Horror amid Sweetness

Abstract

Abstract Postcards, once an important form of communication which has now been driven out of contemporary culture by emails and other instant messages, are the least known among the metatexts of Sienkiewicz’s novel. The time of the novel’s creation and the fact that it was quickly recognized as a bestseller contributed to the production of numerous postcards that presented scenes and characters from Quo vadis . They deserve attention not only for their artistic variety (style, technique, format, and so on), but also for their coexistence with kitsch. The presence of this aesthetic category in intersemiotic interpretations of Sienkiewicz’s work implies the need for determining which parts of the novel particularly encourage kitsch. Postcards referring directly to Quo vadis reveal the presence of different types of kitsch. Due to the novel’s subject matter, religious, erotic, and patriotic kitsch are observed most often, followed by the kitsch of death and suffering. In order to understand the connection between Sienkiewicz’s Quo vadis and kitsch, it is not enough to determine its types. Kitsch on postcards tends to be integrated into an intertextual and periphrastic strategy. Whether through the vehicle of a photograph, watercolour painting, oil painting, engraving, or sculpturography, the purpose of creators of illustrations was usually to put across the idea of the novel and its aesthetic value. Importance was also attached to the expectations of potential purchasers of postcards, both those who had and those who had not read Quo vadis. Thus, the postcards are valuable evidence not only of the artistic interpretation of the novel in different semiotic systems but also of the perception of ancient Rome in twentieth-century European culture.