Author | Henryk Sienkiewicz |
---|---|
Original title | Quo vadis. Powieść z czasów Nerona |
Translator | Jeremiah Curtin W. S. Kuniczak Samuel Augustus Binion |
Country | Poland |
Language | Polish |
Genre | Historical novel |
Publisher | Polish dailies (in serial) and Little, Brown (Eng. trans. book form) |
Publication date | 1895–1896 |
Media type | Print (Newspaper, Hardback and Paperback) |
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero is a historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish. [1]
The novel Quo Vadis tells of a love that develops between a young Christian woman, Lygia (Ligia in Polish), and Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician. It takes place in the city of Rome under the rule of emperor Nero, c. AD 64.
Sienkiewicz studied the Roman Empire extensively before writing the novel, with the aim of getting historical details correct. Consequently, several historical figures appear in the book. As a whole, the novel carries a pro-Christian message. [2] [3] [4]
It was first published in instalments in the Gazeta Polska between 26 March 1895 and 29 February 1896, [5] [6] as well as in two other journals, Czas and Dziennik Poznański, starting two and three days later. [7] [8] It was published in book form in 1896 and has been translated into more than 50 languages. The novel contributed to Sienkiewicz's Nobel Prize for literature in 1905. [9]
Several movies have been based on Quo Vadis, including two Italian silent films in 1913 and in 1924, a Hollywood production in 1951, a 1985 miniseries directed by Franco Rossi, and a 2001 adaptation by Jerzy Kawalerowicz.
The young Roman patrician Marcus Vinicius falls in love with Lygia, a barbarian hostage being raised in the house of the retired general Aulus Plautius. Vinicius' courtier uncle Petronius uses his influence with the Emperor Nero to have Lygia placed in Vinicius' custody. But first, Nero forces her to appear at a feast on the Palatine Hill. Secretly a Christian after having been converted by Plautius' wife Pomponia Graecina, Lygia is appalled by the degenerate Roman court. She is rescued by her fellow Christians while being escorted to Vinicius' house the following day, and disappears.
Petronius takes pity on the desolate Vinicius, and hires the cunning Greek philosopher Chilo Chilonis to help him find Lygia. [10] Chilo soon establishes that Lygia was Christian, and goes undercover in the Christian community in Rome to find her. When he tells Vinicius that the entire Christian community is going to meet at night outside the city to hear the apostle Peter, Vinicius insists on attending the meeting himself in hope of seeing Lygia there. At the meeting, a disguised Vinicius is strangely touched by Peter's words, but forgets everything when he sees Lygia. He traces Lygia to her hiding place in Transtiber Rome, but is stopped and severely wounded by her barbarian bodyguard Ursus when he goes in to kidnap her.
Instead of killing Vinicius, Lygia and her Christian friends take him in and nurse him back to health. [11] At this point Lygia falls in love with him, and confides in the Apostle Paul. He tells her that she cannot marry a non-Christian, so she leaves Vinicius' bedside and disappears a second time.
After returning to health, Vinicius is a changed man. He starts treating his slaves with more kindness, and rejects the advances of the depraved empress Poppaea Sabina. When Chilo brings him information of Lygia's new hiding place and advises him to surround the house with soldiers, Vinicius has him whipped. Chilo swears revenge while Vinicius goes to Lygia's hiding place alone. After promising Lygia's guardians, the apostles Peter and Paul, to convert, he is engaged to Lygia with their blessing.
The emperor Nero and his court, including Vinicius, go to Antium for recreation. Nero is composing a poem about the burning of Troy, and expresses regret at never having seen a real city burning. Later, the courtiers are shocked when news comes that Rome is aflame. Vinicius rides back to Rome to save Lygia, and Peter baptizes him on the spot after he rescues him and Lygia from the flames.
When Nero returns to Rome and sings his poem about Troy in public, the masses accuse him of igniting the fire. Nero's advisors decide they need a scapegoat. The Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Tigellinus, suggests the Christians. It is revealed that the idea has been given to him by Chilo, still desperate for revenge on Vinicius after his whipping. Vinicius' uncle Petronius protests, but the empress Poppaea—still nursing a grudge against Vinicus for spurning her advances—overrules him.
Chilo divulges the Christians's hiding place to the authorities, and many of the Christians are arrested, including Lygia. Nero has planned a series of games in the arena, at which the Christians will be butchered in "revenge" for the fire. But even the Roman mob is shocked by the cruelty of the exhibitions: in the penultimate show, Christians are set alight on crosses to illuminate a luxurious feast open to the Roman public. Chilo is so appalled by the scene that he repents and publicly accuses Nero of igniting the fire. As the court scatters, Paul emerges from the shadows and promises Chilo salvation if he truly repents. This gives Chilo the courage to die bravely in the arena the following day, after refusing to retract his accusation.
