Biography of Henryk Sienkiewicz. Biography of Henryk Sienkiewicz Historical trilogy of novels by Henryk Sienkiewicz about the adventures of Pan Michal Volodyevsky

Years of life: from 05/05/1846 to 11/15/1916

Polish writer, prose writer, journalist. Classic of Polish literature. Laureate Nobel Prize on literature. He gained fame for his historical novels, which take place in Poland and the Roman Empire during the era of early Christians.

Henryk Adam Alexander Piy Sienkiewicz was born in the Polish town of Okzheyska (now the territory of Lithuania). His father, Jozef Sienkiewicz was the owner of several small estates. His mother came from a noble, educated family. When Senkevich reached school age, economic difficulties forced his family to sell their estates and move to Warsaw, where Henryk became interested Polish history and literature, and began to write prose and poetry. After graduating from the gymnasium (1866), Sienkiewicz entered the Faculty of Medicine at Warsaw University, but then changed his specialty and transferred to the Faculty of History and Philology. During his studies, Senkevich began to study literature. Senkevich failed to finish his studies, his family became completely impoverished, and in 1871, the writer was forced to leave the university without passing exams and without receiving a diploma. The next year came out written in student years S.'s novel "In vain" ("Namarne"). At the same time, Sienkiewicz became a journalist, wrote articles for several Polish periodicals at once, traveled as a representative of these newspapers to Vienna and Paris, as well as to Ostend. In 1876, Sienkiewicz made a trip to the USA with the aim of founding a Polish community in California. Sienkiewicz spends more than a year in California, and although he fails to establish a Polish colony, his American reports, published in the Polish press from 1876 to 1878, and then published as a separate book, Letters from the Road (Listy z podrozy do Ameryki) , had great success. Returning to Europe in 1878, Sienkiewicz traveled to France and Italy, gave lectures, wrote reports and short stories inspired by impressions of America, published in Warsaw periodicals. In Italy in 1879 he met Maria Shetkevich, a Polish woman who became his wife two years later (she died in 1885). After returning to Warsaw in late 1879, Sienkiewicz became the editor of a new daily newspaper and began to pay attention to larger-scale fiction. In 1884, the novel "With Fire and Sword" ("Ogniem i mieczem") was published, more increased after the release of the novels "The Flood" ("Potop", 1886) and "Pan Volodyevsky" ("Pan Wolodyjowski", 1888). Senkevich traveled a lot, changing his place of residence many times (Austria, England, Italy, Lithuania, France, Switzerland, in 1886 - Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, in 1891 - Egypt and Zanzibar, etc.). At the end of 1894, Senkevich married an admirer of his talent, the young Maria Romanovskaya, but the marriage soon fell apart. Soon after this event, Sienkiewicz begins work on his own famous work: the novel "Kamo gredeshi" ("Quo Vadis", 1896) - about the persecution of Christians during the time of Emperor Nero. The novel was enthusiastically received by Polish and foreign critics; the head of the Roman catholic church Pope Leo XIII. In his homeland, Sienkiewicz was so popular that in 1900, in connection with the 50th anniversary of the writer, a sufficient amount of money was collected by subscription to purchase a small estate Oblegurek near Kielce. Shortly thereafter, Sienkiewicz married Maria Babskaya, his cousin, and in 1905 completed Na polu chwaly, the continuation of his first historical trilogy. In 1905, Sienkiewicz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for outstanding achievements in the field of the epic." In 1909-1910, Senkevich wrote a novel about the events of the Russian revolution of 1905-1907 - "Omut". Last piece writer, the novel "Legions" (1913-1914) remained unfinished. At the beginning of World War I, Sienkiewicz left Oblegurek and moved to neutral Switzerland, where he worked, despite severe sclerosis, in the Polish Red Cross. He died in Vevey in 1916, and eight years later his body was transported to Poland, the ashes of the writer were buried in the crypt of St. Jan's Cathedral.

After the trilogy "Fire and Sword", "The Flood", "Pan Volodyevsky" Senkevich became the Polish writer with the highest earnings (he received 70 thousand rubles from the publisher for the right to publish the trilogy for 20 years).

The work of Henryk Sienkiewicz was highly appreciated by L.N. Tolstoy. The writers even corresponded.

The name "Kamo Gryadeshi" (Where are you going) is associated with an episode from the life of St. Peter. Fleeing from the persecution of the emperor Nero against Christians, Peter secretly left Rome at night. Christ appeared to him outside the city wall. Peter ask him: "Quo Vadis, Domine?" (Where are you coming, Lord?) Christ answered: "To Rome, to be crucified again." At that moment, Christ ascended into heaven, and Peter, perceiving his words as a sign of his martyrdom for his faith, he returned to Rome, where he was crucified on a cross.

