CHAPTER XVII

HONORS TO POLISH FICTION--SIENKIEWICZ (1905), REYMONT (1924)

The prize of 1905 has been awarded:

Sienkiewicz, Henryk, born 1846, died November 16, 1916: “because of his splendid merits as an author of historical novels.”[163]

As has been noted in previous chapters, in the Nobel prizes in literature, exponents of the same kind of writing in a country have been honored in successive generations. Björnson and Knut Hamsun, Heyse and Hauptmann, Echegaray and Benavente, Anatole France and Rolland, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Ladislaw Reymont are examples of such awards. Another inference from the lists of winners is that the adjudicators wish to recognize the aspirations and achievements of small countries that are too often overlooked upon the map of world literature. Thus Denmark and Switzerland, Ireland and Belgium have shared with the so-called “great nations” of Europe. Twice has Poland been selected for recognition. The very name suggests struggle and oppression on one hand, hope and faith in ultimate right on the other. In spite of tragic sadness, the messages of Poland in art and literature have been vital and lofty in idealism. Some of the melancholy and passionate yearning of later Poland has been expressed in the poets Michievicz and Slowacki, who are allied in their moods with Chopin; the “Funeral March” was described by Liszt as “the murmuring plaint of a whole nation following the bier of its dearest hopes.”[164] In his book, _Poland Reborn_, with keen analysis of advance in education and literary opportunities, Roy Devereux says, “Henceforward there will not be need for Polish men of letters like Henryk Sienkiewicz, who belongs as much to Western Europe as to Poland, to seek the protection of a foreign flag for their literary labours.”[165] To Sienkiewicz came the Nobel award in 1905, a surprise to European critics and a blow to Russian aspirants for the honor.

[Illustration:

_Copyright, 1912, by Little, Brown and Company_

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ]

Born in Lithuania, at Wola Okrzejska, in 1846, he was sixty when he received the prize; he was already known by translation to international readers. He belonged to a patrician family and was educated at the University of Warsaw until political conditions, following the revolution of 1863, caused him to leave Poland for Russia, where he edited a journal at St. Petersburg. He wanted to know more of the world so he traveled, in gypsy or Bohemian fashion, in Southern Europe; in 1876 he came to America, to Los Angeles, seeking to found there a Polish Commonwealth of Utopian type. He had written tales and travel sketches under the pseudonym of “Litwos”--_Nobody is a Prophet in his own Country_ and _From the Notebook of a Posen_. He wrote impressions of America for a Warsaw newspaper; among these earlier sketches were “Janko, the Musician,” “Across the Prairies,” and “In Tartar Captivity.” A later tale, “The Old Bell-Ringer,” was patriotic and wistful.

In 1880 he returned to Poland where he faced sadness in the death of his wife with the panacea of work upon his trilogy of historical romances of Poland. For eight years he worked winters in Warsaw at libraries and in his study, in summers in the Carpathian mountains. The results were the long, imaginative but strictly historical tales of _With Fire and Sword_, relating events from 1647 to 1651, _The Deluge_, from 1652 to 1657, and _Pan Michael_, dealing with the Turkish invasion and incidents from 1670 to 1674. This cycle of romances showed scholarship and dramatic ability, especially in the first and third stories of the trilogy. The background is panoramic; the dialogue is natural in most places. The author visualized individuals and the Polish people, under sentiments of distress, fear, love, conflict, and aspiration. The qualities of honor, patriotism, and faith are emphasized in these portrayals of Poland, under successive invasions of Cossacks, Swedes, and Turks. He idealized Poland and gave hope to his people.

