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Captains Courageous: Poland

SIENKIEWICZ HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ, so great a name in Poland that he has been coupled with Copernicus and Koscuiszko as the three Poles to whom Americans are most indebted, was born in Opreya in Russian Poland in 1846. He studied philosophy at Warsaw University, and soon afterward, in company with Helen Modjeska and other radical Poles, established a socialistic community in California. It was somewhat like the earlier Brook Farm experiment made by Hawthorne and his friends. It was no more successful and Sienkiewicz returned to Poland, where he wrote a series of articles for a Warsaw newspaper about his American experiences.

Then he turned to novel-writing. He wrote brilliantly and rapidly, turning with the utmost ease from realistic pictures of contemporary life to stories of romance and to historical novels. "Children of the Soil," which he called his best book, is a simple story of Polish life which won more favor with his own countrymen than it did abroad.

In the 1880's he completed his tremendous trilogy, "With Fire and Sword," "The Deluge," and "Pan Michael." There was an epic quality about these historical novels that made many people in many lands hail him as a new Scott or a new Dumas.

His international reputation, however, came with "Quo Vadis," his masterpiece of ancient Roman life. It was quickly translated into English and into nearly every European tongue. Then it passed to the stage, not only in America and England, but also in France and Germany. Since that success Sienkiewicz had traveled widely, visiting England, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Africa, and the Far East. He received the Nobel prize for literature in 1905. From the outbreak of the war to his death in November, 1916, he devoted himself to the relief of Polish war victims.