G. Sienkiewicz is depicted on the 1990 Polish 500,000 złoty note.

Writer's Awards

Bibliography

Old Servant (1875)
Ganya (1876)
Selim Mirza (1876)
Charcoal sketches (1877)
Janko the Musician (1879)
From the diary of a Poznań teacher (1879)
For bread (1880)
Bartek the Winner (1882)

Quo vadis (1951) dir. M. Leroy
A Baby Called Jesus (1985) dir. F. Rossi

The most famous Polish adaptations:
The Crusaders (1960) dir. A. Ford
Pan Volodyevsky (1969) dir. E. Hoffman
The Flood (1974) dir. E. Hoffman
With fire and sword (1999) dir. E. Hoffman
Quo vadis (2001) dir. E. Kavalerovich

Henryk Sienkiewicz - Polish writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1905.

He came from an impoverished gentry. The writer's father came from Tatars who settled in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the reign of Vitovt. Only in the 18th century did they convert from Islam to Catholicism. Mother was from a Belarusian gentry family. He graduated from the gymnasium in Warsaw and in 1866-1870 studied at the medical and historical-philological faculties at the Main School (since 1869 - Warsaw University). He made his debut in print as a student in the weekly Przegląd Tygodniowy (1869). From 1873 he was a regular columnist for Gazeta Polska. From 1874 he was in charge of the literary department of the Niwa weekly, from 1882 he was the editor of the conservative newspaper Słowo.

In 1881 he married Maria Shetkevich, who died of tuberculosis in 1885 and left him two children. In 1888, an anonymous admirer provided him with 15 thousand rubles, for which Senkevich created a fund named after his late wife, which paid scholarships to cultural figures with tuberculosis (in particular, Maria Konopnitskaya, Stanislav Wyspyansky, Kazimierz Tetmayer used the fund's scholarships). The second marriage with Maria Volodkovich from Odessa (1893) ended in divorce at the initiative of his wife (1895). In 1904 he married Maria Babskaya.

Having visited the USA (1876-1879), he published Letters from a Travel (1876-1878). Upon his return to Europe, he lived for some time in Paris, in 1879 he was in Lvov, then he visited Venice and Rome. Since then, he traveled a lot, changing his place of residence many times (Austria, England, Italy, Lithuania, France, Switzerland, in 1886 - Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, in 1891 - Egypt, Zanzibar, etc.). In 1900, in connection with the 25th anniversary literary activity, Sienkiewicz was presented with the Oblenogorek estate in the commune of Strawczyn in the Kielce district, acquired with funds raised by the public (later - the writer's museum).

With the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Switzerland. He headed the Committee for Assistance to the Victims of the War in Poland. After his death in Vevey, the ashes were initially buried in a local Catholic church, in 1924 they were transferred to Warsaw and buried in the crypt of St. Jan's Cathedral.

During his lifetime he became one of the most famous and popular Polish writers in Poland and abroad. After the trilogy "Fire and Sword", "Flood", "Pan Volodyevsky" became the Polish writer with the highest earnings (he received 70 thousand rubles from the publisher for the right to publish the trilogy for 20 years).

Creativity played a big role in the history of Polish culture and received worldwide recognition (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1905, "for outstanding services in the field of the epic"). Quo vadis has been translated into more than 40 languages. The novel "Without Dogma" was highly valued by L. N. Tolstoy, N. S. Leskov, A. P. Chekhov, Maxim Gorky and other Russian writers.

Henryk Sienkiewicz ( full name- Henryk Adam Alexander Piy Sienkiewicz) was born in Podlasie, on the estate of Wola-Oksheyska near Lukov, on May 5, 1846. The Polish writer, Nobel Prize winner was a descendant of an ancient gentry, a poor family who revered military traditions.

In 1863, the parents moved to Warsaw, and Henryk became a student of the local gymnasium, after which in 1867 he entered the Main School (in 1869 it was transformed into the Imperial University). His mother wanted him to become a doctor, but a year later, Henryk moved from the more “promising” medical faculty to the historical and philological one, because. had a penchant for literature. The student life was not easy at times in the biography of Senkevich: he had to earn extra money as a tutor, tutor, because. financial situation left much to be desired. The beginning of his literary-critical activity belongs to the same period.

