Without Dogma

Without Dogma

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Without Dogma, by Henryk
Sienkiewicz, Translated by Iza Young
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Title: Without Dogma
Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
Release Date: March 23, 2004 [eBook #11686]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DOGMA***
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Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

WITHOUT DOGMA.
A NOVEL OF MODERN POLAND.
BY
HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ
AUTHOR OF "WITH FIRE AND SWORD," "THE DELUGE," "QUO
VADIS," ETC.
TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH BY
IZA YOUNG.
1893

"A man who leaves memoirs, whether well or badly written, provided
they be sincere, renders a service to future psychologists and writers,
giving them not only a faithful picture of the times, but likewise human

documents that can be relied upon."

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE
In "WITHOUT DOGMA" we have a remarkable work, by a writer
known only in this country through his historical novels; and a few
words concerning this novel and its author may not be without interest.
Readers of Henryk Sienkiewicz in America, who have known him only
through Mr. Curtin's fine, strong translations, will be surprised to meet
with a production so unlike "Fire and Sword," and "The Deluge," that
on first reading one can scarcely believe it to be from the pen of the
great novelist.
"Fire and Sword," "The Deluge," and "Pan Michael" (now in press)
form, so to speak, a Polish trilogy. They are, first and last, Polish in
sentiment, nationality, and patriotism. What Wagner did for Germany
in music, what Dumas did for France, and Scott for all
English-speaking people, the great Pole has achieved for his own
country in literature. Even to those most unfamiliar with her history, it
grows life-like and real as it speaks to us from the pages of these
historical romances. Only a very great genius can unearth the dusty
chronicles of past centuries, and make its men and women live and
breathe, and speak to us. These historical characters are not mere
shadows, puppets, or nullities, but very real men and women, our own
flesh and blood.
His warriors fight, love, hate; they embrace each other; they laugh; they
weep in each other's arms; give each other sage counsels, with a truly
Homeric simplicity. They are deep-versed in stratagems of love and
war, these Poles of the seventeenth century! They have their Nestor,
their Agamemnon, their great Achilles sulking in his tent. Oddly
enough, at times they grow very familiar to us, and in spite of their
Polish titles and faces, and a certain tenderness of nature that is almost
feminine, they seem to have good, stout, Saxon stuff in them.
Especially where the illustrious knights recount their heroic deeds there
is a Falstaffian strut in their performance, and there runs riot a
Falstaffian imagination truly sublime.
Yet, be it observed, however much in all this is suggestive of the
literature of other races and ages, these characters never cease for a
moment to be Poles. Here is a vast, moving panorama spread before us;

across it pass mighty armies; hetman and banneret go by; the scene is
full of stir, life, action. It is constantly changing, so that at times we are
almost bewildered, attempting to follow the quick succession of events.
We are transported in a moment from the din and uproar of a
beleaguered town to the awful solitude of the vast steppes,--yet it is
always the Polish Commonwealth that the novelist paints for us, and
beneath every other music rises the wild Slavic music, rude, rhythmical,
and sad.
There is, too, a background against which these pictures paint
themselves, and it reminds us not a little of Verestchagin,--the same
deep feeling for nature, and a certain sadness that seems inseparable
from the Russian and Lithuanian temperaments, tears following closely
upon mirth. At times, after incident upon incident of war, the reader is
tempted to exclaim, "Something too much of this!" Yet nowhere,
perhaps, except from the great canvases of Verestchagin, has there ever
come a more awful, powerful plea for peace than from the pages of
"Fire and Sword."
In "Without Dogma" is presented quite another theme, treated in a
fashion strikingly different. In the historical novels the stage is crowded
with personages. In "Without Dogma," the chief interest centres in a
single character. This is not a battle between contending armies, but the
greater conflict that goes on in silence,--the battle of a man for his own
soul.
He can scarcely be considered an heroic character; he is to some extent
the creature