Master of disenchantment: how Sapkowski and the Witcher confound the critics

By Tomasz Z. Majkowski (tekst dostępny jest również w języku polskim)

The Netflix series The Witcher, launched in late 2019, was not an overnight success. Most critics, after watching the four episodes available for review, complained about the lack of flow to the plot, unnatural dialogue, and the bizarre combination of brutality, horror and comedy.

The reviews published at the time of the series premiere presented a relatively clear picture: despite its ambition, The Witcher would not be the next Game of Thrones, another phenomenal fantasy series causing widespread excitement, and bring another work of a literary genre sometimes seen as infantile into the mainstream.

This criticism is now recalled with a certain affection. Yes, The Witcher was not the new Game of Thrones, because it had no such ambitions. But it did become Netflix’s most-watched production (at least until the premiere of Bridgerton in January), a global phenomenon that captured the imagination of people around the world and contributed to huge interest in the books it was based on.

The English translations of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books became bestsellers on Amazon, and the world held its breath waiting for the second season of the series.

For anyone who has followed the career of Poland’s foremost fantasy writer, this should have come as no surprise. In fact, history was simply repeating itself: ever since Sapkowski’s debut on the pages of Fantastyka monthly in the mid-1980s, the Witcher’s ventures into new territory have consistently been met with similar scepticism, criticism – but ultimately popular acclaim and commercial success.

Plagiarist of fairy tales

Geralt, the Witcher himself, arrived through Roper’s Gate in the December 1986 issue of Fantastyka. The story was written for the second edition of the magazine’s competition to find a novice talent capable of filling the magazine’s pages with Polish prose. Among the hundreds of entries, Sapkowski missed out on first prize – which went to science-fiction author Marek S. Huberath – but was awarded a distinction.

Among readers, The Witcher caused quite a stir. Years later, the magazine’s long-time editor Maciej Parowski liked to say that Sapkowski’s debut piece was greeted with immediate and enthusiastic acclaim. But the reality was more complicated. Many were certainly captivated – so much so that Sapkowski and Geralt became permanent fixtures in Fantastyka and its successor, Nowa Fantastyka.

But there was also opposition and indignation over the author’s chosen literary format and genre. Polish readers, accustomed to two models of fantasy, could not get their heads around the idea that an evident piece of light entertainment could force its way into a magazine that should either publish hard sci-fi with philosophical ambitions (in the style of early Stanisław Lem) or political parables masked as dystopia (in the spirit of Janusz A. Zajdel).

Sapkowski did not fit into these formats, writing an overtly derisive fantasy story. Years later, he admitted that his choice of genre was not motivated by any great passion for fantasy – he even claimed that if there had been a competition for gulag prose, he would have sent his hero to do backbreaking work in Siberia.

It is hard to say how much of the author’s characteristic waggishness there was in this assertion, as he was undoubtedly well versed in sword and sorcery literature. He owed this to an advantage he had over most Polish readers – as a sales representative he spent time abroad, and so was able to see for himself the explosion in the popularity of fantasy novels in Anglophone countries that started in the mid-1970s and resulted in numerous multi-volume sagas of various Tolkien imitators.

In the communist Poland, however, just a few cast-iron classics of the genre were published (above all The Lord of the Rings), and for typical Fantastyka readers it was all about sci-fi prose. They did not realise how mature a text The Witcher was, and were not sufficiently well-read to appreciate Sapkowski’s masterclass in challenging the conventions of the genre, laying down the gauntlet to the moral simplicity and glaring conservatism of multi-volume sagas like several other authors of his generation, above all Terry Pratchett and (a decade later) George R. R. Martin.

Yet his brilliant idea, replacing the folk hero who cunningly vanquishes monsters to which knights have no answer with a professional specialising in monstricide, was met with a decidedly mixed reaction. The magazine even received letters exposing Sapkowski as a plagiarist who, rather than sharing the fruits of his imagination with readers, shamelessly stole the plot of Roman Zmorski’s fairy tale Striga.

