Henryk Sienkiewicz was born on a day like today in 1846 in a village of Poland. He was the first Polish writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905 and is a benchmark in his country. His best known work is undoubtedly the novel Quo vadis?, but all his work has been translated into more than 40 languages and he was one of the most widely read authors of the XNUMXth century. We review your figure.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
He was the son of a family of peasant nobility. Start Medicine and then Philology in Warsaw, but later dropped out. He lived in United States and he also visited France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey before returning there. He ran the conservative newspaper slowo where he began to publish in series of the novel A blood and fire, the first installment of his trilogy, where he recreates the polish resistance against the invasions of the seventeenth century.
when the World War I I was in Switzerland. There he formed, with Ignacy Jan Paderewsky, former prime minister of his country, a committee for war victims in Poland, where he never returned in life until his remains were transferred in 1924.
Literary work
Henryk Sienkiewicz is considered representative of the renewal of Polish literature for his versatile work, both historically well documented and with an important social component. He was a very prolific author, he touched on almost all genres besides narrative, such as short stories and novellas.
Quo vadis?
Undoubtedly his best known title and one of the most famous historical novels set in ancient Rome, which was quickly translated into other languages. It was published in 1896 and in it mixes real and fictional characters. It tells the love story between the Roman legacy Marco Vinicio and Ligia, daughter of a barbarian king and slave of Rome but adopted and educated by the general Aulius Plautius And his wife pomponyBoth converted to Christianity.
Around them parade a series of secondary characters which also stand out as Petronius, patrician and trusted advisor of Nero, who symbolizes the classical culture of the past. The dangerous Praetorian also appear Tigellin, or the philosopher Seneca, her nephew Lucan or the apostles Pedro and Pablo.
At the cinema
Its literary success led to its adaptation to the cinema with two first versions that were Italian and silent. However, the best known is the one directed by Mervyn LeRoy in 1951 (in Spain it was not released until 1954), which had an extraordinary cast with Robert Taylor y Deborah Kerr like Marco Vinicio and the Christian Ligia, a brilliant Leo Glenn as Petronius, and the show-stealer in his memorable Nero, the Great Peter Ustinov. And as an anecdote, highlight the brief appearance of the later very popular Bud Spencer as a roman guard
It was also such a success that from then on it became a Easter classic that we see every year. And in his wake followed in that decade titles such as the sacred robe o Ben-Hur, also based on a novel of the same title by the American soldier Lewis Wallace.
It was nominated for eight Oscars among them for best film and best supporting actor for Ustinov, but he did not get any.
Fire and Blood Trilogy
To blood and fire, Together with The flood y a polish hero, They constitute the trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz. Includes the period from 1648 to the last years of the XNUMXth century, with the reign of John III (John Sobieski). The author was influenced by Alexander Dumas father regarding the theme of the story and his way of telling it, also adding a marked patriotic feeling. It is considered a great epic epic and in current times it can also be interesting to discover it.
The plot tells how in 1647 the cosacos they rise up against the power of the Polish nobility. The rebellious Ukrainian peasants they will join the Cossack army, and these are allied with the eternal enemies of Poland: the Tatars.
That is when Juan Kretuski, Commander Of The Prince's Knights, falls in love with the beautiful Elena, which is kidnapped by the Cossacks. Thus, the following battles will be fought for the survival of Poland and the search for Elena by Kretuski and his knights, who become a symbol of what Poland was and wants to continue to be.
Stan and Nel — Through the desert and the jungle
Sienkiewicz also cultivated the Adventure novel Jules Verne style with this story starring Stas and Nel, a polish boy and an english girl, sons of engineers working on the construction of the Suez Canal. During a riot, he kidnaps them both. el mahdi, a subject who proclaims himself envoy of Muhammad against English domination. they will get run away thanks to the bravery of Stas and will undertake a travel full of adventures until they manage to return to their families, while forging a great friendship.