Postmodern
Sienkiewicz

Edited by
Bartłomiej Szleszyński
and Magdalena Rudkowska

Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, Warszawa 2019

Reviewers:
prof.dr hab. Tadeusz Budrewicz
dr hab. Wacław Forajter

Translators:
Ewa Nowik-Dziewicka
Joanna Moczyńska
Klaudyna Cwynar
Katarzyna Fetlińska

Editor:
Anna Pochmara

Language editor:
Michelle Atallah

Cover design:
Paweł Ryżko

Layout and typesetting:
Maria Narewska (TEKSTura)

The publication was financed by a Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki (National Project
for the Development of the Humanities) grant.
Sienkiewicz ponowoczesny – laboratorium cyfrowe (Postmodern Sienkiewicz: Digital Laboratory),
no. 2aH 15 0195 83

@ Copyright by Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2019

ISBN 978-83-66076-56-3

Foreword

Postmodernity, one may say, is modernity without illusions

(the obverse of which is that modernity is postmodernity
refusing to accept its own truth).

Zygmunt Bauman1

As an active participant in the debate on civilization and the human condition, Henryk Sienkiewicz largely shaped the modernity of nineteenth-century Polish culture; the culture, let us add, not devoid of its illusions, but at the same time allowing the writers of the period to exert an immense impact on its social practice. The fact that Sienkiewicz – an ironist, a positivist, and a conservatist in one – was torn by doubt and ambivalence does seem to encourage ever-new perspectives on his writing, biography, and the public reception of his works from the vantage point of current concepts and notions. It is our conviction that all three aspects of the writer’s life are worth examining as cultural texts, with the use of today’s methodologies of gender, geocriticism, visuality, aesthetics of reception, and political theology. We should try to unlock the interdisciplinary potential of combining literary and cultural (to some extent, even politological) frames of reference, and verify the applicability of the above for research into literature and its social implications.

Henryk Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre may be seen to epitomize the symbolic interrelation between the birth of the modern Polish nation on the one hand and the establishment of the novel as a mythogenic paradigm for the entire community on the other. In a way, Sienkiewicz’s novels (striking a chord with the reading public to an unprecedented degree) eventually became an account of modern Polishness and nineteenth-century Poland with all its wealth of fantasies: a story so complex, so multi-layered, that one cannot resist adding a small new chapter written from today’s point of view.

The book you are holding in your hands provides insights into Sienkiewicz’s rich and multi-faceted writing, including his innumerable letters, travel literature, journalism, and novels. It is yet more proof of a well-known thesis, supported by numerous authoritative studies, that these works readily yield to analysis in the context of phenomena characteristic for (post)modernity.2 At the same time, we must emphasize that this and related approaches by no means mark the end to the interpretative possibilities offered by the life and works of the author.

With its hallmark Postmodern Sienkiewicz collection, our research project is an attempt at expanding the range of critical and methodological perspectives to include the comprehensive, culturally defined (post)modernity, and to find a new mode of discussing this fascinating writer, his literature and biography. The reservation to be made here is that the aim is not to force a specific interpretation onto Sienkiewicz’s writing through some theory-imposed violations. To the contrary, our objective is to employ research tools that would bring out fresh new meanings, offering novel readings that, far from being “art for art’s sake,” would significantly enrich the existing studies on Sienkiewicz’s works and broaden their scope in the future.

The contributors, both literary and cultural scholars, were asked to choose between the following subject areas: 1) narrative tensions between masculine and feminine factors (including the issue of “heroism”); 2) space, location, and life story, discussed in the context of psychobiography, otherness, and geopoetics; 3) visual aspects of the writer’s oeuvre, biography, and reception; 4) so-called “political theology.” Obviously, the fields of interest tend to overlap (the first and the second, i.e. masculinity studies and psychobiographical approaches, in particular), which confirms yet again that Sienkiewicz’s life and works continue to present us with a wealth of interpretive possibilities and solutions.

These considerations appear to have been genuinely rewarding in all of the above research areas, giving rise to new analyses of the writer’s life and works. Gender studies research by Grażyna Borkowska, Magdalena Rudkowska, and Dawid M. Osiński uncovers a fascinating network of tensions, interrelations, and transgressions in Sienkiewicz’s writing (oscillating between masculinity and femininity, not shying away from the topics of sexuality and violence). This theme also pervades the second section with contributions from Bartłomiej Szleszyński, Agnieszka Bąbel, Konrad Niciński, and Aleksandra Wójtowicz, who discuss the writer’s life as tightly bound with the semantic significance of time and space. They examine the America – or California, to be more precise – that Sienkiewicz explored, and the Warsaw that Sienkiewicz inhabited; they appraise his responsiveness to changes in the cultural space that were brought about by the then blooming post-subjugation, pro-independence discourse of the Other and the place (together with genius loci) as the focus of geocriticical readings. In the next section – devoted to the broadly defined visual culture –Piotr Kubkowski, Iwona Kurz, and Igor Piotrowski offer extensive analyses of Sienkiewicz’s public perception in terms of both visuality and space. The last section is a dialogical diptych featuring texts by Marek Pąkciński and by Maciej Gloger, whose interest in political theology allows for new insights into the possible causes underlying the immense social impact of the writer’s novels.

This collection of critical essays does not aim to bring back from oblivion the now-forgotten, marginal writings by Sienkiewicz. Instead, it is an attempt at opening new promising reading directions for the popular and the canonical ones. While the interpretations of selected phenomena in the present publication cannot but be far from exhaustive, they should be read as an invitation to reconsider and re-evaluate particular research themes. The contributors suggest some revisions to the generally accepted tenets of Sienkiewicz studies, or move into uncharted territory and try to draw on the already established views to design new frameworks of meaning.

Although the contributors were obviously free to select their approach and follow their own line of criticism, it is easily observable that some tropes resurface in different texts and in a variety of contexts. One should mention here Sienkiewicz’s ambivalence-ridden masculinity and his American adventure, so cherished by the writer himself, so enigmatic, so full of blank spots. Equally meaningful is the fact that a number of researchers cite Sienkiewicz’s rather crude letter to Daniel Zgliński, with its intimate bawdy remarks highlighting the fundamental themes of the former’s stay in America (masculinity, freedom, hunting). Still, our authors do not settle for obvious answers to the many questions that arise. The analyses touch upon Sienkiewicz’s (self-)image creation: a specific multi-faceted boundary crossing3 both in his life and writings, as well as a variety of reception mechanisms employed in the reading of his characters and works in general.

Incidentally, on the institutional level, the Postmodern Sienkiewicz project is itself an example of crossing the boundaries. It was headed by the Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL, PAN) and developed mostly by scholars affiliated with this institution as regards its concept, publication design, and individual articles; however, it also involved vital contributions from the Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw (IKP, UW) and the Institute of Polish Literature, University of Warsaw (ILP, UW), as well as Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz. It should be added here that the final version of the present collection is the result of our placing emphasis not so much on multi-institutionality as on interdisciplinarity, i.e. combining the approaches and fields of literary and cultural studies.

Funded by a grant from the Polish National Programme for the Development of Humanities, the project is subtitled A Digital Laboratory, since the majority of project actions were aimed at developing a digital collection for the New Panorama of Polish Literature platform (http://nplp.pl/kolekcja/sienkiewicz-ponowoczesny/). Therefore, it would be a gross oversight not to mention the key role of the IBL’s team involved with the New Panorama of Polish Literature, namely, Bartłomiej Szleszyński (Project Head), Konrad Niciński, Paweł Rams, Paweł Ryżko, and Agnieszka Kochańska, with a valuable assistance from Kornelia Sobczak (IKP, UW).

The resulting articles have been published in two media: the above-mentioned online collection, rich in visual content, and the traditional printed form, both in Polish and English language versions. The primary publication form is an open-access e-book. This choice does not only stem from the current tendency towards the digitalization of the humanities, but also from a firm conviction held by all of the people involved in the project that the outcomes of public-funded projects should be publicly available (which is enabled by digital distribution). The supremacy of the digital format was also determined by the premises established for the project by the IBL’s New Panorama of Polish Literature team.

The editors would like to thank the book’s reviewers, Professor Tadeusz Budrewicz, Pedagogical University of Kraków, and Professor Wacław Forajter, University of Silesia, Katowice, for their support and valuable comments, which helped to shape and further improve this collection.

Bartłomiej Szleszyński

Magdalena Rudkowska

Warsaw, February 2019

1 Z. Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, Oxford 1993, p. 32.

2 Ryszard Koziołek’s Sienkiewicz’s Bodies: Studies of Gender and Violence, Frankfurt am Main 2015 is the most seminal work of 21st-century Sienkiewicz studies. Another publication of particular interest is a recent collection of compelling articles on, among others, Sienkiewicz’s representation of masculinity and cultural exoticism; unfortunately, it came out only on submitting the present book for printing, which is why it could not be acknowledged even in literature review footnotes (see Sienkiewicz. Nowa odsłona [Sienkiewicz: New edition], ed. G. Borkowska, R. Kotowski, A. Kurska, Kielce 2018).

3 See T. Bujnicki, “Sienkiewicz przekracza granice. O ‘przełomie’ w życiu i twórczości pisarza” [Sienkiewicz pushing the boundries: About ‘the turning point’ in the life and works of the writer], Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2009, vol. 2, no. 44, pp. 63–85. This publication proved to be a source of inspiration for many contributors to the present volume.

The Frontiers of Masculinity

Grażyna Borkowska

(Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Sienkiewicz’s Theatre of Cruelty

The logic of suffering

Sienkiewicz’s inclination to the methodical construction of the scenes of cruelty was rarely noticed1 and immediately justified with historical context.2 Drawing attention to violence, which was ubiquitous in the Trilogy, Tadeusz Zieliński states, “One cannot silence such a phenomenon; if such an atrocity took place, then the conscientious painter of the epoch describes it, and we cannot bear grudges about it. The only accusation that we may form is that he describes it in too much detail.”3 The topic of the overly detailed descriptions of the scenes of violence appears in Zieliński’s essay only incidentally and disappears, giving way to other topics. In the conclusions of his essay, he asserts, seemingly with no connection to this first mention, that when everything is well, we can devote our attention to aesthetic issues, but:

When misfortune strikes, endangering the life of the nation, it immediately awakens the awareness, though rather vague, that this life is the highest element, and it subordinates all creative forces of the nation. The autonomous aesthetic gives way to biological orientation, also in the area of art. Then, the nation dispenses justice to its masters – the justice the value of which depends on the nation’s own vitality and dignity; the writer, the artist who led the nation along the road of life, strong, healthy, beautiful life is justified.4

For Tadeusz Zieliński, Sienkiewicz is an unrivaled master of existential persistence – “in power, health, and beauty.”5 The author does not provide any arguments in favor of this thesis. How, in what way, does the writer, the lover of the historical realities of the bloody epoch of wars and risings, often lost or portending imminent defeat, manage to play the role of the propagator of the nation’s strength and well-being? We could treat Zieliński’s idea as an apt conception of a philologist familiar with the rhetorical methods for concluding a critical text if it had not been for another precedent created with a hand of a subtle critic. This precedent was provided by Maria Konopnicka.6

In a small sketch devoted to Sienkiewicz, attached to two ample critical essays concerning Józef Bohdan Zaleski and Adam Asnyk, Konopnicka celebrates the greatness of the writer as the creator of life. Not a chronicler but a creator: “In this work, apart from its historical content and artistic beauty, we can always read, on every page, an imperative that tells us with great power: Whatever your fate is – live! And whatever your suffering is – live! And whatever your weakness is – live! And even if you were to suffer more while burning, rather than cooling off; being afire, rather than dying out, then burn, be afire, and live!”7

Konopnicka’s text is organized via the metaphor of fire and its related tropes. So, we have the bonfire, firebrands, burning logs, hot ash, which initially, in the early works of Sienkiewicz, was barely smoldering, in need of stimulating, fanning, and boosting the weak sparks:

Portfolio [Humoreski z teki Worszyłły, Humorous Sketches from Woroszyłło’s Portfolio], whose every page targets apathy, indifference, stillness, and stuffiness, is nothing but a stab into the dying bonfire, a stab into the firebrands, covered with the ash of selfishness and idleness, which – by themselves – could not sustain the flame of life. 8

The short stories written in Sienkiewicz’s early years are called by the poet “the fuel,” collected from scattered brushwood. The fates of economic migrants, the excluded ones, those who were not included in the division of material goods, constitute “the wasted firewood of life.” The historical novels kindle the fire of the great historical events – so not from the brushwood anymore, but from large firebrands, only seemingly dead. They made “the fire of our souls blaze stronger. More visible, hotter, and more commonly felt, and our life intensified.”9

Konopnicka is aware of the paradox that she uses, and she does not refrain from explanation. The burning logs emit light and heat, but they die soon, self-burning. Sienkiewicz’s novels, written and read “to cheer people’s hearts,” are filled with the images of pain and suffering. How can we reconcile the logic of life and the imperative of death? Konopnicka does not explain the author’s choices with the conventions of the genre or the historical context. She can see a deeper individual purpose. She writes about the author of the Trilogy in the following manner:

In his hands, the motif of pain, the motif of torment, the motif of death as a sacrifice has become a powerful tool of expiation, atonement, and the power of resurrection. Some figures created by Sienkiewicz are based solely on this motif, and their mental suffering means tearing their soul into bloody pieces, and their bodily suffering is so great that it is unbearable to the audience.10

What justifies the accumulation of horror – for instance in the scene of “the gruesome death of Azja (Azia), the unfortunate traitor” or in the scenes of torment administered to Jurand in the dungeons of the Teutonic Knights’ castle? The horror created by Sienkiewicz does not end with the scenes of tortures; it is never fruitless as Konopnicka notices. It is ruled by its own laws – the law of forgiveness given to those who were doomed to it, and the law of sanctity for those who willingly sacrificed their lives.11 The poet considers the case of Płoszowski along slightly different lines. He suffered but insufficiently to deserve help; he merely deserved to be appreciated for his metamorphosis and to earn understanding and reluctant acceptance on the part of the readers.

Just the way that suffering is not fruitless, fault cannot be hopeless. That is supposed to be proven by the figure of Kmicic (Kmita), treated as a prefiguration of the repentant sinner.

Mystique of death

Still another perspective on cruelty depicted in the Trilogy is offered by Stanisław Tarnowski. According to him, crime has to be punished, and the manner of killing shown by Sienkiewicz, although horrible, was consistent with historical truth. The celebration of cruelty is detrimental to the aesthetics of the novel, the aesthetic which – contrary to Gotthold Ephraim  Lessing’s recommendations – is dragged into the whirl of horror that we do not want to see and about which we do not want to know. Disgusted with the cruelty of Nowowiejski (Novovyeysky) and his subordinates, Tarnowski wrote: “Thus, in our Polish and Christian feeling, we are offended and worried with this torture because due to it, the criminal appears to be a martyr, while the aggrieved knight – a torturer.12 The guilty can be killed, but we should not have to listen to “the crackling of his joints and watch his intestines being torn with a blunt wooden wheel.”13

Konopnicka does not turn a blind eye nor a deaf ear; she wants to find a place for human suffering, even the most culpable, in the Christian order of the world. Tarnowski only mentions “the dignity of the martyr,” Konopnicka is looking for it intensely. Her argumentation fails to account for those pages of the novel where there is no mercy for the suffering enemies, the pages which show the cruelty of Jeremi Wiśniowiecki’s (Prince Yeremi) and other commanders, accepted by the narrator, where the story discusses in detail the intricately planned and methodically conducted tortures, the omnipotent power of death and the acts of revenge that do not treat the wounds. But this “justification” of Sienkiewicz (for which the poet was scorned) would not have been possible without the participation of the writer, who – as Andrzej Stoff showed in the quoted paper – went beyond the conventions of a historical novel by presenting not only the fear but also the soul of the condemned. Azja’s death is preceded with solemn thoughts:

At times too it came to his head that after torments and death he would go straightway to paradise; but because once he had professed Christianity, and had lived long among Christians, fear seized him at the thought of Christ. Christ would have no pity on him; if the Prophet had been mightier than Christ, he would not have given him into the hands of Novovyeysky. Perhaps, however, the Prophet would show pity yet, and take the soul out of him before Adam Novovyeysky would kill him with torture.14

Full sacralization may take place only with positive characters; the agony of Longinus Podbipięta (Podbipyenta) may serve as a clear example:

When he saw the bows, and the arrows poured out from their quivers at the feet of his assailants, Longinus recognised that the hour of his death had arrived, and he began to say the litany of the most Holy Virgin. Silence fell, the crowd held its breath in expectation of what would happen. The first arrow whizzed forth just as Longinus repeated “Mother of the Redeemer,” and it grazed his temple, another arrow flew forth as Longinus said “Oh, Blessed Virgin,’’ and it stuck fast in his shoulder. The words of the litany mingled with the whizzing of the arrows and when Longinus had said “Star of the morning” arrows were sticking in his shoulders, in his sides, and legs. Blood oozing from a wound in his temple flowed over his eyes; he saw as through a mist, the meadow, and the Tartars. Presently he heard no longer the whizzing of arrows; he felt that his strength was forsaking him, that his legs were bending beneath him: his head dropped on his breast. For the last time he fell on his knees. Then he said in a half groan, “Queen of the Angels,” and these were his last words on earth. The hosts in heaven received his soul and placed it as a translucent pearl at the feet of the Queen of the Angels.15

Always, or almost always, human suffering evokes the suffering of the Saints, Christ’s suffering. It is reflected in the sacred as if in a mirror; it is fulfilled in overt or covert analogies, even if it is the suffering of sinners: the three-hour suffering of Christ on the cross and the three-day death of treacherous Azja; the statue of Saint Sebastian, pierced with arrows, and the fate of brave Longinus Podbipięta, stabbed like a shield, with a bleeding wound in his side. Should we seek the uplifting power of torment and suffering that comes from the loss and defeat here, in religious analogies? Isn’t the physical deformity, the deformity of the physical body, of the body of the nation, the signal for the reviving Spirit? This is the course of events predicted by the mystics. For instance, Słowacki in his drama Samuel Zborowski. Magdalena Saganiak wrote about this drama:

Dying on the cross, Christ ruined his body although his head (contrary to Słowacki’s protagonist – G. B.) had not been cut away. He did not ruin it in order to re-create it because this form is not his true essence. That is why the Chancellor’s deed, which led to the deformation of Samuel’s body, simultaneously constituted the sin and the tragic fault, but also the liberation of the Spirit. Both for Samuel and for the Chancellor, it became clearer what or who they essentially are and what is the essence of the transient character of their human status.16

Sienkiewicz is not a mystic; he does not go as far in his conceptions of religious esotericism as Słowacki did, but the ethos of chivalry at the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth equally well accustoms his protagonists to death. The famous “This life is nothing!,” which Michał Wołodyjowski (Volodyovski), preparing for his death, asks to be passed to Basia, does not entail disrespect to life, but it is rather the harbinger of new events and new life. What Magdalena Saganiak wrote about the mystic poet proves partly correct in the case of Sienkiewicz’s historical novels: “Słowacki depicts the dangerous life of a knight, which does not consist in the despise of death, resulting from ignorance, but rather in life with death being its other dimension.”17 At the end of the last volume of the Trilogy, something evidently comes to an end so that something else could begin. This “something” has a historical dimension; it is not exclusively spiritual – as in Słowacki’s works. It is equally incredible, driven by the inner force and supernatural sanction, like the visions of a mystic. Let us note that between the scene of Wołodyjowski’s death and the scene of his burial, there is no temporal gap, no chiasmus, no break. We would wait in vain for the information regarding the preparations for the burial although, in the Polish historical tradition, a considerable amount of time usually elapsed between death and burial (sometimes even a month, though, this period could be shorter in war conditions). There is no graphic sign delimiting the text (a new chapter, spacing, an asterisk) which would signify the flow of time. In terms of narration, both events remain parts of the same whole. Wołodyjowski died, and he was buried in a double coffin: leaden and wooden, which was not typical. He “lay there high among the tapers, in glory immeasurable, but in the silence of death,”18 and he was waiting, symbolically speaking, for Sobieski, the hetman, to enter. And when he did, “The eyes of all were turned to him; a quiver shook the people; and he went with clatter of spurs to the catafalque, lordly, mighty, with the face of a Caesar.”19

Saganiak notices a connection between Słowacki’s and Sienkiewicz’s protagonists: “They have something in common as the knights of great and powerful Poland, Christian and just, waging war on antique and modern paganism and on contempt for God.”20 We need to remember not only Kmicic, whom we could interpret as the equivalent of Zborowski, adapted for the needs of a popular novel, but also the dramatic sermon delivered by Priest Kamiński in the collegiate church in Stanisławów, where the “Little Knight” was temporarily buried, and his horrific prophecy:

O Lord, they will turn churches into mosques, and chant the Koran in places where till this time the Gospel has been chanted. Thou hast cast us down, O Lord; Thou hast turned Thy face from us, and given us into the power of the foul Turk. Inscrutable are Thy decrees; but who, O Lord, will resist the Turk now? What armies will war with him on the boundaries? Thou, from whom nothing in the world is concealed,—Thou knowest best that there is nothing superior to our cavalry! What cavalry can move for Thee, O Lord, as ours can? Wilt Thou set aside defenders behind whose shoulders all Christendom might glorify Thy name? O kind Father, do not desert us! show us Thy mercy! Send us a defender! Send a crusher of the foul Mohammedan! Let him come hither; let him stand among us; let him raise our fallen hearts! Send him, O Lord!21

The arrival of the Savior prevented this prophecy from coming true. The alliance between Poland and God was renewed in the spirit of enlightened providentialism and mystic romanticism.

Dionysian Sienkiewicz?

If Wołodyjowski sacrificed himself, his sacrifice constituted the beginning of salvation. The body suffers, but the soul is strengthened. This is the economy of Polish/Sarmatian sacrifice. Its essence is expressed in Słowacki’s Samuel Zborowski, but not necessarily in Samuel Zborowski by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz. Which literary work is more consistent with the spirit of Sienkiewicz’s writing? We have already pointed out the connections with romantic mysticism, though not necessarily with any specific mystic dramas written by Słowacki, which the author of the Trilogy could not have known. Rymkiewicz perceives the conflict between Jan Zamoyski, Batory’s Chancellor, and Samuel Zborowski as a deadly clash between the supporters of the absolute power of the monarch, the power that the Chancellor was dreaming of, and the free unbridled ethos of Polish knighthood. In the story told by Rymkiewicz, unlike in Słowacki’s story, it is not only Zborowski’s spirit but also his mutilated body that is alive. Stolen after the execution at Lubranka, it was carried in a blood-covered coffin to the Zebrzydowskis’ tenement, perhaps in Bocheńska Street in Kraków, where it underwent ablutions and other aesthetic treatments. The four daughters of Kasper Zabrzydowski and Jordanówna from the clan of Trąba washed the body of Samuel, who was their uncle. They sewed back his head and other body parts that suffered during the execution (parts of his arm, shoulder, fingers). Rymkiewicz assumes that they were working without gloves, since, in those times, contact with noble blood was not considered unpleasant. “It was solemn, this sewing back of his head – as if Roman, something resembling the works of maidens in ancient Rome.”22 The body was dressed in red silk, and the coffin was pitched. A glass pane was placed above the sewed-back head. Rymkiewicz wonders if this was done in order to show the ruler’s cruelty. It does not seem so. Coffins with glass panes used to be part of funeral customs in Poland. From this perspective, Wołodyjowski’s double coffin seems exceptional. Incidentally, encouraged by Rymkiewicz’s inquisitiveness, I am wondering what Wołodyjowski’s coffin contained. What was put inside after the explosion that shook the whole Kamieniec?

Rymkiewicz emphasizes that after Zborowski’s death, everything that was said or written by his supporters, mainly his brothers, concerned his dead body. About his body’s comfort, its transport, the violence it suffered. And what is meant is not a phantasmal body, communal or political – like in the work of Ernst H. Kantorowicz,23 but the body understood as literally as possible. Rymkiewicz makes a clear reservation: “It seems […] that the second life of the body, in some fundamental way, differs from the second posthumous life of the soul – this life is local, earthly, and mortal.”24 The paradoxical posthumous vitality of the body is confirmed by the fact that it spent quite some time unburied, carried around, transported. Perhaps it was hidden from Zamoyski and his supporters? It has not been established where and when Zborowski was finally buried.

When showing the suffering bodies, Sienkiewicz adheres to the mystic-romantic line: the body is the way to save the soul and to enhance the (national) spirit. Konopnicka seems to be discussing this although the vitalistic theme woven into her text suggests the influence of the conceptions originating from modernism streaked with Nietzscheanism. Particularly in Zieliński’s interpretation, the Dionysian, if not Nietzschean, character becomes entangled in mystic interpretations; it overlaps with them. The figure of Samuel Zborowski, as described by Rymkiewicz, is thoroughly Dionysian: insane, extreme, anti-Christian, going to certain death, fragmented and cut, and then in some way resurrected, not in the soul, but rather in his body. Even this sewing together of the parts of the body of the Polish knight by the Zebrzydowski sisters alludes to the female Dionysian rituals, to the attachment of women to Dionysus, to their maintenance of his cult. Rymkiewicz is Dionysian, but what about Sienkiewicz? Can we find similar notes in his protagonists? He seems too focused on Catholicism to take other religions and cults seriously. Tadeusz Zieliński, an eminent world-famous expert on antiquity, regrets that Sienkiewicz did not know much about the culture of ancient Greece. This opinion can be confirmed when we read Sienkiewicz’s novels and Greek tales, which only superficially reflect the historical realities – artificial, pre-textual, light, if not trivial. However, the scholar can see a certain way out of this situation – religious syncretism. According to Zieliński, the Holy Mother absorbed virgin-goddesses and mother-goddesses of the antiquity. Combining Catholicism with the love of his homeland, the Polish Catholic adds a new sacrament to his religion: the sacrament of Mother-Earth. The symbol of Mother-Earth is the connecting link between antiquity and Christianity. Zieliński buries the gulf between the cults of antiquity and Christianity. The example of Sienkiewicz’s Ligia shows the different forms the religious attitude towards the world could take throughout various historical epochs. If the heroine had lived three hundred years later, she might have fought to defend the statue of Demeter in Eleusis and her opponents would have been the hordes of Alaric, Goth, and – “what a shame to say” – as Zieliński adds the point – of a Christian, setting fire to the sanctuary of the goddess. As Michał Luśnia (actually Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz) ironically and perversely wrote, Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis can be considered a revolutionary novel; the fight between Christians and pagan Rome prefigures the clashes between the proletariat and the defenders of capitalism.25

Since Sienkiewicz did not write a novel about the barbarian raids of Rome, and he was far from any revolutionary associations, we have to stick to what we are left with: Tadeusz Zieliński’s attempt at the Dionysian reading of Sienkiewicz’s historical works. Is it legitimate? The answer to this question requires an analysis of the Nietzschean themes in Sienkiewicz’s work – the themes I understand differently than Maciej Gloger, yet this complex issue calls for a separate paper.26 Let us assume, here and now, that in the case of some of Sienkiewicz’s heroes, such as Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, who were able to suspend their ethical obligations and were brave enough to give up on the rules of ethos, we can talk about the shadow of apparent Nietzscheanism (it is apparent because it was loosely linked to personal risk of the hero who was invoking higher sanctions). Nietzscheanism which does not lead in a straightforward way towards a healthy, beautiful, and peaceful life, as Zieliński would like to see it, but is the embodiment of violence. This violence is so strong and omnipotent that one of the researchers compared Prince Wiśniowiecki’s order to kill Khmelnytsky’s envoys to the state of emergency, as defined by Giorgio Agamben, and thus to a totalitarian situation: the sovereign, being beyond the law, proclaims its absolute reign or – just the contrary – the repeal of its rules. “The law constitutes the personal inviolability of an envoy, but only until the sovereign repeals this law on the territory that the sovereign controls.”27 Incidentally, this episode in Sienkiewicz’s story resembles a fragment from Jan Kazimierz, Słowacki’s drama, where we can find a similar scene of violation of the envoys; Sienkiewicz’s scene resembles and reminds us of Słowacki’s work.28

The history of Polish literature has not so far seen anything inappropriate in an attitude streaked with cruelty, which in Słowacki’s writing is aesthetically softened with humor and the grotesque, modeled on Shakespeare, among others (Firlej, in response to the demands of the envoys replies with an allusion to The Merchant of Venice: “Why didn’t you demand a pound of flesh from each heart?”). Juliusz Kleiner, however, wants to interpret the grotesque convention of the drama in a clearly ideological context: “But when Khmelnytsky’s envoy arrives and demands that Jeremiasz [Jeremi Wiśniowiecki – G.B.] be given away, the drama heightens. We can feel the Polish knight, we can feel the hero in what old Firlej says.”29 For the sake of clarity, let us add that in Słowacki’s drama, it is Mikołaj Koniecpolski, and not – as in Sienkiewicz’s text – Wiśniowiecki, who suggests that the envoy should be killed, and his head should be used to load the cannon.

Violence and eroticism

The area of violence in Sienkiewicz’s novels and short stores concerns not only the field of military combat but also erotic struggles. In both areas, the writer suspends (for a longer or shorter period of time), the rules of ethics. Urszula Benka, the author of an excellent essay entitled “Święty sadyzm Sienkiewicza” (The holy sadism of Sienkiewicz), adds – and this is of utmost importance – that the suspense is done by the reader’s consent:

If the protagonist “truly” desires, if, in some peculiar way (which the author assumes to exist irrationally, in a jumble of primeval emotions), he becomes the follower of his female goddess – he is free to do anything, and the reader is fully aware of this fact. When Bohun kidnaps Helena, the reader does not hold it against him – the female reader is sure to be disappointed that the lady chose the less fascinating (for the female reader) bachelor from Great Poland, so obsequious towards the honorable Wiśniowiecki family. When Kmicic kidnaps Oleńka, the male and female readers, as long as they are “excited” about The Deluge, support the daredevil without any scruples and without taking into consideration the civic virtues of his little rival. In other words, if the sensible and just Oleńka had chosen Wołodyjowski, the public opinion would have held her in lower esteem than if she had given in to the sexual urges of Radziwiłł. 30

War crimes come as no surprise to anyone even if they clearly break the rules of the ethos of chivalry: the murders of the envoys, women, and children, “ethnic cleansing,” collective responsibility, rapes committed on women, their kidnapping, deportation, and deprivation of freedom. Such images can be found in all parts of the Trilogy, in Quo Vadis, as well as in other works by Sienkiewicz. They concern both conflicting sides, and even if not everyone commits war crimes, everyone accepts them. Feeling helpless, Benka writes ironically that the acts of war violence, especially violence against women, have a special meaning in the logic of war and “result from a certain primeval impulse – to pour sperm into a place where a murder was committed.”31

Taking the description of American expanses as the starting point, read through the image of Ukraine, which Sienkiewicz did not know from his personal experience, Benka confirms some of Zieliński’s intuitions, and she strengthens them, moving the considerations from a cultural to a psychoanalytical Freudian plane. She does that, but – as it later turns out – only in order to quickly leave this path. Similarly to Zieliński, she writes about the syncretism of Sienkiewicz’s imagination (or perhaps synthesizing of the remembered or projected images is a cognitive process of many writers?), which would show not only in mixing the descriptions of the Ukrainian steppe with the images of the American prairie, but also, primarily, in including his reading reminiscences, spread on the mythical tissue formed by Polish literature – the works of Mickiewicz and Słowacki, into the sphere of allegedly personal perception. But is this tangle of what was seen and what was known composed only of the texts of culture? Benka writes: “the land of Ukraine was for him [Sienkiewicz] a woman – a mystic woman, a woman that is giving birth, like Greek Gaea, to beautiful women (krasavitsa) – ‘the steppe sisters.’ In this sense, it comes as no surprise that his vivid comparisons finally focus on the womb, that in the subtle tissue of With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem), Helen’s womb seems to be some kind of sanctissimum […].”32 The junior nature of Ukrainian culture, a certain kind of its subordination to some rather indeterminate center of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, translates into gender relations. Ukraine, as a prefiguration of femininity, undergoes conquest and capture, as a prefiguration of fertility – undergoes sacralization. Both acts (capture and sacralization) follow the same logic – wartime-sacral logic (holy sacrifice, the association between sin and expiation), and Sienkiewicz fully employs both.

Violent sexual behaviors appear in the majority of Sienkiewicz’s works: the use of physical force towards women, kidnapping, beating, rapes, the phantasms of physical possession of a woman, of domination, of tearing her body, and of profanation are present not only in historical novels but also in American stories (Orso) and modern works (Charcoal Sketches [Szkice węglem], Whirlpool [Wiry], In Desert and Wilderness [W pustyni i w puszczy]).33 Here is a symptomatic passage from Quo Vadis – the longing Vinicio is restless, waiting for the girl to be found:

But there were moments, too, in which he grew pale from rage, and delighted in thoughts of the humiliation and tortures which he would inflict on Lygia when he found her. He wanted not only to have her, but to have her as a trampled slave. At the same time he felt that if the choice were left him, to be her slave or not to see her in life again, he would rather be her slave. There were days in which he thought of the marks which the lash would leave on her rosy body, and at the same time he wanted to kiss those marks. It came to his head also that he would be happy if he could kill her.34

Benka formulates an extremely interesting thesis: she believes that the popularity of Sienkiewicz’s works and “even the particular ‘love’ that the wide circle of Polish readers feel towards them indicates that similar tendencies were not only Sienkiewicz’s individual aberration. This means that the obsessions of imagining, the aforementioned connection between fight and eroticism, between the spiritual struggles and love struggles held a wide appeal. Obviously – in the sphere of the unconscious.”35

How does the author of the essay explain the perverse inclinations of Sienkiewicz, and perhaps even of the entire epoch? She makes a subtle allusion to Freud and psychoanalysis, but when she was writing her text in 1994, she a bit too hastily assumed that “the European affair of humanities with psychoanalysis” had omitted Polish culture, so Freud could not have influenced Sienkiewicz in any way. Let us note, however, that we are discussing the unconscious, so no conscious influence was necessary; still, it was possible to offer explanations along the lines of Freud and other researchers of human sexuality: Richard Krafft-Ebing, John Symonds, Havelock Ellis. In other words, Sienkiewicz could have been subjected to the mechanisms discovered by psychoanalysis, simultaneously not being aware of their existence. Benka, however, chooses a different interpretation, far more conciliatory towards the Polish tradition and literary practice. She assumes that the saturation of the erotic sphere with the torment and suffering of women, which is done by Sienkiewicz, is a variation on the baroque religious imagination, linking mystic ecstasy with erotic experiences. The torments caused (to oneself or to the object of one’s feelings) in the act of the love of God were motivated by masochism or sadomasochism. Such was the case of the author of the Trilogy: “Sienkiewicz’s sadomasochism is in its essence a sacred act […].”36

Replacing Freud with Zbigniew Kuchowicz, whose works on baroque Benka refers to, weakens the logic of her argument. After all, we want to remain – and it seems that Urszula Benka also wants this – in the sphere of unconscious inclinations, and not in the area of intellectual or aesthetic choices based on knowledge, or in this case – based on the knowledge about the past. That is why we need to return to Freud, and to the earlier intuitions linking love with fight, and eroticism with violence. The connection between war and eroticism has been noticed by other authors, including Empedocles, a Greek philosopher. In his treaty, which was written five centuries before Christ and which has been only partly preserved, Empedocles distinguished two powers that ruled the world: the power of love (philia) and the power of fight (neikos). They remain in a dialectical relation: when love weakens, quarrels appear. When the stamina of the fighters decreases, love facilitates reconciliation. Empedocles was a favorite writer of the modernists, and – earlier – of Friedrich Hölderlin. He was also evoked by Nietzsche, for instance, in his essay devoted to Schopenhauer (“Schopenhauer as Educator”) and by Freud in his various notes37 as well as in his major texts. Sarah Kofman, a French philosopher, discussed the similarities linking Empedocles’s categories with the universal drives in Freud’s theory: the life drive and the death drive (destruction). According to her study Freud and Fiction, the death drive is manifested in the inclination for aggression. The order of the world is a function of two alternate activities: the internalization of the instinct of death by an individual human subject and the development of the instinct of love, which allows people to form communities.38 Following Freud, Kaufman emphasizes that Eros himself is infected with death – and thus with aggression – and the ideal relationship, based on solely love, is only imaginary.

What do we know about sadism in its non-literary clinical sense? According to Laplanche and Pontalis, primary sadism is independent of the sphere of drives. Only when the identification with the suffering object takes place, and this object derives pleasure out of suffering, can we talk about sado-masochism as a sexual perversion.39 It seems that at least some of the protagonists created by Sienkiewicz bear the hallmarks of pathological behavior.

Quoting the pioneer works of Kraft-Ebbing in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud reminds about the distinction between passive perversion (masochism) and active perversion (sadism). And then he writes:

The roots of active algolagnia, sadism, can be readily demonstrable in the normal. The sexuality of most men shows a taint of aggression, it is a propensity to subdue, the biological significance of which lies in the necessity of overcoming the resistance of the sexual object by actions other than mere courting. Sadism would then correspond to an aggressive component of the sexual impulse which has become independent and exaggerated and has been brought to the foreground by displacement. The conception of sadism fluctuates in the usage of language a mere active or impetuous attitude towards the sexual object to the exclusive attachment of the gratification to the subjection and maltreatment of the object. Strictly speaking, only the last extreme case has a claim to the name of perversion.40

Moving sadism to the limits of the socially acceptable norm, Freud links its opposite – masochism – with the appearance of various mental complexes:

It can often be recognized that the masochism is nothing but a continuation of the sadism turning against one’s own person in which the latter at first takes the place of the sexual object. Analysis of extreme cases of masochistic perversions shows that there is a cooperation of a large series of factors which exaggerate and fix the original passive sexual attitude (castration complex, conscience). 41

Judging on the basis of this fragment (and other fragments as well), it is difficult to conclude what is of primary and what is of secondary (additional) value; whether complexes lead to masochism or vice versa: the primary masochism leads to neurotic psychological reactions. Still, we cannot fail to notice the fact that Freud tries to “break the spell” binding the two inclinations, emphasizing that, in a mild form, they are ways of manifesting sexual activities in normal sex life. I do not examine here whether the later schools of psychoanalysis (e.g. feminist psychoanalysis) invalidated this theory, or – just on the contrary – strengthened it. I treat this as still valid. The question I formulate is whether the forms of sexual activity that Sienkiewicz bestows upon his protagonists constitute the basis for the conclusions concerning his own sexuality, which might be one of the sources of his literary imagination.

They probably do, to some extent. Literary historians often mix literary order with biography although this frequently stigmatized practice requires various reservations, intuition, and caution. One more important and even more direct piece of evidence is the writer’s epistolography. I am going to examine here the testimony coming from the times of his trip to America. The testimony, which was well-known, attention-grabbing and unique, full of pretended sincerity formed, in fact, from many clichés and masks. It is a letter to Sienkiewicz’s friend, a critic and a journalist, a playwright and a neighbor from Niecała Street in Warsaw: Daniel Zgliński, whose real name was Freudenson (Freudensohn), written in May 1877. The letter was written in or sent from San Francisco. Sienkiewicz encourages his friend to visit America. The new continent is supposed to be a cure for frayed nerves, hamletic doubts, apathy, and aversion to life. Sienkiewicz describes his life in the New World in an adventurous, if not saucy, convention:

And so in those mountains, all the way from Oregon to Arizona – I hunt. I do not care about tomorrow; in a word, I live like Robinson. Sometimes, I visit a settlement to buy a sack of flour. Besides, I spend long weeks on my own. The game is plenty – I learned to shoot like an angel. The sun has burnt my skin so that I look as if I were a Turk or an Indian. I lost weight because all my fat evaporated, but I got smoked, and I toughened, and I am as healthy as a horse. Having known me earlier, you wouldn’t believe how wild my life is for the bigger part now, but I give you my word that it is really so. I sleep well, I eat like a horse – I don’t worry about tomorrow. I light a bonfire, wrap myself in a quilt, and “all right.” When I recall the old silly fear, this vague anxiety that accompanied me when I went to sleep – just think about the satisfaction, the feeling of power and health when I sometimes tell myself, ‘I don’t give a shit about those nerves!’. Only sometimes, when I get very tired, I think it is only a temporary improvement, which is going to be followed by an even worse crisis. But next morning I feel healthy and confident again, as if I were 16 years old, and were to start my life anew. It was not too late for me yet because I had sufficient natural powers (You are awfully thin, Sir [?] – that is true). My dormant enterprise was resurrected, too. It could not be any different here. In this country, you literally breathe energy: you cannot help being vigorous, even if you do not want to. True, the thing you love above all is sometimes not on offer, but Chinese girls do their best to make up for this deficiency. Only my modesty, my utter humility stops me from boasting how, and how many times… It feels so strange now to think back to my Warsaw efforts to resist the temptation of sinful desires! Apropos – Chinese women shave, but not often, so “this business” resembles a stiff-bristled brush. Indian women have millions of lice, and American women are cold; Irish women too devout, so they do not want to give themselves voluntarily but ask to be raped. Finally, all of them have the disgusting habit of asking: Are you satisfied? My answer is: “No!,” so once again they ask: Are you satisfied?, and ten minutes later: No!, etc. All Irish women repeat during the action “Ah, let me alone,” and that is why when a loutish miner meets an Irish woman in the street, he starts to squeal: “Let me alone.” […] I forgot about black women. And I tell you: lo and behold! You should import one to learn about these pleasures. As for the pure American women, in order to give you an idea about young misses, let me just tell you this: do you remember at Andzia’s place, when Zosia, Walerka or Olesia was going by, carrying the plates, and everyone was pawing her tits, her ass, her thighs? Well, it is the same here, but misses do this to men. It may be slightly exaggerated, but – I swear – not as much as you could think. What an indecent letter! But you are worth it. I have not forgotten that you indulged in debauchery, but hope a bit that having read the paragraph above, you will abandon the thought of Dunkirk, and will come here, from which I will also benefit. Do not show my letter to the modest people, though – perhaps with the exception of Janek Kamiński. Although already married to a nice lady, he had a beautiful history, and he would understand and judge both the subject and the experiences.42

What can be concluded from this message? What knowledge regarding the sexuality of the sender does this letter provide? We are struck by the immaturity of the author, a 31-year-old man – the age which was regarded as more mature in the late 19th century than it is today. The man who boasted to his friends about his virility, lust, and sexual appetite. The rest seems less important: the disrespectful attitude towards women, certain brutality of language, which is motivated by the convention of privacy, similarly to the reasons for leaving Warsaw: certain mental problems (nerves!). Apart from this striking immaturity, the content of this letter fragment seems standard: who does not experience life dilemmas, the moments of bad mood, breakdowns, the feeling of meaninglessness of one’s own life?

Why did Sienkiewicz have such a strong need to boast to his friends about his conquests? Why did he actually encourage his friend to show the letter to at least one more person, which, even when done in privacy, meant the inevitable publication of the American adventure? The explanation is provided by the key – in my opinion – sentence of this letter, marked with a question mark probably by the editor – thus difficult to decipher, not certain, and putting our hypothesis up against the wall: “You are awfully thin, Sir [?]”? The author of the letter quotes somebody who, by expressing such an opinion, casts doubt upon the writer’s vitality, his virility. Is it not so that the quoted letter confronts this painful diagnosis and denies it in all respects? I do not know if Sienkiewicz was a debauchee or a libertine, but I know that at this moment of his life he wanted to be perceived as such – by his friend, by the Warsaw circle. Was this motivated by some complexes? Bad experiences, hurtful words, gossip – it is hard to conclude. And one more thing: the slightly naïve conclusion that Jan Kamiński had a beautiful erotic history, but now – as a married man – he can be described as an ex-debauchee. I do not impute anything to Kamiński, but did Sienkiewicz not take a different solution into consideration: that the debauchee remained a debauchee in spite of the fact that he started a family? It seems he did not; the writer seems to have excluded that kind of extramarital erotic activity. As a result, is it not so that the proper subject of his dreams was not debauchery but marriage, not casual sex with many partners but one lasting relationship?

The torment of the author

In a slightly meandering fashion, my text examines the problems of violence and physical suffering present in Sienkiewicz’s prose. What is their origin? I am unable to formulate one strong hypothesis. Sienkiewicz’s “theatre of cruelty” had various sources. It came from the mystic-messianic atmosphere that permeated Polish romanticism, from the popular auto-definition of a Pole as a victim – the key figure in our 19th century culture, perhaps from the baroque imagination, which harmonized with the historical realities of Sienkiewicz’s works, and also from the recognition of a universal code that organizes the order of world (a pre-Socrates code, which was rescued from oblivion by modernism) – the world where war and love, death and love are the forces that establish the common rules of the game. Perhaps, it came also from Sienkiewicz’s own physical condition, considered as unsatisfactory by the writer, painful, connected with some indisposition, physical debilitas, causing the kind of torment that he projected in his novels.

1 See R. Koziołek, Sienkiewicz’s Bodies: Studies of Gender and Violence, translated by David Malcolm, Frankfurt am Main 2015.

2 When explaining the accusations directed sometimes towards Sienkiewicz (concerning the excessive number of drastic scenes), Paweł Popiel quotes French critique André Baudrillart, the author of an essay about Quo Vadis, and claims that “when describing such times and such an epoch, it is highly unlikely that the writer would lecture young ladies on the principles of catechism” (P. Popiel, “Dwie prace o Sienkiewiczu” [Two works on Sienkiewicz], Czas February 6, 1901, no. 30; Baudrillart, “Le Roman ‘Quo Vadis’ et l’histoire” [Quo Vadis and history], Le Correspondant January 25, 1901).

3 T. Zieliński, Idea Polski w dziełach Sienkiewicza [The conception of Poland in the works of Sienkiewicz], Zamość 1920, p. 33.

4 Ibidem, p. 55. All Polish secondary sources translated by Ewa Nowik.

5 Ibidem, p. 55.

6 Some are surprised that the poet (is this because she is a woman?) shows so much understanding for cruelty in Sienkiewicz’s writing. Andrzej Stoff wrote: ”It is astounding that the one who defended Sienkiewicz’s ‘depictions of such suffering that can barely be observed’ was Maria Konopnicka” (A. Stoff “Sienkiewiczowskie studium zemsty. Wątek Adama Nowowiejskiego w ‘Panu Wołodyjowskim’” [The study of revenge in Sienkiewicz’s writing: The theme of Adam Nowowiejski in Fire in the Steppe], Roczniki Humanistyczne 1997, vol. 45, no. 1, p. 145.

7 M. Konopnicka, Szkice. Bohdan Zaleski – Adam Asnyk – Henryk Sienkiewicz [Sketches: Bohdan Zaleski – Adam Asnyk – Henryk Sienkiewicz], Lviv 1905, pp. 120–121.

8 Ibidem, pp. 221–222.

9 Ibidem, p. 124.

10 Ibidem, p. 125.

11 Urszula Benka presents another perspective: she believes that in Sienkiewicz’s writing, even abandoning revenge does not mean forgiving. See U. Benka, “Iluzja kuszenia. Uwagi na marginesie ‘Quo vadis’ Henryka Sienkiewicza” [The illusion of temptation: Remarks on the margins of Henryk Sienkiewcz’s Quo Vadis], Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis Prace Literackie 1992, vol. 32 no. 1459, p. 67.

12 S. Tarnowski, Studia do historii literatury polskiej [Studies on the history of Polish literature], vol. 5: Henryk Sienkiewicz, Kraków 1897, p. 176.

13 Ibidem, p. 177.

14 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 19, Pan Wołodyjowski [Fire in the Steppe], Warszawa 1950, edited by J. Krzyżanowski, part 3, p. 141; trans. Jeremiah Curtin.

15 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 10, Ogniem i mieczem [With Fire and Sword], Warszawa 1949, part 5, p. 131; trans. Jeremiah Curtin.

16 M. Saganiak, “Makabra w Mistycznym Teatrze Juliusza Słowackiego” [Macabre in Juliusz Słowacki’s mystic theatre], Polska Sztuka Ludowa. Konteksty: Antropologia kultury. Etnografia. Sztuka 1995, vol. 3/4, p. 78.

17 Ibidem, p. 78.

18 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 19, Pan Wołodyjowski [Fire in the Steppe], part 3, p. 245; trans. Jeremiah Curtin.

19 Ibidem, p. 248.

20 M. Saganiak, op cit., p. 78.

21 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], Pan Wołodyjowski [Fire in the Steppe], vol. 3, p. 248; trans. Jeremiah Curtin.

22 J.M. Rymkiewicz, Samuel Zborowski, Warsaw 2010, p. 345.

23 E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Princeton University Press, 1957.

24 J.M. Rymkiewicz, op. cit, p. 348.

25 M. Luśnia [K. Kelles-Krauz], “Powieść rewolucyjna” [The revolutionary novel], Naprzód 1897, vol. 1, p. 6 (a substantial part of this paper was confiscated).

26 Maciej Gloger sees Sienkiewicz’s Nietzscheanizm in the following manner: just like Nietzsche in his famous essay “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life” did not entirely condemn the history, Sienkiewicz was not its uncritical singer. “Both Nietzsche and Sienkiewicz are concerned with ‘a healthy dose’ of historical sense, which is supposed to ‘reassure’ and be the driving force” (M. Gloger, Sienkiewicz nowoczesny [Modern Sienkiewicz], Bydgoszcz 2010, p. 130). The parallel that was drawn here seems at least insufficient and based on a logical error. The fact that Nietzsche did not completely reject references to history does not bring him in any way closer to its apologists. Besides, in order to confirm this parallel, we would need to entirely re-interpret – and reject – the religious nature of Sienkiewicz’s world (in the providential-messianic spirit), which does not seem to have been the researcher’s intention.

27 F. Mazurkiewicz, Opowieści nowoczesne [Modern Stories], Katowice 2015, p. 128.

28 It is possible that Sienkiewicz knew the scenes of the drama. A fragment of Słowacki’s drama, written at the end of 1841 has been preserved. It is mentioned by Józef Alojzy Reitzenheim in a monograph Juliusz Słowacki (Paris 1862); the preserved parts of the drama were published by Antoni Małecki (Pisma pośmiertne Juliusza Słowackiego [Posthumous works of Juliusz Słowacki], vol. 3, Lviv 1866: “Jan Kaźmierz. ‘Szczątek dramatu’ [Jan Kaźmierz: A fragment of the drama]). A columnist for the Czas magazine also noticed the similarity between Sienkiewicz’s novel and Słowacki’s drama: [b.a.] “Sienkiewicz and Słowacki,” Czas 1884, vol. 48.

29 J. Kleiner, “Słowacki. Dzieje twórczości” [Słowacki: The history of works], vol. 3, Okres ‘Beniowskiego’ [The Beniowski period], edited and with an introduction by J. Starnawski, Kraków 1999, p. 175 (the verse of Słowacki’s drama is quoted here after Kleiner).

30 U. Benka, “Święty sadyzm Sienkiewicza” [The holy sadism of Sienkiewicz], NaGłos 1994, vol. 14, p. 102.

31 Ibidem, p. 103.

32 Ibidem, p. 104.

33 Those images rarely became the object of study of literary scholars – see R. Koziołek, “Martwe kobiety” [Dead women], Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2006, vol. 41, pp. 59–73; in Sienkiewicz’s eroticism, scholars looked mainly for aesthetic beauty, see T. Bujnicki, Ciało i erotyka. Rozbieranie Ligii [The body and eroticism: Undressing Ligia (Lygia)], in Na przełomie wieków. Studia i szkice ofiarowane Profesorowi Zdzisławowi Piaseckiemu w czterdziestolecie pracy naukowej [At the turn of the century: Studies and sketches], edited by W. Hendzel i P. Obrączka, Opole 2003.

34 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 20, Quo Vadis, pp. 166–167; trans. Jeremiah Curtin.

35 Ibidem, p. 105.

36 Ibidem, p. 107.

37 The reference to Empedocles can be found, among others, in the essay entitled “Analysis Terminable and Interminable,” where Freud again returns to the issue of “a great riddle of sex” (I used the following source: S. Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated by. J. Strachey, A. Freud, vol. 23, London 1964, electronic version: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_Analysis_Terminable_Interminable.pdf; accessed: 2017–06–03).

38 S. Kofman, Freud and Fiction, translated by S. Wykes, Cambridge 1991, p. 38.

39 J. Laplanche, J.B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, with an introduction by D. Lagache, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, London 2006 [1988], pp. 400–404.

40 S. Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, translated by A. A. Brill, New York and Washington, 1920, p. 25.

41 Ibidem, p. 25.

42 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 2 (Aleksandra Ulanowska-Józef Żychoń), edited, annotated, and with an introduction by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2009, pp. 586–588.

Magdalena 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)

Theories and aporias

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 19th-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.

In his overview of the conceptions of heroism in the history of European culture, Ryszard Przybylski notices significant changes in relation to the antique original:

For Greeks, the highest human value was tragic heroism. The classics juxtaposed it with rational heroism. They substituted the insane metaphysical courage with the mental caution of the modern rationalists. And they transformed our only world, which for the Greeks was the battlefield of the brave man and Mysterious Destiny, or – if you wish – Inscrutable Justice, or – in other words – the Measure of All Things, into a school for meek sages, where philosophers teach the principles of conduct resulting from the Law of Nature, or – if you wish – the Eternal Reason, or – in other words – Providence.2

The author diachronically presents two phases of cultural transformations, extremely important for the awareness of the Europeans: on the one hand – the passage from antique tragic heroism to classical reason, and on the other hand – from reason to metaphysics and romantic madness. From the perspective of Polish literature of the second half of the 19th century, this binary opposition needs to be moderated. One of the opportunities to do so might be found in the works of Sienkiewicz – a post-romantic alumnus of Szkoła Główna3 (The Main School, today’s University of Warsaw). Many a time, Sienkiewicz’s works proved the conventional character of later literary stratifications and openly negated the then-groundbreaking nature of Polish culture. For instance, according to the writer, the battle between new and old journalism was merely “miserable journalist guerilla warfare,” bringing the society “fatigue and the waste of strength.”4

Obviously, in the post-January-Rising era, the conception of heroism and the choice of the hero that would be worthy of the new rough times were important arguments in this “guerilla” discourse. Paraphrasing Tadeusz Bujnicki, we could say that Sienkiewicz pushes the boundaries5 – in his own way – without unnecessary drama, in an unobvious and intriguing way.

“Any act of heroism is an act of charity towards the public,”6 stated Edmund Stawiski, an economist and historian of agriculture, one generation older than Sienkiewicz, in his Księga szkiców i fragmentów (The book of sketches and fragments), published in the Biblioteka Warszawska magazine in 1867. He broadened the context of meanings understandable to the readers of the text by adding the trauma of one more rising (the manuscript7 comes from 1856, and in 1861, the author carried the coffin of one of the participants of the brutally suppressed demonstration8). In this interpretation, heroism is a unique theatricalization of the lack, suffered by the public, and as such, it acquires the features characteristic of an alarming problem, calling for countermeasures. Analogously, then, “in the name of love, we need to work to eradicate poverty and to eliminate the need for charity.” Indeed, in such a perspective, heroism is not the opposite of reason:

Heroism is the highest peak of dedication and love. It is the sacrifice of everything that is dearest to a man, for the sake of belief or principle. Heroism does not measure the difficulty, does not retreat in view of the impossible; it knows no danger since heroism is a sacrifice, and it is powerful, not due to reaching the aim, but due to the power of the sacrifice. Heroism is the triumph of the spiritual greatness of a man. It is often juxtaposed with reason as two opposite poles as if reason always had to take the side of self-love, self-interest, and all small calculations of caution and the consequent predictions. It is a strange view and a strange humiliation of reason. If it did not serve to decide what is smaller and what is higher, what is worth less and what is worth more sacrifice, for what we need to sacrifice everything or nothing, it would not be a judge, but a servant to the lowest passions.9

These words seem to adequately reflect the post-January-Rising climate of mediation between the heart and the reason, which is also the background to Sienkiewicz’s writing. It is worth noting that it is aesthetics that is the middle ground, where all conventional oppositions disappear. Aesthetics is the area which does away with the discussed binary oppositions but does not nullify any of its parts. This is confirmed in Sienkiewicz’s (in)versions of the heroic idiom.10

Polish Hercules vs. Gallic Hercules

As proved in the book by Jerzy Banach, the image of Polish Hercules, dating back to the 17th century, served mainly as an allegory of the ruler.11 This is the function that Hercules Polonus also plays in Sienkiewicz’s writings; after all, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki is (Prince Yeremi) “the Slavic Hercules” (“Welcome, the invincible leader! The Slavic Hercules! Till death, we are going to stand at your side!”).12 In his works, Sienkiewicz built the awareness regarding the fact that the identity of the mythological hero is complex, and the internal contradictions may become the subject of the narration about the paradoxes of heroism as a cultural ideal.13 The author expressed this view, for instance, in an 1870 study devoted to Kasper Miaskowski, where he ironically noted that Hercules Polonus seems to become morally superior to the mythological (foreign) Hercules, who “was seduced by Omphale since he indulged himself with women and also due to his debauchery.”14

Andrzej Kmicic (Kmita) was also endowed with the qualities of Hercules, and, like the mythological hero, losing his mind due to the orders of Hera, he was often losing his mind in a destructive way: “I poured water on my head so as not to lose my mind,” he told the king.15 Iwona Puchalska offers an interesting interpretation of this issue in a study of expiatory heroism in the works of Polish 19th-century writers, drawing attention to the touch of insanity in Kmicic’s literary biography.16

The name of Hercules is also given to 16-year-old Orso, arousing “female minds” in the scene in which he raises and defends Jenna.17 The allusion to Hercules, a submissive lover of Omphale, appears also in the novel Na polu chwały (On the Field of Glory) in the image of Pągowski, an old despot, passionately attached to Miss Sienińska. Let us quote a meaningful dialogue between the protagonists:

“Virgil said that amor omnia vincit but forgot to add that also mutat,” said the priest, “This Delilah will not cut your hair because you are bald, Sir, but I am sure I am going to see you at her feet, spinning the distaff, as Hercules did at the feet of Omphale.”

“That’s not in my nature! I was always able to control not only my servants but also my family.”

“And so people say, but that is why you deserve it even more, Sir. Someone should take you well in hand.”

“And that’s a very nice hand!,” said Pągowski, in an unusually cheerful way.18

These allusions to the ambivalent heroism impersonated by mythical Hercules allow us to find in Sienkiewicz’s heterogeneous works the variants of heroism that escape the stereotype of the proud (but empty) name of “Polish Hercules.” Sienkiewicz’s Hercules goes beyond that.

Trying to answer the question whom he would be, it is perhaps worth mentioning another national version of Hercules, perhaps – paradoxically – closer to Sienkiewicz’s imagination, different but not contradictory in relation to the ideal impersonated by Hercules Polonus. In 1870, in a Parisian chronicle of the Biblioteka Warszawska magazine, Seweryna Duchińska discusses the history of French literature written by Émile Chasles19 and draws attention to one part of this book – the one presenting the Gallic variant of the image of Hercules, described by Lucian of Samosata during his trip to Gaul. The symbolic L’Hercule Ogmius (Gallic Hercules) “is an old man with a bald head, with the remaining hair as white as swan’s down; his complexion is dark and swarthy, like an old soldier’s skin. One could say that this is Charon, emerging from the pit of hell.”20 The hero is old and dejected. The attributes of his bygone youth (a lion skin, a club, a bow, and arrows) seem to be only of an ornamental nature since there are no young powerful muscles which could use them. The defining feature of Gallic Hercules is his literally physical attachment to his people. The thin chains flowing down from his tongue pierce the ears of the obedient Gauls. We have to add that the chains are very intricate, made of gold and amber, attention-grabbing on their own, enticing with their beauty.

Gallic Hercules, drawing by Raphael (drawing from the book by É. Chasles).

“More than anything, the Gauls worshipped the power and the charm of words”21 – this is the conclusion of the analysis of this symbolic image described by Duchińska.

Toutes proportions gardées, it can be claimed that in Polish literature, Sienkiewicz represents the literary movement that could be described as the narrativization of the herculean myth (as opposed to the allegoric functions presented by the variant of the Polish Hercules).22 Sienkiewicz’s Hercules – let us use this name metaphorically and generally to seriously describe all Sienkiewicz’s heroes – is handsome, seductive, and mysteriously ambiguous. When contemplating beauty, rhetoric loses unambiguous nature.

Hercules at Omphale’s feet

Sienkiewicz’s inversion of the herculean myth, as discussed in this sketch, refers to the already mentioned softness of the image, loaded with ambivalent meanings, and full of mysterious and disturbing charm, which are evoked by the mythological image of Hercules at Omphale’s feet.23 Let us summarize the traditional story: as punishment for the murder of innocent Iphitus, mythological Hercules had to spend three years as a servant at the court of Queen Omphale, the ruler of Lydia – the country with a cultural inversion of sexual roles. Having bought Hercules as a slave, Omphale took over the hero’s attributes: the lion skin and the club, and the hero, dressed in women’s clothes, spun the wool. What is significant in the modern references to this myth is that the two were also joined by fierce passion.

At this point, it is worth mentioning a characteristic thread, discussed by Ryszard Koziołek, in The Deluge (Potop),24 where the heroic Kmicic, excluded from the community of men due to his dishonorable deed, in a way, imitates the ideal represented by Oleńka, the impersonation of the virgin-hero. In his own way, Kmicic-Babinicz, develops the mythical herculean theme of role reversal, dressing up in peasants’ clothes.

Kmicic and Oleńka in a sleigh, watercolor by Juliusz Kossak, 1887.

The transgressive, even masochistic, theme of Hercules at Omphale’s feet ignited the imagination of many 19th-century writers – it is enough to mention Théophile Gautier,25 Stendhal, or August Strindberg (The Father).26 In Polish literature, Joachim Lelewel devoted his attention to this theme in reference to Sebastian Ciampi’s work on Greek sculpture. He became involved in an argument with the scholars who were searching for Omphale’s theme in the scene of the triumph in Meropamikos. Lelewel confirmed that the Greek amethyst did not contain (as claimed Ciampi) the “veiled” head of Helenus, but Hercules’ head, “decorated in a womanly way in order to celebrate the orgy with Omphale.” 27 In post-January-Rising poetry, this theme was taken up, for instance, by Marian Korwin-Kochanowski in his erotic poem “Konwalia” (Lily of the Valley).28 What is more, the theme of Hercules’s effeminacy was noticed by Teodor Jeske Choiński as the syndrome of “disintegration in life and literature,” already confirmed in Roman civilization (the author quoted the example of the satire “The Dialogues of the Gods” by Lucian of Samosata).29

This last theme, concerning the “disintegration of Roman civilization,” which was discussed in the literature and in the literary criticism of the late 19th century interferes more subtly with Sienkiewicz’s representation of the antique world presented in Quo Vadis. This is connected, to a large extent, with the figure of “slender and effeminate” Petronius.30 But there are more such figures: the ill fate of Omphale’s distaff also affected Vinicio, “a handsome athletic youth.”31 In one of the variants of herculean myth, which was employed in Quo Vadis, the theme of dressing the protagonist up in slave’s clothes, which were unworthy of him, loses the meaning of a frivolous anecdote and the explicit nature of a sexual joke concerning the reversal of roles, the game of domination and submission. In Quo Vadis, Marc Vinicio dresses up as a slave, but this disguise has a hidden meaning; it contributes to the process of internal development of the protagonist to the role inspired by the role model of Ligia (“On his part, Vinicio, disguised as a slave, was searching for Ligia all day, in the backstreets of the town, but he did not manage to find the smallest trace or a cue”).32 His disguise as a slave – as we might think – let the hero of the twilight of the world of antiquity find the way to the world of Christianity, with its ideal of humility. The scene of Vinicio watching the “living torches” of Nero acquires a symbolic significance:

And so they saw Hercules, burning alive, on the top of Mount Oeta. Vinicio shuddered at the thought that Ursus may have been assigned the role of Hercules, but it seemed that it was not the turn of Ligia’s faithful servant because some other Christian whom Vinicio did not know burnt on the stake.33

Something, someone must die so that a new hero worthy of a new era can be born.

Greek Element and Transgression

Sienkiewicz’s legend Na Olimpie (On Mount Olympus), published in 1900, describes “a crowd of gods, deserted, forgotten, scared and waiting for a death sentence,”34 among whom only the Song (Apollo) and Happiness (Aphrodite) are going to be saved.35 As Józefat Nowiński wrote in 1901, “As the saying goes, there is a grain of truth in every joke, and that is why I believe that, as a poet, Sienkiewicz slightly regrets such beautiful gods as Apollo and Venus or such lovely goddesses as the Muses.”36 Indeed, we can believe in Sienkiewicz’s regret concerning the Greek gods and the ideals of pure beauty that they evoke. Are the consecutive literary versions of the herculean theme – the legendary demigod, half-man, wanted like a charity by the hungry-for-heroism nation – the forms of this longing? In order to confirm the significance of the antique version of heroism in the writer’s imagination, we may add that Sienkiewicz is the author of a drawing that represents the hero’s head with a lyre.37

The recurrent 19th-century discussion on the semantics of antique art supported the growth of Sienkiewicz’s above-mentioned sensitivity towards disintegration and transformations of the heroic myth (as far as Polish authors are concerned, we can quote, for instance, Euzebiusz Słowacki or Józef Kremer38). In his monumental work on the history of artistic imagination, Kremer pointed out to mythological Hercules as a peculiar harbinger of new sensitivity connected with the influence of Christological ideal:

In this old herculean myth, you will find both the heavenly and the earthly element, and the triumphs of the soul over sexual urges; here, you will see good matter, the body shining with a soul, the image of a man coming to grips with the hardships of life, fighting for eternal glory. All this is just a dream of an early, still unawake, human history. There are specters of new life that was to be born in the history of the world! These are the prophecies of the salvation of all people, still closed in a bud of God’s flower!39

What is interesting, the author of the aforementioned drawing, which represented the hero with a lyre, the creator of the ambiguous and subtle figure of Petronius, whose physique includes many womanly features, did not show empathy to Octave Feuillet, a French author contemporary to Sienkiewicz. Against Feuillet’s drama, entitled Le Sphinx, in 1874 Sienkiewicz juxtaposed a completely different model of artistic work in the Niwa a magazine, evoking the heritage of Hellas – but Sienkiewicz clearly emphasized its “manly” aesthetic and cognitive horizon:

On the contrary: the brave, harsh, manly soul will reject such art that weakens hearts, softens conventions, makes minds effeminate, easily intoxicates like a drug, but also weakens like a drug. The one who needs Tyrtaeus for the needs of their public will despise Feuillets. Feuillet forgot that apart from a woman, the physiology of her biological needs, the love affairs of the salons, apart from the unnatural passions and sophistication of the decay, there is another world: broad, clear, airy, with the shining sun, moon, and stars. Could he not hear the sounds of this other world? Could he not hear the swoosh of the sea, the winds and the forests, and sometimes the battle cries, the trills of the nightingale or the shepherd’s pipe?40

In his discussion with Feuillet, Sienkiewicz contrasts the “manly” poet, Tyrtaeus, with the despised softness, physiology, and effeminacy of the art.

A similar note could be heard in his 1905 polemics with Anatol France, whose Hellenism is believed by Sienkiewicz the journalist to contrast with the Christian perspective, and whose aestheticism (in Petronius’ style) seems to smack of moral indifference:

However, Anatol France fails to appreciate, limits and purposefully diminishes Christianity. And it is a pity. It is a pity even from the artistic and literary point of view, not to mention all other aspects. By doing so, he ceases to be this cheerful Greek skeptic, this child of merry, chatty and humorous Hellas, this Pyrrhonian butterfly, hovering on the colorful wings above all signs of life. His works cease to be a sweet pastime, literary delight since their author becomes the man of a party, the member of a faction or even of a sect, a short-term politician, a Dreyfusard, the supporter of Combes and whoever you want – but not himself. And, primarily, by smuggling a certain tendency in a seemingly neutral form, he loses artistic honesty, which was his main asset, and which, next to his talent, wit, and creative and extremely vivid thought, ensured his popularity in France and in other countries. Finally, it is a pity also because he seems to be a bit of a modern Petronius. He cannot stand evil, violence, ignorance, barbarity, and cruelty – both because he has a noble soul and because, as an aesthete, he despises all ugliness.41

Petronius, who was presented by Sienkiewicz in such an ambiguous and seductive way in Quo Vadis, becomes in this literary polemics argumentum ad hominem, slightly depreciative and embarrassing the opponent. But in this article, Sienkiewicz says something that is important for him – he claims that literary Hellenism is a bit of an escape from the world, an aesthetic pleasure, liberation from the strict discipline of “tendency.” Is this the reason why the writer sketches “the head of the hero with a lyre,” next to other (contemporary) male and female heads?

Sienkiewicz’s Andro-texts

In his Bible de l’humanité from 1864, Jules Michelet also devotes some space to the myth of Hercules and its break-through role in European awareness.42 In Dziennik Literacki, in a skillful summary of Michelet’s claims, this role is described in the following way:

According to Michelet, the amazing myth of Hercules is superior to the Iliad and the Odyssey. This giant is the first one to care not only about the good of his little homeland but also about the salvation of all people, about spreading common order and common justice. What is most important, however, Hercules does not believe in destiny, does not accept it, but faces it, and fights it straight, winning everything by means of his indomitable will, hard work, and his own achievement. Michelet claims that Hercules is a hapless victim, a living complaint against the natural order of the world and lawlessness of the Gods. While Alcmene, his virtuous and faithful mother, wanted to have a lawful child, she gave birth to a bastard; he was conceived later but was born earlier due to Jupiter’s injustice. Finally, he is a slave, a slave to his older brother, weak and foul Eurystheus, a slave sold, a slave of love since, in this world, he has nothing but love.43

Michelet also discusses the theme of archetypical masculinity, represented by Hercules, confirmed by the experience of metaphorical and literal slavery, which is juxtaposed against effeminate Bacchus. This contrast is additionally strengthened by the opposition between the West (Hercules) and the East (Dionysus), clashing in the battle of two civilizations:

The beautiful myth of Hercules defended the old Greek lyre against the Phrygian flute and orgies. Even if he used to be Apollo’s contender, he is his friend even more. He is the hero of the West, and he pursues the eastern wild effeminate Bacchus. In Apollo, there is no element of the hardships of sorrow and death. As light, he knows no countries of darkness, and what is more, he lacks the element of work. Ethereal art and the Muses are not sufficient among the numerous heroes of work. His works are not at all ennobling in the ordinary sense of this word, but rather simple and disgusting. The heroes of Persia are also its laborers; the great liberator of Persia is Gustasp, a blacksmith, takes a hammer and an anvil; Persia did not dare to elevate such low and mean works to heroism like Greece did with Hercules.44

The fragments of Sienkiewicz’s prose that were cited here focus on Hercules and indicate a similar understanding of this myth – as an element of the dynamic development of the hero, who undergoes experiences that are against nature and identity, in response in order to transform to the needs of the reality, which changes in an unforeseeable manner. Similarly to journalism and literary critique, the literary works of the author of the Trilogy, which involve heroic themes, when read without search for continuity, perfectly match the crisis of masculinity that builds the dilemmatic structure of the 19th century.45

Thomas Carlyle wrote:

This, for reasons which it will be worthwhile sometime to inquire into, is an age that denies the existence of great men; denies the desirableness of great men. Show our critics a great man, a Luther for example, they begin to what they call “account” for him; not to worship him, but take the dimensions of him, – and bring him out to be a little kind of man! He was “the creature of the Time,” they say; the Time called him forth, the Time did everything, he nothing – but what we the little critic could have done too! This seems to me but melancholy work. The Time call forth? Alas, we have known Times call loudly enough for their great man; but not find him when they called! He was not there; Providence had not sent him; the Time, calling at its loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would not come when called.46

The search for a hero, clearly visible in Sienkiewicz’s works, is obviously a form of therapy, with its all limitations. In his book, Ryszard Koziołek draws attention to the “discourse of physical power,”47 which could be a reaction against the traumas of the 19th-century history. The old ideal of knighthood was supposed to counterbalance the contemporary crisis of masculinity. But is this old ideal knighthood, in Sienkiewicz’s view, homogenous, inviolable in its structure? The Herculean theme as employed by Sienkiewicz seems to prove the contrary, and the ambiguity concerns both: aesthetics and gender.

