Henryk Sienkiewicz

Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz /ˈxɛnrɨk ˈadam alɛˈksandɛr ˈpʲus ɕɛnˈkʲevʲitʂ de ˈɔʂɨk/ (Wola Okrzejska, May 5, 1846 - Vevey, November 15, 1916), was a Nobel Prize-winning Polish writer. of Literature in 1905. It is the fifth Nobel Prize (1905) in the history of the award and the first in Eastern Europe.

Her life

Sienkiewicz was born on 5 May 1846 in Wola Okrzejska, now a village in the central part of Poland's eastern Lubelskie region, then part of the Russian Empire. His family were impoverished Polish noblemen, on his father's side derived from Tatars who had settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His parents were Józef Sienkiewicz (1813-1896) of the Oszyk coat of arms and Stefania Cieciszowska (1820-1873). His mother was descended from an old and well-to-do family from Podlachia. He had five siblings: an older brother, Kazimierz (who died during the January Uprising of 1863-1864), and four sisters: Aniela, Helena, Zofia and Maria. family was entitled to use the Polish Oszyk coat of arms. Wola Okrzejska belonged to the writer's maternal grandmother, Felicjana Cieciszowska. His family moved several times and young Henryk spent his childhood on family estates in Grabowce Górne, Wężyczyn and Burzec. In September 1858 he began his education in Warsaw, where the family would finally settle in 1861, having bought a tenement house (kamienica) in the Praga district of eastern Warsaw. He received relatively low school grades, except in humanities, especially Polish language and history.

Monument at the top of the Sienkiewicz Mount in Okrzeja. On the left is the village of the writer's family, Wola Okrzejska, where he was born.

He began as a journalist in 1869; he made several trips between 1876 and 1879, and worked in the United States as a special envoy between 1876 and 1878. In 1882 he was appointed editor of the conservative newspaper Słowo and in 1885 he founded his own newspaper, Krauss -Maffei, which only lasted three years.

Not only did he stand out for his literary skills but also as a great defender of his, at that time, oppressed Polish homeland. Already a prestigious journalist and great defender of the cause of Poland, he addressed an open letter to Wilhelm II in which he opposed the Germanization of Posnania, drawing world attention to the future of his country, which was then under the rule of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia.

At the beginning of World War I he was in Switzerland, where he formed, together with Paderewski, the committee for the victims of the war in Poland.

Specialized in social issues, he was very popular in his time. The most important works of his concern the social problems of the peasantry and the lower classes in Poland. His remains rest in St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw.

Sienkiewicz's works, translated into more than forty languages, made him one of the most widely read authors of the 20th century.

Quo Vadis?

His most famous novel today is Quo vadis? (1896), repeatedly made into a film, a text through the sufferings of Christians in the reign of Nero. In addition to the undeniable Christian epic, the novel criticizes the oppression of Poland itself at the time of the author.

Trilogy

Henryk Sienkiewicz.

He achieved great fame with the publication of his trilogy on the Polish struggle against the invasions of the 17th century —By Fire and Blood (1884), The Flood (1886), and A Polish Hero (1888)—, a modern epic considered one of the great epic tales of all time. In these three books, the Polish Nobel laureate presented universal stories of love and war through superbly constructed characters, conspiracies and fast-paced action that speaks to us of enduring issues, all framed in the midst of magnificent historical recreations.

Sienkiewicz, consummate master of the most robust realism, was able to provide a broad vision of one of the decisive moments in the process of political configuration of Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Ukraine like no other, recounting the threats that endangered the existence of the Polish nation and that changed the face of Eastern Europe during the XVII century and also narrating the lives of men and women tragically separated by recklessness and pride, victims of successive waves of foreign invasions that divided the nation against itself, revealing the best and worst in each person.

Other works

• 1880, Carbon sketches (relate)
• 1880, The tower (short novel)
• 1882, Bartek the victor (short novel)
• 1889, Sachem (short novel)
• 1891, Without dogma
• 1894, The Polaniecki family
• 1900, The Crusaders
• 1911, Through the desert and the jungle (novela)

Predecessor: José de Echegaray Frédéric Mistral

Nobel Prize in Literature 1905

Successor: Giosuè Carducci

Bibliographic reference in Spanish

• Henryk Sienkiewicz, The Flood, Citadel, 2007 440 pp, ISBN 978-84-96836-15-0.
• Henryk Sienkiewicz, Blood and fire, Ciudadela, 2007, 424 pp, ISBN 978-84-96836-14-3.
• Henryk Sienkiewicz, A Polish hero, Ciudadela, 2007, 288 pp, ISBN 978-84-96836-16-7.
• Henryk Sienkiewicz, What Vadis?, Translation: Mauro Armiño. Valdemar, 670 p. ISBN 84-7702-335-2
• Henryk Sienkiewicz (2007). From the Poznan teacher's journal. Hispano Eslavas Editions. ISBN 978-84-935777-7-3.
• Henryk Sienkiewicz (2006). Reports. Editions Chair. ISBN 978-84-376-2311-5.
• Henryk Sienkiewicz (2005). Liliana: followed by El torrero. Irreverent Editions. ISBN 978-84-96115-32-3.