Non (solo) Quo Vadis : note sulla ricezione italiana delle opere di Henryk Sienkiewicz

Henryk Sienkiewicz’s works have been translated into Italian almost in their totality. Still, one could not say that his literary heritage has been fully and completely appreciated in Italy, since only the novel Quo vadis? (1895) met with an unprecedented critical and audience acclaim, attested by 54 translations and 286 editions. The historical novel Ogniem i mieczem (With sword and fire, 1883) and the young adults narrative W pustyni i w puszczy (In deserts and wilderness, 1911) rank second or third according as the number of translations or number of editions is taken into account. Apart from Quo vadis? a major critical treatment was accorded only the psychological novel Bez dogmatu (Without dogma, 1889). Italian critics experienced some difficulties in assessing the genre of the novel Quo vadis?: scholar Domenico Ciampoli labelled it as a “historical narrative of Nero’s times”, whereas critics as Paolo Arcari or Domenico Tencajoli conceived it as a “Christian apology”. The first translator of the novel (1899), Federico Verdinois, met with a refusal when he offered his translation to the daily “Il Mattino” because the book could be considered as an apology of the Catholic Church when her relations with the newly born Italian State were non extant. Whereas Jesuit Father Pavissich claimed that the novel could not by any means be regarded as a celebration of Christian ethics, other critics maintained that the Italian public would have appreciated its deep moral values, so thoroughly expunged from Gabriele D’Annunzio’s works. The great success of Quo vadis? turned against a fair critical evaluation of Sienkiewicz’s other works. The psychological novel Bez dogmatu was therefore regarded either as a new piece of religious propaganda or a moralizing pamphlet that once again could be counterposed to D’Annunzio’s unethical narrative. The main character of the novel, Leon Płoszowski, a refined connoisseur of art and a spare time philosopher, was assimilated either to Quo vadis? Petronius Arbiter or D’Annunzio’sdecadent characters, since very few among the Italian critics were aware that Bez dogmatu was conceived, written and published well in advance of either Quo vadis?, Il piacere or L’innocente. Oddly enough, few of them either realised that the novel could be seen as indebted to Paul Bourget’s Le disciple. The most astounding feature of the novel was that it offered a reading clue that nowadays could be easily defined as “post-colonial”, but this went completely unnoticed by Italian critics because of the heavy cuts performed by A. Wodziński in his French translation of the novel (Sans dogme, 1895), from which any allusion to the colonized character of late 19th century Poland was removed. Whereas Sienkiewicz’s historical novels, meant to give confidence to the oppressed Polish hearts and minds, could not play a major role in the views of an audience that had not only already read D’Azeglio, Guerrazzi or Manzoni, but had also obtained a full national sovereignty, the Crusoean adventures of Staś and Nel were greatly acclaimed, not only because of their proximity to one of the less known novels by Emilio Salgari (La favorita del Mahdi, 1887), but also because they could be read as an invitation to colonial expansion on the eve of Mussolini’s aggression to Abyssinia. Notwithstanding its colonial undertext, Paolo Lorenzini’s comics adaptation of the book (1934-35) is still noticeable today for its lack of the islamophobic or racist remarks that punctuated some pages of W pustyni i w puszczy.