Magdalena S. Rudkowska (Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Heroism: Sienkiewicz’s (In)versions

Throw what I say into the kettle.

Take the rust that lies

On Omphale’s needle,

From Hercules’s bloody fingers;

From this rust there will arise

Foppish knights — malingerers.^[1]

(Juliusz Słowacki, Kordian)

The works of Henryk Sienkiewicz undoubtedly have a mythopoeic dimension. It is worth noting, however, that the emerging heroic ideal is not unambiguous, and it does not fit simply, entirely, without friction into the ideal of masculinity. It seems that the starting point for the narrative variations on the heroic themes composed by the writer is his conviction regarding the crisis of masculinity and heroism in 19^th-century culture. Still, we should not be misled by the suggestion that the past does indeed offer a monolithic ideal that could remedy this crisis. Using the recurring Graeco-Roman motive of Heracles/Hercules (with special attention devoted to the episode of his stay at the court of Queen Omphale), we can examine Sienkiewicz’s inversions of the heroic myth as the literary manifestations of unorthodox ideas concerning the merging of the male and female elements in the process of “solidification” of the heroic ideal. It seems that the literary theme concerning the inversion of sexual roles favored ironic perspective, thanks to which the writer’s narration acquired ambivalent and ephemeral meanings.