Contemporary Novels

"Whirls"

This novel has been printed in newspaper titled "Polish Word" ("Slowo Polskie") in 1909. Its plot carrys on against a background of revolution (1905-1907) and though the author wanted to show satirically landed gentry, though he has showed their moral and intellectual poverty, novel is full of hatred to these hugnry and ragged people who dared to attempt settled order. In novel the ideologists of revolution are invidious and they hate everyone who has more than they do. Sienkiewicz didn't show revolution objectively, in principle he didn't show it at all. But there is left one more interesting thread - romance, so even for that this novel is worth of reading.

"Polaniecki family"

This novel was written in summer 1893 in Zakopane and was published the same year. "Polaniecki family" was supposed to be a contamporary "The Deluge" and to some extent - it was. The main character - Stanislaw Polaniecki is a reduced to poverty nobleman who grows rich as a businessman - speculator and doesn't worry about people, who lose because of his activity. He is an egoist and also doesn't care about the country. As said Antoni Czechow - it was a novel for bouergoisie - it has told: "you may be a beast and in the same time a happy man". That's why the Polish Left wing-intellectual criticized it sharply. This attack upon "Polaniecki family" lasted long and even critics reproached it with characteristics of decline of Poland.

"Without Dogma"

If Trilogy was a surprise to those who were connoisseurs of Sienkiewicz's short stories, his readers were due for yet another surprise when the writer turned from history to try his hand in the field of the contemporary genre novel. This-as his correspondence reveals was due to the writer feeling the need for a rotation of subjects. The result of this step "Without Dogma" ("Bez Dogmatu") was a penetrating analysis of the psychological phenomenon referred to as decadence, and evoked consider- able interest, above all, outside Poland, in Germany and Russia, while the Polish readers, seeing in the author of "Trilogy" an heir of the "Romantic bards", gave a rather cool reception to the outpourings of Płoszowski, a modern Hamlet, lost in the world surrounding him.