HONORS TO POLISH FICTION--SIENKIEWICZ (1905), REYMONT (1924) The prize of 1905 has been awarded: Sienkiewicz, Henryk, born 1846, died November 16, 1916: “because of his splendid merits as an author of historical novels.”[163] As has been noted in previous chapters, in the Nobel prizes in literature, exponents of the same kind of writing in a country have been honored in successive generations. Björnson and Knut Hamsun, Heyse and Hauptmann, Echegaray and Benavente, Anatole France and Rolland, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Ladislaw Reymont are examples of such awards. Another inference from the lists of winners is that the adjudicators wish to recognize the aspirations and achievements of small countries that are too often overlooked upon the map of world literature. Thus Denmark and Switzerland, Ireland and Belgium have shared with the so-called “great nations” of Europe. Twice has Poland been selected for recognition. The very name suggests struggle and oppression on one hand, hope and faith in ultimate right on the other. In spite of tragic sadness, the messages of Poland in art and literature have been vital and lofty in idealism. Some of the melancholy and passionate yearning of later Poland has been expressed in the poets Michievicz and Slowacki, who are allied in their moods with Chopin; the “Funeral March” was described by Liszt as “the murmuring plaint of a whole nation following the bier of its dearest hopes.”[164] In his book, _Poland Reborn_, with keen analysis of advance in education and literary opportunities, Roy Devereux says, “Henceforward there will not be need for Polish men of letters like Henryk Sienkiewicz, who belongs as much to Western Europe as to Poland, to seek the protection of a foreign flag for their literary labours.”[165] To Sienkiewicz came the Nobel award in 1905, a surprise to European critics and a blow to Russian aspirants for the honor. [Illustration: _Copyright, 1912, by Little, Brown and Company_ HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ] Born in Lithuania, at Wola Okrzejska, in 1846, he was sixty when he received the prize; he was already known by translation to international readers. He belonged to a patrician family and was educated at the University of Warsaw until political conditions, following the revolution of 1863, caused him to leave Poland for Russia, where he edited a journal at St. Petersburg. He wanted to know more of the world so he traveled, in gypsy or Bohemian fashion, in Southern Europe; in 1876 he came to America, to Los Angeles, seeking to found there a Polish Commonwealth of Utopian type. He had written tales and travel sketches under the pseudonym of “Litwos”--_Nobody is a Prophet in his own Country_ and _From the Notebook of a Posen_. He wrote impressions of America for a Warsaw newspaper; among these earlier sketches were “Janko, the Musician,” “Across the Prairies,” and “In Tartar Captivity.” A later tale, “The Old Bell-Ringer,” was patriotic and wistful.