Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Although we have a popular saying: Comparaison n’est pas raison, one cannot refrain from stating here that this love for the poor, the little, and the oppressed, brought out so powerfully in Sienkiewicz’ short stories, constitutes a link between him and François Coppée, who is so great a friend of the friendless and the oppressed, those who, without noise, bear the heaviest chains, the pariahs of our happy and smiling society. The only difference between the short stories of these two writers is this, that notwithstanding all the mastercraft of Coppée’s work, one forgets the impressions produced by the reading of his work — while it is almost impossible to forget “The Lighthouse Keeper” looking on any lighthouse, or “Yanko the Musician” listening to a poor wandering boy playing on the street, or “Bartek the Victor” seeing soldiers of which military discipline have made machines rather than thinking beings, or “The Diary of a Tutor” contemplating the pale face of children overloaded with studies. Another difference between those two writers — the comparison is always between their short stories — is this, that while Sienkiewicz’ figures and characters are universal, international — if one can use this adjective here — and can be applied to the students of any country, to the soldiers of any nation, to any wandering musician and to the light-keeper on any sea, the figures of François Coppée are mostly Parisian and could be hardly displaced from their Parisian surroundings and conditions.

  Sometimes the whole short story is written for the sake of that which the French call pointe. When one has finished the reading of “Zeus’s Sentence,” for a moment the charming description of the evening and Athenian night is lost. And what a beautiful description it is! If the art of reading were cultivated in America as it is in France and Germany, I would not be surprised if some American Legouvé or Strakosch were to add to his répertoire such productions of prose as this humorously poetic “Zeus’s Sentence,” or that mystic madrigal, “Be Blessed.”

  “But the dusk did not last long,” writes Sienkiewicz. “Soon from the Archipelago appeared the pale Selene and began to sail like a silvery boat in the heavenly space. And the walls of the Acropolis lighted again, but they beamed now with a pale green light, and looked more than ever like the vision of a dream.”

  But all these, and other equally charming pictures, disappear for a moment from the memory of the reader. There remains only the final joke — only Zeus’s sentence. “A virtuous woman — especially when she loves another man — can resist Apollo. But surely and always a stupid woman will resist him.”

  Only when one thinks of the story does one see that the ending — that “immoral conclusion” I should say if I were not able to understand the joke — does not constitute the essence of the story. Only then we find a delight in the description of the city for which the wagons cater the divine barley, and the water is carried by the girls, “with amphorae poised on their shoulders and lifted hands, going home, light and graceful, like immortal nymphs.”

  And then follow such paragraphs as the following, which determine the real value of the work:

  “The voice of the God of Poetry sounded so beautiful that it performed a miracle. Behold! In the Ambrosian night the gold spear standing on the Acropolis of Athens trembled, and the marble head of the gigantic statue turned toward the Acropolis in order to hear better…. Heaven and earth listened to it; the sea stopped roaring and lay peacefully near the shores; even pale Selene stopped her night wandering in the sky and stood motionless over Athens.”

  “And when Apollo had finished, a light wind arose and carried the song through the whole of Greece, and wherever a child in the cradle heard only a tone of it, that child grew into a poet.”

  What poet? Famed by what song? Will he not perhaps be a lyric poet?

  The same happens with “Lux in Tenebris.” One reads again and again the description of the fall of the mist and the splashing of the rain dropping in the gutter, “the cawing of the crows, migrating to the city for their winter quarters, and, with flapping of wings, roosting in the trees.” One feels that the whole misery of the first ten pages was necessary in order to form a background for the two pages of heavenly light, to bring out the brightness of that light. “Those who have lost their best beloved,” writes Sienkiewicz, “must hang their lives on something; otherwise they could not exist.” In such sentences — and it is not the prettiest, but the shortest that I have quoted — resounds, however, the quieting wisdom, the noble love of that art which poor Kamionka “respected deeply and was always sincere toward.” During the long years of his profession he never cheated nor wronged it, neither for the sake of fame nor money, nor for praise nor for criticism. He always wrote as he felt. Were I not like Ruth of the Bible, doomed to pick the ears of corn instead of being myself a sower — if God had not made me critic and worshipper but artist and creator — I could not wish for another necrology than those words of Sienkiewicz regarding the statuary Kamionka.

