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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Will Poles and Ukrainians Never Again Confront Each Other With Fire and Sword?

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Jerzy Hofman, a noted Polish film director, stated on July 1 that he had finished work on With Fire and Sword, based on Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel. The production cost $6 million, the most expensive in Polish film-making history. The premiere is scheduled for January 25, 1999.

The setting dates back to 1648, the time of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Cossack revolution against the Poles. The story is a part of Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy written at the end of the last century “to enhance the Polish spirit,” as the Poles had no state of their own at the time. The two other novels are about Polish struggle against foreign aggressors: the Swedes in The Deluge and Turks in Pan Michaj. In this sense, With Fire and Sword portrays the Ukrainians fighting the Polish szlachta gentry as yet another attempt from outside to conquer Poland.

Sienkiewicz’s novels, written in refined Polish and psychologically very convincing, are marked by breath-taking plots with totally unexpected turns of events. Yet they do not suffice for considering the author to be world caliber. All his novels are aimed at glorifying one and only one thing, the Polish state. Thus, With Fire and Sword is an extremely biased account of 300-year-old events. For example, Jarema Wisniowiecki, known in Ukrainian history as a turncoat and hangman, is portrayed by Sienkiewicz as a knight of flawless repute, and Khmelnytsky’s war is explained by the man’s personal grudge which made him rise up in arms against his “native land,” the Rzeczpospolita, the Polish Commonwealth.

At the outset Jerzy Hofman assured that he would strive to convey both the Polish and Ukrainian views of that bloody page in Polish-Ukrainian history. This would be facilitated by inviting a galaxy of Polish movie stars and several celebrated Ukrainian actors (e.g., Bohdan Stupka acts as Khmelnytsky and Ruslana Pysanka has a bit part as Horpyna the Witch).

He also declared, even before the work on the film started, that his production, apart from the creative aspect, would serve to better Polish-Ukrainian understanding, but to do so, he would have to divert considerably from the spirit and letter of Sienkiewicz’s novel. This remains to be seen, for if Mr. Hofman stays close to the text, the new production will only serve to enhance in Polish public consciousness the negative Ukrainian stereotype, which unfortunately still exists.

 

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