„Na dnie duszy polskiej leży zawsze folga”. O pewnym Sienkiewiczowskim toposie)
“At the Bottom of the Polish Soul There Always Lies «Folga»”. On One of Sienkiewicz’s Topoi

Summary/Abstract: Sienkiewicz’s readers certainly known the writer’s favourite, archaically styled terms ‘folga’ (“relief”, “respite”, “indulgence”) and ‘folgować’ (“to follow”, “to allow”, “indulge someone/something”), etymologically derived from the German ‘Folge’ (“consequence”, “result”, “aftermath”) and ‘folgen’ (“to follow”, “to obey”, “to submit to”). They are found in Sienkiewicz’s texts more than seventy times, and not only in historical novels, where their use is motivated by the chronotope of the past. The theme of ‘folga’ grows in his work to the status of a kind of a leitmotif. Observing the chronology of the occurrence of the term, we can see a clear evolution: from a neutral term, to some kind of an idea or cultural topos. The article follow the function of this topos across the writer’s body of work, which by the end of “The Trilogy” evolves into an ethos of a national-societal vice. The topos of ‘folga’, shaped in the works of Sienkiewicz for decades, finds its culmination in the novel “Wiry” (“Whirpools”).

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