  Quite another thing is the story “At the Source.” None of the stories except “Let Us Follow Him” possess for me so many transcendent beauties, although we are right to be angry with the author for having wished, during the reading of several pages, to make us believe an impossible thing — that he was deceiving us. It is true that he has done it in a masterly manner — it is true that he could not have done otherwise, but at the same time there is a fault in the conception, and although Sienkiewicz has covered the precipice with flowers, nevertheless the precipice exists.

  On the other hand, it is true that one reading the novel will forget the trick of the author and will see in it only the picture of an immense happiness and a hymn in the worship of love. Perhaps the poor student is right when he says: “Among all the sources of happiness, that from which I drank during the fever is the clearest and best.” “A life which love has not visited, even in a dream, is still worse.”

  Love and faith in woman and art are two constantly recurring themes in “Lux in Tenebris,” “At the Source,” “Be Blessed,” and “Organist of Ponikila.”

  When Sienkiewicz wrote “Let Us Follow Him,” some critics cried angrily that he lessens his talent and moral worth of the literature; they regretted that he turned people into the false road of mysticism, long since left. Having found Christ on his pages, the least religious people have recollected how gigantic he is in the writings of Heine, walking over land and sea, carrying a red, burning sun instead of a heart. They all understood that to introduce Christ not only worthily or beautifully, but simply and in such a manner that we would not be obliged to turn away from the picture, would be a great art — almost a triumph.

  In later times we have made many such attempts. “The Mysticism” became to-day an article of commerce. The religious tenderness and simplicity was spread among Parisian newspaper men, playwrights and novelists. Such as Armand Sylvèstre, such as Theodore de Wyzewa, are playing at writing up Christian dogmas and legends. And a strange thing! While the painters try to bring the Christ nearer to the crowd, while Fritz von Uhde or Lhermitte put the Christ in a country school, in a workingman’s house, the weakling writers, imitating poets, dress Him in old, faded, traditional clothes and surround Him with a theatrical light which they dare to call “mysticism.” They are crowding the porticos of the temple, but they are merely merchants. Anatole France alone cannot be placed in the same crowd.

  In “Let Us Follow Him” the situation and characters are known, and are already to be found in literature. But never were they painted so simply, so modestly, without romantic complaints and exclamations. In the first chapters of that story there appears an epic writer with whom we have for a long time been familiar. We are accustomed to that uncommon simplicity. But in order to appreciate the narrative regarding Antea, one must listen attentively to this slow prose and then one will notice the rhythmic sentences following one after the other. Then one feels that the author is building a great foundation for the action. Sometimes there occurs a brief, sharp sentence ending in a strong, short word, and the result is that Sienkiew
icz has given us a masterpiece which justifies the enthusiasm of a critic, who called him a Prince of Polish Prose.

  In the second period of his literary activity, Sienkiewicz has produced his remarkable historical trilogy, “The Deluge,” “With Fire and Sword,” and “Pan Michael,” in which his talent shines forth powerfully, and which possess absolutely distinctive characters from his short stories. The admirers of romanticism cannot find any better books in historical fiction. Some critic has said righteously about Sienkiewicz, speaking of his “Deluge,” that he is “the first of Polish novelists, past or present, and second to none now living in England, France, or Germany.”

  Sienkiewicz being himself a nobleman, therefore naturally in his historical novels he describes the glorious deeds of the Polish nobility, who, being located on the frontier of such barbarous nations as Turks, Kozaks, Tartars, and Wolochs (to-day Roumania), had defended Europe for centuries from the invasions of barbarism and gave the time to Germany, France, and England to outstrip Poland in the development of material welfare and general civilization among the masses — the nobility being always very refined — though in the fifteenth century the literature of Poland and her sister Bohemia (Chechy) was richer than any other European country, except Italy. One should at least always remember that Nicolaus Kopernicus (Kopernik) was a Pole and John Huss was a Chech.

