneliness and conrasts his sorrow with her almost ethereal form. It's an amazing composition and I really like it.

But what about the first picture?

Eloe is described by Słowacki as a personification of death, the caretaker of graves. What's interesting, Malczewski saw that Słowacki described her as a herder of reindeer and he decided to dress her in clothes whose patterns seem to be loosely inspired by the indigenous clothing of nomadic reindeer herders. I don't know enough to ascertain whether or not he actually used actual siberian cultures' artifacts for reference, or if he just extrapolated on whatever he saw as fitting.

In the poem Eloe appears throughout the story - here she carries Ellenai's body to her resting place. The confusion over who's who is reinforced by the fact that in this scene Eloe is described as cradling Ellenai's dead body in her wings and here in order to showcase Eloe properly the wings assume a very weird, gravity-defying position. Malczewski was a symbolist, which is revealed by the fact he gave Eloe shackles to carry - they may symbolise the constraint that is death, but also they could signify herself being an exile among angels, similarly to Ellenai and Anhelli. Her other hand is touching Ellenai's fingers, in a very delicate, loving way. She is indeed shown as a figure of compassion and beauty, and death in romanticism's books is generally shown as nothing but mercy. Malczewski's fascination by death as a figure of mercy is also visible in his other works.

Jacek Malczewski - Eloe (1909)