Sienkiewicz “in a rough draft”. The case of the “Whirlpools”

Abstract

A great many manuscripts have been preserved in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s legacy. Not all of them have been examined so far. The novel Wiry (Whirlpools), published in 1910, exists also as a rough draft of a large part of volume 1 and fragments of volume 2. The rough draft of Wiry (Whirlpools) is a text full of deletions, variants and transformations, showing Sienkiewicz's creative process at the time of writing. The writer worked hard on the text of the novel, making many changes and searching for the best solutions. An analysis of the rough draft of Wiry (Whirlpools) reveals the fluid nature of its text, in which the author’s ideological and artistic dilemmas can be seen. Sienkiewicz did not start writing with a fixed concept of the plot, he created various variants of its motives, changed the profiles of the characters and improved his style. Sienkiewicz’s notes are a textual testimony to his struggles with the creative process. Their textological value cannot be overestimated. They are also of historical and literary significance because they broaden the presentation of Wiry (Whirlpools) as a novel with a complex plot composition and ideological structure that cannot be subordinated to an unambiguous tendency.