Modern Poland was the setting for his next series of tales, _Without Dogma_ and _Children of the Soil_. The former is pathological and tragic, the diary of Leon Ploszowski, aristocrat and bore, and his love for his cousin, Aneila. The vices of modern society and self-indulgent forces are in sharp contrast with the heroes of the trilogy. For many years he had studied early Christianity with its opposing force, Paganism. In 1896 he wrote his masterpiece, _Quo Vadis_, which has been called “an epochal book.” In many translations it was familiar to readers before the Nobel prize was given to its author. Of somewhat similar trend was the later brief message, _Let Us Follow Him_, which appeared in a single book and is included in the collection of stories and sketches, _Hania_, in translations by C. W. Dynicwicz, Jeremiah Curtin, and Casimir Gonski.[166]

The confessed purpose of _Quo Vadis_ was to show “how God’s truth, because it is the only Truth, conquered pagan might.” The sustained interest in this religio-historical novel is not gained by melodrama or sensational intrigues. It has breadth and dignity. The characters vary in vividness but among the outstanding photographs are Paul and Petronius, Ursus and Chilo, and the girl captive, Ligeia. He called the tale “A Narrative of the Time of Nero.” The background was convincing but Nero was not successfully drawn; even such a master of characterization as Sienkiewicz could not make the Roman emperor vitally real to modern readers but he introduced several dramatic situations that center about his baffling personality. The question of the title, “Whither goest thou?” was asked of the modern world of unrest and discord, even as it was asked in the days of the apostles; the author felt the need of guides of to-day to hold up the banner of faith and service.

Sympathy and spirituality were qualities found, not alone in _Quo Vadis_ but in many other works in fiction by this Polish writer. _Knights of the Cross_, recounting the struggle between the Poles and Lithuanians against the Teutons, is a favorite with many readers. _After Bread: a Story of Polish Emigrant Life in America_ (also entitled, _For Daily Bread_ and _Peasants in Exile_) is typical of his tales of emigration. _On the Field of Glory_ celebrates Sobieski’s rescue of Vienna. Few authors have been so fortunate in English translators as this Polish novelist. Jeremiah Curtin, S. A. Binion, and S. C. de Soissons are among the best known; they have given fine interpretations to his historical trilogy, his religious novel, and such other stories as _On the Field of Glory_, _On the Bright Shore_, _In Desert and Wilderness_, _That Third Woman_, and _In Vain_. Sienkiewicz lived until 1916, alert and productive, ever exemplifying the word that he used in a criticism of Zola, “The novel should strengthen life, not undermine it; ennoble it, not defile it; bring good tidings, not evil.”

LADISLAW STANISLAW REYMONT

The prize of 1924 has been awarded:

To Reymont, Ladislaw, born 1868: “For his great epic, _The Peasants_.”[167]

Again, a new generation has come “to hold the candle to light the dark corners of the earth” in Poland, since Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote his novels of historical and religious potency. A new group of authors had come forward, many of them scarcely known outside their racial confines. Among the better known of the representatives of “Young Poland” is Ladislaw Reymont to whom the Nobel prize was given in 1924. A few weeks before this award was made public there appeared a translation of the first part of the four-volume novel, _The Peasants_ by Reymont, with the title, _Autumn_ (Knopf, New York, 1925). The translator was Michael H. Dziewicki, Professor of English Literature at the University of Cracow. The book attracted meager attention until the Nobel prize was announced; then a furor of interest was aroused in this first volume and those to appear since then--_Winter_, _Spring_, and _Summer_. Reymont had visited America twice but escaped much publicity. He had been translated into English as author of _The Comedienne_ (1920), the tale of a girl who sought to be beautiful and famous on the stage but ended in “philisticism.” Some of his short stories had been included in a collection of Polish tales, in the Oxford University series of _World Classics_ (1921). An extract from his industrial novel, _The Promised Land_, was used in the _Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature_, edited by Paul Selver, in 1921. He has written more than a score of novels, and is well known and commended in Germany. Comparisons to Sienkiewicz reveal more pictorial skill, more dramatic vigor like that of Dumas, in the older writer, but a realistic force of surpassing effects in Reymont.

