Without Dogma | Page 4

Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, and the realists, as well as all the forces of nature, have helped to make Henryk Sienkiewicz; yet he is not any one of them. He is never merely imitative. Originality and imaginative fire, a style vivid and strong, large humor, a profound pathos, a strong feeling for nature, and a deep reverence for the forms and the spirit of religion, the breath of the true cosmopolitan united with the intense patriotism of the Pole, a great creative genius,--these are the most striking qualities of the work of this modern novelist, who has married Romance to Realism.
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WITHOUT DOGMA.
ROME, 9 January.
Some months ago I met my old friend and school-fellow, Jozef Sniatynski, who for the last few years has occupied a prominent place among our literary men. In a discussion about literature Sniatynski spoke about diaries. He said that 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. He seemed to think that most likely the novel of the future would take the form of diary; finally he asserted that anybody who keeps a diary works for the common good, and does a meritorious thing.
I am thirty-five, and do not remember ever having done anything for my country, for the reason, maybe, that after leaving the University, my life, with slight intervals, was spent abroad. This fact, so lightly touched upon, has given me, in spite of all my scepticism, many a bitter pang; therefore I resolved to follow my friend's advice. If this indeed means work, with some kind of merit in it, I will try to be of some use in this way.
I intend to be perfectly sincere. I enter upon the task, not only because of the above-mentioned reasons, but also because the idea pleases me. Sniatynski says that if a man gets accustomed to put down his thoughts and impressions it becomes gradually one of the most delightful occupations of his life. If it should prove the contrary, then the Lord have mercy on my diary; it would snap asunder like a string too tightly drawn. I am ready to do much for my community; but to bore myself for its sake, oh, no! I could not do it.
Nevertheless, I am resolved not to be discouraged by first difficulties, and shall give it a fair trial. "Do not adopt any style; do not write from a literary point of view," says Sniatynski. Easier said than done. I fully understand that the greater the writer, the less he writes in a purely literary style; but I am a dilettante, and have no command over any style. I know from experience that to one who thinks much and feels deeply, it often seems that he has only to put down his thoughts and feelings in order to produce something altogether out of the common; yet as soon as he sets to work he falls into a certain mannerism of style and common phraseology; his thoughts do not come spontaneously, and one might almost say that it is not the mind that directs the pen, but the pen leads the mind into common, empty artificiality. I am afraid of this for myself, for if I am wanting in eloquence, literary simplicity, or picturesqueness, I am not wanting in good taste, and my own style might become distasteful to myself, and thereby render my task impossible. But this I shall see later on. I begin my diary with a short introductory autobiography.
My name is Leon Ploszowski, and I am, as I said before, thirty-five years of age. I come from a wealthy family which has been able to preserve its fortune. As to myself I shall not increase it, and at the same time I am not likely to squander it. My position is such that there is no necessity for me to enter into competition with struggling humanity. As to expensive and ruinous pleasures, I am a sceptic who knows how much they are worth, or rather, knows that they are not worth anything.
My mother died a week after I was born. My father, who loved her more than his life, became affected with melancholia. Even after he recovered from this, at Vienna, he did not wish to return to his estates, as the memories associated with them rent his very soul; he left Ploszow under the care of his sister, my aunt, and betook himself in the year 1848 to Rome, which, during thirty-odd years, he never left once, so as to be near my mother's tomb. I forgot to mention that he brought her remains to Rome, and buried