So Runs the World | Page 3

"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 Sylvèstre, 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