Quo Vadis 
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Xander Cricket Library 2009;
original in 1896 contributing to a Nobel Peace Prize
What is your relationship to God? What are your religious beliefs? If you believed in one way and met the love of your life who believed another way, would your faith evolve into the other person’s? What if such a change would cause you to lose all social privilege and financial power? Would you still evolve?
These are fundamental questions.
Quo Vadis is a book originally written in Polish in 1896, and contributed to the author’s Nobel Prize. I had never read it before.
Not surprisingly, there are as many reviews and analyses of this phenomenal story as anyone could ever one to peruse. I ignore reviews and commentary before reading any book, so that I can form my own impressions.
I have strong religious feelings. This story is set in A.D. 64 when Nero was Caeser, which is the same time that the Romans undertook to drive the last Jews from Palestine (with the standoff at Masada being, the Romans hoped, one of the last battles. Rome had degenerated.
Marcus Vinicius is a military tribune, a patrician, a potential Caeser. In his own right. He meets Lygia. She is a Christian. Nero burns Rome, blames the Christians, then rounds them up to be fed to lions among the many means of group murder.
Saints Peter and Paul are in Rome. Lygia is imprisoned to be the supreme spectacle of punishment. Will the faith of these people be rewarded with anything other than martyrdom?
I found it difficult to get into the story, largely because of the idioms of the 1890s writing, and a style that is, to me, a lot like a drawn out Biblical story, which it could be. Once into it, I found myself thinking through my own religious and emotional feelings. How would I react under these circumstances?
When I closed the book, I felt confirmed.
If you feel like a serious story that will cause you to evaluate your own feelings, then put Quo Vadis on your list. It will also make for an excellent basis for book club discussion, as our Philosophers’ Club will do next week.
Warms, Cym
