So Runs the World - Henryk Sienkiewicz,
SO RUNS THE WORLD
BY HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ
AUTHOR OF "QUO VADIS," ETC.
Translated by S.C. de SOISSONS
Contents
HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ
ZOLA
WHOSE FAULT?
THE VERDICT
WIN OR LOSE
PART FIRST
HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ.
I once read a short story, in which a Slav author had all the lilies
and bells in a forest bending toward each other, whispering and
resounding softly the words: "Glory! Glory! Glory!" until the whole
forest and then the whole world repeated the song of flowers.
Such is to-day the fate of the author of the powerful historical
trilogy: "With Fire and Sword," "The Deluge" and "Pan Michael,"
preceded by short stories, "Lillian Morris," "Yanko the Musician,"
"After Bread," "Hania," "Let Us Follow Him," followed by two problem
novels, "Without Dogma," and "Children of the Soil," and crowned by a
masterpiece of an incomparable artistic beauty, "Quo Vadis." Eleven
good books adopted from the Polish language and set into circulation
are of great importance for the English-reading people--just now I am
emphasizing only this--because these books are written in the most
beautiful language ever written by any Polish author! Eleven books of
masterly, personal, and simple prose! Eleven good books given to
the circulation and received not only with admiration but with
gratitude--books where there are more or less good or sincere pages,
but where there is not one on which original humor, nobleness, charm,
some comforting thoughts, some elevated sentiments do not shine. Some
other author would perhaps have stopped after producing "Quo Vadis,"
without any doubt the best of Sienkiewicz's books. But Sienkiewicz
looks into the future and cares more about works which he is going to
write, than about those which we have already in our libraries, and he
renews his talents, searching, perhaps unknowingly, for new themes and
tendencies.
When one knows how to read a book, then from its pages the author's
face looks out on him, a face not material, but just the same full of
life. Sienkiewicz's face, looking on us from his books, is not always
the same; it changes, and in his last book ("Quo Vadis") it is quite
different, almost new.
There are some people who throw down a book after having read it, as
one leaves a bottle after having drank the wine from it. There are
others who read books with a pencil in their hands, and they mark
the most striking passages. Afterward, in the hours of rest, in the
moments when one needs a stimulant from within and one searches for
harmony, sympathy of a thing apparently so dead and strange as a book
is, they come back to the marked passages, to their own thoughts,
more comprehensible since an author expressed them; to their own
sentiments, stronger and more natural since they found them in
somebody else's words. Because ofttimes it seems to us--the common
readers--that there is no difference between our interior world and
the horizon of great authors, and we flatter ourselves by believing
that we are 'only less daring, less brave than are thinkers and poets,
that some interior lack of courage stopped us from having formulated
our impressions. And in this sentiment there is a great deal of truth.
But while this expression of our thoughts seems to us to be a daring,
to the others it is a need; they even do not suspect how much they are
daring and new. They must, according to the words of a poet, "Spin
out the love, as the silkworm spins its web." That is their capital
distinction from common mortals; we recognize them by it at once; and
that is the reason we put them above the common level. On the pages
of their books we find not the traces of the accidental, deeper
penetrating into the life or more refined feelings, but the whole
harvest of thoughts, impressions, dispositions, written skilfully,
because studied deeply. We also leave something on these pages. Some
people dry flowers on them, the others preserve reminiscences. In
every one of Sienkiewicz's volumes people will deposit a great many
personal impressions, part of their souls; in every one they will find
them again after many years.
There are three periods in Sienkiewicz's literary life. In the
first he wrote short stories, which are masterpieces of grace and
ingenuity--at least some of them. In those stories the reader will
meet frequent thoughts about general problems, deep observations of
life--and notwithstanding his idealism, very truthful about spiritual
moods, expressed with an easy and sincere hand. Speaking about
Sienkiewicz's works, no matter how small it may be, one has always the
feeling that one speaks about a known, living in general memory work.
Almost every one of his stories is like a stone thrown in the midst
of a flock of sparrows gathering in the winter time around barns: one
throw arouses at once a flock of winged reminiscences.
The other characteristics of his stories are uncommonness of his
conceptions, masterly compositions, ofttimes artificial. It happens
also that a story has no plot ("From the Diary of a Tutor in Pozman,"
"Bartek the Victor"), no action, almost no matter ("Yamyol"), but the
reader is rewarded by simplicity, rural theme, humoristic pictures
("Comedy of Errors: A Sketch of American Life"), pity for the little
and poor ("Yanko the Musician"), and those qualities make the reader
remember his stories well. It is almost impossible to forget--under
the general impressions--about his striking and standing-out figures
("The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall"), about the individual
impression they leave on our minds. Apparently they are commonplace,
every-day people, but the author's talent puts on them an original
individuality, a particular stamp, which makes one remember them
forever and afterward apply them to the individuals which one meets
in life. No matter how insignificant socially is the figure chosen by
Sienkiewicz for his story, the great talent of the author magnifies
its striking features, not seen by common people, and makes of it a
masterpiece of literary art.
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's
short stories, constitutes a link between him and Francois Coppee, 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
Coppee'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's 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 Francois Coppee 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 Legouve or
Strakosch were to add to his repertoire 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 Sylvestre, 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 Sienkiewicz 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 _pere_.
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's 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's
fantastically heroic pen is without rival.
Alexandre Dumas, notwithstanding the biting criticism of Brunetiere,
will always remain a great favorite with the reading masses, who are
searching in his books for pleasure, amusement, and distraction.
Sienkiewicz's 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's literary achievements.
In the third period Sienkiewicz is represented by two problem novels,
"Without Dogma" and "Children of the Soil."
The charm of Sienkiewicz's 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's 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's
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'ame humaine_ to _la bete humaine_.
He is never vulgar even when his heroes do not wear any gloves, and he
has these common points with Shakespeare and Moliere, 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's 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.