Many years ago, Kazimierz Wyka noticed:

Sienkiewicz excels in creating heroes, but not in the sense of the super-heroes who perform heroic deeds, but the heroes in a different sense: the people whose psychology includes several fundamental and recurring features and who remain heroes in the first of the abovementioned senses, because they never stop being themselves, even in the psychologically least favorable circumstances.48

We should not stop, however, at an interpretation that focuses on the deficiencies in psychological depth and the persistent search of this depth in the places where it is clearly lacking. The passion that Sienkiewicz finds in his narration, a certain kind of pleasure derived from linguistic work become arguments encouraging us to examine his heroes in their lack of continuity, their internal contradictions concerning the restoration of their sexual roles and dimensions of heroism. When read in the perspective presented in this paper, do Sienkiewicz’s works not oscillate, to some extent, in some secret registers, towards the ideal of androgyne?49 Is Sienkiewicz’s Hercules at Omphale’s feet not fascinated in Baudelaire’s fashion with “the heroism of modern life,” full of contradictions and aesthetic clashes? Both according to Baudelaire and Sienkiewicz (the best example could be a novel about a 19th- century Petronius, i.e. Bez dogmatu [Without Dogma]), “The painter, the true painter for whom we are looking, will be he who can snatch its epic quality from the life of today and can make us see and understand, with brush or with pencil, how great and poetic we are in our cravats and our patent-leather shoes”50 Manly, unmanly…?

1 Juliusz Słowacki, Kordian, translated by Gerard T. Kapolka, Green Lantern Press 2011.

2 R. Przybylski, “Zmierzch rozumnego heroizmu, czyli prolegomena do romantycznego bohaterstwa” [The dawn of the rational heroism or prolegomena to romantic heroism], in Problemy polskiego romantyzmu [The problems of Polish Romanticism], series 2, edited by M. Żmigrodzka, Wrocław 1974, p. 166.

3 See S. Fita, “Sienkiewicz i pokolenie Szkoły Głównej” [Sienkiewicz and the generation of Szkoła Główna], Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2006, vol. 41, pp. 47–57.

4 All quotations from Sienkiewicz’s works are indicated in accordance with Dzieła [The Collected Works], edited by Julian Krzyżanowski (indicated with the volume and page number); trans. E. N. Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 45, pp. 269-270.

5 See T. Bujnicki, “Sienkiewicz przekracza granice. O ‘przełomie’ w życiu i twórczości pisarza” [Sienkiewicz pushing the boundries: About ‘the turning point’ in the life and works of the writer], Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2009, vol. 2, no. 44, pp. 63–85.

6 E. Stawiski, “Księga szkiców i fragmentów. O rozsądku” [The book of sketches and fragments: On reason], Biblioteka Warszawska 1867, vol. 3, p. 328.

7 See also information on this topic in “Doniesienia literackie” [Literary news], Biblioteka Warszawska 1856, vol. 2, p. 196.

8 See the painting by Aleksander Lesser Ostatnie błogosławieństwo zwłok [The last blessing of the corpse]. Information quoted after H. Rutkowski, “Edmund Stawiski,” Internetowy Polski Słownik Biograficzny [Polish Internet Bibliographic Dictionary], http://www.ipsb.nina.gov.pl/a/biografia/edmund-stawiski [date of access: 2017–01–12]

9 E. Stawiski, op. cit.

10 Compare with Ryszard Koziołek’s view that only literature (as opposed to journalism) enabled the writer to be for and against at the same time – See R. Koziołek, Sienkiewicz’s Bodies: Studies of Gender and Violence, trans. David Malcolm, Frankfurt am Main 2015.

11 J. Banach, Hercules Polonus. Studium z ikonografii sztuki nowożytnej [Hercules Polonus: A study in iconography of modern art], Warsaw 1984, pp. 69–71.

12 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 7, p. 240.

13 As Stefan Majchrowski reminds us in his book, in 1886 in a museum in Naples, Sienkiewicz “saw the Farnese Bull, Psyche, and Hercules, in a big collection of Pompean art” – see S. Majchrowski, Sienkiewicz, Kraków 1975, p. 133; trans. E. N.

14 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 45, p. 35.

15 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 14, p. 96.

16 See I. Puchalska, “‘Oszalały Herkules’, czyli o bohaterstwie ekspiacyjnym w polskich narracjach dziewiętnastowiecznych (Adam Mickiewicz, Walery Łoziński, Henryk Sienkiewicz)” [‘Insane Hercules’ – on the expiatory heroism in Polish 19th-century narrations (Adam Mickiewicz, Walery Łoziński Henryk Sienkiewicz)], in Prace Herkulesa – człowiek wobec wyzwań, prób i przeciwności [Hercules’s labors: Man in the face of challenges, trials and adversities], edited by M. Cieśla-Korytowska, O. Płaszczewska, Kraków 2012, pp. 288–293.

17 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 3, p. 158.

18 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 27, p. 189.

19 See É. Chasles, Histoire nationale de la littérature française [The National History of French Literature], Paris 1870, pp. 10–12. [the attached illustration comes from the frontispiece of this book: https://books.google.pl/books?id=z25LAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=pl#v=onepage&q&f=false].

20 S. Duchińska, “Kronika paryska” [Parisian Chronicle], Biblioteka Warszawska 1870, vol. 2, p. 432.

21 Ibidem.

22 See. J. Banach, op. cit., p. 70 and the following.

23 See e.g. P. Grimal, “Hercules,” The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, translated by A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop, Hoboken, New Jersey 1996.

24 R. Koziołek, op. cit.

25 On Gautier’s Omphale, 1835 – see B. Sosień, “Lwia skóra, maczuga i kądziel: Herkules, Omfale i rokoko (Théophile Gautier: Omphale, 1835)” [The lion’s skin, the club and the distaff: Hercules, Omphale and Rococo (Théophile Gautier: Omphale, 1835)], in Prace Herkulesa – człowiek wobec wyzwań, prób i przeciwności [Hercules’s labors – man in the face of challenges, trials and adversities], pp. 175–184.

26 See P. Noir, Aux pieds d’Omphale. Hercule ou le crépuscule d’un dieu masochiste (Mythocritique de la Décadence et de Sacher-Masoch), Paris 2014.

27 J. Lelewel, “O pracach profesora Ciampi z uwagą nad rzeźbą wyrażać mającą głowę Herkulesa w stroju Omfalii oraz z notką nad wyrazem Equitas” [On the works of Professor Campi regarding the sculpture of Hercules’ head in Omphale’s dress, including the note on the word Equitas], in Polska, dzieje i rzeczy jej [Poland: History and concepts], vol. 18/2, Poznań 1865, pp. 133–135; trans. E. N.

28 See the poem of this poet, entitled “Konwalia” (The Lily of the Valley). There, the following confession takes place: “And I am not the same – alone, without Omphale.” See M. Korwin-Kochanowski, “Konwalia” [The Lilly of the Valley], in Wydanie pośmiertne pieśni i poematów [Posthumous collection of songs and poems], Kraków 1869, p. 12.

29 In the dialogue cited by Jeske-Choiński, Esculapius sneers at Hercules, “After all, if I did no great deed, but at least I was not a lackey, like you were; I did not spin wool in Lydia, I did not wear a purple skirt, and I did not get my face bitten with Omphale’s golden shoe.” (T. Jeske-Choiński, Rozkład w życiu i literaturze. Studium [Disintegration in life and literature: A Study], Warsaw 1895, pp. 11-12; trans. E. N.

30 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 20, p. 53.

31 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 20, p. 2.

32 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 22, p. 135.

33 Ibidem, p. 147.

34 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 5, p. 141.

35 See the interpretation of Na Olimpie (On Mount Olympus) presented by Aneta Mazur, where “a similar poetic vision of religious symbiosis conveys a completely different (because) Christian message. It brings saints down to earth and puts earthly values in the sphere of the sacred” (A. Mazur, Transcendencja realistów. Motywy metafizyczne w polskiej i niemieckiej prozie II połowy XIX wieku [Transcendence of the realists: Metaphysical themes in Polish and German fiction of the second half of the 19th Century], Opole 2001, p. 306). Earlier, Andrzej Stawar described the legend Na Olimpie as “an interesting commentary to Quo vadis” (A. Stawar, Pisarstwo Henryka Sienkiewicza [The works of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 1960, p. 287).

36 J. Nowiński, Sienkiewicz, Warsaw 1901, p. 155.

37 See Bibliografia Literatury Polskiej „Nowy Korbut”. Henryk Sienkiewicz [Bibliography of Polish literature “Nowy Korbut.” Henryk Sienkiewicz], edited by. D. Świerczyńska, Warsaw 2015, p. 621.

38 In his Teoria poezji [Theory of poetry], Euzebiusz Słowacki quoted Jacques Dellile: “Developing all his poetic power, Homer shows me the ancient Hercules in his soft beauty” (E. Słowacki, Dzieła z pozostałych rękopismów ogłoszone [The works published from the remaining manuscripts], Wilno 1026, p. 171; emphasis M. R.) Commenting Hercules’ Labors, Kremer noted that “What was harder than all those labors was the suffering that Hercules endured, giving himself to the humiliating servitude, and the voluntary obedience meant humiliation of his goodness” (J. Kremer, “Listy z Krakówa” [Letters from Kraków], vol. 1; Wstępne zasady estetyki [Preliminary principles of aesthetics] and Dzieje artystycznej fantazji [The history of artistic imagination], vol. 1, Warsaw 1877, p. 43; emphasis: M. R.).

39 J. Kremer, op.cit., p. 44.

40 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 45, p. 251.

41 Dzieła [The Collected Works], vol. 46, pp. 76–77.

42 See. J. Michelet, Bible de L’Humanité, Paris 1864, pp. 190–226.

43 Dziennik Literacki 1865, no. 15, p. 119.

44 Ibidem.

45 See D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity, Yale University Press 1990; E. Badinter, XY: On Masculine Identity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

46 T. Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History, London 1840, p. 16.

47 R. Koziołek, op. cit., p. 415.

48 K. Wyka, “Sprawa Sienkiewicza” [Sienkiewicz’s case], in Szkice literackie i artystyczne [Literary and artistic sketches], Kraków 1956, vol. 1, p. 128.

49 Sienkiewicz is known to have been an avid reader of Karol Libelt. See K. Libelt, System umnictwa, czyli filozofii umysłowej [The system of knowledge or mental philosophy], Poznań 1850, vol. 2, p. 82: “All of nature can be divided into two halves: male and female, and all living creatures represent this dichotomy: either masculinity or femininity. As a material atom, joining the atom of form and the atom of content, it was a transitional form for all creatures, so visible that sexuality, which links femininity (the stable type of form) and masculinity (the stable type of content) is a transitional form, that is the matrix of all kinds that creatures are divided into.”

50 Ch. Baudelaire, Salon 1845, quoted in J. Mayne, Art in Paris 1845-1862: Salons and Other Exhibits Reviewed by Charles Baudelaire, London 1965, p. 32.

Dawid Maria Osiński

(University of Warsaw)

The Syntax of Affection: Men and Women, Masculinity and Femininity in the Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz

The Linguistic Image of the World and comparative structures

Approaching literary studies as a field that researches the construction and creation of the figures of men and women (which, according to Roman Ingarden1 and Henryk Markiewicz,2 are important – if not the most important – elements of the fictional universe) presents both an opportunity and a threat. The opportunity consists in a new, fresh appraisal of a literary work with a focus on the effectiveness of plot choices, the structure, and composition of the text. The characters and figures who define the semantic repertory of the writer’s prose works are given the status of raisonneurs and ciceroni of the fictional world. It is their personality and the relations they enter into as well as their knowledge about themselves (based on a variety of premises), or lack of such knowledge, that inform both the framework of the fictional world and the quality of the author’s literary creation. The characters’ makeup also influences the lessons we learn from reading, which are different every single time because, in a way, they are always connected with either the sensation of pleasure or the feeling of detachment and disappointment.

However, this way of reading literature poses a threat as well. There is a risk of adopting an anachronistic approach toward the issue under study and the structuralist (though not critically evaluated) inscription of characters within the network of meanings, while they themselves point to a number of different relationships developed within the structure of the literary work. The threat lies also in forming a catalog-like presentation of the relations represented by the writer; the relations that readers recreate in their minds in the process of reading by organizing the knowledge about these relations and about the world they govern in a specific way. The reader is provided with detailed knowledge which has to be either verified or accepted at face value (even to the point of total absorption in the fictional world); but sometimes, the reader has to face the lack thereof and make conjectures to be further explored through decoding the hidden meaning, thus discovering textual interconnections, and eventually acquiring knowledge – in other words, obtaining an advantage from the process of reading.

I will examine Sienkiewicz’s works, especially those set in his own time (novels of manners, psychological narratives, and novellas), using the methodology of the Linguistic Image of the World. I believe that this approach may add a new interpretive quality to the views and readings of Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre. In the present article, I draw not so much on the detailed and well-established body of linguistic studies (in keeping with the tradition started by Anna Wierzbicka3 and Jerzy Bartmiński4), but rather on the general spirit of the Linguistic Image of the World as comprehensively outlined by Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the originators and developers of this method for conceptualizing the world. Humboldt’s reflections on the language-bound nature of reality will guide our examination of the Linguistic Image of the World in Sienkiewicz’s writings.

A scholar witnessing the 19th-century birth of comparative linguistics, Wilhelm von Humboldt claimed that every language that can be used to represent the world is based on the rules so far unknown, unexplored, and new: the rules that serve to categorize the created (and, consequently, the explored) world in a variety of ways.5 Such a perspective helps to grasp the potential effects of depicting the world in words and to identify language (literary) structures used by Sienkiewicz to build the world as conceived by men and women respectively. It is this layer of meaning that will be the focus of my paper. Moreover, the above approach appears promising in the examination of the writer’s way to fashion the literary universe of ideas, which is represented through language and itself represents the narrative-thematic relations and action patterns of Sienkiewicz’s characters.

Compared against the language of Sienkiewicz’s historical works, the manner of speaking that distinguishes individual characters of his contemporary novels and novellas sheds new light on the area of Sienkiewicz studies. The linguistic dimension of historical novels has already been subject to in-depth and multi-faceted analyses concerning: morphology, lexis, syntax, semantics, the meaning of dialecticisms and borrowings; there are also detailed discussions of the structural aspects of utterances. By contrast, novellas and novels set in Sienkiewicz’s own time are not a popular field of study, at least not as regards the issue that I find particularly interesting: the relations between men and women, the images of femininity and masculinity. This is the reason why I am going to focus on the examination of the functionality of individual sentence structures as well as the significance of combining selected lexemes that can be found in Sienkiewicz’s prose writing; of using certain verbs that express different degrees of belonging and possession; of the rection of verbs that denote male-female relationships; and of linguistic expressions associated with the stereotypical roles of men and women. The results of my study will complement those that can already be found in existing research into Sienkiewicz’s writing, namely the readings which center on the terms defining the anthropology of love, the significance of the characters’ subjectivity, the sense of freedom, the distinctiveness of characters, the concepts of desire, aestheticism, dandyism, play, and the notion of marriage as legally sanctioned prostitution (after Honoré de Balzac’s The Physiology of Marriage, where a woman “at last becomes lower than a chorus girl for she prostitutes herself to her husband”6).

The “syntax of affection” in the title of the present paper is a deliberate choice of words since my primary aim is to examine not individual lexemes and their meanings, but rather the structure of Sienkiewicz’s syntactic patterns, which convey a specific conceptual model of the world developed by his fictional characters. In other words, it is not linguistics but language as a vehicle for expressing certain mechanisms and depicting relations between the author’s male and female dramatis personae that will be the subject of my study. Consequently, my focus will not be on a given list of lexemes; instead, I will analyze the interrelationship of particular lexemes within the structure of sentences. The narrative, word-string dimension of Sienkiewicz’s prose writing with its depictions of femininity and masculinity appears to carry much more weight than any concordance analysis for particular words and their use in context. That is the reason why I will explore not the grammar of affection (neither in its broader sense nor when understood as a study of given parts of speech or parts of a sentence), but its syntax – as a specific branch of grammar that concerns the utterance and the image of the world it evokes.

In recent years, stylometry has become a well-established method in Polish literary studies. This is largely owed to Kwiryna Handke and her research into lexicons of Polish writers such as Stefan Żeromski and Eliza Orzeszkowa, i.e. linguistic analyses based on the concordance of specific words appearing in their works.7 However, this approach would not prove effective in the present paper for a simple reason: I am not going to examine the frequency with which Sienkiewicz uses given lexemes or single words, but rather their syntactic relationships, which will allow me to focus on an utterance as a complete signifying entity. Although it is true that the results of stylometric analyses may provide exhaustive information on the repetition rate for given words and consequently the writer’s stylistic features and preferences, they are inevitably limited by their exclusion of units larger than a word or a lexeme. By contrast, the purpose of my inquiry into the specificity of Sienkiewicz’s comparative and syntactic structures is to explore the narrative’s internal interrelationships.

While discussing the paradoxical nature of the stylometric method, Jan Rybicki rightly states:

The undeniable advantage of stylometry, focused on individual words, is mainly the relative simplicity of the method itself and the calculations it entails. However, any attempt at examining larger units, e.g. sentence structures, gives rise to numerous methodological problems (especially in Polish, which is a highly inflectional language), and analyses of word n-grams prove considerably less valuable than those of single words. Constructive semantic parsing of literary material is bound to soon take over the field of criticism – but it will not be for some time yet.8

Therefore, I believe it is the methodology of the Linguistic Image of the World that will provide the most valuable and effective tools to the study of those comparative structures which are specific for the syntax of Sienkiewicz’s idiolect. It may be successfully applied when defining the status of men and women in the writer’s novels and novellas; it proves of use in analyzing his pithy diagnoses of their life experiences; last but not least, it allows for an examination of the images of Sienkiewicz’s male and female characters and the manner they approach the task of building relationships, the roles they fulfill within this framework, and the way they perceive the objects of their desire (in the fictional world, those are mostly women evaluated by their male observers). Indeed, the question of mutual relations and social positions of men and women is of major importance throughout the writer’s oeuvre. The Linguistic Image of the World facilitates a multi-faceted analysis of this issue, taking into consideration different narrative plots and opinions on different attitudes and role models. The language structures that describe these relations and positions point to a number of questions that are psycho-emotional and ontological (existential) in nature. It is important to note that such questions are asked by the characters themselves. Sienkiewicz scholars have discussed in detail how the writer – commonly admired for his talent for fashioning the past, painting scenes with words, and creating the national spirit – managed to meet the taste and expectations of the reading audience.9 As a novelist, Sienkiewicz placed a marked emphasis not so much on the object to be depicted but on the manner of depiction: the language which stirs emotions, appeals to the readers’ instincts, and ultimately – seduces the reading public. With his fine ear for words, Sienkiewicz knew that language is a signifying system that influences the audience’s perception of the world in a highly specific way. He was well aware which aspects of the worldview should be brought into focus so that the fictional characters’ adventures and needs are accurately represented.10

Sienkiewicz endowed the language of his characters with certain features that help them to exercise control over their fictional worlds of authority and of self-knowledge. Thus, the characters come to express a variety of qualities and penchants that define their status. It is equally important that they voice their desires so their individual traits should be interpreted as an indication of the power of domination, submission, and dependence. This proves that language may become a space of oppression since it allows to generate (sometimes unconsciously) a myth of a conqueror and possessor. The Linguistic Image of the World in Sienkiewicz’s novels and novellas also identifies narration as the area where things are called by their names, which reveals vital instincts and elements. A variety of seduction strategies (described in brazen detail by another Polish writer, Maria Konopnicka), illusion-creating techniques, poetic and narrative qualities of Sienkiewicz’s fiction, and dialogue lines of his characters, all sanction lust for life in its perennial potential for narration, that is, building with words.

This paper identifies and discusses the linguistic structures that convey the relations and relationships between men and women. It also proves that Sienkiewicz scholars’ well-established analyses on (among others) aestheticism, egotism, decadence, dandyism, subjectivity, and eroticism, find their validity and ample illustration – i.e., argumentative power – in the language of the writer’s novels and novellas.

My examination of the Linguistic Image of the World focuses on a number of Sienkiewicz’s most significant areas of literary interest. These include the issues of the above-mentioned decadence, dandyism, and aestheticism; collecting as a manifest sign of opposing the existential horror vacui; bodily and sensual experience; stereotypes of femininity and masculinity, the status of the former, and questions raised in respect of the role of the latter’s power. This line of reading allows an analysis of the functional nature of “painting with words” in order to represent male-female relationships. Moreover, it encourages inquiries into the nature of the “exchange of favors” between the two sexes, and the role of the watching eye (mostly associated by Sienkiewicz with the dominant, evaluating observer and collector of experiences).

The major areas of study include possessives as used by Sienkiewicz’s characters to mark ownership and belonging. The manner in which novelistic male protagonists employ them indicates that, as early as the end of the 19th century, Sienkiewicz placed emphasis on the importance of subjectivity, the development of discreteness and individuality. Eliza Orzeszkowa adopted the same approach in The Argonauts, when she highlighted the use of the word “my” and its significance in denoting egotism and individualism. However, this adjective pronoun was first and foremost the expression of the sense of belonging for the characters of Sienkiewicz’s Without Dogma (Bez dogmatu)11 and Children of the Soil (Rodzina Połanieckich):

Why do I repeat to myself so often that she is as the crown of my head? (WD, p. 406)

You must love her! Let her feel that she is not only your female, but the crown of your head, as precious as your child and friend; wear her close to your heart, let her feel the warmth of it, and you may rest in peace; year after year she will cling closer to you, until you two are like Siamese twins. (WD, p. 59)

Połaniecki (Polanyetski), in turn, calls his beloved Marynia “my little one” (CS, p. 657), which implies both reverence and tenderness. At the same time, he voices some enigmatic feelings as well, proving he cannot think of Marynia in more precise terms than “that one.” This can be illustrated with utterances such as “She is kind and shapely, charming; where is there such another?” (CS, p. 33), on the one hand, and “I am occupied with her, not in love with her” (CS, p. 53), on the other.

Sienkiewicz’s syntax of affection stands out mostly for its repetitions, variations, comparisons, and metonymies. An important role is fulfilled by verbs, especially those that indicate ownership, belonging, dependence, i.e. lexemes such as “have,” “take,” “choose,” “conquer,” “be something or somebody for another person.” Such verbs are governed by specific syntactic constraints. Thus, language as a signifying system imposes very precise rules for correlating the elements; it defines the lines of relationships. A few examples are worth mentioning here. Płoszowski confesses in his journal: “I intoxicate myself with […] the daily sight of Aniela, and forget that she belongs to somebody else” (WD, p. 179); “I preferred to have Aniela in this way to not having her at all…” (WD, p. 353). In the Polish original of Children of the Soil, Bigiel says he “got himself” a good wife, and Maszko (Mashko) is presented as “a genuine parvenu who had won a princess” and “loved her precisely because she seemed a princess, and because he possessed her” (CS, p. 346).

The Linguistic Image of the World is also very effective in explaining the significance of the characters’ fantasies as well as registering the act of making allowances for one’s desires. The basic verb “to be’ is used to indicate the status of the subject, their belonging, and identity. However, in the third-person narration and the characters’ idiom, it mostly requires completion, i.e. ‘to be somebody in relation to something or somebody’, ‘to be something for somebody’ (a prospect, an item, an element). This is particularly noticeable in the language of erotica, dominated by such stylistic features as periphrasis, ellipsis, understatement, or – to draw on Ryszard Koziołek’s seminal analysis of the body and physicality in Sienkiewicz’s works – the absence of context, implied but missing from the text itself.12 It should be noted here that, even at the syntactic level, there are many compelling stylistic and rhetorical solutions which indicate the importance of women’s belonging to men and the effects of different love games, spiced up with linguistic structures.

Eroticism in language: Physiognomy and life

The eroticism of Sienkiewicz’s characters has already been critically analyzed, most notably in the above-mentioned Sienkiewicz’s Bodies by Ryszard Koziołek. The critic points out that the writer’s language of eroticism abounds in allegories, ellipses, and metonymies, which means that the corporality and carnality of women are conveyed through understatements, innuendoes, and witty remarks. Periphrases, double entendres, and allusions thus become a means of artistic expression that reveal the degree of engagement of a female character in the relationship with the man she is trying to seduce (this situational arrangement is not coincidental). Both men and women in Sienkiewicz’s works typologize features and role models. At the same time, however, they are always aimed to get actively involved in answering the question about their own identity in the face of the Other. Sienkiewicz turns out to be a meticulous creator of images, especially as far as female representations are concerned. This must be attributed to the (quite common at the time) acquaintance with the school of physiognomy, especially 18th-century theories of Enlightenment scholars Johann Kaspar Lavater and Franz Joseph Gall.13 Nevertheless, the emphasis is placed first and foremost on the way the woman is perceived by the eye of the dominating male, always registering and evaluating female shapes and curves. This confirms yet again the truth acknowledged decades earlier by Charles Baudelaire in The Painter of Modern Life: that the observing eye is inevitably the assessing eye, with each glance necessarily generating opinion and enhancing the advantage of the one who is watching.

Without Dogma adopts such a perspective in the passage where Płoszowski attempts to employ descriptors of physical reality (culinary arts, to be more precise) in the description of the body. As used in the novel, this strategy draws on the anti-aesthetic tradition of turpism, which relies on shocking and repelling imagery. The example cited below is significant in view of Płoszowski’s perception of Aniela as an object not to be copied or even compared against anyone else: she is supposed to be one of a kind. However, there are many possible comparisons that can provoke disgust and revulsion. Being a portraitist and aesthetic connoisseur, Płoszowski knows that an ill-suited juxtaposition of items or people under observation is likely to result in an eventual damage to the image of the woman one desires – just because she is wooed by an unsightly rival:

But for his small, black hair, his head looks as if cut out from a cheese-rind, – for such is his complexion. He reminds me of a death’s-head, and I simply have a physical loathing for him. Ugh! How the thought of him in connection with Aniela has spoiled her image. I am quite aware that she is in no way responsible for Kromitzki’s intentions; but it has damaged her in my eyes. (WD, p. 40)

However, such thinking is a double-edged sword and it is Płoszowski himself who is diagnosed by Chwastowski to have “the nerves of a decaying race” in spite of “a fair supply of muscular strength” (WD, p. 266). The significance of fictional characters’ appearance and personality is also highlighted in Sienkiewicz’s novel for teenagers, In Desert and Wilderness. Here are two examples of how the techniques for depicting perception and visualization are used in this book:

In the meantime Idris and Gebhr continued to stand like two white columns, gazing attentively at Stas and Nell. The moon illumined their very dark faces, and in its luster they looked as if cast of bronze. (ID, p. 37).

Nell submitted passively to all of Stas’ efforts; she only gazed at him like an exhausted bird, and only when he removed her shoes to spill out the sand and afterwards when he smoothed out the saddle-cloths did she throw her arms around his neck. (ID, p. 88).

As a modern writer, Sienkiewicz uses the constructs of masculinity and femininity to delineate a certain approach to life – or rather, to reveal the unattainability of living to the fullest. For Sienkiewicz, and consequently, for many of his fictional characters, life becomes the concept of paramount importance. His works consistently express criticism of everything that goes against vitality, whether it is the decadence of the modernist era, the aestheticism that precludes the true knowledge of the essence of beauty, Zolaesque naturalism, or the asceticism of the first Christians in Quo Vadis. Sienkiewicz considers life to be a value in itself. That is why his favorite figures (both those who clearly enjoy his authorial approval and those he appears to have a weak spot for) are the embodiment of liveliness, biological determinism, corporality. In his oeuvre, death of female characters signifies helplessness – but it also triggers all the more yearning for and awareness of the importance of life. It seems that the female character most endowed with favorable features is Litka, a dying half-child, half-woman. Mature for her age because of the balancing act at the edge of death, she knows life so much better since she has come to experience it twice as much as others. She is trying to understand it in its particularity and uniqueness (especially during her stay in Reichenhall) and grasp the mechanisms by which it is governed – and which make people act as they do. She does not focus on trying to squeeze pleasure out of life (like Płoszowski, Świrski the painter, Teresa Krasławska-Maszko, Petronius, and Aneta Osnowska; neither does she take the center of the stage and play an active part (like Nero).

Obviously, both male and female characters attempt to adopt self-discipline, correct their ways, caution and advise one another (e.g., in the Trilogy, On the Field of Glory [Na polu chwały], The Teutonic Knights [Krzyżacy], Whirlpools [Wiry]). Among the least successful ones, one should mention Płoszowski, Petronius, and Bukacki (Bukatski) – the morphine-addict in Children of the Soil. These decadent spirits with their skeptical outlook on people and life in general are criticized by Sienkiewicz through the narrators and characters of respective novels for focusing too much on experimentation, lacking enthusiasm for life, and for amassing a collection of impressions and emotions or people and items – often the ones they do not have any right to. Professor Waskowski (Vaskovski) makes an accurate diagnosis in Children of the Soil: “that too is a disease of the age – collecting and collecting on all sides!” (CS, p. 55).

Physiognomical research into Sienkiewicz’s characters includes critical analyses by Marta Rabikowska,14 Agnieszka Janiak,15 Barbara Szargot,16 and, in particular, a recent study by Ewa Skorupa.17 I would say that Sienkiewicz applies “comparative physiognomy,” as opposed to the techniques used by other Polish writers of the latter 19th century: neither Prus, nor Orzeszkowa, nor Kraszewski employs such pronounced comparative structures in order to achieve a description of enhanced quality. Its uniqueness must be attributed to specific syntax that represents a given image or personality in relation to yet another referent. Some excerpts from Without Dogma illustrate this point particularly well:

The characteristic of this little head with the low brow is that exuberance of hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and that down, which on the face is very slight. This at some future time may spoil her beauty, but at present she is so young that it points only to an exuberance of organism, and shows that she is not a doll, but a woman full of warm, active life. (WD, p. 29)

I do not deny that, fastidious as are my nerves and not easily thrilled, I fell under a spell. She is my type exactly. My aunt, who, if she ever heard about Darwin would call him a wicked writer, has unconsciously adopted his theory of natural selection. Yes, she is my type. They have baited the hook this time with a dainty morsel. (WD, p. 29)

There are faces that seem to be a translation from music or poetry into human shape. Such a face is Aniela’s. There is nothing commonplace about it. (WD, p. 29)

The concept of representation is used quite literally in The Third Woman, where “cadaver” paintings are tellingly said to be Światecki’s (Swiatetski) specialty: he “painted large cadavers, small cadavers, and some of medium size” (TW, p. 8). Physiognomy seems to rule both the description and the personality traits in this short story. “Kazia’s head reminds me of a type in the days of the Directoriat. She would look much better if she dressed her hair in the style of that period” (TW, p. 21), and Kazia’s complexion is “as if she jumped down from a canvas by Fortuni” (TW, p. 21). Later, the subjective narrator continues talking in images: “I look at Kazia’s muslin dress which on the carpet of a faded red makes a very nice contrast” (TW, p. 67).

In a short story entitled “Hania,” aesthetics plays a major part, defining the image of characters and bringing into focus particular parts of the body. Colonel Mirza’s representation, with his “prominent cheek-bones, slanting eyes with a wonderfully gloomy glitter,” reminds one of Adonis. His descendant Selim, however, “resembled his ancestors in nothing” (H, p. 31). This was allegedly due to the fact that his father, Dawidowicz (Davidovich), married a beautiful Caucasian girl in the Crimea, and Selim inherited his mother’s “great, dark, pensive, moist eyes” and “regular features, as noble as if they had come from the chisel of a sculptor,” his lips “red as raspberries, a sweet smile, and teeth like pearls” (H, p. 31). The characters are compared to “young eagles,” and their youth is a “treasure” (H, p. 60). The protagonist, Henryk, at one point tellingly confesses that he “fell asleep with [Hania’s] image under [his] eyelids” (H, p. 66); he also recollects: “We sat side by side like two dolls; it seemed to me that I was listening to the hurried beating of my own heart” (H, p. 70). In an exchange with his father, Henryk – now Warsaw’s Main School student – hears that he must be stronger than Selim Mirza for Hania’s sake, but the story’s vignette of the handsome Selim looking Hania in the eyes is commented on by Henryk the narrator in a humble way: “no artist could have imagined a more beautiful couple” (H, p. 77). It is also worth mentioning here that Selim’s face is “like a mirror or the surface of water” (H, p. 85) – yet another example of the deliberate use of comparative structures.

In time, Sienkiewicz begins to write in the manner similar to 19th-century physiognomy-inspired authors, Zola and Flaubert. His literary images of characters resemble those created by Orzeszkowa, even when he is critical of the ones who do not see life as a value in itself (i.e., decadents, skeptics, dandies, substance-addicted junkies of artificially enhanced life). He interestingly diagnoses them as “geniuses without portfolios,” “sufferers from remoteness,” collectors of impressions and life-shunning aphorists that spend their time planning life instead of yielding to its currents, wherever it might take them.

Many of Sienkiewicz’s male characters act as esthetes that appraise women who, in turn, are often turned into a bargaining card or an object to be contemplated, painted, photographed. This is exactly how Płoszowski feels about Mrs. Davis, Aniela, Laura; Vinicius – about Lygia; Połaniecki – about Marynia as well as his lover, the statue-like and aloof Miss Krasławska (Kraslavski) (later Mrs. Maszko [Mashko]). The woman is defined by the fact of belonging: she is subject to the patriarchal authority system, and the object of possession and desire (especially in Sienkiewicz’s historical novels).

There is one more recurrent mechanism that rules the male-female relationships in Sienkiewicz’s works that should be taken into consideration. Men always start by building mental representations of the relationship with women and consequently form a female phantasm, an idealized projection (Połaniecki does so with Marynia, Vinicius – with Lygia, Kmicic [Andrei Kmita] – with Oleńka, Zbyszko – with Danusia, Płoszowski – with Aniela); however, such an illusion is unavoidably shattered in the face of reality. Sienkiewicz vehemently opposes this way of perceiving and learning about the world. Thus formed, male-female relations are doomed to follow patterns of subjection and attribution. Indeed, while Sienkiewicz depicts them in his fiction writing, he overtly mocks such simplistic readings of the complex rules that govern the male/female universe. And, since a phantasm is but a figment of the imagination, it has little in common with real life. An apt conclusion to this line of analysis is the classification of the representatives of the fair sex, formulated by Sienkiewicz in a column from 1880. Two of the three types of women that an artist is likely to fall in love with are particularly valid: 1) a woman with a simple and honest heart who supports her beloved with all her effort and vital energy. The tower of strength, the source of inspiration, rest, morality, health; 2) an exuberant individuality herself, she absorbs all of her man’s artistic power that should be released through the act of creation. She does not enhance but rather saps her partner’s strength. The third type is a dissolute, vain woman.18

Aesthetes, collectors, conquerors: The value and power of collecting

Sienkiewicz’s fictional characters, mainly males, have the feel of a conqueror about them. They are always assessing the appearance and discussing the role of the naked body, or the body conditioned by cultural norms. This attitude is also adopted by some women: for example, Marynia concludes that, in comparison with every other man she knows, Połaniecki “came out always victorious” (CS, p. 426). In both Children of the Soil and Without Dogma, male characters evaluate the aesthetic value of females as images; but in a novella entitled At the Source, it is a woman who draws a portrait of her fiancé from memory (AS, p. 278). Soon afterward, she is said to have “looked like a vision […] so admired was she that some of my acquaintances stood as if fixed to the pavement” (AS, p. 279). The range and significance of visualization are discussed in depth in one of the most interesting scenes of Without Dogma:

Since a description is an unsatisfactory way of painting a portrait, I showed my father a large and really excellent photograph of Aniela, at which he looked with the keenest interest. I was no less interested in the study of his face, in which I saw not only the roused artist, but also the refined connoisseur of female beauty, the old Leon l’Invincible. Resting the photograph on the poor hand half paralyzed, he put on his eyeglass with the right, and then holding the likeness at a longer or shorter distance he began to say: “But for certain details, the face is like one of those Ary-Schaeffer liked to paint. How lovely she would look with tears in her eyes. Some people dislike angelic faces in women, but I think that to teach an angel how to become a woman is the very height of victory. She is very beautiful, very uncommon looking. Enfin, tout ce qu’il y a de plus beau au monde — c’est la femme.”

Here he fumbled with his eyeglass, and then added: “Judging by the face, or rather by the photograph (sometimes one makes mistakes, but I have had some practice), hers is a thoroughly loyal nature. Women of this type are in love with the whiteness of their plumage. God bless you, my boy! I like her very much, this Aniela of yours. I used to be afraid you might end by marrying a foreigner — let it be Aniela.” (WD, pp. 66-67)

The human body often becomes a space for experimentation and play, not only for the hedonist Petronius but also for Połaniecki – convinced as he is that he follows some bourgeois conqueror’s code. Figures tend to be appraised in the manner similar to the works of art, such as sophisticated ornaments and paintings brought to the Płoszow estate from Rome itself. The body image is read like literary works, perused or recalled to memory: the smallest details may contribute to the diagnosis of the character’s physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Approaching the body as if it were an ornament does appear like art for art’s sake in its focus on form in search of stimulation, and even titillation, for action. Collecting, i.e. selecting particular elements by means of comparison, and continual validation of set components through assessment turns out to be a preventive measure against the atrophy of personal life, the horror vacui, wavering identity, or constant hunger for new experiences.

This is the case because Sienkiewicz’s esthetes, conquerors, merchants, and dandies are not able to use their energy to constructive ends. They try to escape taking the responsibility for their own thinking processes, and so they construct whole sequences of comparisons and variations on the literary and visual imagery present in their Linguistic Image of the World. A perfect illustration of that point can be found in Płoszowski’s confession – an aphoristic statement of a universal truth that nevertheless draws on a comparison pointing to a different layer of meaning:

The French women, and for the matter of that, my own countrywomen, of whatever class and in spite of all their virtues when young, remind me of my fencing lessons. As the fencer has his hour of practice with the foils so as to keep his hand in, so women practice with sentimental foils. As a mere youth, fairly good looking, I was sometimes invited to a passage of arms, and as I took the matter seriously, received many a scratch. (WD, pp. 13-14)

The comparative mechanism is an important instrument to be applied against the void and in support of life, the choice of conscious beauty as the way to fulfillment – if there is one in the dictionary of decadent dandies like Leon Płoszowski.19 Relying on familiar (though often forgotten) constructs enables one to take control over oneself and one’s surroundings, which results in the feeling of stability and consistency. Even Petronius of Quo Vadis needs to follow the exigencies of image building and latest fashions. He takes care of his body with baths that stimulate blood circulation, followed by being embrocated with perfumed oils by two servants called balneatores, and a careful draping of his linen clothes. Petronius has a weak spot for Marcus Vinicius and regards him from the aesthetic perspective. He appraises his friend’s body as if it were a work of art; likewise, Lygia is evaluated in terms of classic beauty and compared to a carved personification of Spring. The delicate Eunice and herculean Ursus also trigger associations with fine sculpture. An aesthetic desire for an artistic object becomes a need for self-satisfaction. This is why Petronius tells Vinicius about exquisite beauties to be seen in Roman villas and a delightful female slave that can serve as a momentary distraction.

For characters of the novels and novellas set by Sienkiewicz in his own time, experimenting with life for pure enjoyment is a vital experience. Watching women brings the necessity of developing a juxtaposition mechanism in the Linguistic Image of the World to the foreground. Without Dogma highlights this quality particularly well in the words of Płoszowski, who thus tries to come to terms with an outside perspective:

As formerly my father’s friends looked upon him as a genius, so she persists in regarding me as one exceptionally gifted, from whom great things are to be expected. To allow her to remain of this opinion seems an abuse of her good faith; to tell her that nothing is to be expected from me would be a more likely conclusion, but at the same time inflict upon the dear old lady a cruel blow. (WD, p. 7)

The above-quoted excerpt conveys the significance of finding similarities and differences in order to ascribe a new image into the catalog of old designata, phenomena, and other easily visualized components of the physical world. Effectual comparative structures are invariably used as elements of describing the appearance of Sienkiewicz’s female characters. Lineta Castelli, for example, is a painter and a poet who looks like “an orchid” (CS, p. 381), a “dreamy queen” (CS, p. 370), and “the inanimate head of a statue” (CS, p. 369). Teresa Krasławska is compared to “an empty doll and manikin” (CS, p. 153), or a “decanter of chilled water” (CS, p. 234). Aneta Osnowska is a “dark brunette, with cherry lips, dishevelled forelock, and somewhat oblique violet eyes” (CS, p. 306) who makes Połaniecki think of rusalka – a Slavic water nymph (CS, p. 314). In Without Dogma, Laura Davis is referred to as Venus, Sybil, Diana the Huntress. The main protagonist says that she “looks like a Juno […] she has the figure of a Greek statue” (WD, p. 68):

Mrs. Davis on the terrace with the moon shining upon her was beautiful as a Greek dream. (WD, p. 70).

By contrast, her husband is depicted as an ailing man on the verge of dying.

Płoszowski’s father, in turn, has a “fine head of a patrician philosopher” (WD, p. 69). The process of aestheticization continues to have its hold on his son even after the parent’s death, which is evident in the diary entry that expresses the fear of the noble body being treated like a ‘thing’: “I was not present at the embalming of the body, – I had not the strength; but after that I did not leave the dear remains for a minute, out of fear they might treat him as a thing of no consequence” (WD, p. 76).

The description of German pianist Klara Hilst is informed by national – and, as 19th-century physiognomists would say, racial – stereotypes. She is exceedingly tall, which is why the protagonist calls her the “caryatid” (WD, p. 142). Serious, cautious, and lofty, she also reminds him of Saint Cecilia. “Miss Hilst belongs to the category of musical philosophers” (WD, p. 142), he writes at one time; Klara “looked like a hill covered with heliotrope blossoms” (WD, p. 251) at another. Earlier in the book, in his conversation with Klara, Śniatyński discusses “Aniela’s type and its aesthetic perfection […] as if she were a portrait hanging on the wall, rather than a living presence” (WD, p. 208). Płoszowski, also present during the exchange, remains silent but compares the faces of these women in his mind. He concludes that Aniela “is not only an artistic production of an exceedingly noble style as regards her features, but there is something individual in her that cannot be measured by any standard” (WD, pp. 208-209). Another act of observation provides more delight:

Her white shoulders peeping out from a cloud of muslin, gauze, or whatever it is called, she looked like a Venus rising from the foam. I fancy it was already gossiped about that I am going to marry her. (WD, p. 34)

In the continuation of the scene, the Linguistic Image of the World puts the character in the context of the physical world as she seems to reflect sunlight:

It was eight o’clock in the morning and a flood of daylight poured into the room. It was so perfectly blue, seen by the glare of the lamps, that it reminded me of the Capri grotto. And there stood Aniela, with that blue haze around her white shoulders. (WD, p. 36)

A very similar picture can be found in Children of the Soil, with the narrator stating that, at Reichenhall, Litka “seemed rather the idea of an artist than a living little girl” (CS, p. 67). Bukacki says she is “formed of mist” (CS, p. 67), which is a deeply meaningful image in the novel where onirism is a descriptive convention and a tool for atmosphere building.

Throughout Without Dogma, Płoszowski quotes extensively from a variety of sources. He compares himself against literary characters and the fictional worlds of their impressions, experiences, and emotions. He studies the classics of European philosophical and artistic thought: Solomon, Ovid, Dante Alighieri, Shakespeare, Descartes, Goethe, Hegel, Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Balzac, George Sand, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, Renan, Ribot, and Pascal. Making references and relating to these venerable sources enables Płoszowski to model himself on literary paragons and self-diagnose his ideological and emotional condition. Like the great masters, he develops his own philosophical and metaphysical system, discovering on the way that his experiences confirm the long-forgotten but still scientifically valid conclusions on living and maintaining the right balance in this world. He tries to find similarities so that it is easier to face the unknown and deal with the uncertainty in case the new is ungraspable in its character or significance. Recognizable elements are sought to feel safer, to protect oneself, and to ensure effective self-control. Płoszowski is always acting – to himself and in front of the mirror, as it turns out when he confesses: “There are always two persons within me, – the actor, and the spectator” (WD, p. 66). Still, he also states: “My heart is like that plant which closes its leaves at the slightest touch” (WD, p. 139). That is his trick to make the reality he experiences more attractive and fiction-like. He hopes to add another line in the book of the wretched “geniuses without portfolio” and literary drones who suffer from the lack of willpower and hunger for adventure, but at the same time get stimulation from their own unsatisfied desire to achieve the fullness they will never achieve because the desire itself is basically insatiable:

Not long ago, when romanticism flourished in hearts and poetry, everybody carried his tragedy draped around him as a picturesque cloak; now it is carried still, but as a jaegervest next to the skin. But with a diary it is different; with a diary one may be sincere. (WD, p. 12)

In fact, Płoszowski is interested in nothing but thinking about himself and experimenting with a variety of male-female relationships. Women are always assessed by him in respect of their conduct, degree of neuroticism, refinement, desirability, attitude to and lust for life:

I frequented their salons mostly for the sake of their female element. They are very subtle, the women there, with highly strung nerves always in search for new pleasures, fresh sensations, and truly void of any idealism. They are often as corrupt as the novels they are reading, because their morality finds no support either in religion or tradition. But it is a brilliant world all the same. The hours of practice with the foils are so long there that they look more like days and nights, and the weapons are dangerous sometimes, as they are not blunted. (WD, p. 14)

Contrary to the seeming chaos, the appraisal of women is completely under control. It follows the rules of distancing oneself and using common sense as if this particular domain of experience required alertness, caution, and careful consideration whether it is worth taking the risk to play. Indeed, one could say that this is a game played by Płoszowski to teeter on the brink of approaching women and evaluating them by their appearance, behavior, and opinion:

I have seen this and noticed it very often in a general way; but now and then there happens to be found a pure diamond too among the chaff. No, my queens and princesses, permit me to worship you from a safe distance. (WD, p. 25)

Fancy putting aside all other aims, all ideals, in order to burn incense every day at the shrine of a woman, and that woman one’s own wife. No, dear ladies, that is not sufficient to fill a man’s life. (WD, p. 25)

I am often bored at balls. As a homo sapiens and an éligible parti, I abhor them; as an artist, that is, artist without portfolio, I now and then like them. (WD, p. 26)

The protagonist of Children of the Soil also focuses on physiological and physiognomic features of the representatives of the fair sex. Mrs. Krasławska seemed to Połaniecki “quite beautiful, in spite of a slight inflammation of the eyes, and a few pimples on her forehead, which were powdered” (CS, p. 234). Marynia, in turn, had “a face so calm, so full of something like that repose which a flower has, and so serene, that it was simply angelic” (CS, p. 272). The “Chinese eyes” of Mrs. Osnowska made her look like “the eighth wonder of the world” or a water nymph (CS, p. 314). As the plot develops, Mrs. Osnowska claims that “if she were a man, she would be a Trappist” (CS, p. 317).

In one of the novel’s turning points, the black-clad Marynia seems attractive to Połaniecki for her gravity reminiscent of their wedding. The moment of heightened perception is significant for evoking the solemnity of death as well: “Her transparent face assumed at times a bluish tinge; and seemed, especially when the sick woman kept her eyes closed, like the face of a dead person” (CS, p. 633). After giving birth to their child, Marynia’s looks were once again in focus: “Her complexion, always very pure, had become still clearer, and more lily-like” (CS, p. 642). Her child, on the other hand, had “staring round eyes, in which the external world was reflected as mechanically as in a mirror” (CS, p. 647); not a random comparison, since the image of the mirror is evoked by the third-person narrator earlier in the novel in reference to Marynia. Mrs. Maszko is described as follows: “A pure Vannuci! The same quietism, and a little yellowish; but she has very beautiful lines in her form” (CS, p. 456). Still, as mentioned above, Połaniecki sees her as “a puppet, a manikin” (CS, p. 429). Zawiłowski (Zavilovski), with his strong jaw and long legs, is a Wagnerian character (CS, pp. 522-523): Świrski will think of him as “a tragic head” (CS, p. 541), though he calls him “the Benjamin of the counting house” (CS, p. 447). As the ideal of feminine beauty, Świrski would mention the head of Miss Ratkowska. Many characters of Sienkiewicz’s novels are keen on keeping healthy and fit not only because it is fashionable, but because it gives them a feeling of self-fulfillment. The dictate of a lean sporty figure resurfaces repeatedly; so does the mention of the “English” type, beautifully shaped by a sporty lifestyle, in Sienkiewicz’s writing in general. Osnowski, for example, plays tennis “passionately, so as not to grow fat” (CS, p. 476). The slenderness of Kopowski is proudly emphasized by the soft fabric of the clothes he wears (CS, p. 522).

Sienkiewicz’s male characters not only tend to develop whole typologies of women and female nature, but they also share a specific misogynistic taxonomy that exposes their attitude to the opposite sex. Połaniecki differentiates “patricians, who have culture, principles, and spiritual needs,” from “parvenues, who dress in them, as in mantillas, to go visiting” (CS, p. 264). Bukacki states that women can be divided into “plebeian souls” and “patrician souls” (CS, p. 309). Irrespective of their status, women are discussed like the loot, something to be conquered. Consequently, they are regarded from the perspective of male domination with eyes that assess the value of a new possession; and exceedingly looked down on. Połaniecki tells Bigiel that “Marynia is such an honest little woman that it would be hard to find a better [one]” (CS, p. 335). Even the third-person narrator feels obliged to comment on such condescension and proves his involvement with the fictional world when he writes: “there was in [Polanyetski] the carefulness of a husband, perhaps, but not the anxiety of a lover” (CS, p. 372). It is no surprise, then, that “he composed expressions with which he would confess to Marynia” (CS, p. 384).

These men are consistently criticized by the third-person narrator and fellow characters for their violation of the basic decorum: safeguarding the value of life. They are well aware of their own defeat, their entanglement in the correlated addiction to the daily routine and eccentric habits (Płoszowski) or the hedonistic affirmation of the experience of the moment (Bukacki). This has nothing to do with the Horatian carpe diem but rather the wrongly conceived Epicurean concept of ataraxia (freedom from disquiet and the Stoic apatheia – emotional stability resulting from the avoidance of passion). A perfect example here is Petronius with his observance of dying aesthetics: reconciliation with death and deliberate involvement with the last moments of life by focused reflection and listening to… anacreontics.

There is no overstating the fact that male characters in the novels set in Sienkiewicz’s own time include not only parvenus, bourgeois, and merchants, but also esthetes and connoisseurs of the arts and the art of life. At the same time, their inside-out knowledge of European etiquette turns them into bored and déclassé dandies. They read the world classics (especially Shakespeare, the author of dramas on the power of authority, split personalities, and dysfunctional relationships, so intensively perused by Sienkiewicz and his fellow writers, Bolesław Prus and the then-young Stefan Żeromski). With consistency and insight, they become acquainted with philosophical heritage, particularly existential concerns characteristic of the followers of Kierkegaard, Max Stirner, and Jean-Marie Guyau, who teach them to distance themselves from other people and the world as well as to maintain confidence in the face of the uncertainty of life. These characters are more than familiar with the male apprehension of maternity, the father’s role, taking responsibility for another person. Without Dogma contains a description of the resulting escapism:

Father Calvi loved art with the pure, serene feeling as maybe a Da Fiesole, a Cimabue, or Giotto loved it. And he loved in all humility, as he himself had no gifts that way. I could not say which of the fine arts he loved best, but I believe he leaned mostly towards harmony, which responded to the harmony of his own mind. (WD, p. 8)

However, though it is not apparent at first glance, even historical novels by Sienkiewicz do not spare their male characters from fearing for their masculinity. In Fire in the Steppe, Krzysia’s pregnancy makes Wołodyjowski (Volodyovski) look at his former love interest from an aesthetic perspective in which she seems unattractive (though this off-key experience is balanced by the economic advantage of producing a descendant).20 Basia, the childless tomboy, appears to resemble Horpyna from the first part of the Trilogy; Ewa Kosowska stresses this similarity when she analyzes Horpyna as both the antagonist and the alter ego of Helena.21 At first, Horpyna seems to be but a weird outsider and, because of her hallucinations, is believed to be a witch. It is important to mention here that a male protagonist of Sienkiewicz’s contemporary novel, Połaniecki does not settle for living his life solely for procreation, within the marital confines of the bourgeois code.

Aesthetics is equally important in “Hania.” Although the stereotype of the strong looking after the weak (i.e., of Henryk and Selim caring for Hania) results in a hierarchical relation, Sienkiewicz stresses the significance of the aesthetic perception of women, i.e. the places of the beautiful and the ugly in the social structure and the eye of male desire. Hania’s chronic cold makes her susceptible to smallpox, which leaves her body in unsightly pox marks. As a result, the girl joins the Sisters of Charity, where she appears to be “beautiful as never before” (H, p. 167). This seeming non sequitur is interestingly rendered in the 1984 film adaptation, directed by Stanisław Wohl and Krzysztof Wierzbiański, where the title protagonist is shown with a veil over her face for the viewer to fill in with imagination, and the image of Hania’s marred beauty is eliminated altogether from the take.

In Whirlpools, Sienkiewicz uses third-person narration to depict the process in which the pretty looks of Miss Anney stir Krzycki’s desire. It is said that this woman undermines the righteous faithfulness of the protagonist since she “muddied his recollection of the field peasant-girl, Hanka” (W, p. 272). Groński’s manner of appreciating women lies in comparing them against works of art. A true esthete (as he is actually defined in the text), he adores Miss Marynia Zbyłtowska with “a love of a heavenly-blue hue, not scarlet” (W, p. 111). As he watches her praying:

There came to his mind the purely aesthetic observation that Carpaccio might have placed such a maiden beside his guitar-player and Botticelli should have foreseen her. (W, p. 56)

A different attitude toward women is displayed by Laskowicz, the tutor of Staś. The pattern of submission and subjugation he believes in is conveyed through the third-person narration:

He vaguely felt, however, that in this passion there was something of the lust of a negro for a white woman, and what was more, that in that particular love there was apostasy to principles. (W, p. 94)

In the novella entitled On the Sunny Shore, the character by the name of Wiadrowski claims he has noticed that “in French novels all women are sterile” (OS, p. 38). A lot of emphasis is put on working out for oneself what being engaged actually means: “It was more agreeable to Świrski to anticipate the betrothal than to become affianced” (OS, p. 60). Świrski proves to be a fatalist when he realizes it is strange “that [he], who was so much afraid of women and whom [he] distrusted so much, should finally select a woman who is able to arouse more troublesome impressions than all others can do” (OS, p. 111). In fact, people remind him of death and skeletons; this association is further enhanced with the image of the Greek Thanatos (a winged representation of death), important for the role of art as discussed in the story.

In Sienkiewicz’s fictional world, despite the dominance of the assessing male eye, women and love tend to constitute the only safeguard against skepticism characteristic of the moral, emotional, and spiritual decay of men. It may be cynical love, as in the case of Maszko; or, it may be what Bigiel calls a spark in the belly. In his study, Ryszard Koziołek argues that Sienkiewicz is interested not in women as such, but in femininity in general. The woman is history’s motive force only if she is loved, and femininity – just like virginity – catalyzes the man’s desire.22 It is important to note here, however, that Sienkiewicz’s portraits of trustworthy, subdued, suffering, or disenchanted women (e.g. Miss Ratkowska, Aneta Osnowska, Emilia Chwastowska, who withdraws to a convent after her daughter’s death) are delineated in a different manner. Incidentally, the writer gives a different treatment also to authoritative figures such as Professor Waskowski in Children of the Soil. Secluded in his study which resounds with bird songs, the wise man keeps positive about the world, exploring the issue of morality in Slavic communities and trying to develop an ethical system based on the concept of evolving history and morals.

The Linguistic Image of the World allows an insight into how language is used by Sienkiewicz – the master of the non-obvious and the ambiguous – to reveal the language-related mechanisms of male / female perceptions of the world, and to examine the function of male / female stereotypes from the perspectives of family, “hearth and home,” and eroticism. What is more, Sienkiewicz shows how these stereotypes can be challenged and revised. This is the case with his unfinished political novel Legiony (The Polish Legions) that he was working on during the First World War. Legiony illustrates a radical shift in the notion of war and, consequently, the soldier code, the ideal of prowess, fortitude, staying faithful to the cause like a true patriot; in brief, all the traits that define masculinity (especially in the Trilogy). The change of meaning is brought to the foreground. In Legiony, Sienkiewicz claimed that taking an active part in the war was no longer seen as a sign of virility and manhood, with Marek being called a poet, a pageboy, even a “maiden.”23 While the Trilogy assumed the historical mask of the 17th century, Legiony dealt with the then recent history that was still palpable and easy to verbalize. The novel is set in the early 19th century, which at the time of writing was frequently recounted and endowed with personal emotion since the Polish Legions of the Napoleonic period were associated in the public consciousness with the contemporary formation of the Polish Legions by Józef Piłsudski in 1914.

By contrast, the Linguistic Image of the past in the Trilogy ensures that the stereotype unequivocally points to and describes the right attitude of a warrior, a man, a maiden, and a courtly lady. The latter is modeled on the image drawn from 17th-century court poetry, not devoid of a certain licentious style, as once discussed by Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa24 and Lech Ludorowski.25 In addition, Sienkiewicz follows the stylistic code suitable for the period setting, so that his characters fit perfectly in the chosen historical context. As it was noted by the fellow writer Bolesław Prus in his 1884 review of With Fire and Sword (published in Kraj, a socio-political weekly), Sienkiewicz’s fictional figures are structured in a very specific manner. It is worth listing here some of the elaborate terms used by Prus to describe them since they indicate what the critic thought of the male role models depicted in the novel, and of using stereotypes to assess and narrow down the meaning of inclinations and attitudes of the novel’s characters. Hence, Wołodyjowski (small but “venomous like a hornet,” as he is described by Sienkiewicz) is just an “agile little officer with a slack-jawed face,” Zagłoba – a “Sphynx with a swine’s head” and “Falstaff slash aged Ulysses,” Podbipięta (Podbipyenta) – a “walking guillotine,” Bohun – a “fearless knight, dreamer, and troubadour,” Skrzetuski (Skshetuski) – “Jesus Christ as a cavalry officer.”26

As indicated above, Sienkiewicz was fond of ambiguity. However, one could say that the Linguistic Image of the World, particularly of male characters, allows us to specify quite clearly what they are like. While observing, they evaluate; while watching, they create; while praising, they collect experience; while assessing, they choose. Their perception is never neutral. Połaniecki, for example, found in Marynia “something which he had looked for in vain in foreign women, and which moved him more than he expected” (CS, p. 5-6); thinking about her qualities, he started “speaking to himself in mercantile language” to size the girl up like goods to be purchased (CS, p. 7).

Sienkiewicz’s male characters usually look at women like they were paintings in the making. They take note of their characteristic features and compare them against well-known images and figures. They are proficient at associating a real-life profile or slender waist with the ones immortalized by visual arts or literature. In Children of the Soil, Zawiłowski realizes about Lineta Castelli that “hitherto she had been for him an image; now he feels her for the first time as a woman” (CS, p. 400). Świrski claims that a woman is raised by him to the rank of divinity because she seems “not badly fitted for the architecture of the temple” he had previously built in his mind (CS, p. 540). This is also the way that Without Dogma’s Płoszowski reacts practically every time he watches women to satiate his senses:

In the mean while it is pleasant to sit on moonlit terraces and talk in subdued tones about art, love, and woman, and look at the divine profile of such a woman as Mrs. Davis. (WD, p. 71)

In the church [Marynia] looked like some profile of Fra Angelico. (CS, p. 272)

Even when Płoszowski tries to avoid such comparisons, the very pattern of juxtaposing the present image with another one (especially if loaded with emotion) still surfaces in his idiolect:

But I will not enlarge upon these mournful comparisons, especially when I want to write about Aniela. I am quite certain my feelings towards her have not changed, but I seem to see her a long distance off, shrouded in a blue haze and less real than at Ploszow. I do not feel her through my senses. (WD, p. 72)

Looking at one’s object of affection inevitably (though often inadvertently) results in employing the strategy of comparison. This mechanism conditions Połaniecki’s perception, as evidenced in the free indirect discourse narration: Marynia “had brought to him so many artistic comparisons, with so many ‘types of various Italian schools’” (CS, p. 443). In Without Dogma, the fascination with the delightful appears to be how Płoszowski experiences the world and sees his relations with women: “At any rate, he admires her from a thinker and artist’s point of view; for beautiful she is, – there can be no two opinions as to that, – and of more than average intelligence” (WD, p. 68).

Sienkiewicz’s fictional narration and the Linguistic Image of the World reveal that the male cultural model encompasses a penchant for dominance, confidence, fascination with aesthetically pleasing women – as well as collecting or possessing them (often solely for the sake of convenience). Men prefer receiving to conquering; but if they need to fight for their beloved and prove their valor (as in the Trilogy), they do so with future profit in mind. They would rather have certainty than harbor doubt.

Coda: Sienkiewicz forever, or towards parody

To conclude, let us take a quick look at Sienkiewicz and the issue of parodies. A rather short man with his famous Spanish-style beard, he was easy to ridicule because of his puny appearance. Allegedly, this was the reason for his rejection when he wanted to become a partisan in the January Rising of 1863, and why he was called a “baby” (as he confessed in a letter to his sister-in-law). The most successful parody of Sienkiewicz’s male and female characters and their typical entanglements dates back to the 1958 collection of two plays by Artur Maria Swinarski, Trylogia trojańska w dwóch wieczorach (The Trojan trilogy in two parts, illustrated by Jan Młodożeniec, a famous Polish graphic designer). The following five decades proved the inspirational potential of Sienkiewicz’s fictional figures – including their erotic and corporeal dimension – in two popular spoofs. One of them is a series of sketches by Elita, a Polish comedy group, poking fun at Sarmatian traditions and the social entourage of the Trilogy. The other was filmed by Marian Opania and Wiktor Zborowski in connection with the movie adaptation of With Fire and Sword (1999) and entitled With Fire and Sword II. Casting works on the idea of an American adaptation to be directed by Dustin Hoffmann. It revolves around the culturally coded American and Polish attitudes to eroticism, nudity, and sexuality, both current and 19th-century ones. The dialogue highlights wordplay, enhanced importance of subtext and metonymic structures; the characters are men who read for the parts of Sienkiewicz’s “heroes.” It turns out that Madonna will feature as Horpyna, Leonardo di Caprio as Helena, Michael Jackson as Bohun. The issue of body language – and body exigencies for particular parts – provoke a question about who is going to play Wołodyjowski, nicknamed the Little Knight. The viewer is meant to learn the exact nature of this synecdoche and grasp the undertone of nakedness as soon as it becomes evident the Americans are actually making a porn movie. The Linguistic Image of the World and the witty play-on-words are primarily used here to turn Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre and the fictional world of his characters upside down.

One might say that if a particular work has the potential to be parodied, it means that it is still compelling and potent. Moreover, if it stands up to parody, it keeps its relevance and significance. Such literature never goes out of date, becomes anachronistic or stilted. Similarly to the myth, it needs to evolve in order to stay alive forever. Sienkiewicz intuited this mechanism expertly. As a teller of tales and a creator of fictional worlds, he would most likely agree to have his works used in this way by new generations since he believed in the power of literature, which – he knew perfectly well – is hybrid in nature. Using a rather obvious metaphor, it could be said that literature and history were for Sienkiewicz just like women. He used them in his seduction act and played with them – by means of wordplay, the very substance of wooing: calculation, lust, possession, and desire. The price at stake was keeping his self-image while trying to come to terms with adversities. It is in this context that the insightful though controversial critique published by Aleksander Świętochowski in 1884 can be understood in its full meaning:

By the very nature of his talent, Sienkiewicz is a woman’s writer. It would seem he is sitting in their midst: he recounts his stories in a soft, tender, poetical manner; his writing includes touching details, refinement bestowed on rough personages, lightening of shadows that seem too murky; his themes are invariably either pastoral or chivalric.27

1 See R. Ingarden, The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, translated by R. A. Crowley and K. R. Olson, Evanston 1973.

2 See H. Markiewicz, Główne problemy wiedzy o literaturze [Major issues in literary studies], Kraków 1965; H. Markiewicz, Wymiary dzieła literackiego [The dimensions of a literary work], Kraków 1984.

3 The works worth mentioning here are, among others: A. Wierzbicka, O języku dla wszystkich [On language for everybody], Warsaw 1965; A. Wierzbicka, Dociekania semantyczne [Semantic investigations], Wrocław 1969; and A. Wierzbicka, Understanding Cultures through their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese, Oxford 1997.

4 For example, J. Bartmiński, Językowe podstawy obrazu świata [The linguistic basis of the image of the world], Lublin 2006, and J. Bartmiński, “Punkt widzenia, perspektywa, językowy obraz świata,” in Językowy obraz świata [The Linguistic Image of the World], edited by J. Bartmiński, Lublin 1999, pp. 103–120. See also R. Grzegorczykowa, “Pojęcie językowego obrazu świata” [The notion of the Linguistic Image of the World], in Językowy obraz świata, op.cit, pp. 39–46.

5 See e.g. W. von Humboldt, On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species, translated by P. Heath, edited by M. Losonsky, Cambridge 1999. Polish scholars may refer to W. von Humboldt, O myśli i mowie: wybór pism z teorii poznania, filozofii dziejów i filozofii języka, selected, translated by and with a preface by E. M. Kowalska, translation verified by M. J. Siemek, Warsaw 2002, which is a collection of Humboldt’s essays focused specifically on the theory of cognition and philosophy of language, and to a critical analysis: E. Drzazgowska, “Humboldt: przełamanie arystotelesowskiego modelu relacji” [Humboldt: Against the Aristotelian model of relations], Lingua ac Communitas 2011, vol. 21, pp. 53–78.

6 H. de Balzac, The Physiology of Marriage, translated by K. Prescott Wormeley, Project Gutenberg 2016 as of Oct 1, 2018, np.

7 We should mention here Słownictwo pism Stefana Żeromskiego [Lexis in Stefan Żeromski’s works], a multi-volume study edited and annotated by Kwiryna Handke, and her own publications „Barwne” słownictwo Stefana Żeromskiego – kreacja pisarska i obraz rzeczywisty [Stefan Żeromski’s colorful lexis: Authorial creation and realist representation], Warsaw 2004; “Językowe świadectwa epoki w Dziennikach Stefana Żeromskiego” [Contemporaneous Polish language Stefan Żeromski’s Dzienniki (Journals)] Rozprawy Komisji Językowej 2004, vol. 49, pp. 185–202; Polszczyzna Stefana Żeromskiego [Stefan Żeromski’s Polish language], Warsaw 2012; and Prywatny język Elizy Orzeszkowej [Eliza Orzeszkowa’s private language], Warsaw 2013.

8 J. Rybicki, “Pierwszy rzut oka na stylometryczną mapę literatury polskiej” [The first glimpse of a stylometric map of Polish literature], Teksty Drugie. Nowa (?) Filologia 2014, vol. 2, p. 120; trans. J.M.

9 Sienkiewicz had a genuine flair for selling his works, a fact noted by his contemporaries (e.g., writers Bolesław Prus and Eliza Orzeszkowa) and explored by Jolanta Sztachelska in her Czar i zaklęcie Sienkiewicza: studia i szkice [Sienkiewicz’s charms and spells: Studies and sketches], Białystok 2003.

10 Yet another promising area for analysis are comparative structures used in aphorisms that define Sienkiewicz’s fictional worlds. Throughout his oeuvre, the writer frequently reaches for pithy observations on general truths as a diagnostic tool when the narrative cannot provide conclusive answers. The comparative nature of the aphorism’s syntactic elements makes it one of the basic strategies for describing and diagnosing the textual order of things. Indeed, the aphorism (as a literary device) conditions narrative features and the Linguistic Image of the World.

11 All quotes from and page references for Sienkiewicz’s works are cited after the following editions, introduced as abbreviations in the main text (emphasis D. O.):

AS: H. Sienkiewicz, “At the Source” [“U źródła”], in H. Sienkiewicz, Hania, translated by Jeremiah Curtin, Boston 1897, pp. 265–290.

CS: H. Sienkiewicz, Children of the Soil [Rodzina Połanieckich], translated by Jeremiah Curtin, Boston 1898.

H: H. Sienkiewicz, “Hania,” in H. Sienkiewicz, Hania, translated by Jeremiah Curtin, Boston 1897.

ID: H. Sienkiewicz, In Desert and Wilderness [W pustyni i w puszczy], translated by Max A. Drezmal, Boston 1917.

OS: H. Sienkiewicz, “On the Sunny Shore” [“Na jasnym brzegu”], translated by S.C. de Soissons, New York 1897.

TW: H. Sienkiewicz, The Third Woman [Ta trzecia], translated by Nathan M. Babad, New York 1898.

W: H. Sienkiewicz, Whirlpools [Wiry], translated by Max A. Drezmal, Boston 1910.

WD: H. Sienkiewicz, Without Dogma: A Novel of Modern Poland [Bez dogmatu], translated by Iza Young, Boston 1893.

12 See R. Koziołek, Sienkiewicz’s Bodies: Studies of Gender and Violence, translated by David Malcolm, Frankfurt am Main 2015.

13 As suggested by Ryszard Koziołek, Sienkiewicz was probably also familiar with Edward Reich’s Studien über die Frauen, a dissertation on women translated into Polish in 1876. For the discussion of the impact that physiognomists’ analyses had on the Polish literature of the late 19th century, see E. Skorupa, Twarze – emocje – charaktery. Literacka przygoda z wiedzą o wyglądzie człowieka [Faces, emotions, characters: Literature’s adventure with human physionomy), Kraków 2013.

14 M. Rabikowska, “Trzy typy seksualizmu kobiecego w Bez dogmatu Henryka Sienkiewicza,” [Thee types of female sexuality in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Without Dogma], in Henryk Sienkiewicz i jego twórczość. Materiały z sesji naukowej w WSP w Częstochowie [Henryk Sienkiewicz and his works: Conference proceedings], edited by Z. Przybyła, Częstochowa 1996, pp. 171–172.

15 A. Janiak, “Interteksty i przesłony. Co powiedziałby fizjonomista o bohaterach powieści współczesnych Henryka Sienkiewicza?” [Intertexts and apertures: What would a physiognomist say about the characters of Henryk Siekiewcz], in Z ducha biblioteki. Literatura w interpretacji intertekstualnej [Intertextual interpretations of literature], edited by E. Konończuk, E. Nofikow, K. Sawicka, Białystok 2002, pp. 166–174.

16 B. Szargot, “Anioł ‘wiedeńskiej okazyji’. Wokół bohaterów Na polu chwały Henryka Sienkiewicza” [Characters in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s On the Field of Glory ], in Sienkiewicz wobec Europy [Sienkiewicz and Europe], edited by L. Ludorowski, H. Ludorowska, Z. Mokranowska et al., Lublin 2004, pp. 165–177.

17 Although Skorupa does not focus primarily on Sienkiewicz’s works, her analysis of the role played by physiognomy in Children of the Soil (Rodzina Połanieckich) and the writer’s attitude to Lavaterian theory is highly insightful, not to mention the fact that the critic’s overview of European and Polish fictional characters of that time provides a reliable basis for the discussion of Sienkiewicz’s writing. See E. Skorupa, “Henryk Sienkiewicz – Rodzina Połanieckich” [Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Children of the Soil], in Twarze – emocje – charaktery, Kraków 2013, pp. 481–525.

18 H. Sienkiewicz, Mieszaniny literacko-artystyczne [Literary and artistic medley], in H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected works], edited by J. Krzyżanowski, Warsaw 1950, vol. 1, pp. 167–168; trans. J.M.

