HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ TO JEREMIAH CURTIN: SOME UNPUBLISHED LETTERS

Scholars working on Poland's most popular novelist, Henryk Sien kiewicz, have looked for a long time to his private letters as one of the most valuable sources of his life and works.1 Unfortunately, there is no tradition in Poland of publishing volumes of "life and letters" equal to that in the English-speaking countries. Partly because of the lack of such a tradition, partly because of war devastation and losses, the search for valuable letters often results in fighting such obstacles that it is more an ordeal than literary research. In many cases the losses are final and irreplaceable as is the case with Joseph Conrad s Polish letters to Tadeusz Bobrowski lost during World War I. Sometimes, however, completely unexpected materials appear bringing new and surprising facts about writers, their lives and their works. In any event, a search for documents and letters not only attempts to rescue the past under the changing circumstances of the modern world, but ought to be regarded as an integral part of any literary research, especially where a danger exists that the documents may perish forever. Quite often years of laborious pursuit after old materials are repaid with results which form a logical chain of biographical and literary facts, leading to the establishment of final data indispensable to any student of a literary geriod or a single writer. The recent publications of "life calendars" of such writers as Sienkiewicz, Mickiewicz, Slowacki and others show that Poland is establishing a new tradition which be gins to occupy an important place in her literary scholarship. Henryk Sienkiewicz presents a very special case. In addition to his world-wide popularity, he was known as a person trying to answer most of the innumerable letters sent to him which, in connection with his large private correspondence, makes him one of the most productive epistolographers in the history of Polish literature. It is estimated that