So Runs the World | Page 6

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.
Sienkiewicz considers the Christian faith as the principal and even the
only help which humanity needs to bear cheerfully the burden and
struggle of every-day life. Equally his personal experience as well as
his studies made him worship Christ. He is not one of those who say

that religion is good for the people at large. He does not admit such a
shade of contempt in a question touching so near the human heart. He
knows that every one is a man in the presence of sorrow and the
conundrum of fate, contradiction of justice, tearing of death, and
uneasiness of hope. He believes that the only way to cross the precipice
is the flight with the wings of faith, the precipice made between the
submission to general and absolute laws and the confidence in the
infinite goodness of the Father.
The time passes and carries with it people and doctrines and systems.
Many authors left as the heritage to civilization rows of books, and in
those books scepticism, indifference, doubt, lack of precision and
decision.
But the last symptoms in the literature show us that the Stoicism is not
sufficient for our generation, not satisfied with Marcus Aurelius's
gospel, which was not sufficient even to that brilliant Sienkiewicz's
Roman arbiter elegantiarum, the over-refined patrician Petronius. A
nation which desired to live, and does not wish either to perish in the
desert or be drowned in the mud, needs such a great help which only
religion gives. The history is not only magister vitae, but also it is the
master of conscience.
Literature has in Sienkiewicz a great poet--epical as well as lyrical.
I shall not mourn, although I appreciate the justified complaint about
objectivity in belles lettres. But now there is no question what poetry
will be; there is the question whether it will be, and I believe that
society, being tired with Zola's realism and its caricature, not with the
picturesqueness of Loti, but with catalogues of painter's colors; not
with the depth of Ibsen, but the oddness of his imitators--it seems to me
that society will hate the poetry which discusses and philosophizes,
wishes to paint but does not feel, makes archeology but does not give
impressions, and that people will turn to the poetry as it was in the
beginning, what is in its deepest essence, to the flight of single words,
to the interior melody, to the song--the art of sounds being the greatest