19 The issues of estheticism, dandyism, and the experience of corporality, see e.g. K. Morawski, “Romans z czasów Nerona” [Romance in the time of Nero], in Rzym. Portrety i szkice [Rome: Portraits and sketches], Kraków 1924, p. 127; S. Tarnowski, Henryk Sienkiewicz. Studia do historii literatury polskiej [Henryk Sienkiewicz: Studies in the history of Polish literature], vol. 5, Kraków 1897, p. 300; R. Zimand, „Dekadentyzm” warszawski [Warsaw decadence], Warsaw 1964; M. Podraza-Kwiatkowska, “Wieża z kości słoniowej i kazalnica, czyli między Des Esseintesem a Piotrem Skargą” [Ivory Tower and the pulpit: Between Des Esseintes and Piort Skarga], in Studia o Tadeuszu Micińskim [Tadeusz Miciński studies], edited by M. Podraza-Kwiatkowska, Kraków 1979; B. Bobrowska, “Na wspak J. K. Huysmans i Bez dogmatu H. Sienkiewicza – dwie powieści o skomplikowanych durniach” [J. K. Huysmans’s Against Nature and H. Sienkiewicz’s Without Dogma: Two novels on complicated idiots], in Sienkiewicz i epoki. Powinowactwa [Sienkiewicz and literary epochs: Connections], edited by E. Ihnatowicz, Warsaw 1999, esp. pp. 9–20; T. Bujnicki, “Sienkiewiczowski bohater wśród dzieł sztuki i książek (Płoszowski i Petroniusz)” [Sienkiewicz’s protagonist among books and art], in Sienkiewicz i epoki, op.cit., esp. pp. 44–45; E. Owczarz, “Między esencją a egzystencją. Bez dogmatu wśród powieści o chorobach wieku” [Between essence and existence: Without Dogma as the novel of civilizational illness], in Sienkiewicz i epoki, op.cit., pp. 193–207; G. Mędykowski, “Dandysowski feblik pana Sienkiewicza” [Sienkiewicz’s dandyist love], in Sienkiewicz i epoki, op.cit., esp. pp. 140–143; G. Borkowska, Pozytywiści i inni [Positivists and others], Warsaw 1996, p. 140; K. Kłosińska, Powieści o wieku nerwowym [Novels of the nervous age], Katowice 1988, esp. pp. 120–121, 148; A. Rozpłochowska, “Dekadentyzm utracony” [Decadence lost], Pamiętnik Literacki 2006, vol. 4, pp. 117–142; D. M. Osiński, “Dandysa dziewiętnastowieczny tekst o ciele. Przyczynek do teorii cielesności dandysa” [Dandy’s nineteenth-century text about the body: Introduction to the theory of dandy’s embodiment], Tekstualia. Palimpsesty Literackie. Artystyczne. Naukowe 2007, vol. 1, no. 8, pp. 23–42; D. M. Osiński, “Dandyski tekst o ciele. Przyczynek do teorii cielesności dandyski” [Dandy’s text about the body: Introduction to the theory of dandy’s embodiment], in Lektury płci. Polskie (kon)teksty [Gender readings: Polish Con(texts)], edited by M. Dąbrowski, Warsaw 2008, pp. 130–144; D. M. Osiński, “Dandyska w podróży po Europie. Diarystyczny zapis obecności Marii Baszkircew” [A female dandy travelling across Europe: Diaristic presence of Maria Baszkircew], in Europejczyk w podróży [Europeans on the road], edited by E. Ihnatowicz and S. Ciara, Warsaw 2010, pp. 445–465.

20 See R. Koziołek, op.cit., pp. 132–153.

21 E. Kosowska, “Inwarianty kobiecości: wiedźma z Czortowego Jaru” [Invariants of femininity: Horpyna], in E. Kosowska, Negocjacje i kompromisy. Antropologia polskości Henryka Sienkiewicza [Negotiations and compromises: An anthropology of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Polishness], Katowice 2002, esp. pp. 81–83.

22 R. Koziołek, op.cit., p. 166. Koziołek claims that the loss of virginity makes women marginalized and excluded (that would be the fate of e.g., Ewa and Zosia in Fire in the Steppe, so their brother and fiancé Nowowiejski (Novovyeyski) admits he prefers them killed by knife or fire than alive and dishonored). Nonetheless, Koziołek continues, this concept is not uniformly employed throughout Sienkiewicz’s writing; in his contempory novels, Helena Davis and Mrs. Maszko (Mashko) are not ostracized despite being objectified as bodies.

23 For an insightful analysis of Legiony (The Polish Legions), see R. Koziołek, op.cit., esp. p. 407.

24 A. Nowicka-Jeżowa, “Trylogia w świecie sarmackim” [The Trilogy in the Sarmatian world], in Sienkiewicz i epoki. Powinowactwa, op. cit., pp. 163–175.

25 L. Ludorowski, “Portret inicjalny heroiny w powieściach historycznych H. Sienkiewicza” [The image of female rites of passage in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s historical novels], Przegląd Humanistyczny 1992, vol. 6, pp. 47–63.

26 B. Prus, “Ogniem i mieczem. Powieść z lat dawnych Henryka Sienkiewicza” [With Fire and Sword: Henryk Sienkiewicz’s historical novel], in Programy i dyskusje literackie okresu pozytywizmu [Literary programs and discussions in the age of positivism], edited by J. Kulczycka-Saloni, Wrocław 1985, pp. 511–521, esp. p. 521.

27 A. Świętochowski, “Henryk Sienkiewicz (Litwos),” in Prawda 1884. Quoted after A. Świętochowski, Wybór pism krytycznoliterackich [Selected writings in literary criticism], Warsaw 1973, p. 171; trans. J.M.

Borderland Experiences:
Reading Biography, Reading Space

Bartłomiej Szleszyński

(Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Henryk Sienkiewicz: Space and Biography.
From America to Africa

Henryk Sienkiewicz’s time and space

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.

America and freedom

When we speak of Sienkiewicz’s America, we have to make clear that we mean the country as deliberately described in his letters rather than the one whose particularities were more often than not silenced in his writings (the fact established by factual studies of third-party accounts). This subjective America is basically experienced by the writer as a source of the sense of freedom. Freedom, let us add, from many different restrictions that belong in Europe. Firstly, freedom from social etiquette and hierarchy, as manifested by “not only state- but also custom-related democracy” and lack of divisions between “simple and not-so-simple people.”2 Secondly, freedom linked to spatial reality. Used to the confines of Europe with its territory cut up by borders and haunted by national conflicts, Sienkiewicz arrives in America, where space seems endless and everyone may find (and acquire) part of this abundance for themselves, and where the state does not exert constant pressure on its citizens.

I thought to myself, “So much space almost untouched by human presence, where millions of people could find their home and gain possession of their own, their very own piece of land; while back in the old Europe wars continue to rage on, with some countries increasing their territories at the expense of their neighbors […].” And I realized that America has yet another major advantage: nowhere in its immense coast-to-coast expanse does the state’s rationale claim lives, Moloch-like, just as it does, for example, in Prussia.3

Sienkiewicz’s letters offer a sort of investigation into that aspect of American freedom. The journey takes him from New York on the eastern coast of the US to western lands, more and more sparsely populated, with ever-smaller towns and villages:

[…] just where you should look if you want to find the authentic America, the heart of its power, health, and future: namely, small rural settlements, farms as numerous as grains of sand; borderline and coastal areas as well as the mountains, among people who may be poorly off but are legion, resourceful, and dynamic instead.4

In a letter to Edward Leo of November 1876, Sienkiewicz confesses that it was only then that he felt the true journey had begun:

You know what? It feels like I am starting to travel, to really travel, just now. Because taking a train, staying at hotels – in brief, traveling the civilized way – that is good for nothing.5

The climax of the American “pilgrimage to freedom” is an almost complete withdrawal from human company to a place where “there is no social organization; no cities, no institutions, no laws; hence, into the wilderness, where one is left to one’s own devices with nothing but a rifle to rely on, and with no society to blend into.”6

An absolute deliverance means solitude, which allows for a sort of reintegration: “From that moment to this day, I have been living in a mountain desert without getting bored. On the contrary, every day it proves ever more captivating and irresistible.”7 The seclusion, seen by the narrator of the letters as an escape from any confines or constraints, may help confirm (restore?) true manliness that has been lost in the labyrinth of the European civilization:

But in these mountains – barely inhabited by man, and certainly lying beyond the limits of civilization – the explorer plays a different, unavoidably active part. The only passport and traveling ticket is your own rifle; the only means of transport – your own feet or a half-tamed bronco, which needs to be practically strangled by a lasso before you can mount it […].

In short, at last, you can travel like a real man should: all the elements of manhood that have not yet been eradicated in you by urban life are drawn on so that you can face any danger.8

The nature of the journey undertaken by Sienkiewicz (in particular, the final destination) is corroborated in his private correspondence, namely a personal, even secret letter to Daniel Zgliński. It mentions the same desirables: the cherished absence of other people, seclusion, lack of limitations and worries (emphasized by the repetition of “I don’t care what tomorrow brings”). The achievement of these factors is supposed to make it possible to recover one’s health and peace of mind:

So, here it is: the mountains I mentioned earlier are almost completely empty […] It’s not that the soil is dry: on the contrary, it’s quite rich – but there are no people around. […] I just don’t care what tomorrow brings; I tend to live like Robinson Crusoe.[…] You surely remember the old me, so you may not believe it, but I swear that I lead a half-wild existence on most days. I sleep like a baby, eat like a horse – and don’t care what tomorrow brings. I light a fire, wrap a duvet around myself – and it’s alright. When I think back to my former crazy fear, this irrational trepidation that accompanied me to sleep every night… You cannot imagine the satisfaction, the feeling of strength and health that makes me say to myself every so often: “Nerves? What nerves? Bollocks to nerves!”9

In this way, the writer liberates himself from social norms, financial concerns, and eventually, superfluous belongings: “my outfit consists of repp pants plus a sombrero and is worth one dollar […]. Climate-wise, there is no need for any other clothes. I use a blanket over sheets of leather to cover myself at night”10; “there’s no use for money here – unless you want to put it up a bear’s back passage.”11 The American retreat affords the (usually hypersensitive) narrator not so much confirmation as restoration and healing, i.e. the recovery of vital energy, and – through the need to hunt for his food – the opportunity to prove himself a man. The letter to Leo is very similar in spirit to the one addressed to Zgliński: “I am finally free of nerves, colds, and toothaches. I sleep like a log. A linen canopy of a tent is nothing but a sign of emasculation to me. […] Meanwhile, I remain as healthy as a horse […], happy and contented.”12

Aside from restful sleep, the evidence of a change for the better (or maybe, of return to one’s true self?) can be found in the writer’s sexual exploits, recounted in the very same letter to the “comrade in debauchery”:

In this country, you literally breathe energy: you cannot help being vigorous, even if you do not want to. True, the thing you love above all is sometimes not on offer, but Chinese girls do their best to make up for this deficiency. Only my modesty, my utter humility stops me from boasting how, and how many times… It feels so strange now to think back to my Warsaw efforts to resist the temptation of sinful desires! […] Indian women have millions of lice, and American women are cold; Irish women too devout, so they do not want to give themselves voluntarily but ask to be raped. Finally, all of them have the disgusting habit of asking: Are you satisfied? My answer is: “No!,” so once again they ask: Are you satisfied?, and ten minutes later: No!, etc. All Irish women repeat during the action “Ah, let me alone,” and that is why when a loutish miner meets an Irish woman in the street, he starts to squeal: “Let me alone.” […] In any case, there is a multitude of women of different nationalities, and I can bet that you would not be able to think of any European nation that does not have its fair sex representatives in America. I forgot about black women. And I tell you: lo and behold! You should import one to learn about these pleasures.13

The above excerpt reveals a little-known, surprisingly vulgar side of the writer we know and love; but even more importantly, it points to yet another aspect of the “American freedom.” This time, it stands for liberation from the decorum in male-female relations that inhibits their sexual life. Sienkiewicz portrays America (at least its “freer,” Western part) as an exotic supermarket of erotic pleasures, where, unlike in Warsaw, you do not need to “resist the temptation of sinful desires”; in brief, a place where you will not only experience a surge of vital strength but will also have no problem finding an adequate release.

One could easily risk a statement that all of the above-outlined aspects of freedom came to evoke nostalgia in Sienkiewicz after he left America. He would fondly revive his memories as if he wanted to return to a paradise that was irretrievably lost. As he put it in a letter to Leo, “it’s such a great place that, if I was assured of eternal life, I would not choose to spend it anywhere but here.”14

The long way back from America (1): The United States of France

You ask me to come back to Warsaw. By all means, I will, since I miss my own people every so often. But – I am so happy here, so healthy, so blissful that it feels criminal. Americans are very courageous, loyal, and righteous. Many of their qualities are almost impossible for the Old World to grasp. Once you get used to their brusqueness, you cannot help but love them, and come to the not-so-exaggerated realization on how ancient, low-minded, effeminate, and degenerate Europe has in fact become.15

Sienkiewicz returned to Europe in April 1878. It took another year and a half before he arrived home in Warsaw. This was a period of profound significance for the writer’s artistic and ideological development, and, as such, has been analyzed repeatedly and in depth.16 In this paper, I am drawing on the previous research, but I would like to suggest a different (though not incompatible) approach: focusing on Sienkiewicz’s American adventure that resurfaces in his descriptions of Europe of that time.

The writer’s epistolary impressions of Paris can serve as a good example here. Staying in one of the most important European cities, Sienkiewicz witnesses the third Paris World’s Fair of 1878, a key cultural event of the 19th century; but it feels like a part of his mind had never left the New World. In his letters from France, he seems to assume the part of an American trapper, a free and rugged lone wolf, who watches the human masses and their “refined civilization” from a distance. In a letter reporting on the 1878 World Exhibition, Sienkiewicz writes:

As you know, I spent over two years of my life in the silent, lonely woods of America; I cannot even begin to tell you how weird it feels now to see this swarm of people, the glitter and glamour of their sophisticated, refined civilization, all these uniforms, stars, feathers, and badges.17

Sienkiewicz observes the World Fair from the point of view of his “Yankee brothers,” forming an impression that whatever he can see here is infinitely remote from the American social ideal that he beheld just a while earlier. In the letter, he appears to have been suspended in a moment:

before the intuition turned into a conscious thought; before I could decide for myself if all those things in front of my eyes are mere tinsel and polish of civilization or the civilization itself, in other words: the humbug, as my Yankee brothers would say, or the whole truth; before it crossed my mind that, despite the appearances represented by these exquisite carriages, social progress has, in fact, remained far behind technological advances, and that there is indeed so little happiness and so much misery in the life of humankind.18

Even though France, Paris, Exposition Universelle, as well as social and international relations in Europe are the topic of Sienkiewicz’s writing, the American chapter of his life reemerges over and over again in his descriptions. For instance, when the writer praises Parisians for not responding to the provocation of the monarchic press, he does so in the following words: “[the French masses] demonstrated the level-headedness I did not expect to see (even) in them: the one worthy of Americans themselves.”19 Just to illustrate the model (say: American) reaction to taunting:

Once, during the elections in America, some fool shouted jeeringly: Hooray for Hell! Others answered with the unshaken American tolerance: “Alright! Everybody for his country!,” killing him with laughter.20

Eventually, like he used to write about the shortcomings of Europe from America, so he continued the criticism (of France as a synecdoche for Europe as a whole) after his return to the Old Continent; at least, being there in person, even if his mind stayed behind.

As for me, I would have a lot to say about the French Republic, and about the French democracy in particular. Both are lagging far behind the American paradigm. Here, they are only discussed; over there, they are actually lived. Here, democracy is but a notion; there, it is already in usage. In America, citizens and governors are mostly one and the same thing. The centralization here can be opposed to the decentralization in the broadest sense there. Europe is ridden by bureaucracy and its senior and junior officials; America has no bureaucracy, no senior or junior officials, no hierarchy.21

It turns out that Europe’s main vice is that it is the exact opposite of American simplicity and lack of hierarchy. French democracy is just a pale shadow of the true, American one. A person who has just returned from America finds it extremely difficult to stomach the overly quaint etiquette and the servility that is conditioned by economics and thus is a clear sign of inequality:

Anyone who is used to genuine equality and democracy will be embarrassed to see this parody of democrats, fawning like dogs at their master’s feet, waiting to be made happy with a pourboire. A traveler already familiar with the American straightforwardness can only see such undignified behavior in respect of foreigners, such courtesy bordering on obtrusiveness, as the unmanly, stale, bizarre cunning and coquetry, aimed at the pockets of potential sponsors and arousing nothing but contempt.22

The long way back from America (2):
Between the longing to return and the desire to flee

It is true that a considerable delay in Sienkiewicz’s coming back to Warsaw can be explained by a variety of objectively valid reasons. It appears, however, that his willingness to return to the home country was counterbalanced to a certain degree by an urge to leave the Old Continent yet again. Here is how this yearning was expressed by Sienkiewicz in one of his letters to Leo in 1879:

Nothing new on my side: life is as depressing and foolish as usual. – If Doctor Piotrowski (from the French navy) succeeds at getting me onboard, I’ll voyage to China and Japan with him. It’s not sure yet. In March, I was going to leave for Gabon, but the plan fell through this time.23

So, not long after getting back, Sienkiewicz tries to organize an even farther journey. In fact, the writer diagnosed himself with “traveling fugue” while still in America, which he described as follows:

[…] I did not know back then, as I don’t know now, where I’m going to be in a few months’ time. Next year may see me in Warsaw, or maybe in San Pablo. Dromomania is like any other addiction. It is difficult to take the first step, but everything that follows is driven by some strange force, like the one haunting the Wandering Jew, on and on, into perpetuity.24

A marked change in the writer’s attitude can be found reflected in his letters to the recently met Maria Szetkiewicz: “I have been blessed with […] the great virtue of Native Americans: I am very patient in waiting. This gift has allowed me to achieve all the major goals in my life so far – the trend, I believe, that is going to continue in the future.”25 Apart from the repeated assurance of “waiting patiently” for Maria, the next letter contains the announcement of Sienkiewicz’s intention to make a (rather radical, given his previous stance) adjustment in his life: the actual return to his home country. He writes: “I have finally decided to come back to Warsaw, close the chapter of my voluntary exile, and open a new one. What will I find there? Time will tell.”26

As is now known, Maria was not particularly convinced by these vows. Apparently, she did not believe Sienkiewicz would settle down, even less so in the context of the reputation he had in Warsaw.

It is not my intention to impute any evil to you, Sir, but I do not have that absolute trust in you that should be the foundation of any closer relationship. […] We only know you from meeting you in person in Venice and from what we have heard about you in Warsaw, so there can obviously be no question of any commitment.27

It seems that Maria’s rejection of his first proposal made Sienkiewicz realize that, if he really wished to come back home, he had to marry Maria Szetkiewicz; and, in turn, if he really wanted to have her for a wife, he had to come back a changed man. A man at peace with himself, hiding his still burning Wanderlust deep inside.

The fact that it was the right way for him to go (and that his unstable living situation and unquenched desire to travel were, indeed, key reasons why he was not initially accepted) is more than confirmed in a letter Maria Szetkiewicz wrote to her mother late in the autumn of 1880:

You know, Mamma, what I think? I think this was a decisive year for him. Either he would go on a grand tour again without paying his dues, and again, live a debased life of a wastrel from day to day: that would make him die as a man (though he might remain famous as an artist); or, he could overcome his difficulties, commit to work, earn a position and acceptance as a selfstanding [?] man – not an artist who has lost his soul.28

The above excerpt evokes an image of Sienkiewicz as a reckless adventurer. It is far from later eulogies of the canonical writer, but it appears consistent with the many insights offered by his letters, especially the ones he wrote in America. This also proves that Sienkiewicz’s mind stayed in America much, much longer than his body, since he seems to have come back to Europe only once he got married. He arrived in Warsaw on November 7, 1879, but spent some time leading a bachelor’s life, seeking Maria’s hand in marriage, and settling down. His second proposal was accepted at the beginning of 1881, which we will assume to be the tentative time when, at last, the writer mentally returned from his American expedition. A letter to Stanisław Witkiewicz, dated summer 1881, reveals Sienkiewicz already past the American-style penchant for minimalism as he describes the process of decorating his Warsaw apartment in a detailed – exceedingly detailed – manner:

The apartment may not be ready yet, but all the furnishings have already been purchased. They need to be checked over and put together, which I’m going to do as soon as all the joiners, upholsterers, and masons finish fixing the floors and walls. The living room looks like this: [a sketch] the wallpapers is in the color of Burgundy; one set of furniture has the hue of wilting leaves, the other, smaller one is Marie Antoinette-style; a sofa, ditto; two chairs upholstered with Burgundy satin. A console table and a grand French walnut dining table from the main set, both exquisite. A swag lamp. Your drawings on the walls, a carpet on the floor, windowsill plants and cacti – a thicket, I’m telling you. Windows and doors fitted with curtains and portieres. The walls will be decorated with arms as soon as they are delivered.29

American nostalgia and the African dream

As stated above, marrying Maria Szetkiewicz marked his mental return to Europe for Sienkiewicz. He put down roots and took on the roles of a respected editor, a husband, and soon a father. It turned out, however, that dromomania may be restrained for some time but cannot be completely cured. It was not long before the writer’s letters to his former companion in some of his American adventures started to overflow with a wave of fond reminiscences of the United States, combined with fear of getting into a rut and dreams of revisiting the New World. In January 1882, Sienkiewicz wrote to Witkiewicz:

Paprocki works for us as a proofreader. Every so often, I surprise him with: “Do you remember us going to take a dump between the oaks at the Pleasants’?” Then, I can feel my blood rising against my own nature. I am going to remain a slave to the last of my colleagues if Marynia and I do not go to California in the nearest future. But when oh when will that happen? Life ends one day at a time at a rate so quick that it really scares me. Are you going to America? Say when – together we can surely do it. After all, let’s face it, we are going to get old, and we’ll have less and less eagerness, talent, and vitality. […] But if you went there to stay – I swear, we would come to join you in less than a year.30

Yet another telling element is the writer’s use of English words and phrases in his correspondence not only with Witkiewicz (who, as evidenced by e.g. his portrait of Sienkiewicz in a cactus forest, was quite sympathetic to his friend’s partiality) but also with other penfriends. This stylistic trick could be interpreted as yet another sign of nostalgia for America.

Around the same time, Warsaw sees the beginning of a fad for Africa. In September 1881, Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński announced his plan to explore the Cameroonian interior. It created a great stir in Warsaw, fueled by the enthusiastic coverage of the city’s most famous columnists, most prominently Bolesław Prus and Sienkiewicz himself.31 The “African discourse” of that time is surely a topic that deserves a more extensive analysis. Sienkiewicz’s concept of the continent, however, seems strongly informed by the vision of Rogoziński, whose perspective the writer seems to have accepted without any reservations. The young explorer presented what we might call Africa the Light Way: “vast spaces of fertile soil, spaces of life, spaces of the future.” He played down all possible difficulties and dangers. His youthful carefree arrogance prevented him from taking any notice of the opinions of his experienced predecessors, and he largely ignored the fact that the Dark Continent had its own unique character. Such a vision of Africa was a real magnet for Sienkiewicz. Apparently, he believed in it with his whole heart when he wrote in one of his columns:

The primal tribes that have not yet come into contact with white people […] are not cruel at all. Allegedly, those Negroes are much better than we are led to believe.[…] The land […] is fecund, so the expedition is not at risk of dying of starvation, as they would be in the Sahara Desert. The natural terraces of central Africa are covered either with primeval forests or with steppes teeming with herds of antelopes, zebras, and buffalo. Judging by the coastal regions, the interior is quite densely populated and used largely for farming. Pieces of glass, mirrors, and old uniforms can easily be exchanged for bananas and manioc.32

It would seem that the African project is just a perfect male adventure, a mere trip that combines the pleasant with the useful, a journey into the land of children’s and youth literature:

So far, five Poles have signed on [for the journey]. Some participants are going to stay on the coast as back-up, the rest is going to continue farther through the deserts, mountains, and woods. What does ‘farther’ stand for, exactly?… Let the reader fill in the gaps with their imagination… African people, elephants, gorillas… Starry nights resounding with lions’ deep bass rumbles, Verne’s adventure novel, A Thousand and One Nights… all this with a specific, scientific objective in mind. Indeed, the idea will fire up the enthusiasm of many, and more candidates will surely sign up.33

The above passage contains a revealing reference to Jules Verne’s fiction work. Without a doubt, Sienkiewicz alluded here to Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen (serialized for Polish readers in Gazeta Polska in 1863, and first published in a book-form in 1873). Sienkiewicz’s – and partly Rogoziński’s – mental picture of an African expedition displays the features of Verne’s fictitious one, where the protagonists may risk their lives but ultimately manage to emerge unscathed from any trouble owing to the strength of their minds and characters, and stopovers are enjoyed with meals of game washed down with grog, followed by cigar smoking.

One might well conclude that Sienkiewicz did not realize the extent to which his experience of American life would be different from the African realities. The nostalgia for “his” America and the imaginary dream of the Dark Continent both condition the writer’s yearning to visit Africa – though he was actually attracted by Verne’s artistic vision rather than curious of the real world.34 This longing, reinforced with the fact that he really missed California, made him spin a web of odd theories and plans, thus presented to Witkiewicz in a letter of February 1882:

Rogoziński has been a frequent guest […]. With a winning straightforwardness, he told me that the natives who live on the coast do not let anyone pass to the interior to protect their trade monopoly, so “we are going to slink through to Pebot one by one at night.” Aren’t you laughing yet? I am laughing my head off. – The climate of the Cameroonian mountains, I hear, will be fantastically fine and healthy. […] As soon as I arrive, I’ll get letters from them. Janikowski (the meteorologist) will continue writing to me from the coastal station. If it is really as peaceful and healthy as they say, […] I will seriously consider coming to stay together with My Dearest One, all the more so as the station, that is the farm (with a house to live in, etc.), is bound to be ready: they will have completed building facilities by then. If that is the case, you’ll get married and come to join us. As for me, I would breathe easily for once; I often get practically suffocated here.35

In some of his letters, Sienkiewicz tags leaving Warsaw “an absolute necessity” and is serious about it up to the point of thinking not only about Africa but also an alternative plan:

And if it comes to nothing, California is my ultimum refugium.36

You see, I am no longer an island, thinking solely of myself. California, Africa, freedom, everything that I believe to be the best, the most sublime, the most liberating – I long for all that only for her sake now and will reach for it only when I am certain she has the same opinion of these treasures. – However, I am fully convinced that she is not always happy with our present time, either – and from time to time, she seriously addresses her parents like an obstinate child: “We’re moving to California!” Mamma becomes alarmed, and Pappa replies, “Whatever, as long as we sell the Lipków estate.”37

While the idea of a family relocation to Africa in many respects may be described as nothing but a pipe dream, it is hard to estimate how the far more feasible Californian scheme would have turned out in reality. However, Maria Sienkiewicz’s considerable health decline necessitated a journey closer to home: a tour of European health resorts, unfortunately without the happy ending.

Sienkiewicz’s dream of Africa lived on.

Sienkiewicz’s Africa: Writing problems

Henryk Sienkiewicz’s textual testimony to his African experience may again be found in his letters to friends and acquaintances, published in 1893 in a book entitled Listy z Afryki (Letters from Africa). It is quite telling that they were written mostly back in Poland – in Zakopane and Kraków – and some as late as the carnival season of 1892 (nine months after the writer returned to Europe). The impossibility of keeping up correspondence during the stay in Africa is explained to Mścisław Godlewski in the letter of March 2, 1891:

You will surely understand that, while traveling, with the sea rolling, or when straightening things out in Zanzibari hotels (which have very popular, noisy taprooms) or, worst of all, living in a tent flooded by rainwater or scorched by direct sunlight, I am unable to create anything even remotely artistic, and I plan to sit down to writing only after the journey is over, i.e. at the end of April. It is indeed physically impossible to do otherwise.38

Also other, unpublished letters sent from Africa to, for example, Godlewski, Leo, and the Szetkiewicz family, contain largely consistent passages which seem to bear out the fact that there was not much for Sienkiewicz to write about. An interesting supplement to the writer’s perspective on the journey can be found in an account by Jan Tyszkiewicz, his young fellow traveler who carried on a more regular correspondence with his family.

Listy z Afryki itself does not make for interesting reading, but, if interpreted in the context of Sienkiewicz’s biography, it could offer some interesting insights. All the more so as the author was one of the most important personalities among those who shaped the Polish discourse on Africa.

Sienkiewicz’s Africa: Slow departure from Europe

A look at Sienkiewicz’s itinerary, the dates of reaching particular destinations, as well as some of the writer’s letters appear to suggest that he was in no rush to arrive in Africa, and a number of vicissitudes seemed set to discourage him from pressing ahead with his plans.

Sienkiewicz sets off from Kraków in the middle of November 1890. He takes his time, and reaches Rome only on December 16, which elicits the following comment from Tyszkiewicz: “At long last, Sienkiewicz has arrived, so the plan starts to come together.”39 One of the writer’s numerous episodes of bad luck occurs already on his trip to Rome. As he puts it in a letter to Jadwiga Janczewska:

I arrived this afternoon, testy and tired. Tired, because railcars were uncomfortable, my compartment crowded and cold; testy because, somewhere between Pontebba and Mestre, I lost my little pocketbook with about 200 gold francs, my ticket, baggage reclaim receipt, and – the worst thing of all – the ducat my Mary had given to me.40

From Rome, our travelers continue on to Naples, take a ship to Ismailia, see the Giza pyramid complex, and arrange to take part in a hunt in the Faiyum Oasis. This is where they run out of luck again, or rather: Sienkiewicz runs out of health. In the words of Tyszkiewicz:

That’s what I call bad luck! We were so much looking forward to the trip to Faiyum, to the hunt that we had been preparing for; and here is Sienkiewicz, who has felt under the weather since leaving Cairo, coming down with nasty pharyngitis right there on the train.41

The expedition has not yet started for good when Sienkiewicz has to face another unfortunate event:

The French Messageries Maritimes ship that I was going to take down the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean proved a bitter disappointment. We were told by travel agents that it would call at Suez on January 19, but it actually arrived – and departed – the previous day. […] News of this prank on the part of Messageries Maritimes, or maybe the ship captain himself, put me quite out of my good mood. I could either wait one whole month for the next French ship or take up the offer of other vessels. The latter, however (including the British ones) are slower, of inferior quality, and of a much lower standard.42

One could wonder whether the above situation could really be attributed to bad luck – or perhaps to the lack of organization and resourcefulness in the context of realities that were much more challenging than the American ones. Another valid question is: did Sienkiewicz really wish to get to Africa as soon as possible, or was this delay intentional?

Sienkiewicz’s Africa: The Great Unknown

Henryk Sienkiewicz’s journey to Africa is beset by uncertainty and insecurity from the very beginning. The first and foremost imponderable is pretty obvious: where exactly is he heading? Zanzibar is only one of the options, others include Somalia and Abyssinia. Secondly, for a long time, it remains a total mystery what the travelers are going to do once they reach the African interior. Sometimes Sienkiewicz voices his doubt about them ever getting there at all, at other times he gets carried away with fanciful plans of getting to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.43 Also, the time scale of the journey seems to have been merely a matter of chance (to quote the letter of December 29, 1890, to the Szetkiewicz family: “I’ll probably arrive in Zanzibar only on January 17. We’ll see.”44). One might think that the health problems he experienced in Egypt managed to kill the remaining enthusiasm he had for the expedition, which was not high to start with. On December 21, 1890, Sienkiewicz wrote to Leo: “I’m going to Ismaila, Cairo, next to Zanzibar through Suez, and then…?? – One short trip into the interior, and I will ‘remove my person from the scene’ at the earliest opportunity.”45 He even admits from time to time that he actually feels like coming back to Poland (“Zanzibar and other destinations do have their appeal, but it is nothing compared to the attraction of returning to one’s nearest and dearest. If I had a choice right now, it’s possible I would go home without thinking twice about it”46). This journey is clearly something to be checked off the bucket list and gotten over with as soon as possible before getting back to the Old Continent (“I will not stay here for more than ten days: I am going to take the first passable ship that sails to Europe. […] March will surely see me in Italy. In any case, I’ll be back in Europe by April”47).

On the other hand, in the letter of January 30, 1891, addressed to his mother-in-law, Sienkiewicz makes his journey sound like a stay in a seaside spa:

Dearest Ma,

I was thinking of returning home, but how can I take my poor sore throat back to the European winter, to unheated Italian rooms, under- or overheated railcars, then finally to the freezing temperatures of Kraków or Zakopane, etc. To be honest, Cairo is not a good option, either.

[…]

Here are the advantages of continuing on my travels: first, some clean and healthy air during the voyage; secondly, a doctor at my service; thirdly, a likelihood of reaching a better climate and healthier lands.48

It is not clear whether Sienkiewicz intended to proceed alone (which seems to be his inclination), or with Tyszkiewicz (whose presence, for unclear reasons, he is not particularly keen on). To appreciate this uncertainty, we need to look at deeper layers of the text. Sienkiewicz’s chaotic reflections make it difficult to gather the exact reason why he visited the Dark Continent at all (as mentioned above, we may assume that he wished to relive the American adventure and fulfill his vague dream of Africa triggered by Rogoziński’s reports49). Yet another important element is Sienkiewicz’s striking ignorance as to what he might expect once he arrives at his destination (wherever that is). He seems to erroneously believe, for example, that it is rain season in East Africa, and his published letters reiterate the false notion that tsetse flies are no health hazard to humans.

When the writer boarded the German steamer Bundesrath (eventually, in the company of Tyszkiewicz), it was already February, two and a half months after leaving Poland. The first-class luxury cruise took over two weeks (including a brief stopover in Aden). Sienkiewicz really did take advantage of this leg of his journey for convalescence. Five meals a day50 and fresh sea air were supposed to help him recover before the expedition itself (whatever it was going to be).

Zanzibar, or fantasy versus reality

The ship called at the city of Zanzibar on February 16. During their two-week stay there, Sienkiewicz spent a lot of time in the hotel, went sightseeing, and strolled up and down the seaside boardwalk, while Tyszkiewicz was happy to play tennis with the English.51 Apparently, they left the city only twice: to join a surprise party held onboard an English battleship, and to take part in a trip organized by missionaries (which tired Sienkiewicz so much that he skipped that evening’s reception at the consulate). It is easily noticeable, especially in Tyszkiewicz’s account, that Sienkiewicz was mostly weary and reluctant to leave his hotel room (in Italy, Egypt, as well as in Zanzibar).

Our travelers attend the parties in tailcoats they have fortunately remembered to take with them on their journey, and dinners are served in line with European etiquette (though with the addition of the local color):

We could hear the sound of Indian Ocean waves in the dark outside. The dining hall was lit up just like the ones in Paris and London residences of the affluent, but terrace doors were open to the view of the Crux constellation shining brightly in the sky. Indian domestics in smart outfits, their beards dyed purplish red, were serving European dishes to ladies in décolleté dresses and gentlemen wearing white ties. All of a sudden, I recalled an anecdote about a bathing Englishman who escapes the jaws of a crocodile right up to a palm tree – and uses palm leaves to make himself a pair of gloves and a tie. One would be foolish to even think of heading for the African interior without a tailcoat. You are most certainly going to need it: after all, by Lake Tanganyika, on Ukerewe Island, in Uidjidjia or any other place with a dozen or so “j’s” in its name, you will encounter an English lady determined to accompany her husband to the ends of the world. She will don a low-cut dinner dress to dinner, he will put on his impeccable frock coat (and a white tie) to treat you to pale ale. The English stay the same, no matter where they live.52

A question arises about the image of himself that Sienkiewicz wanted to project in Africa and the person he actually was at that time. His reluctance to build a rapport with Tyszkiewicz seems to suggest that he wanted to get away from the company of Poles and thus have some rest from relations and responsibilities he was obliged to keep up every day back at home. On the other hand, he carried multitudinous letters of introduction, which ensured he was received like royalty. Not only did he receive an invitation to the consul’s party, but Tyszkiewicz also recounts an even more telling incident. Sienkiewicz’s hat was blown into the sea on the cruise from Zanzibar to Bagamoyo – and the English passenger steamer turned back especially to retrieve the lost item for him.53

It was only in Zanzibar, while they were waiting for the caravan to form, that our travelers decided where exactly they wanted to go. The private correspondence sent to many different addressees and Sienkiewicz’s published letters both indicate that he preferred to rely on local missionaries in practically every aspect of the journey. He realized beyond all doubt that the Mount Kilimanjaro plan was completely unfeasible:

I’ve already mentioned that my primary objective was to climb Mount Kilimanjaro […] about one month’s forceful march away from Bagamoyo. The Maasai tribe who inhabits the vicinity of the mountain is warlike and merciless […]. So, it is no laughing matter […]. With real regret, I had to renounce this trip for a number of reasons. […] First, we needed to face the fact that neither of us has the experience necessary for such a goal, and that all I know about Africa is only textbook knowledge. I could make up for this ignorance with vigor if my health was intact, but it just happens that I got quite ill in Egypt and have half my usual strength left.54

Let us stop for a minute on the Kilimanjaro project to acknowledge the fact that it was pure fantasy without even the smallest chance of success. The loop itinerary which was eventually – and only just – covered by Sienkiewicz was approximately 150 kilometers long, while the distance from Bagamoyo to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro is over 500 kilometers. Aside from the problems with high-mountain climbing, including altitude sickness and the freezing cold (that Sienkiewicz was unlikely to know about), even if the travelers turned back before reaching the summit, they would still need to walk a stretch at least six times as long as they did, which would take proportionally more time (no less than three months). Irrespective of all these and other weak points of the scenario, it would surely last into the rain season.

The difficulties listed by Sienkiewicz were easy to predict already from Europe, but it would have required the writer to rely on more authentic accounts than the fantasy of Verne’s artistic vision. Arriving in Zanzibar was most probably when the dream first clashed with reality. It becomes clear that Sienkiewicz definitely had less strength and energy than back in America, and he may also have been much less curious about the world.

Another revealing passage reads:

In Africa, the only way to move around is on foot. Let us now imagine a man accustomed to traveling on a train, a horse-drawn carriage, or a ship; taking his meals at regular times; going to sleep in a comfortable bed; taking shelter in bad weather. This man suddenly finds himself in wild countries, where he walks vast distances every day, sleeps in a tent on almost bare ground (sometimes even in the open), eats just about anything, drinks water that is the color of white coffee or hot chocolate, gets wet every time it drizzles and burnt every time the sun comes out. He seems virtually doomed to come down with yellow fever.55

The fact that it took so long for Sienkiewicz to realize how difficult it was to move around in Africa is one thing; an even more interesting aspect is his approach to traveling itself. In all likelihood, it is inadvertently that Sienkiewicz expresses an opinion that is almost exactly the opposite to the one he held during the American adventure (when traveling on his own was somehow seen as the beginning of the actual journey). It is true, however, that the present expedition is far from the ideal of the American minimalistic lifestyle:

At this point, we deserved some rest, but unfortunately, we had to play the role of stewards. People who have never had to perform this function may think this is but a trifle, but all this fuss is actually the most disagreeable aspect of the journey. Some cases are padlocked: just try to find the right key. Canned food is secured with reed stems, but tags have come off the tins because of the heat and humidity: just try to guess what’s inside! You need to open the cans on your own and not entrust the task with a local, who will squeeze your main meal together with sauce onto the ground. Your translator is gone, he took off into the woods. Without him, the cook does not understand you nor you the cook, so if you want to eat a bit better, that is: you do not want tea sprinkled on your vegetables, sugar in your sausages, salt in your coffee – you have to look to everything yourself. And this means sitting by the fire when it’s already over forty degrees Celsius around you.56

The African reality check made it necessary to find something that would give the stay some sort of focus. The choice fell on hunting: “To be honest, I do not care if I get to Morogoro or not. The place holds no interest for me, and I decided to take any longer stopovers only where there is abundant game for hunting.”57

The hunt, or making sense of Africa

Throughout his stay on the Dark Continent, Sienkiewicz was not sure how to give meaning to this chapter of his life. Once the dream of the imagination-stirring Kilimanjaro was definitely over, the writer’s mind turned to hunting, which had been a major component of his American experience and, as such, offered a chance to recreate the excitement felt 15 years earlier. Nevertheless, while the “American” Sienkiewicz in all seriousness had called himself a dexterous shooter, the African alter ego tries to deflect potential disparagement with auto-irony: “Personally, were I as dexterous a hunter as I am an avid one, hundreds of hippopotamus wives would have to go into mourning for their murdered husbands.”58

Still, the hunt was supposed to become the focal point of the journey, especially with the reminiscences of Sienkiewicz’s achievements in bloody sports in America and Europe:

[…] I thought to myself that it wouldn’t hurt to add a dozen or so boxes of African trophies to my American and European collections; and Father Le Roy has just told me that, just a few hours away from Bagamoyo, in the Kingani River, we will see not one, not ten, but whole flocks of hippos.59

In a letter to Godlewski, he quips: “A lion was killed before I arrived on the scene. He evidently got wind I was coming for him, and chose to seek refuge in the arms of death.”60 As before, Sienkiewicz and his companion run into difficulties caused by lack of knowledge and inadequate research into the realities of the region to be visited.

Father Korman confirmed what we had already learned from Friar Oscar in Bagamoyo: that this was the worst possible timing for a hunt. It was already March, which in the southern hemisphere marks the summer’s end period of the highest temperatures and drying mud puddles, when game withdraws into the mountains, hiding from the scorching heat in the shade of ravines.61

Sienkiewicz’s African hunting adventure is best epitomized by three episodes: shooting hippopotami from a boat, stalking land game during his stay in the mission house, and, finally, lion hunting. During the first episode, the hunters came close to death due to their ignorance as well as Sienkiewicz’s absent-mindedness.

A monstrous head with its maw open suddenly cropped up from under the water right next to us as if trying to sink its fangs into the side of our boat. […] Unfortunately, all I could think of was that, when shooting an animal in the head, you need a steel bullet, and I unproductively pulled on the trigger of the rifle I had just used. Tyszkiewicz, sitting on the other side of the boat, was not able to take aim, and the attacker managed to get away. There was just a sickening jolt when the beast must have brushed against the frames with its back, probably with the aim of tipping the boat over. It emerged a dozen or so meters away so that half of its body was visible, and I immediately took a shot, but then it went under water for good62.

Tyszkiewicz recounts the incident in far more dramatic terms (though it seems that the only participant who fully grasped the actual degree of peril was their fellow hunter from Germany):

I am standing on the left side of the deck. The moment I am ready to fire, the boat is jerked so violently that I need to hold on to a servant not to fall into the water. The bouncing does not stop and I’m really getting scared, all the more so as our German companion is shrilly shouting some incomprehensible words at us. I turn around and see that, behind Sienk.[iewicz], there’s this enormous hippo holding the boat with the teeth and shaking it vehemently. […] Sienk.[iewicz] has lost his head: he is taking aim at the beast […] but the gun doesn’t fire – he has forgotten to cock it. Regaining my balance, I decide to shoot just in time. Just in time… for our foe to realize that it will not have its way with the solid steel boat and to let it go after a good farewell kick, leaving us with long faces, the German still screaming and scolding us.63

To sum up, the hunters had a lucky escape without even realizing what was going on, with no trophies to show for it, risking their lives in a way that was, at best, unnecessary.

The second episode, i.e. hunting in the vicinity of the Mandara mission house, was described as a series of fails by both Sienkiewicz and Tyszkiewicz. In the straightforward words of the latter:

This hunt was a failure in every possible respect. Le Père Supérieur was rushing forward, completely oblivious to his duties as a host and to his tired guests, who were scarcely able to keep up with him. To make things worse, Sienkiewicz was still suffering from a fever. I learned later that there had been some misunderstanding between the two, that’s why neither of them was in a good mood. We could see a lot of antelopes but I was the only one who found himself in a position to shoot. I wounded a fine specimen, but in the end, was not able to trace it down.64

Sienkiewicz, in turn, commented on the trip as follows:

There were only two good things that came out of the hunt that day. First, we saw antelopes, without which we could never say we saw Africa in its full natural beauty. Second, cutting across towards M’Pongwe at a breathtaking pace, we covered an enormous distance, at least twice as long as our usual daily treks.65

The matter is also discussed in Sienkiewicz’s letter to Godlewski:

My hunting plans partly foundered since the “real thing” was supposed to start only in Gugurum. While trekking, I could see antelopes, but only from a distance of 600 meters. Besides, when you’re hiking, you are usually short of breath, with your arms and legs shaking and your heart pounding; it is very hot, and you’re bound to shoot like an amateur. A couple of times, I even missed the birds that were not even moving – this has never happened to me in Europe.

Still, I killed a lot of birds altogether. I could hear monkey noises, but they never once came in my sight. And that’s about it.66

The lion hunt scheduled for the end of the journey was prevented by Sienkiewicz’s bout of fever, which itself could serve as some sort of a punchline to the rather miserable story of hunting as a synecdoche for the African expedition. Sienkiewicz made up for the missing trophies in Zanzibar, buying souvenirs in bulk: “My baggage load increased every day. I bought several dozens of those superb Madagascar mats, a leopard skin, an enormous rhino horn, and many other choice items. Elephant tusks turned out to be so expensive that I sadly had to renounce the purchase.”67

Africa: Chronicle of a disease foretold

As you can see, I got out of Africa alive, though it was close.68

Sienkiewicz presents Africa as a place where Europeans are taken ill and die. Indeed, disease and death appear to follow the writer throughout his journey to the Dark Continent. Death constitutes the framing device of Listy z Afryki (Letters from Africa). The book opens with a scene of the “great Schliemann” dying in a Neapolitan hotel69 and ends with the suicide of Sienkiewicz’s fellow passenger and convalescent on an English steamer during the return voyage.

The onset of a disease marks the climax of Sienkiewicz’s 14-day hunting trip and his stay in Africa in general. We could conclude that, just as the high point of the writer’s American expedition was recovery in its multiple dimensions, so the closing act of the African experience is a debilitating illness, half-expected by Sienkiewicz due to his observation of the ailing and dying Europeans – like in one of the first sights of Zanzibar, described as follows:

I have to wait for my cases to be dug out from the innards of the ship, so in the meantime, I’m taking a closer look at some Germans who have come from the town to meet the newcomers. The first impression is horrifying. These men have death written all over their faces. Fever and anemia have left their marks on them as if sealing their fate. They are walking around, greeting and calling one another, their eyes are gleaming with joy at the arrival of a German ship so clearly that it is genuinely touching to see, but they all look like patients recovering from severe illness.70

Sienkiewicz did think about protecting himself from the risk. Having realized that Africa is not the fantasy he had expected, he recognized the extent of the health hazard and the difference between the healthy Californian and the lethal East African climates. This awareness is discernible not only in Listy z Afryki, which was written post factum but also in letters that were sent on the way. This is how Sienkiewicz was trying to reassure his mother-in-law:

As I promised, we will go through with this expedition only if neither I nor Tyszkiewicz develop even the slightest signs of yellow fever. If it happens, I am not going to set off at all; and if it happens during our trek, I promise I’ll turn everyone back, even that very day.71

Possibly, the most characteristic example can be found in the already quoted letter sent from Bagamoyo to Godlewski just before heading into the African interior:

Here comes the reason why I’m writing this letter. Please, remember to extend the duration of insurance cover for another six months […]. If I happen to bring some African fever-causing bug home with me and croak within half a year before I send you the manuscript, you will lose the money.72

It is noticeable that the writer took the risk of dying as a result of the African journey quite seriously. The informal, humorous style of the letter seems to be a mechanism for managing his fear, or premonition, of illness and death.

Nonetheless, we should be careful not to jump to conclusions by implying that it is specifically Africa that was portrayed by Sienkiewicz as space dominated by death. Certainly, it is highly probable – even inevitable – that the writer witnessed tropical diseases taking their toll, and that his African bout of yellow fever was worse than any other disease described in his letters from America. Another thing that should be taken into consideration is the evolution of the writer’s perspective on life and death. His letters from that period reveal that the matters of illness and dying had been on his mind ever since his marriage to Maria Sztekiewicz. The traumatic experience of seeing her decline and succumb to the disease made it even harder. He often wrote about health issues and his concerns about the well-being of himself, his children, sister- and parents-in-law. We may, therefore, conclude that Africa could have only intensified Sienkiewicz’s dread of being taken ill and dying, though it did not cause it. That fear was already the intrinsic trait of the writer’s epistolary style.

Conclusion

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.”73

1 T. Bujnicki, “Sienkiewicz przekracza granice. O przełomie w życiu i twórczości pisarza” [Sienkiewicz pushing back boundaries: About “the turning point” in the life and works of the writer], Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. A. Mickiewicza 2009, vol. 2, no. 44, p. 65; trans. J.M.

2 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], part 1, in H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], Warsaw 1950, ed. J. Krzyżanowski, pp. 179–180; trans. J.M.

3 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], part 2, in H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], Warsaw 1950, ed. J. Krzyżanowski, pp. 169–170; trans. J.M.

4 Ibidem, p. 51; trans. J.M.

5 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 1, edited and prefaced by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2007, p. 455, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

6 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], part 1, op.cit., p. 190; trans. J.M.

7 Ibidem, p. 241; trans. J.M.

8 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], part 2, op.cit., p. 4, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

9 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 2, edited, prefaced, and annotated by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2009, p. 586, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

10 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 1, op.cit., p. 452; trans. J.M.

11 Ibidem, p. 442; trans. J.M.

12 Ibidem, p. 452, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

13 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 2, op.cit., p. 587, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

14 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 1, op.cit., p. 452; trans. J.M.

15 Ibidem; trans. J.M.

16 See T. Bujnicki, op.cit.; M. Gloger, Sienkiewicz nowoczesny [Modern Sienkiewicz], Bydgoszcz 2010 (chapter entitled “O nowoczesnym konserwatyzmie Sienkiewicza” [On Sienkiewicz’s modern conservatism]); R. Koziołek, Sienkiewicz’s Bodies: Studies of Gender and Violence, trans. David Malcolm, Frankfurt am Main 2015.

17 H. Sienkiewicz, “Listy Litwosa z Wystawy Paryskiej” [Sienkiewicz’s letters from the World Fair], in H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 44, Listy z podróży i wycieczek [Miscellaneous travel letters], ed. J. Krzyżanowski, Warsaw 1950, pp. 35–36; trans. J.M.

18 Ibidem, p. 36; trans. J.M.

19 Ibidem, p. 43; trans. J.M.

20 Ibidem, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

21 Ibidem; trans. J.M.

22 Ibidem, p. 48; trans. J.M.

23 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 1, op.cit., p. 487; trans. J.M.

24 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], part 2, op.cit., p. 24; trans. J.M.

25 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 4, part 1, edited, prefaced and annotated by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2008, p. 46; trans. J.M.

26 Ibidem, p. 48; trans. J.M.

27 M. z Szetkiewiczów Sienkiewiczowa, Listy [Letters], ed. B. Szargot, Piotrków Trybunalski 2012, p. 50 (letter of September 20, 1880), emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M. It is worth mentioning here that, in light of the cited correspondence, the view that Maria’s parents played a dominant role in her initial rejection and then acceptance of Sienkiewicz’s marriage proposal seems an overstatement.

28 Ibidem, p. 76 (letter of November 11, 1880).

29 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 2, op.cit., p. 283; trans. J.M.

30 Ibidem, pp. 310–311, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

31 For a more detailed analysis of Sienkiewicz’s African expedition, see B. Szleszyński, “ ‘Zresztą nie mamy czasu jechać do Afryki, bo musimy pisać sprawozdania o Sarze Bernhardt.’ O Kronice warszawskiej z 7 stycznia 1882 roku” [“No time to go to Africa, we have to write reports on Sara Bernhardt”: On Sienkiewicz’s column from January 7, 1882], in Sienkiewicz z innej strony [Sienkiewicz from another perspective], ed. T. Bujnicki, J. Axer, Warsaw 2014, pp. 84–94. The topic of Africa and Bolesław Prus is developed in B. Szleszyński, “Kolonialne fantazje i kolonialne koszmary w Zemście Bolesława Prusa” [Colonial fantasies and nightmares in Zemsta by Bolesław Prus], Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2014, vol.7, no. 49, pp. 207–228.

32 See H. Sienkiewicz, “Kronika Warszawska” [The Warsaw column], in H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], ed. J. Krzyżanowski, vol. 53, supplement 1, Warsaw 1952, p. 10; trans. J.M.

33 Ibidem, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

34 It should be mentioned here that the (altogether surprising) juxtaposition of both continents in one and the same text is made by Sienkiewicz as early as 1877, when he advises Daniel Zgliński to leave for “the banks of the Zambezi, the coast of Zanzibar or Oveuge [?]” as a remedy for the nerves, and compares it to his “wild” experiences back in California (Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 2, op.cit., p. 585; trans. J.M.).

35 Ibidem, pp. 313–314; trans. J.M.

36 Ibidem, p. 314, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

37 Ibidem, p. 320, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

38 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 2, edited and prefaced by J. Krzyżanowski, annotated by M. Bokszczanin, cons. M. Korniłowicz (letters to M. Godlewski annotated by E. Kiernicki), Warsaw 1977, p. 156, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

39 J. Tyszkiewicz, Laiškaiiš Zanzibaro 1891 m. – Listy z podróży do Zanzibaru 1891 r. [Letters from Zanzibar, 1891], edited by V. Poviliūnas, I. Senulienè, Troki 2010, p. 82; trans. J.M.

40 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 2, part 2, edited, prefaced and annotated by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 1996, p. 391; trans. J.M. As we learn from the letters to Henryk Siemiradzki, the wallet was eventually returned, though Sienkiewicz had mixed feelings about the incident.

41 J. Tyszkiewicz, op.cit., p. 89; trans. J.M.

42 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], in Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 43, ed. J. Krzyżanowski, Warsaw 1949, p. 24; trans. J.M.

43 “Should Mount Kilimanjaro prove too much for me, especially for (?) my wallet, I would return immediately from Zanzibar, stopping over in Keren (Abyssinia)” (Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 1, op.cit., pp. 308–309, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.).

44 Ibidem, p. 305; trans. J.M.

45 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 1, op.cit., p. 495, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

46 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 1, op.cit., p. 311; trans. J.M.

47 Ibidem, p. 309, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

48 Ibidem, pp. 312–313; trans. J.M.

49 “Almost anyone who is about to experience something extraordinary, something craved for, is full of foreboding that it will just pass them by. I was no exception when I was going to see subtropical Africa, which I have longed to do for a long time” (Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], op.cit., p. 25; trans. J.M.).

50 “We are served food and drink throughout the day. There’s coffee between 7 and 8 a.m.; a hot meat dish for breakfast at 9 a.m.; lunch at noon; coffee at 3 p.m.; dinner at 6 p.m.; tea in the evening. Because there are only several passengers, everyone has their own cabin. Sweet and salt water baths are on offer, but I have not tried them yet” (Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 1, op.cit., pp. 314–315; trans. J.M.).

51 “What a great lawn tennis court”, he wrote about one of the many things that generated his excitement (J. Tyszkiewicz, op.cit., p. 101; trans. J.M.).

52 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], op.cit., p. 91; trans. J.M.

53 J. Tyszkiewicz, op.cit., p. 101; trans. J.M.

54 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], op.cit., pp. 109–110, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

55 Ibidem, p. 112; trans. J.M.

56 Ibidem, p. 233; trans. J.M.

57 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 1, op.cit., p. 334; trans. J.M.

58 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], op.cit., p. 109; trans. J.M.

59 Ibidem; trans. J.M.

60 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 2, op.cit., p. 156; trans. J.M.

61 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], op.cit., p. 228; trans. J.M.

62 Ibidem, p. 168; trans. J.M.

63 J. Tyszkiewicz, op.cit., p. 106; trans. J.M.

64 Ibidem, p. 110, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

65 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], op.cit., p. 233; trans. J.M.

66 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 1, op.cit., p. 159; trans. J.M.

67 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], op.cit., p. 259; trans. J.M.

68 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 1, op.cit., p. 540; trans. J.M.

69 “Such mental pictures are like fog. They obscure any sunlight there may be, and make your day gloomy. As I was sitting in this mental fog, my dejection deepened when a dying man was brought into the hotel. He was carried by four men. His head was slumped to his chest, his eyes were closed, complexion sallow, arms hanging limp to the ground. The sombre group glided past me, and a minute later I was approached by the hotel manager. He asked me:

“Do you know who the sick man is?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I replied.
“It’s the great Schliemann.”
Poor “great Schliemann”! He excavated Troy and Mycenae, his discoveries made him immortal, and now he was – dying…” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], op.cit., p. 5; trans. J.M.).

70 Ibidem, p. 63, emphasis B. Sz.; trans. J.M.

71 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 1, op.cit., p. 335; trans. J.M.

72 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 2, op.cit., p. 156; trans. J.M.

73 Ibidem, p. 159; trans. J.M.

Agnieszka Bąbel

(Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Self-Made Man: Henryk Sienkiewicz’s American Experiment

America versus Africa

In the works devoted to the life and work of Henryk Sienkiewicz, the authors often eagerly juxtapose his 1876-1878 journey, which inspired Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz (Listy z podróży do Ameryki), with his dream journey to Africa in 1890, which was long delayed and largely unsuccessful. One of these authors is, for instance, Dariusz Trześniowski, whose text devoted to the analysis of Listy z Afryki (Letters from Africa), although in many respects debatable, puts forward an interesting interpretation. Travel is understood as “an attempt at an auto-definition of one’s self, recognition of one’s own ambiguous and contradictory identity.”1 It might be useful to apply this interpretation – travel in search of identity – to Sienkiewicz’s first journey, or rather to its literary reflection.

The model of masculinity

Despite the numerous works analyzing the crisis of masculinity in 19th-century literature (suffice to mention the often observed “eternal crisis of masculinity” and the images of the great men of the past2), in this text, we are dealing with a very traditional model. This model includes elements such as “activity, being in control of both the world and of one’s emotional life, being in sovereign power, authoritarianism, strength, resoluteness, fantasies of being a hero or achieving something extraordinary, transcendent virility, assertiveness in general as well as in sexuality.”3 Masculinity is always positively valued, in contrast to effeminacy – this dichotomy appears repeatedly in the texts I will refer to – Samuel Smiles’s work on self-help from 1859 and the works of Sienkiewicz (American correspondence and private letters4). Hence the conscious ambiguity of the popular phrase used in the title – the “self-making” of the self-made man is supposed to refer to constructing oneself both as a human and as a male, for which the space of the foreign culture seems particularly favorable.

The journey under the banner of “self-help”

Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance, a book by Samuel Smiles, enjoyed immense popularity in Europe, which can be confirmed by the number of its translations, re-makes, and record-breaking editions. It found its way into the Polish language via its German translation by Joseph Boyes, which was a Germanized version of the original. The book was translated by a group of long-time collaborators of the Przegląd Tygodniowy weekly, headed by Adam Wiślicki,5 the editor in chief, and the first edition was published in Warsaw, in 1867.6 The translation was domesticated (Polonized) – Boyes’s text was enriched with an abundance of Polish examples and realities. Boyes had already added many German protagonists to Smiles’s text in order to appeal more effectively to the readers’ imagination and even turned the author himself into one of the protagonists; his success was supposed to be the perfect illustration of his claims. Smiles’s “self-help,” translated as “one’s own-help,” is used here in at least two meanings: as self-development/self-reliance and cooperation (affiliating).7 In his Portrait of America, Sienkiewicz uses this term in the context of the lynch law (“the capacity for self-help is in a way innate to the American people, and it is so strongly-grounded that even in the well-organized states, the government and the police find it difficult to stop the mob from lynching in more serious cases”8) as well as in the context of the frequently praised American self-reliance:

I prefer this Yankee republican vivacity together with all its abuses. […] the richness of inner life and self-reliance have already died in old Europe, and […] it is difficult to take there any unconstrained steps. Contrary, in America, self-reliance and vivacity are flourishing and growing powerfully.9

Vivacity and perseverance, the virtues embodied by the idealized figures of the squatters, are the key notions in Smiles’s work, similarly to “manly character.”10 Sienkiewicz openly writes about Americans: “There is no other nation in this world that would combine all the vices and virtues of a genuine manly character,” and an American individual is perceived in the following way:

In all respects, he is a tough man. He can love but not chirp; he can hate but not bite on the sly. He despises gossip, female garrulousness, embroidering scandalous news on the canvass of human honor.

In other words, even if Sienkiewicz did not travel around America with Self-Help as a traveling pocketbook, the ideals and values expressed in his texts of that time seem to have been shaped according to this model. The same is true of the projects sketched by other young positivists, who in their own lives had already tested and were disappointed by the traditional model of a “Polish man” promoted by the nobility culture. Undoubtedly, it was “the book of the generation.”11 Writing about the career of the “self-help” model in the generation of positivists, Ewa Paczoska concludes that it was “Smiles’s ‘self-made man’ that became the model of character, the shaping of which is supposed to depend on the work and perseverance of every individual as well as their ability to assess their chances in the world.”12

The Source…

We often juxtapose Portrait of America with his correspondence, and in this way, we divide the image of America and the information concerning Sienkiewicz’s stay in America into the private sphere and official sphere, retrieving the data and treating the text as a bibliographic source. We need to remember, however, that this correspondence is not really private but rather half-private since some fragments were not only read out but also published. For example, “List Litwosa ‘Z drugiej półkuli’” (Sienkiewicz’s letter “from the other hemisphere”) “to one of our [Gazeta Polska’s] collaborators” was reprinted as a supplement to Szkice amerykańskie (American Sketches) in the edition of Sienkiewicz’s collected works edited by Julian Krzyżanowski, or the reservations made in the letter to Edward Leo as of November 1876:

In the correspondence that I am going to post in a couple of days, I am going to describe all these events and many others; that is why I wouldn’t like this letter or its fragments to be published since it would be repetitive.13

Undoubtedly, the autobiographical threads are strongly connected with self-creation, both in the case of the correspondence that was written to be published as well as in the case of epistolography. Still, “the American experience” should not be perceived as a holistic and profound experience of America, where Sienkiewicz spent two years (from March 1876 to March 1878). His journey from one coast to the other encompassed only the northern states; that is why Sienkiewicz equates “American” with “Yank,” and for him, a Californian trapper is the embodiment of the American ideal.

… and the Fib

Did the author of Portrait of America fib? This slightly provocative question remains especially valid today, in light of the discussion regarding the limits of the so-called literary reportage and the freedom of artistic expression of a journalist.14 Writing on the border of non-fiction and belles-lettres offers the author a tremendous opportunity for artistic fulfillment, simultaneously raising serious doubts in the minds of the readers and the critics. “Thus a general and more basic question is: how much freedom is the journalist allowed? Because the increase in ‘capacity’ and the ‘enrichment’ of literary reportage, the ‘improvement of the reality,’ the crossing of genre borders, and encroaching upon the area of fiction make journalism pay a high price, an unpleasant drawback – the loss of credibility.”15 We have to stress, however, that in the times of Sienkiewicz, the pioneer era of press reportage, this issue did not raise much controversy, and the author himself did not feel embarrassed as a result of embellishing his experiences in accordance with the needs of the text that he was writing; consequently, he felt no need to conceal his methods. The correspondence is a testament to his ability to distinguish “artistic truth” from “real-life truth”: according to what the author wrote to Julian Horain in 1876, Portrait of America is a thought-out literary work:

Do you think that this ingenious young man gradually develops, and simultaneously lies so much that the paper blushes in embarrassment? What is more, I can tell you that in the next letters, he will be lying twice as much: you will be reading the descriptions of grasslands, bears, hunts, and accidents that he suffered. In brief, a genuine romance, where, apart from the geographical and natural backdrop, everything was made up – only slightly related to the truth. It should not seem strange, as everybody does that.16

The young correspondent presents his writing method to his publisher in such an open and humorous way (the letter to Edward Leo as of November 1876):

After all – by God! – I have learned a bit how to deal with Indians, and since everyone can speak Spanish, I can talk to them, and I can negotiate. In the end, they taught me many war and hunting tricks: “to see and to hear in the grassland,” to hide, and to read tracks the way one reads letters in a book.

On the basis of little cues, such as bent grass, the trace of a moccasin on the sand, the hoof print, the remains of a bonfire, or food, I can easily and conceitedly conclude - as writers typically do – who was passing by, where they went, how many people were there, etc.

Naturally, I often fall for their fibs, which is relatively easy, since they cannot be verified.17

Jerzy Krzyżanowski claims that the entire hunting trip to Wyoming, which was described in three different texts (in Szkice Amerykańskie XII-XIV), was, in fact, a skillful hoax, humbug, an attractive story made up to compensate the feeling of frustration and the overwhelming internal crisis experienced by the writer in 1877, after the fall of the “artistic phalanstère” in Anaheim, California and after parting with Helena Modrzejewska, which was caused by a serious conflict with her husband.18 Obviously, neither this fact nor the members of the idyllic Californian community, who were framed out of the picture in the texts written for publishing, were mentioned in the pages of Portrait of America. In the anonymous provincial nobleman who traveled with the main protagonist from Warsaw through Berlin, London and across the Atlantic – on board of the Germanicus – we can recognize a slightly caricatured portrayal of Juliusz Sypniewski. Still, apart from several mentions of Horain and the paeans sung to the glory of the acting career of Modrzejewska, we learn nothing about the numerous Poles living in San Francisco (for instance, Captain Rudolf Korwin Piotrowski and Franciszek Wojciechowski, who were later occasionally mentioned as the models for some protagonists of the Trilogy or about members of the Anaheim community (the Sypniewski family, Karol Chłapowski, Stanisław Witkiewicz, Adam Chmielowski, Lucjan Paprocki). The immigrant community was described from the outside (the way it was described later in two lectures on Polish settlements in America), as seen with the eyes of a visitor who immersed himself in the complete strangeness of America, staying in touch only with the locals (Max Neblung, Jack Harrison, the Pleasants, the Indian guide Pero, etc.). If we were to believe the published letters, the main activities that the young man from Warsaw engaged in included writing and hunting. As Ryszard Koziołek notes, “the same hand holds the pen and the weapon”; that is why “the accident with the hand”19 – which was bit and scratched by a shot cougar – causes delays in sending the correspondence commissioned by the Gazeta Polska, a national newspaper, and spoils the author’s handwriting for a significant period of time. And in accordance with the spirit of this correspondence, a skillful hand keeps “the real man” alive by letting him obtain food thanks to a well-aimed shot and by letting him gain financial remuneration for the vivid description of these shots.

Yet, the private letters reveal also other aspects of life in the Californian residence: “I know a certain columnist who currently spreads manure on the fields, but it’s all right!”20 Farming, hunting, and the appeals of the idyllic life, associated by Sienkiewicz with the use of burdock leaves for toilet purposes, quickly bored the writer21 since – as he concluded in a letter to his publisher – “I could not spend my whole life in the woods.” 22

The story about growing up (Entwicklungsroman)

The key moment in the plot of Portrait of America is, no doubt, the arrival in the Santa Ana Mountains and tasting the real trapper life, the fact that the narrator mentioned with a certain solemnity:

Today, it seems to me that my trip started only when I had arrived in those mountains. Because, how could one use the term “trip” to describe crossing the seas in great ships or the grasslands in comfortable Pullman cars … – furthermore, staying in the hotels, sightseeing the cities, etc.? What is the role of such a civilized scholarly traveler? He is carried around like a traveling trunk – that’s it. The only active role that he plays is spending money. But in those mountains, almost uninhabited, or at least remaining out of the scope of civilization, the role of the traveler is completely different and unconditionally active. Your only passport and your ticket is your gun; the only way of transportation – your own feet or a half-wild mustang, […] you get warm only if you make fire; you eat what you have hunted; you sleep with one eye open and searching through the dangerous depths of darkness […].

To cut a long story short, you travel like a real man; all the elements of your bravery, not wasted by life in the city, you start to play with danger. Everything that happens, happens thanks to you, thanks to your bravery, vivacity, and caution. You cannot be passive even for a moment. And one more thing: you not only watch but also discover. You have to admit that only this kind of trip can be called a real trip, active and creative.23

This experience contrasts starkly with the consciously ironic auto-creation presented at the beginning – the image of a rookie, even an emotional schoolboy, who would gladly feel like a protagonist of an opera upon seeing the famous cliffs of Dover but whose experience is disturbed by the rain:

And but for the lashing rain, you could attune to the ominous majesty of the view, open the soul to tragic impressions, recognize yourself as having an exceptionally wild nature, like some opera protagonist, frown and sing, “Let the crashing waves roar!” and think to yourself, “I wish my friends could see me now.” You would at least be in the right place. But to sing, “Let the crashing waves roar!” while wearing wellingtons and carrying an umbrella is completely unbecoming.24

Sienkiewicz was fed on the popular literature of his era – adventure stories from the Wild West, on the basis of which he formed his images of Indians, trappers, and cowboys. In his eyes, the rafters on the Mississippi “constitute a perfect example of an excellent kind of frontier Americans, living on the border of civilization and the desert, whom I have read so much about in the novels by Cooper, Bret-Hart, and others.”25

In the first letters, he willingly showed his own insecurity and apprehension, expressed in his attitude towards a duel and towards the threat of violence. The fear of knight Zielonogłowski’s “spade of the fathers” is later contrasted with the composure presented by the journalist in the Californian wilderness when he opposed the Mexican caballero or in his reply to the warnings against his lonely reconnaissance in Wyoming, in the area controlled by Indians (“He will kill you.” “All right!”).26

The narrator-protagonist did not fail to stress his original lack of perfection by admitting to his susceptibility to diseases (such as seasickness – embarrassing for a globetrotter). He also did not conceal the lack of knowledge (the proof of which is the lack of knowledge of English and Spanish – the cause of comical situations, as well as problems with geography):

Even though as a result of my acquaintance with a certain young translator of Guthe’s manual on geography, my knowledge of geography is comparable to the knowledge of an average third-grader, hoping for the promotion to the fourth grade, I must admit that I believed America, or at least the United States, to be a far warmer place.27

This last quote, in particular, is a typical exaggeration – an adult man who had crossed the Atlantic and is just learning about the attractions and inconveniences of the famous American transcontinental railroad compares himself to a schoolboy, and not a very bright one.

Building his persona of a “European in the Wild West,” he did not even conceal his lack of dexterity, and in order to achieve an additional comic effect, he wrote about himself in the third person. And so, in Anaheim, a certain “writer from Warsaw, a truly bad shooter, who happened to visit this area,” disturbed the starlings feeding on grapes. No one else shot the birds as they are useful in killing insects.28

Incidentally, Sienkiewicz proudly corrected this last piece of information in a private letter to the editor, written in November 1876: “In my last letter, I presented myself as a bad shooter, which was unnecessary. I have a good eye, a steady hand, a good Henry rifle, and I am quite a decent shooter.”29

“The American experiment” seems to be the test of a hard life for the sissy boy. It consists in testing oneself in a foreign environment by (at least theoretically) using only one’s own strengths and skills, by practicing the body and the mind, mainly by perfecting one’s hunting skills, with hunting being seen as the most primal and the manliest:

Shooting all days, from morning till evening, and sometimes even at night, I was getting more and more proficient. The progress in my hunting skills was aided by the surprisingly fast improvement of my sight and hearing. I must admit that hygienic conditions were favorable, too. While in Warsaw, I used to write at nights until three or four o’clock in the morning; here I went to sleep at sunset and got up at dawn. But the main cause of this improvement of my senses was connected with the kind of life I was living – bound with the wilderness and the forest. The need to search the surroundings with my sight, peering through the thicket of the forest and the darkness of rock rifts, rapt attention and the necessary precision of these actions: this is the real practice, thanks to which, after a couple of months, the senses improved and became as sharp as a razor.30

His initially unfavorable remarks concerning America and Americans, voiced in Portrait of America changed with time, and were accompanied by the mentions of self-development and growing physical strength, especially during his stay in the canyon in the Santa Ana mountains, under the supervision of Jack Harrison, the squatter. The stages of the growing independence were marked by the progress in taming a mustang (unfortunately, the Mustang was not caught but bought from Neblung), which was supposed to provide the narrator with mobility and thus – freedom. Above all, however, hunting for animals that were more difficult to shoot was identified with reaching the next stages of masculinity:

I had been shooting water birds in Sebastopol on the Consumnes River for several months, partridges and hare near Orange, coyotes and sea birds in Landing, but this was the first time I shot such a big animal, twice in size of our roe deer.31

“The rookie hunter” was already able to control drowsiness and impatience so that, in the morning, he could shoot a huge deer at the waterhole, and accept laconic praise from his host (“All right!”).32 The crowning achievement in this process of self-development was the hunting trip for grizzly bear with the squatters from Pleasants’ estate, and then the grand search for bison in Wyoming.

Hunt and Desire

At this point, we can pose the following question: is it not so that the hunts, which are so important in the construction of Szkice amerykańskie, constitute a decent substitute of erotic experiences that are mentioned openly in private correspondence and that, analogously, confirm the masculinity of the narrator? According to the letter to Daniel Zgliński, written in San Francisco in May 1877, “Robinson’s life,” with the ever-present rifle in his hand, is supposed to be a wonderful remedy for frayed nerves, apathy, and indecisiveness.33 In one of the letters to Julian Horain, his companion during the American experience, we can find a very striking and clearly sexual metaphor, comparing sex to firearms:

And when I think that a man has sixteen thousand bullets, so I should still have around five hundred (an assumption proving my modesty), and that these five hundred bullets that nature seemed to have preserved for Matylda are lying useless and getting old, 15 miles away from Matylda, or even worse, they are shot in my sleep on Max Neblung’s bed sheets. 34

In Sienkiewicz’s mind, hunting, masculinity, and eroticism are often interconnected on the level of language also in Portrait of America, although in a more veiled way – the model of masculinity, i.e. an ideal American man, is often compared to strong and dangerous animals: an eagle, a bull or “a lion in love.”35 As a side remark, it may be added that the author later uses the same kind of association, with a slightly weaker sexual undertone, when constructing the protagonists of the Trilogy, who are compared to animals – the animal evoked matches the protagonist’s physique. As a result, Wołodyjowski is described as a wildcat and Zagłoba as an ox36.

