I shall last out ten
thousands
of
thousand years.
thousand years.
Poland - 1915 - Poland, a Study in National Idealism - Monica Gardner
org/access_use#pd-google
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POLAND
The story ends, and none of the listeners can
speak. Presently they pull themselves together,
and sing and make merry. One of them sings a
blasphemous song, at which Konrad, for all he
declares that he has little faith left, angrily inter-
poses, intimating that he will not allow the name
of Mary to be treated with anything but rever-
ence. He sits apart, as he has sat all the evening,
brooding and gloomy, till his friends lay hold of
him and, with a burst of chaff, insist that he shall
improvize to Frej end's flute. This is one of the
intimate touches that illustrate how close is the
connection of Konrad with his author. Mickiewicz
possessed the gift of improvization and, while he
was waiting in Wilna for his final sentence, im-
provized, always accompanied by the flute of
that same Frej end.
Konrad flings out a wild song breathing revenge
on Russia, for which he is sternly reproved by a
priest among the prisoners and by the corporal.
He sings on in a poetic frenzy that degenerates
into delirium, and ends in a swoon. The corporal
gives the alarm that the guard is returning. The
{>risoners all rush to their cells, leaving Konrad
ying unconscious.
Now enters the great moment of the drama.
Konrad, alone in his cell, sings the Improvization,
the most splendid piece of inspiration that Mickie-
wicz ever reached. On one side, it is the unveiling
of the poet's mind at the actual moment of his
ecstasy: an Adam waking to life, as in Michel-
angelo's fresco, at the finger of his creator. On
the other, the wounds of the Polish soul that sees
his nation suffering, unavenged by either man or
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 6y
God, are here laid open, bare and bleeding, to the
vision.
Konrad is in a dungeon; but what bonds of
man's devising can enchain his spirit?
"My songs, ye do not need men's eyes, men's
ears! Oh, God, oh, nature, hearken unto me!
Worthy of you my music and my song. I am the
master! I, the master, stretch forth my hands, I
stretch them even to the skies, and lay my hands
upon the stars, as on the crystal wheels of an
harmonica. Now fast, now slow, as my soul wills, I
turn the stars. Millions of sounds flow forth.
'Twixt million sounds each sound I caught, each
sound I know. I weave them into rainbows,
harmonies, and verse. I pour them forth in music
and in lightning streamers.
"I have taken away my hands. I have raised
them above the borders of the world, and the
harmonica's wheels are held in their flight. Alone
I sing. I hear my songs. Long, wailing, as the
breathing of the tempest's blast, they moan with
grief, they roar with storm, and the ages answer
with deep echoings. And each sound together
plays and flames. I see each one, I hear each one,
as I hear the flight of the wind when, whistling,
it rocks the waves, as I see it in its robe of cloud.
"Worthy of God and nature such a song!
That song is great, that song is creation, that song
is strength, is power, that song is immortality. I
feel immortality, I create immortality. What
greater couldst Thou do, oh, God? "
Has any other poet, any other wise man, cries
he in the rapture of his inspiration, ever felt:
"As I feel to-night, in this lonely night, when
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POLAND
alone I sing within myself, alone I sing unto myself.
Yea, I feel, and I am mighty, and I understand.
To-night is my zenith, to-night is the crisis of
my power. I will cast off my body, and as a spirit
I will take pinions only. I will fly forth from the
turning-wheel of stars and planets, I will reach to
the boundary of the Creator and of nature.
"And I have them, I have them, I have these
two wings. They will suffice. I will strike the past
with the left, the future with the right, and on
the flames of feeling I will come to Thee. And I
will gaze into Thy feeling, oh, Thou, of Whom
they say that Thou feelest in the heavens. I am
here, I have come here, Thou seest what is my
power, my wings reach even here. But I am man,
and my body is there on earth. There did I love,
and in my country hath remained my heart.
