Bartłomiej Szleszyński, (Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Henryk Sienkiewicz: Space and Biography. From America to Africa

We should start with a rather obvious observation: Henryk Sienkiewicz was an avid traveler, and the time he visited particular spaces appears to coincide with significant changes in his life and artistic development. The claim that “the spatial perspective exerts a tremendous impact on his perception of reality” cannot be disputed.^[1] However, we do need to make a less evident reservation here. If the space covered by a traveler is to be correlated with their life story arranged along the time axis, then we need to be more specific about Sienkiewicz, whose touring did not start for good until his early 40s. He spent the first two decades of his life in the region of his home village Wola Okrzejska and in Warsaw. The third decade sees the writer widen his space of experience with stays in Vienna, Berlin, Ostend, and Paris, but it was during a journey to and across America (commenced in 1876) that he really got bitten by the traveling bug. Between 1876 and 1886, Sienkiewicz visited Paris, Constantinople, Athens, Naples (for the first time), and countless health resorts, where he accompanied his ailing wife. The fifth decade is quite busy as well, with Sienkiewicz’s second journey to another continent (Africa) as the major peripatetic adventure.

It would appear that, while the American expedition opened an important chapter in the writer’s life, the African one closed it. In fact, the latter seemed to be a failed attempt at reenacting the former, and it marked a symbolic end of Sienkiewicz’s youth. The fifteen years that pass between the American and African episodes are of profound significance for his works and biography. This was the period that saw the writing of the Trilogy and Without Dogma (Bez dogmatu), as well as the coda to the dramatic story of Sienkiewicz’s marriage to Maria née Szetkiewicz.

Even though Siekiewicz’s African adventure was an attempt at reliving the American one, and though by that time the writer’s expectations were raised by Verne’s and Rogoziński’s fanciful narratives of the Dark Continent, these two expeditions were actually the very opposites of each other. In America, the young, unknown reporter made his way towards freedom – from the company of other people, from the love of amassing things, from nervous breakdowns; he aimed at proving his manhood through self-reliance, self-efficacy, and competence as a hunter. In Africa, he was already a well-known writer who may have been fantasizing about an escape from fame but, brandishing numerous letters of introduction, was warmly welcomed and recognized everywhere he went. In the end, both his health and hunting skills failed him. The culmination of the African chapter was a fit of yellow fever, and souvenirs bought in bulk in Zanzibar had to serve as substitutes for the desired trophies. Last but not least, while American exploits left such an imprint on the writer that it took almost two years for his mind to settle back into the reality of Europe, it appears that Sienkiewicz never meaningfully experienced Africa. And yet – he did not feel unsatisfied and eager for more – which is yet another difference that separates him from the energetic, always-adventure-hungry narrator of the letters from America. On leaving Zanzibar, Sienkiewicz recapitulated in a letter to Godlewski: “I have seen everything I wanted or needed to see.”^[2]