The additional elements of the therapy that was administered to the European dandy included manual labor at the construction of a hut (the memories of which echoed back many years later, for instance in the letter to Stanisław Witkiewicz of January 13, 1881!37), taking up carpentry, as well as self-imposed limitations and modest needs (the often mentioned “one-dollar pants”38). This was accompanied with a break with social conventions (e.g. preference for honesty and simplicity over refinement) and, finally, a gradually more visible bent for traveling, identified with freedom: “I arrived in these mountains like a bird, and like a bird, I am going to depart.”39

As befits a decent Entwicklungsroman, the survival training brought the desired effects – Sienkiewicz’s authorial persona has grown up. He could provide himself with food, shelter, and safety in the woods. “The dream bison-hunting trip to Wyoming” turned him into an experienced hunter, who was offered the position of the leader by his companions (which he politely refused).40 He volunteered to take the first night-watch. He looked after the camp with dedication and humorously reported the slip-ups of his companions.

Sienkiewicz’s text seems to successfully realize Samuel Smiles’s recommendations on how to construct a mature man. He is aware of his aims and potential, able to evaluate the world critically and to adapt his actions accordingly, and simultaneously not deprived of youthful ardor. Experiencing such a process before turning thirty is part and parcel of the recommendations formulated in Self-Help or Character since, as Ewa Paczoska notes:

The exceptional nature of adolescence, the time of particular receptivity and sensitivity to new stimuli, consisted in building solid foundations of knowledge about the world, which would simultaneously constitute the basis for character-shaping. Smiles stressed the role of “youthful ardor” as a “hopeful indication of character.” 41

“American therapy”

Oh! I find it difficult to say how young, gifted and full of internal powers this nation is. And how glad I would be to send here for health a certain familiar society, where the public good is just a worthless coin... with no direction, where everything decreased, vivacity and work are just a platitude; men suffer from nerves and anemia, but they overuse their tongues, weave and deliver gossip that was freshly baked in the furnace of hideous opinion to their ladies.42

The therapy of self-reliance, which was administered to the Warsaw journalist, is believed to be an excellent therapy for the entire society. It could be described as a paradoxically reversed “Grand Tour”: not a journey in search of the roots and culture, but a journey in search of health, simplicity, and physical strength. This last concept seems especially important to Sienkiewicz and is clearly visible in his writing as well as in personal fascinations and obsessions connected with the issues of health and fitness.43 His relatively low height and his fine-featured face were supposed to be the reasons why he was contemptuously rejected when he wanted to become a member of the troops formed in the 1863 January Rising.44 According to researchers, this unpleasant youthful experience and the resulting complexes were later artistically compensated in the form of the superhuman strength of Sienkiewicz’s protagonists, the truly prodigious fencing abilities of Michał Wołodyjowski, or the many figures of brave young men with “angelic faces,” who are often nicknamed as “ladies” by their comrades (for instance, Selim in “Hania” and in “Selim Mirza,” Bohun or Ketling in the Trilogy, Zbyszko of Bogdaniec in The Teutonic Knights (Krzyżacy), Jacek Taczewski in On the Field of Glory (Na polu chwały), and Marek Kwiatkowski in Legiony [Legions]).45

Sienkiewicz, after his American experience, frequently liked to mention the birth of his passion for traveling:

But my passion for traveling, my Wandering Jew, developed so strongly that I may come back only in order to leave again (after some time), e.g. to Borneo or Africa.46

“Less emancipation than anywhere else”: Masculinity and femininity

A separate issue that is worth analyzing is the attitude towards women as expressed in the texts from the American period. On the one hand, the dislike towards American women, whom he believed to be spoilt lazy coquettes, prevented from debauchery only by their cold calculated nature, is accompanied by words of respect for perfect American men. On the other hand, we can see a clear fascination with the freedom and exoticism (expressed, for instance, in the description of young Indian women,47 and in a far more reserved form – in the famous bachelor letters to Julian Horain or Daniel Zgliński).

An unusually unrestrained language of those letters reflects some more important quality than just fondness for spicy jokes among close friends.48 The libertine form coexists with disregard for social manners, probably adapted to the nature of the addressees and the relation of “manly conversation,” out of the scope of official social occasions. In the letter to Zgliński, the complete honesty of the author and the lack of pose are supposed to be confirmed by the delicate subject matter, which consists in a detailed discussion of the intimate preferences and experiences of both interlocutors, stressing of the private nature of the correspondence (“Don’t show this letter to modest people, Sir”49), as well as the ample number of obscenities, and the resulting persistent directness of language. In fact, one cannot escape the impression that all these elements were used very consciously in order to construct another self-fashioning. The correspondence with Horain, however, contains not only the evidence of social provocations but also of intellectual courage – it stands as a testament to the epoch of internal quests, ethical uncertainty, “the crisis of the soul consumption”50 (the letter as of August 1, 1876).

“I learned this in America”

It is often believed that the American journey is the first turning point in his writing biography and has been instrumental for his development. Tadeusz Bujnicki regards it as a “threshold” at the very beginning of his paper.51 Zdzisław Najder considers this period both as a bottleneck and the key to Sienkiewicz’s life and work.52 Jerzy R. Krzyżanowski even states that “Bearing Sienkiewicz’s future delight in the free life in the grasslands in mind, clearly visible in the Trilogy, the Californian period can be considered as a practical exercise in creating the literary images of life on the frontier grasslands.”53

On the pages of Portrait of America, the journey to America is presented as an experience that was difficult, yet leading to an impressive victory over one’s own limitations, both physical and imposed by social conventions and habit. In real life, the travel experiment failed, and Sienkiewicz paid for it with a period of depression and disillusionment (the long-lasting and ambiguous relation with Modrzejewska must have included serious emotional engagement of the young author54) as well as financial problems (he had to borrow money for the return journey to Liverpool from Captain Piotrowski55).

Sienkiewicz, the promising journalist, who in March 1876 set out to conquer California, was almost thirty years old, but he was described (and often described himself) as a youngster. He was perceived as such by Sewer in his London letter to Karol Chłapowski, dated as of February 24, 1876, where he wrote about him as a “young man.” Also Sienkiewicz humorously presented himself in a letter to Horain in a similar way: “they [the Chlapowskis] were met by a young and exceptionally handsome gentleman, that is me.”56 He was similarly portrayed in Modrzejewska’s memoirs: this “young novelist” was exceptionally “strong, healthy and ruddy-faced” after sea swims in the nearby Anaheim Landing.57

Having returned from America, Sienkiewicz spent the next year in France, crossing not only the symbolic age limit (he turned 33, the age of Jesus Christ when he died on the Cross, and in European culture the thirtieth birthday was a kind of border, separating youth from maturity), but also coming to terms with his experiences and taking significant life decisions which could be summarized in one word: stabilization. This stabilization included not only the choice of professional career (turning from a journalist to a novelist) and liberation from the long-lasting fascination with Modrzejewska. In September 1876 in Venice, he met and established a closer acquaintance with the Szetkiewicz sisters, which was followed by a long-lasting period of courting Maria Szetkiewicz, crowned with their wedding on August 18, 1881.58 During their engagement, Sienkiewicz was already thirty-four years old, and was by reputation “a man of an indeterminate profession, reckless and indebted.”59 He was probably painfully aware of this since, for some time, he had been seriously negotiating financial terms with his publisher. The negotiations started half-jokingly already during his journey to America. This is clearly visible in his letters to Edward Leo, for instance in the letter sent in February 1877:

I have not been informed about what is going on with my writings – if you are going to publish them. I expect so. Despite the fact that I flourish here in hiding like a violet, I have received various offers, which I have not accepted, willing to work only for Gazeta. So, I hope it is quid pro quo.

As far as my remuneration is concerned, I have no doubt it is going to be humongous and unprecedented – obviously in plus. You are telling me that “the paper is growing,” from which I conclude that the pocket is growing as well. Finally, since the business has been joined by a new partner, the proverb that comes to my mind is “strike while the iron is hot.” 60

And later, in the same letter, he wrote in a seemingly humorous way: “I have been turning into a businessman, to such an extent, that it comes to my mind that the astronomical sums that I pay for my letters should be covered by the paper. But never mind.”61 By no means was it the subject of minor importance to the correspondent since, just after this nonchalant declaration, he asserted his copyright to the potential second edition of Charcoal Sketches (Szkice węglem), mentioned in this letter under the title of Barania Głowa (The village of Barania Głowa).

A very uncompromising tone can be heard in the letters from Paris, which concern financial issues and were written less than a month after the writer’s return from New York. The letter from Paris (written around April 20, 1878) was almost an ultimatum; the young correspondent openly presented his situation in life, listed his needs, emphasized his “market value,” and simply dictated the terms and conditions of further cooperation:

I agree with the paper’s tendencies; secondly, when I think that I am thirty, but I have neither savings nor financial perspectives, it comes to my mind that I should perhaps put myself first. […] You have to consider the fact that in light of the growth of papers and the competition among them, the value of their cooperators – especially those who have gained some recognition – is growing as well. You can conclude that on the basis of the prices and the conditions that I am currently offered.

What is going to happen and who is finally going to write to all those newspapers – I don’t know. I only know that the writers will be auctioned – the one who gives more, wins. As far as you and I are concerned – you don’t have to offer the most since it involves the matter of the heart – you need to offer enough, and make things work in such a way that I am able to live.” 62

“The matter of the heart” did not veil the most important issue, that is the negotiation of the most beneficial terms and the highest prices for the texts, and simultaneously maintaining the right to cooperate with other magazines. In support of his arguments, Sienkiewicz did not hesitate to list the titles and names of other bidders, and openly formulated the rule that he was now going to obey, and that would lead to his unprecedented artistic and financial success63:

You wouldn’t believe how wanted the exhibition correspondents are. […] Now, Unger may attack me. As you know, Nowiny wants me, too. What Wiek and Gazeta Warszawska are going to do – I don’t know. I have had offers from Galicia, but I am not going to accept them. Anyway, I found myself in a strange position. My sister is getting married on May 1. They are cordially inviting me to come – my heart and the sense of duty tell me that I should go, but again: it’s easy to go, but more difficult to return. And it’s also difficult to miss such a harvest. I spend 3 francs per day in Paris, including accommodation. I make my morning and evening meals. I learned this in America – as well as I learned self-help. And the exhibition will raise the prices – so, one has to write and one has to earn.64

This sober conclusion of a private nature was – one could say – also the side effect of “American therapy.”

1 D. Trześniowski, “‘Listy z Afryki’ Henryka Sienkiewicza w świetle dyskursu postkolonialnego” [Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “Letters from Africa” in the light of post-colonial discourse], in Podróż i literatura. 1864–1914 [Travel and literature, 1864–1914], edited by E. Ihnatowicz, Warsaw 2008.

2 “In research on the history of masculinity, the turn of the twentieth century and in Great Britain the end of the seventeenth century are often mentioned as periods of crisis for males and masculinity. However, in Tjeder (1999) we can read that there has been a worry about lost masculinity during the entire nineteenth century judging from, among others, the existing advice manuals from that time. As a matter of fact, Tjeder questions whether there has ever been a period without anxieties about lost masculinity. ‘Men were supposedly always more masculine in the past,’ writes Tjeder.” Having quoted this conclusion, Gunnar Karlsson advances the thesis that it might be a childish projection of the image of a powerful father (D. Tjeder, “Konsten att blifva herre öfver hvarje lidelse: den ständigt hotade manligheten” [The art to become master of every passion], in A.M. Berggren, Manligt och omanligt et historiskt perspektiv [Manly and unmanly in a historical perspective], Report 99:4, Forskningsrådsnämnden 1999, p. 179; quoted after G. Karlsson, “Masculinity as Project: Some Psychoanalytic Reflections,” NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 2014, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 256–257.

3 In psychoanalytic terms, this model corresponds to “phallic masculinity” (G. Karlsson, op. cit., p. 250). In pre-Freudian times, it was the most common model (if not the only one that was commonly accepted) in European culture.

4 “You are writing to me that I should go back to Warsaw. Obviously, I will, because I miss my fellow countrymen sometimes. Still, I feel so well here, so healthy, so blissful. Americans are so brave, so loyal, righteous, and virtuous that once you get used to their brusqueness, it is impossible not to love them, simultaneously coming to the conclusion that our Europe got old, wicked, effeminate, and disgraceful.” H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 2, edited, annotated, and with an introduction by M. Bokszczanin. Warsaw 2007, pp. 449–451. All quotations from Sienkiewicz’s letters have been translated by Ewa Nowik.

5 Apart from Wiślicki, the translation was provided by Aleksander Kraushar, Józef Kirszrot, Jakub Szenwic, who replaced August Jeske, Wołody Skiba (Władysław Sabowski), and “an anonymous lady” who was identified as Matylda Okrętowa by Karol Estreicher, the author of Bibliografia polska XIX stulecia [Polish bibliography of the 19th century] (see J. Kubicka, Na przełomie. Pozytywiści warszawscy i pomoc własna [At the turn of the century: Warsaw positivists and self-help], Warsaw 2016, p.141). A more detailed analysis concerning the issue of the authorship of the translation can be found in B. Szleszyński, “Kto napisał ‘Pomoc własną’ Samuela Smilesa?” [Who wrote Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help?], in Etyka i literatura: pisarze polscy lat 1863–1918 w poszukiwaniu wzorców życia i sztuki [Ethics and literature: Polish writers of 1863–1918 in search of the models of life and art] edited by E. Ihnatowicz and E. Paczoska, Warsaw 2006.

6 The second edition: 1868 Kraków; the third edition: 1879 Warsaw. Another translation, based on “the German translation by A. Colenfeld,” was published in Warsaw, in 1869. Later, other works of the English author were translated, and the great comeback of Self-Help in Poland took place before the First World War, when two other editions were published (Kraków–Warsaw 1908 and Warsaw 1912).

7 For the 19th-century readers, the phrase self-help became a catch-phrase, a slogan, which did not require explanation or commentary, but the exact understanding strongly depended on the context (J. Kubicka, op. cit., pp. 230–232).

8 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], p. 190. All quotations from Listy z podróży do Ameryki come from: H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 1988. Listy z podróży do Ameryki, p. 190.

9 Ibidem, p. 191; emphasis A. B.

10 A few characteristic quotations: “Hence energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man” (S. Smiles, Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance, Nashville 1873, p. 248); “the honest earning and the frugal use of money are of the greatest importance. Rightly earned, it is the representative of patient industry and untiring effort, of temptation resisted, and hope rewarded; and rightly used, it affords indications of prudence, forethought and self-denial—the true basis of manly character” (p. 305); “The highest object of life we take to be, to form a manly character, and to work out the best development possible, of body and spirit—of mind, conscience, heart, and soul. This is the end: all else ought to be regarded but as the means” (p. 323).

11 See J. Żadziłko-Sztachelska, “Czytanie Smilesa” [Reading Smiles], in Książka pokolenia. W kręgu lektur polskich doby postyczniowej [The book of the generation: On the most influential books in Poland after the January Rising], edited by E. Paczoska and J. Żadziłko-Sztachelska, Białystok 1994.

12 E. Paczoska, “Ojcowie i dzieci: dojrzewanie w modelu ‘self-help’” [Fathers and children: Growing up in the ‘self-help model’], in Dojrzewanie, dojrzałość, niedojrzałość. Od Bolesława Prusa do Olgi Tokarczuk [Maturing, maturity, and immaturity: From Bolesław Prus to Olga Tokarczuk], Warsaw 2004, p. 17.

13 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 2, edited, annotated, and with an introduction by M. Bokszczanin. Warsaw 2007, pp. 454–455.

14 This phenomenon was usually observed only in the 20th century, when journalistic genres and conventions had already been formed. The so-called New Journalism, also known as “faction,” was born in the 1960s and was popularized thanks to the work of the authors such as Bruce Chatwin, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and – in Poland – Ryszard Kapuściński. This form of “creative non-fiction writing” aims to combine “the functions of the traditional reportage with the writing techniques used in fiction” (A. Domosławski, Kapuściński non-fiction, Warsaw 2010, p. 389).

15 Ibidem, p. 438.

16 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], edited by J. Krzyżanowski, vol. 55, Warsaw 1951, p. 222, emphasis A. B.

17 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 2, edited, annotated, and with an introduction by M. Bokszczanin. Warsaw 2007, pp. 449–450; emphasis A. B.

18 J. R. Krzyżanowski, “Sienkiewicz w Wyoming, czyli “trick or trip”? [Sienkiewicz in Wyoming: Trick or trip?], Pamiętnik Literacki 1996, vol. 4, p. 72. The rumors of Sienkiewicz’s affair with Modrzejewska appeared already in 1874, during his short engagement to Maria Keller. “Warm” feelings must have filled the star’s husband even earlier since “the third one” wrote in his letter to Julian Horain: “Finally, I know a certain Karol, who is constantly dreaming to learn how to castrate, and he deprived all male chickens of everything he could cut away, as a result of which all hens hate him to such an extent that he cannot even peacefully go to the toilet” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 2, introduction and biographical notes of the addressees by J. Krzyżanowski, annotated by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 1977, p. 381). It is via Horain that Sienkiewicz later passed his letters to Modrzejewska (pp. 389–390).

19 R. Koziołek, Ciała Sienkiewicza. Studia o płci i przemocy [Sienkiewicz’s Bodies: Studies of Gender and Violence], Katowice 2009, p. 411; trans. E. N. See also R. Koziołek, Sienkiewicz’s Bodies: Studies of Gender and Violence, trans. David Malcolm, Frankfurt am Main 2015.

20 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part. 2, op. cit., p. 380.

21 Ibidem, p. 387.

22 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part. 2, op. cit., p. 467.

23 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 1988, p. 183; emphasis A. B.

24 Ibidem, pp. 25–26.

25 Ibidem, p. 102.

26 Ibidem, p. 305.

27 Ibidem, p. 87.

28 “As far as the writer is concerned, he rarely causes any calamity, but often scares the living daylights out of somebody, especially since it’s impossible to avoid him and to know where he is and where he isn’t – he roams the fields, vineyards, bushes. In one word, even if he hasn’t been invited, he is sure to appear” (p. 163).

29 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 2, op. cit., p. 454.

30 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 1988, p. 210; emphasis – A.B.

31 Ibidem, p. 206.

32 Ibidem, p. 106.

33 “Can you imagine this wonderful, warm, and wooded country, where you travel on foot or on the horse back, live off your own rifle, you look at the money like the cock at the pearl, you sleep under the sky and near the fire, you forget about moral dilemmas, and you expend all your energy, all mental and bodily powers on not missing the target, such as some crappy partridge or a hare. If you can’t revive like this, you can’t at all. […] The game is plenty – I learnt to shoot like an angel. The sun has burnt my skin so that I look as if I were a Turk or an Indian. I lost weight because all my fat evaporated, but I got smoked, and I toughened, and I am as healthy as a horse. Having known me earlier, you wouldn’t believe how wild my life is for the bigger part now, but I give you my word that it is really so. I sleep well, I eat like a horse – I don’t worry about tomorrow. I light a bonfire, wrap myself in a quilt, and “all right.” When I recall the old silly fear, this vague anxiety that accompanied me when I went to sleep – just think about the satisfaction, the feeling of power and health when I sometimes tell myself, ‘I don’t give a shit about those nerves!’” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 2, edited, annotated, and with an introduction by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2009, pp. 585–586).

34 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 2, pp. 365–366.

35 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 1988, p. 217. Animal metaphors conquered the imagination of the author of Szkice amerykańskie (American sketches) for a long time, also in other texts that were not meant for publishing. Referring to himself, Sienkiewicz used a whole series of such humorous similes in the letter informing his friend about his longed-for engagement: “Strange things are happening, my dear! I thought I could live perfectly alone, like a rogue animal in the woods, and I believed there was no other animal like me – such a skittish and bit-hating horse, such a kicking donkey, such a surly bear, and such a grouchy rhinoceros. It seemed to me that I was the most untamed and the most difficult to tame animal that zoology has ever heard of. And yet, I can see now that I am like a big faithful dog that could lie at my master’s feet and bristle up only when some evil approached the beloved hand. In a word: Orso growls quietly, and is very happy” (the letter to Stanisław Witkiewicz, as of January 22, 1881, in H. Sienkiewicz “Widziałem wszystko, com chciał i potrzebował widzieć.” W stulecie śmierci Pisarza wybór listów oraz pokłosie epistolarne [“I saw everything that I wanted and needed to see”: At the centenary of death of the writer: A selection of letters and the epistolographic legacy], edited by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2016, pp. 177–178). In this letter, he also compared himself to “good Caliban” with fair-haired Miranda, who expresses his feelings and promises to take care of her in the wilderness (“I prithee, Let me bring thee/where crabs grow/And I with my long nails will dig thee pignut/Show thee a jay’s nest and instruct thee how/To snare the nimble marmoset …” (Shakespeare, The Tempest, act two, scene 2, lines 1253–56). The additional ambiguity and comic nature of these remarks is due to the fact that Shakespeare’s Caliban gives those promises to Stefano, a drunken sailor, with no romantic intentions.

36 See M. Pietrzak, Językowe środki charakteryzowania postaci w twórczości historycznej Henryka Sienkiewicza [Linguistic means of protagonist description in the historical works of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Łódź 2004.

37 “Oh my dear! Sometimes, I feel so bad in Warsaw! It’s even worse because I know very well what could make me feel calm, happy and be the king of infinite space. Sometimes, it seems to me that I am a squatter, carrying heavy beams to build a hut, and arranging them with difficulty. But I cannot be sure if on some beautiful morning, they don’t all fall down on me, if I don’t lose my footing, and, when in doubt, I feel so exhausted and powerless.” (H. Sienkiewicz. Widziałem wszystko, com chciał i potrzebował widzieć…, pp. 175–177).

38 “My wardrobe, which consists of a flannel shirt, grosgrain trousers, and a sombrero, costs one dollar. The climate does not require anything above that” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part. 2, pp. 452–453).

39 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 1988, p. 220.

40 Ibidem, p. 295.

41 E. Paczoska, op. cit., p. 33 (chapter “Dojrzewanie – problem percepcji” [Growing-up: The problem of perception]. The quotation comes from Smiles’s book, entitled Character, London 1831, p. 347.

42 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 1988, pp. 217–218.

43 See the last part of the book by Ryszard Koziołek, Sienkiewicz’s Bodies: Studies of Gender and Violence, especially the analysis in the chapter “The Weakening Hand.”

44 Maria Korniłowiczówna states openly, “Sienkiewicz did not get rid of the complexes connected with his petite physique and the lack of physical strength till the end of his life.” (M. Korniłowiczówna, Onegdaj. Opowieść o Henryku Sienkiewiczu i ludziach mu bliskich [Once: The story about Henryk Sienkiewicz and his loved ones], Szczecin 1985, p. 26).

45 R. Koziołek, op.cit, pp. 402–405.

46 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 1988, p. 343.

47 This description is highly idealized, which is confirmed by the author’s self-comment in a letter to his editor, “The young Indian woman who visited my wigwam and for the benefit of my love gave up her favorite delicacy: lice will be mentioned in a highly idealized and stylized way” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 2, pp. 454–455).

48 The complete lack of this type of humor in the “official” writings of Sienkiewicz is mentioned by Jerzy R. Krzyżanowski (“O ‘kawalerskich dowcipach’ Sienkiewicza” [About Sienkiewicz’s “bachelor jokes”], in W rocznicę Jasnogórskiego Tryumfu 1655. Recepcja twórczości Sienkiewicza [At the anniversary of Jasna Góra Triumph of 1655: The reception of Sienkiewicz’s works], edited by L. Ludorowski, H. Ludorowska, Z. Mokranowska, Lublin 2005, part 2, p. 205).

49 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 2, p. 588.

50 “My skepticism has progressed so much that it seems to me that good and evil is just humbug, and their conceptions are just the two opposite symptoms of human stupidity. The universe knows only one order, i.e. blind logic. This is the true philosophy of pessimism, which, however, is insufficient as the principle of life. Thus, I have nothing to hold on to – I have no starting point, no life axis […]. If I believed in God, I would talk to him in my solitude, just like Miss Strencel with her fucking brother, but not having even this consolation, I can only write letters.” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 2, op. cit., p. 365).

51 T. Bujnicki, “Sienkiewicz przekracza grancie. O ‘przełomie’ w życiu i twórczości pisarza [Sienkiewicz pushing back boundaries: About ‘the turning point’ in the life and works of the writer], Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2009, vol. 2, no. 44.

52 Z. Najder, “O ‘Listach z podróży’ do Ameryki Henryka Sienkiewicza” [About Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz”], Pamiętnik Literacki 1955, vol. 2.

53 J.R. Krzyżanowski, “Na kalifornijskim szlaku Sienkiewicza” [On Sienkiewicz’s California trail], Pamiętnik Literacki 2003, vol. 2, p. 87.

54 In the already cited letter to Daniel Zgliński, Sienkiewicz offers very personal advice regarding the winning of the beloved woman to whom one feels “unfortunate passion” and “terrible addiction” of desire and jealousy: “Oh, I can tell you that it is simply unbearable, and you will be hitting your head against the tree, and when you think that, perhaps, she is kissing somebody else, maybe she is putting out for somebody, then you will be biting your hands and getting furious, […] and you will feel like yelling in your Dunkirk or in the woods, and you – the so far good-natured man – will be pondering the ways to poison, kill, drown and quietly bury in the ground those who separate you from her all the time.” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 5, part 2, p. 591. The youthful fascination with the great actress was supposed to be so strong so as to lead the author of Charcoal Sketches (Szkice węglem) across the Atlantic but also many years later, induced him to write a story entitled The Third Woman (Ta trzecia) (written in 1888) which was a hidden homage to Modrzejewska, who was portrayed as the perfect Ewa Adami. (R. Koziołek, op. cit., pp. 24–25).

55 J.R. Krzyżanowski, Na kalifornijskim szlaku Sienkiewicza [On Sienkiewicz’s California trail], op. cit., p. 92.

56 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 2, op. cit.., p. 378.

57 See “Dekady Henryka Sienkiewicza (1876–1886)” [The decades of Henryk Sienkiewicz (1876–1886)], www.nplp.pl/artykul/1876–1886/ [access: 2017–07–05] (quoted after Henryk Sienkiewicz: kalendarz życia i twórczości [Henryk Sienkiewicz: The diary of life and work] (written by J. Krzyżanowski; edited and annotated by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2012).

58 Jolanta Sztachelska, referring to the subject research, believes that Sienkiewicz met the Szetkiewicz family in Szczawnica – a spa, in 1879, during an “American lecture.” Maria made such an enormous impression on him that he “decided to follow them to Italy” (J. Sztachelska, “Żona w biografii twórczej artysty. Na marginesie listów Marii z Szetkiewiczów Sienkiewiczowej” [The wife in the artist’s creative biography: On the margin of the letters of Maria Sienkiewicz née Szetkiewicz], Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2016, vol. 9, no. 52, p. 430.

59 See “Dekady Henryka Sienkiewicza (1876–1886)” [The decades of Henryk Sienkiewicz (1876–1886)], www.nplp.pl/artykul/1876–1886/ [accessed on: July 7, 2017] (quoted after: Henryk Sienkiewicz: kalendarz życia i twórczości [Henryk Sienkiewicz: The diary of life and work] (written by J. Krzyżanowski; edited and annotated by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2012.

60 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 2, p. 461.

61 Ibidem, p. 462.

62 Ibidem, pp. 472–473.

63 Ryszard Koziołek states, “Despite the inconveniences connected with being a public property, Sienkiewicz was far more a beneficiary than a victim of modern press. Thanks to his talent and knowledge on how it functioned as the medium for literature, he was able to integrate the economic and ideological dimensions of writing without any major contradictions – the achievement that had not been so effectively accomplished by any other writer of his generation. He even managed to modify the awareness of the receivers, who – in his case – did not emphasize the conflict between ‘artistic mission’ and the excellent business that he made out of it” (R. Koziołek, op. cit., p. 18).

64 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, part 2, op. cit., p. 475; emphasis A. B.

Konrad Niciński

(Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Sienkiewicz on the American Frontier: The Literary Material of the Trilogy?

Introduction

Much has been written about Sienkiewicz’s American journey. Few have dared to question its cardinal importance in his biography, and in the light of the present state of research, it would not be wrong to argue that the journey was, in fact, nothing less than a rite of passage. The initiatory nature of Sienkiewicz’s two-year-long journey through, or rather stay in, the United States has been explored from many an angle: it has been read in a strictly biographical context, as the thirty-year-old writer’s rite of passage,1 but also interpreted as a worldview change, one which involved his parting ways with a radical form of Polish positivism,2 or analyzed as an exploratory episode that triggered a developmental change (embarking on the journey across the ocean, Sienkiewicz is not only departing from Mazovia and taking a course for California but also leaving his settled way of life, which begins his lifelong passion for traveling, the passion that would feed his creative powers from then on3), or yet seen in terms of his development as a writer. It is the last perspective that has been examined in greatest detail and in the most diverse ways – it has been explored, for instance, in its inseparability from the approaches listed above, which is to say, in such a way as to lay bare the changes in Sienkiewicz’s writing (e.g., his gradual renouncing of the positivist bias, of using literature as a means of exemplifying the principles of Polish positivism – or his making increasing use of American themes, drawing on what he experienced in the course of his American journey, transforming the persons he met into literary characters) which may have been brought about by his American experience. That said, the development of Sienkiewicz’s literary craft has also been extensively written about in the context of the American experience.4 What has been studied most is clearly Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz (Listy z podróży do Ameryki), the volume analyzed both as an independent text (and the rise of such genres as the reportage or feuilleton) and explored as a token of the transformations of Sienkiewicz’s literary craft seen in status nascendi. Bogdan Mazan, the first scholar to carry out a (mostly descriptive) analysis of Sienkiewicz’s prose-writing techniques, has shown that the writer’s American experience was a formative factor in the emergence of what he sees as Sienkiewicz’s impressionist style of description.5 The most recent attempts to shed light on the American journey rely on postmodern models of reading, predominantly on gender and postcolonial studies.

Nevertheless, it would appear that however important such research may well be, the topic that still keeps inviting one to explore it in novel ways is Sienkiewicz’s use of the American journey as the literary prime matter of his later work, above all – including those texts of his in which American themes are not explicitly present at all. I would submit that the subject is far from having been sufficiently examined – and the perspectives from which it has been approached certainly leave much ground still uncovered. Mazan’s study shows how Sienkiewicz’s experience of America, also in its sensual aspect, could be translated into literary forms. This could be extended into an analysis of the processing of the narrative and the storyline understood in a broader, culture-oriented manner – as a story about a culture, as a transformation of the story the American culture tells about itself (and the storytelling methods it relies on in such undertakings) into Sienkiewicz’s own story about another culture. The aim of the present paper is to examine Sienkiewicz’s American journey as a possible literary material of the Trilogy.

A story of culture clash

Such a thought is hardly new – one can find it in the early biographical accounts, in which it boils down to efforts to find the real-life models of the Trilogy characters among the people Sienkiewicz met in the New World, mostly among the Poles in the United States, (e.g., Captain Korwin-Piotrowski as a possible model for Zagłoba).6 One may well broaden the scope here. Firstly, why should one look for such models among Poles only? If Sienkiewicz could ever see any borderland knights, or at least hear contemporary, not historical, stories about them, it was in North America between 1876 and 1878. Secondly, why should one look only for the models of characters or the plot? After all, the United States was a great cultural experience for Sienkiewicz. If we assume that the literary material for the Trilogy was – apart from knowledge (historical, first and foremost) and imagination – the writer’s experience of life in the borderlands, then the latter could only mean his stay in California and his month-long bison hunt in Wyoming in October 1877. Before he arrived in the New World, Sienkiewicz – an heir of a petty noble – was familiar only with his family estate, Warsaw and a handful of European cities. The literary material from his American journey is diverse and may include the frontier sensibility, meetings or clashes between cultures, partially or wholly alien to each other, ways of their co-existence, life in an expanding republic on its way into becoming an empire, the borderlands at war (or more specifically a war that is a conflict between nations that lay claims to the very same land just like in the Trilogy, and the invaders’ moral right to the land stems from their Christian and progressive narrative for civilizational reasons). The literary material might also consist in an experience of frontier life, of a life outside of the urban culture, far removed from European cultural patterns and models.

I am not going to argue here that Sienkiewicz used Wild West events, persons, and stories as models for the Trilogy – that would be idle speculation which one can agree or disagree with. Yet the world of the Trilogy is as accurately reflected in the reality of the American West of the 1870s – in its space, its history, its narratives, its cultural clashes – as if the latter were a mirror, and this is the sole reality Sienkiewicz experienced that remains close to the rules and realities of the world of the Trilogy. In the events of the time of American frontier wars, in the spaces and the communities inhabiting them and, last but not least, in the emblematic characters and the narratives centered upon them, there is an enormous potentiality of a correlative, and a model, of the world of the novel praising borderland wars of a great country, wars in which the boundary between the native and the foreign, the defensive war and the civil war could not be clearly established. As I said, I am not going to look in the Wild West for the models of some particular characters or situations of the Trilogy. However, I do intend to expose a close proximity between the two – proximity between the world of the Trilogy and the reality and narratives of the Wild West as Sienkiewicz might have known it.

The United States at the time of Sienkiewicz’s journey

Sienkiewicz arrives in the States around March 1, 1876.7 Having spent a week or so in New York (the episode which so suggestively yielded a critical depiction in Portrait of America that those who analyze the text, overwhelmed by the dichotomy between the tumult of the New York streets, noisy, gaudy, and sparkling with gold, and the sunny realm of California with its endless vistas and apparently limitless possibilities, sometimes forget the fundamental disparity between what was but a mere brush with New York and a long stay in the American frontier for Sienkiewicz8), he leaves for California. Two stopovers later – a planned one in Chicago and one forced by a blizzard in Wyoming, where he sees a Native American for the very first time at the Ketchum railway station9 – around March 16 Sienkiewicz reaches San Francisco. In June, he moves to Anaheim, which at the time is little more than a village (and not yet a part of Los Angeles), and takes part in preparing the future establishment of a “colony” of Karol Chłapowski, Helena Modrzejewska, and their close friends, which is why he actually decided to embark on the journey in the first place. He is, however, arguably less engaged in the creation a future phalanstère than happy to be able to enjoy local trips, hunting, and life much closer to nature than the one which he led in Warsaw since he had come of age. He is also clearly fascinated by the life of a colonist in the still half-wild borderlands of a great country. The Chłapowski family arrives on November 30, but his relationship with them soon begins to deteriorate, partially perhaps due to Sienkiewicz’s fascination with Modrzejewska (which her husband did not appreciate at all), but certainly also because of the catastrophically bad state of the farm they were trying to settle in.10 One might well wonder whether Sienkiewicz’s apparently scant participation in the efforts to establish the “colony” was not another significant factor. According to his correspondence and Portrait of America, Sienkiewicz leaves Anaheim very often. He visits the mountains for the third time, travels in the Mojave Desert, and visits Los Angeles and San Francisco. One may well have the impression that Sienkiewicz was considerably more interested in living among the locals than with his compatriots. Towards the end of March, he leaves Anaheim for good and embarks on a journey that will take months: he spends several weeks in each of the places he passes through – in Sebastopol, in Haywood (in the vicinity of San Francisco), in the Mariposa country (on the verge of what today is the Yosemite National Park), and finally in San Francisco, where he arrives in July. In October, he probably takes part in a month-long hunting trip to the Wyoming territory (in the South-West of what today is the state of Wyoming). Between January and February, he embarks on a long journey home. Having stayed in New York considerably longer this time (we know now that the stay features trips to Boston and Pittsburgh), on March 23 or 24 Sienkiewicz boards a Liverpool-bound ship and leaves the New World for good.

As he is traveling in the States, there occur events that are both attentively followed by Americans and historically momentous when it comes to the changes happening in the country and the nation. October 1876 sees the presidential elections that close the two-term rule of Ulysses S. Grant, a breakthrough period for the States. Grant’s presidency ushers in what historians have called the Gilded Age, which fosters the development of industry, the re-creation of the foundations of the state after the tragedy of the Civil War, and the merging of California with the rest of the country – that is to say, the colonization of the so-called Wild West, which since 1848 had been formally a part of the country but which lacked all state organization and effectively remained a domain of Native Americans.11 But the Gilded Age also brings about previously unimaginable levels of corruption, puts a final end to the Protestant work ethic in trade and industry, and – a phenomenon increasingly visible once Grant leaves the office – moves the actual center of power away from the world of politicians and into the world of plutocrats. The 1876 elections will come to be remembered as one of the gravest constitutional crises in the history of the States. Their final outcome is referred to as the Compromise of 1877. Reached in March by the representatives of the two parties (after fraud accusations effectively subverted several attempts to identify the winners of the electoral votes in three disputed states), it proclaimed Rutherford B. Hayes of the Republican Party to be the president of the United States – although it is his Democratic opponent, Samuel Tilden, who actually received more electoral votes.12 The Compromise of 1877 guarantees the final withdrawal of the army from the Southern states, which is meant to ensure a solidification of the post-war order – at the price of significant concessions to the South with respect to racial issues. But that which Americans are more engrossed in at the time is what is taking place in the West of the country.

American Indian Wars

Finally, we have the unique experience of the frontier war described on the pages of the Trilogy. The time between 1875 and 1877 represented the most important and decisive period in the war with Native Americans to colonize the West, both the South-West – formally obtained, like California, after the Mexican-American War but in fact constituting Indian country belonging to the Navajo, Apache, and Comanche – and the North-West, constituting free territory inhabited mainly by Indian tribes (esp. the Sioux).

By and large, it is difficult to clearly mark the beginning of the war with Native Americans, especially in the South, where the state of war between the settlers and the Indian tribes, notably the Comanche, was permanent and for 40 years had gradually escalated with the increased colonization.13 It must be borne in mind that it was an undeclared war, with periodical involvement of the US army or local volunteer forces in the South, but it nevertheless remained a permanent state and encompassed everyone. The military presence markedly increased in the 1850s and did not cease with the Civil War. To the contrary, since 1861 (1862 in the Northern territories), it transformed into organized military action even though, for obvious reasons, it was often led by the militia, volunteer, or auxiliary forces. Therefore, the decision of the Congress and the United States Army to take massive military action against Native Americans was not so much a reopening of hostilities as an attempt to bring some order into the war or to finally subdue the indigenous tribes. It was supposed to be achieved with the help of the units battle-hardened in the East, and among them, often, officers who had fought Native Americans before the Civil War.14 It must be added that it was a failed attempt. The war against the Sioux waged in the North (usually called “Red Cloud’s War,” especially in reference to the period between 1867 and 1868) probably sparked the most public interest, and it was groundbreaking in terms of narration as it was probably the first time the American public started regarding Native Americans as thinking opponents, not a force of nature. It ended in 1868 with a truce that satisfied neither party.15 The peace, which in the northern territories formally lasted until 1875, was, in fact, a state of permanent tension between the actions of the settlers (mainly building railways and roads to the western coast) and the firm resistance of the Sioux, resulting from time to time in Indian assaults on the civilians and minor armed conflicts. Larger confrontations were avoided mainly because the activities of the colonists were not that robust. The relative peace in the North allowed a more intense action against the unvanquished Comanche in the South. The military campaign against them, ongoing since 1867, gained more momentum only in 1871 and was not that successful at first. A permanent victory was achieved by the 1873-1874 campaigns, which finally closed in 1875.16 The Apache war had a much less strategic value as their territory was remote and the conditions for settlement unfavorable (the rocks and deserts of present-day Arizona and New Mexico), and yet it was singular in its exceptional cruelty, even if compared to the appalling deeds committed on other territories. It continued from 1872 and reignited in 1879. For all intents and purposes, the period between 1872 and 1879 in the South could hardly be called a time of peace, not even a tentative peace as the one achieved in the North17.

The Comanche were vanquished and now the Sioux war (the immediate cause of which were the deposits of gold found in 1874 in the Black Hills by a military expedition led by Col. George Armstrong Custer) found its dynamic climax between 1875 and 1877.18 The country in its entirety focused at first on several spectacular American defeats in the spring and summer of 1876, especially on the battle of Little Bighorn, which took place on the Sioux territory (the present day borderland between the states of Montana and Wyoming), and then on the American counteroffensive in the fall of 1876 and spring of 1877, which drove the majority of the Sioux forces to surrender to the US or retreat to Canadian territory.19 Sienkiewicz arrives in America a few months after Little Bighorn, at a time when the carnage of Col. Custer’s battalion is still a returning topic in the American press headlines. He follows the next stage of the war effort mainly as a reader but it is the plot and narration that is at the center of American life at the time and is of vital importance for California in particular as its further development depended heavily on an efficient and functional connection with the East of the country (which was the exact problem the organized colonization of the Wild West was supposed to solve).

Finally, probably in October 1877, the writer goes bison-hunting on the Wyoming territory. Admittedly, the war effort is almost finished after the key events of May, when Crazy Horse surrendered to the US forces and Sitting Bull, in charge of groups of loyal Native Americans, escapes to Canada (quite possibly Sienkiewicz and his companions would not have dared travel there otherwise), however, the memory of the recent events is still fresh and their traces still palpable. Sienkiewicz never came into direct contact with the war, but he could sense the aura, see the American troops still stationed in Wyoming, and finally, he could hear the narration of war in a place which, admittedly, had not been on fire itself, but was very close to what recently had been the front line. That is, of course, if he was really there, which shall be discussed presently.

The American frontier

Sienkiewicz was undoubtedly fascinated with the American frontier. Portrait of America clearly records the birth of that fascination and its development. If one were to describe it, several contributing factors could be differentiated. The first aspect is the escapist myth. It accompanies Sienkiewicz’s American voyage almost from the very start: after all, the attempt of the Chłapowskis to establish a commune at the ends of the world, living in accordance with nature and putting the rules of the utopian economy into practice was escapist in its character. From the very beginning, after a very short stay in New York, there is a very clear dichotomy in Portrait of America of the rich American metropolises developing instantaneously and impossible to bear, and the interior, a land of infinite space and possibilities, where a human being could live in accordance with oneself or be able to find oneself. The second element of Sienkiewicz’s fascination with the frontier is the initiation myth. California is a space of self-discovery and maturation. A city-dweller becomes a hunter and wanderer who feels at home in the mountains, in the wilderness and in the desert. The narrative poetics is unambiguously that of initiation – a boy becomes a man (this is obviously a stylistic device, Sienkiewicz is then 30 years old. On the other hand, if we are discussing a man entering the age in which Christ died, in Slavic cultures called “Christ’s age,” the physical and spiritual heyday, this sort of narration could be appropriate). It seems, however, not least on the grounds of the writer’s letters from that period, that it is not just a stylistic device. It is also seeing oneself exactly the person one wishes to be: entering into the mindset of a man of wide open spaces. The third factor seems to be of a very personal nature – everything points to the fact that Sienkiewicz was happy in California.

However, apart from the personal transformation during the escape to another world, it is also important in which world, which space, the transformation takes place. In California, it takes place in a physical dimension, its environment is a challenge in itself – a challenge especially difficult for a city man, a man of forest-covered lowlands, who now climbs high mountains, crosses the desert, hikes along the seashore, and when he is finally in the woods, he can see trees of previously unimaginable size. These spaces are occupied by other conquerors – hunters, trappers, and also farmers, but they are in a completely different situation to the one he knows from his home. Unlike the oppressed peasants from Poland, in California, they are colonizers (sometimes in the first, sometimes the second or third generation) attempting to subdue the unruly land. There are narrations in this space as well, most of all heroic, celebrating the hunters’ victories or military defeats of Native Americans and the American conquest of California. In the New York part of Portrait of America, it is already abundantly clear how much the writer is interested in the frontier war narrative (Sitting Bull and Custer). The echoes of war on the Wyoming territory would accompany him throughout his entire journey. It is as if he found himself in a world of fairy tales and legends. The familiar European dimension of legends takes, however, a different shape here – instead of knights – there is cavalry, instead of adventurers colonizing the eastern borderland of Poland – there are trappers, instead of Cossacks or Tatars – Native Americans.

It seems a peculiar paradox that the slowly rising conservatism of Sienkiewicz rejects the American greedy city, sprawling without containment or consideration, and embraces the lands that change even more quickly and are transformed even more ruthlessly. Upon a closer look, it ceases to be paradoxical. Sienkiewicz’s unique perspective can transform the Western frontier of the United States into a space not so much victimized by ravenous progress as one that returns to the source. A space in which a republic is colonizing its own borderland (this time in the West), fighting the wilderness and the wild natives is an everyday event, and the knight culture is not so much a memory as a tribal necessity. Manifest Destiny, the idea of a singular predestination of the United States’ citizens towards the rule over American lands, that is, primarily, conquering California, was invented in the 1840s as an ideological justification for the Mexican War (a war perceived by a part of the nation as unfair, invasive and shameful).20 It gave rise to controversy amongst Americans from its very conception, yet by in the 1870s, though still a questionable belief; it was already firmly rooted in American culture. Sienkiewicz, then, apart from familiar narrations dressed in new robes, here finds the messianism of a rising empire. The Republic that he observes from the beginning of his stay in the US is attached to freedom and democracy, which are not, however, available for all. It is dissentious, sprawling, enormously rich, desiring new lands, corrupt, heroic, on horseback, still bleeding after the Civil War. There is much here of another state, another republic, also a literary one, which he puts to paper almost a decade later.

Sienkiewicz’s California as a literary material

Sienkiewicz arrives in California almost thirty years after it was incorporated into the United States at a time when American colonization is still an ongoing and open process. The writer encounters there a difficult but permanent coexistence of two nations which, for differing reasons, feel they are the masters of this land (maybe even three if you take the remnants of the Native Indian population described in Portrait of America into account21). He also keeps coming into contact with the ongoing process of the colonization of a virgin land – the harbor city of San Francisco may have developed very quickly, yet in its close proximity, there are still farmers trying to transform the wasteland into arable lands and wandering hunters, who are a living memory of the exploration that took place thirty years prior.22 The California of farmers and hunters attracts Sienkiewicz’s attention to the highest degree.

California, where Sienkiewicz had lived for almost two years, was a peculiar place, a “state within a state” in a way. Two issues contributed to that: its separation from all the other states and its unique social and cultural structure. In 1850, barely two years after the acquisition of California by the United States pursuant to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it gained the status of a state (the state borders charted then are still in effect). Between 1850 and the outbreak of the Civil War among the territories incorporated into the United States and lying to the West of the “Old Union,” the only ones to gain state status were: the remote Minnesota (1858) and Oregon, neighboring California (1859), and just after it Kansas (1861), where the dispute over its legal status had been one of the pretexts leading to the outbreak of the Civil War. Before Sienkiewicz came to America, three more states were established in the West: Nevada (1864), Iowa (1867), and, almost simultaneously to the writer’s arrival, Colorado (1876); subsequent states were established only towards the end of the 1880s.23 What follows is the unique position of California among the other parts of the US as a state demarcating the Western frontier for almost a quarter of a century, yet separated from the other states by miles of half-wilderness crossed only by lone roads, very slowly substituted with the Trans-American railway. On the one hand, these were the borderlands of an empire; on the other, however, because of its remoteness and the well-developed community of Iberophone Californians, more numerous than Americans, California presented a lot of features of a colony. Apart from imposing the new authorities on the local people by the newly arrived ones, other issues that made it resemble a colony would be the exploration of unused vast areas of land, forming new settlements, and fertilizing the Californian soil to transform it into agricultural acreage. One could view the various actions American society undertook towards its new state from this angle, starting with the utilization of the gold fever, which broke out just after the incorporation of California by the United States, to the change in the demographical structure of the new territory, to the priority treatment of the flow of settlers to the farthest parts of the West (safety of the trails, building the railway). If one were, nevertheless, to regard California as an almost colonial territory, it is striking how differently the settled, non-American populace is treated. We are touching here, of course, upon the subject of very difficult relations, imposing the dominance (linguistic, political) of a less numerous but much stronger nation, but this is not an act of conquering, an attempt at extermination or complete domination through a ruthless cultural war.24 It is also worth mentioning that American colonization at the time of the acquisition of California by the United States was a phenomenon which had already lasted more than one generation, even if it was limited (those were mostly rural settlements in the Sacramento Valley, and this is why to this day Sacramento, as a historical outpost of American people in California, remains the capital of the state).25 Hence we can rather speak of two concurrent strategies: coexistence with the Ibero-American population (concentrated mainly in the South of the state, around San Diego and Los Angeles; Sienkiewicz primarily came into contact with it when he lived in Anaheim) and the development of colonization, especially in places with adequate natural conditions and sparsely populated before the annexation (the flourishing of San Francisco, in 1848 a small settlement by the sea and a rapidly developing harbor town in the 1870s).

Trappers

The California of Sienkiewicz as described in Portrait of America seems to be stitched together out of two types of matter – the real and the idealized. If a stark division is to be applied, which always poses a risk, considering the real and the idealized are almost invariably intertwined in a literary image, then the real would be the one more strongly associated with the existing social relations and the idealized with the clash with nature. The clash with nature, the colonization of wilderness, is, after all, something Sienkiewicz expected, something that was accompanied by the legend of the American frontier of the trappers and bears, which Sienkiewicz bore in memory when he came to the States. For this reason, it is the Californian fragments of Portrait of America that feature the most complete interlacement of the idealized model of a European encounter with the American wilderness and genuine rapture and amazement, that is a combination of imagination and experience.

That idealized element is apparent not only in the composition structured around Sienkiewicz turning into a true trapper but possibly even more in the image of the trapper itself. For in point of fact, within the reality of California of the end of the 1870s, trappers were a species on the verge of extinction.

To be exact, the end of the trapper line of work in the West occurred almost two generations before. The last trapper gathering, signaling the end of the profession, the customs and ethics associated with it, was convened in 1840.26 Trappers, that is hunters specializing in hunting fur animals and selling their hides (that is where their name comes from, the traps that they set), lost their place in the market in the 1840s, both because of the lack of supply (too many animals killed, especially beavers) and demand (market saturation). The most renowned among the ones who stayed in the West became guides helping to blaze new trails for the settlers and often working for the railway or the army. Among them was Kit Carson, a key character in the mythology of the West.27 In 1876, when some of the conquerors of the West were barely beginning to forge their own legend (Wild Bill Hickok died six months after Sienkiewicz came to the States) or have not appeared on the scene yet (Wyatt Earp is to gain publicity only after 1878), Kit Carson, deceased in 1868, was the most emblematic character in the mythology of conquering the West. Emblematic as a trapper-guide, an infallible hunter and scout, a mountain man parading in animal hide, an unerring sharpshooter, blazing the United States’ trail to the West.

Carson’s merit was singular as he was the guide of Col. John C. Frémont’s third surveying expedition (the previous two as well). The expedition, in fact, turned into an anti-Mexican uprising in California, which later on with the support of the US fleet and infantry led to the acquisition of California by the Americans. This campaign, as it often happens with victorious ones, abounded in events that were to become the stuff of legends – the Californian flag is just one of the outcomes (the bear which Carson and Frémont saw once they reached the coast), another is the name the entryway to the port of San Francisco, i.e. the Golden Gate (Frémont is said to have uttered these words upon seeing the strait, yet untouched by human hand, at sunrise).28 Carson’s most famous feat during the California expedition (already at the time of armed conflict) was to walk thirty kilometers on foot with no shoes on in twelve hours to ask for reinforcements which allowed the American troops to egress the most critical situation of the entire campaign.29

Since the 1850s, many of Carson’s achievements, often invented, became the canvas of popular literature of the lowest quality and widest circulation, which made him the most recognized hero of the West.30 Apart from that, Sienkiewicz could also have known a piece of writing which was almost equally widely read even though it was much more serious, bearing a title quite unusual for a bestseller: Report on the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843–44. As the name itself suggests, technically it was a report on the first two expeditions made by Frémont to the United States Congress. This little text with a sensational plot and narration resembled an adventure novel rather than a report,31 and even in the 1840s, it lived to see three reprints. Quite possibly, it is there that we should look for some narrative clichés characteristic of Wild West stories, especially the character of a newcomer, outsider, who – with help from a “smart simpleton” knowing the wilderness inside and out – becomes the hero of the new territory. This is how Frémont is stylized in the report (the role of the “smart simpleton” falls to Carson, of course).

A distant trace of that model can be found on the pages of Portrait of America.32 Sienkiewicz, admittedly, treats himself more modestly than Frémont, one certainly cannot speak here of such a far-reaching heroization, there is no clear “untaught master” embodied by Carson, nevertheless, for all other intents and purposes the pattern of a journey to the West as a rite of passage is similar, the definition of the canon of male qualities is also similarly defined. It is in this narration and in similar ones – generally contemporary and perceived as accounts reflecting true events – that one should look for the sources of Sienkiewicz’s American text rather than in, for instance, Cooper, in whose writing the white protagonist is, from the onset consistently a man of two cultures (it is a still different matter that the author of the Frémont Report, whoever that person may be, was definitely indebted to Cooper in their description of Carson, different though the type of hero may have been). This model – becoming a “man of wilderness” not to reject civilization but to become a man of two cultures, a transmitter of European values and a real male able to withstand any challenge – is going to appear later on in Polish literature, especially in On the Mountain Pass (Na Przełęczy, 1891) written by Sienkiewicz’s friend, Stanisław Witkiewicz, in which the entire narrative structure built around the hero-narrator is like a mirror image of the one in Portrait of America.33

The question should be asked, does not a similar process take place in the universe of the Trilogy, notably on the pages of With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem). All the heroes – Skrzetuski (Skshetuski), Wołodyjowski (Volodyovski), Zagłoba, Podbipięta (Podbipyenta) – are newcomers who have arrived from different parts of the Commonwealth. The attempt to make a life within the borderlands of Poland brings out the best qualities in each of these characters, nonetheless, they are not transformed into someone different. Most importantly they are not transformed into men of the wilderness. It would seem, however, that without having victoriously conquered the wilderness of the borderlands none of them could have fully become a knight of the Commonwealth.34

The fascination with the world of the trappers possibly consists then of a few layers. Undoubtedly Sienkiewicz’s trapper – through the image of Carson – bears the characteristics of a conqueror of the frontier, not just a hunter chasing beavers. Inevitably, he is notwithstanding also a hunter tracking beavers. That is – he bears the characteristics of the American frontier era, which is coming to a close. Portrait of America seems to carry a not unrelated meaning in a passage that describes a journey through the desert with a Native American from a dying tribe.35 For all the patronization the character of the Indian receives, the excerpt carries a feeling of nostalgia for a world that is passing away and with which Sienkiewicz, in fact, was never able to become acquainted. Another issue raised by Sienkiewicz, though only signaled in passing, is the awareness of the destruction of American frontier culture of by the progressing civilization. As if Sienkiewicz wished for the conquest of the West never to conclude. It seems that the way Sienkiewicz portrays the ethos of the trapper is exactly that kind of hoping against hope to stop the inevitable, an attempt to freeze the process of conquering the West in an everlasting Now. Finally, another issue is the here and now, the feeling that the process of conquering the West remains ongoing and that the trapper education that Sienkiewicz receives in California makes him a part of that process and maybe even a transmitter of the trapper ethos.

Mexico and the Polish issue

What is an equally important (or not much less important) symptom of Sienkiewicz’s Californian fascination is his clash with the Iberophone culture. All the more important as, contrary to the encounter with the world of trappers, it was, as certified by passages in Portrait of America and his correspondence, unexpected. Sienkiewicz becomes acquainted with California through the optics of the United States. And the Iberophone landowners did not belong to California’s American legend – they have simply been living there for a few generations. The initial reserve and sense of superiority are replaced with growing amazement, respect, and affection. Sienkiewicz slowly begins to realize that he is dealing with a close-knit community that has a separate culture, which resembles that of the Polish gentry rather than of stereotypical “natives,” he rejoices in its hospitality, courtesy, and sense of honor.36 Consequently, he begins to learn Spanish and even makes advances at his Mexican friends’ daughter.37 From the present-day perspective, what could make one wonder is not the growing affection but Sienkiewicz’s initial reserve, his assumption of the Mexicans’ (or rather Spanish-speaking Californians’) inferiority in comparison with American culture.

It would seem, however, that the assumption of a colonial perspective, paradoxical for a Pole, the sense of civilizational unity with the empires of the time, was constantly inherent in Sienkiewicz during his distant voyages or even intensified with time. It may then be surprising that Sienkiewicz initially does not ask any questions regarding the type and stability of the social structures at the time California belonged to Mexico; he does not dwell upon the similarity of the Mexican and Polish situation, and he does not even feel any connection to the Catholic identity in the face of a new, non-Catholic authority. Nonetheless, the way he perceives the situation is quite unobvious at the time of colonial imperialism: he regards Mexicans as the exotic other, on a different civilizational level and yet having the right to its peculiarity and separateness and, most importantly, remaining the master of this land just as much as the conquerors. It seems that such view of the situation is characteristic not only for the description of California in Portrait of America but also (or maybe most importantly) for the description of Ukraine on the pages of With Fire and Sword. On the one hand, Sienkiewicz has no doubt that it is the Commonwealth that is in the right (after all, the similarity between two Republican expansions may be the cause for his identification with the American conquerors); on the other hand, the Ukraine of With Fire and Sword is a space of a difficult coexistence of cultures and not of a necessary eradication of a primitive Ukrainian culture, which was not that obvious in the light of narrations characteristic for the 1880s. It cannot stem only from the Polish perspective of a nation under foreign rule. It is worth asking whether that was not also a lesson Sienkiewicz learned when he forged stronger bonds with the Iberophone community of California.

Did Sienkiewicz ever go to Wyoming?

Did Sienkiewicz really go to Wyoming? The question has been asked by Jerzy R. Krzyżanowski, who disputes the authenticity of Sienkiewicz’s account and forms the thesis that we are dealing with an exquisitely forged piece of literary fiction.38 Krzyżanowski’s argumentation follows two trains of thought. Firstly, he questions the probability of the entire situation. He points out that the travel companions are treated sketchily and stereotypically, their biographical data is difficult to define, and finally, it is improbable for Sienkiewicz to receive an invitation to participate in an expensive expedition for free. Secondly, he questions the details of the description which lead one to believe that a usually precise Sienkiewicz described a slightly different natural environment from what he could have experienced in that place and at that time of year. One must agree that the lack of a precise description in that part of the text really does pose serious difficulties. It is, after all, questionable whether a bison hunt was possible in the fall of 1877, that is, immediately after their mass massacre between 1872 and 1874, when their population perceivably dwindled until they were close to extinction, especially in the Eastern part of present-day Wyoming, the outskirts of the so-called great bison belt.39

One cannot then exclude the possibility that Sienkiewicz’s text is a compilation of accounts he had read and heard over the years supplemented by his gift of narration. Can the thesis be defended, however? That is impossible as well. Actually, every single argument cited here can be countered: Sienkiewicz could, after all, have been wrong when he was describing nature in a region completely unknown to him; he could have embellished his account with the stories from hunters who have hunted there in the past (which is, after all, quite a usual thing in hunting stories, especially those of a failed hunt; it is, in fact, the number of hunting failures in his later accounts from Africa that reaches an unusually high count); he could also have been concealing the personal details of his companions and the true circumstances of the expedition: employing a mask would be nothing unusual in this case. Something else, however, is much more important.

Whether Sienkiewicz visited Wyoming or not is actually of secondary importance. Obviously, if he was there, he could have, while processing his experience of war on the borderland, make good use not only of close relations but also of personally getting acquainted with the places where the war effort occurred and hearing the stories. Then again one could only talk of approximation as he never stayed in the military zone and spent most of his time on the territory of the Ute people, who had led a rather peaceful life in their reservations since 1872 and raised their weapons against the white man only in September 1879.40 Arguably even a short stay in Cheyenne and the possibility to see the cavalry troops stationed not far away would give the second-hand descriptions much more color. Regardless, however, of whether the description of the journey to Wyoming is an account or a compilation, its very existence in the text bears witness to the importance of wars with Native Americans to Sienkiewicz. Regardless of whether he had set foot in the terrain or not, he should have been there. The wars with Native Americans constitute, for all intents and purposes, the compositional framework of Portrait of America. One of the first excerpts written after the arrival in America addresses Custer and Sitting Bull.41 Undoubtedly, the events taking place in the West are those that focus the writer’s attention most of all. The most important things of all America are happening there. Sienkiewicz seems fascinated with the expansion of the States, the will to victory, the heroism of the cavalrymen fighting in the vast stretches of the wilderness, as well as with Native Americans. The victory of Sitting Bull over Custer, the way it was possible for the leader of a bunch of “savages” to defeat the well-trained cavalry. At the time, it was a source of amazement and fascination not only in American society. The journey to Wyoming is, compositionally and thematically, the only possible completion to Portrait of America.

The world of borderland cavalry

What was the world of the borderland cavalry at the time directly preceding the arrival of Sienkiewicz in America? It would do well to remember that, contrary to the frequently recurring opinions, the cavalry troops of the United States were not formed – or at least not mainly and not solely – of men who did not match the usual army standards or caused too much trouble and were thus sent to fight the Native Americans.42 There were, of course, men like that, too. Nevertheless, the fact of “not matching the usual standards” means something slightly different. It is no accident that the new phase of American Indian Wars, which can now be called an organized war effort of the United States against the Native Americans, breaks out shortly after the end of the Civil War. The obvious consequence of the Civil War was the exorbitant number of high ranking officers, often quite young men who had quickly been promoted during the four years of war. What could the United States army do with such a large number of colonels and generals? They could not very well be demoted; simultaneously their military rank could not be maintained. As a result, a double rank system was introduced: the formal and the brevet system (George Armstrong Custer, for example, achieved the formal rank of a captain43 but in the brevet system he was awarded the rank of major general). The war in the West theoretically was an excellent opportunity for the officers to achieve their military ranks once again, this time through a promotion during a regular war.44 In effect, due to the limited number of positions within each rank, this was not so simple – sometimes the officers had to wait ten years or more for promotion.45 This was a way, nonetheless, to provide the young men who were often unwilling to take their uniform off after the war, and having been taught to fight in the unprecedented, drastically cruel conditions of the Civil War, they found it difficult to perform any task other than the total annihilation of the opponent. The officers sent to the West were often those who were the most effective during the Civil War precisely because of their ruthlessness in fighting the enemy who was now again their compatriot. It was decided then to put their unusual skills to good use in fighting an opponent appropriately savage and vicious,46 at the same time it was hoped that their meritorious contribution in the West would help to blur the memories of their recent actions in the South. This concerned first and foremost the commanders in chief, Generals William Sherman and Philip Sheridan, but also the not insignificant number of their subordinates, including the previously mentioned Custer.

The circumstances of the fighting in the West made the cavalry’s fate a ready material for a novel. After all, turning the events of the prairies into a cheap adventure romance was a common practice already at the time of Kit Carson, that is, from the early 1850s. Since Frémont’s report, all types of memoirs, expedition accounts, or battle narratives were also hugely popular. It was not uncommon for officers to publish their (often embellished) armed conflict adventures in the press; Custer is, again, a great example as in 1874 he published his collected press contributions as a separate volume entitled My Life on the Plains. A traveler fascinated with the West could therefore choose from a varied offer of printed material.

Three cavalry biographies are particularly worth mentioning at this point as they seem quite close sometimes to the life events of the characters of the Trilogy. Custer is incontestably obvious here.47 Sienkiewicz, whose stay in the US falls almost immediately after Little Bighorn, must have known all the narratives about him; the Custer question was one of the most important topics at the time. What is important, the process of creating a hero and a martyr out of Custer, associated mainly with his widow’s tireless fight to make him remembered, begins a little later; it does not come into full force until the 1880s. During Sienkiewicz’s stay, there was no lack of critical opinions of Custer, specifically in the community that in the late 1860s tried to enforce Grant’s so-called peace policy, which aimed at the coexistence of white people and Native Americans, although, of course, within the framework set by the white race.

An officer with a borderland warlord mentality, throughout his entire military career specializing in the effective command of wanton hordes and in fact unfit for any other type of action, a born carouser and duelist, suspended from service and returned to duty multiple times, with an atrocious record from the Civil War, a martyr for the national cause, finally blessed with some happiness, though to a much lower degree than Kmicic (Kmita), for instance – the existing narrations of Custer were a ready-made prototype for the Trilogy character. From start to finish, this is a biography of a warlord – Custer’s first success during the Civil War was connected with effective pursuit actions in small cavalry regiments,48 later on, he became infamous for his acts of suppression of civilians in the Shenandoah Valley. The defeat of Little Bighorn resulted from a failed attempt to destroy the opponent with a lightning-fast raid against the high command’s orders. Custer’s defenders pointed to his heroic stance at Gettysburg and his overwhelming victory over the Cheyenne at the Washita River (November 1868) during the American Indian Wars and the respect he gained among them. His opponents emphasized how he lost this very respect because of his numerous transgressions,49 his breaking of rules of honor, too pronounced even for the permissive standards of the Indian war (mostly women and children perished in the battle of the Washita, it was also most probably Custer who attacked the peaceful group of the Cheyenne people50), or the incident bordering on treason in the summer of 1868 when Custer was AWOL. The theme of a reaver, traitor, and hero martyred by the barbarians is one of the American themes that abound in Sienkiewicz – and actually a raw material ready for use in a number of threads and characters in the Trilogy, not just Kmicic.

The profile of Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie could be a similar type of literary material, he was an officer whose entire career ever since they went to West Point together was connected with Custer and who was in many respects the very antithesis of the Little Bighorn commander.51 S. C. Gwynne, a modern-day popularizer of the history of the West, wrote that Mackenzie was usually dispatched to bring order to the chaos that Custer had left behind.52 The pattern did not vary after Custer’s death at the Little Bighorn, where Mackenzie became one of the most important commanders leading the counterstrike against the Sioux. Earlier, between 1871 and 1874, he played a decisive role in subduing the southern Cheyenne and the previously undefeated Comanche. Contrary to Custer, he carefully analyzed the way Native Americans fought and drew conclusions that were key to success. Similarly to Custer, he was a born swordsman, and despite his meager body of fragile build,53 known for his unusual resilience to tiredness and pain, characterized by exceptional moral rigidity. Clearly self-fashioning himself as a Christian knight, Mackenzie closely reminds of at least two Sienkiewicz’s protagonists – Wołodyjowski and Skrzetuski. His presence was much less felt in the press than Custer’s (partially because of his unapproachable personality, partially because he was disinclined to advertise his adventures in writing), nevertheless, his ascendancy in the West had reached such great stature that he must have been known to any traveler interested in the West.

The third person worth evoking here, not so much to prove the influence of their biography on the creation of the Trilogy characters as to show the affinity between them, that is between the American experience and the processing of the memory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth borderlands – is Lieut. Gustavus Doane. Doane was one of the few white people who became famous as commanders of Indian scouts.54 Two things differentiated him from the others. Firstly, throughout the 1870s, Doane, subsequently forgotten in the legend of the West, was particularly active in the press. His descriptions of the Yellowstone riverbanks exploration strongly contributed to the foundation of a national park at the location. Secondly, Doane was the man in command of the Crow Indian scouts who saved the survivors of Major Marcus Reno’s troops from the Little Bighorn massacre and recovered and buried the remains of Custer.55 If we were to search in the West for close relations of Sienkiewicz’s Polish and Lithuanian officers in command of Tatar troops, it is Doane, in particular, that we should remember as he was the most famous among the commanders of Native American troops at the time.

Is it possible to speak here of prototypes of the protagonists of the Trilogy? That might be an overly far-reaching thesis. I would prefer to call that phenomenon finding confirmation of historical tales and sources in reality. Would Kmicic leading a troop of Tatar scouts ever come to life without Gustavus Doane commanding Native American troops? Possibly. Doane could have been, however, proof of the existence of a Kmicic for Sienkiewicz. And this is already a lot.

Borderland coexistence

It would seem that one of the lessons Sienkiewicz learned in America, which is apparent on the pages of the Trilogy, regards the two models of coexistence in the borderlands. There are two patterns of a culture clash which Sienkiewicz experienced in the American West and their echoes, in varied proportions, sometimes contaminated, can be heard in the Trilogy. The first is the coexistence and difficult vicinage of the Anglo- and Iberophone Californians. The second – the necessity to subdue the barbarian hordes threatening the oikumene to such a degree that it would be difficult to coexist with them, and at the same time, being a part of this world since time immemorial, therefore inevitably forming a constituent part of existence on these lands. This is, obviously, the Native American pattern.

The former, Californian pattern would then be a vicinage of cultures that is difficult and yet still functioning for more than one generation, where each culture feels “at home” in that area of land. A vicinage of cultures differing in terms of faith, customs, social structure, and also language (though in Sienkiewicz’s writing to a lesser degree than in the Californian reality), nevertheless, despite the apparent and continuous tensions, able to coexist. Fascinating though its otherness and separateness might be, for all its alienness, it is not uncivilized or barbarian; it can also be given the name of “culture” according to the rigid hierarchical criteria of the 19th century.

The latter model is the clash with barbarians. A clash with an alien, terrifying, wild culture that does not even deserve such status in accordance with 19th-century nomenclature. Simultaneously, however, it is fascinating because of its exoticism (it is worth returning here to the already quoted letter of Sienkiewicz from the Ketchum station in which he describes his first encounter with a Native American) and, possibly, power. Insofar as it is possible to describe the presence of the first model in Sienkiewicz’s accounts harmoniously (the initial dislike, discovery, surprise, acquainting and growing interest, finally acceptance while separateness is preserved), the second model and the general perception of Native Americans in Sienkiewicz’s accounts are not entirely homogeneous. It would seem that in some way it reflects the lack of uniformity in the perception of Native Americans in America of his time. Fascination, compassion, paternalistic treatment of the “savages,” disbelief at their victories over the white people is mixed with awe, but also anxiety, an attempt at rationalizing their success, finally the belief that it is beyond the grasp of logical thinking. There is also nostalgia of a kind, notably present in the Californian descriptions where Native Americans are almost extinct. They are a trace of the truly Wild West that is passing away, that Sienkiewicz would not become acquainted with much, though he might have wanted to. This particular nostalgia was probably not necessarily shared by Americans. Yet Sienkiewicz, at least on the pages of Portrait of America, seems to share the belief that brought together even the Americans that differed the most in their assessment of the Native American question – that regardless of feeling compassion or hatred for them, they are the Savage and the Other which could not be and would not ever be fully assimilated.

It seems possible to draw – although not to the fullest extent – a demarcation line in the Trilogy between these two models. Not to the fullest extent since insofar as the model of life in close proximity with the barbarians would be used in the Tatar threads, the other threads connected with cultural clashes would feature both models simultaneously. For the record, as it is an issue for a separate interpretative study, one could mention the problem of Ukraine where the span stretches from excerpts possibly indicating Sienkiewicz’s reminiscence of the encounter with the Iberophone California and his fascination with it (Skrzetuski’s arrival at the Kurcewicz [Kurtzevitch] house) to scenes and characters which could never possibly have any connection with the Christian culture in California (Horpyna). One could claim that such differences stem from a strongly evaluative gradation from civilization to wildness and savagery, which is apparent within the same range of threads in the Trilogy (for example, Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s transformation). Thus framed, the Ukrainian people will be “Iberophone” or “Native American” depending on their actions (especially towards the Poles). Tatars, on the other hand, even if they fight side to side with Poles, will always be wild, alien, and not fully assimilated. One could seek in such framework, particularly permeating Fire in the Steppe (Pan Wołodyjowski), Sienkiewicz’s growing conservatism – but are not its sources apparent in Portrait of America where Native Americans, after all, forever remain wild savages?

1 See Jerzy R. Krzyżanowski, “Na kalifornijskim szlaku Sienkiewicza” [Sienkiewicz on the California trail] Pamiętnik Literacki 2003, vol. 2. See also Zdzisław Najder, “O ‘Listach z podróży’ do Ameryki Henryka Sienkiewicza” [On Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Portrait of America], Pamiętnik Literacki 1955, vol. 1.

2 Tadeusz Bujnicki, “Pozytywista-neokonserwatysta” [Positivist-neoconservatist], in Pozytywista Sienkiewicz. Linie rozwojowe pisarstwa autora “Rodziny Połanieckich” [Sienkiewicz the positivist: Lines of literary development], Kraków 2007; Maciej Gloger, Sienkiewicz nowoczesny [Modern Sienkiewicz], Bydgoszcz 2010; Ewa Kosowska, Eurosarmata. O postawach i wyborach Henryka Sienkiewicza [Euro-Sarmatian: On Sienkiewicz’s worldviews and choices], Katowice 2013.

3 Most of all Jolanta Sztachelska, “Ameryka – dotknięcie Nowego Świata” [America: Touching the New World], in Mity Sienkiewiczowskie i inne studia tylko o nim [The myths of Sienkiewicz], Warsaw 2017.