Master of the short form

Andrzej Sapkowski’s next stories about the Witcher, published in Fantastyka in the late 1980s, were increasingly successful. But the acclaim was not universal – with every new publication came opinions that the text was much weaker than its predecessors, especially in the case of A Grain of Truth. Yet Sapkowski’s outstanding writing strategy, sense of his reader’s needs, and indisputable stylistic talent defied the resistance.

When the stories about Geralt began to appear in book form – 1992 saw the publication of Sword of Destiny, containing previously unpublished texts that started to form a chronologically coherent plot – the author solidified his position as the master of Polish fantasy.

Sapkowski took full advantage of this position as a columnist, at once scolding professional critics that could not cope with popular literature and mercilessly deriding his younger colleagues trying to force themselves through the generic floodgates he had opened with their own fantasy stories.

Whereas the result of the latter tirade was a paucity of attempts to create sword and sorcery literature based on Slavic motifs, the former was a little exaggerated. There was certainly increasing interest among literary critics and researchers in Sapkowski’s work, who approached his prose guardedly, but also without prejudice.

The younger generation in particular was quick to recognise the value of the Łódź writer’s texts – and with every passing year he became more recognised outside Nowa Fantastyka’s readership. Sapkowski became a symbol of new Polish fantasy literature, an equivalent of Lem for sword and sorcery novels, a translated (for the time being into the languages of Poland’s neighbours), award-winning and much-discussed author.

From 1993, comic books based on the stories appeared, created by authors from the Nowa Fantastyka stable, and there were rumours that a computer game was in development. Following the publication of The Last Wish in 1993, the canon and chronology of the texts about Geralt of Rivia was fixed, and the whole of Poland held its breath at the news that the author was stopping the short stories to write – as befits a fantasy author – a multi-volume saga.

Blood of Elves, published in 1994, was not at all warmly received. The novel was radically different from the stories: the plot was no longer based on deconstructing well-known fairy tales, and Geralt was clearly in the background. The action did not take place at breakneck speed, but calmly built the dramatic situation necessary for the adventures in subsequent volumes.

Of course, sales were excellent, and the novel had enough fans to win Sapkowski the Zajdl Award, which is voted on by Polish sci-fi and fantasy readers. But critics turned up their noses. A common view was that, although the king of Polish fantasy had taken a stab at a saga in the Anglo-Saxon style, he was not up to the challenge. This, after all, was the master of the short form, whose talent shone brightest in witty stories based on a single concept but was extinguished when he rambled on too much.

Yet – in a familiar pattern – the critics’ reservations were overcome by the enthusiasm of readers, with the Witcher saga becoming a huge success – both commercially and artistically. By the end of the 1990s, five volumes had been published, presenting the history of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer against the background of political and metaphysical events shaking the nameless continent to its core. Sapkowski was no longer a cult author, but a mainstream, celebrated and much discussed one, awarded the Paszport Polityki – a major cultural prize – in 1997.

Too good for Poles

Meanwhile, Geralt gradually began to turn into a national treasure. It is hard to pinpoint the reasons for the character’s popularity– although a legion of researchers and critics have tried to. Undoubtedly, the Witcher was a perfect match for his time: as a high-class professional constantly forced to confront the ignorant masses as well as the cynical or limited authorities, he corresponded with the aspirations and the mass imagination of Poland’s transformation period.

Sapkowski’s excellent ear for society was also important. The author liked to bring snatches from the public debate on such topics as abortion, environmental protection or relations between religion and the state onto the pages of the saga. And he did so in a clever enough way to avoid taking a clear-cut position, meaning that the Witcher prose seemed engaged, but not didactic.

The Polish publishing market, no longer limited by the state, began to assimilate English-language fantasy at lightning speed, providing a context that Sapkowski’s first readers had been missing. This increased the importance of the author’s talent for smoothly combining his own native tradition – linguistic stylisation or nods to Henryk Sienkiewicz – with the Anglophone, and thus global, canon.

