The Lighthouse-Keeper of Aspenwall (Polish: Latarnik) is a novella by Henryk Sienkiewicz published for a first time in 1881 in the Niwa journal, and included in the 1882 collections of Sienkiewicz works by Gebethner i Wolff. The story, placed in the 1870s, evolves around Skawiński, a Polish migrant, working as a solitary lighthouse keeper, which was located at the Aspinwall island, part of Colón, Panama today.[1][2]
Sienkiewicz embarked on a travel to the United States from 1876 to 1877. "Gazeta Polska" has been publishing his travel reports, as well as contributions from a fellow journalist and writer Julian Horain, which included an account about a Polish man, who got fired from his job as a lighthouse keeper, for reading Zbigniew Kaczkowski novel Murdelio, a distraction that almost resulted in a disaster at sea.[3] This story inspired Sienkiewicz to write a novella based on the Horain report. In the novella, Skawiński is distracted by reading Pan Tadeusz of Adam Mickiewicz.
This work is considered as one of the best Polish novellas published. An autograph resides at Ossolineum.[1][2]
A 1976 film adaptation has been directed by Zbigniew Skonieczny for Telewizja Polska.
References
edit- ^ a b Dobrosława Świerczyńska, ed. (2015). Bibliografia literatury polskiej „Nowy Korbut” : Henryk Sienkiewicz (in Polish). Warszawa: Fundacja Akademia Humanistyczna : Instytut Badań Literackich PAN. ISBN 978-83-61750-54-3.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) - ^ a b Henryk Markiewicz, "Sienkiewicz, Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius", Polski słownik biograficzny, vol. XXXVII, 1997, p. 205.
- ^ Julian Horain, "Listy z Kalifornii", Gazeta Polska, 1877, № 32
External links
edit
- The Lighthouse-Keeper of Aspenwall at the Internet Archive
- Latarnik published by Wolne Lektury (in Polish)
- Latarnik (1898 Chicago edition) (in Polish)
- Latarnik (1945 Hanower edition) (in Polish)
