Sienkiewicz Progress Report

Yesterday I planned to write a Polski Piątek (Polish Friday) piece for all the language lovers, but I didn't get home until really late. So here it is this morning.

First of all, Henryk Sienkiewicz is the man who wrote Quo Vadis--you know, the one about the captured princess who is stolen from her loving adoptive Roman parents by Nero to give to Lygia's handsome but selfish admirer Marcus. Saints Peter and Paul feature, as well as Lygia's ginormous bodyguard. Rome burns; Christians suffer. If you haven't read the book, you may have seen the film. Both made Sienkiewicz temporarily world-famous.

Sienkiewicz (sh'yen--K'YAY-veetch, you're welcome) was part of the 19th century Polish cultural revival, the Poles still being extremely miserable and annoyed at having lost their lands to the Russians, Austrians and Germans. One of the few things they still had was their language. Therefore Polish literature was very important in keeping Polish self-esteem alive, and as a matter of fact Quo Vadis is not just an adventure story, it is an allegory about Poland. 

Sienkiewicz wrote a number of  historical novels that Poles still like to read and turn into films. The first one that comes galloping to mind is Ogniem i mieczem  (With Fire and Sword) because I have director Jerzy Hoffman's version and watched it with a party of men until the clouds of testosterone grew too oppressive and I fled to my bedchamber. Mostly what I got out of this  film was that in the 17th century Poles still dressed like Vikings in a snowstorm. One day I will try watching it again. 

Meanwhile, I am reading Sien--oh, heck, let's call him Henryk. I'm reading Henryk's one novel for children, W Pustyni i W Puszczy (In the Desert and the Wilderness), writing the date at the bottom of each page I finish reading. The first page (5) is marked June 19, and on August 15 I finished page 42. Sadly, I have not managed to read a page every day since June 19, but I'll tell you why. It's because I still have to look up every second word, that's why. 

Poland is very hard to defend because it is flat. If you can cross the Baltic Sea to Gdansk or the mountains to the south and kill millions of angry Poles before they can kill you, you could conquer Poland relatively easily. The Polish language, however, is full of mountain ranges, plunging valleys, treacherous marshes, silent quicksand, barbed wire, sea monsters and carnivorous plants. When approached by a foreigner, it covers itself with a slippery goo derived from beetroot juice so that the words slide out of the foreigner's head as quickly as the foreigner shoves them in. After four years of study, I still can't speak the blessed thing.  Or won't, anyway--except to fellow foreign students of Polish. Alas.

But one thing I can do is read Polish and get the general gist of it. To actually understand it word for word, I still need the dictionary. And so frustrated was I with all the physical labour of looking up words in my heavy Langenscheidt Premium Słownik polsko-angielski/angielsko-polski that I cut it in half. Snip, snip, snip. Then I taped the back cover to the first half and affixed tabs to all the letters, so I could see immediately where they were without having to flip around so much. Then I made a dictionary of my own out of a little hardback notebook, affixing more alphabetic tabs. This way I can write down the words I don't know, so that if I see them again and can't remember what they mean, I can just look them up in my mini-słownik.

So here is my new process:

1. Read page of story. Write date at bottom.

2. Read page again, underlining all the words I don't understand.

3. Read page again, looking up all the underscored words as they come up and writing them down in my mini-słownik.

This takes an agonizingly long time. See, for example, a passage I decoded yesterday:

Do południa pędzili prawie bez wytchnienia, ale gdy słońce wzbiło się wysoko na niebo i poczęło przypiekać, wielbłądy, które z natury mało się pocą, oblały się jednak potem i bieg ich stał się znacznie wolniejszy. Karawanę otoczyły znowu skały i osypiska. Wąwozy, które w czasie deszczów zmieniają się w łożyska strumieni, czyli tzw. khory, zdarzały się coraz częściej. Beduini zatrzymali się na koniec w jednym z nich, całkiem ukrytym wśród skał. Lecz zaledwie zsiedli z wielbłądów, podnieśli krzyk i rzucili się naprzód, schylając się co chwila i ciskając przed siebie kamieniami. Stasiowi, który jeszcze nie zsunął się z siodła, przedstawił się dziwny widok. Oto spośród suchych krzaków porastających dno khoru wysunął się duży wąż i wijąc się z szybkością błyskawicy między okruchami skał, umykał do jakiejś znanej sobie kryjówki. Beduini ścigali go zaciekle, a na pomoc im poskoczył Gebhr z nożem w ręku. Ale z powodu nierówności gruntu zarówno trudno trafić było węża kamieniem, jak przygwoździć go nożem — wkrótce też wrócili wszyscy trzej z widocznym w twarzach przestrachem.

wzbiło się         -  it [the sun] had risen

przypiekać       -  to broil 

się pocą             - they [the camels] sweat

oblały się          - they [the camels] were covered 

bieg                    - run (noun)

znacznie           - significantly

otoczyły            - they [rocks and scree] surrounded

osypiska           - scree

w łożyska         - into the riverbed

strumieni         - of a stream

tzw.                     - called, so-called  

zdarzały się      - they [the ravines] occurred

zatrzymali się  - they [the Beduins] stopped

wśród                    - among

zaledwie             - as soon as, barely

zsiedli                   - they dismounted

podnieśli            - they raised

schylając się      - bending down

ciskając                - hurling

zsunął się             - he [Stan] slipped

z siodła                - from the saddle

krzaków              -  the bushes

porastających   - overgrowing

wysunął się        - he [the snake] came out

wijąc się              - writhing

błyskawicy         - lightning (adj.)

okruchami        - fragments, crumbs

umykał                - he [the snake] fled

znanej                 - known

kryjówki             - hiding place

ścigali                  - they [the Beduin] chased

zaciekle               - fiercely

poskoczył            - he [Gebhr] sprang

nierówności      - unevenness

gruntu                 - of the ground

zarówno              - both

trafić                     - to hit

przygwoździć   - to pin down

z widocznym    - with visible [terror]

However, as I was looking these all up in a dictionary, not Google Translate, I had to mentally think about what they would look like in their most standard forms--the nouns all in the nominative case, and the verbs all in the imperfect infinitive. I wrote all the ones I could find down. The ones I couldn't, I have discovered right now on Google Translate.  So now we see that the passage could be rendered in English as: 

Until noon they hurried on almost without a break, but when the sun rose high in the sky and began to broil, the camels which by nature perspire little were nevertheless covered in sweat and their run became significantly slower. Rocks and scree again surrounded the caravan. The ravines, which in rainy season became riverbeds, called 'khors', occurred ever more often.  The Beduin stopped at last in one of them, totally hidden among the rocks. But they had barely dismounted their camels when they raised a cry and moved forward, bending all the while and hurling stones before them. A strange sight met Stan, who had not yet slipped from his saddle. There from among the dry bushes overgrowing the bottom of the khor emerged a big snake, and wriggling with lightning speed between the fragments of rock, he fled to some hiding-place known to him. The Beduin pursued him fiercely, and Gebhr sprang to help them with a knife in his hand. But because of the unevenness of the ground, it was difficult both to hit the snake with stones and to pin him with the knife--soon also all three returned with terror visible on their faces. 

Looking up all the words, my angels, for a passage which is (in English) only 200 words, took me AN HOUR.  Still, I suppose this is how we learn. Hour by hour, word by word. 

Notice how the snake is "he." The Polish word for snake is masculine, and turning animals back into "it" feels like a betrayal of the author's Polish point of view.