So Runs the World | Page 4

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 père. 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 Brunetière,
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