Z żywotów świętych Bolesława Prusa jako legenda o niezbadanych wyrokach Boskich
Bolesław Prus’s Lives of Saints as a Legend about God's Mysterious Ways

Summary/Abstract: Prus’s 1891 novella Lives of Saints (Z żywotów świętych) contains the motif of “God’s mysterious ways,” common to hagiography and folklore. The motif is present in Leo Tolstoy’s What Men Live By (1881), translated into Polish in 1892 by Stanisław Witkiewicz, and in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s 1889 Sabała’s Tale (Sabałowa bajka). Prus’s legend is not a slight reworking of a folk tale but a case of a motif known from folk tales being used as the basis of an original work. Like Tolstoy and Witkiewicz later, Prus highlights the idea of the love of one’s neighbour and extends the message to include the positivist idea of social utility.

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