Henryk did not pass the final exam in Greek and stopped studying at the university in 1871. The source of income for him was cooperation with the local newspaper. The debut in print dates back to 1869, when his work was first published by the Weekly Review magazine. In 1872, his first story “In Vain” was published, which tells about a failed Polish uprising 1863

Since 1873, Henryk Sienkiewicz has been constantly working in the Polskaya Gazeta as a feuilletonist, and from the next year he becomes an employee of the Niva weekly, heading the literary department. Written in the early 70s. stories, as well as the story "Ganya" published in 1876, testify to the fact that their author has a clear sympathy for the bygone era of noble knights and beautiful ladies.

During 1876-1879. Henryk Sienkiewicz traveled around European countries and USA. During his travels, he met ordinary people, and outlined his impressions in the essays and stories of the series "Letters from the Road", published in 1876-1878. In 1881 Senkevich got married, and in 1885 his wife Maria Shetkevich died of tuberculosis, leaving two children orphans. With the money of an unknown philanthropist, G. Senkevich organized a fund named after his wife, which paid scholarships to artists suffering from the same disease. After that, there were two more marriages in his life.

Returning to Europe, Senkevich lived for some time in the French capital, in 1879 he visited Lvov, Venice, Rome, and since that time his biography has been associated with numerous travels and a change of residence. So, he managed to visit England, Austria, Lithuania, Italy, Switzerland, France, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Zanzibar, Egypt and other countries. In 1802 Senkevich became the head of the conservative newspaper Slovo. During this period of his work, a great love for the motherland, pride in it, historical optimism can be traced, which can be seen in the novels "Fire and Sword" (1883-1884), "The Flood" (1884-1886), "Pan Volodyevsky" (1887- 1888).

His talent as an author of historical novels was most clearly revealed in the epic "Kamo Coming" (1894-1896), which tells about the confrontation between the first Christians and Emperor Nero. In 1905, Sienkiewicz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for it. The last of the major works was a novel, which he wrote during the years 1897-1900. - Crusaders. In 1900, in honor of the 25th anniversary creative activity Sienkiewicz became the owner of the Oblenogorek estate, which was presented to him on behalf of the public, located in the Kielce region. Later, a museum will be created here.

When did the first World War, Henryk Sienkiewicz left for Switzerland. He was the head of the committee helping the victims of the war in Poland. In this country, in the city of Vevey, he was overtaken by death. It happened on November 15, 1916; the ashes were buried in one of the city's Catholic churches, and in 1924 they were reburied in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Warsaw.

Henryk Sienkiewicz (Polish Henryk Sienkiewicz, full name Henrik Adam Alexander Pius Sienkiewicz, Polish Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz), also Heinrich (Genrik) Iosifovich Sienkiewicz (May 5, 1846, Wola-Oksheyska (Polish) Russian in Podlasie, Kingdom Polish, Russian empire- November 15, 1916, Vevey, Switzerland) - Polish writer, known as the author of historical novels, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905.

He was a corresponding member (since December 1896) and an honorary academician (since November 1914) of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in the department of the Russian language and literature.

He came from an impoverished gentry. The writer's father came from Tatars who settled in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the reign of Vitovt, the so-called. "lipkov". Only in the 18th century did they convert from Islam to Catholicism. Mother was from a Belarusian gentry family. He graduated from the gymnasium in Warsaw and in 1866-1870 he studied at the medical and historical-philological faculties at the Main School (since 1869 - Warsaw University). He made his debut in print as a student in the journal "Weekly Review" ("Przegląd Tygodniowy", 1869). Since 1873, he was a permanent columnist for the Polish Newspaper (Gazeta Polska). Since 1874, he was in charge of the literary department of the weekly "Niwa" ("Niwa"), later from 1882 - the editor of the conservative newspaper "Slovo" ("Słowo").

In 1881 he married Maria Shetkevich, who died of tuberculosis in 1885 (two children left). In 1888, an anonymous admirer gave him 15 thousand rubles, for which Senkevich created a fund named after his late wife, which paid scholarships to cultural figures with tuberculosis (in particular, Maria Konopnitskaya, Stanislav Wyspiansky, Kazimierz Tetmayer used the fund's scholarships). The second marriage with Maria Volodkovich from Odessa (1893) ended in divorce at the initiative of his wife (1895). In 1904 he married Maria Babskaya.

Having visited the USA (1876-1879), he published Letters from a Travel (1876-1878). Upon returning to Europe, he lived for some time in Paris, in 1879 he was in Lvov, then he visited Venice and Rome. Since then, he traveled a lot, changing his place of residence many times (Austria, England, Italy, Lithuania, France, Switzerland, in 1886 - Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, in 1891 - Egypt and Zanzibar, and so on.). In 1900, in connection with the 25th anniversary of his literary activity, Sienkiewicz was presented with the Oblęgorek estate (pl: Oblęgorek) in the Strawczyn commune in the Kielce region, acquired with funds raised by the public (later - the writer's museum).

