Bringing historical figures into fiction

Writing the second part of my trilogy came with a new challenge – integrating more historical figures and events within a fictionalized narrative. Doing a wide amount of research came with the temptation of just rewriting a textbook, forgetting about my storyteller’s voice. It took me time to gain confidence in painting these historical players as real people rather than marble statues. Like anyone of us, they too had their own unique friendships, loves, joys and sorrows. But how could I respect the authenticity of their lives while presenting them in the context of a novel?

In my favorite historical fiction books, real figures appeared from a distance. Or if they did have significant, close-up scenes, these were people from faraway times like Ancient Rome (as in Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz). One can be at liberty with fictionalizing those times. Writing about a relatively recent era can be a double-edged sword – on one hand resources for research are readily available, on the other, fresh topics can easily elicit controversies and debates about the accuracy and fairness of depictions.

In Poland the WWII era is very much alive in people’s memories. My focus is on the youth resistance movement – of which some members have been elevated to the status of legends, covered by an implicit veil of unconditional respect and protection. I share in this feeling of honoring their memory, but at times the intensity and weight becomes at odds with the creative task of a fiction writer, who wants to retell stories through a new lens. Not necessarily to shake up established facts or to contradict the current narrative, but rather to bring life back to the overheard tales, with a fresh take on interpersonal relationships.

When I first began writing, my main goal was to depict a specific era and city close to my heart. Warsaw, during the Second World War. Floating between fiction and reality, I structured the story along larger scale true events while fictionalizing the details. This allowed me to create a personal angle specific to my characters. While leaving myself space for creativity, I had to avoid the danger of interfering with the course of history.

I planned to build entirely fictional characters who did not necessarily interact on page with those who really existed. If anything, their connection to historical figures would be implicit. I thought of the latter as distant and mysterious personalities, which were more safely kept out of reach. I did not want to risk bringing them to life and accidentally contradict any known facts.

Writing about an era that is not far back, and well-known to people, I could not get rid of the fear of mistakes and misrepresentations being pointed out by readers and specialists. Even if I was confident in the research I had done, I thought that interfering with the lives of specific true people was a liberty I was not bold enough to take. Especially since witnesses of these days are still alive, perhaps even friends of those who come to life in my book. I’ve seen waves of criticism regarding certain movies that painted inaccurate and perhaps hurtful images of people. The risk of offending someone’s memory frightened me.

The concern of doing justice to historical figures was one of the strongest chains to my creativity. Whenever one of them entered the stage and began interacting with others, I turned over precautious. Sticking to the known facts, I painted people who seemed like a necessary element of the construction, but should not be investigated in depth, lest they fall apart and collapse along with the entire world.

The interior life of my characters, their reflections, and emotions, are usually given considerable space. However, my “real” characters were somehow not given the chance for such self-awareness moments. Was I afraid of intruding into their lives again? It’s confusing when you start creating scenes with these “real people”. There’s that worry that readers will get confused – so which of these events were true and which were not?

After tossing and turning the conundrum in my head, a new idea helped me free myself from constraints. I asked myself why I was building this mental barrier between fictional and real characters. Are they in essence different from one another? Or is the strength of this boundary artificial? Perhaps, the line could be blurred…

Ultimately, those characters that I “made up” would never be entirely fictional. A writer’s work is unavoidably influenced by surrounding people, interactions with others and stories and personalities extracted from the past. The invented characters would never be totally void of pieces from existing people – known personally and through historic accounts. After all, the greatest achievement is to create characters who live across the pages and give every impression of being real. Convincing and coherent figures are a success.

And conversely, real historical figures will always hold fictionalized elements within the legends of their existence. However rigorous the efforts to collect testimonies, and formulate accurate biographies, there will always be a subjective coloring behind the facts.

Even when witnesses who survived the war later shared stories about their departed friends, the emerging narrative would never be perfectly objective. Memories we hold, of people and events, are always specific to our personal experiences and interpretations. Through our perceptions, we attribute meaning to the world, and there can never really be two identical pictures painted of the same scene.

The same goes with history, passed on from generation to generation. It is written not by omniscient robots, but through the lens of imperfect human perception. Comparing information from multiple sources can prove helpful in improving accuracy and objectivity, but there will always be gaps left to fill. No one can claim to hold the full truth about a person’s life, no matter the number of books and memoirs they read about them.

And in this space of uncertainty, where the story appears incomplete, the fiction writer can step in. I embraced this challenge – to recreate mystified heroic figures as complete human beings. With full respect for what is known and documented about specific person’s life, taking care not to contradict facts or cross private boundaries.

| history | wwii |