  Historical novels began in England, or rather in Scotland, by the genius of Walter Scott, followed in France by Alexandre Dumas père. These two great writers had numerous followers and imitators in all countries, and every nation can point out some more or less successful writer in that field, but who never attained the great success of Sienkiewicz, whose works are translated into many languages, even into Russian, where the antipathy for the Polish superior degree of civilization is still very eager.

  The superiority of Sienkiewicz’ talent is then affirmed by this fact of translation, and I would dare say that he is superior to the father of this kind of novels, on account of his historical coloring, so much emphasized in Walter Scott. This important quality in the historical novel is truer and more lively in the Polish writer, and then he possesses that psychological depth about which Walter Scott never dreamed. Walter Scott never has created such an original and typical figure as Zagloba is, who is a worthy rival to Shakespeare’s Falstaff. As for the description of duelings, fights, battles, Sienkiewicz’ fantastically heroic pen is without rival.

  Alexandre Dumas, notwithstanding the biting criticism of Brunetière, will always remain a great favorite with the reading masses, who are searching in his books for pleasure, amusement, and distraction. Sienkiewicz’ historical novels possess all the interesting qualities of Dumas, and besides that they are full of wholesome food for thinking minds. His colors are more shining, his brush is broader, his composition more artful, chiselled, finished, better built, and executed with more vigor. While Dumas amuses, pleases, distracts, Sienkiewicz astonishes, surprises, bewitches. All uneasy preoccupations, the dolorous echoes of eternal problems, which philosophical doubt imposes with the everlasting anguish of the human mind, the mystery of the origin, the enigma of destiny, the inexplicable necessity of suffering, the short, tragical, and sublime vision of the future of the soul, and the future not less difficult to be guessed of by the human race in this material world, the torments of human conscience and responsibility for the deeds, is said by Sienkiewicz without any pedanticism, without any dryness.

  If we say that the great Hungarian author Maurice Jokay, who also writes historical novels, pales when compared with that fascinating Pole who leaves far behind him the late lions in the field of romanticism, Stanley J. Weyman and Anthony Hope, we are through with that part of Sienkiewicz’ literary achievements.

  In the third period Sienkiewicz is represented by two problem novels,

  “Without Dogma” and “Children of the Soil.”

  The charm of Sienkiewicz’ psychological novels is the synthesis so seldom realized and as I have already said, the plastic beauty and abstract thoughts. He possesses also an admirable assurance of psychological analysis, a mastery in the painting of customs and characters, and the rarest and most precious faculty of animating his heroes with intense, personal life, which, though it is only an illusionary life, appears less deceitful than the real life.

  In that field of novels Sienkiewicz differs greatly from Balzac, for instance, who forced himself to paint the man in his perversity or in his stupidity. According to his views life is the racing after riches. The whole of Balzac’s philosophy can be resumed in the deification of the force. All his heroes are “strong men” who disdain humanity and take advantage of it. Sienkiewicz’ psychological novels are not lacking in the ideal in his conception of life; they are active powers, forming human souls. The reader finds there, in a well-balanced proportion, good and bad ideas of life, and he represents this life as a good thing, worthy of living.

  He differs also from Paul Bourget, who as a German savant counts how many microbes are in a drop of spoiled blood, who is pleased with any ferment, who does not care for healthy souls, as a doctor does not care for healthy people — and who is fond of corruption. Sienkiewicz’ analysis of life is not exclusively pathological, and we find in his novels healthy as well as sick people as in the real life. He takes colors from twilight and aurora to paint with, and by doing so he strengthens our energy, he stimulates our ability for thinking about those eternal problems, difficult to be decided, but which existed and will exist as long as humanity will exist.

  He prefers green fields, the perfume of flowers, health, virtue, to

  Zola’s liking for crime, sickness, cadaverous putridness, and manure.