"But that love of mine hath not rested on one
man, not on one family, not on one century. I
love a whole nation. I have gathered in my arms
all her past and future generations. I have pressed
her to my bosom as a friend, a lover, a husband, as
a father. I would fain raise her, give her joy. I
have no power to do it--and I have come here to
find it. I have come armed with the whole strength
of thought, that thought which tore Thy thunder-
bolts from heaven, that tracked Thy planets'
march, and flung open the deep bottom of the
sea. I have more; I have that power men do not
give, for I have feeling.
"I was born a creator. My powers came whence
came Thine to Thee. Thou hast them,Thou fearest
not to lose them--and I fear not. In the moments
of my strength, when I gaze on high a. t- the' trails
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? ADAM MICK1EWICZ 69
of clouds, and hear the wandering birds sailing on
wings scarce seen, I will; and with my eye I
hold them in the snare. Only corrupted man,
weak but immortal, does not serve me, does not
know me--does not know us both, Thee and me.
Here in heaven I seek the means of ruling him.
I would fain wield that power I have on nature
over human souls. Not with weapons, not with
songs, not with learning, not with miracles. I
would fain rule with the feeling that is in me,
rule even as Thou rulest over all. Let men be for
me as thoughts and words from which a house of
song is woven at my will. They say that even thus
Thou rulest. Thou knowest that I have not cor-
rupted thought, that I have not squandered
speech. If Thou wilt give me a like rule over souls,
I will create my nation as a living song, and greater
marvels will I work than Thou; I will entone a
song of joy. Give me the rule of souls ! I would
fain have power like Thou possessest. I would
fain rule souls even as Thou rulest them. "
Here the speaker halts, awaiting God's answer.
Part at least of the extent of Konrad's blas-
phemy will be made clear when we remember
that in Mickiewicz's scheme the brain and under-
standing cannot be the motive power of the
world's salvation. To him the heart, love, feeling,
must be the rulers of the human race. The works
of the intellect without the heart in the eyes of
this man of great mental power stood for brute
force, for militarism with all its consequences.
There is silence. Then Konrad cries:
"Thou art silent! Now I know, I have found
Thee out. He hath lied who called Thee love.
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POLAND
Thou art only wisdom. With the mind, not with
the heart, shall Thy ways be found. Thou hast
given the world to thought, and Thou leavest
the heart in eternal penance. "
The situation now develops its peculiar tragedy.
We have seen the poet carried on by lust of power
and intellectual pride to defy his Creator. But now
that poet merges into the Pole; the Pole who
represents the mental anguish of a nation; the
Pole who has lived among the deep and bitter
things of life, who has from his childhood known
misery and injustice. Konrad's temptation, said
in 1890 the son of Adam Mickiewicz, is the temp-
tation of the whole Polish nation. * Konrad
blasphemes, and it is his country's suffering that
drives him to his blasphemy. He entreats for
power, but for the power that will govern by love
in a world ground down by brute strength, the
power that will at last entone the hymn of joy
for Poland. It is the sorrow of his nation that
maddens him, not his own. Mickiewicz's heart
nearly broke within him as he uttered this cry of
despair. He wrote it in one night. The next
morning, he was found lying like Konrad uncon-
scious on the floor of his room.
"Once more I challenge Thee," goes on Kon-
rad, while around him angels and devils battle
for his soul. " Thou art silent? I challenge Thee.
Despise me not. I am not alone, although I am
raised to these heights alone. On earth my heart
is brothered with a great nation. I will wage with
Thee a bloodier war than Satan. He fought for
the intellect, I challenge for the heart. I have
* L. Mickiewicz, Life of Adam MiekiemicM. Posen, 1890 (Polish).
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 71
suffered, I have loved, I have grown in torments
and in love. When Thou didst tear from me my
personal joy, I did not raise my hand against
heaven.
"Now is my soul incarnate in my country.