4 Kazimierz Wyka, “Sztuka pisarska Sienkiewicza” [Sienkiewicz’s art of writing], in Henryk Sienkiewicz – twórczość i recepcja światowa. Materiały konferencji naukowej, listopad 1966 [Henryk Sienkiewicz: Works and reception. Conference proceedings, November 1966], edited by A. Piorunowa and K. Wyka, Kraków 1968; “O nową drogę do Sienkiewicza” [A new road to Sienkiewicz], Miesięcznik Literacki 1967, vol. 1; Jolanta Sztachelska, “Listy z podróży do Ameryki a XIX-wieczne korzenie polskiego reportażu” [Portrait of America and the birth of the Polish reportage], in Henryk Sienkiewicz i jego twórczość. Materiały z konferencji naukowej w Wyższej Szkole Pedagogicznej w Częstochowie, 5–7 maja 1996 r. [Henryk Sienkiewicz. Conference proceedings, May 5–7, 1996), edited by Z. Przybyła, Częstochowa 1996.

5 Bogdan Mazan, “Impresjonizm” Trylogii Henryka Sienkiewicza [The impressionism of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy], Łódź 1993.

6 For a good recapitulation of this type of research, see J. R. Krzyżanowski, op. cit.

7 All the established dates of the American journey quoted after Julian Krzyżanowski, Kalendarz życia i twórczości Henryka Sienkiewicza [The calendar of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s life and works], edited and with notes by Maria Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2012.

8 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży do Ameryki, [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], edited by Julian Krzyżanowski, Warsaw 2004, pp. 78–107.

9 A letter to Stefania Leo from December 3, 1876, see Henryk Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, edited by Maria Bokszczanin, Warsaw 2007, pp. 437–438. See also H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży [Portrait of America: Letters of Henryk Sienkiewicz], pp. 137–143.

10 Compare Helena Modrzejewska, Karol Chłapowski, Listy [Letters], vols. 1–2, edited by Alicja Kędziora and Emil Orzechowski, Warsaw 2015.

11 Compare S. D. Cashman, America in the Gilded Age, New York 1984; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, New York 1988.

12 Compare M. A. Jones, The Limits of Liberty: American History, Oxford 1983, pp. 258–259; S. D. Cashman, op. cit., pp. 200–202.

13 Compare Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The US Army and the Indians, 1866–1891, Bloomington 1977 (1st edition, New York 1973), pp. 44–58; pp. 111–115.

14 Ibidem, pp. 44–58.

15 Tom Clavin, Bob Drury, The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend, New York 2013, pp. 303–366; Robert W. Larson, Red Cloud: Warrior-Statesman of the Lakota Sioux, Norman, Oklahoma 1997, pp. 74–104.

16 Compare S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, Scribner, New York 2010, pp. 222–287.

17 Compare Donald E. Worcester, The Apaches: Eagles of the Southwest, Norman, Oklahoma 1979; Edwin Sweeney, From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, Norman, Oklahoma 2010.

18 R. Utley, Frontier Regulars, pp. 243–245. See also Robert M. Utley, Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot, New York 2008, pp. 174–233.

19 Compare R. Utley, Frontier Regulars, pp. 245–283; R. Utley, Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot, pp. 174–233; Philip Weeks, Farewell, My Nation: American Indians and the United States in the Nineteenth Century, Chichester–Oxford 2016 (1st edition, 1990), pp. 246–267.

20 For a more complex biography of the issue, see Hampton Sides, Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West, New York 2007, pp. 57–59.

21 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży [Portrait of America], pp. 343–361.

22 Compare Stephen Schwartz, From West to East. California and the Making of the American Mind, New York 1998, pp. 73–138; Ray A. Billington, The Far West Frontier 1830–1860, New York 1956.

23 M. Jones, op. cit.

24 Compare S. Schwartz, op. cit.

25 H. Sides, op. cit., pp. 114–116.

26 Ibidem, p. 62.

27 Hampton Sides’s Blood and Thunder is a popular yet excellently documented monograph of Carson, which thoroughly encapsulates the current state of research.

28 Ibidem, pp. 116–117.

29 Ibidem, pp. 241–245.

30 Ibidem, pp. 273–280.

31 Currently, it is widely believed that its co-author was Frémont’s remarkable wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, considered to be one of the keenest minds in Washington of that day.

32 I specifically mean “letters” no. 8 and 9 (Szkice amerykańskie [Sketches of America], the second with the subheading: “Z puszczy” [From the jungle]), introducing the author as a student of the trapper art. See also the letter to Edmund Leo from September 1876: H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, pp. 450–455.

33 Nota bene, Witkiewicz is the author of the heroicized portrait of Sienkiewicz shown as a hunter in the Californian desert.

34 It is worth mentioning here that a similar ethics of an armed statesman in the service of the nation, burdened with a historical mission appears in Frémont’s narration – as opposed to Sienkiewicz’s much less bombastic Portrait of America or Witkiewicz’s Tatra mountain accounts.

35 See footnote 13.

36 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży [Portrait of America], pp. 298–319.

37 Letter to Edmund Leo from September 1876, see Henryk Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 3, pp. 447–457. See also H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży [Portrait of America], pp. 298–319.

38 J. R. Krzyżanowski, “Sienkiewicz w Wyoming, czyli “trick or trip”? [Sienkiewicz in Wyoming: Trick or trip?], Pamiętnik Literacki 1996, vol. 4, pp. 65–75.

39 S. D. Cashman, op. cit., p. 267; compare P. Weeks, op. cit.

40 R. Utley, Frontier Regulars, pp. 322–344.

41 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z podróży [Portrait of America], p. 110.

42 Compare R. Utley, Frontier Regulars, pp. 80–92.

43 From 1866 till his death, he served in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

44 Taking into consideration that the vast majority of Native American territory formally did not form a part of the United States but constituted its protectorate, Indian-American Wars were considered to be a war on an external enemy.

45 Compare R. Utley, Frontier Regulars, pp. 10–43.

46 Interestingly, during the first years after the war, the officers who enjoyed a very good soldier opinion during the Civil War did not always fare as well in the West. The Fetterman massacre during the so-called Red Cloud War (December 1866) is a good example here. Native Americans killed every last one of the soldiers from the troop commanded by Captain William Fetterman who had been decorated during the Civil War; the situation was contained thanks to the cautiousness of Col. Henry Carrington, an unappreciated “paper pusher officer” with little experience of the battlefield. The probable cause behind Fetterman’s bravado and defeat is the lack of familiarity with the West and failure to adapt his fighting style the new opponent. Compare T. Clavin, B. Drury, op. cit., pp. 303–350.

47 Compare Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer. Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, New York 1996 (1st edition, 1975). See also: R. Utley, op. cit.; Ph. Weeks, op. cit.

48 A lot is revealed about Custer’s style on the battlefield through the anecdote about one of his first feats, the pursuit of General Johnston’s confederate troops; upon crossing the Chickahominy river, he heard his commander, General Barnard, utter a rhetorical question: “I wish I knew how deep it is,” Custer rode his horse right into the middle of the river and yelled: “That’s how deep it is, Mr. General!”

49 It is worth mentioning that immediately after the Little Bighorn, Custer was a controversial character in the press narrations; the cult of Custer the martyr was in full bloom only in the 1880s, see Ph. Weeks, op. cit., pp. 260–262.

50 Ph. Weeks, op. cit., p. 186, R. Utley, Frontier Regulars, pp. 128–130.

51 For a concise yet thorough and vivid biographical note on Mackenzie, see S. C. Gwynne, op. cit., pp. 329–348.

52 Ibidem, p. 331.

53 His body was also painfully marked with wounds; Mackenzie limped, he suffered from chronic back pain; at Winchester, he lost two fingers of his right hand.

54 Orrin H. Bonney, Lorraine Bonney, Battle Drums and Geysers: The Life and Journals of Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, Soldier and Explorer of The Yellowstone and Snake River Regions, Chicago 1970. See also Thomas W. Dunlay, Wolves for the Blue Soldiers: Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 1860–1890, Lincoln, Nebraska 1987, pp. 56, 96.

55 During Sienkiewicz’s stay in the US, Doane distinguished himself in the American Army’s pursuit of the Nez Percé Indians in August and September of 1877.

Aleksandra Wójtowicz

(Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

The City of Paradoxes:
Warsaw in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Columns

Warsaw in the times of Sienkiewicz: Physical space

When read from today’s perspective, the columns written by Sienkiewicz in the 1870s to record, as their title suggested, “the present moment,” could be given a different title. They could be well summarized with the phrase “against all the odds.”1 The writer’s journalistic texts were written in the period of the Russification of Warsaw, a process that covered also changes in architecture. Those took a variety of forms – from the conversion of individual buildings and changes in their functions (Łazienki Park, Belweder Palace), to the urban layout (transportation network, military buildings).2 The conversion of key buildings into the seats of the Russian authorities, military barracks, and Orthodox churches,3 the closure of schools and monasteries, the presence of Russian troops in clubs and in the streets, the construction of the Citadel and of the ring railway were, as we know, part of the social reality of the capital at that time. Marian Marek Drozdowski pointed out that “the Russian community in Sienkiewicz’s Warsaw consisted mainly of thirty thousand garrison soldiers,”4 and “the system of Russian forts surrounding the city, together with the Citadel, hampered the city’s territorial and urban development.”5 According to him, the places that were marked by the presence of the army included the Citadel with the nearby forts, the forts in the vicinity of the Vistula Railway Station and today’s Aleja Wojska Polskiego, and the forts in the area of Zielona Street, Powązki, in the districts of Wola, Mokotów, and Czerniaków. These forts – through a system of embankments and moats – were connected to the forts at the city borders. The treatment of Warsaw as a provincial town by Russian authorities and the lack of support of the decision-makers with regard to the city’s development are echoed in Sienkiewicz’s comments. These comments, which mainly concern the technical condition of the city, are an essential element of the description of its physical space. For obvious reasons, the narration does not directly refer to political issues, but it concentrates on the everyday functioning of the city, to a large extent on the topics related to the cultural, social, and artistic spheres. Life goes on as if “in a niche,” despite the limitations and oppressions it is subjected to. And this is the space that Sienkiewicz describes in his journalistic texts.

For obvious reasons, the traces of the invader’s activity visible in the tissue of the city (for instance, the architectural conversion of the buildings and the erection of new monuments6) were omitted from the literary images of Warsaw. They are absent from the journalistic texts of both Prus and Sienkiewicz, who focused on everyday life and cultural life of Warsaw citizens. They are also deliberately and meaningfully ignored in their literary works. Janusz Tazbir called this disregard for the symbols of Russian domination “a peculiar kind of disapproval.”7 He referred to the observations of Jan Kuczawa and Stanisław Mackiewicz, who showed that as a rule, 19th-century literature did not notice Russians in the city.8

The columns show a world that is seemingly normal: business lunches, excursions to the countryside, parties in the parks, dancing balls, concerts, and performances all take place. To a large extent, apart from the topics connected with urban infrastructure and development, the writer comments mainly on social occasions, lectures, and charity auctions because cultural life goes on irrespective of – or rather despite – the limitations. And that is why Ferdynand Hoesick believed that Sienkiewicz’s involvement in “organic life” was an expression of a political attitude.9

In his columns, the takeover of the building for the seat of the commanding officers is described as something ordinary, and the stress is placed on the plan to allocate the rooms for cultural purposes. In 1875, Sienkiewicz wrote:

[…] We can again hear the news on the demolition of the ugly pavilions in Saski Square, and journalists – look at their fantasies – even write about the conversion of the building taken over for the seat of the commanding officers into a theater devoted to opera and ballet. In such a case, the Wielki Theater would house drama and comedy, and the Rozmaitości Theater would be turned into a comfortable concert hall.10

This strategy of ignoring the issues that evoked natural opposition in an obvious way became the part of the trend of “silent” writing, characteristic of the 19th century.11 It is also a factor that needs to be taken into consideration in the analysis of the physical space presented in the columns. Texts are a testament to the experience of space; they are the carriers of information regarding its relations with society.

Focusing on the descriptions of the city, Sienkiewicz emphasizes the elements that are its natural components – he characterizes concrete social groups, calls for the support of the institutions, portrays the ambiance of the moment. Sienkiewicz reported, “We mentioned the old woods along the Vistula River; let us then speak now about the Vistula of today. The river is fickle, bound on its right side with a floodbank so it cannot play nasty pranks on the district of Praga, which it used to bathe in cold waters every year.”12 When writing about Praga, he pictured the community of the riverside dwellers, whose place in the hierarchy depends on whether they own a boat and a fishing net. A group of homeless vagabonds lives next to them. In the summer, this area of the city becomes more vivid when the craftsmen take rides to Saska Kępa and use the services of the carriers. The pages of the articles conjure the images of the colorful crowds in boats, bathed in romantic lights, in the fog, at night, accompanied by the rafters’ songs, surrounded by the streams of sparks from the steamers, in the darkness and smoke. Summer performances are held in a garden near the Vistula (Antokol Theater on Praga Embankment) in the tents lit with kerosene lamps. When we leave the space described in the columns, in the vicinity of the river, a historian will notice Russian troops and forts, such as Sergei’s fort (in the area of today’s Żeromski Park – as pointed out by Drozdowski), or Vladimir’s fort on the right bank of the Vistula River.13 Teodor Brandowski pointed out that Sienkiewicz “was truly interested in politics, looking at the then-common pseudo-politics and pseudo-politicians through the prism of comedies and theater.”14

The signals regarding the problems that Polish society had to deal with are implicitly present in the texts written in a cheerful tone; critical comments regarding social issues are ironic and humorous. For instance, the colorful figures of the 1875 carnival are presented “against the grey background of poverty, worsened by hard frost”15; dancing parties and balls are not very popular due to the lack of money and “the turn of the minds towards more serious matters.”16 The situation in those days resembled the situation of an ill man who, having treated a bout of his illness, “starts to enjoy his life anew and starts to indulge in various pleasures.”17 When writing about the sewerage system and waterworks, the author mentions the end of the Pośrednik Society (which was supposed to act as a middleman between the Polish Kingdom and the Russian Empire):

Unfortunately, the Society sank like a stone. We could suspect it went missing somewhere on the way, but it is absolutely certain that it did not leave Warsaw. Imaginez vous, it must have gone missing in Warsaw. People are trying to work out what happened. It did not fall into the Vistula because there is a constant lack of water in the Vistula. It did not fall into the sewage because we have no sewage system. It could have broken its leg because the roads are in bad condition; it could have got broken, killed, run over because the street lights are weak. But to go missing, just like that?18

According to Sienkiewicz’s columns, Warsaw, when perceived from the point of view of a broadly understood analysis of space, became the city of paradoxes. On the one hand, it was degraded, reduced to the role of a provincial town, which determined its position in the spatial system understood geopolitically. On the other hand, it was treated as one of the European metropolises, entering the path of industrial development. In Sienkiewicz’s journalistic texts, Warsaw is represented in the context of the neighboring countries: it is compared to the capital cities of other European countries, and the most frequent comparisons concern France, England, and Germany (both in terms of the technical condition of the city and its mental sphere). The foreign context recurs in the comments concerning particular scenes, the comments which show – on the one hand – the backwardness of the city, but – on the other hand – its aspirations and tendencies to follow in the footsteps of other European capitals. Here is a city troubled by technical problems (“Oh, our roads and bridges. What precious monuments you are, both for the poets who love ruins and for the historians, examining the prehistoric culture of the original inhabitants of the globe”19). And here is the city undergoing the process of transformation – the extension of the railway, the construction of the water supply system, the growth of the city which, at the turn of the 20th century, entered the phase of modernization. Sienkiewicz’s columns published in Gazeta Polska and Niwa were written in the years 1873-1875, at the time of the transportation revolution, which involved the construction of several railway stations – the Saint Petersburg Station (today’s Wileński Station) in 1867, the Terespol Station (today’s Warsaw East Station) w1867, the Vistula Station (today’s Gdański Station) in 1877 – and the construction of bridges – Alexander Bridge (also referred to as the Kierbedź Bridge) in 1864 and the railway bridge in 1875. It was the time of the first horse cars (however, their condition was not satisfactory). Additionally, the military role of the Vistula Railway and the activities connected with the functioning of the ring railway cast a shadow over the development of transport routes in Warsaw.20 Sienkiewicz mentions not only the development of the railway but also events such as the meeting of shareholders of the Warsaw-Bydgoszcz Railway (Droga Żelazna Warszawsko-Bydgoska), in which he participated.21

Frequently, Sienkiewicz’s irony, emphasizing negative aspects, constitutes a strategy thanks to which description reveals the technical and social details in the image of the portrayed city:

No-one would want our stone-paved streets, even if we gave them away for free; it is about our railways, the ones that Hamburg is going to build since they are cheap, lasting and comfortable. […] Europe is following our example, huh! We have something that no other city has. Oh, Gods! It comes to my mind that we even have more such things and that I am the first person to notice it. Does any other capital have such horses like the ones that draw our trams? The ones that resemble ghosts or skeletons, seemingly unable to carry their own weight, yet pulling the huge weight of the car and the passengers? Does any other city have such dirty trams? Or so many plans of sewerage and sanitation systems? Does it have such a gas company that, out of concern for the morality of the inhabitants, has the street lamps put out as soon as possible so that good citizens do not roam the streets at night but would rather sleep in their own houses, in their own beds, on their own pillows, and under their own duvets? (I always take on this biblical style when I feel moved).22

The bird’s eye view of the city

The physical space of the city as recorded in the columns includes not only images but also sounds, smells, and weather conditions. The pedestrian moves along the dust-covered streets, the uncomfortable cobbled roads, struggles with transportation problems, feels hot in summer and has to breathe the odors of the steaming gutters.

In the summer, when clouds of dust rise above the cobbled streets, filling our mouths and eyes, when our paths, devoid of water, start to emit an atrocious odor, when this odor combines with dust, smoke and hangs like a heavy leaden atmosphere above the city, then we can rightly say that Warsaw, which is called the paradise for the eyes due to the beauty of the ladies that live here and the purgatory for ears due to the number of barrel organs and pianos played by the talented ladies, that this Warsaw is hell for every nose that was not born here, has not lived here, has not been ill here, and has not been brought up here.23

Apart from sensual sensations, movement is an important element of the descriptions. It is the sign of the times – the reality of the 19th-century city, noisy, crowded, and bustling with life. An inhabitant of the metropolis misses the moments of peace and quiet, which can only be found outside the city borders.

And here is the city with its hustle and bustle, turmoil and hectic traffic, with crowds of people on the sidewalks and with glittering shop windows. You miss your dark, airy and clean retreat. I miss it too, and it is so difficult for me to return to the city […].24

This moment of refuge is possible thanks to the short time spent in the countryside or in the Botanical Garden, in non-industrialized zones (“God created the country and man created the town”25 – the writer quotes a poet). There is also another attempt at a momentary escape from the sensory impressions experienced by an inhabitant of the city – noise, crowd, and stuffiness. Special attention should be paid to the spatial narrative strategy, which was employed several times in Sienkiewicz’s columns. This strategy consists in rising above the city level. It was used by the writer already in the first series of columns in 1873:

On the other hand, this life outside is boiling and bubbling in turmoil. The one who, having abandoned the stuffy city for a moment, could rise high, high in the clean evening air and look at the city from above, he would perceive this movement more spatially. From below he could hear the bustle and urban turmoil, in the dark corners and turns of the streets, he would see the crowds of people flowing in different directions. The gardens, where theaters and orchestras play, would look like shining lakes, where civilians, the military, and the dressed-up, made-up women, the ladies of the camellias. are visible in the waves of gaslight […].

But we doubt whether this winged wanderer would want to abandon his dark lonely airy highlands and would want to return to this sea of lights, to the stuffy streets with no sewerage system. He might prefer to fly over the silver ribbon of the Vistula, to forests, woods, and villages.26

This kind of halt is typical of the bird’s eye perspective, which was recognizable in the urban practices of the 20th century. The issue of the perception of the city has a rich theoretical background. The perception of the city as a labyrinth, as a text (unrecognizable or viewed from above) is linked to the realities in which particular ways of experiencing the space were becoming the most common (the influx of inhabitants to the 19th-century city, the status of a flâneur, the status of an individual against the crowd – different at the beginning of the 20th century from the one in a postmodern city of the 21st century). It is pointed out by Robert Tally, who juxtaposes Michel de Certeau’s postulates with Georg Lukács’s findings, thus contrasting the realist narration and the spatial experience of the walker with the naturalist description typical of a bird’s eye view of the distanced observer.27 Tally notes: “It [the city] is both a text to be read (á la Bertrand Westphal’s notion of la géocritique) and a process of writing (as with Michel de Certeau’s discussion of ‘Walking in the City.’”28 The important distinction is the one between (in de Certeau’s terms) “the practitioners of the city,” who walk its streets and create “the poem of walking,” and “voyeurs from above,” where the metaphor of the city ceases to function.

In the context of the spatial practices of the city, it is worth quoting de Certeau, who points to the bird’s eye panoramic view (looking at New York from the top of the World Trade Center – the view that is different from the limited perspective from the inside of the urban labyrinth. In the 1980s, de Certeau wrote:

To be lifted to the summit of the World Trade Center is to be lifted out of the city’s grasp. One’s body is no longer clasped by the streets that turn and return it according to an anonymous law; nor is it possessed, whether as player or played, by the rumble of so many differences and by the nervousness of New York traffic. When one goes up there, he leaves behind the mass that carries off and mixes up in itself any identity of authors or spectators. An Icarus flying above these waters, he can ignore the devices of Daedalus in mobile and endless labyrinths far below. His elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts him at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was “possessed” into a text that lies before one’s eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god. The exaltation of a scopic and gnostic drive: the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more.29

These words clearly remind us of some parts of Sienkiewicz’s columns, for instance:

We will go up some tower, for instance, the one in Saint Cross Church, and from its height, we will look down at the city. After all, it is the feast of Corpus Christi today. Down there, the city is closing in on our eyes, it is so difficult to breath; it is so boring, so sad!30

The 1875 celebrations of Corpus Christi, observed by Sienkiewicz from the tower of Saint Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, were also described by Bolesław Prus, who witnessed the events of that day in Grzybowski Square. The narration conducted by Prus from the point of view of the crowd concentrates on individuals and on individual practices. The crowd loses the features of a mass; the view from within allows us to see the details, actions, individuals, and events. These concrete elements build this fragment of the city. In the column from July 1-3, 1875, Prus comments on the events from the perspective of a participant and draws the reader’s attention to the absurd form of manifesting one’s piety by snatching the caps off Jews’ heads during the procession.31

In the description written by Sienkiewicz from the voyeur-observer perspective, the reader will find neither the detail nor the description of individual figures, but a panoramic view of all those gathered below. Focused on aesthetic impressions, the description is constructed by the commentator, who is distanced from the negative aspects of the city – the stinking walls, the clouds of dust and noise.

Sienkiewicz wrote:

Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, bent in an arch towards the Vistula River, runs beneath our feet. Everything is clear as day. Below us – Copernicus with a globe in his hand, looks up, as if longingly, farther on – terraces of houses, and farther down, at the end of the street, King Sigismund, with a sword and a cross, barely visible from a distance. Today is the feast of Corpus Christi so there are altars in the streets; you can see the whole line. Dressed in flowers and greenery, they seem like May islets. There is a huge crowd of people At their feet, rocking slowly, expanding and growing in strength with every minute.32

Despite the continuous industrial development, Sienkiewicz’s Warsaw is a provincial city, still backward, struggling with the issues of roads, water supply system, and street lights. Looked at from the perspective of the street, the city is squalid, facing transportation problems, grey and unfriendly because its development is not supported by the authorities. Other writers of that period also depict Warsaw as a behemoth city, dark and mysterious.33 Thanks to the distance, the view from above offers a different impression, and in the end, Sienkiewicz concludes:

[…] everything starts to take on the usual urban color, not too charming or poetic. But let us not leave, at least for a moment, our airy highlands. It must be so good and beautiful here in the evening. From there, we can see not only our stinking walls, our tollbooths, our provincial quarrels and storms in a teacup. There, the horizon is broader; the atmosphere is brighter. […] I have to go down, to the dark and stuffy streets of our city.34

Vertical orientation in the image of the city can also be found in other texts from Sienkiewicz’s era (we can mention the most recognizable description of this type – the image of Paris in The Doll by Bolesław Prus). Still, the bird’s eye view is not always connected to the convention of distancing and opposing the participation in the “urban crowd.” It helps create another important 19th-century model of the city next to the labyrinth: the panorama. Here, the juxtaposition of the perspectives used by Sienkiewicz and Prus when reporting the celebrations of Corpus Christi emphasizes the spatial strategy of the bird’s eye view employed by the former in his columns. Moreover, this strategy is motivated by Sienkiewicz’s desire to escape from the busy city.35 Faced with the realities of Warsaw at the end of the 19th century, Sienkiewicz resorts to the perspective of Icarus, the perspective contrasting with the limited perspective of the pedestrian, who is overwhelmed by urban surroundings in all their aspects: visual, audio, and olfactory. It seems that the inhabitant of Warsaw in the late 1870s cannot take a stroll (his legs get twisted and his shoes get damaged on broken cobbles), he cannot admire shop windows (due to the clouds of dust and the stuffiness prevailing despite the citizens’ requests to use road sprinklers and to build a sewerage system). He cannot admire the metropolis while taking a horse-car (since both the horses and the cars are in poor condition). Thus, the reasons for getting up and away from the crowded city are completely different from those that drive the 20th-century inhabitant of New York in Walking in the City – the inhabitant of a modern city, overwhelmed with the pace of life and the excess of stimuli. Seemingly, both the former and the latter want to look at the city from above in order to escape its hustle and bustle. Still, the voyeur from the 20th- and 21st-century metropolis seeks the perspective that would not be limited by the urban labyrinth, and he does that in order to leave down there “the mass that carries off and mixes up in itself any identity of authors or spectators.”36 By this, he resigns from the participation enjoyed by “the practitioners of the city.” The Warsaw-dweller’s desire for the ascent the depicted in Sienkiewicz’s columns stems from the fact that down there, “the city is closing in on our eyes, it is so difficult to breath; it is so boring, so sad!”37

The view from the city level

In his work on Sienkiewicz’s journalistic activity,38 Ferdynand Hoesick categorized the texts according to the subject and to the place of their publication. Julian Krzyżanowski pointed out that apart from the categories such as “Life and customs of Warsaw” and “Paintings and sculpture,” reviews should also be considered as a separate body of texts.39 Leaving aside the analysis of these reviews or texts devoted strictly to artistic events, what is worth noting, however, are the elements of the descriptions of cultural events that draw the image of public space, show the way it was experienced, and illustrate the customs activated in a given spatial context (a leaking roof in the theater, a crowded ballroom, or commotion in the cloakroom at the concert hall, as well as the spatial and thematic division of conversations, locating the gossiping in the halls on the first floor, beyond the area of informal, polite conversations on the ground floor, e.g.: the author wrote about the ball in the City Hall: “downstairs people were socializing – upstairs they were sweating and gossiping”40).

In spite of the strict genre requirements and editorial guidelines concerning their size and subject, the journalistic texts exhibit a considerable dose of “literary character.” Thanks to Sienkiewicz’s ironic and humorous comments, critical remarks, and intertextuality, not only physical but also imaginary space emerges from the reported information. The function of the columns turned out to be dynamic. While treated by Sienkiewicz as “current” or “present,” and perceived by Hoesick in 1902 as “forgotten”41 – after almost one hundred and fifty years, they are, after all, a valuable testimony of the times and a record of the social reality of Warsaw in the late 19th century. The columns not only reconstruct and report facts but also create an image of both the real and cultural dimension of the city as well as of its mentality, customs, and the imagination of its inhabitants, an image in which literary and artistic matters are interwoven with technical, organizational and even sanitary problems. In 1875, Sienkiewicz wrote: “We are the city of the worst cobbled and worst lit streets of all European cities – [...] The palaces on main streets neighbor with half-ruined huts – that is a variety for the eye. Dark at night – it is romantic, and dirty during the day – it is original.”42

When writing on commissioned topics, concerning the condition of the streets, the need for charity collections, or the necessity to paint houses and wash windows in the spring, Sienkiewicz drew the picture of the inhabitants of the city, appearing in specific spatial realities and experiencing this space. The use of irony and intertextuality point to a specific type of “virtual” reader – an intelligent reader. Roman Zimand noted that “writers, critics, journalists, in a word – ideologists of those years are aware that they are participating in the creation of a new, previously unknown model of culture.”43 The social context of the contemporary capital is, therefore, an important factor determining the content of Sienkiewicz’s journalistic writings.44

The city space is divided into areas where particular social classes are concentrated, including the Jewish poor. In turn, regardless of their place of residence, people “engaged in begging, pretending to be merchants” occupy the most frequented streets (Sienkiewicz sketches a picture of these figures: a girl crying for twelve hours straight while selling calendars, boys forcing people to buy bouquets, women pretending to be poor widows, or immigrants45). Beggars specializing in manipulation solicit passers-by in their homes, gardens, restaurants, confectionaries, and on the streets. Old-style beggars (“a pauper with a can”) appear in the vicinity of churches, especially in near the Powązki Cemetery, while thieves become active during mass events. There is a clear division of the city into areas inhabited by groups of a given social status; this factor also determines the emergence of areas in which residents spend their free time (e.g. the upper classes rest, as we know, in the Łazienki Park and the neighboring Botanical Garden, while working-class families visit Saska Kępa neighborhood for this purpose; business lunches are eaten, depending on the social status, in restaurants in Angielski Hotel on Wierzbowa Street or in Europejski Hotel). Inferior streets are built up with wooden houses, which are prone to catching fire. As a result, the city is divided into brick and wooden districts.

Researchers point to Sienkiewicz’s interest in the technical condition of the city – street cobblestones, lights, the issue of the water supply system. As early as 1882, he wrote about problems related to the poor infrastructure and the unrealized Lindley’s sewage system project.46 A map of the most frequented and most inaccessible places due to the poor quality of the streets emerges from the descriptions of public transportation. It is not only a map of objects and the street network but also a plan of the places where city life is most vibrant. The Castle Square is an area where transit vehicles accumulate, whereas rumors have been circulating about the widening of Wierzbowa Street “by demolishing the annex of the Brühl Palace” etc. Apart from information about the theater building, about the development plans for the most representative buildings, there is also the issue of dirty trams (“there are no worse vehicles in the world”47), congestion and mud on the main streets, narrow roads, cobblestones, and railways. The author takes up the subject of planned and never implemented communication and sewage system improvements, all the way to the issue of dirty water in the Vistula River – “in no European city was the sewage system so widely discussed and nowhere was so little done about it.”48 The search for the places worthy of cultural events is constrained by the technical condition of the facilities. In urban planning, there is a visible lack of consistency both in terms of architecture and decision making. Nevertheless, the city is being developed (for example, the writer reports an accident near Pawia Street, where three newly built houses collapsed onto the construction workers). A lot of space in the columns is dedicated to the subject of Warsaw public transportation (“It is said in Warsaw, and even written and printed, that a certain railway official has invented a new machine that is to replace today’s steam engines and that is set into motion by means of a crank”49) – both on a wider scale and at the city level. However, the bipolarity of the phenomenon is visible here as well, since the intensive life of the city is hampered by the shortcomings of its communication system:

It is one of the unique features of Warsaw that the most frequented streets are the narrowest. Senatorska Street from Teatralny Square to Sigismund’s Column, Wierzbowa, Żabia, and Graniczna Streets are the main routes of urban traffic, where all the carts, carriages, and wagons carrying wood, drag with countless stops. For the inhabitants of Warsaw who must pursue their affairs in those streets, it is almost impossible to cross.

[...] all wheeled transit transports through Warsaw should be informed about the streets which they are not allowed to use; as for the wagons and carts collecting or discharging their loads in the city, they should be instructed to keep sufficient distance between one another for passing or crossing [...]. Since it often happens that there are up to forty wagons in a continuous line on the street turn [...].

The worst point is undoubtedly the stretch of Senatorska Street from Miodowa Street to Sigismund’s Column. There are always loads of carts, wagons, trams, and carriages; sometimes you will have to wait for a quarter or even half an hour before you can get through. When planning a new urban communication network, would it not be more reasonable to extend Miodowa Street to Krakowskie Przedmieście than to create Włodzimierska Street, which is used only once a month? 50

The image of Warsaw in Sienkiewicz’s columns from the 1870s consists of the descriptions of transport routes and important buildings, the representation of which is triggered in the context of events. These events are often determined by external factors:

The river overflowed the banks, especially on the Praga side. The houses in Praga, hidden behind the protective embankment, seem to look with irony over the embankment at the waves, so disastrous and terrible for them in the past. Praski Park is almost halfway under water, which got in between the alleys, dense willows, juniper, creating as if still, murky, but calm lakes. Saska Kępa is also almost completely underwater. Here, the eyesight gets lost in these huge, blue pools of water that have flooded vast areas.51

Crowds of people watching this view gather especially in the area of Nowy Zjazd and on th 5e bridge. That sets out another plan pointing to the vertical layout of the city.

After all, Foucault

The public space of Warsaw at the end of the 19th century consists mainly of places “connected with the slices in time.”52 Entering those places is connected with the acceptance of certain rules. Staying in a particular place provokes behaviors that would not be so natural in other circumstances: it triggers a set of conducts required at the moment of entering the place, it also loosens some patterns, as if there was a non-written system of joining a given space(or not).

It is inevitable to point to places distinguished by Michel Foucault as absolutely temporary, created by a society functioning in a given culture. Sites such as markets, holiday resorts, and other places connected with periods of celebration are in opposition to those that accumulate time within their boundaries.53 Moreover, they trigger the aforementioned set of conducts demonstrating belonging to a given area, even if only temporarily. Sites such as the wool market at the St. John’s Fair, fun fairs and traveling theaters during the Easter period, temporary open-air markets in Saska Kępa, May holidays in Wilanów or Bielany and entertainment organized on various holidays and Sundays are set for the purpose of celebrating certain cultural practices by society. They create a network of points on the city plan, where temporary entertainment sites are activated. “On Monday, especially, after the holy Easter mass, crowds of men, women, and children hurry to Ujazdowski Square, where theater stages, swings, carousels, Ferris wheels, and the historical smoothed and soapy pole await them every year”54 – wrote Sienkiewicz in 1875.

Saski Garden55 forms a separate microcosm in Warsaw from Sienkiewicz’s descriptions (as well as the one presented by other 19th-century artists). It has a network of paths and places to rest, a central point with a fountain, sculptures (which, by the way, Sienkiewicz categorizes as “the park’s peculiarities” and describes as ugly), a sundial, a summer theater, a mineral water bar, an orangery, and a dairy bar. It is a separate entity yet it is located within a wider city structure.56 Saski Garden is so strongly connected with the city that it takes over its negative features, losing the properties of a green area and changing into a frequently used route (even the freshness of greenery is lost here in cigarette smoke). Mass public events do not improve its condition. Sienkiewicz thus commented on the lottery run in 1875:

[....] we are soon going to have a lottery. It will be, as they say, the last one, after which the misery of Saski Garden will end once and for all. […]

Several tents and shops are set up, a huge crowd of people is brought with the help of posters and allowed to enjoy à discrétion the scent of old tallow burning in street lamps, to trample lawns, also à discretion, to buy a lot of folded tickets, to unfold them with curiosity and to have their faces becoming two feet longer when the tickets turn out to be empty.57

Encouraging the readers to support botanical or zoological gardens with donations (over the years he mentioned that many times), the writer describes Saski Garden as the very opposite of his vision:

In a few years’ time, instead of going to Saski Garden and frying there in dust, heat, and cigarette smoke, you will be able to find shadow, cool breezes from the Vistula and useful entertainment.

Unfortunately, today we only have Saski Garden.

And it is already beginning to fill up. The trees are still gloomily stretching their lean, grey, and ugly branches, yet without leaves and buds; the lawns are not yet green, the streets are still muddy; and yet this old friend of pensioners, nannies, children, elegant women, and idlers is already filling up.58

In the summer, the green areas serve as recreational spaces and become central meeting places, as opposed to streets or squares. Paradoxically, it is Saski Garden that still remains the “green salon of Warsaw.” In the face of the disappointment of the inhabitants with their unsuccessful stays in the countryside, it becomes a longed-for summer embodiment of a city as contrasted with the inconveniences of the province. Here, too, the artistic life concentrated around objects such as the Summer Theater or the Riding Hall located beside the park on Królewska Street.

Thanks to Foucault, the 20th century became, as researchers point out, the era of space. Edward W. Soja emphasizes that Foucault added space as a third element to the dichotomy of history-society.59 Contrary to the belief concerning the dominance of the historical aspect at the time, Sienkiewicz’s writings from the late 19th century employ the space-society scheme. Although the writer is interested in the activity of institutions, the level of scientific and artistic events, every activity is closely related to or triggered by its location. His irony-based poetics uses an element of self-criticism, the narration refers to a collective subject, but this witty reflection on the mental structure of the city’s inhabitants surfaces in a specific situation, in a specific place. The place becomes the trigger, activating or exposing certain patterns of behavior. Some places “are attended,” which does not mean that the attending people do not fall asleep on literature readings, do not leave the theater during performances, or do not compromise themselves during balls and sports events. According to Zimand:

One of the important problems of the cultural model of modernism was the emergence of completely new cultural needs of very diverse social classes. With huge differences in financial situations, in the face of the existence of various types of economic, class, cultural, social barriers, etc. the pressure of the so-called social bottom on the sphere of culture was becoming increasingly more noticeable. Despite the social barriers, the first signs of the shortening the distance were appearing, for instance, in the form of sports competitions attended not only by the “social crème” but also by “the commoners” and, of course, these signs were criticized by the intellectuals of that time. 60

The reaction to this particular cultural problem appears in Sienkiewicz’s journalistic texts. The imitation visible in the attempt to transform Polish nobility into English lords, the French language used during social meetings, drinking alcohol in the vestibule of the ballroom, entering the theater in the middle of the first act and leaving in the middle of the last act, etc., all these customs show the arriviste mentality of “the recently promoted presidents, directors and newly cultured families.”61 This picture is complemented with business travelers for whom the ritual of “breakfasts” and cigars is a regular component of their stay in Warsaw (“Breakfasting is an outstanding feature of city life in Warsaw; it has no equals”62).

Physical space activates the imaginary one, with all its drawbacks and shortcomings. Sienkiewicz’s narration is based on similar rules, which makes it possible to evoke Foucault’s conclusions (which, after all, concern the 20th century) and thus leads to the reflection that the beginnings of the phenomena concentrated around the meaning of space crystallized already in the late 19th century. Particular topics raised in the columns (for instance, the Gas Association, sewerage system problems, street lights, flooding, etc.) lead to spatial creations. Starting with a specific physical area, the writer activates the social context in the reader’s imagination – the city is deserted in summer, bustling and crowded in winter. He activates a wider spatial context – the association with a seaside landscape.

“This is how they say it used to be [...] today, times have changed”63: More about time

But is the world from Sienkiewicz’s columns based on the dichotomy between space and society? At first glance, it seems to be the picture of the period, frozen in time, the “present moment,” “current moment.” This pause, however, is only apparent, as the writer repeatedly underlines the passage of time, and highlights the changes in customs. In the columns, the emphasis is on the dynamics of everyday life (transformations visible over the course of several years), but also on changes in a wider timeframe. When writing about the sale of the manor house in Wiśniowiec and about the auction of a collection of historical memorabilia, a gallery of paintings and a valuable library, as well as about the plan to adapt the Wiśniowiecki Palace into a factory, Sienkiewicz states: “Times have changed. For the better? Depends who you ask [...].”64 Reaching back to the past is often based on a palimpsest structure, recalling the history of old customs and contexts, or formulas such as a “long, long time ago,” describing practices from years ago, finally analyzing the present state. Reaching to the experience from the past emphasizes changes visible within the same phenomena that determine the mental dimension of the city. This is accurately illustrated, for example, by Sienkiewicz’s excellent column from June 30, 1875, in which, firstly, the time axis is activated – the literary image of the past (beliefs in pagan gods, evil spirits, and ferns), then the description of contemporary celebrations appears (nymph-like elegant young bachelorettes in Saski Garden are also tempting, but young men are less susceptible: “people have strangely gotten wiser, they are not easily deluded with songs; they need dowry”). The text finishes with highlighting the difference between Warsaw’s celebrations of summer solstice (the so-called Wianki [wreaths]) two years earlier, which were attended also by upper classes, and the festivities in 1875, in which only carpenters participated, while a group of people gathered on a bridge did not understand the tradition, considering a visit to a restaurant to be the main goal of the celebration. St. John’s Day is, above all, the date of paying installments in associations, settling bills of exchange, the time when one receives lawsuits and advice notes from industrial funds, bank reminders, etc. Sienkiewicz wrote: “This is not how it used to be at illo tempore, says an old-fashioned song, and it is very right. Times have changed; old customs are slowly going away, dissolving in the waves of oblivion, disappearing, and the distance and difference between the past and the present are constantly growing.”65

The life cycle of the city is in a sense defined by the calendar year (“Theater, lectures, concerts are still quite popular in the winter season”66) and by the liturgical year, just like in the pages of Władysław Reymont’s Chłopi (The Peasants). Cultural events, from charity collections to fairs and mass entertainments, are closely related to the periods of Christmas and Easter celebrations as well as other religious festivals (carnival, Lent, St. John’s Day, etc.). The relation between politics and religion is not without significance here (Catholicism, connected with the attitude glorifying independence, is opposed to the elevation of the Orthodox Church as an expression of the invader’s policy). Ultimately, the rhythm of life is connected both with the religious sphere and with the realities characteristic of specific seasons. The space of the theater is a very important element determining the hierarchy of places in Warsaw, but – paradoxically again – it is the climatic conditions that influence the plan of cultural events associated with a given place. This translates into periodic habits and rituals. For example, during Lent, there are “lectures that are not listened to, banquets that are yawned at, and concerts that are not attended,”67 while summer is the “season of heat and dust, common fainting, common idleness, and drowsiness” 68. Summer brings “such a lot of different kinds of entertainment that it is hard to choose”; it is “an open-air carnival” (summer theaters arrive in the city). However, due to the problems with epidemics, dust, the need for disinfection, and numerous fires, “social life moves to the countryside in summer. In winter, however, it is the time for the city; at that time, it buzzes and bubbles with life to the brim.”69

In summer, the residents of Warsaw move to their homes on the outskirts of the city – to Sielce, Mokotów, Wilanów, Grodzisk, Jeziorna (they commute there, among others, on crowded trains, for which it is customary to “accommodate twice as many people in each carriage” and “lay passengers in layers”70). This juxtaposition of the countryside and the city is a permanent element of Sienkiewicz’s narration.

What about cartography? – Mental space

Reading Sienkiewicz’s columns, one could draw a map of points that are important from a narrative perspective. This would be a cultural map of Warsaw at the end of the 19th century, indicating places important in public life.71 The obvious difference between an analysis of space in the novel and creation of a literary map, on the one hand, and a delineation of a network of points important for the imaginary space, functioning within a specific geographical area, on the other, results, firstly, from the specific nature of the work (the journalistic text was a record of real events taking place in a real location), and secondly, from the essence of the phenomenon itself. The list of places in Sienkiewicz’s articles that are important for the life of the city and can be mapped out include the social meeting area in Saski Garden or in Bartels’s zoo, dancing balls in the City Hall, artistic events in Dolina Szwajcarska (Swiss Valley Park), exhibitions at Krakowskie Przedmieście and nearby Nowy Świat Streets, periodic events in Ujazdów, and summer gardens in Saska Kępa. The cultural life of the city is mainly concentrated in its central area, and Krakowskie Przedmieście is the main route of cultural entertainment (including Alexander Krywult’s Salon in Europejski Hotel, the Museum of Industry and Agriculture, Warsaw Charity Society, and since the 1880s – Gracjan Unger’s Salon of Fine Arts in the Potocki Palace, Resursa Obywatelska Palace). The descriptions also concern schools, hospitals, societies, orphanages, and social activity centers; that is why specific locations recur in the texts. Calling for support for individual initiatives, the writer starts a narration representing a given site – Alexander Park (today’s Praski Park) and Saski Garden, are mentioned in the context of botanical and zoological garden projects (as a point of reference), Vistula areas are referred to in connection with the problem of river regulation or water supply system, the main urban routes (Krakowskie Przedmieście, Marszałkowska Street, Old Town) – in the context of street lights and traffic regulation.

Stanisław Fita wrote about the topographic representation in Sienkiewicz’s journalistic texts:

Most often he [Sienkiewicz] led the readers along Krakowskie Przedmieście and Nowy Świat, Marszałkowska and Świętokrzyska, Miodowa, Wierzbowa and Niecała, Królewska and their cross streets, through Saski and Teatralny Squares. He also did not avoid the Old and the New Town. He often wrote about Warsaw parks: Saski Garden, Łazienki Park, and Botanical Gardens. But he also mentioned Saska Kępa. It should be noted that he did not forget about Praga and its problems, the-then Alexander Park, part of which was to be used for a zoo, about the need for a hospital in this district, about philanthropic events and folk games, about the “Antokol” open-air theater and “Pod Rakiem” restaurant. […]

The names of larger and smaller theaters often appear, as well as those of concert halls, exquisite restaurants and confectioneries, and social clubs. They are occupied mostly by the “elegant world” of Warsaw rather than the anonymous crowd; attractive places dominate over neglected backstreets. 72

Attempts at mapping Warsaw from Sienkiewicz’s columns are based on the competence of the narrator-guide. The narrator is not a walker or an individual set in the middle of a crowd and in the unrecognizable text of the city (as it often happens in 19th-century narratives), but a commentator shaping his readers’ opinions (appealing for support for various initiatives and improvements of the technical condition of the city). A question arises as to whether the narration of the columns truly “leads the reader” – as the researchers have pointed out – or “throws the reader” between particular points on the city plan, points that are important from the perspective of the addressed topic and that are conditioned by the area in which the cultural life of Warsaw was concentrated. Walks were a form of cartographic mapping, setting the city landmarks, as Kevin Lynch pointed out in The Image of the City,73 and that led to the creation of mental maps related to the space of the city. Pointing to the imaginary space in Sienkiewicz’s columns opens slightly different threads – it is closely connected with the real space but does not only depend on the wandered area. The subject matter of the texts refers to the issues of general public interest, thus the space of Warsaw is a common space, a space conditioned by the existence of a complex society (Sienkiewicz repeatedly uses the form of the first person plural). If one reaches for a map of the city of that time in order to visualize the object of description, the shape of Warsaw that is superimposed on the cartographic grid is the one depending on the social groups living in given areas, as well as the one stretching between the points important for cultural life. Such a reading of the columns provokes us to reach for John Bryan Harley’s74 critique of cartography, which points to the textual nature of the map and the possibility of using it as a research tool. The social rules to which the code of cartographic transcription is subordinated are replaced here by the rules of selecting objects according to their importance from the perspective of the column writer – the commentator of social customs.

Julian Krzyżanowski wrote:

Closing the remarks about Warsaw in the work of the great master of the novel, one should finish with a reference not to Legiony (The Polish Legions), but to a charming sketch “Wspomnienie” (A memory), written shortly before his death. It is Sienkiewicz’s farewell to the truly beloved city, an object of his creative love not by birth, but by choice.75

In a different part of his study about Sienkiewicz’s Warsaw, Krzyżanowski asked “What kept him in Warsaw, where, especially after his return from America, he felt very bad as the letter to Witkiewicz proves, where he explicitly painted the cultural misery of the city that was being transformed by the historical events from the capital into a provincial hole?”76 Małgorzata Trzeciak, on the other hand, claimed that the author of the columns strongly criticized Warsaw society, and revealed his attitude towards the city in the columns and his correspondence: “One can read from them the obsession with the cruelly and systematically destroyed intellectual life of the city, the futility of all actions aiming at its modernization and improvement.”77 Janina Kulczycka-Saloni emphasized that Sienkiewicz described contemporary Warsaw from the perspective of its apparent charm and real shadows. “The atmosphere of Warsaw bored Sienkiewicz the journalist quickly, so he left it without regret”78 – the researcher stated. This is a key sentence, which accounts for the reconciliation of the above-mentioned contradictory interpretations. Shortcomings in the technical condition of the city, which Sienkiewicz regretted, are connected with the problems on the level of mentality. What determines the writer’s negative attitude towards the city is its atmosphere, Warsaw in its mental dimension. Whereas the streets of the Old Town, the house behind Świętojańska Street, Piwna Street with small shops and the church with “its gothic ribs of the nave, altars, monuments, portraits, and especially statues of knights in armor” were the things that “attracted the writer enormously.”79 The city in its physical dimension was an important element of his youth. However, the physical dimension of the city does not concern its technical aspects, but the rank of the objects having their own history and constituting cultural continuity. Sienkiewicz left “Wspomnienie” (A memory) written in 1916 to the readers of Tygodnik Ilustrowany just before his death. In the text, he referred to the painting of St. John’s Church by Palma il Giovane and emphasized that the church is visited by all those “who come for the service or to draw in the breath of the past centuries of strength, glory, and freedom.”80

1 I juxtapose this formula with the description of the-then Warsaw, presented in the Studia Warszawskie series [Warsaw Studies]: “The years 1795–1918 constitute a whole era in the history of Warsaw. […] It is sufficient to examine Warsaw at the moment of its fall at the end of the 18th century and to compare it with the city on the eve of the First World War. We can see the long road that Warsaw had gone through during those 120 years. The changes concerned all areas of the city’s economy as well as the social, political and cultural relations.” At that time, Warsaw was politically oppressed; it was being gradually deprived of the functions of the capital city, and it was degraded to a provincial town. Still, it preserved many features of a capital city” (Editor’s note, Warszawa XIX wiek, 1795–1918 [Warsaw, 19th century, 1795–1918], vol. 1, Studia warszawskie [Warsaw Studies] series, vol. 6, edited by. R. Kołodziejczyk, J. Kosim, J. Leskiewiczowa, Warsaw 1970, p. 5). All translations from Polish sources by Ewa Nowik.

2 For more on this topic, see, for instance, P. Paszkiewicz, Pod berłem Romanowów. Sztuka rosyjska w Warszawie 1815–1915 [Under the Romanov rule: Russian art in Warsaw, 1815–1915], Warsaw 1991; M. M. Drozdowski, Warszawa epoki Sienkiewicza [Warsaw at the times of Sienkiewicz], in H. Sienkiewicz, Felietony warszawskie 1873–1882 [Warsaw columns, 1873–1882], selected and edited by S. Fita, Warsaw 2002.

3 The most spectacular and painful blows to the population of Warsaw was the construction of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Saski Square (today’s Piłsudski Square), the conversion of the Staszic Palace into Saint Tatiana of Rome Orthodox Church, and the conversion of the Royal Castle chapel into an orthodox church.

4 M. M. Drozdowski, op. cit., p. 20.

5 Ibidem.

6 We can list here the Monument of Seven Generals, also known as the monument of the Poles who died loyal to their monarch (unveiled in 1841 in Saski Square – the place which for the Poles was also the symbol of shame), the monument of Paskiewicz in front of the Viceregal Palace or the monument of Tsar Alexander the First located in the Citadel.

7 J. Tazbir, “Walka na pomniki i o pomniki” [The fight with monuments and about monuments], Kultura i Społeczeństwo 1997, vol. 1, p. 8.

8 J. Tazbir, “‘Zdrajcy’ pomnikiem zhańbieni” [Traitors shamed by the monuments], Przegląd Humanistyczny 1997, vol. 6, pp. 23–24. Tazbir quotes the words published in the Wiadomości Literackie magazine: “Those people were skillful in remaining silent. This was a certain sad form of a protest” (J. Kuczawa, “Spiż, marmury i historia” [Red bronze, marbles, and history], Wiadomości Literackie 1938, vol. 52–53, p. 6. For the conspicuous absence of Russian traces in Lalka (The Doll) by Prus, see E. Paczoska, ‘Lalka’, czyli rozpad świata [The Doll or the fall of the world], Białystok 1995 (especially the chapter entitled “Warszawskie Elizjum”).

9 F. Hoesick, “Przedmowa” [Foreword], in Sienkiewicz jako felietonista. Zapomniane kartki z teki Litwosa (1873–1883) [Sienkiewicz as a columnist: Forgotten pages from the portfolio], Warsaw 1902, pp. v–vi.

10 H. Sienkiewicz, Chwila obecna [The present moment], vol. 1, in Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, edited by J. Krzyżanowski, Warsaw 1950, p. 27.

11 In this case, I am interested in the purposeful omissions of political issues and of the traces of Russians in Warsaw only in the context of the representation of space. I do not undertake to discuss the theme of omissions of political reality in literary representations. This theme is the subject of study of the scholars examining positivism, especially the works of Bolesław Prus – see E. Paczoska, op. cit., L. B. Grzeniewski, “Warszawskie realia ‘Lalki’” [Warsaw reality in The Doll], in Śladami Wokulskiego. Przewodnik literacki po warszawskich realiach „Lalki” [Following the traces of Wokulski: A literary guide to Warsaw reality of The Doll], edited by S. Godlewski, L.B. Grzeniewski, H. Markiewicz, Warsaw 1957; B. Bobrowska, Małe narracje Prusa [Little narrations of Prus], Gdańsk 2004. For a different perspective on the issue of such omissions, see J.M. Rymkiewicz, “Nie ma Polski, nie ma Rosji, nie było powstania: Tygodnik Ilustrowany w 1863” [There is no Poland, no Russia, there was no Uprising: Tygodnik Ilustrowany in 1863], Gazeta Polska 2013, no. 1.

12 H. Sienkiewicz, Bez tytułu (1873) [Untitled (1873)], in Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, Warsaw 1950, pp. 48–49.

13 M.M. Drozdowski, op. cit., p. 20.

14 T. Brandowski, “Sienkiewicz jako dziennikarz” [Sienkiewicz as a journalist], Dziennik Bydgoski 1927, no. 173, p. 15.

15 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 1.

16 Ibidem, p. 2.

17 Ibidem.

18 Ibidem, pp. 99–100.

19 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, p. 47.

20 I found Wojciech Tomasik’s paper devoted to the map of Prus’s Warsaw very useful for my considerations. See W. Tomasik, “Błądzenie Michałka. Nad mapą Warszawy Prusa” [Michałek’s wandering: The map of Prus’s Warsaw], Teksty Drugie 2017, vol. 5.

21 H. Sienkiewicz, Chwila obecna [The present moment], vol. 2, in Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 49, p. 13.

22 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, pp. 50–51.

23 Ibidem, p. 127.

24 Ibidem, p. 130.

25 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, p. 89.

26 Ibidem, pp. 88–89.

27 R.T. Tally Jr., “Neutral Grounds, or, The Utopia of the Urban,” The Journal of Contemporary Literature 2010, pp. 134–148.

28 R. Tally, op.cit. Elżbieta Rybicka calls these two opposing perspectives presented by de Certeau the conceptual city (rational functionalism and the product of urban theories) and the experienced city – the point of view of a pedestrian. See E. Rybicka, “Geopoetyka (o mieście, przestrzeni i miejscu we współczesnych teoriach i praktykach kulturowych” [Geopoetics (about the city, space and their place in the contemporary cultural theories and practices)], in Kulturowa teoria literatury. Główne pojęcia i problemy [Cultural literary theory: Key concepts and issues], edited by M. P. Markowski, R. Nycz, Kraków 2002, p. 474.

29 M. de Certeau, “Walking in the City,” in The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by S. Rendall, Berkeley 1984, p. 91.

I evoke here the 20th-century theories in order to point out that some phenomena that were characteristic of the modern and postmodern city contain elements that had already been signaled in the 19th-century perspective. The bird eye’s view, which can be found in Sienkiewicz’s journalist texts, became popular thanks to works such as Michel de Certeau’s Walking in the City (1984), These issues are connected with cognitive mapping and cartographic modeling of space focusing on landmarks (see K. Lynch, The Image of the City, Cambridge 1960; K. Schlögel, In Space We Read Time: On the History of Civilization and Geopolitics, translated by Gerrit Jackson). The work of de Certeau has been quoted in the part of this paper devoted to physical space because the elements of this perspective can be found in Sienkiewicz’s narrative strategies, and secondly, because it is connected with the issue of landmarks indicated by the writer on the cultural map of Warsaw.

30 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 166.

31 B. Prus, Kroniki [Columns], edited by Szwejkowski, vol. 2, Warsaw, 1957, pp. 66–67.

32 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 166.

33 See also Warszawa pozytywistów [Warsaw of the Positivists], edited by J. Kulczycka-Saloni, E. Ihnatowicz, Warsaw 1992.

34 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, pp. 167–169.

35 Compare S. Fita, “Warszawskie felietony Sienkiewicza” [Sienkiewicz’s Warsaw columns], in H. Sienkiewicz, Felietony warszawskie 1873–1882 [Warsaw columns, 1873–1882], edited by S. Fita, Warsaw 2002, p. 12.

36 M. de Certeau, op. cit., p. 191.

37 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 167.

38 See F. Hoesick, op. cit.

39 J. Krzyżanowski, Sienkiewicz a Warszawa [Sienkiewicz and Warsaw], 1975, p. 26. Due to the subject of my paper, Sienkiewicz’s reviews and texts devoted strictly to artistic matters have not been analyzed here. I would like to note, however, that the topic of artistic space being the subject of Sienkiewicz’s attention (not only of whole texts but also of selected fragments of chronicles) is a separate issue. The issue of the range of mental space, which in the field of artistic activity – due to the European context – emerges as a component of larger structures.

40 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 29.

41 F. Hoesick, op. cit., pp. ii–iii.

42 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, pp. 127–128.

43 R. Zimand, Dekadentyzm warszawski [Warsaw Decadence], Warsaw 1964, p. 91.

44 For accounts of the social structure of Warsaw of the times (statistics regarding the population and social groups), see among others M. M. Drozdowski, op. cit.; M. Nietyksza, Ludność Warszawy na przełomie XIX i XX wieku [The population of Warsaw at the turn of the 20th century], Warsaw 1971; R. Zimand, op. cit.

45 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 1, pp. 108–111.

46 The implementation of the Lindley’s water and sewage project began in 1883, but it had been awaiting approval from St. Petersburg since 1879. See F. Kucharzewski, Wodociągi i kanalizacja w Warszawie. Projekty dawniejsze – projekt Lindleya [Water and sewage system in Warsaw: Older projects. Lindley’s project], Warsaw 1879.

47 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, p. 27.

48 Ibidem.

49 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 49, p. 104.

50 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, pp. 25–26.

51 Ibidem, pp. 107–108.

52 Compare M. Foucault, “Des Espace Autres” [Of Other Spaces], Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité 1984; While reading Sienkiewicz’s descriptions of mass events, an association with the fragment of Michel Foucault’s work devoted to heterotopology is inevitable. It is not about a top-down application of the category of heterotopia. In Poland, there is a conviction that, since the first decade of the 21st century, this category has been too heavily exploited in the literary field as well. However, its status is well-established and its reception is firmly rooted in research, especially by foreign researchers (Derek Gregory, Edward Soja, Jeremy W. Crampton, Peter Johnson). An interesting perspective is offered in the collective volume Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Post-Civil Society, edited by M. Dehaene, L. De Cauter, London 2008), and it is difficult to ignore the features highlighted by Foucault in the analysis of such places.

53 Foucault calls the sites that are strongly connected with time heterochronies, and he distinguishes those that accumulate time (libraries, museums) and those that are absolutely temporary and not oriented towards lasting for eternity (M. Foucault, op.cit., p. 123).

54 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, p. 30.

55 For more about Saski Garden at the end of the 19th century as well as its literary representations, see e.g. K. Mordyński, “Warszawski Wersal” [Warsaw Versailles], Stolica 2012, no. 4, pp. 34–36; E. Paczoska, op. cit.; B. Bobrowska, Małe narracje Prusa [Little narratives by Prus], Gdańsk 2004, p. 142. For literary representations of Saski Garden, see e.g. B. Prus, Ogród Saski [Saski Garden]; W. Wóycicki, “Fizjologia Saskiego Ogrodu” [Physiology of Saski Garden], in Szkice i obrazki [Sketches and pictures], 1858.

56 The issue of the decisions on managing the garden made by the garden management board is raised by Sienkiewicz many times, for instance in H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 137 and p. 157.

57 He also wrote about it in H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 49, p. 106–107.

58 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 101–102.

59 E.W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places, Blackwell, Oxford 1996, pp. 15–16, 145–163.

60 R. Zimand, op. cit., pp. 87–90.

61 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 62.

62 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 77.

63 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 49, p. 11.

64 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, p. 27.

65 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 49, p. 9.

66 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, p. 45.

67 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, p. 13.

68 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 48, p. 177.

69 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 47, p. 13.

70 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 49, p. 105.

71 It is worth stressing that its nature would be different from literary maps representing the trajectory of characters’ movement in literary works and the relationship between real space and the one presented in the work as the spatial relations emerging from the columns have a different meaning than in the case of novel chronotopies. For the purposes of comparison, we can mention projects concerning literary cartography such as Walking Ulysses: Joyce’s Dublin Today, http://ulysses.bc.edu/ [accessed on 01-05-2018], directed by J. Nugent; A Literary Atlas of Europe (Mapping and Analysing the Geography of Fiction with Interactive Tools), directed by L. Hurni and B. Piatti, http://www.literaturatlas.eu/?lang=en [accessed on 01-05-2018].

72 S. Fita, op. cit., p. 11.

73 K. Lynch, op. cit.

74 J. B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” Cartographica 1989, vol. 26, no. 2.

75 J. Krzyżanowski, op. cit., p. 81.

76 Ibidem, p. 16.

77 M. Trzeciak, “Henryk Sienkiewicz,” in Warszawa pozytywistów [Warsaw of the Positivists], ed. by. J. Kulczycka-Saloni, E. Ihnatowicz, Warsaw 1992, p. 157.

78 J. Kulczycka-Saloni, “Sienkiewicz a Warszawa” [Sienkiewicz and Warsaw], Przegląd Humanistyczny 1967, vol. 3, p. 51.

79 H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 40, p. 152.

80 Ibidem, p. 155.

Sienkiewicz and the (In)Visible

Piotr Kubkowski

(University of Warsaw)

Sienkiewicz and His Living Pictures: An Introduction

An invisible eye, images unnoticed?

In a letter to Jadwiga Janczewska, Henryk Sienkiewicz observes:

The photograph in which you are wearing a hat is definitely better. In the other, your hands are gorgeous, but the left eye is visibly smaller than the right one, while the color of your eyes is too dark when compared to the color of your hair – thus, the look on your face is unnatural and alien. Your picture with a hat reminds me of Ophelia and the moment when Hamlet meets her, exclaiming: “Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember’d.” The way you hold your hands brings to my mind Zarzecki’s painting Gwiazda Zaranna [Morning Star] – and if you held a book of prayers instead of an umbrella, I would entitle the work “After First Holy Communion.” The image reminds me of Princess Stella, the heroine of Kraszewski’s Morituri – an exquisite aristocrat, a Canonness in spe, ignoring the storms of life, loving tradition, and dreaming about the greatness of ancestors. A woman proud, poetic, sheer, and able to vanquish the inquisitive looks of the parvenus with just one powerful glance.1

A lot has been written about the writer’s talent for creating flirtatious descriptions as well as about his sensitivity towards beauty and detail. I, however, am not going to dwell upon this issue. Nor will I analyze the depictions of women’s bodies in Sienkiewicz’s literary and epistolographic oeuvre. I shall also refrain from referring to rumors about the relationship between the writer and his wife’s sister (whose painterly and detailed depiction follows the above-quoted fragment).

The letter to Jadwiga Janczewska entices me to ask questions of a different kind. The photograph – a “true,” “faithful,” modern, and reproducible medium – reminds Sienkiewicz of literary classics (William Shakespeare, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski), paintings (Mateusz Zarzecki), and religious ceremonies (Catholic First Holy Communion). Does – upon all these layers of meaning – the description retain its primary function of being the addressee’s portrait? Is September 1879 a special moment in media history? What is the importance of the circulation of this particular photograph? Let me summarize: Sienkiewicz travels around Europe, and so do the Janczewski sisters. They meet in Venice and have themselves photographed in one of the local studios. There are fourteen portraits of Maria, and almost as many of Jadwiga (the evidence is to be found in the bill attached to the letter), four of which Sienkiewicz sends to Vienna via postal service. It is a risky endeavor, as the photographs might be lost on their way, and the Janczewski sisters may not reach Vienna at the right moment to receive the letters. Sienkiewicz also sends four copies to Maria Dembowska, and the remaining ones are sent via certified mail to Janczewski sisters’ Warsaw address.

What is it like to stare with a man’s eyes at twenty-eight photographs of two women? What is it like to catalog these images, choosing what to send, and what to describe in detail? What is it like to write letters to the freshly acquainted women about their portraits (“badly done photographs, poorly retouched, with a red tint”), and to describe their bodies (“hands are gorgeous, but the left eye is visibly smaller than the right one,” “picture of a sweet little, Darling girl”)? How can Sienkiewicz compare Jadwiga to Ophelia, the Virgin Mary, a princess, a canoness, and a child participating in First Holy Communion? How can he compare Maria to a seductress, a suffragette, and a teacher? Such comparisons look like a record of insanity or at least a fragment written in a feverish state of mind.

To recapitulate, I shall not delve deeper into the story of the Janczewski sisters. The part of the letter I have referred to will serve as evidence of Sienkiewicz’s particular visual focus. I treat it as an introduction to the discussion of how Sienkiewicz shaped the visual aspect of his own persona. I am interested in the circulation of the writer’s portraits as well as in the cultural context of their distribution. Such an approach allows for situating my argument in the context of visual culture studies, defined in the following manner:

Sight is an element of visual culture: including the biology of sight and its cultural realizations (as well as the common preconceptions about them) but also phenomena such as invisibility, literal and metaphoric blindness, and the process of active overlooking. Visual culture is rooted in the processes of recognition, name-giving, and identity building based on images, portraits, gestures, or glances. It is about visualizing the world and our place in it – while the language we use to describe, imagine, and identify things is an integral part of visual culture.2

Visual culture studies, together with performance studies (the interrelatedness of these two culture- and media-related disciplines has been noted3), allows me to focus on a previously unobserved phenomenon: namely, the spectacular character of Sienkiewicz’s public biography. I argue that the circulation of Sienkiewicz’s photographs in the media was a crucial factor in the process of creation of the writer’s social role.

Even though I am not a specialist on Sienkiewicz, I would like to situate my text among the works written by Monika Gabryś-Sławińska, Krzysztof Stępnik, Jolanta Stachelska, and Marian Płachecki. I also hope that my article stays in correspondence with the documentary and editorial input of Maria Bokszczanin, Tadeusz Bujnicki, Zygmunt Falkowski, Julian Krzyżanowski, and Lech Ludorowski – all of whom aim at explaining Sienkiewicz’s popularity.4 Stępnik proposes gathering data from the press (“press microbiographics”) in order to create the writer’s “public biography,”5 which supplements traditional biographies based on personal documents and literary works. I suggest an even further biographical supplementation, which includes portrait images functioning in the press (and other media). I perceive this addition as justified, at least for the reason that Stępnik’s novel work was not endowed with any illustrations, except for the one on its cover. Analogously, Sztachelska’s and Płachecki’s articles refrain from treating visual data as the object of analysis and interpretation. Conducting research on the history of memorializing Henry Sienkiewicz by the means of images and performances as well as a comprehensive presentation of the early circulation of his visual portraits deserve a separate, extensive monograph. To delve deeply enough into this topic requires months of meticulous research, and is impossible within the scope of just one article. This is why in this paper, I will make several introductory observations, which I will only episodically complement with in-depth commentary.

The research on the visual representations of the first Polish Nobel laureate in Literature was limited and resulted in sparse academic publications. Except for Płachecki’s article, which I have already mentioned, one should remember Marian Kowalski’s book, published in 1989 and presenting a summary of information gathered by 1986, which is the date of Sienkiewicz’s 140th birthday and 70th death anniversaries.6 Kowalski’s work is important, though limited in the scope of its analysis. There are also early, occasionally quoted analytical works, which tend to be treated as primary sources – Józef Ujejski’s and Jan Czepiński’s texts published on the occasion of Sienkiewicz’s death, as well as its 10th anniversary.7 These publications are devoted to the national mourning after Sienkiewicz’s death, which had the nature of a collective demonstration or performance.

Sienkiewicz as a spectacle: Apotheoses

I am discussing here several chosen visual sources and performance descriptions stemming from the period in Sienkiewicz’s life which witnessed an explosion in the production of the writer’s painted portraits and their copies. Before radio gained popularity, the development of popular illustrated press reached its zenith in the first two decades of the 20th century (often referred to as the actual end of the “prolonged” 19th century). This period was, in general, permeated by a fascination with the modes of visual culture that were at that time not yet even one hundred years old. Joanna Kubicka notes that the century in question is the century of biography and that this particular period has marked historiography with an enchantment with great figures of “self-made men.”8 In the 19th century, biographies were among the most widely read genres. Stories of great people were as popular as magazine fiction published in installments – and the medium used for such publications was invariably the well-established paper press. Self-made men, such as the “aristocrats of art” or the “aristocrats of knowledge” were appreciated more than aristocrats by blood. Greatness was no longer inscribed in family roots. At the turn of the 20th century, together with Helena Modrzejewska and Maria Słodowska, Sienkiewicz became world-famous. And fame was not only the domain of words but also of images and performances.

The peak of Sienkiewicz’s unquestioned and noncontroversial popularity witnessed the circulation of the author’s printed images, but also the proliferation of tableaux vivants. Printed press sources provide numerous examples of live performances, which were often combined with firework shows. In 1901, the Kurier Stanisławowski weekly described one such tableau, entitled Apoteoza Henryka Sienkiewicza (The apotheosis of Henry Sienkiewicz), in the following manner:

Next to Henryk Sienkiewicz’s bust, above which a charming genius spread the laurel wreath, all major heroes of the Trilogy and Quo Vadis are gathered, while a crowd clad in traditional Polish costumes is paying tribute to the writer’s bust. The upper part of the image depicts a mighty personification of Poland in a victorious pose with her arms raised.

The image made a grand impression. A firework show was an additional delight for the spectators – they forced the performers to raise the curtain three times.9

An entire series of tableaux vivants was also presented in 1900 at the Wielki Theater in Warsaw during the famous Sienkiewicz jubilee, which lasted for several hours and constituted the main event in the series of celebrations devoted to the writer. After the play Zagłoba swatem (Zagłoba the matchmaker) had been staged, local painters presented their tributes: Miłosz Kotarbiński prepared Za chlebem (For money) – a spectacle devoted to Polish immigrants in America; Julian Maszyński adapted the short story entitled “Pójdźmy za Nim!” (We shall follow him). According to the accounts in the press, Maszyński “made the major events more picturesque, imbuing the novella with highly aesthetical aspects.”10 Kazimierz Alchimowicz staged Pojedynek Wołodyjowskiego (Wołodyjowski’s duel), and Franciszek Żmurko – Pożar Rzymu (The Great Fire of Rome). A journalist later wrote that the writer’s apotheosis was finally visible: “Apollo celebrated the Poet’s glory, while sister muses surrounded the statue in picturesque groups. The audience gladly applauded all the tableaux.”11

Krzysztof Stępnik mentions examples of similar events held in Zakopane, Stanisławów, Warsaw, Skarżysko, and Inowrocław. At the same time, he emphasizes that Sienkiewicz was actively shaping his own fame. The writer undeniably understood the mechanisms of the capitalist market: he planned the publishing schedule of his magazine novels so that their finales were released at Christmas; he also planned the premieres of the bound versions of his novels for Christmas.12 Visual representations, however, remained (at least partially) out of Sienkiewicz’s control. Similarly, the reprints, adaptations, makeovers, and the publishing of abridged versions of his literary works stayed outside of Sienkiewicz’s sphere of influence, especially if these processes took place abroad. The information gathered from his letters as well as the analysis offered by Lech Ludorowski13 prove that Henryk Sienkiewicz arranged the organization of his anniversaries so that they did not coincide with the celebrations held to commemorate Adam Mickiewicz.

The scene described in the Kurier Stanisławowski is an example of a tableau vivant that is at the same time immobile and revealed with the rise of the curtain. It is supposed to be watched from one side only. To a certain extent, the actors involved resemble effigies. Nevertheless, this is a performance enmeshed in a particular spatial and temporal frame, and thus impossible to reproduce. It is supposed to be delightful, but the organizational supply of the performance hints at its limitations.14 Maria Gerson-Dąbrowska notes:

As for the costumes used in tableaux vivants – they are much easier to prepare than costumes for theatrical performances. They do not require a perfect trim, they can quickly be corrected with the use of pins, and a particular character may be dressed from the visible side only. It is easiest to prepare costumes for allegories […]. They can be made from anything: bedclothes, rugs, curtains, scarves, furs, and pieces of gauze. The sole requirements are creativity and some manual dexterity.15

Sienkiewicz as a spectacle: categorizing metonymies

Apotheosis was one of the most popular subgenres of tableaux vivants. In this context, it is important to mention Wojciech Gerson, a famous artist, co-founder of the Zachęta Fine Arts Fellowship, under whose tutorship Jadwiga Janczewska painted her famous self-portrait.16 Wojciech Gerson was an experienced creator of tableaux vivants 17 and the father of Maria Gerson-Dąbrowska. I quote Gerson-Dąbrowska’s work here as since early childhood she was acquainted with the rules of staging painted works. Her manual for the staging of tableaux vivants which I quote in my paper was created at the time when “living pictures” were losing their popularity. Gerson-Dąbrowska introduced early 20th-century readers to the rules of such performances, revealing the invisible backstage to the spectators. For a contemporary reader, however, Gerson-Dąbrowska presents the world of an art almost forgotten, as we could only know the performances from their descriptions in the press, and rarely from photographs.

