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Henryk Sienkiewicz

Sienkiewicz was born on May 5, 1846 into an impoverished noble family in the village of Wola Okrzejska. At first, his father rented various manor lands, then settled in Warsaw where he purchased an apartment house. Sienkiewicz finished high school in Warsaw and attended university there from 1866 to 1871, where he studied law and philology-history. He finished his studies in 1871 but never received his diploma, for he skipped his exam in the Greek language.

In his youth, Sienkiewicz was inspired by the high-spirited adventure in the stories of Alexandre Dumas. When the unsuccessful uprising against Russian domination broke out in January 1863, his parents refused him permission to participate, since his older brother Kazimierz (who would later die in the Franco-Prussian War) had already gone to fight. Disappointed, he concentrated on Poland’s past glories and family history. His first youthful forays into literature were poetry and a novel of student life—Na Marne (In Vain)—which received some critical praise.

From 1872 to 1887, Sienkiewicz worked as a journalist and reporter for the Warsaw press, and by 1874 he became co-owner of the bi-weekly Niwa, remaining in that position until 1878. In 1876 he was sent as a correspondent to North America by Gazeta Polska. Simultaneously, he was the advanceman for a group of friends, including the actress Helena Modrzejewska (later Modjeska), who were intent on resettling in the United States, and he half-heartedly joined their attempt to start a communal farm in Anaheim, California. He stayed only until 1878.

In 1879 he traveled through France and Italy, and after 1880 he traveled constantly. Every year he made trips abroad so that his first wife, Maria Szetkiewicz, could receive treatment for her tuberculosis. In addition to his travels, he was the editor of Słowo (a conservative daily) between 1882 and 1887. After his first wife’s death in 1885, he frequented spas in Austria, Italy, and France. In 1886 he ventured further afield, to Constantinople, Athens, Naples, and Rome. Spain was his destination in 1888, and in 1890 Sienkiewicz joined a hunting expedition to Zanzibar.

He was a tireless traveler and wrote continuously, producing novels, short stories, commentaries, and letters, which appeared in the press in Krakow, Warsaw, Poznan, and Lwow. The work brought him fame. In 1900, on the 25th anniversary of his writing debut, a grateful nation presented him with Oblęgorek, a small estate with a manor house near Kielce (in southeastern Poland).

He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905. By giving the prize to a “Polish writer,” the Swedish Academy recognized the language of a country that, at that time, did not exist as a nation-state. Poland had been partitioned out of existence in 1795, and its lands remained under the control of Prussia, Russia, and Austria until 1918 and the end of World War I. In his address to the Academy,1 Sienkiewicz said:

Nations are represented by their poets and their writers in the open competition for the Nobel Prize. Consequently the award of the Prize by the Academy glorifies not only the author but the people whose son he is, and it bears witness that that nation has a share in the universal achievement, that its efforts are fruitful, and that it has the right to live for the profit of mankind. If this honour is premous to all, it is infinitely more so to Poland. It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph. Like Galileo, one is forced to think “E pur si muove”2 when before the eyes of the world homage has been rendered to the importance of Poland’s achievement and her genius.

This homage has been rendered not to me—for the Polish soil is fertile and does not lack better writers than me—but to the Polish achievement, the Polish genius. For this I should like to express my most ardent and most sincere gratitude as a Pole to you gentlemen, the members of the Swedish Academy, and I conclude by borrowing the words of Horace: “Principibus placuisse viris non ultima laus est.”3

After the outbreak of World War I, Sienkiewicz moved to Vevey, Switzerland where, with Ignacy Jan Paderewski and A. Osuchowski, he organized the General Committee to Help the Victims of War in Poland. The committee sent medicine, clothing, and money to their beleaguered homeland. Sienkiewicz also joined other social relief efforts, including the creation of a tuberculosis treatment center for children in Bystre. A fund for writers, which he founded in 1889, helped Stanisław Wyspiański, Stanisław Przybyszewski, K. Przerwa-Tetmayer, and many others to spend time in sanatoriums. He died in Vevey on November 15, 1916 of a heart aliment.

