Lately I have been hearing a lot about what it means to be Polish. It seems to be a trendy discussion topic, both among my countrymen and foreign expats living in Poland. And while neither side can agree on what exactly characterizes a typical Pole, they are both of the same opinion when it comes to pride. Polish people are fiercely proud of being Polish. We’re proud of our history, culture, language, food, music, country, weather, alcoholic beverages and everything in between. Where that pride comes from, I’m not really sure. But in order to try to understand what it means, you need to take a closer look at the thick volumes of Henryk Sienkiewicz.
You might have heard of him, he’s the guy who wrote “Quo Vadis”. Yep, the same “Quo Vadis” that in the 1950s was adapted into a movie with Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov and a whole bunch of other stars. Actually, “Quo Vadis” has been turned into several film versions, including a couple of silent ones, in addition to just about everything else – stage plays, TV miniseries, and even an opera.
This book has definitely contributed to Mr. Sienkiewicz’s Nobel Prize for literature in 1905, which he got for his “outstanding merits as an epic writer”. There are other Poles that also got the prize – Władysław Reymont in 1924, Czesław Miłosz in 1980 and Wisława Szymborska in 1996, but we’ll talk about them another time.