Meanwhile Lygia and her bodyguard Ursus have been kept for the final show, in which they are exposed to an aurochs in the arena, [12] but when Ursus manages to break the animal's neck, the crowd is impressed and forces Nero to spare the two. She is then married to Vinicius, and the two move away to the latter's mansion in Sicily where they live openly as Christians.
The rest of the novel relates the historical events of Peter's martyrdom ("Quo vadis, Domine?"), Petronius' suicide in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, and concludes with an account of Nero's ultimate death based on Suetonius.
"Quo vadis, Domine?" is Latin for "Where are you going, Lord?" and appears in Chapter 69 of the novel [14] in a retelling of a story from the apocryphal Acts of Peter, in which Peter flees Rome but on his way meets Jesus and asks him why he is going to Rome. Jesus says, "If thou desertest my people, I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time", which shames Peter into going back to Rome to accept martyrdom.
Sienkiewicz alludes to several historical events and merges them in his novel, but some of them are of doubtful authenticity.
Playwright-actor-manager Wilson Barrett produced his successful play The Sign of the Cross in the same year as publication of Quo Vadis? started. The play was first performed 28 March 1895. [19] Several elements in the play strongly resemble those in Quo Vadis. In both, a Roman soldier named Marcus falls in love with a Christian woman and wishes to "possess" her. (In the novel, her name is Lycia, in the play she is Mercia.) Nero, Tigellinus and Poppea are major characters in both the play and novel, and in both, Poppea lusts after Marcus. Petronius, however, does not appear in The Sign of the Cross, and the ending of the play diverges from that of Quo Vadis.
Stanislaus Stange adapted the novel into a stage play of the same name which premiered in Chicago at McVicker's Theater's on 13 December 1899. [20] It was later produced the following year on Broadway by F. C. Whitney in a production using music by composer Julian Edwards. [21] The play was also staged at the West End's Adelphi Theatre in 1900. [20]
Jeannette Leonard Gilder also adapted the novel into a stage play of the same name which was also staged on Broadway in the year 1900 at the Herald Square Theatre. [22]
Film versions of the novel were produced in
The novel was also the basis for a 1985 mini-series starring Klaus Maria Brandauer as Nero and a 2001 Polish mini-series directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz.
It was satirized as the quintessential school play gone horribly awry in Shivering Shakespeare , a 1930 Little Rascals short by Hal Roach.
Jean Nouguès composed an opera based on the novel to a libretto by Henri Caïn; it was premiered in 1909. [24] Feliks Nowowiejski composed an oratorio based on the novel, performed for the first time in 1907, and then his most popular work.
Following Buddy Baer's portrayal of Ursus in the classic 1951 film Quo Vadis , Ursus was used as a superhuman Roman-era character who became the protagonist in a series of Italian adventure films made in the early 1960s.
When the Hercules film craze hit in 1959, Italian filmmakers were looking for other muscleman characters similar to Hercules whom they could exploit, resulting in the nine-film Ursus series listed below. Ursus was referred to as a "Son of Hercules" in two of the films when they were dubbed in English (in an attempt to cash in on the then-popular Hercules craze), although in the original Italian films, Ursus had no connection to Hercules whatsoever. In the English-dubbed version of one Ursus film (retitled Hercules, Prisoner of Evil), Ursus was referred to throughout the entire film as Hercules.
There were a total of nine Italian films that featured Ursus as the main character, listed below as follows: Italian title/ English translation of the Italian title (American release title);
In the small church of "Domine Quo Vadis", there is a bronze bust of Henryk Sienkiewicz. It is said[ according to whom? ] that Sienkiewicz was inspired to write his novel Quo Vadis while sitting in this church.[ citation needed ]
Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz, also known by the pseudonym Litwos, was an epic Polish writer. He is remembered for his historical novels, such as the Trilogy series and especially for his internationally known best-seller Quo Vadis (1896).
Quo vadis? is a Latin phrase meaning "Where are you going?" It is commonly translated, quoting the KJV translation of John 13:36, as "Whither goest thou?"
Aulus Vitellius was Roman emperor for eight months, from 19 April to 20 December AD 69. Vitellius was proclaimed emperor following the quick succession of the previous emperors Galba and Otho, in a year of civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Vitellius was the first to add the honorific cognomen Germanicus to his name instead of Caesar upon his accession. Like his predecessor, Otho, Vitellius attempted to rally public support to his cause by honoring and imitating Nero who remained popular in the empire.
Santa Maria in Palmis, also known as Chiesa del Domine Quo Vadis, is a small church southeast of Rome. It is located about some 800 m from Porta San Sebastiano, where the Via Ardeatina branches off the Appian Way, on the site where, according to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, Saint Peter met the risen Christ while Petrus was fleeing persecution in Rome. According to the tradition, Peter asked him, "Lord, where are you going?". Christ answered, "I am going to Rome to be crucified again".