The key to a successful performance was the proper “composition of the image,” aiming at a clear reception. An adequately large team of actors holding items of symbolic value should be grouped together. The scene should be properly lit in order to bring out the vividness of colors. The compositional success depended on the right choice of background as well. Gerson-Dąbrowska stated:

Paintings aiming at a certain form of apotheosis, i.e. awarding special merits to someone (for example, Kościuszko, Jagiełło, Piast, Poland, or Education personified), require a symmetrical grouping. Sometimes, instead of placing a live person, a portrait, a bust, or a statue can be placed in the center, and live people may surround it. This formula is popular when someone with accomplishments for the country, art, or science is celebrated.18

These general tips precede the manual for paying homage to artists:

If we stage an apotheosis of a poet or an artist – such as, for example, Mickiewicz, Grottger, Matejko, or Sienkiewicz – characters stemming from his works may surround his bust or portrait. […] Therefore, Sienkiewicz could be accompanied by Skrzetuski (Skshetuski), Wołodyjowski (Volodyovski), Kmicic (Kmita), Oleńka, Zagłoba, etc.19

Małgorzata Komza, an author of a contemporary monograph devoted to tableaux vivants, pinpoints that this particular kind of art is hard to define: the rules for staging tableaux changed over the decades, and the characteristics of a genre could be distinguished only since the end of the 18th century. The positioning of the actors on the stage was crucial but also the fact that this was a silent and, at least partially, a static performance. Sometimes it had a dramaturgy of its own and consisted of a sequence of representations divided by the closing of a curtain. Sometimes the forming of the final tableau was preceded by a peculiar pantomime: actors assuming their positions on the stage. In other circumstances, mobile lighting was used, as well as color-changing lights. Some performances were accompanied by live music.20 Tableaux vivants are something in which the spectators participate, something which they perceive and interpret, but do not discuss in detail. Even press accounts consist of either enthusiastic reviews (“a highly aesthetical spectacle”) or descriptions devoid of elements of critical analysis. The comprehension of the performance’s reception was meant to be instantaneous and communal. By definition, a critic had no access to its meaning and was left “deeply thrilled.” What we are left with is, therefore, an archeology of affects.

The spectacles had specific topics: scenes from everyday life, allegories, or a mixture of both. The tableau from Stanisławów was an example of such a mixture, combining the story of a particular man and his work with the symbolic representation of Polishness. Dariusz Kosiński, when writing about Polish cultural spectacles, argues that “Polish culture, or even Polish identity, has had a deeply theatrical character. It is proven by the manner in which events and practices existed: the way in which historical events have been played out, how political and religious practices have functioned, and how different and important Polish spectacles have always been.” Kosiński makes this argument in order to “emphasize the crucial values of the theatrical manner of life, which contributed to the survival of a community – together with the values that were considered by this community as the most important.”21

Being Polish as a spectacle: How to be present, if you do not exist?

These two sentences by Kosiński ought to be quoted every time a scholar is exposed to the source materials describing the oddness of communal life of 19th-century Poles in the so-called Vistula Land and in other Polish lands stripped of their autonomy by the Russian Empire. I remind myself of Kosiński’s words whenever I read the emotion-laden descriptions of the ecstatic collective reactions to speeches given by Henryk Sienkiewicz and other idols of that time. These two sentences resonate in my mind whenever I come across accounts of euphoric greetings in the streets, the homage paid to Sienkiewicz both in provincial committees and by the members of metropolitan high society. Kosiński’s phrase “the manner in which events and practices existed” suggests that this was a “manner” which was to certain extent atypical: the events did not “simply” happen, and the cultural practices did not find their “regular realizations,” to which special attention need not have been given. Quite the contrary – just like plants taking root in atypical conditions – the events had strangely distorted shapes, a confusing “manner of existence.” That is why the Aesopian language full of metaphors and substitutes was used by Poles living after the January Rising in three countries-provinces which used to be united, but which one did not even know how to properly call after the partitions. These Poles were combining different themes, which is why it is nowadays difficult to disentangle the strands of a tight knot of their imagery. This penchant for complexity may be the reason behind the immense popularity of the silent tableaux vivants in the territories in question, as the formation of Polish public life was not allowed in the territories lacking autonomy. This is why noticing in the “manner of existence” a manifestation of “mass,”22 and not “public” life, importantly points to the fact that the Poles were sending a subversive, hidden message through performative acts and practices. Sienkiewicz himself was a master of hints, parables, metaphors, and palimpsests. Consequently, he often became a part of an intricate universe of signs and indirect references, as, for example, during the Warsaw jubilee or in the tableau performed in Stanisławów. The live nature of these events, however, is difficult to analyze today, as only the textual accounts are left.

According to a theatrical interpretation of the performance in Stanisławów, Sienkiewicz and his literary protagonists stemming from different times (the era of Sarmatianism in Poland, the birth of Christianity) and places (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ancient Rome) are paying homage to the writer and the inexistent – though victorious – Poland. This consolidates the set of values distributed among the members of the Polish nation. We can, however, broaden this interpretation – if the apotheosis in question, as well as the lesser-known one held in Warsaw,23 are treated as a cultural performance in line with the performative approach suggested by Kosiński. In such a case, we could say that Polish victory and glory were becoming more real with each time the curtain opened, and with each glance shot at Sienkiewicz’s bust exhibited in one of the formally non-Polish – but otherwise very Polish – cities. We could say that this performance not only reminded about the available definition of Polishness (Sarmatian, Catholic, resurrected – as the props would suggest), but it could create anew the idea of what Polishness means. These two functions – recreation and creation – can be found in the classic definitions of cultural performances, such as the one formulated by John MacAloon. According to him, performances are the peculiar “occasions in which as a […] society we reflect upon and define ourselves, dramatize our collective myths and history, present ourselves with alternatives, and eventually change in some ways while remaining the same in other.”24 It is important to note that I am discussing the art of tableau vivant which was at that time already anachronistic.

Looking for other “Polish meta-images” of the second half of the 19th century, the scholars have been focusing on representations subject to reproduction: Iwona Kurz discussed Pięciu poległych (Five men down) by Karol Beyer (by no means a tableau vivant), 25 and Łukasz Zaręba focused on Artur Grottger’s cycle devoted to the January Rising.26 In the case of the performance I analyze, its anonymous authors create something unique, to be seen live and only once. The characters constituting the apotheosis of Sienkiewicz and the Polish community were lit by the glittering of fireworks, and thus revealed themselves to the audience in Stanisławów for only a moment. They were visible for a few dozen seconds as if the flash of a camera went off, but at the same time, they were presented in multiple encores, as if a series of photographs was taken. Such a short-lived unveiling was not a generic characteristic of tableaux vivants but rather their popular subgenre.27 Put briefly, the spectators were participating in a performance invoking and updating the mythical past of a Catholic country, the spectacle of which, at the same time, aimed at defining Polishness for future generations. Mythology and modernity formed a double loop in a combination of the old-fashioned practice of tableaux vivants with a reference to flash photography: this appears to be a format perfectly suited for celebrating Henryk Sienkiewicz’s jubilee.

Sienkiewicz as a double spectacle: Apotheosis revisited

Sienkiewicz, present in Stanisławów merely as a statue, personally visited the Wielki Theater in Warsaw. This had been a long day, and the body of the not-so-young writer must have already been tired. Nevertheless, he stood in front of the gathered audience, in one more tableau vivant, constituting the center around which a symmetrical composition of admirers was grouped. It was a metonymic performance of Polishness, the national pars pro toto, which Poles had constructed out of themselves (and the allegories of certain values), with Sienkiewicz playing the main, though silent, role.

The spectators dressed in their anniversary costumes were holding loud conversations before the curtain went up. The roar of voices resembled the roar of a rough sea. This loudness, the smiles on people’s faces, their eyes shining – all indicated excitement. Everyone became silent when the Jubilee appeared in his box decorated with flowers…

Everyone looked at him…

And he, solemn as always, with a melancholic look on his face – stared into the room… He almost cried… What surrounded him was Respect, Adoration, and Love. They were all sitting in the chairs, looking out of their boxes, leaning on the railings, soaring like swallows…

The Poet-Jubilee saw all these emotions on the people’s faces. As these feelings were all aimed at him, he stood thrilled, with a pounding heart. The applause was really long… Spectators kept clapping to the rhythm of their hearts beating for the great Poet…28

The relationship between Sienkiewicz and images

Even though Sienkiewicz’s cloudy countenance visible in the central box of the Wielki Theater may suggest otherwise, it is possible to argue that the writer preferred to shape his image in visual self-narratives rather than in words. In a well-known correspondence with Stefan Demby (who worked on Sienkiewicz’s bibliography), which was exchanged just before the jubilee, that is in 1899 and 1900, Sienkiewicz summarized his life for the first and the last time, revealing it to the readers’ eyes. His biographical note was very brief, limited to a few dozen sentences, which are full of mistakes (according to the editors). Sienkiewicz was, however, pressing for the publication of his portrait (a photogravure) in the edition of Humoreski z teki Worszyłły (Humorous Sketches from Woroszyłło’s Portfolio) and Selim Mirza.29 He also used to sign letters with a self-portrait – for example, a caricature of himself endowed with a prominent belly.30 Of course, Sienkiewicz and his admirers created a visual persona of the writer, but these representations soon acquired a life of their own. This involves both an inertia that determined the circulation of the writer’s portraits, distributed by both the writer and the exponents of his works, but also the very logic of images, concerning their functioning, will, and biographies. This is why the methodological basis of the following paragraphs is related, first of all, to the role of social circulation of cultural texts, in this case, images, whose significance was emphasized by Stefan Żołkiewski.31 At the same time, I use tools and methods introduced by specialists in the field of visual culture, which allow me to explain the active role of visual images.

Since his early years, Sienkiewicz was preoccupied with images. In a letter to Ignacy Baliński, he stated:

The third book that made a grand impression on me was an illustrated book on Napoleon’s life.32 From the moment I had finished it, I dreamt of becoming a great leader of a nation ruling Europe. This dream accompanied me during my entire childhood and the early period of my youth.33

It’s an important statement: visualizing the life story of a certain individual shaped Sienkiewicz’s aesthetic sensitivity. Later, Sienkiewicz was known as sensitive to the beauty of adults and adolescents of both sexes: proof can be found in early correspondence with Konrad Dobrski and other friends made by Sienkiewicz during the summer holiday of 1886. In these letters, Sienkiewicz included photograph-based drawings of himself and his colleagues, as well as reported in lively discussions held on styles and aesthetics, especially the ones related with the woman whom Dobrski adored. Sienkiewicz rushed his addressees: “Send the photograph quickly, I’m dying,”34 “I need this photograph with all my heart.”35 His vivid imagination was full of images even at the time of the first literary endeavors, but his everyday existence was full of images, too. Sienkiewicz enjoyed posing for pictures, collecting, and sending them. He gladly commissioned photographic processing and kept the photographs in diaries and books. He carried them hidden among personal belongings, treating them as valuable companions of his distant travels.

Sienkiewicz was very focused upon his own body, and this phenomenon is especially vivid when the writer’s awareness of even the tiniest ailments is considered. This trait has even been attributed to Sienkiewicz’s alleged hypochondria.36 Having insight into what is happening within the body is often related with a propensity towards imagining the body itself – and this process is clearly visible in the letters sent by Sienkiewicz to his closest friends, in which the writer provides lengthy descriptions of his physical suffering succeeded by the descriptions of his portraits. For example, in the seven known letters to Karol Benni, Sienkiewicz discusses the oil paintings of himself and his wife (as well as the transportation of the artworks to Oblęgorek); he often mentions photographs and the art of photography as well as other visual representations.37 The correspondence with Jadwiga Janczewska,38 which I have already mentioned at the beginning of this paper, can serve as an exquisite source of self-references and meta-commentaries. One should also remember about the letters gladly exchanged and friendships made with visual artists responsible for Sienkiewicz’s portraits: Józef Chełmoński, Jan Styka, Stanisław Witkiewicz, Kazimierz Pochwalski, and Józef Deskur.

As I have already stated, the images of Sienkiewicz are not limited to printed representations. Special editions of the Warsaw press also mention medals or other accessories, whose quality – incidentally – left a lot to be desired: “some shops with jewelry sold key rings with Sienkiewicz’s portrait – which, however, was not one of the best.”39 Interestingly, people and items related to Sienkiewicz tended to be portrayed, too. There are known reprints of the effigies of individuals responsible for theatrical adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s works as well as for the translations of these works into English, Italian, Portuguese, and German. Yet another form of paying metonymic homage to the writer in question was the circulation of the illustrations accompanying his novels as well as the distribution of artworks based on Sienkiewicz’s literature. At the turn of the 20th century, such images were widespread and sometimes even exhibited. The visual career of artworks related to Quo Vadis is worth a separate paper, or even a monograph: the process of the social circulation of the novel’s editions was accompanied by paintings, sketches, exhibitions, slideshows, theatre plays, operas, tableaux vivants, and cinematographic images. Album jubileuszowe Henryka Sienkiewicza: główniejsze sceny i postacie z powieści i nowel Sienkiewicza w dwudziestu ilustracjach40 (The jubilee album of Henryk Sienkiewicz: Major events and protagonists of his novels in twenty illustrations) published in 1898 (the year for which the “first” Henryk Sienkiewicz jubilee was planned) was a special edition, which consisted of nineteen illustrations made by the best Polish artists of that time. The illustrations depicted the protagonists of Sienkiewicz’s novels and novellas as well as selected scenes from his works (which could later be used to create tableaux vivants), all complemented with relevant quotes.

Other sources worth microhistorical analysis are the issues of the Tygodnik Ilustrowany magazine that were partially or fully devoted to Sienkiewicz’s jubilee: issue 10 and 11 (March 1900), 51 and 52 (December 1900). These issues are replete with visual images of places which Sienkiewicz used to visit: the guest house in Zakopane, the villa near Paris, the park in Saint-Maur, the landscapes of the Marne river (“this is greatly satisfying: to row a boat on the Marne, early in the morning”41– Sienkiewicz stated) or the surroundings of Perros-Guirec in Brittany (with the castle in Ploumanac’h portrayed three times). The largest prints were devoted to the writer’s private properties (his mansion in Oblęgorek and the study in his Warsaw apartment at Wspólna 24) as well as to Wola Okrzejska – Sienkiewicz’s place of birth (these prints represented his childhood home, the manor outbuilding, the village, and the church).

The writer’s visual environment: How to perceive Sienkiewicz?

“U Henryka Sienkiewicza” (Visiting Henryk Sienkiewicz), an eight-page long article by Ferdynand Hoesick, was the longest text in the Tygodnik Ilustrowany jubilee editions. It proves especially valuable for me as it is both a textual and a visual report on the interior of Sienkiewicz’s house. This article is heavily image-focused and can be treated as a tribute to the visual aspect of the writer’s lifestyle. Hoesick is describing what can be seen on pictures: a true horror vacui. The walls, the cabinets, and the desks are loaded with hunting trophies, guns, and bladed weapons, portraits and landscape paintings:

The whole room has a floor covered with a flowery carpet, door hidden behind a heavy curtain, drapes matching the crimson wallpaper; there is a big table in the middle, covered with a linen cloth, cluttered with books, trinkets, various writing utensils; a refined tiny desk bucking under the weight of ornaments, frames and curiosities stands between two windows; a fireplace glares from behind a Japanese screen, the mantelpiece is crammed with porcelain vases, bronze items, and photographs; an enormous ottoman supports the main wall; an array of soft, cushioned furniture is placed in the room in a tasteful manner; a glazed bookcase stands next to the door, tightly filled with decoratively bound volumes; on the walls – apart from several large and small shelves with books – lots of paintings, pictures, sketches, deer antlers and buffalo horns, animal skulls, old weapons, maces, karabelas, pickaxes, bows and Tartar arrows; a huge antlered head of a moose sticks out of one wall, placed high up; a beautiful, exceptional lamp from the East hangs from the middle of the ceiling.42

The reader who, seeking voyeuristic pleasures, had managed to get through such extensive descriptions, finally saw the writer’s study, in which Sienkiewicz created the very best of his works. Elaine Freedgood,43 a specialist on the descriptions of Victorian interiors, could have described this room as full of “cavalcades of objects.” These objects were hanging in mind-boggling weaves and combinations, with heavy, patterned cloth in the background. A lamp from the Far East shed light on the Wild West paraphernalia intermingled with images of the Tartars. One image on top of another: the gifts that the writer received were placed in between his trophies – a true graveyard of animals that had fallen prey to the writer’s passion for hunting. In Hoesick’s text, detailed descriptions of further items – sculptures, portraits, and landscapes – are interspersed with Sienkiewicz’s casual comments on his aesthetic preferences (he held the Pre-Raphaelites in high esteem), the origins of particular things, and the relationships they had with his biography. In this manner, reader-attractive information about Sienkiewicz – such as his hunts and journeys overseas, described, for example, in his Listy z podróży po Ameryce (Portrait of America) – gained a physical existence, embodied in real objects. Next, these items-relics were offered to the newspaper readers in two ways: in Hoesick’s written reportage and in the photographs. The images are thus inscribed into an essentially modern pattern: the mass idol is being sold, and his private property may be subject to a harsh evaluation of the potentially critical audience. On the other hand, however, the reader denies this privilege and rejects the power which is granted to him with the ostensibly defenseless printouts of Sienkiewicz’s private properties. The social circulation I am investigating can thus be treated in a manner akin to the circulation of hagiographical writings, which tend to be accompanied with illustrations. Images of this kind provide an accessible idea of a hero, including his actions and typical characteristics. They are spread in order to cultivate and strengthen faith – and such is the case of the newspaper images I discuss here. One should not forget how strongly the images of Sienkiewicz and Poland were interrelated, and that, as a consequence, the writer was not the sole object of faith, but so was the idea of the nation-state that he represented.

Images within images

The portraits of Sienkiewicz himself were published in the December 22 Tygodnik Ilustrowany issue (no. 9). There was a painting by Kazimierz Pochwalski on the first page. Secondly, the magazine printed the reproduction of Henryk Sienkiewicz w różnych epokach życia (Henryk Sienkiewicz in different stages of life), which consisted of eight photographic portraits of the writer. The cycle began with Sienkiewicz’s secondary-school years (1863), portrayed him respectively in 1869, 1872, 1878, 1880, 1883, 1899, and closed with the most up-to-date image – a photograph by Jan Mieczkowski. This photograph, taken in the jubilee year, showed Sienkiewicz in the foreground, with the Warsaw cityscape in the background, and was accompanied by the Roman numeral XXV related with to the 25th Jubilee. What did this combination of images communicate? Did it imply that Sienkiewicz was young once, or that he graduated in Warsaw? Or maybe the portrait selection was a statement meaning that Sienkiewicz had always been one of us? Maybe it told the story of the writer’s maturity, of him aging gradually, as documented in a lifelong snapshot experiment? Maybe it communicated the fact that such form of documentation was technologically possible, and that Sienkiewicz, born in the 1840s, was one of the first to have an almost complete series of portraits? In addition to this photographic cycle, Tygodnik Ilustrowany printed a portrait of Sienkiewicz based on Aleksander Karol’s photograph, a photograph of the writer’s bronze bust carved by Stanisław Roman Lewandowski, Julius Mien’s photograph of Sienkiewicz in Zakopane (accompanied by children and a dachshund),44 and finally, a portrait in pencil drawn by Witkiewicz.45

Kazimierz Pochwalski, whom I have already mentioned, made a number of Sienkiewicz’s portraits. The first two were finished when Pochwalski and Sienkiewicz were traveling together in 1886 to the Middle East, next ones were created in 1889-1890 (later, Pochwalski co-authored also Album jubileuszowy [The jubilee album] published in 1898, in which the first image of Sienkiewicz was Pochwalski’s 1890 work). I am especially interested in Pochwalski’s painting, which is presently the most well-known image of Sienkiewicz, and which was also iconic in the late 19th century. Due to the popularity of this image, I would like to concentrate on its social circulation as well as the relationship between the artwork and the writer. Pochwalski began working on the portrait in the summer of 1889 in Kraków. Sienkiewicz describes it as follows: “Yesterday I visited Pochw[alski], who began to work on the portrait, made a sketch, and started to paint. I don’t know what will happen next, but now there is no likeness. A broad head, short nose, walrus mustache – no likeness at all. […] It’s going to be finished soon.”46 This work, however, was not quickly finished, as Pochwalski and Sienkiewicz were soon preoccupied with managing their travels around Europe. Thus, the model and the artist returned to their work after nearly a year. Next year in June, Sienkiewicz wrote to Janczewska, slightly disputing the mocking tone of her earlier comments:

My portrait is going to be finished by Thursday – and it will be very good: a bit bigger than reality, that’s why my body and my face seemed enormous, but this enormity disappears in the process of corrections. It shall disappear even more due to the box frames, and the way the portrait will be hanged. Its style is, in general, very serious.47

This painting appears twice in the 10th jubilee issue of the Tygodnik Ilustrowany: on the cover and on the photograph depicting a wall in the writer’s apartment. The artwork is also described and interpreted by Hoesick:

The wall above the ottoman is almost completely covered by two portraits painted by Pochwalski: Sienkiewicz’s famous portrait of 1890, undoubtedly the best of all his portraits, and the portrait of the late Mrs. Sienkiewicz […].

In the portrait one can see Sienkiewicz sitting in a stylish armchair and looking at the viewer, his face firm and true, with a dark olive complexion (as if he came from the Mediterranean), and sporting a short Spanish-style beard – a truly manly face with regular, noble features, an aquiline nose, dark, expressive eyes full of melancholy. When one notices Sienkiewicz’s pensive mood, perfectly rendered by the painter and generally characteristic for the writer, one is automatically reminded of Lorenzo Il Pensieroso, whose reverie is similarly striking.

At the same time, looking at this portrait, painted while Sienkiewicz was writing Without Dogma, one is of the impression that this is a meaningful portrait of a writer who enriched the world with the creation of Płoszowski – the Werther and the Hamlet of the late 19th century.48

What is especially noticeable in this description is the aspect which was also emphasized in the writer’s letter to Jadwiga Janczewska: namely, the portrait is a “talking image,” which means that it tells stories embedded in the exact time and space. Most importantly, however, it is an accurate representation of Sienkiewicz in 1890 – in the period when he was writing his fin de siècle novel, and the portrait reflects the essence of this literary work (together with further references: Leon Płoszowski, the protagonist of Without Dogma (Bez Dogmatu), who is also the author’s reflection, summons the iconic heroes of Wolfgang Goethe and William Shakespeare). There is even more to this description: Sienkiewicz’s countenance resembles Michelangelo’s sculpture of the Duke of Urbino but also reminds the viewer of a patrician – maybe even of Gaius Petronius Arbiter, casting a melancholic glance into the dusk of the world as he knows it. Sienkiewicz’s image is characterized by all the traits that were commonly associated with the writer: “manly” looks, dark eyes full of melancholy (caused by his first wife’s death or by the state of the nation), facial features noble and sharp (brought out by a Spanish-style beard), and a slight tinge of exoticism, which amounted to a darker complexion, often associated with Sienkiewicz’s Tartar ancestors.

Therefore, the image of Sienkiewicz, which was already reprinted twice, was once again described by Hoesick. This was, however, not the last time:

Standing in front of the 1890 portrait and looking at the true Sienkiewicz, one can notice only a slight change: within the scope of ten years, the author has grown quite a lot of grey hair. The brown-haired man has become grizzled.49

The fourth image of Sienkiewicz is revealed – the writer looks only slightly different, his hair is slowly going grey. Hoesick repeats the gesture of the mentioned tableau, comparing the writer’s appearance from before a decade to the one that is revealed to him.

Gestures in pictures

An apt reader, who has navigated through a number of paragraphs full of various images of the jubilee, turns the page again only to see – for the fifth time – the same clouded countenance, the same hands crossed on the backrest of a chair, the familiar pleats in the jacket, crinkles in the waistcoat. This is the drawing entitled Sienkiewicz u siebie (Sienkiewicz at home): ten years after Pochwalski portrayed him, Sienkiewicz sits in exactly the same pose in his apartment on Wspólna Street. This famous image of Sienkiewicz is an almost identical reproduction of the 1890 portrait – only the perspective is slightly different. Ferdynand Hoesick prepared the reader for the proper reception of this image with his detailed description, which also supports his opinion of Pochwalski’s painting being “undoubtedly the best of all his portraits,” or, in other words, the image that should come to our minds whenever we think of Sienkiewicz. Guns and hunting trophies are located in the background, an ashtray and some quills on the desk, the Warsaw cityscape is behind the closed window drapes. The portrait of Sienkiewicz’s wife hangs on the opposite wall (painted by Kazimierz Pochwalski in 188650). Her bust hangs over the writer’s right arm as if she were his guardian angel. The 1890 portrait made by Pochwalski is outside the frame. Sienkiewicz could catch a glimpse of it with his right eye, and properly assume his pose opting for an adequately cloudy countenance. He could place his hand on the backrest in the right manner, emphasizing the continuity of his existence, as well as the passing of time this way.

In his analysis of film images, Giorgio Agamben states that such images are “neither poses éternelles (such as the forms of the classical age) nor coupes immobiles of movement, but rather coupes mobiles,” which allows him for the discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s images-mouvement concept. Agamben argues that:

It is necessary to extend Deleuze’s argument and show how it relates to the status of the image in general within modernity. This implies, however, that the mythical rigidity of the image has been broken and that here, properly speaking, there are no images but only gestures. Every image, in fact, is animated by an antinomic polarity: on the one hand, images are the reification and obliteration of a gesture (it is the imago as death mask or as symbol); on the other hand, they preserve the dynamis intact (as in Muybridge’s snapshots or in any sports photograph).51

The image of Sienkiewicz, which grows out of Pochwalski’s paintings and is supplemented by the active performance of the writer, is multiplied and ceaselessly modified thanks to reproductions and minor changes in perspective. By employing Agamben’s argument in my discussion, I can argue that this plastic image becomes a reference to the development of cinematic techniques, or to the medium which operates in live, moving pictures. Thus, the Tygodnik Ilustrowany magazine offers its readers a screening of a film about Sienkiewicz – a film, which has never been made.

Sienkiewicz: Living images, living gestures

The notions of “living pictures” or “moving images,” stemming from the 19th century, are associated both with cinematography and an outdated form of performance – the tableau vivant, in which gestures are immobile, and yet dynamic. Therefore, the living picture of Sienkiewicz is revealed to the reader-viewer, as if the Stanisławów Apotheosis was still taking place. As Agamben notes, the modern image works in two distinct manners: “the former corresponds to the recollection seized by voluntary memory, while the latter corresponds to the image flashing in the epiphany of involuntary memory. And while the former lives in magical isolation, the latter always refers beyond itself to a whole of which it is a part.”52 Thus, there is Sienkiewicz immersed in his past (in the years 1890 and 1900), but also Sienkiewicz encountered in the dynamis sphere, present in the living act-gesture, in which he becomes a huge, national Polish imaginarium – the one which he himself co-created, referring “beyond himself to a whole of which he is a part.”

Ferdynand Hoesick opened his reportage “U Henryka Sienkiewicza” (Visiting Henryk Sienkiewicz) with Aleksander Fredro’s opinion, according to which “in order to gain in Poland some deserved respect, one must either die or ... refrain from seeing anybody, keep a distance from people … in other words, one must not let anyone know him in person.”53 Hoesick argues that “these words prove untrue in relation to Sienkiewicz: Sienkiewicz is enjoying such fame that no living Polish writer has ever experienced”54 because Sienkiewicz knew how to use his sociability as a key to success. It appears to be paradoxical, but it is a false paradox. Sienkiewicz perfectly sensed the new media context – including the growing importance of images and performances – and he knew how to use it. He added the necessary dynamic to his portraits and his gestures, making living pictures out of himself, and allowing these images to become metonymies for the Polish people. Thus, Sienkiewicz built a bridge between the old media of texts and static pictures, and the new media – adaptable, plastic, and full of life. This may be yet another explanation of the career of Sienkiewicz as a popular writer and a common idol.

1 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 2, part 1, edited by M. Bokszczanin, Warsaw 1996, pp. 115–16; trans. K.F.

2 Ł. Zaremba, “#zobaczyc_swiat. Od tłumacza” [#see_the_world: Translator’s note], an introduction to N. Mirzoeff, How to See the World, trans. Ł. Zaremba, Kraków-Warsaw 2016, p. 8. See also I. Kurz, “Kultura wizualna w Polsce. Fragmenty” [Visual culture in Poland: Fragments], in Kultura wizualna w Polsce. Fragmenty [Visual culture in Poland: Fragments], Warsaw 2017, pp. 8–23; trans. K.F.

3 I. Kurz, “Obraz i performans: w zapętleniu” [Image and performance: In a loop], in Więcej niż obraz [More than an image], edited by E. Wilk et al., Wyd. Naukowe Katedra, Gdańsk 2015, pp. 259–65.

4 This topic has been widely discussed. In addition to comprehensive biographies, this topic has recently been raised in the following works: K. Stępnik, Henryk Sienkiewicz. Studia z mikrobiografiki prasowej [Henryk Sienkiewicz: An analysis of press microbiographics], Lublin 2016, pp. 11–38; J. Sztachelska, “Dwie legendy Sienkiewicza” [Sienkiewicz: Two legends], in Henryk Sienkiewicz w kulturze polskiej [Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish culture], edited by K. Stępnik and T. Bujnicki, Lublin 2007, pp. 25–41; M. Płachecki, “Osiem lat, osiem dni. Drugi pogrzeb Henryka Sienkiewicza” [Eight years, eight days: The second funeral of Henryk Sienkiewicz], in Sienkiewicz polityczny. Sienkiewicz ideologiczny [Political Sienkiewicz. Ideological Sienkiewicz], edited by M. Gloger and R. Koziołek, Warsaw 2016, pp. 279–90. All three authors declare to be, however, solely text-oriented (Stępnik, Płachecki), or their work directly exemplifies such an approach (Sztachelska). See also Monika Gabryś-Sławińska, “Pierwsze miejsce z urzędu należy się Sienkiewiczowi. Pisarz na łamach ‘Tygodnika Ilustrowanego’ w latach 1905–1916” [The first place by law belongs to Sienkiewicz: The writer in the Tygodnik Ilustrowany, 1905–1916], Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2016, vol. 4, no. 51, pp. 465–481. The topic in question was also raised by Z. Falkowski in Przede wszystkim Sienkiewicz [Sienkiewicz above all], Warsaw 1959 (especially the chapter entitled “Kult i anathema” [The cult and anathema]).

5 K. Stępnik, op. cit., pp. 8–9.

6 M. Kowalski, Portret Henryka Sienkiewicza w medalierstwie, rzeźbie, numizmatyce i filatelistyce [The portrait of Henryk Sienkiewicz in medallic art, sculpture, numismatics, and philately], Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk w Międzyrzecu Podlaskim, Międzyrzec Podlaski 1989. The text was also published with the same title in Rocznik Międzyrzecki 1986, vol. 18.

7 J. Ujejski, Na zgon Henryka Sienkiewicza [On the death of Henryk Sienkiewicz], Drukarnia Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 1917; J. Czempiński, “Na ojczyzny łono”.. : opis przewiezienia zwłok nieśmiertelnego duchowego przywódcy narodu, genialnego pisarza Henryka Sienkiewicza z Vevey, gdzie zmarł, do Warszawy oraz pogrzebu w stolicy i uroczystości żałobnych [“To the Motherland”: A description of transporting the body of the immortal spiritual leader of the nation, the ingenious writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, from Vevey where he died, to Warsaw, where the funeral and the mourning ceremonies were held], Towarzystwo Oświaty Narodowej, Warsaw 1927.

8 J. Kubicka, Na przełomie. Pozytywiści warszawscy i pomoc własna [At the turn of the century: Warsaw positivists and self-help], WUW, Warsaw 2016, pp. 23–4.

9 K. Stępnik, op. cit., p. 16; trans. K.F.

10 Trans. K.F.

11 “Jubileusz H. Sienkiewicza” [The jubilee of H. Sienkiewicz], Kurier Poranny December 23, 1900, no. 354, pp. 7–9; trans. K.F.

12 See the letter to Adam Dobrowolski, the editor of the Kurier Warszawski paper; H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part. 1, p. 230.

13 L. Ludorowski, op. cit.

14 J. McKenzie, Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance, Routledge, New York 2001, pp. 55-94.

15 M. Gerson-Dąbrowska, Obrazy żywe [Living pictures], Warsaw 1920, p. 21; trans. K.F.

16 J. Janczewska, Autoportret [Self-portrait]:

http://mnki.pl/pl/obiekt_tygodnia/2017/pokaz/231,jadwiga_janczewska__autoportret [Accessed on: 25.09.2018].

17 M. Komza, Żywe obrazy. Między sceną, obrazem i książką [Tableaux Vivants: The scene, the image, and the book], Wyd. Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław 1995, pp. 106–8.

18 Op. cit., pp. 8–9; trans. K.F.

19 Op. cit., p. 9; trans. K.F.

20 M. Komza, op.cit., pp. 124–38.

21 D. Kosiński, Teatra polskie. Historie [Polish theaters: Histories], Wyd. Naukowe PWN, Instytut Teatralny im. Zbigniewa Raszewskiego, Warsaw 2010, p. 21; trans. K.F.

22 A. Mencwel, Stanisław Brzozowski. Postawa krytyczna. Wiek XX [Stanisław Brzozowski: A critical attitude. The 20th century], Wyd. Krytyki Politycznej, Warsaw 2014, pp. 79–82; trans. K.F.

23 A brief mention appears in Karolina Beylin’s memoirs, see W Warszawie w latach 1900–1914 [In Warsaw, between 1900 and 1914], PIW, Warsaw 1972, p. 35.

24 J. J. MacAloon, “Introduction: Cultural Performance, Cultural Theory,” in Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance, edited by John J. MacAloon, 1984, p. i; emphasis added.

25 I. Kurz, “‘Pięciu poległych’ jako metaobraz kultury polskiej połowy XIX wieku” [“Five Men Down”: A metaimage of Polish culture in the mid-19th century], Widok. Teorie i Praktyki Kultury Wizualnej 2015, vol. 10; http://pismowidok.org/index.php/one/article/view/312/590 [Accessed on: 25.09.2018].

26 Ł. Zaremba, “Obraz” [Image], in Kultura wizualna w Polsce. Spojrzenia [Visual culture in Poland], edited by I. Kurz et al., Warsaw 2017 (see especially the subchapter entitled Imagines Polonices, pp. 89–93).

27 M. Komza, op. cit., p. 136.

28 “Jubileusz H. Sienkiewicza” [Henryk Sienkiewicz’s jubilee], Kurier Poranny December 23, 1900, no. 354, p. 7; trans. K.F.

29 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 1, pp. 197–201.

30 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 2, part 2, p. 19 (caricature as the illustration no. 18 to be found on the back of page 96).

31 Following Stefan Żółkiewski’s lead, I assume that a study of a cultural text cannot be conducted without considering its social circulation among recipients; see S. Żółkiewski, Wiedza o kulturze literackiej. Główne pojęcia [Literary culture: Key concepts], Warsaw 1985, pp. 244–52; S. Żółkiewski, Kultura. Socjologia. Semiotyka literacka. Studia [Culture. Sociology. Semiotics of literature. Studies], Warsaw 1979, pp. 408–415.

32 According to the editors, the book in question was an anonymous work entitled Życie Napoleona podług najlepszych źródeł z rycinami na stali rytymi z oryginalnych obrazów najsławniejszych malarzy francuskich [The life of Napoleon with engravings based on works by the finest French painters], S.H. Merzbach, Warsaw 1841, vol. 1 and vol. 2.

33 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 1, p. 37; trans. K. F; emphasis P. K.

34 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 1, p. 323; trans. K.F.

35 Op. cit., p. 325; trans. K.F.

36 See B. Szwargot, “Sienkiewicz prywatnie i oficjalnie” [Sienkiewicz: Formally and informally], Sztuka Edycji 2016, vol. 2, p. 137.

37 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 1, part 1, pp. 75–8.

38 For instance, “I consider myself as much more handsome,” H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 2, part 2, p. 55; trans. K.F.

39 “Jubileusz H. Sienkiewicza” [The jubilee of H. Sienkiewicz], Kurier Poranny, 23.12.1900, no. 354, p. 9; trans. K.F.

40 Album jubileuszowe Henryka Sienkiewicza : główniejsze sceny i postacie z powieści i nowel Sienkiewicza w dwudziestu ilustracjach: Józefa Brandta, Józefa Chełmońskiego, Antoniego Kamieńskiego, Juliusza Kossaka, Wilhelma Kotarbińskiego, Kazimierza Pochwalskiego, Jana Rosena, Henryka Siemiradzkiego, Piotra Stachiewicza i Wincentego Wodzinowskiego [The jubilee album of Henryk Sienkiewicz: Major events and protagonists of his novels in twenty illustrations by Józef Brandt, Józef Chełmoński, Antoni Kamieński, Juliusz Kossak, Wilhelm Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Pochwalski, Jan Rosen, Henryk Siemiradzki, Piotr Stachiewicz and Wincent Wodzinowski], G. Gebethner i S-ka, Warsaw–Kraków 1898.

41 F. Hoesick, “U Henryka Sienkiewicza” [Visiting Henryk Sienkiewicz], Tygodnik Ilustrowany, March 10 (February 26), 1900, no. 10, p. 190; trans. K.F.

42 Op. cit., p. 188; trans. K.F.

43 E. Freedgood, The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2010, p. 1.

44 All of them are to be found in issue no. 10.

45 See Tygodnik Ilustrowany, no. 51.

46 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 2, part 2, letter no. 173 (July 4, 1889), p. 98; trans. K.F.

47 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], vol. 2, part 2, letter no. 233 (June 22, 1890), p. 285; trans. K.F.

48 F. Hoesick, op. cit., p. 188; trans. K.F.

49 Op. cit., p. 188; trans. K.F.

50 Sienkiewicz mentioned it in his letter to Janczewska. See Listy [Letters], vol. 2, part 1, letter no. 10, p. 140, 31.07.1886.

51 G. Agamben, “Notes on Gesture,” in Means Without End. Notes on Politics, edited by Sandra Buckley, Michael Hardt and Brian Massumi, Minneapolis, 2000, p. 54.

52 Ibidem.

53 F. Hoesick, op. cit., p. 185; trans. K.F.

54 Ibidem; trans. K.F.

Iwona Kurz

(University of Warsaw)

The community of Images: Sienkiewicz on Screen

It is definitely difficult to find a common denominator of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s literary works and their screen adaptations.1 The full list of over thirty movies encompasses foreign works, cinema, and TV productions – some of which were produced before WWII.2 Many of them do not exist in the collective consciousness of the viewers, and copies of some no longer exist altogether. A number of the adaptations, however, have had a huge influence on the imagination of the Polish audience and have become at least as important as their literary originals.

In this article, I shall focus on these impactful ones – the adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s greatest and most widely read novels, produced in the Polish People’s Republic (1947-1989). I have chosen this time frame on purpose as at this time the state organs had a great influence on cinematography. These were also the times in which mass culture already existed, and content transmitted via the means of the press, cinema, or television reached the public directly – while the public had no choice as to the content received. Consequently, an attempt at meeting the conflicting needs of various groups of spectators can be observed in the process of production and reception of films such as Aleksander Ford’s Krzyżacy (The Teutonic Knights, 1960), Władysław Ślesicki’s W pustyni i w puszczy (In Desert and Wilderness, 1973), Jerzy Hoffman’s Pan Wołodyjowski (Fire in the Steppe, 1969) and Potop (The Deluge, 1974). On the one hand, the audiences expected an intense and engaging show, while on the other, they hoped for a confirmation of the image of the novels and their protagonists as they stayed consolidated in the collective memory. The filmmakers wanted to fulfill these expectations, but they also aimed at creating autonomous works – grand spectacles which would function in the economic conditions of real socialism. The authorities allowed for the presentation of ideas partially conflicting with the officially promoted narrative (such as Sienkiewicz’s discussion of the dangers posed by eastern influences to the Polish state and to the religiousness of Poles), while at the same time, they wished for internalizing the classics and employing them to further legitimate socialism.

Sienkiewicz: Still relevant

In just a few days, Sienkiewicz’s The Teutonic Knights shall conquer the panoramic screens of Polish towns. In a grand, wide-screen, adaptation of the historical novel in color – divided into two parts and directed by Aleksander Ford – we are going to see our favorite fictional characters: brave Zbyszko (Mieczysław Kalenik), misfortunate Danusia (Grażyna Staniszewska) accompanied by the tragic character of her father, Jurand of Spychów (Andrzej Szalawski), rowdy Jagienka (Urszula Modrzyńska), and many others.3

The Teutonic Knights premiere was planned for September 2, 1960: the very beginning of the school year, which also coincided with the anniversary of the onset of WWII. The film’s premiere – attended by Secretary General of the Polish United Workers’ Party Władysław Gomułka – took place in summer, in the Polonia cinema in Olsztyn. The event was held at the time of the celebrations of the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald, which were taking place on July 15 at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw and on July 16 and 17 in Grunwald.

A short note about the upcoming premiere reveals a lot about the reception of Sienkiewicz’s fiction and the way in which the state’s propaganda took advantage of it. Firstly, the film was introduced as a great spectacle – long and consisting of two parts, in color (which was still a novelty, and in the case of Ford’s film, it grew out of an economic decision made by the authorities4), panoramic (and thus promising a feast for thrill-seekers). This modern spectacle was, however, available only for the chosen ones: the audiences of the largest cities in Poland. Secondly, Sienkiewicz’s literary works were known to all spectators – including the ones doomed for lower quality screenings. The protagonists of Sienkiewicz’s novels would “come alive” in front of the audiences, but they would lack the complexity of a literary presentation, being reduced to a distinctive personality trait fitting the action frame of brave Zbyszko trying to save Danusia, the unlucky child of a tragic father, in order to finally engage in a relationship with Jagienka. Within the film, this closed narrative scheme gained a clear visual form, created by the collaborative effort of the cinematographer, scenographer, costume designer, and – predominantly – by the actor.

The product – costly, and thus proving high economic growth – was supposed to be modern and up-to-date, which is proven by the title of the note: “The Relevance of The Teutonic Knights.” Just after the premiere, the Poznań daily Express Poznański stated, “a splendid film” in which “the story of the greatest battle of the Middle Ages entices us to evaluate multiple contemporary issues.” This exaggerated statement can seem quite funny, but it points to the third important aspect of the reception of the film adaptations. Movies based on Sienkiewicz’s fiction were huge productions endowed with the emotional power of famous narratives, hence they incited questions about the films’ compatibility with the literary original, or even about their convergence with the images present in the minds of the recipients. There were doubts concerning the validity of Sienkiewicz’s ideas – sometimes formulated in the vein of Stanisław Brzozowski Marxist critique, more often in the vein of Professor Pimko, Witold Gombrowicz’s caricature of the conservative teacher. Every time huge efforts were taken in order to produce another spectacular adaptation of Sienkiewicz’s work, a single issue reappeared – is it still important today?

Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz disagreed with all attempts at making Kmicic (Kmita) and other characters of The Deluge more contemporary and emphasized the cinematic qualities of the adaptation.5 Anna Tatarkiewicz scathed the return to Sienkiewicz and his “conservatively-bigoted” ideas, ironically asking “what can Poles actually learn from them?” and “of what use are they for a society of culturally developing peasants and laborers?”6 Tatarkiewicz quoted a reader who posited that such films “cannot help in the development of young Poles’ characters,” while “the alleged arguments about the Trilogy strengthening the feeling of connection with one’s own nation are today, in 1974, largely detrimental.” Such opinions of critics and viewers alike were, however, rarely encountered. The authorities believed that regardless of Sienkiewicz’s conservatism, his work can help achieve some of their current aims.

A film adaptation of any literary work, understood – as Alicja Helman puts it – as the “proof of reading,”7 inevitably becomes the authentication of particular social opinions. This is because the text is read not only individually by the director or the screenwriter, but the reading of a text in the collective process of a film production becomes subject to various mediations and also has to provide for the power of official censorship as well as for the quasi-censorship of the spectators, which always know best when it comes to the looks and the behavior of their favorite protagonist. The adaptation discloses which elements of the heritage of a widely read author are interesting for their cinematographic interpretations. The created images are only successful when they cater to the needs of everyone.

Fun

Entertainment was the first dimension in which these contradictory tendencies were negotiated. After the screening of one of the first films based on Sienkiewicz’s work – the Italian 1913 adaptation of Quo Vadis directed by Enric Guazzoni, Jan Skarbek-Malczewski wrote:

The premiere was grandiose. Authorities and press representatives were invited, while the social elite of Warsaw filled the room. So many were wishing to attend the next screenings that entire crowds would leave the box office empty-handed […]. The most stunning scene depicted Ligia (Lygia) tied to bull’s horns – even though the bull was not a bull, but rather a big calf. In the next part of this tragic scene, the actress playing Ligia was substituted by a dummy. There was a gladiator fight, Nero watching from the stands, and powerful emotions on part of the film audience, to the emotions of which the presence of the orchestra also contributed.8

The author of this commentary had first-hand experience with filming as he was the camera operator of many early Polish films, such as Pola Negri’s debut Niewolnica zmysłów (Slave of sin, 1914), or Słodycz Grzechu (The sweetness of sin, 1914), and Meir Ezofowicz (1911) starring Maria Dulęba. Skarbek-Malczewski knew tricks that strengthened the illusion of tangibility and realness of the filmed scenes. The goal was not authenticity, but the credibility induced by emotional power.

A good example of this technique is a minor episode from Wszystko na sprzedaż (Everything for sale, 1969) directed by Andrzej Wajda. The director’s alter ego (Andrzej Łapicki) visits the film set of Fire in the Steppe in order to have a conversation with an extra (Wiesław Dymny) who knows the famous actor Zbyszek Cybulski. The protagonist arrives in a helicopter and observes troops in the armor of the Polish Hussars preparing for a battle scene. The extra, dressed in a “civilian” jacket with wings attached, is responsible for running around the camera, thus making the image of the battle more “packed” and dense. Wajda’s film was supposed to be critical (and autocritical) of historical films, showing that the past is always created, while the materials used for such creations are not always of the best quality. Nevertheless, Wajda still revealed the power of such films, which may abound in evocative representations and incite powerful sensations on the viewers’ part.9

Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy, The Teutonic Knights, or In Desert and Wilderness were often discussed as works perfectly suitable for cinema and almost ready for screening, while their author was called “a great screenwriter.”10 The greatest strengths of popular culture – violence and sex, incorporated in a narrative about a fight for love and values – surface here under the guise of a swashbuckler film. Kissing scenes were for girls, while duels for boys: “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” as film critic Pauline Kael defined the essence of cinema.11 Cultural critics and film critics sensed the great emotional potential of a cinematic spectacle – in particular, in connection with television, a new and powerful medium born in the middle of the 20th century. The viewers were raising this topic, too. One of the participants of a debate “Is Sienkiewicz worth screening?,” which began in 1966 after the success of the movie The Teutonic Knights, argued: “The entire Trilogy or its parts should be adapted into a film about love, adventure, shooting, and chase – with the horse, the girl, with the folklore of 17th-century Poland in the background.”12 Sienkiewicz was worth adapting, but mostly as the writer of moving adventure novels:

The film is thrilling and moving, and not only for younger audiences. Simple emotions have been described – akin to those incited by Love Story. There are records of people crying. In my opinion, even an adult viewer will have many reasons “to cry from joy and sadness,” when in the last scene Staś holds unconscious Nel, laughing and weeping simultaneously. And the ending becomes even more powerful when one realizes that it lacks a greeting exchanged between children and their parents because Jasiukiewicz, starring as Mr. Tarkowski, has passed away.

One could sigh, as in the ending of Sienkiewicz’s Hania: “Ah, kind of brings a tear to the eye!...”13

It is difficult not to perceive a resentment towards foreign films present in the above commentary. The emotions, however, are most important. They are the groundwork for constructing further layers of the message.

History

Viewers expect a faithful representation of the plot and the characters’ emotions, even though they have to accept the essential shortcuts taken by the filmmakers in the adaptation of a literary narrative. This obscures the issue of historical faithfulness – a story once presented by a writer can be retold by a filmmaker with carelessness towards historical detail. Obviously, the film aims at authenticating historical events. A literary concept of “a knight on horseback” does not require visualizing the details of a costume or armor, but on screen, this knight has to be embodied. The physical and visual body has to be produced by all props, costumes, buildings, interiors, and even landscapes, which might not be described in the text, but must be shown within the movie. All these things should possess a degree of probability as defined by Aristotle: probability which stays in accordance with the internal logic of the work. The literary convention of a chivalric romance does not necessarily entail historically faithful detail, and its creation does not require consultations with experts. A realistic formula, however, demands the cinematic respect for details. A heavy sword can pretend to be an original sword from a particular period, but it has to look heavy – it is important for this heaviness to be perceived by the spectators.

I am not referring to the legendary anecdotes about Władysław II Jagiełło wearing a watch because the actor, Emil Karewicz, forgot to take it off.14 The Teutonic Knights had to face grander allegations regarding the way it rendered the character of the historical times presented in the movie. As the reviewer of Tygodnik Powszechny noted:

The costumes are highly questionable (regardless of the opinions expressed by respectable experts). Numerous decorations and patterns have a modern folkloristic look, and the texture of the material used is truly outrageous. Plastic horse trappings, flexible helmets, and armor, clothes made of shiny artificial leather are all a disgrace to the historical epoch.15

Another famous critic, Jerzy Płażewski, mentioned the power of convincing images, especially the ones that possess emotional appeal:

These knights, dramatically falling off galloping mounts, these warriors, slashing furiously as if they were fighting for their lives – this makes the impression that if the swords provided by Ford hadn’t been made of plastic, blood would have been shed.16

Płażewski did not mind that when a knight in plate armor fell to the ground, he would quickly stand up. Powerful emotions were born on the side of spectators in spite of all the plastic and artificial leather. The presentation of the battle’s momentum was the filmmakers’ goal. Płażewski emphasized the fact that the dynamic imagery was an aim of another artist-historian of the Polish culture: “Today, a man with the ambitions of Jan [Matejko] would not grab a paintbrush: he would rather grab a camera.” Nevertheless, Płażewski ignored Matejko’s thoughtful historiographic approach: the painter had always performed a fastidious reconstruction of a historical event in order to present a condensed image of the course of time. In other words, Matejko depicted people who could not be present at a particular point in time, providing a broader perspective on various attitudes and motivations of historical heroes.17 Thus, he transgressed the immediacy of visual art, which in its classical form offers special constructs and refrains from presenting the passage of time.18 Matejko’s paintings were supposed to be narratives, and in this way, they can be likened to filmmaking.

This does not mean, however, that Matejko’s paintings resemble the film adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s fiction – the creators of these movies were more inspired by Wojciech Kossak, who, in his paintings, did not turn history into a discourse. The films I discuss here were not supposed to depict the complexities of historical processes. On the contrary, they were criticized for those kinds of revisionist interpretations. Let me mention Władysław Ślesicki: long before the shooting of In Desert and Wilderness, a reviewer working for Tygodnik Powszechny enumerated all the aspects which the director did not appreciate about the novel (and which he mentioned in the interviews): “childishness, religious exaltation, elements of fantasy and fairy tales,” “Staś is not the greatest thinker,” Nel is “passive, clumsy, and weeping.” Therefore, Staś had to be “made more human,” Mahdi had to serve as a “cumbrous sage,” while the character of Chamois became “beautiful, as [he is] empathetic and brave, no longer at the rock bottom of poverty and ignorance, which, in his environment, had lasted for ages.” It was thus at least partially legitimate for the reviewer to ask: “Was it worth working on In Desert and Wilderness? Would it not have been better to film Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa or any other piece of realist fiction?”19

It seems, however, that Ślesicki, having an aptitude for documentary techniques, as well as a particular sensitivity for human feelings and experiences,20 had analyzed not only Sienkiewicz’s work but also its more contemporary interpretations, such as Marian Brandys’s reportage Śladami Stasia i Nel (Following Staś and Nel, 1961). Brandys subtly argued with Sienkiewicz, partially due to the fact that he could relate to the current situation in North Africa. This situation had a close historical relationship with the first anticolonial movements, including the Mahdi uprising. Ślesicki addressed the colonial issue, reworking the character of Chamis, whom he portrays as an insurgent, but also as a person loyal towards Staś and Nel. He also made the decision to record some of the dialogues in Arabic.21

This aspect of the film did not arouse much interest – it was still “our” story, in which a teenager was raised for future actions. Third World problems did not belong to the interests of most viewers, who preferred to focus on things remembered from the novel itself as well as on the exotic landscapes. The presentation of current issues also tended to be criticized. In Tygodnik Powszechny, a reviewer wrote:

Introducing changes to Sienkiewicz’s world view is, to me, both ridiculous and unnecessary – and the director made a major effort in order to introduce them. His aim was to enrich the character of Staś Tarkowski with traits of a revolutionary hero of the Third World. This approach resulted in new expansions to the story, but otherwise, the effects are rather questionable. The film is based on an adventure novel, and adventure narratives cannot be expected to be historically and ideologically progressive. The example of In Desert and Wilderness illustrates that very clearly.22

Cruel images

Just before the film’s premiere, it was advertised as a digital safari: “Wonderful landscapes, exotic actors, African animals.” This combination of landscapes, people, and animals discloses an unconsciously paternalistic attitude towards otherness, but at the same time, it points directly to the qualities regarded as the key to attract audiences: Sienkiewicz, exotic things, and nature. Mixed reviews also noted this issue, emphasizing that the film “meets the spectators’ expectations.”23

Except for the useless “changes to Sienkiewicz’s world view,” the film was considered too long, as it lasted more than three hours and was divided into two parts. This fact was attributed to Władysław Ślesicki’s fondness for documentaries: the director focused on images devoted to landscapes and nature. This technique did not even require panoramic shots, as was the case of The Teutonic Knights and the Trilogy. The landscapes of Sudan (and Bulgaria) themselves proved quite engaging.

Regardless of the beauty of these foreign and Polish landscapes, they were the background for many scenes that were not idyllically beautiful. Both in the case of In Desert and Wilderness and The Deluge, reviewers pointed to the cruelty present in the films, without juxtaposing them with the literary original. The Teutonic Knights were less associated with violent scenes: in this film, the “dishonorable” suicide of Zygfryd de Löwe attracted attention, as it resembled the (often public) executions of Nazi criminals, which took place after WWII.

The cruelty of the world presented by Sienkiewicz can be noticed even by an inattentive reader – this is the world of slaughter, both in the Trilogy focusing on the bloody period in Polish history and in the story of children lost in the desert and wilderness. Ślesicki confronted the viewers with scheming, executions, battles, and hunts. Maciej Karpiński wrote:

In Desert and Wilderness is a cruel movie, too cruel for children and teenagers alike. The audience – older than seven! – are served with multiple slit throats, knives thrust in chests, the agony of people killed in a variety of ways – with guns, spears, and bows. These facts illustrate an issue which I have already mentioned – the confusion concerning the film’s target. It seems that Ślesicki wishes to join the ranks of contemporary directors associated with the “cinema of cruelty,” having altogether forgotten the target audience of his movie. In Desert and Wilderness is filled not only with people dying. Of course, the killing of a lion is justified and understandable, but the spectators should not necessarily watch Staś shooting a running gazelle: the animal trips and dies, spastically kicking its tiny hoofs. There is no justification for such an image.24

The reviewer emphasized that he is “not an old prude,” but the scenes themselves are not adjusted to the reception of younger audiences. Again, a crucial trait of literature is revealed: a reader might not see what is being described. A filmmaker who reconstructs the story can obviously refrain from providing an outright illustration of an event and show its consequences or commentaries about it instead. One can also introduce bloodless imagery – as was the case of many war films, until that point mostly black and white. Perhaps because the narrative was set in distant times, or maybe because of alibi provided by Sienkiewicz’s literary representations, Ślesicki decided to faithfully render the writer’s imagination. It stayed in accordance with the modern conventions of foreign cinema, which was – just a year later – noted by a reviewer of The Deluge:

Blood in The Deluge splashes on the screen like in The Godfather, and thanks to advanced Panavision lenses, the blood is finally red. The fights look real and no longer resemble the tender stroking of the opponent’s beard.25

Outright cruelty was not, however, accepted by everyone. There were press comments written by viewers about The Deluge, according to which Sienkiewicz’s “bloodbath” was too faithfully transferred on screen. Too much meat, they argued, “human flesh – burnt, chopped, pierced, shown in close-up; and animal meat waiting to be consumed.”26 These comments can point to the fact that Sienkiewicz’s name attracted not only film connoisseurs acquainted with films in the like of The Godfather to the cinemas. They prove that film in color was still a novelty, to which the spectators were not yet used to. But if these spectators read Sienkiewicz’s novels, they must have consciously or unconsciously ignored the cruel images present within them.

Men and women

The cruelty was also justified by the characters’ noble intentions. The debate concerning the adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s works was heavily focused on the characters and a set of traits which they represented – the conceptual stereotypes.27 “Brave Zbyszko,” “unlucky Danusia” (but also, for example, “fanciful Kmicic” or “proud Oleńka,” “brave Staś” and “sweet Nel”) are characters reduced in their portrayal to one dominant trait only. As such, they create an important part of a socially embedded narration, in which the “local” properties of Sienkiewicz’s world connect with the traditional representations of Polish culture and the universal gimmicks of popular culture. These gimmicks play the role of both keystones within a narrative and the tools to communicate with viewers and readers less acquainted with relevant contexts.

For instance, the reappearing figure of a passive woman – very often still a child – fits perfectly the stereotypical convention of “innocence” justifying the actions of a “knight” (observable in a variety of works, from Ivanhoe to Pretty Woman). In Poland, this convention became one of the widespread ways of mythologizing femininity and masculinity, and its origins may be traced in the narratives created under the influence of the January Rising. In her analysis of the “uprising mythologeme,” Grażyna Borkowska observes that its structure revolved around the belief that Poles are superior to Russians, but that this superiority is of a spiritual kind – resulting from the acceptance of the superiority of moral power over physical strength, as Russians had the physical and military advantage.28 This postcolonial sense of being inferior resulted in a vision of superiority of spiritually endowed Poles, which itself was rooted in the solidity of the image of a woman. In Artur Grottger’s art, a visual form was granted to the myth of a woman in black: the mother, the fiancée, the widow is the one who suffers most after the loss of a beloved man, but also the one who is identified with Poland itself. The list of Sienkiewicz’s female heroines is long: Danusia, Oleńka, Helena, and even the vigorous Basia (not to forget Nel, even though In Desert and Wilderness evokes also other colonial contexts – the protagonist here is, however, unflinching like Skrzetuski [Skshetuski]) – all of these women are portrayed as pure and fragile, but at the same time proud and full of typically Polish perseverance. Whenever the heroes become consumed by doubts, the thought of a beloved woman grants them power. All women are shown as patiently waiting for their men, and all of them save the male protagonists – Danusia covers Zbyszko’s head with a veil moments before the execution, Nel prods Staś to be more responsible, Oleńka saves men from a moral downfall, and Basia protects them from emotional desperation. What is more, most of Sienkiewicz’s novels include the kidnapping of a virgin by “strangers,” which is an important motif, associated closely with the task of saving the motherland. Sienkiewicz suggests a particular fusion: the strangers want our women because they are the emblem of Poland.

Moralistic goals were not the target of filmmakers, even though they could suppose that Sienkiewicz was especially useful in the Polish People’s Republic. Nevertheless, the issue of raising children and teenagers, and educating the society, was constantly present in the public discourse, and the controversies present within Sienkiewicz’s fiction were sometimes unearthed involuntarily. Jan Józef Szczepański wrote:

Amiable Tomasz Mędrzak – a bit too grown up as Staś – copes quite well with the unclear role of neither a boy scout, nor a spiritual pioneer, and the fragile Monica Rosca as Nel is stylized as an irritating miniature of Brigitte Bardot. This is a sad image, even sadder when we think of all the pedagogical issues.29

The pedagogical issues remain unarticulated – the readers are left with an impression of inappropriateness.

Generally speaking, the aim of cinematic narratives was the political integration based on a common story about the Polish historical past.30 In this context, an unexpected aspect was revealed and expressed in the reception of In Desert and Wilderness and The Deluge. Staś Tarkowski was explaining “how to be a man,” especially in the times of the “feminization of educational institutions and family structure.”31 In turn, a reader discussing The Deluge made a public appeal – “Young men – be like Kmicic!”32 One can laugh at this diagnosis and the plea that following (“Often when we look at people, we don’t see a person – and drug addiction, alcoholism, hooliganism, venereal diseases, followed by much more disgusting things, are rife”), but this expectation of being a “better” person, especially valid for a man, apparently stayed in accordance with the identification of social changes. At the beginning of the 1970s, a quarter of a century passed since the end of WWII. On the one hand, this fact provokes a critical reaction to the omnipresence of topics associated with WWII (Wajda’s Wszystko na sprzedaż may serve as a prime example). On the other hand, this phenomenon contributed to the fact that people noticed the changes in social and family life, which were caused by the war, and which were closely related to the new sociopolitical order (which, among all, forced women to work and provoked the implementation of the Family and Guardianship Code of 195033) – also in these aspects, which some more conservative Poles felt uncomfortable about. This, in turn, activated the “conservatively-bigoted” potential present in Sienkiewicz’s novels.34

The chosen one

It should be emphasized that the focus on the main film characters illustrates the specifically Polish approach towards the political community. Ewa M. Thompson discussed the cultural foundations of Sarmatism (Sienkiewicz is one of the propagators of its modern incarnation), arguing that the basic tenet underlying the Sarmatian philosophy is the importance of an individual. The individual identifies themselves with a political and national community, but still retains the superior role, and stays in the center of attention.35 This manner of thinking concurs with the popular narration, also – or rather in particular – with Sienkiewicz’s narration, which always employs individual charters in order to comment upon more general social issues.

The adaptations made in the period of the Polish People’s Republic present male heroes who are always active in the face of danger. This must have been as pleasing for the spectators, as it was for the reviewers and critics. This positive reception is visible in the comments on the model masculinity of Kmicic and Staś Tarkowski. Aleksander Ledóchowski observed a psychological compensation for the contemporary “nihilistic” art – The Deluge for him was a film, which finally “shows the Polish man as a man of action and a man of the future.”36 The virtue of an instigator turning into a conscious patriot was often emphasized, and due to this fact the film was believed to contain an “outright and clear moral message.”37

Within the movies, the individual in question was supposed to not only be unique but also to act as a conciliator for the masses. Decisions concerning the cast in the “great” adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s works awakened powerful emotions. The Deluge may serve as a prominent example as the cast was discussed in the press for months.38 A similar discussion was incited by the announcement of casting calls for the lead roles of In Desert and Wilderness.39

In the context of the adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s works, both the scale of casting auditions was much grander than usual, and the accompanying emotions were more powerful. “300 candidates for the roles of Staś and Nel. Still no elephant and no dog” – newspapers announced on New Year’s Eve of 1969. Finally, according to various statistics, between 7,000 and 10,000 young people took part in the auditions. This, in turn, caused concern among moralists worried about teenagers drawn away from school in order to submit to the pressures of the pursuit of success.

The search for lead actors in The Deluge began with a return to the cast of Fire in the Steppe. Not all the decisions could be repeated, and it had to be decided who would star as the main protagonists – Kmicic and Oleńka. The idea that Daniel Olbrychski should star as Andrzej Kmicic incited a discussion in the media, which continued even after the crew started shooting and returned with a vengeance once again after the premiere. Paradoxically, objections against this decision resulted from Olbrychski’s success in Fire in the Steppe. Olbrychski played Azja (the son of Tugay Bey) in such a suggestive manner that he became strongly associated with this particular character in the minds of the viewers. Outstanding critic Aleksander Jackiewicz was afraid that “the respectable Andrzej Kmicic may be too Tartar-like,”40 and, similarly, one of the readers of the Przyjaciółka magazine begged for “the dream hero of Polish girls” not to be played by “this terrifying Azja with his monstrous face.”41 The doubts expressed in the debate prove the bewildering power of mistaking a character with an actor. The success of an actor often relies on the fact that it is difficult to imagine them later as a different person, but it becomes problematic when it is hard to imagine the actor in a different role. Therefore, if Olbrychski – with his “eyes blazing with passion” – became Azja, he could not impersonate anyone else. And a Tartar cannot be a Polish knight. Other arguments were surfacing, too – the actor was supposed to be too short or too uneducated for the role of Kmicic. All of these arguments were collected in a jocular commentary written by Janusz Głowacki, who stated: Olbrychski “starred as Azja, and we all remember that he is short, dark, bearded and stoop-shouldered; even on tiptoes he is shorter than the shortest knight. Olbrychski has no higher education: such an ignoramus can play Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, but not our Polish Andrzej Kmicic.”42

The film director fiercely defended his choice of Olbrychski, while desperately looking for the lead’s partner, both among professional female actors and in casting auditions. The crew was shooting, and Oleńka was still not chosen. The titles of press notes concerning the search for the actress were permeated by anxiety: “Are there no beautiful women?” Beauty was, in fact, an alibi for the associate producer, Wilhelm Hollender, who explained the lack of the female lead in such way: “Oleńka represents the sheer beauty of Polish women.”43 No doubt that it was so difficult to find the perfect candidate.

The protagonists of Sienkiewicz’s narratives were supposed to be an embodiment of the Polish spirit – and the cinematic adaptations forced these protagonists to become materially embodied by the actors, who, in turn, became the bearers of Polishness. Therefore, the casting choices made a profound impact on the Polish imaginarium – no wonder these proceedings incited such lively debates.

Engagement and community

The connection between the “chosen” individual and the nation was expressed by mass scenes – battles, assaults, marches, the Siege of Jasna Góra and the Battle of Grunwald. “Ford definitely deserves the spontaneous applause which the Battle of Grunwald sometimes gets: the entire event is portrayed with flamboyance, vivacity, and admirable skill in managing huge masses of extras,”44 Szczepański wrote, emphasizing the cinematic synchronized engagement of the crowd of actors on screen and the crowd of spectators in front of it.

This particular engagement also applied to the world outside the screenings. It found its most direct expression in the already mentioned casting calls and in the debates concerning them. Most importantly, however, the production of each of the adaptations demanded strenuous efforts. The budget for The Teutonic Knights exceeded ten times the budget for an average Polish film of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Ford employed thousands of extras, 600 horses, and 18,000 custom-made costumes. On top of that, a modern, expensive tape was used.

In the case of The Deluge, the numbers are even more impressive: 24,000 costumes sewn, 9,000 costumes borrowed, 10,000 props produced, 5,000 borrowed (they had to be transported to the film set in the USSR in 250 train wagons). Ten tons of explosives were used. What’s important, apart from things prepared by the Łódź film production company, a lot of tasks were outsourced. The lace for Kmicic was made by the famous lace-makers from Koniaków, and the gloves were prepared by Zakłady Białoskórniczo-Rękawicznicze “Renifer” [Renifer Leather Industry]. “Cepelia” (Polish Art And Handicraft Foundation) wove the fabric for the “Piotrkowianka” cooperative, which in turn sewed the costumes. Czesław Piaskowski was responsible for the sugar chalices, “the armorer from the Beskid Mountains,” Lech Leski from Wilkowice near Bielsko-Biała, took care of the armor. “W. Bednarek, the manager of a hat store at Rynek Trybunalski” in Piotrków Trybunalski produced the hats, bonnets, and caps for the Swedish army. Bednarek observed that “due to such big commissions, three people have work in the slack season.” The 340 pieces of glass were prepared by the Hortensja glassworks based in Piotrków Trybunalski, and the iron was struck hot by blacksmith craftsmen from Sułkowice. A specialist research center, the Institute of Heavy Organic Synthesis in Blachownia Śląska, produced styrofoam bricks, the aim of which was to look natural, while preventing the actors from injuries. Hotel Cristal in Białystok was the venue for purchasing used saddle-cloths. The preparation of the culverin was “a tough job” finished by the Zamech factory in Elbląg. In September 1971, the following note was issued: “The workers do not hide the satisfaction of taking part in the production of The Deluge, which right now is the most awaited Polish film.”45

In all these production processes, collaboration with the USSR was very important, both politically and practically speaking (USSR offered money and production support). The joint production of a film especially important for the Polish people – with the main scene portraying the defense of the Jasna Góra monastery – could easily be used for the purposes of “soft propaganda.” The army was also helping, as is often the case with period drama productions: they provided extras, pyrotechnics, and the protection of the areas where battle scenes were shot.46 The collaboration with the Catholic Church was a complete novelty – it was, however, essential, due to the plot contents of Sienkiewicz’s novel. The satirical magazine Szpilki jokingly asserted that – unlike the Swedes – the filmmakers conquered the Jasna Góra monastery, and in December 1971, Jerzy Tomziński, the prior of the order in Jasna Góra, stated, “this time Jasna Góra has actually surrendered.” It can also be said that thanks to filmmakers, the Catholic Church began to appear in the public debate as an institution and the patron of national heritage, rather than as the enemy of the socialist state.

These efforts were, of course, possible due to a political decision. They reflected the atmosphere within society. The political aims of the state and the communitarian needs of the society merged within the grand national film project. After the premiere of The Teutonic Knights, one critic noted: “So it happened – we have our own great historical movie, just like Russians, Americans, Italians, or the English do.”47 Therefore, when a contemporary scholar asserts that “nobody – neither the viewers nor the reviewers (except for those associated with the propaganda) – treated the ideological context of the creation of The Teutonic Knights seriously,” it can be assumed that this statement is not at all valid.

Firstly, the political impact of the movie was related to the process of strengthening social ties based on anti-German attitudes, which in 1960 were very much present because of the temporal proximity of WWII. The great battle presented in The Teutonic Knights became incorporated into the persistent narrative about “the Polish nation fighting against the German invaders.” Its aim was not to remind about the glorious victory but about the persistent threat. Władysław Gomułka, the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP), observed that “the violent nature of German imperialism has not changed since the times of Ulrich von Jungingen, and is still present in the times of Konrad Adenauer.”48 Henryk Jabłoński, a political scientist but also a member of the PUWP, emphasized that no one wants to “incite nationalistic pride.”49 The most telling element of the propaganda associated with Ford’s movie is the recurring reference to Konrad Adenauer – the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany – as “a Teutonic Knight.” Interestingly, in 1958, Adenauer really became the Honorary Knight of the Teutonic Order, which in modern times performs charitable work. The rich and long history of the order cannot, of course, be reduced to the period of destroying and pillaging Polish lands, but the Teutonic Knights were regularly used as symbolic shorthand for Germans, in turn conflating the two into an image of the hostile - as was the case of Adenauer.

Secondly, the title of the already mentioned article by Henryk Jabłoński pointed to another important phenomenon – the celebrations of the millennial anniversary of the founding of Poland that took the form of the competition between state and church. Anti-German attitudes were thus supplemented by the state’s embracement of modernity. Both one thousand new schools for one thousand years of the Polish state, one opened in Stębark near Olsztyn during the celebrations, and the premiere of a great film production confirmed the fact that Poland is a truly modern country.

Entertainment was by no means the main aim of adapting Sienkiewicz’s work. The goal of the state authorities was to employ ideas and emotions associated with the film in order to lend legitimacy to the social and political situation of Poland. Jerzy Płażewski observed:

The cinematic quality of Sienkiewicz’s novel is present in the fact that all of its minor motifs, its grander themes, and psychological “close-ups” move in a symmetrical manner towards the monumental master plan of presenting the victory of united Slavic nations over the traitorous Teutonic Order.50

One can wonder whether Płażewski was actually referring to the cinematic quality – or rather to the political one. The mentioned mechanism also worked in case of The Deluge. The enemy – the Swedes – could not be put to as direct use as the Germans, but they still reminded that the evil came from the West. All the cinematic elements of this story were devoted to portraying the victory of “specifically Polish” elements. Explicit propaganda was not necessary: the entire nation participated in the film’s production, mobilized as if in a state of war.