And of course, we should not underestimate his writing skillset, his ability to bring to life distinctive but not caricatured protagonists and to hold together a complex, multi-stranded narrative. The combination of these factors made Sapkowski the most important Polish writer of the 1990s apart from Olga Tokarczuk, whose debut novel was published in the same year as The Last Wish. Parowski, the editor-in-chief of Nowa Fantastyka, called Sapkowski “the Polish Umberto Eco”.

It is therefore not surprising that an energetic fandom as well as various adaptations formed around Sapkowski’s prose. First came the comic books published in the first half of the 1990s From the mid-1990s onwards there were also efforts to produce a video game, at first by Metropolis Software, creator of the cult adventure game The Prince and the Coward and the most important Polish studio of the time.

Polish public television also took aim at the Witcher universe, airing a TV series in which Geralt was played by rising star Michał Żebrowski. The series was re-edited for cinema distribution, a common practice at the time. That was when everything started to go wrong.

The Metropolis Software game was never completed, and the TVP production was a fiasco. The film, which had the misfortune of opening in cinemas in 2001, around the same time as Peter Jackson’s meticulously designed Lord of the Rings, was widely mocked, chided for its makeshift costumes, limited location shots and, above all, outdated and laughable special effects. The accompanying role-playing game, an ambitious attempt to create a mass-appeal Polish answer to Dungeons & Dragons, did not gain the hoped-for publicity and popularity.

The first rumours about resumption of work on a video game by a new studio ignited some interest at first, but the production was dragging on and everybody, including Sapkowski, lost faith that the studio, CD Projekt, would ever manage to complete it. The star of Geralt’s creator began to fade, especially when the Nowa Fantastyka community found itself a new favourite son in the form of Jacek Dukaj.

With the benefit of hindsight, of course, although the first attempts to adapt Geralt’s adventures to new media failed, the breadth of the whole venture should be appreciated. The film and series, though unsuccessful, were the first attempt to transfer fantasy prose to the Polish screen since TVP’s collaboration with Stanisław Lem. The series of comic books, games, and television narratives formed the first and to date only Polish entertainment system akin to such brands as Star Wars or the Marvel comics.

The reason why this undoubtedly impressive achievement did not gain acclaim or the intended successes was obvious. There was no money, and the numerous decision-makers (including the infamous TV and film producer Lew Rywin) could not treat fantasy literature seriously.

The Witcher fan community soon found an outlet for their disenchantment: they began to dream of a worthwhile – i.e. American – producer taking an interest in Sapkowski’s prose and giving the world the adaptation of Geralt’s adventures that it deserved.

The Slavic witcher

International success came from a source where it was probably least expected. Although production of the CD Projekt game was a long time coming and not without problems, it was finally launched in 2007. Its initial reception in Poland was not hugely enthusiastic, but once again Sapkowski’s Polish readers were positive, seeing it as a successful adaptation.

The response abroad was completely different, with the game achieving renown for its exotic aesthetic and an allusion to Polish Romantic prose.

Surprisingly, although it was the local elements that were most interesting to critics, while working on the sequel the producers removed them almost entirely, giving The Witcher II: Assassins of Kings a much more international feel. The game was also produced faster, using more modern technologies and gaining renown mostly thanks to the eccentric idea of creating two parallel plot lines accessible depending on the choices made at a certain point by the player.

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, launched in 2015, finally achieved staggering success, and until recently was the most awarded video game in history. This time, its creators managed a magnificent combination of local and international elements, classical game conventions with innovation and humour with moving depth – in other words, to a large extent they succeeded in doing the same as Andrzej Sapkowski in his stories.

Ironically, Sapkowski benefited little directly, after making what he later admitted was the “stupid” decision to demand a small up-front lump sum from CD Projekt rather than accept their offer of a percentage of the games’ profits. However, thanks to global success of the Witcher series, the author’s international position also grew and the process of translating his prose into English accelerated.

