W

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

(1846-)

BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG

ITH all the confidence that can ever attach to human judgment upon a living author, Sienkiewicz may be pronounced the greatest creative genius in the field of fiction at the end of the nineteenth century. In his own country a clique of Polish critics applied to him the policy of silence, but they had underestimated the force that they strove to check. With his splendid trilogy of historical novels, Sienkiewicz sat self-crowned upon the throne of Polish literature, left vacant by the death of Mickiewicz thirty years before. It was with translations of these novels that he made his first appearance before the English-speaking world; and at once was felt the presence of the supreme master through the veil of an alien tongue and the mists of a remote time and people. It has been said that the creation of a new character is as important as the birth of a new man. If it is the highest achievement of art to create a new human character and endow it with inexhaustible freshness and vitality, Sienkiewicz securely takes his rank among the greatest artists. One who has wandered through that wonder-world of Poland in the seventeenth century can never again be quite the same: he is one that has had a vision. The characters who ruled in that rugged time enter the mind through these inspired pages, and like the gods of Greece and the heroes of Homer, take up their abode in the realms of the fancy forever.

Henryk Sienkiewicz was born at Wola Okrzejska in Lithuania, in 1846. The facts obtainable about his life are meagre. He studied at Warsaw, and from the first gave himself wholly to letters. For a time he was editor of the Niwa. As a writer of fiction he first came before the public in 1872, with a humorous tale, 'No Man is a Prophet in his Own Country.' In 1876 he came to America; and in southern California, in the midst of that circle of which Madame Modjeska was the centre and the inspiration, he met many of the characters and had many of the experiences that have received artistic immortality in his works. It was there that he found the prototype of the inimitable Zagloba. Under the pen-name of "Litwos," he wrote letters of travel for the Gazeta Polska which attracted

general attention. Several stories appeared under the same name, some of them dealing with characteristically American scenes. In 1880 he published his first large work, Niewola Tartarska' (Tartar Slavery). With this he served his apprenticeship in the historical novel. Four years later came the first of his great masterpieces, 'Ogniem i Mieczem' (With Fire and Sword), and he entered at once into his kingdom. In 1886 appeared Potop' (The Deluge), and in 1887 Pan Wolodyjowski' (Pan Michael). To the Poles themselves these books represent the finest achievement of prose fiction in the language; and they are unsurpassed by the best historical romances of the world's literature. As if to show his boundless versatility, the author next published the profound psychological novel 'Bez Dogmatu' (Without Dogma). His two latest works are 'Rodzina Polanieckich (Children of the Soil: 1894) and Quo Vadis' (1895), both of which have secured a popular success in English. For a time Sienkiewicz edited the Slowoc in Warsaw; but his genius is restless. He says himself that he is something of a gipsy; travel is a passion: but Cracow and Warsaw are the cities to which he returns. After his long sojourn in California he went to Africa; and his wanderings have led him over all of Europe and far into the Orient. But he is no idle rover: he plunges into the midst of men and events, and describes with a realist's precision what he observes with a poet's discernment. Freedom and independence are everything to him.

Of the short stories of Sienkiewicz, the best are those which deal with Polish scenes and people. The stories of American life, as Lillian Morris' and 'The Comedy of Errors,' lack the intimate touch. The Polish tales are firmly drawn and faithful pictures, revealing the closest knowledge of the life described and of the modes of thought that condition it. They cover a varied field. Light-hearted humor and deep feeling distinguish the story of artist life entitled The Third.' It is told in the first person by a young painter, whose impulsive nature twice leads him into error in the choice of a sweetheart. In all his amusing entanglements a distinguished actress is his friend and adviser; they are of the same artistic temperament: at last the obvious dawns upon him that his true love is this "third." In contrast to the gayety of this tale stands the sad Na Marne,' a story of student life in Kieff. The title may be paraphrased as 'Frittered Away.' It is a powerful picture of the struggles, temptations, and ambitions in the storm and stress of university life. In it the solution of the highest problems is attempted, and the author does not hesitate coldly to analyze the loftiest human emotions; but never cynically, for through it all breathes an atmosphere of poetry. The famous Bartek 'Zwycięzca ' (The Victor) tells of a poor Polish peasant who was forced to fight