I and my country are one. My name is Million,
because I love millions and for millions suffer
torment. I look on my unhappy land as a son upon
. his father broken on the wheel. I feel the sufferings
of the whole nation as the mother feels within
I her bosom the sufferings of her child. I suffer, I
madden--and Thou, wise and happy, ever rulest,
ever judgest, and they say Thou dost not err.
"Hearken! If that be true which I heard with
a son's faith when I came into this world, that
Thou lovest; if Thou, creating it, didst love
the world; if Thou hast a father's heart for what
Thou didst create; if beneath Thy rule love is
not a mere anomaly; if on the millions of men
crying ' Help ! ' Thou dost not look solely as on
the solution of a complicated sum; if love is
necessary for aught in Thy world and is not only
Thy mistaken figure--"
The cries of the angels and demons interrupt
him. Then his last entreaty breaks forth:
"Thou art silent! I have opened the depths
of my heart unto Thee. I implore Thee give me
power, one small part of power, a part of that
which on the earth pride has won. With that
small part what joy I would create! Thou art
silent! Thou wilt not give it to the heart, oh,
give it to the brain! Thou seest that I am the
first of men and of the crowd of angels. Worthy
I am that Thou shouldst share half of Thy power
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POLAND
with me. If I have not divined Thee right, reply.
Thou art silent, and Thou trustest that Thou
hast a mighty hand. Know that feeling will burn
what the mind will not break. Thou seest that
feeling is my burning-glass.
"Answer me, for I will shoot against Thy
nature! If I do not overthrow it into ruins, then
I will shake the whole space of Thy dominions.
For I will shoot forth my voice through all the
boundaries of creation, that voice which shall
descend from generations to generations; I will
cry out that Thou art not the father of the world,
but . "
The voice of the demon puts his thought . into
words as he hesitates:
"The Tsar. "
We realize the point when we remember that
the Tsar of Mickiewicz's day, Nicholas I, was the
man whose vengeance on Poland was sending
thousands of Polish men and women to hopeless
and lifelong misery.
Hearing the culmination of his blasphemy,
Konrad staggers, then falls in a dead faint. With
wild cries, the demons rush upon him, to claim
their prey.
The key is turned. The corporal enters, accom-
panied by a friar whom he has fetched, being
disquieted by the sounds he has heard issuing from
Konrad's cell. There before them lies Konrad,
insensible, moaning out broken words.
"The pit . . . a thousand years . . . empty
. . . still more.
I shall last out ten thousands of
thousand years. . . . Pray. . . . Here prayer
availeth nought. . . . And was there such a
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ
bottomless and boundless pit ? I knew not . . . and
there was. "
"Thou hearest how he sobs," says the corporal.
"Son," says the priest, who has raised Konrad
in his arms, " thou art on a heart that loves thee. "
But there is something unusual here, and the
priest bids the corporal leave him alone with the
prisoner. Then, still unconscious, Konrad, out
of his broken heart, sobs out his fathomless despair.
"I see hence, yea, even hence, though it is
dark . . . deep. I see thee, Rollison ! * Brother!
thou, too, art in the prison, scourged, all stream-
ing with blood. And God has not listened to thee,
and thou art in despair. Thou seekest a knife,
thou tryest to dash thy head against the walls:
'Help! ' God does not give it, I cannot give it
thee. But I will show thee the way to death. Thou
hast a window. Dash it open, leap, leap down,
and break thy neck. f And fly with me to the deep,
to the dark. Let us fly to the pit, the abyss. That
abyss is better than the vale of earth. There,
there are no brothers, mothers, nations, tyrants. "
The priest perceives that Konrad is in the
possession of the demon. He begins the rites of
exorcism. The evil spirit, speaking in Konrad's
tones, answers in a meaningless and foolish poly-
glot, till the friar drives him forth. Konrad wakes.