His family was of the lower middle class. His father was a windmill owner in Kobiala Wielka, then in Russian Poland, where the author was born in 1868. He went to the village school and attended to the cattle and farm work. One of the interpreters of Reymont to Americans has been Rupert Hughes; in the translation of his Preface to the German edition of _The Peasants_ we read,[168] “Reymont was born to be the epic poet of the Polish village. He is, in spite of his foreign name, a child of that strange, uncouth world where he began his life among goose boys and cowherders, where he drove the herds of his father, the village organist, and whence he has climbed to the rank of a beloved and recognized poet, spending a large part of his life in Paris, the centre of modern culture.” Reymont attended some of the gymnasiums, or High Schools, but he was defiant to the Russian demand _not_ to speak in Polish; sometimes he was expelled.[169]

Several trades and occupations gave Reymont experiences which he has used in some of his fiction. He was a clerk in a store, railway employee, telegraph operator, and longed to travel like the hero of _The Dreamer_. For a time he was actor in a small company whose reflections are found in _The Comedienne_ and _Lilly_. He was, also, a novitiate with the Paulist Fathers for a time at Czenstochowa. _The Promised Land_, with scenes laid at Lotz and indications of revolt against the capitalists and landowners (on the part of the proletariat) was a forerunner of his agrarian novel, _The Peasants_. The earlier book has been compared with Zola’s _Germinal_ in intense naturalism. In this long story, _The Peasants_, Reymont became the “mouthpiece of the peasant and rural elements.” Combined with Reymont’s devotion to the peasant village as “protagonist,” is his passion for Nature in her varied aspects; hence he made his divisions of the book to show the four seasons. Like Thomas Hardy and George Meredith he uses Nature as a vital personality in his story, aiding or restraining the development of his leading characters, especially Yagna, who has been called “a Polish Tess.” The English author is superior in condensation and dramatic sympathy.

To use the Polish peasant as literary material is no exclusive trait of Reymont; he has been portrayed by other writers like Ladislaw Orkan, Jan Kasprowicz, and Stanislaw Prybyszewsski. In _The Peasants_ the slow movement is varied by scenes of intense emotion, like the marriage festival in _Autumn_, or the death of Kuba, like the passionate quest of Yagna and Antek in _Winter_, and the bitter fight between father and son, husband and lover of Yagna, or the tragic, gruesome scene of the death of the father, old Boryna, in the last pages of _Spring_. The mob-attack upon Yagna, at the close of _Summer_, grips the reader and makes a strong climax to the epical story. In addition to specific, haunting situations, there are interwoven customs and legends and a wonderful collection of Polish proverbs (a mine of literature!). Passions of love and hate and revenge, the constant excess of vodka and clouded minds, fear of landlord and slumbering revolt against the loss of forest lands and oncoming industrial domination--such are significant factors in this panoramic novel. In the background is the dull color of the soil, the rank smells and fragrant odors of farmyards and woods, sunsets of splendor, and terrifying storms. One of the most poetic, idealistic passages is the last chapter in _Autumn_, the passing of the soul of faithful Kuba, after his long years of service and keen suffering:

And higher yet it flew, and higher, yet higher, higher--yea, till it set its feet--

Where man can hear no longer the voice of lamentation, nor the mournful discords of all things that breathe--

Where only fragrant lilies exhale balmy odours, where fields of flowers in bloom waft honey-sweet scents athwart the air; where starry rivers roll over beds of a million hues; where night comes never at all--[170]

Many passages in this novel are repugnant to Anglo-Saxon æsthetic tastes, if one is unable to assimilate the raw sordidness of many modern stories of the soil, with the passages of emotional vigor and poetic beauties. Reymont has revealed, in panoramic form, the life of the Polish peasant, typified in the family and associates of Boryna; he has treated his big theme with psychological insight, realistic photography, and robust idealism. The first and second volumes seem more spontaneous and dramatic than the later. He lacks condensation and incisiveness. An excellent review of the four volumes by Vida Scudder is in _The Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1925.

Reymont knows America far better than Americans know him or his books, but the discrepancy is being remedied. He enjoys friendship with many men of affairs and letters here, including Rupert Hughes, whose story, _What Will People Say?_ has been translated by Mme. Reymont, a fine linguist, and published serially in the Warsaw _Gazeta_. Many critics have noted the sincerity of Reymont as man and artist.

In