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under the Prussian eagle at Gravelotte and Sedan. After performing marvels of blind valor, he went home only to become the victim of the repressive injustice of the Prussian government. Strongest of all the stories, in the judgment of the Poles themselves, is 'God's Will,' from the collection of Szkice Weglem' (Charcoal Sketches). It is a tale of village life in Poland, and the secrets of local administration are ruthlessly laid bare,-its corruption, stupidity, and helplessness. Of all these elements the village clerk avails himself to accomplish his designs upon a handsome, honest peasant woman, who has a husband and child. Through sufferings infinitely pitiable,- for in her simple-mindedness she does not know that her persecutor has no power to carry out his threats,- she is at last brought to yield that she may save her husband; and her husband kills her. The story moves to its catastrophe with the inevitableness of a force of nature. The tragedy is enlivened by many scenes of the sprightliest humor; always, however, directly bearing upon the relentless development of the plot. The diverting description of the village court in session is a triumph of realistic drawing. The political significance of the story aroused the opposition of the aristocratic and clerical party, whose policy of non-intervention in local affairs was therein so savagely attacked. But it soon became obvious that Sienkiewicz had something victorious in his nature; that he was a supreme artist, taking his materials where he found them and treating them as his genius chose. The author of 'God's Will' was the author also of that tender bit of pathos 'Yanko the Musician,' the story of the poor boy who struggled to express his inner aspirations but "died with all his music in him." Now over his grave the willows whisper. With the same tender touch was written 'The Old Servant,' which forms the introduction to 'Hania,' a story of love and renunciation. Everywhere there is a faithful reproduction of the hopes and sorrows and faults of the Polish people. For his thought the author always finds the right form, and for his feeling the right figure.

Sienkiewicz had won the supreme piace among the short-story writers of his native land. The historical trilogy gave him a like place among the novelists on a larger scale. Then, from those wonderful pictures of the vigorous and valiant men of action who represented the old Polish commonwealth, he turned to the delineation of a modern Pole in Without Dogma.' The book is the diary of the hero. It is the record of a silent conflict with his own soul, full of profound observations, subtle philosophy, lofty wisdom; but the protagonist is passive, "a genius without a portfolio." He reveals every cranny of his mind's dwelling-place: the lofty galleries whence he has a wide panorama of humanity and the world; the stately halls filled with the treasures of science and art; the dungeons also where

the evil impulses fret and sins are bred. But over the whole mansion of his soul lies a heavy enervating atmosphere: the galleries afford a spectacle but stimulate no aspirations; the treasures of knowledge and beauty feed a selfish pleasure quickly cloyed; even the evil impulses rarely pass into action. This is the modern miasma which he calls "Slavic unproductivity." It is the over-cultivation which is turning to decay, the refinement of self-analysis that lames the will. The hero is a Hamlet in the guise of a young Polish nobleman of the late nineteenth century. His only genuine emotion is his love for Aniela; but this he doubts and philosophizes into apathy. She marries another, loving him. Obstacles arouse him, and now he puts forth an effort to win her. Her simplicity and faithfulness, her dogma, saves him who is without dogma. The futility of his life is symbolized in the words-"Aniela died this morning." The man cannot command our respect any more than Wilhelm Meister can, or Lermontov's "Hero of our Own Time"; but the interest of the psychological analysis is irresistible. There is in it a hint of Bourget; but in the quality of his psychology Sienkiewicz surpasses Bourget, as he surpasses Zola and Flaubert in the quality of his realism. He has been called a psychic realist, and Without Dogma' is the greatest psychological romance that the subtle mind of Poland has produced. 'Children of the Soil' has in it certain echoes of the greater work: It is a modern story also, turning upon the marriage of a man to a woman whom he thinks he loves, and whom after much sin and sorrow he learns to love at last. Quo Vadis,' the latest work, is a tale of the times of Nero. Paganism and Christianity are contrasted. The sympathy of the artist is naturally drawn to the ancient pagan, who devoted his life to the worship of beauty, and faced death with a stoic's calmness. The character of Petronius Arbiter is the masterpiece of the book. This conflict between two forms of civilization has long been a favorite theme with the Polish poets: the dawn of a new era while the lights of the old still blaze.

With this array of works, Sienkiewicz would take honorable rank among the best writers of his generation; but his title to a place among the great creators rests upon none of these. That claim is based upon the famous historical trilogy, 'With Fire and Sword,' 'The Deluge,' and 'Pan Michael.' Poland was the bulwark of Christian civilization on the east. Against the Tartar hordes and Mongolian bands the gallant commonwealth maintained a stout resistance for centuries: but her warlike neighbors did not recognize her importance as the defender of the Christian marches; she was constantly exposed to encroachments on the west. In the moment of her greatest peril the Swedes attacked her from that quarter. These wonderful wars of the seventeenth century are the theme of the trilogy. In the