Ofonius Tigellinus was a prefect of the Roman imperial bodyguard, known as the Praetorian Guard, from 62 until 68, during the reign of emperor Nero. Tigellinus gained imperial favour through his acquaintance with Nero's mother Agrippina the Younger, and was appointed prefect upon the death of his predecessor Sextus Afranius Burrus, a position Tigellinus held first with Faenius Rufus and then Nymphidius Sabinus.
Quo Vadis is a 1951 American religious epic film set in ancient Rome during the final years of Emperor Nero's reign, based on the 1896 novel of the same title by Polish Nobel Laureate author Henryk Sienkiewicz. Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and filmed in Technicolor, it was directed by Mervyn LeRoy from a screenplay by S. N. Behrman, Sonya Levien, and John Lee Mahin. It is the fourth screen adaptation of Sienkiewicz's novel. The film stars Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, and Peter Ustinov, and features Patricia Laffan, Finlay Currie, Abraham Sofaer, Marina Berti, Buddy Baer, and Felix Aylmer. Future Italian stars Sophia Loren and Bud Spencer appeared as uncredited extras. The score is by Miklós Rózsa and the cinematography by Robert Surtees and William V. Skall. The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on November 2, 1951.
Aulus Plautius was a Roman politician and general of the mid-1st century. He began the Roman conquest of Britain in 43, and became the first governor of the new province, serving from 43 to 46.
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian era. He is one of the most important characters in Henryk Sienkiewicz' historical novel Quo Vadis (1895). Leo Genn portrays him in the 1951 film of the same name.
The conspiracy of Gaius Calpurnius Piso in 65 CE was a major turning point in the reign of the Roman emperor Nero. The plot reflected the growing discontent among the ruling class of the Roman state with Nero's increasingly despotic leadership, and as a result is a significant event on the road toward his eventual suicide and the chaos of the Year of the Four Emperors which followed.
Pomponia is the female name for the Pomponia gens of Ancient Rome. This family was one of the oldest families in Rome. Various women bearing this name lived during the Middle and Late Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. The oldest known Pomponia was mother of a famous Roman general; the second and third were related to each other. The relationship between these women, if any, is not known. They descended from Pomponius, the first son of Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome.
Pomponia Graecina was a noble Roman woman of the 1st century who was related to the Julio-Claudian dynasty. She was the wife of Aulus Plautius, the general who led the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD, and was renowned as one of the few people who dared to publicly mourn the death of a kinswoman killed by the Imperial family. It has been speculated that she was an early Christian. She is identified by some as Lucina or Lucy, a saint honoured by the Roman Catholic Church.
Jeremiah Curtin was an American ethnographer, folklorist, and translator. Curtin had an abiding interest in languages and was conversant with several. From 1883 to 1891 he was employed by the Bureau of American Ethnology as a field researcher documenting the customs and mythologies of various Native American tribes.
Marcus Vinicius was twice Roman consul and, as husband of Julia Livilla, grandson-in-law (progener) of the emperor Tiberius. He was the son and grandson of two consuls, Publius Vinicius and Marcus Vinicius.
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus and his reign have featured in music, literature, the arts, and in business.
Quo Vadis? is a 1985 international television miniseries made by Radiotelevisione Italiana, Antenne 2, Polyphon Film- und Fernsehgesellschaft, Channel 4 Television, Televisión Española and Televisione Svizzera Italiana (TSI). It was directed by Franco Rossi and produced by Elio Scardamaglia and Francesco Scardamaglia. The script was by Ennio De Concini based on the 1896 novel Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Quo Vadis is a 2001 Polish film directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz based on the 1896 book of the same title by Henryk Sienkiewicz. It was Poland's submission to the 74th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not nominated.
The Sign of the Cross is an 1895 four-act historical tragedy, by Wilson Barrett and popular for several decades. Barrett said its Christian theme was his attempt to bridge the gap between Church and stage. The plot resembles that of Henryk Sienkiewicz's historical novel Quo Vadis, which was first published between 26 March 1895 and 29 February 1896 in the Gazeta Polska, 11 months after the play's first production.
Quo Vadis is an Italian film directed by Enrico Guazzoni for Cines in 1913, based on the 1896 novel of the same name written by Henryk Sienkiewicz. It was one of the first blockbusters in the history of cinema, with 5,000 extras, lavish sets, and a lengthy running time of two hours, setting the standard for "superspectacles" for decades to come.
Quo Vadis is a 1924 Italian silent historical drama film directed by Gabriellino D'Annunzio and Georg Jacoby and starring Emil Jannings, Elena Sangro, and Lillian Hall-Davis. It is based on the 1896 novel Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz which was notably later adapted into a 1951 film.
The 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) "because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer." He was given the prize on 10 December 1905. He is the first Polish author to win the Nobel Prize in the literary category and the second Polish citizen to win in general after the chemist Maria Skłodowska Curie in 1903. He was followed by Władysław Reymont in 1924.
Quo vadis, Domine?