SIENKIEWICZ, HENRYK. - Polish writer, b. at Wola Okrzejska on 6 May 1846, d. at Vévey on 15 Dec. 1916.
Of a noble family, he lived on his father's country estates until the end of his studies. He traveled in North America, visited France and Italy, publishing in the meantime short stories, novels and journalistic correspondence. He then alternated stays in Warsaw with journeys to Turkey, Africa, Greece, Spain and Italy. At the outbreak of the First World War he set up in Switzerland, together with Paderewski, the Relief Committee for Poles, working by every means for the liberation of his homeland.
Sienkiewicz's literary output is vast and many-sided and won approval throughout the world. At the beginning, in the period of the fullest flowering of positivism, Sienkiewicz came under its influence (No morne [In Vain] and various short stories). But very soon the romantic tradition attracted him; nostalgia for the life of the past pervades the delicate short story Hania; nostalgia for the distant homeland in the heart of the exile dictated to him Latarnik (The Lighthouse Keeper), rightly regarded as a masterpiece. The first great work is the Trilogy, that is the three novels in which the Poland of the period between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries comes to life again, in the most turbulent epoch of its history, which includes the Cossack war (Ogniem i mieczem [With Fire and Sword]), the Swedish invasion (Potop [The Deluge]) and the Tatar war (Pan Michal Wolodylowski): the grandeur of the action, in which people and warriors move, the figures drawn in full light, the vividness of the narrative are admirable. The writer's art appeared as one thing with his patriotism, of which he was to give so many proofs, struggling against the denationalization attempted in Posnania (Z pamiętnika poznańskiego na czyciela [From the Diary of a Posnanian Teacher]), against the expropriation of the lands likewise subject to the Germans, already fought by the Poles in the time of the Teutonic Knights: a subject that would later inspire his novel Krzyżacy (The Crusaders).
After two novels on a modern subject: Rodzina Polanieckich (The Polaniecki Family) and Bez dogmatu ([Without Dogma], a ruthless analysis of the decay brought about by the lack of moral principles), Sienkiewicz published in 1896 Quo vadis?, a tale of the times of Nero. In the contrast between the opposing forces, paganism and Christianity in its earliest dawn, in the richness of life of the historical characters and of those created by the author's imagination, in the beauty of the narrative and in the highly religious spirit, even amid the simple humanity of the plot, lies the reason for the resounding success obtained by Quo vadis?, which was translated into every language.
Sienkiewicz's later work is of lesser importance: Na polu chwaly (On the Field of Glory) is the only novel of a second trilogy that he planned. Wiry (Whirlpools) has as its subject the Polish insurrection of 1863; Legiony was left unfinished; only one work is on a level with his best: W pustyni i puszczy (In Desert and Wilderness), which is among the masterpieces of children's literature. Sienkiewicz's travel letters have also been published, among them some from Italy, which he admired and loved. Sienkiewicz's writings, admirable for clarity and nobility of style, show a particular mastery of the language: fluid and lively when modern subjects are in question, it has an archaic flavor on the lips of the characters of the Trilogy, who speak the historically documented Polish of the seventeenth century, and takes on a classical beauty in Quo vadis?
Bibliography4 works
Marina Bersano Begey