Sapkowski, with characteristic contrariness , criticised the translations, which fail to convey the beauty and suppleness of the author’s language. But, despite their shortcomings, the Witcher books were acclaimed by Anglophone readers, culminating in Sapkowski winning the World Fantasy Award in 2016.

He became the third author in history not writing in English to receive a lifetime achievement award, after Jorge Luis Borges in 1979 and Italo Calvino in 1982. Parowski’s prophesy thus came true: Andrzej Sapkowski took a place on the pedestal alongside titans of 20th-century prose and founders of literary postmodernism.

All this led Netflix to buy the rights to adapt Sapkowski’s prose. Building on the incredible popularity of the third game and the writer’s growing prestige, it seemed to be answering the old prayers of fans dreaming of an English-language screen version to rival Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Disenchantment was, of course, inevitable.

The first controversies appeared with the release of Wild Hunt. Although the game received widespread praise, some critics noted that the inhabitants of the continent were exclusively white, and that the racial representation (as well as the sexist excesses of the previous instalments) added to fantasy’s more general problem of a conservative attachment to aesthetics engendered by 19th-century European colonial empires.

This highlighted a serious problem: on the one hand, fantasy literature in general, a genre born out of Anglo-American prose, has a distinct racist stigma, while on the other, a local version produced in a country with a completely different demographic structure and history of oppression seeks its own forms of expression which do not precisely mirror the social issues discussed in the United States.

This is of course a more serious question that cannot be dismissed as insignificant. With Wild Hunt, however, it resulted in the formation of a camp of defenders of The Witcher’s Slavicness. They see the saga of Geralt as being built on the basis of local beliefs and traditions that should be depicted in the right – i.e. white – way.

The result of this was that even at the casting stage, Netflix’s Witcher was treated with scepticism by this group, which had an increasing social media presence. And their worst fears soon came true when people of colour were cast in the roles of elves and dryads, and even the witch Triss Merigold. The great expectations of some were therefore dashed: the new Witcher series turned out to be an adaptation aimed at a global audience, and not the tour de force of finally appreciated Polish-Slavic fantasy its fans dreamed of.

Watched in Poland, then, the series found itself between the Scylla of English-language criticism, unconvinced by the way the plot played out, and the Charybdis of conservatism, demanding that the content should be adapted to the local sensitivity and justice done to their own ideas, nurtured over the years.

Yet, as always since 1983, Geralt slipped through the gap: the series was a triumphant successes; for two weeks the world hummed its theme tune about tossing a coin to the Witcher, and today it eagerly awaits the second season. Disenchantment will no doubt ensue.

Killer of expectations

When we look at the history of the reception of the stories, novels, comic books, games and series about the Witcher, a recurrent cycle becomes evident: the character’s first foray into a new format is always greeted coolly, but with time it becomes a classic. It is hard to avoid the impression that the main emotion felt by those who follow Geralt’s history is disenchantment – with the novel, the movie or the foreign television series.

And this disenchantment is carefully fostered, incidentally, by Andrzej Sapkowski, who delights, somewhat perversely, in expressing his aversion to everything that did not cause this disenchantment (especially the video games) and complaining about fans’ inconsistent expectations.

When Geralt arrived from Roper’s Gate in the first story in 1986, he laid a challenge both to the naïve magic of the fairy tale and to the philosophical gravitas of Polish fantasy. From the outset, he was a paradoxical figure: the most human of monsters, a killer plagued by doubts, an infertile father, a main character eternally consigned to the wings. A figure at once comic and deathly serious: a brutal buffoon, exposing the rules of operation of the authorities that have the power to name a monster and cast it out from society.

I suspect that this was where the power of the series and its remarkable capacity to dash expectations lay. For this is Geralt’s most important task: to constantly challenge ideas about himself, consistently and in a succession of media exposing the structure of our expectations and the desires and mechanisms that formed them. For now at least, he always emerges from this battle victorious.

Translated by Ben Koschalka. Main image credit: Piotr Skornicki / Agencja Gazeta

Tomasz Z. Majkowski is an assistant professor of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University. He specialises in Polish popular culture, fantasy and video games.