Charcoal Sketches were written in the Pico House, Los Angeles, California, in 1878. Perhaps the hotel is in existence yet; in that case the register for the above year contains the signature of Sienkiewicz and the number of his room. These Charcoal Sketches, as the author informed me, are founded on facts observed by him, and give a picture of life in the district where he was born and where he spent his youth. Ignorance, selfish class isolation, and resultant social helplessness, are depicted in remarkable relief and unsparingly. There is not collective intelligence and strength enough in Barania-Glova to save Repa’s wife from ruin and murder. Pan Floss is driven from his land of “Little Progress” and has to pay for Sroda’s oxen, which the owner himself turned in on his neighbor’s clover; since Pan Floss is a noble and Sroda a peasant, the latter thinks himself justified in taking what he can from the noble in the night or the daytime, by fair means or foul. Pan Skorabevski has no wish to annoy himself in aiding peasants; if he wants anything from them, or wishes to defend himself against them, he calls in Pan Zolzik. The great public forces of Barania-Glova are the vile Zolzik, and Shmul without conscience. Father Chyzik, the priest, considering that his whole business is with another world, has no thought for the temporal welfare of Repa’s wife.
The following is a translation of most of the names in Charcoal Sketches:—
Barania-Glova Sheep’s Head.
Burak Beet.
Krucha Wola Brittle will.
Kruchek A small raven, or rather a rook. It is a name given frequently to a dog.
Lipa Basswood.
Maly Postempovitsi Little Progress.
Oslovitsi Asstown.
Repa Turnip.
Shmul Samuel.
Sroda Wednesday.
White Crawfish A phrase meaning eggs.
Zolzik Strangler.
Zweinos Two noses.
Tartar Captivity is a sketch preliminary to “With Fire and Sword.” Though it appears as a fragment of a memoir, it is an original production written by Sienkiewicz in the style of the seventeenth century. Here the author uses for the first time the two main historical elements of Polish society: nobility and the Church. These two elements were raised to an ideal height in the Polish mind. Zdaniborski was a noble sincere and naïve, who considered the position and privileges of the nobility to be as sacred and inviolable as those of the Church; both he believed to be the direct product of God’s will.
Mayors of the air, referred to in Chapter V., were men appointed to keep alive fires which would fill the air with a smoke disagreeable to the plague or pest, and prevent it, or rather her, from approaching. The plague or pest in the popular mind was represented as a female who went around killing people.
On the Bright Shore. All persons who have read “Children of the Soil” will remember Svirski, the sympathetic artist in that book; this same Svirski is the hero of the present narrative.
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That Third Woman. In this narrative the only character needing explanation is, I believe, the minstrel. In Little Russia and the Ukraine the minstrel called “Kobzar,” from kobza, the instrument on which he plays, and also “Did” (grandfather), because he is generally old and sometimes blind, is a prominent figure to this day. In centuries past he played a great part by rousing popular feeling and carrying intelligence from place to place. At present his rôle is to entertain people who wish to hear either what the minstrel himself improvises, or the ballads of that region. The Duma, or ballad of the Ukraine, is famous.
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Let Us Follow Him was written somewhat earlier than “Quo Vadis,” and was a tentative sketch in a new field, as was Tartar Captivity, which preceded “With Fire and Sword.”
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Footnotes
1 Lord’s daughter, or young lady.
2 To cook crawfish, to blush.
3 A man raised from the dead by Saint Stanislav.
4 This word is the genitive of the Polish word rod, “stock,” or “ancestry.” Integra rodu dignitas means “the unspotted dignity of ancestry.”
5 Mussulmans.
6 Mayors of the air were officials who saw that the air was made offensive to the pestilence. According to popular belief, the pestilence appeared in the form of a woman.
7 Styx.
8 A Suabian, a German.
9 The translation of those four lines is:—
Star of the sea who nourished
The Lord with thy milk,
The seed of death engrafted by our first father,
Thou didst crush.
The last line in the Polish if taken alone would mean, our first father, Skrushyla, and the wise Gomula takes it alone. Taken in connection with its pronoun and ending the compound Tys, the first word in the third line, it means: Thou hast crushed.
10 A great ink blot.
11 Two pigeons in one of the Persian fables of Bidpay or Pilpay.
12 Light shineth in the darkness.
13 Romulus and Remus lisp or pronounce r in the Parisian manner, hence the use of h instead of r in the above words, both French and Polish.
14 Death.
15 For the French Sapristi.
16 Refusal.
17 A form of endearment for Kazia.
18 A form of endearment for Eva.
19 This means farewell.
20 A form of endearment for Vladek or Vladislav.
21 Eva.
22 Helena.
23 This is Russian. Glory to God.