Film therapy

A society is united by its own cure.

“The national cure, in color”51 – this was the expression used by Zygmunt Kałużyński to describe The Teutonic Knights, while after the premiere of The Deluge, Krzysztof Mętrak announced victory:

Each Pole has their own “personal Sienkiewicz” – the characters created by the writer live inside us like mythical creatures, expressing the communal national experience. The heroes of the Trilogy have never been individual, they have always constituted a great collective entity.52

Sienkiewicz’s protagonists led the lives of model knights and their beautiful ladies. The transformation of Kmicic is the essence of the aspiration to become a knight, but such is also the case of both Zbyszko and Staś – agewise, they are boys who become men able to turn into knights. The writer makes such a promise, and the filmmakers endow this promise with material existence – by means of modern cinematic productions, they aim for transforming contemporary Poles into modern Sarmatians, or at least for granting hope for such a transformation.

Film adaptations of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s fiction

Year

Title

Director

Country

Based on

1901

Quo vadis?

Lucien Nonguet

France

Quo Vadis

1910

Au temps des premiers chrétiens [In the days of the first Christians]

André Calmettes

France

Quo Vadis

1912

Krwawa dola [Bloody fate]

Władysław Paliński

Poland*

Charcoal Sketches [Szkice Węglem]

1913

Quo vadis?

Enrico Guazzoni

Italy

Quo Vadis

1913

Obrona Częstochowy (unfinished) [The defense of Częstochowa]

Edward Puchalski

Poland

The Deluge [Potop]

1915

Потоп [The deluge]

Piotr Czardynin

Russia

The Deluge [Potop]

1916

Омуты [Whirlpools]

Borys Suszkiewicz

Russia

Whirlpools [Wiry]

1917

Hania

Józef Posielski

Russia

Hania

1918

Без исхода [Without dogma]

Wiaczesław Wiskowskij

Russia

Without Dogma [Bez dogmatu]

1921

Na jasnym brzegu

Edward Puchalski

Poland

On the Sunny Shore [Na jasnym brzegu]

1923

Bartek zwycięzca

Edward Puchalski

Poland

Bartek the Conqueror [Bartek zwycięzca]

1924

Quo vadis?

Georg Jacoby, Gabriellino D’Annunzio

Italy

Quo Vadis

1930

Janko Muzykant

Ryszard Ordyński

Poland

Yanko the Musician [Janko Muzykant]

1936

Hania

Michał Waszyński

Poland

Hania

1939

Hania (unfinished)

Józef Lejtes

Poland

Hania

1951

Quo Vadis

Mervyn LeRoy, Anthony Mann (not mentioned)

USA

Quo Vadis

1957

Szkice Węglem

Antoni Bohdziewicz

Poland

Charcoal Sketches [Szkice Węglem]

1960

Krzyżacy

Aleksander Ford

Poland

The Teutonic Knights [Krzyżacy]

1962

Col Ferro e Col Fuoco [With fire and sword]

Fernando Cerchio

Italy, France,

Yugoslavia

With Fire and Sword [Ogniem i mieczem]

1968

Pan Wołodyjowski

Jerzy Hoffman

Poland

Fire in the Steppe [Pan Wołodyjowski]

1969

Przygody Pana Michała (TV series) [Pan Michał’s adventures]

Paweł Komorowski

Poland

Fire in the Steppe [Pan Wołodyjowski]

1973

W pustyni i w puszczy

Władysław Ślesicki

Poland

In Desert and Wilderness [W pustyni i w puszczy]

1973

W pustyni i w puszczy

Władysław Ślesicki

Polska

In Desert and Wilderness [W pustyni i w puszczy]

1974

Potop

Digital mastering – 2014**

Jerzy Hoffman

Poland

The Deluge [Potop]

1978

Rodzina Połanieckich

Jan Rybkowski

Poland

Children of the Soil [Rodzina Połanieckich]

1983

Marynia (TV series)

Jan Rybkowski

Poland

Children of the Soil [Rodzina Połanieckich]

1984

Hania (TV film)

Stanisław Wohl

Poland

Hania, The Old Servant [Stary sługa]

1985

Quo vadis? (TV series)

Franco Rossi

Italy

Quo Vadis

1999

Ogniem i mieczem

Jerzy Hoffman

Poland

With Fire and Sword [Ogniem i mieczem]

2000

Ogniem i mieczem (TV series)

Jerzy Hoffman

Poland

With Fire and Sword [Ogniem i mieczem]

2001

Quo vadis?

Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Poland

Quo Vadis

2001

W pustyni i w puszczy

Gavin Hood

Poland

In Desert and Wilderness [W pustyni i w puszczy]

2001

W pustyni i w puszczy (TV series)

Gavin Hood

Poland

In Desert and Wilderness [W pustyni i w puszczy]

2002

Quo vadis? (TV series)

Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Poland

Quo Vadis

1 Mentioning a country in which a pre-WWI movie was produced is, of course, an anachronism. Not because of the fact that Poland as a country did not exist at that time, but mainly because cinematographic endeavors had nothing in common with the workings of a particular state and were not subject to the authorities’ control.

2 The film’s remastering was performed under the artistic supervision of Jerzy Hoffman and Jerzy Wójcik. The final version was shorter (185 minutes) than the original (316 minutes).

1 I provide a list of the adaptations in the appendix.

2 See J. Bocheńska, “Ekranizacje utworów Henryka Sienkiewicza do roku 1939” [The screen adaptations of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s works before 1939], in Sienkiewicz i film [Sienkiewicz and film], edited by L. Ludorowski, Kielce 1998.

3 Cz. Michalski, “Aktualność ‘Krzyżaków.’ Imponujące dzieło naszej kinematografii” [The relevance of The Teutonic Knights: An impressive work of our cinematography], Głos Wielkopolski August 30, 1960. All quotations from Polish press publications translated by Katarzyna Fetlińska.

The note sent by the Polish Press Agency, sometimes in a slightly different version, was also printed in other daily papers published by the Workers’ Publishing Cooperative “Prasa”: Dziennik Bałtycki August 30, 1960; Dziennik Wieczorny (Bydgoszcz) August 30, 1960; Przyjaźń July 17, 1960 (together with a gallery of colored photographs taken at the film set).

4 The first Polish movie in color – Leonard Buczkowski’s Przygoda na Mariensztacie [An adventure on Mariensztat] – was produced in 1954, and the post-production took place in Germany.

5 K.T. Toeplitz, “‘Potop’ czyli o rzetelności” [The Deluge or about reliability], Miesięcznik Literacki 1974, vol. 11.

6 A. Tatarkiewicz, “Nie dajmy się potopić” [Deluge or delusion?],” Tygodnik Powszechny 1974, vol. 39; “Czy ‘Potop’ krzepi?” [Does The Deluge cheer us up?], Tygodnik Kulturalny 1974, vol. 38.

7 See A. Helman, “Dziesięć tez na temat filmowej adaptacji literatury” [Ten theses about cinematic adaptations of literature], in Wokół problemów adaptacji filmowej [On the problems of film adaptations], edited by E. Nurczyńska-Fidelska and Zbigniew Batko, Łódź 1997, p. 12; trans. K.F.

8 J. Skarbek-Malczewski, “Byłem tam z kamerą” [I was there with a camera], edited by M. Sadzewicz, Warsaw 1962, pp. 16–17. Quoted in B.W. Lewicki, “Sienkiewicz na ekranach kinoteatrów” [Sienkiewicz on cinema screens] [1966], in O filmie. Wybór pism [On film: A collection of texts], edited by E. Nurczyńska–Fidelska, Łódź 1995, p. 266; trans. K.F.

9 On the condition that such techniques are successfully disguised – which was not the case either in Quo vadis? (2001) directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz or Jerzy Hoffman’s Ogniem i mieczem (With Fire and Sword, 1999).

10 E. Nurczyńska-Fidelska, “Ludyczne aspekty filmowych adaptacji utworów Henryka Sienkiewicza” [The folk elements in film adaptations of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s works], in Sienkiewicz i film [Sienkiewicz and film], p. 79. See also http://www.edukacjafilmowa.pl/materialy-edukacyjne/teksty-jubileuszowe/item/2136-ludyczne-aspekty-filmowych-adaptacji-utworów-henryka-sienkiewicza [Accessed on: 01.05.2018].

11 See P. Kael, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Boston 1968; E. Morin, L’Esprit du Temps [The spirit of the times], trans. A. Frybesowa, Kraków 1965; K.T. Toeplitz, “Tradycje i perspektywy. Sztuka filmowa dwudziestolecia Polski Ludowej” [Traditions and perspectives: Film art of the twenty years of People’s Poland], Kwartalnik Filmowy 1964, vol. 1/2, pp. 16–17.

12 J. Ordęga, “Serce i szabla” [Heart and saber], Kultura 1966, vol. 32, p. 3. Quoted in B. W. Lewicki, Sienkiewicz na ekranach kinoteatrów [Sienkiewicz on cinema screens], p. 273; trans. K.F.

13 K. Kuliczkowska, “Arcydzieło hipnozy” [The masterpiece of hypnosis], Kino 1973, vol. 10, p. 19; trans. K.F. Stanisław Jasiukiewicz died on June 27, 1973, and because of his illness he could not participate in the final film shoots as well as in post-production; that is why he was dubbed by Jerzy Karnas; trans. K.F.

14 This legend was not confirmed during the screening of the digital version of the film. A remastered movie was shown in Malbork Castle, on July 10, 2010, during the celebrations of the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald. “However, we found something else. Both the spooky Zygfryd de Löwe, and Jurand of Spychów can be seen holding the hilt of a red hot sword in a number of different scenes. Nothing bad happens, as they ignore the laws of physics as if they were some Medieval saints,” Grzegorz Molewski laughs.” See J. S. Majewski, “Znacie? To zobaczcie!” [If you know it, watch it], Gazeta Wyborcza July 14, 2010, http://wyborcza.pl/1,76842,8128620,Znacie__To_zobaczcie_.html [Accessed on: 01.05.2018]. In the description of the remastering process one may draw attention to the rhetorics operating with huge numbers: “The crew of professionals reconstructed 240 thousand frames, frame by frame”; trans. K.F. This is an example of the rhetorics of the “success of modernity” which accompanied the great adaptations of Sienkiewicz’s fiction.

15 JJS [J. J. Szczepański], “Krzyżacy” [The Teutonic Knights], Tygodnik Powszechny 1960, vol. 40; trans. K.F. The “cheap” materials of which the costumes were made were recalled by actors such as Mieczysław Kalenik (Zbyszko) and Emil Karewicz (Jagiełło). See J. Gajda-Zadworna, “Lato piękne, zbroje się topiły” [A beautiful summer, the armor was melting], Rzeczpospolita July 8, 2010, http://archiwum.rp.pl/artykul/961746-Lato-piekne-zbroje-sie-topily.html [Accessed on: 01.05.2018]. The creators of the Trilogy adaptations took this into account, and they were not criticized for similar reasons in the reviews of Fire in the Steppe and The Deluge. In The Deluge, however, the chalices which the proud Polish knights smash on their companions’ heads, were made of sugar, and not glass. The prop set consisted of nearly a thousand pieces of weaponry, including the plastic copies – “for the Hussars, mostly.”

16 J. Płażewski, “Grunwald Sienkiewicza i Forda” [The Battle of Grunwald by Sienkiewicz and Ford], Przegląd Kulturalny 1960, vol. 36; trans. K.F.

17 Cf. J. Krawczyk, Matejko i historia [Matejko and history], Warsaw 1990, especially the chapter “Matejko – historyk” [Matejko as a historian].

18 Cf. G.E. Lessing, Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, translated by E. A. McCormick, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1984).

19 A.H., “Sienkiewicz ‘pogłębiony’” [Sienkiewicz “made deeper”], Tygodnik Powszechny 1970, vol. 8; trans. K.F.

20 His best known work is Rodzina człowiecza [The family of man] (1966), a documentary inspired by “The Family of Man” photography exhibition in the New YorkMoMA. Ślesicki made a reportage in a harsh though poetic style, which portrayed one day of life of a peasant family leaving in the vicinity of Augustów.

21 Quite differently from a 2001 adaptation directed by Gavin Hood. See M. Rogoż, “Adaptacje filmowe ‘W pustyni i w puszczy’ Henryka Sienkiewicza” [Film adaptations of In Desert and Wilderness by Henryk Sienkiewicz], in Wokół “W pustyni i w puszczy.” W stulecie pierwodruku powieści [About In Desert and Wilderness: On the 100th anniversary of the novel’s publication], edited by J. Axer and T. Bujnicki, Kraków 2012, pp. 501–516.

22 JSS [J. J. Szczepański], “W pustyni i w puszczy” [In Desert and Wilderness], Tygodnik Powszechny 1973, no. 45; trans. K.F.

23 Ibidem. Cf.: M. Karpiński, “W pustyni i w puszczy” [In Desert and Wilderness], Kultura 1973, vol. 43; trans. K.F.

24 M. Karpiński, Ibidem; trans. K.F.

25 K. Gedroyć, “Zamiast recenzji” [Instead of a review], Gazeta Białostocka September 14, 1974; trans. K.F.

26 Jan Grygiel, Nowiny November 17, 1974; trans. K.F.

27 This term is introduced by Alina Madej in an analysis of the narrative strategies present in the cinema of the 1920s. Cf. A. Madej, Mitologie i konwencje. O polskim filmie fabularnym dwudziestolecia międzywojennego [Mythologies and conventions: On the Polish feature film of the interwar period], Kraków 1994.

28 G. Borkowska, Pozytywiści i inni [Positivists and others], Warsaw 1999, pp. 20–24.

29 JSS [J. J. Szczepański], Ibidem; trans. K.F.

30 This common story was also updated in the narration associated with the Warsaw Rising: from Andrzej Wajda’s Kanał (Canal, 1957) and Janusz Morgenstern’s series Kolumbowie (The Columbus Generation, 1970) to Jan Komasa’s Warsaw ’44 (2014).

31 S. Melkowski, “Po co w pustynię i w puszczę” [Why go into desert and wilderness?], Fakty 1974, no. 1; trans. K.F.

32 A. Baranowska, “Słodycze usieczonego” [In thrust he trusts], Walka Młodych February 2, 1975; trans. K.F.

33 See M.Czerwiński, Przemiany obyczaju [Changes in customs], Warsaw 1972; M.Czerwiński, Życie po miejsku [City Life], Warsaw 1974.

34 It can be added that the rise in conservative ideas was different than the one in 1999, when after the premiere of With Fire and Sword it became fashionable among men to shave their hair in a Sarmatian fashion. A dream to be a member of the nobility found its realization in everyday life, foreshadowing the rebirth of Sarmatism in the society of “farmers and physical workers.”

35 Cf. “‘Polski nacjonalizm jest niezwykle łagodny.’ Z Ewą Thompson rozmawia Filip Memches” [“Polish Nationalism is curiously benign.” Eva Thompson talks to Filip Memches,” Europa. Tygodnik Idei 2007, no. 156, p. 11.

36 A. Ledóchowski, “‘Potop’ Jerzego Hoffmana’ [Jerzy Hoffman’s Deluge], Kino 1974, vol. 2; trans. K.F.

37 J. Zatorski, Z ducha Sienkiewicza [In the spirit of Sienkiewicz], Kierunki 1974, vol. 36; trans. K.F.

38 See I. Kurz, “Potop szwedzki 1971–1974. Remake” [The Deluge 1971–1974: Remake], in Potop Redivivus [Deluge Redivivus], edited by G.M. Grabowska, K. Koła-Bielawska, and A. Wyżyński, Olszanica–Warsaw 2015, pp. 241–255. I am using here some short fragments of this paper.

39 The ideas concerning the organization of huge casting auditions were not new. Ongoing democratization, together with the fascination with popular culture, contributed in 1957 to the organization of a contest for the lead actress in Tadeusz Chmielewski’s Ewa chce spać (Eve wants to sleep; Barbara Kwiatkowska was the winner). After the casting call’s success, on July 20, 1958, the Film magazine, together with Zespół Autorów Filmowych (The Team of Film Creators), announced a contest entitled “Beautiful Girls on Screens.”

40 A. Jackiewicz, “Wartości constans (‘Zapiski krytyczne’)” [Stable values (Critical notes)], Film 1971, vol. 25; trans. K.F.

41 “W sprawie Kmicica (‘Z naszej poczty’)” [On Kmicic (Our mail)], Przyjaciółka 13.06.1971; trans. K.F.

42 J. Głowacki, Kultura 13.06.1971. A reprint entitled “Od tyłu” [In reverse], in J. Głowacki, Jak być kochanym? [How to Be Loved?], Warsaw 2005, pp. 22–24; trans. K.F.

43 Qtd. in Głos Robotniczy July 15, 1971; trans. K.F.

44 JJS [J.J. Szczepański], “Krzyżacy” [The Teutonic Knights], Ibidem. Such a scene was for sure the singing of the first Polish hymn, Bogurodzica [Mother of God] before the battle – Andrzej Wajda referred to this song and scene in the movie Pierścionek z orłem w koronie (The ring with a crowned eagle, 1993).

45 Głos Elbląga November 11, 1971; trans. K.F.

46 The USSR provided a special cavalry regiment for the filmmakers. “Five hundred men and horses. A unit created to meet the needs of cinematography,” Perspektywy November 5, 1971; trans. K.F.

47 J. Peltz, “Krzyżacy” [The Teutonic Knights], Film 1960, vol. 36, pp. 4–5; trans. K.F.

48 Qtd. in M. Zaremba, Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm. Nacjonalistyczna legitymizacja władzy komunistycznej w Polsce [Communism, legitimization, nationalism. Poland and the nationalist legitimisation of power], Warsaw 2001, p. 309; trans. K.F.

49 H. Jabłoński, “Tysiąclecie Państwa Polskiego” [A thousand years of the Polish State], Nowe Drogi 1960, vol. 3, p. 9. Qtd. in M. Zaremba, Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm. Nacjonalistyczna legitymizacja władzy komunistycznej w Polsce [Communism, legitimization, nationalism. Poland and the nationalist legitimisation of power], Warsaw 2001, p. 309; trans. K.F.

50 J. Płażewski, Ibidem, trans. K.F.

51 Z. Kałużyński, “Krzyżacy” [The Teutonic Knights], Polityka 1960, no. 37; trans. K.F.

52 K. Mętrak, “Potop zwycięski” [The Deluge victorious], Kultura 1974, vol. 36; trans. K.F.

Igor Piotrowski

(University of Warsaw)

“He Was a Great Polish Patriot and Deserves a Tribute”: Commemorating Henryk Sienkiewicz in the Public Space

Sienkiewicz and spaces of reception

The term “space of reception” may be interpreted in both metaphorical and literal senses; in fact, these two meanings are not mutually exclusive. The hypothetical map of various traces of reception, the (often distinct) circles of influence, numerous remembrance sites, and memorization acts is shaped by a number of factors. These include the writer’s individual biographical trajectory and his extensive traveling, which was impressive even at the time. The second factor to be mentioned here is the subject matter of his works, mainly his historical prose writing set in the vast expanses of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Kingdom of Poland. Additionally, the setting of his travel fiction and non-fiction spanned the great swathes of two more continents: Africa in his In Desert and Wilderness (W pustyni i w puszczy) and America in his Portrait of America: Letters of Henry Sienkiewicz (Listy z podróży do Ameryki) and his American short stories. The third factor would be the immense popularity of Sienkiewicz, both in Poland and abroad, repeatedly confirmed by the fact that his works have been appreciated even by those theoretically antagonistic to them – and, for the first time in the history of Polish literature, they were read by virtually everyone.1 It is a fact of no small significance, also in the context of political and ideological circumstances. The state authorities (especially if suspicious of the message contained in the writer’s works) tried to impose specific forms of reception. Since Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre was never altogether banned, officials aimed to control its function in the society by channeling any subversive interest or cult following into a safe outlet. This is especially true of the writer’s official memorials in the public space, where state control is easiest to exercise. It must be emphasized here, however, that – apart from periodic controversies concerning the life and opinions of Henryk Sienkiewicz – his writing could be celebrated with permanent public displays practically without hindrance, provided that a given group of admirers had enough clout.

Taking all the above into consideration, details such as the geographic chronology of monuments built to Sienkiewicz, or streets and schools named after him, should not come as a surprise. In fact, Sienkiewicz had streets dedicated to him even during his lifetime. This occurred mostly in the region of Galicia, first in villages and smaller towns that owed their fame to the writer (e.g., Zbarazh in 1897, Zakopane in 18982), and only then in larger towns and cities. The same applies to schools: even though a Henryk Sienkiewicz school is acknowledged to be part of the first line of resistance in the 1918 fights over Lviv, there were not many educational establishments named after the writer in other Polish cities outside of Galicia at that time. Such preliminary observations allow for a different perspective on the fact that one of the major Sienkiewicz memorabilia collections is located in Poznań, a gift of collector Ignacy Moś – himself a son of a peasant farmer born in Ostrzeszów or its vicinity3 in Wielkopolska; or on the off-site, mobile, or even travelling conferences and symposia dedicated to Sienkiewicz (e.g., the one in 1986)4; or on reporters and writers setting off in the footsteps of literary characters (e.g., Marian Brandys in his Śladami Stasia i Nel [Following Staś and Nel], published in 1961). Obviously, the death of Henryk Sienkiewicz marked a turning point for various author-oriented initiatives, increasing the number of official namings especially during commemorations of his death and birth, the round anniversaries of both falling on the sixth year of each decade. Yet another important date was 1924, the year the writer’s remains were brought from Switzerland to Warsaw. Indeed, looking at the dates of unveiling monuments or opening museums alone, one can easily notice that such events have taken place mostly on the round anniversaries of the writer’s birth and death or are clearly delayed in respect of them; they could also be part of the Sienkiewicz Year celebrations. Examples include the Sienkiewicz Mound in Okrzeja (1938), the second Sienkiewicz monument in Bydgoszcz (1968), the establishment of the Ignacy Moś foundation and museum in Poznań (1977–1978), and the unveiling of Sienkiewicz statue in Warsaw (2000).

“We just cannot afford it yet”: A map of Sienkiewicz monuments in the interwar period and in communist Poland

Owing to the position I held, I had the honor of giving a tour of Warsaw to Anastas Mikoyan, First Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Union’s Council of Ministers, during his official visit to Poland. The distinguished guest was deeply impressed by the fast rate of the post-war reconstruction of our capital city. At one point, however, he asked me why Warsaw did not seem to have a Henryk Sienkiewicz monument. It took me by surprise, and I did not really know what to answer.

“We just cannot afford it yet,” I ventured. “Given time, we will take care of it as well.”

“He was a great Polish patriot and deserves a tribute,” declared Mikoyan. A minute later he enquired if there had been such a monument before the war, and, if so, where it had been located.

“I’m afraid I don’t know, I wasn’t in Warsaw at that time,” I confessed, ashamed of my ignorance.

Still, I was intrigued why our guest – born Armenian in the far Caucasus – had such an interest in Sienkiewicz, so I asked him about it.

“I happened to read the Trilogy and The Teutonic Knights [Krzyżacy] just before the Revolution. I liked both of them very much. Then I came across this novel for teenagers, In Desert and Wilderness. It’s a good book as well. And you, Comrade General,” he continued with a smile, “have you read the Trilogy?”5

Luckily, General Franciszek Cymbarewicz had read the Trilogy, first in Russian, then in Polish, since his father’s favorite books had been not only The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) but also Sienkiewicz’s works. The conversation between Mikoyan and Cymbarewicz took place in the 1950s, when the latter was appointed Quartermaster General of the Polish People’s Army (also known as the Commander of the Support Area) by Konstantin Rokossovsky. Next, General Cymbarewicz and Chairman Mikoyan discussed the differences between the original text and the Russian translation, they also found they shared the same favorite Trilogy character (Kmicic [Kmita], not Wołodyjowski [Volodyovski]). Cymbarewicz’s reminiscence ends with a short recapitulation:

This exchange pleased me exceedingly. I was happy to hear that a venerable Communist and Soviet party-government official had read the works of my compatriot and appreciated their significance for the Polish nation at the time the country itself was divided between three different states. It proves that Comrade Mikoyan was not indifferent to our history, customs and culture, even if they were only rendered by the imagination of the author of the Trilogy and The Teutonic Knights.6

Born in 1917 in Mahilyow (today’s Belarus) to a Russified Polish family, General Franciszek Cymbarewicz served as a doctor in the Red Army before being transferred to the Polish People’s Army towards the end of WWII. When the war ended, he was one of a large group of army officers granted Polish citizenship. In the Stalinist era, Cymbarewicz climbed the military career ladder, rising to the ranks of Brigadier and Quartermaster General. His memoir, first published in 1984, is tellingly entitled Kmicicem nie zostałem (I am no Kmicic) and strewn with brief though most probably deliberate references to the author’s readerly encounters with Sienkiewicz. The Mikoyan anecdote appears to be a major episode in this respect. Yet another relevant motif would be the author’s relations with his beloved superior, the people-caring, justice-abiding, and ever-excelling Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, placed at the center of the account. After the Polish Thaw of 1956, which ended the Stalinist era, Cymbarewicz was relegated to obscure army positions. In 1984, already ten years into his retirement, Cymbarewicz was still active as the Chief Council Chairman of the Grunwald Patriotic Union, an association of national conservative hard-liner supporters. These facts could obviously throw some light on the purport of the General’s narrative and the reason for his references to Sienkiewicz. I am not going to elaborate on this thread here, but I would like to signal its importance since the point of the anecdote about Mikoyan is that it was actually a Soviet official7 who pointed out the lack of a monument to a great Polish writer in the Polish capital and assumed that there must have been such a monument before the war. Moreover, since Cymbarewicz wrote his memoir thirty years after his conversation with Mikoyan, it is obvious that Warsaw still did not have any monument of Sienkiewicz as late as 1984.

The construction of Sienkiewicz monuments and memorial plaques exemplifies the writer’s paradoxical presence in the popular consciousness of 20th-century Poland. Their chronology may seem puzzling at first, not the least so as the earliest Sienkiewicz bust in the public space was financed by the First Polish Sea Bathing Association of Gdynia in 1924, when Gdynia itself, not yet granted its municipal rights, was still more of an urban design project than a city.8 The earliest statue was sculpted by Konstanty Laszczka and unveiled in Bydgoszcz in 1927. Demolished by German occupiers in 1939, it was reconstructed on the original site in 1968.9 A similar fate befell a pillared bust in Sompolno in the southern Kuyavia region (though its reconstruction had to wait for an initiative of a local teacher and activist in the mid-1980s).10 The pre-war monuments in Zbarazh and Kamianets-Podilskyi, in turn, were irretrievably lost.11 In 1934, the 700th anniversary of the town of Łuków was marked with the unveiling of an obelisk to the “Son of Podlasie” (which is how Sienkiewicz was referred to in pre-war source literature).12 The most spectacular memorial to Sienkiewicz in the pre-WWII years was probably the Mound in Okrzeja, situated close to his birthplace – the village of Wola Okrzejska. Building a mound was both expense- and time-consuming, which is why a number of such initiatives in the interwar period came to nothing or continued for years without much success (e.g., the Mound of Freedom in Poznań13). Even the intention to bring the writer’s remains back to Poland, first voiced in 1924 by Henryk Przeździecki, Bishop of Siedlce, took more than ten years to complete. Despite the Polish society’s considerable enthusiasm and eagerness to unite in common efforts to erect the mound, most of the work was actually carried out by “hired hands”14 and financed from a variety of sources, such as donation postcards, contributions from Polish immigrant community in the United States, etc. It is important to note that, while most of the previously-mentioned initiatives were local (apart from the writer’s home town of Łuków) and usually accomplished in the Western regions (cities of Bydgoszcz, Gdynia) and Eastern Borderlands (Kamianets-Podilskyi, Zbarazh), the completion of Sienkiewicz Mound in Okrzeja can be attributed solely to the fact that it was an all-Polish project. The Mound was officially opened to the public on October 2, 1938. However, since there was neither time nor money to fulfill the original design, the top was adorned not with a monument, but with a simple field stone engraved with a commemorative inscription. It was only forty years later, in the early autumn of 1980, that the public could attend the unveiling of the writer’s white marble portrait by Marian Gardziński (Siedlce’s own painter and sculptor, a former student of Franciszek Strynkiewicz).15

The specific forms of the monuments and ideological settings of their unveiling ceremonies also carried a meaning of their own. Jan Kochanowski Park in the center of Bydgoszcz saw the installation of a realistic bronze statue of Sienkiewicz with one hand on the chronicle of Poland, guarded by two eagles – the symbol of the Piasts, the first Polish ruling dynasty.16 The unveiling was attended by Michał Drzymała, whose ingenious opposition to the Prussian occupiers had made him a folk hero. On the same occasion, composer Feliks Nowowiejski conducted an orchestral performance of his musical arrangement for the Polish unofficial anthem, Rota (The Oath). As emphasized by its originators, the monument was supposed to unite Bydgoszcz residents, who hailed from different parts of Poland and represented many different generations.17 The same objective, only on a wider, national scale, governed the Okrzeja Mound project, its design being equally lucid and conventional. In Łuków, the context was distinctly different as the monument was erected in the then outskirts of the town, and the opening ceremony was accompanied by a sports festival. The main contrast, though, was the commemoration’s formal dimension: Łuków gained an obelisk “modern in style, linear in shape, simple, seven-meter high, made of reinforced concrete and covered with terrazzo tiles.”18 The author of these words, Cezary Cybulski (just like Przeworska quoted by him in the article), is clearly not fond of the obelisk since he states that “one certainly needs time to get used to the style, or rather the artistic mannerism of today” and that “the structure exudes no charm of pure-white alabaster or raven-black marble.” Only the originality of form that Cybulski (rather exaggeratedly) associates with Cubism is said to be of any value.19 Perhaps this longing for figurative art has persisted long enough to result in not just one, but two naturalistic representations unveiled in Łuków in recent years.

At the same time, it must be emphasized that no major city in Poland could boast a Sienkiewicz memorial before WWII. The lack thereof was most conspicuous in Warsaw, the city which had made at least three ineffectual attempts at filling this gap. The first one came right after the writer’s death. Instead, the capital had a street named after him; the procedure went quickly and smoothly due to the fact that the street in question was just an extension of Sienna and, though called Nowosienna, did not yet have a true name of its own, which is why it could be assigned a new one without too much controversy. However, it should be added that the press of that time suggested other streets in the center of Warsaw, all of similar prominence but slightly longer (Jasna, Hoża, Wspólna, and Krucza), as well as two city squares: Zielony and Warecki (both were in fact renamed in the early 1920s after General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski and Emperor Napoleon, respectively).20 The second half-hearted attempt came, unsurprisingly, in 1924 (the year the writer’s remains were brought back to Poland) with a concert and a publication of several emotional but ineffectual appeals to the authorities. The third time the idea was taken up by the press was at the end of the 1930s; the spring of 1937 saw the publication of the statute of the Sienkiewicz Monument Construction Committee in Warsaw (Komitet Budowy Pomnika Henryka Sienkiewicza w Warszawie), envisaging the memorial in Małachowski square.21 One look at the list of monuments actually put up in Warsaw in the interwar period will, however, reveal the distinctive prevalence of a rather small military assemblage among commemorated figures, whether individuals or symbolic characters representing e.g. the First Polish Corps in Russia, the Polish Military Organisation, or the Unknown Soldier killed fighting for the independence of Poland. Other projects were unlikely to receive the authorities’ approval and support. The select group of artists and scientists honored with their own monuments after 1918 was restricted to an obvious shortlist of Frederic Chopin, Maria Curie née Skłodowska, Wojciech Bogusławski, and Eliza Orzeszkowa. Their memorials took the form of minor sculptures or busts with the sole exception of the Chopin Statue, the magnificence of which should probably be attributed to the fact that it was designed by Wacław Szymanowski before WWI.22 Naturally, the situation in other Polish cities was much worse. The troubled stories of the above-mentioned monument in Bydgoszcz and the Mound in Okrzeja prove that memorializing personages, even as popular as Sienkiewicz, was not possible without a high degree of devotion and involvement across the Polish nation. Unfortunately, WWII broke out before yet another public collection for the cause could take place.

Sienkiewicz memorials unveiled after 1945, in the communist era, included those in Słupsk (1960, a genuinely imposing one), Bydgoszcz, Częstochowa (1973, located in front of Sienkiewicz Secondary School No. 4 and irreverently dubbed “Dzerzhinsky” because of its heavy, Soviet-like design), and in Płońsk (1978, once again in front of a secondary school and sponsored by its former students). His busts also stand in Bisztynek (1965, called “Mr. Head” and besmirched to have originated as a portrait of Dzerzhinsky as well23), Włocławek, Szczytno (the 1960s), and Białystok (1987). The memorial in Piotrków Trybunalski took the form of a sandstone rock. As exemplified in Bydgoszcz, it was easier to restore a memorial on its original site, especially with the patronage from a senior local official – in that case, Aleksander Schmidt, Chairman of the National Council in Bydgoszcz. Monuments were more likely to be built in towns rather than cities, not in the province capitals but rather in the county seats. Częstochowa, Szczytno, and Płońsk were all connected with the life and work of Sienkiewicz. A recurrent motif was the promotion of Polishness. It was expressed through a number of 1960s representations vilifying The Teutonic Knights, the symbol of German occupation, or by replacing earlier German monuments in the Recovered Territories, for example, substituting the portraits of Sienkiewicz for the statues of Siegfried fighting a dragon in Bisztynek24 and of Otto von Bismarck in Słupsk. But does that mean that no major city in Poland could boast a memorial erected to the writer?

Zagłoba as a substitute figure of memory

Let us return for a minute to the conversation between General Cymbarewicz and Chairman Mikoyan. Cymbarewicz held the position between 1952 and 1956, so the talk must have taken place in the 1950s, already after the inauguration of the plaque depicting the mock-epic wrestle of Onufry Zagłoba with monkeys, authored by artist Józefa Wnukowa, at the foot of the Kazanowski Palace. The artwork was created between 1949 and 1952 on the less prominent side of the Vistula escarpment and Mariensztat, “over the last of the remaining palace bulwarks.”25 The humorous plaque got its semi-official life of its own. It was – and still is – described good-naturedly as, among others, a continuation of the pre-war initiative of putting up plaques for fictional characters of The Doll by Bolesław Prus or marking the fictional tomb of Roch Kowalski (a character of The Deluge by Sienkiewicz) at a church in Ratuszowa Street. The plaque has also been dubbed “a surprisingly friendly face of Socialist Realism.”26 Interestingly, there were two more monuments to Zagłoba, a representative of lesser nobility, in the capital of the Polish People’s Republic with its anti-nobility ideals, and in quite peculiar locations, too. “The Palace of Culture and Science has a little-known statue of one of the Trilogy characters, Zagłoba, portrayed in his fight with monkeys,” wrote Małgorzata Trzeciak in the early 1990s.27 It was about that time that the sculpture left the Młoda Gwardia cinema hall it had occupied for years; the fact that it was a favorite with children meant nothing in the face of the avalanche of system changes, and Zagłoba was removed once this part of the building was modified to accommodate the BAS shopping center.28 As revealed by Waldemar Baraniewski, the redecoration program for the Palace – even in the Stalinist era – was imprecise and allowed for a number of different options as long as the primary objective was the legitimization of the communist authority.29 I believe this fact accounts for the appearance of Zagłoba fighting apes in the first place, not to mention an obvious attempt at making the hall space more attractive and visitor-friendly (other Palace halls also came to display interesting items, often linked to the institutions adjacent to them, such as a dinosaur skeleton model at the entrance to the Museum of Evolution). Yet another statue, this time without the accompanying monkeys, can unsurprisingly be found close to Zagłoba Street in the Warsaw district of Ursus, Niedźwiadek neighborhood. That particular Zagłoba, unsightly and even more caricatured than his grotesque depiction in the Trilogy itself, often has a tire put on his neck. Once, he even sported a Michael Jordan 23 Chicago Bulls T-shirt painted on his chest.30 At present, the space around the statue is overgrown with greenery. In the words of a Warsaw blogger: “Is it a bear? Or is it Zagłoba? He looks a bit like a guy relieving himself behind the bushes.”31

The capital city was a place where it was much easier to put up a plaque or a monument to Sienkiewicz’s literary characters (especially comic, even cartoonish ones) than to their originator. Warsaw tributes to the writer included naming a primary school in the Praga district after him in 1961, which involved an unveiling of unveiling his bust, sculpted by Franciszek Strynkiewicz; founding a commemorative plaque by the academic community on the University of Warsaw campus five years later; and turning the writer’s burial crypt at St. John’s Archcathedral in Warsaw into a memorial center as the 20th century advanced.32 All these forms of remembrance are placed in the peripheries of public vision (on the outskirts of the city, off a main street or city sightseeing trail, usually hidden inside a building or in a yard). Even though there seems to be an underlying reason for the location of every single memorial, all of them can be said to reflect – at least, to a certain degree – the intended reception and interpretations of Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre endorsed by the authorities (with a possible exception of the anti-German slant).

Zagłoba’s statue in Ursus can be justified with the proximity of a street named after this fictional character. One might assume that the naming itself, which took place in 1977, inscribed itself quite well within the tendency to situate Sienkiewicz memorials in the capital’s low-key, secluded places. In this case, however, the historical context is much more complicated. The advancement of Ursus as a name is the most striking spatial evidence of the popularity of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s prose writing in the early 20th century. The eponym of Warsaw’s Ursus district is a character of Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero. This fact is emphasized in all historical studies on the Ursus Factory. Founded in 1893 in Warsaw’s Sienna Street under a different name, it changed its trademark specifically to include the famous appellation over a decade later.33 The association between the fictional strongman and heavy-duty vehicles and engines that were produced in the factory proved catchy, and the company started to be commonly referred to as Ursus. This popular choice was sanctioned in 1954 by the official adoption of the “Ursus” name after the factory moved to Czechowice (today’s Ursus district). It is not a surprise, then, that Ursus had considerably more places with Sienkiewicz-related names (including the Trilogy characters, Zagłoba and Wołodyjowski [Volodyovski]) than could be expected of its rather small locality. The working-class settlement of Czechowice lost its autonomy after the anti-communist strikes of 1976 and was incorporated into Warsaw, which entailed the necessity to rename most of its streets to avoid reiteration. Among the most interesting examples that escaped this fate were Tadeusz Kościuszko and Zagłoba streets.34 Putting Kościuszko’s case aside, Zagłoba, as opposed to e.g. Wołodyjowski (the title hero of the third part of the Trilogy), was not then present in the nomenclature of Warsaw streets. Paradoxically, this was a result of his earlier popularity as an eponymous character. The 1916 incorporation of suburbs into Warsaw and further additions in the interwar period and after WWII necessitated onomastic tricks of the highest order.35 As early as the first year of the “great incorporation” – which, incidentally, was the year of Sienkiewicz’s death – Zagłoba was given his own street: an extension of Sokołowska beyond the local overpass and Górczewska Street in the district of Koło (the possible reason for this location could have been the fact that, on these very grounds, nobility elected Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki, the son of Jeremi Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki [Prince Yeremi], to be the King of Poland in 1669, and Zagłoba’s participation in the event was represented in the Trilogy). Following further expansions, in 1951, Warsaw had four separate Zagłoba Streets.36 After the reorganization necessitated by the urban sprawl, though, it turned out that just one Zagłoba Street had survived – only to be demolished at the beginning of the 1970s to make space for the long and wide October Revolution Avenue (aleja Rewolucji Październikowej, today’s aleja Prymasa Tysiąclecia). It was due to these circumstances that Zagłoba Street in Ursus could be preserved in 1977. However, for the same reasons, Zagłoba failed to have a street named after him after the post-war incorporation of Służew into Warsaw, unlike other Trilogy characters: Kmicic [Kmita], Podbipięta [Podbipyenta], Skrzetuski [Skshetuski], Wołodyjowski [Volodyovsky], Wiśniowiecki (in 1951, however, the street of Jeremi Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki [Prince Yeremi] – a representative of aristocracy, much maligned by the communist regime – was renamed Niedźwiedzia; ten years later, female heroine Oleńka was allegedly honored, though there is no conclusive evidence supporting the claim that such a street actually existed in Służew).37

Yet another, much larger group of Sienkiewicz-inspired street names appeared on the other side of the city, in the district of Białołęka, Brzeziny neighborhood, at the turn of the 21st century. Here, we will find tributes to Oleńka (a real street this time), Hajduczek (Basia’s nickname), Bohun, Rzędzian, Ketling, Herakliusz Billewicz (Billevitch), Babinicz (Babinitch), and the Little Knight (Wołodyjowski’s nickname; as a result, like Kmicic, he had two Warsaw streets named after him). Even before the sprawl, Białołęka had its Danusia, Jurand of Spychów, and Zbyszko of Bogdaniec Streets, so it can be safely said that tributes to Sienkiewicz’s characters, mostly from the Trilogy and The Teutonic Knights, are not few and far between in major Polish cities, though it is true they are mostly located in suburban single-family housing estates (whether in Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, or Wrocław). According to the blueprint, set by the district of Służew, Sienkiewicz’s characters can be added almost indefinitely to the city maps.

Denouement: The 19th century returns in costume and style

Since 1989, monuments have continued to be erected in towns and cities related to the life and work of Sienkiewicz, but – at last – their list is completed with full-scale representations of the writer in Poland’s major cities as well. Chronologically speaking, the trend started in Warsaw with a sculpture by Gustaw Zemła (2000), followed by Zemła’s other art pieces in Vevey (2006) and Kielce (2010), not to mention Czesław Dźwigaj’s sculptures in Rome’s Villa Borghese gardens (joining the earlier bust of Sienkiewicz in 2006) and in Szczawnica (2008). As bench monuments have become a very popular form of commemoration in the past decade, the last Year of Henryk Sienkiewicz (2016) saw the installation of two of them in Łuków: one by Robert Sobociński, the creator of the Golden Uhlan equestrian statue in the nearby Kałuszyn38; and the other one in front of the local museum, carved in wood by Robert Sadło.39 In addition, that year Kraków was finally given its first bust of Sienkiewicz. It could be said that this date, form, and location reflect the rather peripheral place the city occupies on the Sienkiewicz memory map – but what a symbolic location it is! Józef Opala’s bust of Sienkiewicz is displayed in Kraków’s Jordan Park among other, similar memorials (54 at the time of writing this article), between writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Polish Underground Army commander Łupaszka, in the same lane with Cursed Soldiers (Polish postwar anti-soviet resistance) as well as numerous clergymen.

Yet another memorial that should be mentioned here is Zagłoba’s bench monument in Szczytna. The town lies in the Kłodzko Valley, close to the border with the Czech Republic, which could well be the reason why the Good Soldier Švejk sits on another bench just to the side of Zagłoba’s. The association between the two fictional characters is obviously based on their ribaldry, cowardice, and resourcefulness. This similarity seems a bit forced, superficial, and even trivial despite its certain comparative potential (after all, would you really like to join either of those for some holiday relaxation?). The next item on the list is the Bench Monument to the “Iron-Clad Cavalry” in front of the National Library in Warsaw, financed and installed in 2016 by the Zaczytani.org foundation as one of the capital city’s literary benches. Designed by Agata Kornhauser-Duda, First Lady of Poland, it was inspired by the Trilogy. As can be gathered from the name, the open book-shaped bench displays Polish Winged Hussars,40 whose legend in its present form is largely attributable to Sienkiewicz.

Incidentally, most – if not all – recent monuments to Sienkiewicz, apart from benches and busts, represent him as an older man and in a sitting position as well. This is by no means a common way to depict writers, even novelists, and could suggest respectability and a degree of old-time glory as well as a rather literal acknowledgment of the long hours of sitting needed to produce all this copious fact and fiction writing.

As far as the form is concerned, the most recent wave of memorials stylistically belongs in the 19th century. One could even say that, apart from bench monuments, it includes some pieces of art that are genuine gems within this artistic convention. Such is the impression of many commentators and ordinary passers-by alike in the case of the Sienkiewicz statue by Zemła in Warsaw’s Royal Łazienki Park.41 On May 3, 2000, Małgorzata Baranowska noted down, “The new monument in Łazienki is beautiful in its 19th-century style. A 19th-century Zemła, an art piece commissioned by the Porczyński family. Looks like it had always been there, covered in ivy, surrounded by greenery. It may be a good thing that Sienkiewicz and Chopin are out of sight of each other.”42 Two days later, she continued: “Schools named after Sienkiewicz from all over Poland marched through Warsaw today. The most interesting thing about this gathering was probably the fact that the degree of boredom it offered was no different than the one experienced by students during a typical day at school. At least, it allegedly looked that way. Or it might have been just appearances. Regardless, all the Sienkiewicz schools attended the unveiling of their eponym’s monument. Some students wore historic costumes – straight from a rental shop.”43 What is probably most notable here is the remark on the old-fashioned setting of the inauguration ceremony. It might have been very much in the spirit of Sienkiewicz, who even called himself a “Builder of Monuments,” but a few commentators reported it had a sort of distancing effect on today’s audience. This deadlock spotlights the persisting Polish problems not only with the format and design of public events but also with non-figurative art: Poles seem to find it difficult to adopt new solutions and are reluctant to select any form of memorialization but the representational one, particularly when a specific person is to be commemorated.44 There can thus be no other outcome but either a successful likeness or a caricature.

To sum up, Sienkiewicz was memorialized throughout the period of the Second Polish Republic, the Polish People’s Republic, and continues to be so at present, though the process has taken different forms over the years. The interwar Poland of the 1920s and 1930s saw the erection of a shrine to Sienkiewicz – the Mound in Okrzeja, as well as other memorials situated mostly in Poland’s Eastern and Western borderlands of that time. Under the communist regime, anti-German motifs of Sienkiewicz’s works were emphasized, and it was usually easier to represent his literary characters rather than the writer himself. Both these periods are characterized by a certain marginality in the monuments’ location and form. This trend has been reversed in the course of the past thirty years, which can be described as the completion of the process of commemorating Poland’s Nobel Prize winner of 1905.

1 This phenomenon has not yet been adequately discussed in spite of numerous mentions and references, which is partly due to the lack of a well-grounded – or, indeed, any – study of literacy in Poland. A possible contribution could be easily found in, for example, a diary of a Polish peasant farmer born in 1892, as discussed by Roch Sulima. See R. Sulima, “Pismo i pisanie w świadomości ludowych pamiętnikarzy” [Writing in the consciousness of folk chroniclers], in Sploty kultury. Księga pamiątkowa dla Andrzeja Mencwela [Cultural intersections: In the memory of Andrzej Mencwel], edited by N. Dołowy-Rybińska, A. Gronowska, A. Karpowicz, I. Piotrowski, P. Rodak, Warsaw 2010, pp. 559–560.

2 In his Alfabet wspomnień (Alphabet of memory), Antoni Słonimski relates a famous anecdote featuring himself, all-round artist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy) and sculptor August (Gucio) Zamoyski – as well as Sienkiewicz Street in Zakopane as a key element: “One of the greatest feats of Witkacy was the first attempt at introducing the Polish audience to talking pictures. It was a well-known fact that cinemas in other countries already played sound films, but the only thing that played here were pianos, animated by some anonymous ladies behind folding screens. One day, the three of us: me, Witkacy, and Gucio Zamoyski, mildly inebriated, ended up in a cinema. While watching, Witkacy took up the female part and cried out in a high-pitched voice: Oh Richard, are you going to boldly seduce and then abandon me with child? I replied sonorously: Never! I will not desert you till the tiniest root of my gynecological tree rots away. We continued this suspenseful exchange for some time before a row started. The piano lady announced from behind the folding screen: Either they go, or I do. We were obliged to leave the premises with an expert assistance of a local policeman. Just before leaving the cinema, Witkacy suddenly decided to add some social flair to the scene: I believe we have not yet been introduced. The policeman clicked his heels together and told us his name was Pieniążek. Witkacy mumbled: Witkiewicz, Gucio said: Zamoyski, and I, reluctant to use my own humble name after these two biggies, introduced myself as Sienkiewicz. The policeman was truly shocked and bitterly disappointed: Gentlemen, you have streets named after you, and you cannot behave yourselves in a cinema?...” (A. Słonimski, Alfabet wspomnień [Alphabet of memory], Warsaw 1989, pp. 258–259; trans. J.M.). All the three streets in question were named in their eponyms’ lifetime. The discussion of long-term bonds between Sienkiewicz and Zakopane can be found in Maciej Pinkwart’s Zakopane Henryka Sienkiewicza [Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Zakopane], Nowy Targ 2016.

3 A. Surzyńska-Błaszak, “Muzeum Literackie Henryka Sienkiewicza w Poznaniu” [Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Literary Museum in Poznań], in Henryk Sienkiewicz i jego twórczość w naszej pamięci. Antologia tekstów historycznych i literackich [Remembering Henryk Sienkiewicz and his works: An anthology of historical and literary texts], selected and edited by M.M. Drozdowski, H. Szwankowska, consulted by M. Bokszczanin, W. Odojewski, Warsaw 2000, p. 268 (on the social origin of Ignacy Moś: cf. L. Ludorowski, “Skarby Igo Mosia” [Igo Moś’s treasures], in Sienkiewicz wobec Europy [Sienkiewicz and Europe], edited by L. Ludorowski, H. Ludorowska, Z. Mokranowska, E. Kosowska, Lublin 2004, p. 286).

4 In the words of Lech Ludorowski, “The May session in 1986 followed an uncommon, highly original organizational idea. It took the form of a peregrination [emphasis original] through the Lublin, Podlasie, and Kielce Provinces, along the trails named after Sienkiewicz, leading us through regions which played a special role in his life. These were trips to places particularly close to the great writer’s heart that still seemed to be pervaded with the atmosphere of the old times, enchanting with the largely unspoiled landscape not yet tainted to the core by the tackiness of today’s world” (L. Ludorowski, “Sienkiewiczowskie peregrynacje roku 1986” [Sienkiewicz’s peregrinations in 1986], in Henryk Sienkiewicz. Twórczość i recepcja [Henryk Sienkiewicz: Works and reception], edited by L. Ludorowski, Lublin 1991, p. 11; trans. J.M.).

5 F. Cymbarewicz, Kmicicem nie zostałem [I am no Kmicic], Warsaw 1984, pp. 227–228; trans. J.M.

6 Ibidem, pp. 228–229; trans. J.M.

7 Incidentally, before WWI, Anastas Mikoyan studied at a seminary in Tbilisi, the city where a street and a school were already named after Sienkiewicz in 1916, the year of his death (Kurier Warszawski 1916, no. 358, p. 3).

8 The date was not conicendental: 1924 saw the return of the writer’s remains to Poland. The bronze bust was installed in Kamienna Góra’s garden square, later named after Sienkiewicz. During WWII, German occupiers were going to melt the bust, but it survived the war to be returned to its original site (a small roundabout at the junction of Korzeniowski, Mickiewicz, and Sienkiewicz Streets (see Encyklopedia Gdyni [The encyclopedia of Gdynia], edited by M. Sokołowska, I. Greczanik-Filipp, W. Kwiatkowska, Gdynia 2006, p. 612).

9 The pre-war story of the monument is recounted by J. Konieczny in “Kult pośmiertny Henryka Sienkiewicza w XX-leciu międzywojennym. O dziejach pierwszego w Polsce pomnika pisarza w Bydgoszczy” [Henryk Sienkiewicz’s posthumous cult in the 1920s and 1930s: On the writer’s first monument in Bydgoszcz], in Henryk Sienkiewicz. Biografia, twórczość, recepcja [Henryk Sienkiewicz: Biography, works, reception], edited by L. Ludorowski, H. Ludorowska, Lublin 1998, pp. 349–360.

10 L. Ludorowski, “Z Sienkiewiczem w Europie” [In Europe with Sienkiewicz], in Henryk Sienkiewicz. Polak i Europejczyk [Henryk Sienkiewicz: Polish and European], edited by Z. Mokranowska, Sosnowiec 2004, pp. 20–21; http://www.zspsompolno.internetdsl.pl/html/historia.html, accessed on September 10, 2017.

11 L. Ludorowski, op. cit., p. 21.

12 C. Cybulski, “Historia pomnika Henryka Sienkiewicza w Łukowie” [The history of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s monument in Łuków], in Sienkiewicz – pamięć i współczesność [Henryk Sienkiewicz: Memory and modernity], edited by L. Ludorowski, H. Ludorowska, Z. Mokranowska, Lublin 2003, p. 269.

13 M. J. Januszkiewicz, A. Pleskaczyński, I haj vivat Poznzańczanie. Co o Poznaniu wiedzieć wypada [What you should know about Poznań], Poznań 2001, pp. 114–115.

14 S. Anioła, J. Bogucki, M. Formanowski, Kopiec Wolności w Poznaniu jako symbol niepodległości [The Mound of Freedom in Poznań as a symbol of independence], Poznań 1992, pp. 42–43.

15 For more details, see A. Cybulski, “Historia budowy pomnika-kopca Henryka Sienkiewicza” [The history of Henryk Sienkiewicz Mound-Monument], in Henryk Sienkiewicz – tradycje rodowe, epizody biografii, twórczość [Henryk Sienkiewicz: Family traditions, biographical episodes, works], edited by L. Ludorowski, Lublin 2008, pp. 515–521.

16 J. Konieczny, op. cit., p. 351.

17 Ibidem, pp. 351, 360.

18 C. Cybulski, op. cit., p. 271; trans. J.M.

19 Ibidem, pp. 273–274.

20 Gazeta Poranna 2 Grosze 1916, vol. 321, p. 3.

21 A valuable compilation of these materials is provided in “Bibliografia literatury polskiej. ‘Nowy Korbut’” [Bibiography of Polish literature], vol. 17, part 3, Henryk Sienkiewicz, edited by D. Świerczyńska, Warsaw 2015, p. 589.

22 I. Grzesiuk-Olszewska, Warszawska rzeźba pomnikowa [Warsaw monument sculpture], Warsaw 2003, pp. 13-18, 64–103.

23 A. Grabowski, “Bisztynek: pomnik Henryka Sienkiewicza” [Bisztynek: Henryk Sienkiewicz’s monument], at http://mojemazury.pl/98924,Bisztynek-pomnik-Henryka-Sienkiewicza.html#axzz4XMzKQvig, accessed on September 10, 2017.

24 Ibidem.

25 S. Ciepłowski, Napisy pamiątkowe w Warszawie XVII–XX w. [Memorial plaques in Warsaw, 17th–20th c.], Warsaw 1987, p. 36; Z. Stępiński, Gawędy warszawskiego architekta [The stories of a Warsaw architekt], Warsaw 1984, p. 65; trans. J.M.

26 http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/w,437,12540907,12540907,tu_pan_Zagloba_walczyl_z_Malpami.html, accessed on February 1, 2017; trans. J.M.

27 M. Trzeciak, “Henryk Sienkiewicz,” in Warszawa pozytywistów [The Warsaw of positivists], edited by J. Kulczycka-Saloni, E. Ihnatowicz, Warsaw 1992, pp. 160–161; trans. J.M.

28 http://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/1,34862,20350630,demontuja-neony-kinoteki-na-palacu-kultury-w-sierpniu-zaswieca.html?disableRedirects=true, accessed on February 1, 2017. The Zagłoba sculpture was taken away at the same time as the Socialist-Realist Przyjaźń [Friendship] by Alina Szapocznikow. The dismantling report of 16 May 1992 was later found and perused by Katarzyna Bielas and Dorota Jarecka. The artworks mentioned there include the Zagłoba statue, but I found no evidence of anyone trying to track it down. Bielas and Jarecka focused entirely on the fate of Przyjaźń. See K. Bielas, D. Jarecka, “Była tu jakaś «Przyjaźń»?” [Has there been any “Friendship”?], in Jako dowód i wyraz przyjaźni. Reportaże o Pałacu Kultury [In evidence and expression of friendship: Reportages on the Palace of Culture], edited by M. Budzińska, M. Sznajderman, Wołowiec 2015, p. 272 (initially published in Gazeta Wyborcza of September 13, 1998).

29 W. Baraniewski, Pałac w Warszawie [A palace in Warsaw], Warsaw 2014, p. 53 and following.

30 The above information courtesy of a long-time resident of the Niedźwiadek neighborhood in Ursus.

31 http://varszavka.blogspot.com/2016/09/pomnik-zagoby-na-osiedlu-ursus.html, accessed on January 30, 2017; trans. J.M.

32 S. Ciepłowski, op. cit., p. 107; M. Trzeciak, op. cit., pp. 160–161; http://www.sp127.edu.pl//historia, accessed on September 17, 2017.

33 J. Domżalski, “Związki Ursusa z Warszawą” [On Ursus and Warsaw], in Śladami nazw miejskich Warszawy (z prac Zespołu Nazewnictwa Miejskiego Warszawy) [On proper names of places in Warsaw], Warsaw 2012, pp. 85–86.

34 Ibidem, pp. 87–88.

35 J. Zieliński, “Nazewnictwo okresu wielkiej inkorporacji, straty w lokalnych systemach nazewniczych na przełomie XIX i XX w.,” ibidem, pp. 39–56.

36 J. Sawicki (ed.), “Nazwy występujące wielokrotnie w latach 1901–2010,” ibidem, p. 381; by comparison, there were only two Kmicic streets at that time (ibidem, pp. 331–332).

37 J. Sawicki, “Nazwy w nowym Katalogu ulic m. st. Warszawy,” ibidem, pp. 227–228, 240–241; K. Handke, Słownik nazewnictwa Warszawy, Warsaw 1998, p. 380.

38 http://www.podlasie24.pl/lukow/region/laweczka-sienkiewicza-stanela-na-placu-w-lukowie-1cbe3.html, accessed on September 13, 2017.

39 http://www.podlasie24.pl/lukow/region/kolejna-laweczka-sienkiewicza-w-lukowie-1db73.html, accessed on September 13, 2017.

40 More details can be found at http://zaczytani.org/portfolio/znani-i-lubiani-artysci-tworza-dla-nas-zaczytane-lawki/, accessed on September 13, 2017.

41 I. Grzesiuk-Olszewska, op. cit., pp. 216–217.

42 M. Baranowska, “Prywatna historia poezji” [A private history of poetry], Twórczość 2000, vol. 8, p. 142; trans. J.M. Chopin’s statue is one of the park’s landmarks.

43 Ibidem; trans. J.M.

44 Cf. comments on the close-to-marginal effort to find “new form” in post-WWII monuments to Polish personages: I. Grzesiuk-Olszewska, Polska rzeźba pomnikowa w latach 1945–1995 [Polish monument sculpture, 1945–1995], Warsaw 1995, pp. 178–181.

Faith and Politics:
Sienkiewicz’s Political Theology

Marek Pąkciński

(Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences)

Faith at the Heart of Politeia: Henryk Sienkiewicz and His “Political Theology”

The question of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s conservatism

The writer’s motivation in adopting a conservative worldview and the conundrum whether or not he can truly be defined as “conservative” in the classical sense of the word are undoubtedly among the issues most often debated by the scholars of his work. They surface, for example, in Tadeusz Bujnicki’s article entitled “Sienkiewicz – zbuntowany neokonserwatysta” (Sienkiewicz: A rebellious neo-conservative). The exact question posed by Bujnicki is, can Sienkiewicz’s literature and opinions really be classified within the neat opposing categories of conservatism and positivism? The suggested answer is cautious yet firm: “There is enough evidence to claim that it would actually be far from the truth.”1 To some extent, this statement goes against earlier analyses by literary critics, who attributed the writer’s choice to join the conservative camp mainly to individual and environmental reasons as well as a hard-to-define change in his outlook on life that occurred on his return from the journey to North America. One could safely assume that such speculations follow the suggestions made by positivist criticism which, in response to the above-mentioned “conversion” of the author of the Trilogy, gave Sienkiewicz a lasting reputation as a writer of considerable narrative talents and sense of style but lacking in solid intellectual grounds for a more general, philosophical reflection. Indeed, critical voices from within the positivist generation most often equate Sienkiewicz’s gift for narration with the alleged intellectual shallowness of his literary message. An example can be found in a comment by a major Polish thinker of the period, Aleksander Świętochowski:

By the nature of his talent, Sienkiewicz is a woman’s writer. […] he recounts his stories in a soft, tender, poetical manner; his writing includes some touching details and is full of refinement […] his themes are invariably either pastoral or chivalric. There is no deeper thought […] having put the readers’ minds to sleep, he has them shed a few tears here, let out a little laugh there […], he does not charm their senses, but dulls them into a nice nap.2

Similar opinions of Sienkiewicz as an accomplished artist but not a thinker were concurrent with speculation on the writer’s noncommittal, rather coincidental affiliation with the positivist movement. In the words of Piotr Chmielowski, Poland’s leading positivist critic:

Although Sienkiewicz was on the side of progress, he had no penchant for philosophy and therefore did not join the positivist community: he did not take an active part in the dispute on cultural trends, subscribing only to the belief in democracy, criticizing the ineptitude of the nobility, and encouraging educational and industrial developments.3

The same text implies a somewhat accidental and superficial pattern to the writer’s change of heart:

At first, Sienkiewicz was quite explicit about his democratic and progressive views, but his social milieu made them fade very soon. At the beginning of 1882, Sienkiewicz assumed the editorship of Słowo, a newly founded conservative daily.4

Such judgments and the ensuing conclusions of literary historians cannot be denied their factual validity; however, the emotional and intellectual background of Sienkiewicz’s works was much richer than it was assumed by positivists, who were noticeably disappointed in his stance. This seems to suggest that, for Sienkiewicz, opting for this or that Weltanschauung was inspired by deeper motives. Even if he took the decision to switch his ideological allegiance under the pressure of social circumstances, his inclination to do so itself must have had a deeper, emotional and intellectual source – at least, so it seems in view of the artistic truth of Sienkiewicz’s later writings.

Political theology and literary history: Sienkiewicz in perspective

The notion of “political theology” itself appears to be rather ambiguous. It suggests a sort of middle ground between theology and political science, a discipline that studies a theological vision of a transcendent or immanent order in relation to social and political realities. Carl Schmitt,5 a German jurist, constitutionalist and political theorist, who is commonly considered to be the patron of political theology, saw its primary goal to lie in uncovering the religious core of contemporary political and legal concepts. Presently, as a result of a post-secular turn in Western thought, the interaction between the visions of the eschaton and the realities of social life have also been examined by those thinkers who deny adherence to any specific religious tradition (e.g., Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou, Terry Eagleton, Giorgio Agamben).6 The post-secular political theology of today assumes that it is possible to consider the meaning of not only classical theological notions such as “God,” “sanctity” or “mystery,” but also other fields of imagery of the collective unconscious which shape social and political lives of entire communities.

The present paper mostly employs the concept of political theology as proposed by Eric Voegelin, a German-born Austrian and American philosopher.7 In his works, Voegelin adopts a clear-cut definition of this branch of knowledge, which studies the transcendent order (or, the notion of the transcendent order) as it has interacted with social life and political realities throughout the ages. Like other political theologians, Voegelin assumes that such order – the subject of a scientific discipline – is not dependent on beliefs or imponderables of any religion, while its ideation (or experience) constitutes a solid foundation for all human societies. According to Voegelin, the transcendent nature of the order is its inalienable characteristic, while a certain interruption or suspension of transcendence and its partial or complete replacement with immanence, which occurred in the modern culture of the West, can be described more adequately as the “immanentization of transcendence”: approaching the everyday, sensual, carnal, and material aspects of the human condition as if they were elements of the eschatological more-than-human world.

It must be added here that, for Eric Voegelin, Slavoj Žižek, and Eric L. Santner alike, the theory of “political theology” – both as a scientific perspective for studying cultural phenomena and as the praxis that brings, preserves, or restores social order – requires transcendence to be absolute. In other words, transcendence needs to be a radically distinct order, whether founded on classical theologoumena and mythologems or on the total unknowability of the Unconscious. The dynamic nature of transcendence – or, if you prefer, the evolving process of exploring it – can thus never be successfully subjected to a reasoned analysis, though it itself constitutes the source of all rationality. Hence, the human sense or organ that allows for appreciating the order should be the human soul, cited by Voegelin, who in turn borrows this idea from Plato and the Pythagoreans. The soul is capable of experiencing and feeling; it seems to be “the feeling soul” in the sense suggested by Agata Bielik-Robson to substitute the notion of the post-Enlightenment “thinking subject,” or the “sensorium of transcendence” (the term often employed by Voegelin in reference to the psyche).

Therefore, when literature is analyzed from the perspective of political theology, it is not necessarily expected to represent rationality, sagacity, or a masterful selection of valid empirical insights. Even if works of literature have a quality that allows us to identify their potential for recognizing transcendent politeia paradigms, this does not mean that they have to display a specifically philosophical reflection which post-Enlightenment readers have come to see as a mark of valuable, high-brow literature. On the contrary, such writing may seduce the reader with its delightful style, the rhythm, and melody of narration; it encourages intuitive, artistic cognition. A strong connection between cognitive values of literary works (such as biblical poems, Homer’s and Hesiod’s epics, Greek tragedies, etc.) and their aesthetic beauty is built by Eric Voegelin, for example, in many different parts of his multi-volume Order and History.

A question could be asked whether the oeuvre of Sienkiewicz – who, as noted by Chmielowski, had no liking for philosophy8 – could really constitute a suitable object for an analysis in the field of philosophy, or even religious studies, carried out on such a grand scale? The answer appears to be affirmative: yes, this approach seems promising for a variety of reasons, such as the writer’s vacillation between positivist and conservative trends, his aversion for doctrinarism, and the nature of the positivist movement itself (so essential for the modern change in Western perception and described by Voegelin as the most consistent representation of the “immanentist” tendency in 19th-century culture and civilization of the West). According to Bujnicki, Sienkiewicz repeatedly stated (especially in private correspondence) his dislike of any direct attempts to make him a social tribune. He hated being called on to take sides in the then ongoing ideological debate and resisted the pressure of the public opinion that tried to force him to perform the role he did not want or to support the views he was not confident about.9 The decision to take up historical themes was motivated by the writer’s effort to escape what he saw as the spiritual stuntedness of his Polish contemporaries, the point mentioned in an often-cited quotation from his Mieszaniny literacko-artystyczne (Literary and artistic medley):

Of this life, we have had more than enough: it is making us tired, even bored; besides, we have lost our hopefulness, not to mention the desire to live. Let us at least allow literature to open up new worlds for us, with nothing stunted – and everything grand; nothing flat – and everything lofty; nothing diseased or dying – everything healthy, immortal; nothing old and decrepit – everything young and fresh.10

This syndrome of distancing oneself from the dictates of time and disengaging from society- imposed demands by seeking refuge in “ages long gone by” indicates the writer’s dissatisfaction with a wide range of aspects of the contemporary world (by no means limited to Poland being partitioned between enemy states, which in fact pushed Polish culture into a marginal position in Europe). Indeed, Sienkiewicz’s endeavor to bring back the past is very similar at its core to the nostalgia expressed by today’s critics of the post-Enlightenment model of Western civilization. Against the background of such “revisionist” longings, political theology stands out for the fact that it offers very precise diagnoses based on the current life of the society. In his From Enlightenment to Revolution, Voegelin thus characterizes the position of the Church as an institution that is both theological and political – and therefore responsible for translating the vision of the transcendent order into the social and political realities:

the spiritual institution was finally relegated to the private sphere, while the autonomous political institutions achieved the monopoly of publicity. This privatization of the spirit left the field open for a respiritualization of the public sphere from other sources, in the forms of nationalism; humanitarianism; economism both liberal and socialist; biologism; and psychologism. […] More fateful was the spiritual devastation wrought by the widespread conviction that the rational-scientific approach could be a substitute for the spiritual integration of personality.11

This diagnosis gathers together the key motifs for Sienkiewicz’s “conversion” to conservatism and the contradictions emerging in his artistic biography: keeping away from any doctrines, voicing anticlerical views (especially in the private letters written during his trip to America), displaying an aversion to the communities around him (both positivists and conservatives), expressing a desire to be transported into a world that would allow the human soul to regain its “eschatological” dimension and its fundamental freedom of choice between good and evil. There are strong indications that the underlying cause of self-contradictions and inconsistencies (which can undeniably be found in Sienkiewicz’s attitude) lay largely not in his personal motives but in the essential dilemmas of the time.12 In light of Voegelin’s thought, an alternative interpretation to the much-commented fact that the author of the Trilogy never actually went beyond the positivist mindset also appears. It is not enough, I believe, to state that the writer remained under the influence of the generally understood positivist cultural formation throughout his writing career; one should also realize the extent to which the ideological conditioning of the time (or rather: theological and political conditioning, because of the involvement of the unconscious which cannot be subject to reasoning) made it impossible to freely express any “eschatological” yearnings. Similarly, as claimed by Voegelin, Enlightenment trends reflected in the thought of Helvetius constitute:

a classical instance of the destruction of the integral human person by positing as normal the disorder of the person while denying to man the remedial powers which might restore the order. […] Society has become a totally closed universe with an immanent process of salvation.13

The American historian of ideas describes here a model of European society close to the peak of the modern era, which could be associated with Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon with its impenetrable walls and no “windows” for the prisoner to discern the transcendent reality.

In his extensive and multi-layered series Order and History, Voegelin calls this solution the “Gnostic order,” or rather the “Gnostic deformation” in the perception of the Cosmos-Logos, as substantially independent of man (who is merely its non-autonomous creation). It is in this manner, continues Voegelin, that modernity dispels the notion of the fear of God, so characteristic of both monotheistic and polytheistic religious epiphanies of order; it rejects the idea that the transcendent sphere may be free from physis, and that – to draw on Plato and his predecessors – proper measures should be taken to separate the human from the divine.

Thus, Sienkiewicz’s perspicacity appears to consist in the fact that he recognized the need for a shift towards conservatism, which would in a way rectify the major error committed by modern societies in the fundamental, critical stage of defining the premises for the order. It is worth noting here that, thus perceived, conservatism does not rule out adopting individual elements of the positivist mindset: only an objective, honest appraisal of one’s situation can make it possible to readjust the view of reality to correct proportions, so that a single, separate “entity” is no longer deified in a manner typical for the Enlightenment shift.

A Digression on character and novel design: Naturalism abandoned, the Dionysian aesthetic effect

Just like the contemporaneous critics, all literary historians who have discussed Sienkiewicz agree that not only was he an exceptionally gifted stylist but also a discerning observer of the life around him. Many interesting and insightful studies have been devoted to the way he designed his characters, but it would be compelling to approach this topic from the perspective of the peculiar “philosophy of man” developed in political theology. In this light, the “human nature” (the concept criticized by Scientists but accepted by conservative thinkers) could be seen as changing in time, yet essentially based on eschatological premises and focused on the meaning of human existence.

One of the examples that illustrate this changeability can be found in the atrophy of the psyche as the “sensorium of transcendence” that Voegelin diagnoses to progress with advancing modernity, even up to the point of making people unable to experience anything beyond the physical level. However, since the concept of order and the coherence of the cultural sign system requires the human factor to be represented in the immanent order one way or another, Voegelin’s historical analysis indicates the gradually emerging phenomenon referred to by him as “the deification of the animal basis of [man’s] existence.”14

It all boils down to the increasing cultural focus – and the psychological focus of individual human souls – on the real, material life and its many expressions. As regards cultural development, this process (seen by political theologians as a turning point in the relations between the human and the sacred) could lead directly to, among others, Naturalism in art and literature; and it was this movement, particularly its Zolaesque style, that Sienkiewicz vehemently opposed. There is no coincidence, then, that the writer’s reaction against Naturalism was a breakthrough step in his literary evolution towards the historical novel, as noted by Bujnicki, who argues that Sienkiewicz replaced:

associative structures and the autonomization of images with precise motivational dependencies; the narrative rule of depersonalization – with narrative roles within the realm of the narrator-as-author’s omniscience; excessive attachment to detail and confined spaces – with well-developed storytelling and vast spatial expanses; the everyday and the authentic – with the epic, full of meaning and rich in lofty thought; the abasement of the character – with his heroism; the pathology and biologically-determined destiny – with endorsement of “normality,” aesthetic quality, psychological motivation.15

Such an idiosyncratic response to Naturalism proves the writer’s accurate intuition – both esthetic and ethical – even with his irresolution in choosing the paradigm to follow.

