TY - JOUR N2 - This article argues that the short story ‘Ave Patria, morituri te salutant’, first published in a book of Stanisław Reymont's short stories in 1907, shows an overwhelming influence of the expressionist aesthetic. It is conspicuously present in the story's stripped-down sentences, spiked with highly emotive (animal) imagery, and cast in lines that move inexorably towards the catastrophic end. It manifests itself in the disillusioned, sarcastic tone which the writer uses to take up old certainties like military glory and patriotism. Finally, it brings to the fore the conflict between man and nature, man and the universe, the individual and the crowd. As all of those elements are evidently part of the narrative and dramatic structure of ‘Ave Patria…’, it should be viewed as an exemplification of Reymont's drift from realism to modernism (preexpressionism). That transition is also signalized by the tripartite structure of the story. The divisions are worked out with the precision of a master craftsman assembling ‘an epic clock’ (to borrow a telling phrase from Kazimierz Wyka's analysis of the structure of The Peasants), or a painter designing a triptych. The article pursues the latter analogy further by discussing the impressionist technique of framing and cutting off the dispensable elements of the picture. L1 - http://journals.pan.pl/Content/125779/PDF-MASTER/2022-04-RL-07.pdf L2 - http://journals.pan.pl/Content/125779 PY - 2022 IS - No 4 (373) EP - 635 DO - 10.24425/rl.2022.142986 KW - Polish literature of the early 20th century KW - short stories KW - realism versus modernism KW - expressionism KW - narrative structure KW - Stanisław Reymont (1867–1925) A1 - Liszka, Aleksandra PB - Polska Akademia Nauk Oddział w Krakowie Komisja Historycznoliteracka PB - Uniwersytet Jagielloński Wydział Polonistyki DA - 2023.01.23 T1 - A pre-expressionist tryptych, cut off: Ave Patria, morituri te salutant… by Władysław Reymont SP - 617 UR - http://journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/125779 T2 - Ruch Literacki ER -