With the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Switzerland. He headed the Committee for Assistance to the Victims of the War in Poland. After his death in Veveprah, he was initially buried in a local Catholic church, in 1924 he was transferred to Warsaw and buried in the crypte-cathedral of St. John the Baptist.

Senkevich was sickly and a silent person. It was difficult to guess the author of the romantic trilogy "With Fire and Sword" - "The Flood" - "Pan Volodyevsky", which tells about the heroic hours of Poland, where male knights and beautiful women act. one battle replaces another, but love for the Motherland and the struggle for the holy Faith are driving forces heroes and the measure of their actions.

The views of an anthropologically oriented philosophy, which put the personal ahead of the public, that were gaining popularity at that time, did not affect the writer. He was briefly attracted by the so-called democratic currents of social thought, the hypertrophied development of which With their tendency to reduce the role of literature to solving social problems became almost a disease of the second half of XIX century. Living the dream of a reborn Poland. Senkevich was convinced of the priority of the public over the social. And this made him a spokesman for the aspirations of the people, who were grieving the loss of national independence. State subjugation was aggravated by religious humiliation: after three successive partitions in the reign of Catherine II, the Catholic Rech of the GTospolitai was under the rule of Orthodox Russia and Lutheran Prussia. This, too, was sensitively perceived by Senkevich. who wrote on the banner of his work a double slogan: Motherland and Faith.

He was born in the estate of Volya Oksheyskaya in the Radom province - the southern neighbor of the Warsaw province. The Sienkiewicz family had family ties with the ancient families of the Lithuanian gentry. Sienkiewicz subsequently explained his writing passion for chivalry as a cult. family traditions. His grandfather, an insurgent from the time of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who rebelled in response to last section Poland, later served in the legions of Jan Dombrowski, who fought for the creation of the Principality of Warsaw during the period Napoleonic Wars. Even in his youth, his father participated in the patriotic battles of 1830-1831. The elder brother Kazimierz emigrated after the uprising of 1863 and died for the honor of France in Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871. Henrik spent his childhood at his grandmother's estate. The boy's favorite pastime was reading.

In the year when Henryk turned 17, the family - and it already had five children, and the parents experienced certain financial difficulties - sold the estate and moved to Warsaw, where his father bought a house. It was the year of the beginning of the all-Polish uprising, brutally suppressed by Russia. Influenced by this event, and peasant reform and the rapid growth of industry and the social thought of the country was in the period when the worldview of Sienkiewicz was being formed. After graduating from high school, the young man, at the insistence of his parents, entered the medical department of the Warsaw Main School (then renamed Warsaw University), but after the first year he moved to the historical and philological department. Both at school and at the university he studied without brilliance, besides, he was forced to earn extra money for a living, performing the duties of a tutor in the family distant relatives. In the end, he never passed all of his final exams.

As a student, Senkevich published critical notes and articles in magazines. Upon completion of his studies, he became an employee of the magazine "News" and gradually gained strength as an author of humoresques, short stories and poetry; . Great importance For his development as a writer, he spent a three-year stay in the USA as a correspondent for the Polskaya-Gazeta.

; At first, peasants, settlers, soldiers, circus performers, etc. became the heroes of Senkevich's short stories. And although the Brockhaus and Efron Dictionary stated that "in the short story he achieves the same perfection of technology as Maupassant", the theme and ideas of his early works were standard for that period and of little interest.

At the age of 35, Senkevich became the editor of the Slovo newspaper, and at the same time he downloaded and after 6 years completed an epic trilogy that made his name popular not only in his homeland. critical realism, within which he achieved his first successes, was replaced by patriotic optimism, the search for the moral support of the people in its heroic past. The writer consciously went for the idealization of past times in order to find guiding ideas for the events of the current day through them. The trilogy gave its own interpretation of the most difficult pages in the history of Poland - the loss of the left-bank Ukraine in 1654 after the uprising of Bogdan Khmelnitsky ("Fire and Sword"), the subsequent invasion of the Swedes in 1655-1656 ("The Flood"), the Turkish invasion of 1672-1673. ("Pan Volodyevsky"). But the novels breathed vivacity.

