Short Stories and Tales

Henrik Sienkiewicz, a Polish writer, author of historical novels, and winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature, belonged to the constellation of outstanding Polish realists of the 19th century. In the early stories and novellas included in this collection, you can see the author’s interest in themes of the fading of patriarchal life (“The Old Servant,” “Ganya”) and the fate of the peasantry (“Yanko the Musician”). This became the most popular of Sienkiewicz’s stories in Russia: up until 1917, it was published about 40 times and translated by V. G. Korolenko. The story “The Lighthouse Keeper” tells of a longing for home from a Pole left in a foreign land—a participant in the 1830–31 uprising. In “Bartek the Winner,” a language of bitter satire speaks of Germanization and mockery of Polish peasants in the part of Poland under Prussian rule. Many themes of Sienkiewicz’s novels are present in the earlier stories he wrote; for example, “That Third One” precedes novels about modern times.