Sienkiewicz traveled extensively throughout his later life, and met many interesting people. He married Maria Szetkiewicz (1881), with whom he had two children: Henryk Józef and Jadwiga. Despite visits to spas for the rest cure, the only treatment then available, Maria died from tuberculosis in 1885. His subsequent marriage to Maria Romanowska-Wołodkiewicz, which he admitted was an error in judgment, was annulled on technical grounds. Later, in 1904, he married Maria Babska, who became his true partner for the rest of their lives.

Testimony to his wide interests is given by his extensive travel reports: Letters from America and Letters from Africa. In his writings on Polish themes he addressed contemporary social problems, the poverty of the villages, and the oppression in schools operated under the occupation government. In his cycle of short stories written about America, he illustrated life in that young and resilient nation. With over 40 major works, he displayed his mastery of the Polish language, human psychology, and the writer’s craft. Sienkiewicz was instrumental in the flowering of the historical novel at the end of the nineteenth century; he was a writer with a historical temperament. His contemporary novels Without Dogma (Bez Dogmatu) and The Polaniecki Family (Rodzina Połanieckich) were not successful, but his historical novels brought him worldwide fame. His greatest success was Quo Vadis, a great panoramic portrayal of Nero’s Rome. The first part of his Trilogy—With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i Mieczem)—raised him to the level of the greatest Polish prose writers.

Literary and academic circles initially criticized the Trilogy, accusing Sienkiewicz of a lack of understanding for human psychology, and asserting that the novels did not present an accurate historical picture of events. Despite this, the Trilogy instantly became the most popular books in Poland and quickly gained admirers overseas. The Trilogy was written chiefly to “uplift the hearts” of his countrymen, and taught patriotism and faith in individual heroism.

The crowning success of his work was the novel The Teutonic Knights (Krzyżacy). The epic nature of the story, its well-organized action sequences, and the presentation of a growing national awareness testify to its great artistic and imaginative values. Among young people, his novel of Africa was a great favorite: In Desert and Wilderness (W Pustyni i w Puszczy).

According to bibliographer and Sienkiewicz scholar Julian Krzyżanowski, Sienkiewicz remains among the world’s most popular writers. Sienkiewicz’s works are continually reprinted or appear in new translations. In the United States, the Trilogy and Quo Vadis received a new treatment in the 1990s with English language versions by author-translator Wieslaw Kuniczak. These works quickly became controversial among veteran Sienkiewicz readers because of the adaptive approach used in producing these new editions. Kuniczak’s critics said that he crossed the line from translation to co-authorship.4 On the other hand, his defenders held that everything was done in the “spirit of” the original novels to make them “more accessible” to a new and wider English-speaking readership.5

Yet despite any controversy, the first book of the series, With Fire and Sword, quickly became a Book of the Month selection. This is ample evidence that Sienkiewicz continues to speak across time even to readers outside of Poland. He is gone. The centennial of his Nobel Prize in Literature has passed. Yet his unique vision of history, expressed with great narrative skill, continues to engage and fascinate readers willing to make the effort to know him.

Biographical sketch information from:

Borowiec, Jerzy. Encyclopedyczny Słownik Sławnych Polaków [An Encyclopedic Directory of Famous Poles], Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawniczo-Poligraficzna i Reklamowo Handlowa “Adam,” 1996.

1 From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969.

2 “and yet it moves”

3 “to have won the approval of important people is not the last degree of praise”

4 Harold B. Segel, book review in The Polish Review XXXVI, No. 4, (1991), p. 487; Michael J. Mikoś, book review in The Polish Review XXXVII, 2, (1992), p. 253.

5 The Trilogy Companion: A Reader’s Guide to the Trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz, Jerzy R. Krzyżanowski, ed., (New York: Copernicus Society of America and Hippocrene Books, 1991).