With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz

Published 1884 · 1,135 pages · 306,444 words · about 23 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

How hard is With Fire and Sword to read?

With Fire and Sword scores 56 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 65 out of 100
Polish historical vocabulary.
Sentence structure: 62 out of 100
Epic prose.
Abstraction: 60 out of 100
War, nation, heroism.
Information density: 70 out of 100
17th century Poland.
Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
Third person epic.
Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
Fire, sword, nation.
Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
Romantic nationalism.
Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
Epic resolution.
Structural complexity: 58 out of 100
Epic structure.

How With Fire and Sword is regarded

With Fire and Sword holds a literary regard score of 69 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where With Fire and Sword sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (616 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, With Fire and Sword scores 40 out of 100. A second mythos, tragedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: High Mimetic
He was, moreover, in his domain beyond the Dnieper a genuine king.
Symbol: Formal
The year 1647 was that wonderful year in which manifold signs in the heavens and on the earth announced misfortunes of some kind and unusual events.
Mythos: Romance iii (romance iii)
Either her or death,
Genre: Romance + Novel
The Commonwealth lay prostrate in dust and blood at the feet of a Cossack.

Where the story of With Fire and Sword takes place

  • Poland during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, 1648-1651 (1648 to 1651), the main setting
  • Ukraine, Chigirin-Lubni-Saitch and the steppe, 1647-1649 (1647 to 1649)
  • Warsaw interregnum and the election of Yan Kazimir, autumn 1648
  • Zbaraj besieged by Hmelnitski and the Khan, July-August 1649
  • Berestechko coda, July 1651

5 things that are true of With Fire and Sword, with the passage for each

  1. The novel opens on the year 1647 with omens of locusts, an eclipse and a comet.

    In the summer there was a great eclipse of the sun, and soon after a comet appeared in the sky.

  2. Volodyovski beats Bogun in a duel at Lipki by cutting his open breast and striking his head twice.

    Volodyovski warded it off with ease, and struck still twice on the inclined head.

  3. Zagloba knocks the Cossack colonel Burlai from his horse with a single blow.

    Zagloba cut him on the temple, and with one blow rolled him from his horse.

  4. Podbipienta cuts off three heads in one blow in the Zbaraj assault, fulfilling his vow.

    Three bodies fell into the ditch, three heads in helmets rolled to the knees of the kneeling knight.

  5. Skshetuski tells the king that Zbaraj repulsed twenty assaults and made seventy-five sallies.

    Twenty assaults repulsed, sixteen battles in the field won, seventy-five sallies.

Scenes in With Fire and Sword that Frye would name

50 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Cognitio, untitled
But a moment later the strong and beautiful arms of the princess held his weakened and emaciated head. The lovers are reunited on the Toporoff road.
Anagnorisis, untitled
Bogdan Zenovi Hmelnitski. Skshetuski learns whom he has rescued on the Omelnik, the pivot of his later guilt.
Sparagmos, untitled
Several thousand people rushed upon the doomed men and tore them, howling and struggling among themselves to get at the victims. The Saitch mob tears Tatarchuk and Barabash apart.
Sparagmos, untitled
They began to cut the prostrate body to pieces. The severed head was hurled from boat to boat, like a ball, until by an awkward throw it fell into the water. Old Barabash is dismembered on the Dnieper after Krechovski's treason.
Anagnorisis, untitled
But the minstrel had not yet finished his litany when Pan Yan looked into his face, and cried, till the walls of the ravine gave back the echo, "Zagloba!" Skshetuski recognizes Zagloba in the disguised minstrel and learns Helena lives.
Pathos, untitled
These words were his last on earth. Podbipienta dies under Tartar arrows at the oak, a sacrificial death with the Litany on his lips.

Books that share these scenes with With Fire and Sword

About the author

Henryk Sienkiewicz