Voegelin discusses yet another aspect to the “sacralization of bios”: the Dionysian myth. Of course, it existed and was drawn upon long before Friedrich Nietzsche’s antithesis between Dionysus and Christ. The concept was defined by Anne-Robert Turgot, one of the precursors of the Enlightenment:

Of what concern can it be to a man, who lives and dies in his finite present, whether mankind has progressed in the past or will progress in the future […]? Turgot’s answer is the masse totale. The triumphant brutality of the answer is unsurpassable. History has no meaning for man. What does it matter? It has meaning for the masse totale. […] Since concrete man cannot be the subject for whom history has a meaning, the subject has to be changed – man is replaced by the masse totale.16

The author of the Trilogy reveals his peculiar, perhaps deliberately concealed fascination with the Dionysian quality (represented in, for example, amorphous and anonymous masses of people) mainly on the aesthetic level of his novels, as a component of descriptive rhetoric. It is easy to guess that it mostly informs the discourse and imagery of battle scenes. A characteristic example of turning an individual into part of the “anonymous mass” (that nonetheless has the will to survive the fight at all costs) can be found in Sienkiewicz’s novella entitled “Bartek the Conqueror”:

Meanwhile the train has stopped at the station. In all the windows are visible uniforms, and caps with red bands. The troops are apparently as numerous as ants. […] A certain power and might is beating from that train, the end of which is not to be seen. […] But now the soldiers are separated from the crowd; they are already a dark, dense mass which forms into squares and rectangles, and begins to move with the regularity and precision of a machine.17

The above excerpt illustrates the aestheticization of a Dionysian image, though it must be added that this is achieved in the novella mainly through the stark contrast with the tropes of home, the protagonist’s true homeland, and family values.

The historical novel as a journey through the collective unconscious

The above hypothesis on the frame of mind and Sienkiewicz’s attitude at the time he wrote his major works may bring us closer to the understanding of his ideological hovering (more precisely, finding out why both of the then dominant movements, positivism and conservatism, appeared “equally wrong” to him) and his final, though not definitive, siding with the conservatives, who were at least able to notice the fact that spiritual needs were being smothered by positivists, or, to be more exact, by the pessimistic social atmosphere they had created.18 In the context of Voegelin’s theory of political theology, Sienkiewicz’s decision appears to result directly from the process of destruction (or dissipation) of the spiritual integrity of the human soul. This, in turn, opened the soul up to the possibility of substituting the system of transcendent symbols with social doctrines and images from the collective or individual unconscious. For instance, the role of D’Alembert’s encyclopedism in the genesis of Gnostic positivism is thus commented on by the author of Order and History:

Insofar as the origin and the obligation of the bios theoretikos [and the “life of the spirit” at its heart – M.P.], and with it the meaning of humanistic civilization, are unintelligible from the pragmatic perspective of utilitarian values, we find in the attitude of d’Alembert an indication of the profound antihumanism underlying the Enlightenment and the positivist creed.19

The excerpt is worth quoting not only because it points to the Enlightenment as the starting point of the postmodern antihumanism (one should mention here that the source, Voegelin’s study, was first published in 1975), but also for acknowledging the likelihood of replacing the transcendental sensibility of the soul with the then dominant Scientism.20 It could even be said that antihumanism is actually caused by the cult of science, which denies credibility to any religious experience of the transcendent order; instead, it proposes the precision of the scientific search for facts – and the related ascetic atmosphere. According to Scientists, it is not the human being but rather a depersonalized “subject of cognition” that can be attributed with dignity and be morally right.

Sienkiewicz’s turn towards the past, especially in the form of epic-style evocation in historical novels, is by no means a simple unequivocal alternative to Scientism and the pragmatism of that time. One of the basic motives for this change was a quarrel with presentism, a characteristic feature of positivism which was termed the “authoritative present” by Voegelin.21 The American scholar repeatedly mentions the ubiquity of presentism in post-Enlightenment visions of the past, discernible in spite of the seeming emphasis placed on the detailed and well-grounded study of history by thinkers such as Turgot and Condorcet. In fact, the discrediting of the past by positivists took many forms, from representing it as a “sequence of events” governed by the causal chain but divorced from a historiosophical system (such as Christianity) to, most importantly, subordinating it – together with public awareness – to the doctrine of “progress.” In the words of Voegelin:

The idea of progress is, indeed, the idea of a static situation insofar as it envisages the future as “an addition to,” or “an elaboration of” the present. The idea that possibly the values of modem Western civilization might be superseded in due course by a civilization with a value structure as different from the present Western as is the Hellenic from the Chinese, does not enter these speculations on progress. Insofar as the future can bring nothing but a perfection of the values embodied in present civilization, and as the open future of man in history is transformed into a present aim projected into the future, the idea of progress is static. From this static element in the idea of progress stems the reactionary, paralyzed attitude of progressives in the face of new developments (not envisaged in a project which, in substance, is rooted in the eighteenth century) as well as the wrathful impotence of the progressive intellectual to answer with a positive, ordering will the disintegration of Western civilization.22

Voegelin reveals the ways in which the presentism-informed history of mankind shaped the 19th-century Historicism, which (even unto the intellectual initiatives of Carl Jacob Burckhardt and Wilhelm Dilthey) was mostly just an appearance of history: merely an extrapolation of the then-prevalent viewpoint, according to which the “authoritative present” is the consummation of the civilizational and cultural progress. At the very least, the “authoritative present” was seen as the junction where humankind finally arrived at the understanding of its true ends and destiny, conceived from the utopian perspective; thus, as far as the fundamental goals of the human being are concerned, the only thing left to do is their strenuous fulfillment.

Guided by his artistic intuition and a personal idea of searching for truth and objectivity, Sienkiewicz clearly developed his concept of the past by building a multi-faceted argument against the positivist – or, more generally, post-Enlightenment – idols or opinions (to draw on Plato’s differentiation) concerning the meaning of history and ongoing life. The fact that he selected the 17th century as the setting for the Trilogy could well be explained by an urge to provide psychological compensation to the Polish society for all the defeats it had suffered, but one could go much further. If we accept Jerzy Kwiatkowski’s proposition that Sienkiewicz possessed “a grasp of Poland’s historical fate, the ability to hit on its patterns, model situations,”23 we may conjecture that his literary project went beyond his era’s notions of history and historicity. There is no doubt, for example, that if – in line with Voegelin’s supposition – the bourgeois-liberal civilization of 19th-century European powers was in a way (though not in the Marxist sense) reactionary, and this conservatism may have resulted not as much from allegiance to any specific social structure (for example, social class) as, paradoxically, from its progressiveness or allegiance to a certain concept of progress that excludes the possibility of any radical change, then Sienkiewicz used the dynamics of his characters’ actions and depicted the unpredictability of history in order to show that such radical changes are by all means possible – and should not be feared as long as our collective and individual spirituality is safely rooted in a transcendent order.

Yet another solution to open up the “Scientist Panopticon cell” was, obviously, to present history as a large field of possibilities such as a miscellaneous collection of “scenes of freedom” proposed by Hans-Georg Gadamer in his hermeneutical conception of history. This open field has a potential for many different developments, and strangely enough, a lot of them are determined by decisions of individuals. That is probably why, among Sienkiewicz’s works that precede the Trilogy, many critics have singled out a novella entitled Tartar Captivity (Niewola tatarska). The story has been discussed by Tadeusz Bujnicki24 and, more recently, by Marek Wedemann.25 Critics unanimously point to the connection between Sienkiewicz’s work and The Constant Prince by Calderon de la Barca. As the latter was translated into Polish by the leading poet of Polish romanticism Juliusz Słowacki, we may infer a romantic influence and a certain inclination on the part of Sienkiewicz to seek inspiration in pre-modern times, when (as the writer himself would probably say) great people, filled with fiery passions and unswervingly faithful to their duty still lived. Bujnicki marks the novella’s consideration of the issue of national and religious treason as well as of historical legacy guardians, capable of passing the values on to the rest of the society and thus (in terms of political theology) developing the public’s sensitivity to the transcendent order as the paradigm for both the human soul and the social hierarchy. This is precisely the role performed by the protagonist of Tartar Captivity, a representative of the Polish gentry, Aleksy Zdanoborski, who shows commoners (his fellow captives) the meaning of steadfastness by refusing to convert to Islam or offer his voluntary service to the khan.

Clearly, Sienkiewicz’s later historical works incorporate the same vision of the Polish nation, based on the patriotism of the nobility (or, more generally, of historical legacy guardians) who should set an example of proper conduct for the rest of the society; the society, in turn, should follow it, just like the human soul follows a transcendental inspiration. There is no doubt that the author makes up his mind here about the way to disseminate patriotism and the sense of national identity among the general public, a process that historians of ideas and political scientists regarded to be inevitable after the French Revolution of 1789. According to Sienkiewicz, this process should not undermine the authority so that patriotism (or national awareness) and revolution do not form a combination which threatens so many modern societies.26

It is worth noting that, in Tartar Captivity as well as in numerous incidents throughout the Trilogy, in different variations, this emanation of authority from truly honorable guardians of historical legacy (in contrast to undeserving usurpers) is actually enhanced by situations such as traumatic oppression, ethnic persecution, and even major internal conflicts comparable to a civil war. This entails one more important aspect, connected with the fortunes of the human soul in the epoch of godlessness. In the seminal proto-Enlightenment political theory of Thomas Hobbes, elaborated in his Leviathan, the key role is ascribed to social chaos, “a condition of war of everyone against everyone.” It was precisely the threat of war and traumatic memories of turbulent interregna that forced primeval societies to opt for cooperation and submission to an authority. The democratic public sacrifices part of its freedom in exchange for guardianship and protection of their lives. As explained by Voegelin, the Enlightenment was the time when:

the orientation toward a summum bonum was replaced by the flight from the summum malum of death in civil war. The inversion of direction becomes now established, under the title of genealogy, as the principal instrument for interpreting the internal order of human nature. […] the strata of human nature are interpreted genetically as derivatives of a physical or biological substance at the bottom of existence. […] in Hobbes we already see the dangerous attempt to replace the spiritual process of contrition by the external process of submission to governmental power.27

It is possible that Sienkiewicz evoked the difficult, often traumatic experiences of the past not only “for the strengthening of hearts” (as the author wrote himself at the end of the Trilogy) but also to stir the readers’ souls on an individual, not just community, basis. If, indeed, the order imposed in modern societies had its roots in the fear of summum malum (i.e., war or revolution), and these societies were affected by the loss of their religious integrity on an individual, personal level, then the depiction of the “re-integration” model could have had a therapeutic effect. Perhaps it was this tendency (as described by Voegelin) that inspirited Sienkiewicz to demonstrate the following assumption: any state of social chaos or lawlessness can be overcome by a soul that holds – both on individual and communal levels – unto moral values.

Following their original publication in the 19th century, the Trilogy and other works by Sienkiewicz have fulfilled a therapeutic role, showing in very concrete terms that – despite its shortcomings, miseries, and historical defeats – Polish society can be reborn, and its representatives have a potential to change for the better. Consequently, Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre has had a much more positive impact on readers than the output of the advocates of progress and the adoption of Western paradigms (which all too often meant going against the national psychology). Instead of the utopian ideal of bringing happiness to mankind through science and rational skepticism, Sienkiewicz proffered the belief that, irrespective of the future which awaited Poles, they would always be able to rise to the challenge with their spiritual and mental strength, built up from past experiences. It is the common past that gives the nation the vigor to adapt to the vicissitudes of life.

Incidentally, anthropologists distinguish an important healing technique used by witch doctors in so-called “primitive cultures,” which consists in forcing the patient (under the spell of the “evil spirits” of the past) to abreact traumatic experiences in a sort of a theatrical performance. The haunting event is reenacted so that the patient is able to recover from the trauma by undertaking adequate steps instead of the former mistakes that led to the tragedy. Then and only then can the healing begin, and the patient can get over the trauma.28

Sienkiewicz’s letters from his voyage to America, written for and published in the Warsaw press, testify to the writer’s keen interest in Native Americans. Meeting them – even if they were, e.g., prisoners escorted by American troops – was a major source of excitement. Literary historians claim that the author of the Trilogy drew an analogy between the enslaved, rebelling Poles and Native Americans in their fight against the overwhelming forces of white invaders. It is said that, during his stay in Anaheim, California, Sienkiewicz often went for lonely horseback rides. Though there is no evidence to support this guess, it would not be inconceivable to imagine that he spent this time visiting a nearby Indian Reservation, talking to the shamans, and trying to learn the difficult art of summoning the ghosts of ancestors.29

According to one of the most famous quotes from Eric Voegelin, “the order of history is the history of order” – i.e., of developing both the perception and the notion of order with regard to religion and philosophy. This reversal of terms may seem to be of little significance, but in fact, it brings back the primacy of eschatology into the perspective of post-Enlightenment immanentism and, therefore, is a sort of settlement with 19th-century Historicism and its Enlightenment roots. In his study on Sienkiewicz’s conversion to conservatism, Tadeusz Bujnicki cites the anti-positivist turn as an explanation of the mystery behind the novelist’s conversion, or, to be more precise, behind him putting one foot on both sides of the ideological barricade (which could be illustrated by the fact that, even when writing the first part of the Trilogy, Sienkiewicz expressed anticlericalism in his letters; opposition to the clergy was a classic trait of progressive positivist thought, but the writer was already known at that time as the opponent of positivism).

It is important to note here that the anti-positivist turn also impacted clerically-minded conservatives (such as Teodor Jeske-Choiński) without giving rise to ambivalence; at the most, it pushed them towards post-Darwinian nationalism. The different ways in which the cultural phenomenon of turning away from positivism influenced the two historical writers confirm the significance of endorsing (as Jeske-Choiński, also as a potential follower of Wilhelm Dilthey) or opting out of (in the case of Sienkiewicz) the legacy of modern Historicism, where – in line with the Hegelian system, popular throughout the 19th century – it is history that determines the system of values and the vision of the eschaton.30 It goes without saying that political theology offers a contrary perspective by placing the cultural source of order firmly outside the historical reality. This statement can be tested against the source material of various depictions of historical reality written by Sienkiewicz. The results could reveal, for example, that discarding Historicism through placing the core of historical meaning not in abstraction, but in a specific, unique Bios of a nation, its language and value system, makes it possible for the writer to abandon the most evident romantic narrative structures.

Quo Vadis and the issue of Christianity

There is no doubt that interpreting Sienkiewicz’s work is incomplete without due consideration given to the Quo Vadis novel: his most “universalist” piece of writing and the one closest to Voegelin’s “epiphany of transcendent order.” Here again, as he did when representing Poland’s turbulent 17th century for his contemporaries, the writer tried to remain as objective as possible and make his characters complex, evolving, and all too often full of qualms. The artistic vision that inspired Sienkiewicz to use antiquity as the time setting for the novel may also be given different readings.

Given the call for approaching Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre as more intricate than it is usually perceived to be and avoiding interpretive oversimplifications (and in light of some scholarly theses about the ambiguity of the writer’s conversion and his going beyond the boundaries of rigid doctrinal divisions), one could wonder how the grand topic of the Roman Empire and Nero’s persecution of Christians may be reconciled with the novelist’s earlier anticlericalism.31 In addition, Quo Vadis seems to have been Sienkiewicz’s response to what he saw as the inadequacy of the efforts of the Church to bring Poles together when the nation’s survival was at stake, and a crisis of values threatened its integrity. Voegelin outlined a similar situation in the history of Christianity from the Protestant dissent onwards:

The Church has abandoned its spiritual leadership insofar as it has left postmedieval man without guidance in his endeavors to find meaning in a complex civilization which differs profoundly in its horizons of reason, nature and history from the ancient that was absorbed and penetrated by the early Church. In the face of this abandonment of the magisterium it is futile when Christian thinkers accuse the superbia of modern man […]. From the dissatisfaction of being engaged in a civilizational process without meaning there are engendered attempts, beginning with Voltaire, at a reconstruction of meaning through the evocation of a new “sacred history.”32

Apart from the above-described progressive “loss of meaning” (which both necessitated and incited the constitutional development of the “earthly order” embodied in, for example, the encyclopedism of the Enlightenment and positivism), Voegelin identified an even greater menace: turning the universe of Christian symbols into a mere myth, which inevitably rendered it invalid and history-bound, potentially making the symbols tantamount to those of any other religion:

In the age of Christ and the centuries of early Christianity, this language [of Christian religious symbolism – M.P.] was not a “myth” but the exact terminology for the designation of religious phenomena. It has become a “myth” as a consequence of the penetration of our world by a rationalism which destroys the transcendental meanings of symbols taken from the world of the senses. In the course of this “de-divinization” […] of the world, sensual symbols have lost their transparency for transcendental reality; they have become opaque and are no longer revelatory of the immersion of the finite world in the transcendent.33

It seems plausible to hypothesize that Sienkiewicz resorted to narrative settings in a distant past in an attempt to recreate and show the relevance of the process in which history and human existence are endowed with a new meaning; in the novel, Christianity triumphs over ancient Rome by virtue of its new interpretation of reality. One could see it as a paradoxical (deliberate or not) following of post-Enlightenment Rationalists and positivist Scientists in their effective efforts to replace the experience of the transcendent order with the figure of the “genealogy of order” (or value systems).34 The key symbolic device in the figure relies on the fact that two incompatible orders (factual reality versus transcendence) are integrated into one earthly order through a “chain of symptoms” for a given phenomenon, which are linked in a horizontal (as opposed to vertical) cause-and-effect string. In the case of Sienkiewicz, we should rather talk of the “genealogy of moral authority,” whose more-than-human transcendental source is recognized and fully respected.

One can then safely say that Quo Vadis is as much a historical novel as a modern voice in the discussion on the state of European culture and civilization towards the end of the 19th century. However, Sienkiewicz was truly in his element not when he was building an elaborate discourse, but when narrating a story. That is why it is not any specific passage from the novel, not a speech uttered by a “saintly man” or martyr, but the plot in its entirety that convincingly proves the thesis about the end of Christianity or the “Death of God” to be wrong – simply because of the break in moral consciousness of humanity effected by the Christian religion. According to Sienkiewicz, this breakthrough could never be reversed or made historically or morally relative in any way. After all, it is not possible to announce the end of anything that belongs to the historical order as an eschatological fact, an “event in eternity.”

By portraying a handful of persecuted Christians against the Roman Empire’s order and civilization, Sienkiewicz aptly demonstrates the incompatibility of the human and eschatological orders. Such a reading is supported in particular by the character of Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician who is the embodiment of knightly qualities and virtues, a perfect paragon of a polytheistic civilization based on tradition and a naturalistic religious system. Vinicius is gradually led to abandon his belief in the superiority of the cultural system that shaped him and eventually converts to Christianity. The character’s development illustrates the radicalism of the Christian cultural revolution, founded basically on one axiom: the victims always have the moral upper hand over their tormentors.

There is one more important aspect to the “Narrative of the Time of Nero,” as Quo Vadis is subtitled. Doubtlessly, the character of the depraved Roman emperor potentially carries many actualizing interpretations, including political ones. From the perspective of political theology, Sienkiewicz’s Nero can also be seen as a memento that warns the reader of a new, emergent generation of immoralist leaders in Europe’s nihilist era. The paradoxical return to Plato’s concept of ruler-cum-philosopher-cum-dictator was noticed by Voegelin in post-Enlightenment political treatises:

The legislator, as we have seen, provides in his person the directive center of which the soul of the man of passion and interest has been deprived. […] The spiritual drama of salvation which takes place in the Christian soul has become externalized in the drama of a society under the leadership of a “legislator.”35

The thinker then introduces the term “social immanentism” as “the externalization of processes of the soul and their enactment on the stage of society.”36

Irrespective of how to interpret the character of Nero in Quo Vadis, it must be stated that – often in contrast to other Polish historical novelists of that time – Sienkiewicz was fully aware of the necessity, and the need, to subordinate his gift for epic style to the figures of the modern imagination. That is why the “historical dramatization” of spiritual processes (or, in more modest terms, the psychological dramas of human souls) was successfully employed by the writer to remind his readers about imponderabilia.

Sienkiewicz and the lowly ones: The concept of the “remnant”

A question that emerges here is how is political theology (as the reinstatement of the eschatological view of history) different from the theologically-oriented philosophy of history? Would it not suffice to classify Sienkiewicz as a “novelist with historiosophical aspirations”? The affirmative answer to the second question would not, however, make sense, since the positivist verdict on the writer’s lack of philosophical sophistication is by all means justifiable. In my opinion, the essential difference can be seen in the fact that political theology is to classic theology what algebra is to mathematics. In political theology, a concrete epiphany of the eschaton functions as an element in the system that underlies all organizational details of a given political reality, and in consequence – psychological and social realities as well. Thus, if we can speak of any specific intuition on the part of the author of the Trilogy, it would be religious and political (and the question about these particular gifts of Sienkiewicz would most likely get an affirmative answer). A good illustration of this understanding of the sign system for the transcendent order can be found in The Political Theology of Paul by Jacob Taubes, a philosopher of religion:

My thesis is that Paul understands himself as outbidding Moses. […] My thesis thus implies that Christianity has its origin not properly in Jesus but in Paul. That is the problem we’re dealing with here. And the argument for this thesis lies in the parallel between Moses and Paul. […] [The apostle – M.P.] wants to prove by means of Holy Scripture that now the moment has come to open up to the Gentiles. The opening of the Jews, of God’s holy people, to the Gentiles. And this holy people of God is transfigured, that is, the old people winds up becoming unclear.37

Taubes’s analysis of the letters of Saint Paul reveals not only the precedence of interpretation over the Eschatological Event itself (the epiphany of the coming Christ) but also the mental revolution of cultural and social nature that is actually brought about by this interpretation. According to Taubes, Saint Paul made this happen by coining a new concept that almost instantaneously became part of political reality with a potential to develop in time: namely, the notion of the “remnant” of Israel, an amorphous mass of individuals who had been blind to God’s Revelation to the Chosen People but were now ready to accept it under a new form. Taubes writes that Paul’s mission is “bringing in the Gentiles in order to make Israel jealous. He introduces the concept of the remnant and speaks of pas Israel. […] These are not rhetorical flourishes, but rather the devastation about the people of God no longer being the people of God.”38

The “remnant” – apparently, the key concept of the Christian cultural formation in the context of political theology – played an important role also in the mental and literary evolution of Sienkiewicz. Clues to this effect can be gathered from the novelist’s interests and the subject matter discussed in his works; for instance, historical narratives such as Tartar Captivity or With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem) are preceded by texts devoted to those rejected and marginalized in social relations. In his 1877 letter to actor, playwright, journalist, and critic Daniel Zgliński, Sienkiewicz expressed bitterness over the reviews of his Charcoal Sketches (Szkice węglem), tales about Polish common folk:

I keep hammering away at these unhealthy social relations, at the desperate, unacceptable, immoral, unnatural path of social ruin […]. I pick at a festering wound, Zołzikiewicz the rascal […], I give them the first peasant novel that does not portray some idealized rustic but a real-life “son of the soil” and his everyday existence – and they get it all wrong.39

Throughout his essay,40 Tadeusz Bujnicki deliberates whether it is well-founded to talk about any radical change of heart on the part of Sienkiewicz (the critic’s hesitancy is also indicated in the second part of the essay’s subtitle with putting the word “breakthrough” in shudder quotes). According to Bujnicki, the crux of the issue is that Sienkiewicz basically remained a positivist even after publishing the Trilogy. It could be added that there is a certain logical connection between Charcoal Sketches and, for example, Tartar Captivity, and its logic is best discussed in terms of political theology. Beyond intentional logic but within the messianic logic of theological nature, Sienkiewicz identifies the symbolic “remnant” in the Polish society of his time: the most important characters in his earlier works are representatives of the peasantry and gentry who unswervingly uphold the national tradition and Christian religion, and the consecutive parts of the Trilogy portray clean-cut noble-born characters. Sienkiewicz’s message is not just that the strength and future of the nation are dependent on the recovery of leadership by the “morally renewed” nobility, as a conservative would typically argue. Instead, Sienkiewicz intimates that the historical dynamics of the Polish society’s evolution would from then on be determined by moral imitation and emulating the qualities of protagonists (such as knights Kmicic [Kmita] and Wołodyjowski [Volodyovski]) by people up till then deprived of any say or recognition (such as Wawrzon Rzepa, a peasant).

1 T. Bujnicki, “Sienkiewicz – zbuntowany neokonserwatysta (o współpracowniku Niwy i redaktorze Słowa)” [Sienkiewicz: A rebellious neo-conservative], in W kręgu młodokonserwatyzmu warszawskiego 1876 – 1918 [In the circle of young conservatives in Warsaw, 1876–1918], edited by M. Gloger and W. Ratajczak, Bydgoszcz 2015, p. 64; trans. J.M.

2 A. Świętochowski, Wybór pism krytycznoliterackich [Selected writings in literary criticism], selected by S. Sandler, prefaced and annotated by M. Brykalska, Warsaw 1973, p. 171; trans. J.M.

3 Piotr Chmielowski, Charakterystyki literackie pisarzów polskich [Literary portraits of Polish writers], vol. 9, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Złoczów [n.d.], p. 11; trans. J.M.

4 Ibidem, p. 32; trans. J.M.

5 See C. Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, translated by G. Schwab, Chicago 2006; the German original was published in 1922.

6 See e.g. S. Žižek, E. L. Santner, K. Reinhard, The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology, Chicago 2006.

7 The seminal works by Voegelin that have been published in Poland include selected volumes of his monumental series entitled Order and History.

8 See footnote 3 above.

9 In a letter to his friend, journalist Julian Horain, Sienkiewicz wrote, “If you only knew the extent of my hate and scorn for that strumpet we commonly call the public opinion, and the bold readiness I have always felt and will feel to spit in its face, you would truly envy my frame of mind and courage” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], edited by M. Bokszczanin, vol. 1, part 2, Warsaw 1977, p. 372; trans. J.M.).

10 H. Sienkiewicz, “Mieszaniny literacko-artystyczne” [Literary and artistic medley], in H. Sienkiewicz, Dzieła [Collected works], edited by J. Krzyżanowski, vol. 50, Warsaw 1950, p. 93; trans. J.M.

11 E. Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution, edited by J. H. Hallowell, Durham 1975, pp. 20–21.

12 In the already-cited article by Tadeusz Bujnicki, the scholar argues: “So, was Sienkiewicz’s affiliation to the Conservative camp a merely pragmatic act, a symptom of his opportunism? To some degree, this statement is true. However, to reduce the psychological make-up of the author of the Trilogy in this way would be a serious oversimplification. It should be emphasized that Sienkiewicz’s literature often combines ideas that seem to be contradictory: opposite trends are juxtaposed within one mind in a dialogue of differing worldviews” (T. Bujnicki, op. cit., p. 71; trans. J.M.). Sienkiewicz did seem to have a foot in both camps discourse-wise, with his contributions provoking accusations of opportunism; however, his reiterated “desire for space to let the soul grow” points to other reasons – the ones indicated by Voegelin in his studies of the modern era.

13 E. Voegelin, op. cit., pp. 50–51.

14 See E. Voegelin, op.cit., p. 12.

15 T. Bujnicki, “Naturalizm a powieść historyczna” [Naturalism vs. the historical novel], in Problemy literatury polskiej okresu pozytywizmu [Questions in Polish positivist literature], series 2, edited by E. Jankowski and J. Kulczycka-Saloni, Wrocław 1983, pp. 109–110; trans. J.M.

16 E. Voegelin, op.cit., pp. 93–94.

17 H. Sienkiewicz, “Bartek the Conqueror,” Yanko the Musician and Other Stories, translated by J. Curtin, Boston 1893, pp. 162–163.

18 In a letter to Horain, Sienkiewicz confessed, “My skepticism has advanced to the point where both good and evil seem to be mere humbug […]. There is only one order in the universe: blind logic. Here is a true philosophy of pessimism, totally inadequate as a tenet of life” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], op. cit., p. 365; trans. J.M.).

19 E. Voegelin, op. cit., p. 79.

20 As written by Henri Gouhier in his La Jeunesse d’Auguste Comte et la formation du positivism: “Positivism is the religious answer to a religious problem that was posed by the Revolution” (quoted by E. Voegelin, op. cit., p. 170).

21 See e.g. E. Voegelin, op. cit., p. 84.

22 Ibidem, p. 84.

23 J. Kwiatkowski, “Polski archetyp oblężenia. Historia – Sienkiewicz – Mrożek – Herbert” [Polish siege archetype: History – Sienkiewicz – Mrożek – Herbert], Znak 1988, vol. 11, pp. 44–45; trans. J.M.

24 T. Bujnicki, Sienkiewicz i historia. Studia [Sienkiewicz and history: Studies], Warsaw 1981.

25 M. Wedemann, “Niezłomność. O „konserwatyzmie” Henryka Sienkiewicza (na przykładzie Niewoli tatarskiej)” [Steadfastness: On Sienkiewicz’s conservatism in Tartar Captivity], in W kręgu młodokonserwatyzmu warszawskiego 1876–1918 [In the circle of young conservatives in Warsaw, 1876–1918], pp. 73–92.

26 Eric Voegelin identifies the sources of the process (the integration of the increasingly wider, democratized sense of social identity, and revolution as the dismantling of the existing order) already in the Enlightenment thought of d’Alembert in “the sentiment of revolt in the sense of an immediate, violent reaction against a social state that is experienced as oppressive. We have seen that d’Alembert has no direct access to the idea of justice; the primary experience is that of oppression” (E. Voegelin, op. cit., p. 78). In this way, the historian exemplifies the fact that some Enlightenment thinkers believed it did not take long to replace the philosophically discarded authority with bitter disappointment and the wrath of common people.

27 E. Voegelin, op. cit., p. 69.

28 See E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists, New York 1972.

29 Interestingly, if we assume Sienkiewicz’s general adherence to the Positivist intellectual background and the validity of Voegelin’s compelling argument that Positivism was a religion of immanence, then we can claim a similar evocation of the “specters of the forefathers” constituted an integral element of Auguste Comte’s concept of Humanity as the Grand-Être: “in its vast majority [Humanity – M. P.] is composed of the dead who are the only ones who can be truly judged. The living are admitted on probation only and the whole of their lives will prove whether they will be permanently incorporated into it or rejected” (E. Voegelin, op. cit., p. 163).

30 Sienkiewicz’s opposition to the typically 19th-century Historicism, tainted with Scientism (whether in its abstract Hegelian or the Positivist, factual and evolutionary variety) would put the writer close to Nietzsche – though, of course, one should bear in mind the fundamental difference: their radically divergent approaches towards Christianity.

31 Obviously, Sienkiewicz’s anticlericalism did not automatically spell a hostile attitude to Christianity itself (perhaps apart from some very early assertions). In a letter to his friend, historian Karol Potkański, Sienkiewicz stated, “It is deplorable when a society cherishes the church more than Christ, observance more than the Christian spirit.” (H. Sienkiewicz, Listy [Letters], edited by M. Bokszczanin, vol. 3, part 3, Warsaw 2007, p. 113; trans. J.M.).

32 E. Voegelin, op. cit., p. 23.

33 Ibidem, p. 21.

34 A very pertinent quote from Voegelin is worth citing here: “The inversion of direction becomes now established, under the title of genealogy, as the principal instrument for interpreting the internal order of human nature” (op. cit., p. 69; emphasis M. P.). See footnote 24 above.

35 E. Voegelin, op. cit., p. 71. The “modern legislator” is also compellingly discussed in a more substantial context by Istvan Bibó, a Hungarian historian of ideas and politics. Such legislator-usurpers, particularly numerous in Central European countries in the “era of democracy” are ironically called “great realists” and described as follows: “Descending from aristocratic heights or ascending on the wings of democratic representation, these politicians, beside their undoubted talents, had cunning and a bent for aggression that made them perfectly suited for running and epitomizing anti-democratic governments and aggressive political pseudo-constructs in the midst of democratic trappings” (I. Bibó, The Art of Peacemaking: Political Essays, translated by P. Pásztor, New Haven & London 2015, p. 152).

36 Ibidem.

37 J. Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, translated by D. Hollander, Stanford, California, 2004, pp. 39–41.

38 Ibidem, p. 38.

39 Quoted in T. Bujnicki, Pierwszy okres twórczości Henryka Sienkiewicza [Henryk Sienkiewicz’s early writings], Kraków 1968, p. 110; trans. J.M.

40 See T. Bujnicki, “Sienkiewicz przekracza granice. O „przełomie” w życiu i twórczości pisarza” [Sienkiewicz pushing back boundaries: About ‘the turning point’ in the life and works of the writer], Wiek XIX. Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. Adama Mickiewicza 2009, vol. 2, no. 44, pp. 63–85.

Maciej Gloger

(Kazimierz Wielki University)

Political Theology of Henryk Sienkiewicz
The foundations of political theology

Henryk Sienkiewicz included the basic assumptions developed and affirmed by modern political theology, though involuntarily and in an unsystematic manner, not only in the way he structured the Trilogy but also in his journalist writings. The fundamentals of this field of knowledge were laid in the 20th century, primarily by Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin.1 Reading the Trilogy is a constant reminder that you cannot create and maintain political order without regard for the organizing power of religion while introducing categories developed by modern thought (psychology, ethics and especially sociology, etc.) is only – as political theologists argue – a sectarian attempt to distort and appropriate the original theological categories developed by ancient and medieval thinkers. “Enlightened utilitarianism is but the first in a series of totalitarian, sectarian movements to be followed later by positivism, communism and national socialism.”2

Sienkiewicz countered all the pretense of the modern mind with his oeuvre and his ideological stance. He refuted the looming communism by writing Whirlpools (Wiry) and national socialism by creating The Teutonic Knights (Krzyżacy), while his journalism accurately diagnosed the Prussian political system as one that could give rise to Nazism. Sienkiewicz incurred the anger of Polish positivists by writing the Trilogy, which negated Polish positivist utilitarianism and pointed to another identity source: Christian heroism. He was criticized by Roman Dmowski for his universalism, which the politician perceived as a type of cosmopolitanism.3 The creator of the Trilogy did not seem to please any of the political leaders, whereas he himself performed – unwittingly at first – a very important political job for the benefit of a community, which would certainly be less powerful if it was not for its theological dimension.

Let us try to discern here to what extent Sienkiewicz based his vision of a state on the pre-modern ideas, on the unconsciously perceived power of these traditions and to what degree he was forced to update and reclaim those archetypal ideas about the functioning of a community, especially in juxtaposition to the schools of Enlightenment and Polish positivism, which had largely shaped his generation and his own intellect. The destructive influence of those attitudes had become one of the main concerns of the political theologists, Voegelin in particular, who showed how the Enlightenment’s concepts of state, progress, and the social contract had intercepted and appropriated the theological categories.4

For Schmitt, politics is “the root of reality,”5 the elementary characteristics of human life that cannot be eliminated from human existence and human nature. Being political is the natural state and is connected with the necessity to grasp that the human being is dangerous, capable of evil, and must resort to passion to avoid destructive boredom and malaise.6 All attempts to swear politics off are by default utopian and are connected with the unrealistic promise of extirpating evil and establishing a trivial idyll on Earth, comprising solely of producers and consumers. This utopian pursuit pervades modern liberalism, which Schmitt and Voegelin unapologetically criticize.7 One manifestation of this liberal-utopian aspiration was John Stuart Mill’s positivism, and, even more accurately, that of Auguste Comte.8 Herbert Spencer promised that societies would transform from military into industrial-commercial ones, that the principle of war and struggle would be superseded by the principle of exchange and mutual support, and all that would happen thanks to the discovery of evolutionary mechanisms. According to Schmitt, this was a deceptive and fraudulent promise which deprived humans of dignity and meaningful existence.9 As such it aroused his disgust and loathing.

Remaining in a permanent state of conflict and tension is something natural for Schmitt. This would be a somewhat Nietzschean vision, in which the feud between powers, the state of war, as well as the will to power positioning itself and looking for resistance would all determine the movement of the world. It would be an autotelic, infinite process of aligning with crisis, borderline situations. It would be a cycle of the continual return to war and the perpetual rise of conflict for the sake of conflict. Schmitt would surely agree with Nietzsche’s warning about the “last man” who just wants peace and the opportunity to indulge in small bourgeois pleasures. Both Schmitt and Nietzsche despised the human being that hid away from a full and true life.10 This parallel would be complete if it was not for the theological element, or rather dimension, in Schmitt’s thought. According to Piotr Graczyk, Schmitt is an “apocalyptic Catholic”11 who had come to terms with human destiny which is the fight against evil and Satan:

The human being is not a branch of the tree of nature. The human does not really have any roots and doesn’t organically rise out of existence. There is a cut between humans and their roots – the free act of God’s creation which is not explained by anything and not preceded by anything, which has no cause or measure. […] That is why the last human experience will not be the state but war. The future is not called politeia but Armageddon.12

Historical time and ideals

Sienkiewicz’s turn to the historical novel – toutes proportions gardées – stems from similar premises to those driving the thought of Schmitt: feeling weary of the bourgeoisie and Polish positivist liberalism, and searching for the essence of the human being as such, which the writer found in the times of intensified politicalism of the pre-modern times. After all, it is the theological categories which the writer already refers to in his first political article from 1877.13 The surprise shown by many critics that Sienkiewicz while writing novels to “strengthen the hearts” leads us into quite unreassuring times, the days leading the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth into demise and decline14 can be explained exactly by Schmitt’s conviction that no final, happy end of times would ever come and the meaning of history was the fight for ideals, making individuals, societies, nations, and civilizations closer to God, to His divine plan.15 Maria Zadencka notices this in the context of Sienkiewicz’s historical novels in her analysis of The Deluge (Potop) with a reference to John Barclay’s swashbuckling romance Argenis (1621), an early-modern political and philosophical allegory:

Historical time is, however, regarded not only as a cyclical repetitiveness of situations but also as rising towards an ideal – and falling into political non-being: the plenitude and nothingness of the religious time of kairos.

From this perspective, the historical events in the Trilogy are also shaped as an “adventure” in the history of the nation and state, understood as a challenge that should be answered with a maximalist political agenda, a time when anything could happen.16

Sienkiewicz had to grapple with a phenomenon that Schmitt called depoliticization, which originated in Spinoza’s thought and reached its peak at the turn of the 20th century. It is understood as removing from “political and legal theory all elements related to the human being understood in metaphysical and theological terms.”17 It came as a consequence of secularization and gradual confinement of the religious realm to the private sphere– a tendency started by Thomas Hobbes.

Religion and community

It might be justified, then, to draw a hypothesis that whereas Sienkiewicz’s personal religiousness was “tainted” with Polish positivist skepticism and agnosticism only to a degree and till a certain time,18 his conviction about the importance of religion as a force for community and about the necessity to relate the worldly political issues with the immemorial order of Christian morality was unequivocal and deeply established from the very beginning. But most importantly, Sienkiewicz’s convictions and faith, which pervaded all his novels, permeated the Polish social organism preparing itself to become a modern European nation.19

This issue is exceedingly serious and must necessarily lead to a revision of past views on the question of religion in Sienkiewicz’s prose, especially its presence in the representational layer of historical novels. Let us return to the term used by Zadencka: kairos.20 It is the Christian mode of understanding time, contrary to the concept of chronos, in which causality is important and the structure of time is linear. Anna Skórzyńska explains:

[K]airos was entirely different. Firstly, it was not linear. It was a point. But not a random point. This notion relates to an event of particular significance – a kind of awaited breakthrough. Simultaneously, the moment expresses plenitude, the most perfect time for something to happen. The etymology also points to vital forces, life, energy. Kairos, as opposed to chronos, is a desired time. It does not carry emptiness but meaning, or even depth.21

Sienkiewicz’s historical novels are always stories of the state, how it functions, its crisis and the restoration of political order which is possible to maintain only through “Divine auxilia” (The Deluge).22 The political crisis can be overcome by turning to faith and Christian ethics as the last sentence of With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem) already ascertains: “Hatred grew into the hearts and poisoned the blood of brothers,” and nobody chanted “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” The apocalyptic-evangelical framework that supports the narration of With Fire and Sword indicates the importance of the theological roots of the notion of political order. Christian ethical guidelines ensue from the tales of Chreptiów as told by Mr. Muszalski and Father Kamiński. I shall not provide any more examples to back the hypothesis as they substantially permeate the structure and historiosophical thought of the Trilogy.23

At present, I intend to focus on the most important point in Sienkiewicz’s writings which is the description of the defense of the Jasna Góra monastery. Zadencka very precisely extricates the significance of this theme:

The state organization model in The Deluge is developed through depicting it in two diametrically opposing executions: the utmost ineffectiveness and the total mobilization structured around the explicitly marked “axis” which is the “miraculous” event: the defense of the Jasna Góra monastery.24

This description has a modern function: it is aimed at the reintegration and regeneration of the Polish community after the defeat of the January Rising and the traumatic 1870s, the years of martial law in the Congress Kingdom and other spiritual and political losses.25 And it is known from the research on the reception of Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre that this climactic moment of the novel played that exact fortifying role. What is more, the Jasna Góra scenes in Jerzy Hoffman’s film adaptation provided an equally strong reinforcement even in the communist era.

The modernity of Sienkiewicz’s approach lies in the creation and prefiguring of a democratic community on which the National Democratic party, in favor of the emancipation of peasants, would start organic work. Before the more secularly minded nationalists such as Jan Ludwik Popławski or Roman Dmowski understood it, Sienkiewicz had sensed with his artistic intuition that such emancipation and citizenization could take place only thanks to the religious power of Catholicism and Marian worship. In The Deluge, the writer consistently stresses the contribution of the peasants in the fight against the Swedes and their attachment to the king, which results in the Lviv Oath.26 Social differences melt away in the face of the miraculousness of the Jasna Góra painting and one modern, unified nation emerges, a new political organism:

From the gates of the fortress, peasants, and nobles, villagers from various neighborhoods, people of every age, of both sexes, of all ranks, pressed forward to the church on their knees [...]. Differences of rank disappeared: the coat of the peasant touched the robe of the noble, the jacket of the soldier the yellow coat of the artisan.27

The kairos time of the novel radiates with its transcendental power into the modern time, it fills the community with vitality, new life, and gradually generates anticipation of a change of fate, a miraculous event, which did eventually occur in 1918.

Sienkiewicz carried the idealism of pre-modern conceptions into the political and social relationships of his day thanks to the power of artistic creation. He intensely disapproved of the modern ideas about the functioning of the state. It may then be concluded that he not so much idealized history as he theologized it and juxtaposed it with ethical norms and ancient philosophers’ thoughts on the nature of the state.

Let us then point once again at the true roots of political theology propagated by Sienkiewicz.

Political realism

Arkady Rzegocki28 indicated two coexisting traditional ways of thinking about politics in Poland. There are, then, two types of political realism: classical, descending from antiquity and the Middle Ages (Aristotle and St. Thomas) and modern (Niccolò Machiavelli, Hobbes). The former manifests in the pursuit of truth, the political chain of being, it always appeals to the ethical, metaphysical and religious context.

Modern realism is nominalist in nature, it is concerned with the state as it is, not as it should be. Machiavelli focuses on the mechanism governing politics and simultaneously rescinding from wider metaphysical references. There are no references to God here, to natural law, the common good, religion, and morality. The only binding parameter is the criterion of the effectiveness of the ruler’s actions.

The domination of the classical concept of politics ends not so much with Hobbes29 and Machiavelli’s speeches as with specific geopolitical changes. Rzegocki indicates the year 1648 – the end of the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia series of treaties which pushes the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth onto the margin in terms of importance in Europe and starts the modern approaches to politics which results in the Partition of Poland. It is also the date of the Khmelnytsky Uprising which Sienkiewicz chooses as the contexture of With Fire and Sword. It is easy to notice that the year 1648 symbolically introduces a new political order in Europe and for Poland, it is a time of decline that is to introduce a new redemption, which Wespazjan Kochowski expressed quite fully in Psalmodia polska (Polish psalms; 1700) thereby initiating a messianic approach to understanding Polish history.

In the axiology of the novel, Sienkiewicz accurately depicts the traditional attitude of the Polish gentry which of all political thinkers abhorred Machiavelli the most. The author often puts critical allusions to poison and betrayal as political tools in the mouths of Trilogy characters and it is most clearly visible in the way the rulers rebelling against the rightful authorities are judged. In The Deluge, Zadencka repeatedly highlights this aspect of Sienkiewicz’s political axiology and she comments that the type of authority favored in The Deluge could be called “theocentric and anti-machiavellian.”30 The writer himself was to identify lyrically with this stance in his letters from Venice from 1879. The insight into the merchant-utilitarian history of Venice, a city haunted by the ghosts of Hobbes and Machiavelli, engenders a feeling of affection for the Polish political idealism which was later so ruthlessly laid bare by Roman Dmowski in Myśli nowoczesnego Polaka (Thoughts of a modern Pole). In the face of incredible works of art, mosaics and marble a question arises: “[…] what purpose did it serve? What was it to humanity? What higher idea universal to all humans drove those merchants?.”31 A wayfarer hoping to find some sense while traveling to see the points of origin of the European civilization is struck by a feeling of unfamiliarity and alienation finding themselves up against the pragmatic and soulless goals of the western world as well as, however, against its artistic achievements. Sienkiewicz semi-consciously follows the train of thought of Adam Mickiewicz from his Paris lectures in which the poet represented both the Polish civilizational backwardness and their feeble artistic accomplishments as a sign of being chosen, an indication of their singular spiritual predisposition and moral superiority. The emblem of Venice becomes the emblem of the cold modern world of pragmatic politics compared to which Polish history becomes the paragon of state virtue.

From the obscurity of the ages emerges the face of that Commonwealth, marble, proud, mighty, wearing a lion’s fierce frown or quasi wrathful, angry, bleeding, callous and there is no star-idea over her head. With what uplift does the thought then soar far, over the dark pine forests and grey fields! With what relief it scrutinizes that history, so different, unruly though they are and bustling with noise, bout so truly human! Ask anyone where they should like to live if they were born in the Middle Ages. Where there were no lions’ maws into which to throw delation, nor the Council of Ten […]! There were, admittedly, fewer columns, mosaics, and ostrich feathers but there was an idea which carried, like an archangel, winged battalions onto the Germans in defense of the Slavs, onto the Turks in defense of the Germans.32

The thought concludes with a quotation from a poem by Klemens Janicki: “Jać nie boleję, żem sarmackie dziecię…” (It pains me not that I’m a Sarmatian child). And thus the Trilogy, especially its last volume, is replete with the idea of Antemurale Christianitatis which is not just a historic furnishing, staffage, but is treated by the author with utmost seriousness and conviction.

Fire in the Steppe (Pan Wołodyjowski) becomes a novel filled to the brim with the idea of Poland as the outwork of Christianity and the character coming starkly into the foreground is hetman Jan Sobieski, the future vanquisher of the Turkish Islamic power and a true knight of the outwork. In the novel, he is not driven by political pragmatism but unambiguously persists with maintaining Christian values. Facing the rising wave of betrayal among the Polish Tartars who are escaping to Crimea and Turkey (theme based on facts),33 he does not acquiesce to the political plan (fictional theme) of creating an autonomous allied Tartar country within Poland under the leadership of Azja, son of Tuhay-Bey, mainly because he fears such a country could easily resort to religious oppression of the Eastern Orthodox Cossacks.34

An Islamic country within Poland’s borders may quickly become a force against civilization as Islam is devoid of the republican element of tolerance which is inscribed into the Polish tradition of the gentry and Christianity. The belief in this expansionist nature of the Islamic religion is strengthened in the writer as he shares the observations he made traveling around Africa. There, the influence of Christian missions constitutes a bulwark against the expansiveness and barbarism of Islam.

Firstly, they fight slavery and support the European humanitarian anti-slavery movement far more strongly than any means, even more than dreadnoughts or cannons. Secondly, they fight Islam, that greatest scourge of Africa, which as I mentioned, makes a blackie a wolf to a blackie and which is the root of all possible evil, that is slavery itself, and bloody slaughters, and the undoing of entire nations. […] Islam means slavery – and slavery is war, savage assaults, forsaking work, a sea of blood, a sea of tears, stagnation, and disorder.35

The Trilogy author’s vision of Islam is also inscribed into his discourse on civilization which is quite close to the beliefs of the most prominent Polish positivist theorist of this issue, Feliks Koneczny, the author of the well-known dissertation O wielości cywilizacji (On the diversity of civilizations; 1935) in which he consonantly demonstrates the impossibility of the coexistence of human congregations based on heterogeneous civilizational values. The only exception being the Latin civilization within which the existence of cultural minorities is possible if they conform to its regulations.

Sienkiewicz opposes to the pure idea of Realpolitik or the rule of raison d’état which was ultimately planted in Polish minds in the 19th century. Polish political thought was forcibly pushed, as it were, into this train of thought as a result of the crime of the Partitions and the realization that such cynical politics was necessary if the ultimate goal was the regaining of independence in the brutal world of the modern powers. Rzegocki notes: “Thought that referred to the existence of God, Providence, the idea of justice or a universal normative order, from the perspective of modern realists was perceived as pitifully futile.”36 Maurycy Mochnacki (a great admirer of Machiavelli), Michał Bobrzyński, as well as Dmowski, equally accused the Polish nation of puerility and pointless idealism. Sienkiewicz’s standpoint was beginning to take shape even as he disputed the theses of the Kraków school of history, conciliatory though his tone may still have been as he pointed to the third factor regulating the activity of the state. In his review of the work of Szujski (Historii polskiej ksiąg dwanaście, Polish history in twelve books), he observes:

From what the clearest supporters of the new school are saying it would seem that creating a strong state is what they consider the highest ideal to which societies should strive, and the ability to create – the most vital attribute; we seem to think, however, that between a state which for its rule of the state devours thousands of generations like Moloch and an impotent anarchy, there is a third way to be found, some kind of higher principle which history itself should balance.37

Furthermore, in the review of Bobrzyński’s work the writer makes an even stronger point of showing the terror of such a realistic, pragmatic view of the past based on power worship and state centralism: “There are maybe in such judgments that ruthless worship of power characteristic for some present-day German historians, but never mind.” The reviewer’s dilatation is again permeated by the belief in the Polish, individualistic third way of state which reconciles idealism, tolerance, and civic freedom:

What we mean is that had aspirations to create a stronger government existed in Poland, such as can most generally be seen in other countries, had these aspirations failed, they do not form the entirety of internal history as the third factor lies within them. That factor consists in aspiring to create not such a government or other as based on a Western model but an ingenerate, individualistic state system corresponding the most to the character and nature of the nation. And maybe the clashing of this current with the wanton individualism, on the one hand, and the pursuit of foreign enemies, on the other, engendered powerlessness and a moment of weakness which external circumstances turned into a fall.38

The defense of Polish history against the judgment of the Kraków historians bespeaks clearly of the belief that it is not power itself that is the goal of politics but the striving towards political order which is closest to the order deeply rooted in the aspirations of the Christian religion, even though theological issues do not arise yet during these Partitions. Those ideas were ushered into Polish politics by the beautiful declarations of the Union of Horodło on 2 October 1413 in which the worldly and temporal are strongly intertwined with the eternal and eschatological.

It is not impossible for Sienkiewicz’s thinking to have been influenced by, amongst others, Julian Klaczko who, according to Rzegocki, embodies the model of a political realist who does not abandon the idea of a moral order which began with God. The critique of modern governing mechanism often touched upon the example of Germany and especially the brutally pragmatic politics of Bismarck. Sienkiewicz openly alludes to Klaczko’s thought in his statement on Bismarck39:

All the ages of the Christian culture, no less than a sound mind, speak louder than the idolaters from Warcino that this culture which has been the life of humanity for two thousand years is – positively meant – a power even greater and something even more overwhelming than bayonets and that justice should be the commander of countless battalions.40

The body of a citizen and the body of the king

Thus Sienkiewicz modernized and reconciled the pre-modern categories of theological politics with democratic ideas and notions introduced by supporters of organic work. Sociopolitical journalism from the Warsaw young conservatist movement was well known to Sienkiewicz, and specifically that of the most prominent historian of legal and political theory belonging to that circle, Aleksander Rembowski. In his dissertation Stanisław Leszczyński jako statysta (Stanisław Leszczyński as a statesman), published in 1878 in the Niwa magazine and then published again as a separate offprint, the historian encapsulated the fundamentals of his thoughts on the state. He emphasized: “[…] in the life of state there is no creation and no perturbation but everything develops organically.”41 In another part of this work we find this passage:

Only personal, continuous work, only personal participation in public duties and burdens maintain an adequate moral balance within a man which reconciles personal welfare with public welfare and does not let the former consume the latter. Only by appreciating a fellow man’s work and seeing a member of society in him is the notion of public duty properly formed. However, if some see a thing in others that they can legally exploit, then state egoism takes place and desires the public welfare to serve it.42

It seems that the organic vision of citizenship and public duty as defined by Rembowski was perfectly encoded by Sienkiewicz in the knights he created who were supposed to embody the model to be followed by modern merchants, traders and political activists. They were also an example for the self-emancipating masses of villagers and laborers. The necessity to build a modern democracy upon a Christian foundation was also made manifest by one of the most eminent journalists within the society, Antoni Donimirski:

The label of conservatives must also necessarily be maintained in contrast to those realms and elements which desire to make the people happy by shattering the present social order. The conservatives of today, wherever they exist, differ from the elements in that though they acknowledge the need for many changes in the structure of the social building they wish to leave the foundations untouched – those same foundations which have for 18 centuries been the linchpin of the entire building. […] None of them [the conservatives] dreams of the return to some state privilege, to laws of exception, as each of them can see how contrary they are to the teachings of Christ which might not have been correctly understood throughout centuries […].

Having these rules and the system that represents them, it befits to battle at present, on the one hand against the nondenominational liberalism which in egoism sees the main factor for the progress of mankind, on the other hand against the seditionists of the present social order who so far only know they want to destroy but have no idea what to build next instead.43

The way the character of the king is portrayed, especially in The Deluge, is very distinctive, pre-modern and at the same time modern and democratic. Jan Kazimierz (John II Casimir Vasa) is then a tragic, Shakespearean “vagabond king,” a mortal who is unable to shoulder the burden of his godly status, but also the emanation of the nation’s power and unity. The king and the homeland is one and the same and no historical circumstance can challenge this Godly dimension that the nation, the community, the Commonwealth achieves because of the king. It is around the king’s image, his mystical power strengthened by the spiritual power of Kordecki’s faith, that the response to Swedish invasion centers.44 The character of Jan Kazimierz is a reflection of the medieval legal idea that the king has two bodies: the worldly, faltering, sinful one and the eternal, perfect, immortal community body. Ernst H. Kantorowicz devoted an entire case study on political theology in the Middle Ages45 where he showed that this very same idea is also the source of tragic pathos of the kings in William Shakespeare, especially in Richard II46 (it is widely known that Sienkiewicz was a faithful and consistent Shakespeare reader).47

The legacy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

It is then an interesting issue how in the time of depoliticization it was possible for Sienkiewicz to maintain this pre-modern belief, consistently until his death, regardless of his Polish positivist and democratic formation. It would seem that Sienkiewicz was a spiritual heir of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, its legal and political ideas in a much greater part than was previously thought. Such mystical power and irremovable quality of the political and community ideas forged in past culture were the focus of Dariusz Cezary Maleszyński. Their subtle presence and immortality in modern culture stems from the existence of a certain supraindividual, archetypal formal-structural order, and it may well possess a metaphysical sanction which the researcher calls The Great Anthropological Chain. In this chain, Maleszyński discerns three great motifs perpetuated and re-returning in literary topoi: human being, community, existence.48 Among these literary topoi, Sienkiewicz valued the comparison of the state to a ship, a sinking boat, as is proven by Legenda żeglarska (A sailor’s legend, 1890) – an allegorical tale of the might and fall of Poland in which the author includes allusions to the Polish national anthem.49 This allegory is also to be found in The Deluge:

The whole country was like a ship already deep in the abyss, and that cloister was peering up like the top of a mast through the waves. Could those wrecked ones, clinging to the mast, think not merely of saving themselves, but of raising that vessel from under the ocean?

According to man’s calculations, they could not.50

Among many images of an immortal community one of the most beautiful ones is featured in Jeszcze Polska nie umarła (Poland Is Not Yet Lost, the title of the first version of the song which is now the Polish national anthem – K. C.) which captures the moment of the transfer of the mystical body of the king idea onto the entire collective which attains sanctification now in the nineteen-century effort leading to the reclaiming of the country through common sacrifice and action, whether in Polish positivist organic work or in the armed combat of romanticism. The 19th century constitutes a purgatorial age of the transformation of the idea of the Polish state from monarchic to democratic-organic:

Passing in exclusivity onto the nation the eternal element of the Polish nature, the unaware making it a successor of the authority of the Kingdom took place on November 25, 1795, when at the demand of the Russian court Stanisław August [Stanisław II Augustus] signed his own abdication. The Sejm ceased to exist, the monarch returned his crown – the sovereign rights of the Commonwealth could then be represented by the nation itself. Elsewhere at the time – as Roger Callois says – “out of the blood of the ruler the nations divine status originated,” in Poland – it originated from the abdication. The orphaned Poles could speak of themselves as in the interregnum of 1572 the gentry spoke of themselves: “upon this time we all together […] are kings.”51

Sienkiewicz turned out to be the strongest literary catalyst of this transformation in the 19th century, he enabled villagers and townspeople to become Poles and gentry as a separate state passed on into the tradition of the past and turned into citizens, Polish positivists and proponents of organic work, modern national patriots.

The Whirlpools written in 1910 is not just a wise, prophetic novel about the reverie of socialism showing the roots of future Bolshevist totalitarianism, it is also a Polish positivist novel with a thesis where the protagonist, a female villager, wronged in the past by Krzycki, a member of the gentry, returns after years spent abroad as a refined lady, is supposed to represent a civic and cultural social model in the reborn Poland. An astute insight into the character was written by one of the most interesting literary critics of the 20th century, Adam Grzymała-Siedlecki:

Out of Hanka Anney that pure soul, burning and male – this is our desire for the man of the age, when the peasant becomes the citizen and the defender of Polish nature, when every single peasant is made aware, and the best of them shall create themselves to be such gentry, such knights, as knightly and noble miss Anney is, Hanka from the Radom countryside.

Hanka Anney is the artistic nobilitation of the Polish peasant.

If anyone today has the privilege of nobilitating, it is no one other than.[…]

In this desire for a peasant-knight there simultaneously is, there should be, Sienkiewicz’s happiness that his books have offered the peasant soul the first lift towards that height.52

In the novel, which was slandered as reactive, Sienkiewicz fully identifies with the national-democratic program formed in 1886 by the editorial team of Głos. Little wonder then that Sienkiewicz was regarded by people around the world as the creator of modern Poland. As he was dying in 1916 right after the Act of 5th November, which had the symbolic significance in the international process of acknowledging Poland as a separate state entity; in Czech journals the tragic pathos of this situation was highlighted as – the way they phrased it – when a truly old and renowned kingdom rises back into life, one of the greatest and most deserving people to wake it out of its slumber succumbs to death.53

The Trilogy of Sienkiewicz proves the strong relation of the writer with the legacy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Polish romanticism. The cycle is, however, already permeated with the idea of a modern national state which is heading not towards monoethnicity but rather an organic, mystical unity which might encompass all the previous minorities and faiths of the Commonwealth as long as they remain true to the Republic and its values to which, if necessary, they would be equally willing to sacrifice blood in the name of the idea of the immortal community rooted in God.

1 The modern understanding of the term “political theology” was introduced by Sarl Schmitt in his theses Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität (1922) and Römischer Katholizismusundpolitische Form (1923), and it was developed and further established by him well into his latest writings in the 1970s. Voegelin’s thought is often placed within the same school because of the similarity of findings even though Voegelin never really used the term “political theology” and the research of both thinkers was thoroughly independent. On how Voegelin’s work was perceived: Problem ładu politycznego. Eseje o twórczości Erica Voegelina [The problem of political order: Essays on the works of Eric Voegelin], edited by A. Miętek and M. J. Czarnecki, translated by M. Bizoń et al, Warsaw 2010 [editor’s note].

2 E. Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution, edited by John H. Hallowell, Duke University Press, Durham 1975, p. 52.

The From Enlightenment to Revolution volume was published in 1975, however, its pages contained texts written in the 1950s concurrently with the quintessential writings of Voegelin, The New Science of Politics created in 1952 and the Order and History series, the first three volumes of which were published between 1956 and 1958, which means it falls into the 1959 period, before his return to Germany, which brought on the changes in Voegelin’s conceptual apparatus as well as the increasing turn from political science in the strict sense (although the core of Voegelin’s convictions did not undergo a fundamental change). As opposed to the most important writings of Voegelin from the 1950s, which were overtly systemic in nature, From Enlightenment to Revolution is rather a collection of studies constituting arguments supporting Voegelin’s thesis on the gnostic nature of the ideological changes starting from the 18th century (developed to its fullest in The New Science of Politics) composing a diachronic order. Nevertheless, it is this exact volume which constitutes the most precise exposition of Voegelin’s thesis on the ideological changes of modernity and the modern period [editor’s note].

3 See R. Skrzycki [R. Dmowski], “‘Bez dogmatu.’ Luźne notatki” [Notes on Without Dogma], Głos 1891, vol. 36, pp. 428–429, vol. 37, pp. 441–442.

4 Ibidem.

5 Voegelin shares the belief in the indispensability of politics in human life but he connects it with the more general conviction that the human society “is as a whole a little world, a cosmion, illuminated with meaning from within” (The New Science of Politics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1952, p. 27) into which politics and all the notions, rituals and symbols connected with it enter. “The self-illumination of society through symbols is an integral part of social reality, and one may even say its essential part, for through such a symbolization the members of a society experience it as more than an accident or a convenience”; ibidem, p. 27 [editor’s note].

6 Ibidem, pp. 67–72.

7 On the criticism of liberalism by Schmitt see L. Strauss, “Notes on Carl Schmitt: The Concept of the Political,” in The Concept of the Political, edited and translated by George Schwab, pp. 97–122.

8 See the analysis of Comte’s system as the opposite of the idea of Christ as God incarnate – E. Voegelin, From Enlightenment, p. 195–201 (chapter “Grand-Être and the Fiction of Christ”).

9 As opposed to Schmitt, Voegelin objects not to liberalism but to all the ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries positioning the human being on par with God and moving the center of universalism from the sacrum to the profanum, he also places liberal progressivism among them (compare From Enlightenment, p. 137) [editor’s note].

10 P. Graczyk, “Komentarz do uwagi Straussa o Schmitcie” [Commentary on Strauss’s “Notes on Carl Schmitt”], Kronos 2008, vol. 3, p. 75.

11 The well established belief in the related literature that Schmitt’s thoughts were apocalyptic in nature contrasts with the reception of Voegelin’s work in which, all the apparent catastrophic threads notwithstanding, millenarian or apocalyptic features are not unequivocally recognized, compare Problem ładu…, op. cit. [editor’s note].

12 Ibidem p. 77; trans. K. C.

13 [H. Sienkiewicz], “Poland and Russia. The Czar’s Government in Poland and on the Danube,” Daily Evening Post [San Francisco], September 8, 1877. Reprint Wiadomości. Tygodnik [London] 1965, vol. 4, p. 2.

See also J. Axer, “Rok 1877 był to dziwny rok… Sienkiewicz wobec prorosyjskiej propagandy politycznej w Ameryce” [Sienkiewicz and pro-Russian political propaganda in the US], in Sienkiewicz polityczny. Sienkiewicz ideologiczny [Political Sienkiewicz. Ideological Sienkiewicz], edited by M. Gloger, R. Koziołek, Warsaw 2016.

14 Compare M. Płachecki, “Role społeczne Sienkiewicza-pisarza” [Sienkiewicz’s social roles as a writer], in Sienkiewicz i epoki [Sienkiewicz and literary epochs], edited by E. Ihnatowicz, Warsaw 1999, pp. 231–233.

15 Nota bene, this apocalyptic dimension of Sienkiewicz’s work was perceived very keenly by Mikhail Bulgakov as he was inspired by the Polish writer’s oeuvre, Pójdźmy za Nim! (Let Us Follow Him) and Qvo Vadis i.a., when he was creating The Master and Margarita. For more on the subject, see M. Gloger, “Agnostycyzm, apokryficzność, apokalipsa: Henryk Sienkiewicz i Michaił Bułhakow – religijne oświetlenia wzajemne” [Agnosticism, apocrypha, apocalypse: Henryk Sienkiewicz and Mikhail Bulgakov. Mutual religious enlightenement] (paper submitted for a conference proceedings publication entitled Henryk Sienkiewicz i chrześcijaństwo. Idee – obrazy – konteksty, Białystok 2017).

16 See M. Zadencka, Obrazy suwerenności. O wyobraźni politycznej w literaturze polskiej XIX i XX wieku [Images of independence: On political imagination in Polish 19th- and 20th-century literature], Warsaw 2007, p. 48; trans. K. C.

17 M. A. Cichocki, “Wstęp do pierwszego wydania” [Introduction], in C. Schmitt, Teologia polityczna, Kraków 2000, pp. 11–43; trans. K. C.

18 See also M. Gloger, Sienkiewicz nowoczesny [Modern Sienkiewicz], Bydgoszcz 2010, (chapter 4, “Wobec religii” [In response to religion]).

19 On the birth of nationality in the works of Sienkiewicz, see Sienkiewicz nowoczesny (chapter 3).

20 The nonlinear notion of time and the sacred time hold an important place in Voegelin’s thought as a manifestation of “self-illumination” of a given society, they are, however, juxtaposed with the diachronic order, the presence of which is felt strongly in Voegelin’s thought especially in the period before 1959. In Schmitt’s thought, who focused (contrary to Voegelin) not on the symbolic order within given societies but on the fundamental political and legal concepts, notions associated with time remain quite far in the background [editor’s note].

21 A. Skórzyńska, Chrześcijańska koncepcja czasu, czyli kairos, chronos, katechon wobec eschatonu [Christian concept of time: kairos, chronos, and katechon against eschaton], September 5, 2013 http://europachristiana.org/news/kultura/284/chrzescijanska-koncepcja-czasu-czyli-kairos-chronos-i-katechon-wobec-eschatonu [accessed: 2017–12–06]; trans K. C.

22 H. Sienkiewicz, Potop [The Deluge], ch. 13, p. 232; trans. Jeremiah Curtin.

23 See A. Stoff, Opowieści chreptiowskie w planie kompozycyjnym i ideowym „Pana Wołodyjowskiego” [The tales of Chreptiów in the composition and ideas of Fire in the Steppe], in Jeszcze o „Trylogii” [More on the Trilogy], Radom 2004, pp. 95–143.

24 M. Zadecka, op. cit., p. 46; trans. K. C.

25 See M. Płachecki, op. cit., pp. 233–238.

26 Nota bene, this democratic tendency of The Deluge was initially unnoticed and slightly misinterpreted by the national democrat society newly forming around the Głos journal founded in 1886. See E. Siwiński, “Kilka uwag o “Potopie” p. Sienkiewicza” [Notes on The Deluge], Głos 1886/7, December 20 (January 1), no. 1, pp. 8–9. The democratic activist from the Tomasz Teodor Jeż generation (year 1831) claimed, among others, that Sienkiewicz throughout the six volumes of the novel “never found the opportunity to even once notice the attitude of the lords towards the peasants and how strongly oppressed the simple people were by the gentry.” The reason was supposed to be the artistic temperament of the writer who was unwilling to be shorn of “the unity of coloration” but wanted to avoid a note of dissonance and maintain the “knightly harmony” of the work. Siwiński in detail analyzed the presentation and framing of the text of Jan Kazimierz’s Lviv Oath in the novel accusing the writer, quite convincingly, of manipulation. (Compare also A. Kersten, Sienkiewicz – „Potop” – historia [Sienkiewicz, The Deluge, history], Warsaw 1974, pp. 201–203). From our perspective we can see, however, that the writer was aiming, in concordance with Ernest Renan’s recommendation, to forget the gentry’s misdemeanors and simultaneously to gradually unearth the participation of the village folk element in the fight against the Swedes, thinking not so much of historical truth as modernity that needed history as a strengthening, reassuring, and building force. For the nation must know how to live in the two time dimensions: the past and the present. See M. Gloger, op. cit., pp. 38–39.

27 The Deluge, vol. 1, ch. 34, p. 186; trans. Jeremiah Curtin.

28 A. Rzegocki, “Dwa oblicza polskiego realizmu politycznego” [Two faces of Polish political realism], in Patriotyzm i zdrada. Granice realizmu i idealizmu w polityce i myśli polskiej [Patriotism and treason: The boundaries of realism and idealizm in Polish thought and politics], edited by J. Kloczkowski, M. Szułdrzyński, Kraków 2008, pp. 27–38.

29 Reflecting upon Hobbes’s ideas is central in the works of both Schmitt and Voegelin. Schmitt, in his entire oeuvre, returned many times to Hobbes’ thought and devoted to him his 1938 separate dissertation Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes [The Leviathan in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes], which he considered one of his most important works; Voegelin devoted two climax chapters of The New Science of Politics to Hobbes’s thought [editor’s note].

30 M. Zadencka, op. cit., p. 45.

31 H. Sienkiewicz, “Z Wenecji” [From Venice] (Gazeta Polska 1879), in Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 44, Listy z podróży i wycieczek [Miscellaneous travel letters], ed. J. Krzyżanowski, Warsaw 1950, p. 185; trans. K. C.

32 Ibidem; trans. K. C.

33 See P. Borawski, Tatarzy w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej [Tartars in Polish history], Warsaw 1986, pp. 156–173.

34 Fire in the Steppe, ch. 18, pp. 137–141; trans. Jeremiah Curtin.

35 H. Sienkiewicz, Listy z Afryki [Letters from Africa], in Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 43, p. 132; trans. K. C.

36 A. Rzegocki, op. cit., p. 31.

37 “Wiadomości bieżące” [Current affairs] (Gazeta Polska 1880, no. 52), in H. Sienkiewicz, Wiadomości bieżące [Current affairs], in Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 52, p. 10; trans. K. C.

38 “Wiadomości bieżące” [Current affairs] (Gazeta Polska 1880, no. 52), in H. Sienkiewicz, Wiadomości bieżące [Current affairs], in Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 52, p. 52; trans. K. C.

39 On his acquaintance with Klaczka, see M. Gloger, “Zaginiony pamiętnik Sienkiewicza. Rekonstrukcja” [Sienkiewicz’s lost journal: A reconstruction], in Sienkiewicz z innej strony [Sienkiewicz from another perspective], edited by J. Axer, T. Bujnicki, Warsaw 2015, pp. 45–46.

40 “O Bismarcku” [On Bismark], in H. Sienkiewicz, supplement 1, Dzieła [Collected Works], vol. 52, p. 120; trans. K. C.

41 A. Rembowski, Stanisław Leszczyński jako statysta [Stanisław Leszczyński as a statesman], Warsaw 1879, p. 31.

42 Ibidem, p. 10; trans. K. C.

43 A. Donimirski, “Nasz konserwatyzm” [Our conservatism], Niwa 1890, vol. 1, p. 2; trans. K. C.

44 For an all-encompassing discussion of all the functions fulfilled by the character of the king in The Deluge, see T. Bujnicki, “Sienkiewiczowski Jan Kazimierz” [Sienkiewicz’s Jan Kazimierz], in Światopogląd i poetyka. Szkice o powieściach historycznych Henryka Sienkiewicza [Worldview and poetics: Sketches on Sienkiewicz’s historical novels], Rzeszów 1999, pp. 102–113.

45 E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1957.

46 A. Donimirski, op. cit., p. 1.

47 For Schmitt, the works of Shakespeare posed a great interpretative challenge as well in relation to the political history of England – see C. Schmitt, Carl Schmitt, Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play, translated by David Pan and Jennifer R. Rust, New York 2009.

48 D. C. Maleszyński, “ ‘Trzy światy’ piśmiennictwa staropolskiego a zadania interpretacyjne tematologii” [Three worlds of old Polish writing and the interpretative tasks of thematology], in Człowiek w tekście. Formy istnienia według literatury staropolskiej [Humans in text: Forms of existence in old Polish literature], Poznań 2002, pp. 206–207.

49 D. C. Maleszyński, “Alegorie Rzeczypospolitej w literaturze polskiej XVI–XVIII wieku” [Allegories of the Polish state in literature, 16th–18th century], op cit., pp. 149–169.

50 The Deluge, vol. 2, ch. 2, p. 268; trans. Jeremiah Curtin, emphasis M. G.

51 D. C. Maleszyński, “Idea nieśmiertelnej wspólnoty w pieśni ‘Jeszcze Polska nie umarła’” [The idea of the eternal community in Poland Is Not Yet Lost], op cit., p. 194; trans. K. C.

52 A. Grzymała-Siedlecki, “Panna Anney,” Gazeta Warszawska 1910, no. 197 (July 21), p. 2.

53 Hlasnároda 1916, no. 319 (November 17), pp. 2–3; More on the theme of the Sienkiewicz cult in the Czech Republic see M. Gloger, “Sienkiewicz i Masaryk. O kulcie autora “Quo Vadis” w Czechach” [Sienkiewicz and Masaryk: On Sienkiewicz’s cult in the Czech Republic], in Sienkiewicz polityczny. Sienkiewicz ideologiczny [Political Sienkiewicz. Ideological Sienkiewicz].