At first, the author had no intention of creating just such a cycle, J all the more predetermine its ideological basis. Tired of writing in a positivist direction and feeling that this was not his strength as a master, Sienkiewicz conceived a story in one book called "The Wolf's Logo" based on a love affair. This was the start of a trilogy. It was written in fragments and is obliged to final outlines; the unprecedented success of the first parts printed in newspapers. In essence, the trilogy was the fruit of the then ideological situation, a response to the unsatisfied needs of the time. This is an example of a social order completed without delay and exceeding the expectations of both the performer and the customer, an example complete harmony between the possibilities of the writer and the demands of the reader. And this work, created for the needs of the day, outlived the time that caused it for a long time. Noting the merits of the trilogy, the Polish critic Kazimierz Wyka wrote:

“Sienkiewicz is probably the last major writer who was able to achieve the interaction of those elements of the novel, between which there was discord before, and later the discord grew more and more. The pedigree of the novel comes from the genre, full of adventure and fantastic adventures. He is enriched with knowledge of human nature much later. Appearing in the novel truthful image of a person, along with the social and everyday background, gradually pushed into the background what was previously in the genre the main thing is adventure, action. But no matter how the authors reduce the adventure element to a minimum, its significance does not diminish in the eyes of readers. The average reader is just waiting for an author to finally appear who can so satisfy this thirst for adventure that something along the way will fall to the share of higher requests.

The trilogy became not only an artistic, but also a political event. The writer called to seek a way out of the tragic national situations in lofty ideas and knightly service to them. And having invested in the image of the rebellion of Bogdan Khmelnitsky all the aversion of a civilized person to the unrestrained, unjustified cruelty of drunken hordes, Senkevich determined his attitude to the views of those who saw the solution of problems in unlimited democracy. Not surprisingly, the novels have caused heated debate. Critics agreed only in a high assessment of the author's skill. Stefan Zeromsky noted:

“No one surpassed him in the calm, simple and perfectly clear construction of the phrase, in the logic of the development of periods that shade the picture and reveal the thought. Reading any work by Senkevich, we never run the risk of experiencing an unpleasant feeling when we stumble upon a crack, a chip or a splinter - not the slightest falsehood either for the eye or for the ear. He must be recognized as the first in the art of writing, he mastered this skill best of all, the ability to express his thoughts in Polish on paper.

With his trilogy, Sienkiewicz was one of those few writers who were lucky enough to create images whose names have become household names. The "little knight" Pan Volodyevsky took his, albeit modest, place in the series literary heroes embodying certain human qualities - along with Don Quixote, Don Juan, Gobsek, Khlestakov, Ostap Bender. In the same row, another creation of Senkevich is a braggart, a liar and a glutton pan Zagloba.

After the trilogy, Sienkiewicz returned to the themes of modernity in the novel "Without Dogma" - a brilliant intellectual story about the "Polish Pechorin", and then in "The Polaniecki Family" - a psychological family romance posing the problem of personal self-improvement of a person.

Then the venerable prose writer turned to the times of the opposition of the first Christians to the despotism of Nero and created his best novel “Where are you coming?” (1894-1896). interest in the era ancient rome did not mean a deviation from the previous direction - the main ideas of the novel, consisting in the apology of Christianity and the preaching of fidelity to ideals, were addressed to the present. It was the grandiose success of “Where are you coming?” eventually led to the Nobel Prize.

For "Kamo are you coming?" another great historical novel followed - The Crusaders (1900), which tells about the struggle against the Teutonic Order at the turn of the XIV-XV centuries and about the victory at Grunwald, which ensured the subsequent development of the statehood of Poland. With each new work, Sienkiewicz appealed to his contemporaries: “Poland! Rise from the ashes!" He responded to the events of 1905-1907 with the novel "Whirlpools", in the unrest of that time the writer saw the path to chaos, to barbarism, to the destruction of the unity of the people.

Even during the life of Senkevich, his novels were translated into all European languages and even into Volapuk - an artificial international language, later forgotten. In 1896, the writer was elected a corresponding member, and in 1916 - an honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

Henryk Sienkiewicz died in the midst of the First World War, far from the German-occupied homeland, in Switzerland, before the dream came true, the achievement of which he gave his all creativity, freedom Poland. A decade later, the remains of the writer were transferred to Warsaw and, with a huge gathering of people, were solemnly buried in a crypt in Cathedral Saint Jan.

EDITIONS OF SIENKEVICH

Sobr. op. in 9 t. M.: KhL, 1983-1986.

Where are you going?: A novel. M.: Pravda, 1986. 607 p.

With Fire and Sword: A Novel. M.: Orbita, 1989. 624 p.

LITERATURE ABOUT SIENKEVICH

Gorsky I. Historical novel Senkevich. M.: Nauka, 1986. 308 p.

Gorsky I. Henryk Sienkiewicz//History of Polish Literature: In 2 vols. M.: Nauka, 1968-1969. T. 2. S. 561-584.

An article from A. Ilyukovich's book "According to the will"