The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma

.

The book was made into a 1956 Polish film with Adolf Dymsza in the title role, then into a 1980 television miniseries starring Roman Wilhelmi and in 2002, a movie, starring Cezary Pazura.

Plot summary

Nicodemus Dyzma is a small-town man who comes to the Polish capital from the Eastern provinces (called "Kresy") in search of work. While walking the streets of Warsaw, he finds a lost invitation to a party reception. Hoping for a free meal, he decides to use it since he owns a tuxedo. At the reception, he befriends a Member of Parliament and wins the hearts of guests with his attitude. He is introduced to a wealthy landowner by the name of Kunicki, a former con artist, who is so impressed by Dyzma that he offers him a job as superintendent of his country estate. At the estate, Dyzma meets Kunicki's wife, Nina, who quickly falls in love with him. Soon Dyzma takes control of all affairs of the estate and starts to climb the social and political ladder. He is offered a series of prestigious appointments; however, he is also forced to hide his past from the prying eyes of his adversaries and the general public.

Legacy

"Nicodemus Dyzma" has become proverbial in Poland as an archetype of the crude opportunist who makes his upwardly-mobile way by dint of fortuitous connections, ruthlessness and the acquiescence of an oblivious society.

That is one way to see it, but more likely Dyzma is a character forced by the spirit of his times and the society around him to become something they need him to become. In that sense, he is not really so clever or even crude, nor an opportunist. He is rather just stupid, ignorant and malleable. Whatever happens to him is outside of his will or influence. That is the beauty and horror of this novel: that when the elite class need a puppet, they can find him anywhere, especially among the smallest of men, and mould him into what they need him to be. And he is none the wiser.

Controversy

An American novel "Being There" written by fellow Pole Jerzy Kosiński bears strong resemblance to the adventures of Nicodemus Dyzma. In June 1982, a "Village Voice" article by Geoffrey Stokes and Eliot Fremont-Smith accused Kosiński of plagiarizing Dołęga-Mostowicz whose bestselling novel wasn't known to English readers at the time of Kosiński's publication in 1971. The article also claimed that all of Kosiński's novels including "Being There" had actually been ghost-written or possibly translated from Polish by his "assistant editors," pointing to striking stylistic differences among them and sparking off further authorship controversies about Kosiński's literary output. [http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9610/myers.html] "Being There" was filmed by Hal Ashby in 1979 under the same title starring Peter Sellers.

ee also

* Politics in fiction
* Political fiction
* including film "Being There".

Further reading

[http://www.intratext.com/IXT/POL0178/_INDEX.HTM Read the full text of "Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy" in Polish]