Człowiek pełen właściwości. Esej Sienkiewicza o życiu, ideałach i epoce nowoczesnej
The Man Full of Qualities. Sienkiewicz’s Essay on Life, Ideals, and Modern Times

Summary/Abstract: The article is an interpretation of “Rodzina Połanieckich” (“The Połaniecki Family”), carried out in the context of life trials and the accompanying reflection Henryk Sienkiewicz had during his courtship of and marriage to Maria Romanowska-Wołodkowiczówna. It attempts to show that the novel is not, as many of its critics would like to present it, a biased work promoting ethically questionable behaviour, but a modern attempt to confront the fictional representative of the contemporary bourgeoisie world of ideals. The reference to Mary Douglas’ concept of ritual allows to present the spiritual compromises, which the protagonists of the novel decides to make at the time of “revaluation of all values”, in a different light. The article employs the concept taken from “The Man Without Qualities” by Robert Musil, which is combined with E.D. Ermarth’s definition of realism, which lets us see Sienkiewicz’s novel as an attempt to re-work the experiences and observations of the writer into a portrait of a spiritual self-made man of the turn of the century, and a treatise on the psychological and social rules that shape the heroes of those times.

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