  He prefers l’âme humaine to la bête humaine.

  He is never vulgar even when his heroes do not wear any gloves, and he has these common points with Shakespeare and Molière, that he does not paint only certain types of humanity, taken from one certain part of the country, as it is with the majority of French writers who do not go out of their dear Paris; in Sienkiewicz’ novels one can find every kind of people, beginning with humble peasants and modest noblemen created by God, and ending with proud lords made by the kings.

  In the novel “Without Dogma,” there are many keen and sharp observations, said masterly and briefly; there are many states of the soul, if not always very deep, at least written with art. And his merit in that respect is greater than of any other writers, if we take in consideration that in Poland heroic lyricism and poetical picturesqueness prevail in the literature.

  The one who wishes to find in the modern literature some aphorism to classify the characteristics of the people, in order to be able afterward to apply them to their fellow-men, must read “Children of the Soil.”

  But the one who is less selfish and wicked, and wishes to collect for his own use such a library as to be able at any moment to take a book from a shelf and find in it something which would make him thoughtful or would make him forget the ordinary life, — he must get “Quo Vadis,” because there he will find pages which will recomfort him by their beauty and dignity; it will enable him to go out from his surroundings and enter into himself, i.e., in that better man whom we sometimes feel in our interior. And while reading this book he ought to leave on its pages the traces of his readings, some marks made with a lead pencil or with his whole memory.

  It seems that in that book a new man was aroused in Sienkiewicz, and any praise said about this unrivaled masterpiece will be as pale as any powerful lamp is pale comparatively with the glory of the sun. For instance, if I say that Sienkiewicz has made a thorough study of Nero’s epoch, and that his great talent and his plastic imagination created the most powerful pictures in the historical background, will it not be a very tame praise, compared with his book — which, while reading it, one shivers and the blood freezes in one’s veins?

  In “Quo Vadis” the whole alta Roma, beginning with slaves carrying mosaics for their refined masters, and ending with patricians, who were so fond
of beautiful things that one of them for instance used to kiss at every moment a superb vase, stands before our eyes as if it was reconstructed by a magical power from ruins and death.

  There is no better description of the burning of Rome in any literature. While reading it everything turns red in one’s eyes, and immense noises fill one’s ears. And the moment when Christ appears on the hill to the frightened Peter, who is going to leave Rome, not feeling strong enough to fight with mighty Caesar, will remain one of the strongest passages of the literature of the whole world.

  After having read again and again this great — shall I say the greatest historical novel? — and having wondered at its deep conception, masterly execution, beautiful language, powerful painting of the epoch, plastic description of customs and habits, enthusiasm of the first followers of Christ, refinement of Roman civilization, corruption of the old world, the question rises: What is the dominating idea of the author, spread out all over the whole book? It is the cry of Christians murdered in circuses: Pro Christo!

  Sienkiewicz searching always and continually for a tranquil harbor from the storms of conscience and investigation of the tormented mind, finds such a harbor in the religious sentiments, in lively Christian faith. This idea is woven as golden thread in a silk brocade, not only in “Quo Vadis,” but also in all his novels. In “Fire and Sword” his principal hero is an outlaw; but all his crimes, not only against society, but also against nature, are redeemed by faith, and as a consequence of it afterward by good deeds. In the “Children of the Soul,” he takes one of his principal characters upon one of seven Roman hills, and having displayed before him in the most eloquent way the might of the old Rome, the might as it never existed before and perhaps never will exist again, he says: “And from all that nothing is left only crosses! crosses! crosses!” It seems to us that in “Quo Vadis” Sienkiewicz strained all his forces to reproduce from one side all the power, all riches, all refinement, all corruption of the Roman civilization in order to get a better contrast with the great advantages of the cry of the living faith: Pro Christo! In that cry the asphyxiated not only in old times but in our days also find refreshment; the tormented by doubt, peace. From that cry flows hope, and naturally people prefer those from whom the blessing comes to those who curse and doom them.