"Dost thou raise me? Who art thou? Be-
ware lest thou thyself shalt fall into this pit. He
gives me his hand. Let us fly! Like a bird I fly
to the heights. I breathe sweet scents, I shine
? A fellow-prisoner who has been flogged in another cell,
t Here again Mickiewicz draws on a real incident. One of his
brother prisoners flung himself from his window.
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POLAND
with light. Who gave me his hand? Good men
and angels. Whence your pity that for me descen-
ded to this pit? Men? I despised men, the
angels I have not known. "
"Pray," answers the priest, "for the hand of
the Lord hath terribly touched thee. The lips
with which thou hast outraged the Eternal
Majesty, those lips the evil spirit hath polluted
with hideous words. God giant that the words of
folly, heaviest punishment for the learned lips,
be counted as thy penance, God grant thou shalt
forget them. "
Konrad: "They are there--hammered in. "
The Priest: "God grant, oh, sinner, that
thou thyself shalt never more decipher them, that
God shall never ask thee an account of them. "
He kneels, as Konrad falls asleep. " Thy mercy,
Lord, is without bounds," he cries. Prostrating
himself on the ground, he implores the divine
forgiveness, offering himself as a victim in ex-
piation of Konrad's sin. Even as on the Christmas
Eve which Mickiewicz and his companions spent
in Adam's prison cell, they heard the Polish
Christmas carols ringing out from a church near by,
which, says a fellow-prisoner of the poet, "trans-
ported us to our firesides where our mothers
and sisters were weeping for us " ;* so now into
the dungeon where the priest and prisoner are
alone penetrates the music of these hymns.
Above them resound the voices of alternate choirs
of angels, crying the one for mercy, the other for
justice, on the sinner.
* Ignacy Domeyko, The Philarctians and Philomathians, quoted
by L. Mickiewicz, Life of Adam Mickiemic*.
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 75
The -first archangel: "Oh, Lord, he hath
sinned, he hath grievously sinned against Thee. "
The second archangel: "But Thy angels are
weeping for him, Thy angels are praying for
him. "*
The first archangel: "Tread down, oh, Lord,
break to fragments, oh, Lord, those who despise
Thy holy decrees. "
The second archangel: "But forgive those who
have not understood Thy holy decrees. "
An angel: "When, flying with the star of
hope, I shone upon Judea, the angels sang the
hymn of birth. The wise men saw us not. Kings
hearkened not to us. But shepherds saw, and ran
to Bethlehem. Poor, simple, lowly men first
welcomed the Eternal wisdom, and owned the
Eternal rule. "
The first archangel: "When the Lord saw
pride and craft in the hearts of His servant arch-
angels, the Lord did not forgive the eternal spirits,
the pure angels. Bands of angels fell like a rain of
stars from the heavens, and the rain of the minds
of learned men fall with them every day. "
The second archangel: "He did not search into
Thy decrees as one curious to know. Nor was it for
human wisdom that he sought, nor yet for fame. "
The first archangel: "He knew Thee not, he
revered Thee not, oh, our great Lord. He did not
love Thee, he did not call upon Thy name, oh,
our Redeemer. "
* This is said to refer to the prayers of two Polish girls with
whom Mickiewicz had formed a close spiritual intimacy when in
Rome. With the one of these who lives in his poetry as Eva, he
fell in love, but the opposition of the father intervened, and they
never married.
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POLAND
The second archangel: "But he honoured the
name of Thy most holy Mother. He loved a
nation, he loved much, he loved many. "
Both choirs of archangels: "Lift Thou his head.
He shall arise from the dust, he shall reach to the
heavens, and of his own will he will fall and
honour the cross. May the whole world with him
prostrate itself at the foot of the cross; and let it
Eraise Thee for Thy justice and Thy mercy, our
. ord and our God. "
Thus Mickiewicz's Ancestors rises above the
mere sceptical drama. Love saves the sinner. The
heart breaks down the barrier of intellectual
pride. Heaven replies to Konrad's agonized appeal;
but not by language that could convince his
reason: rather by the charity that sought the
blasphemer in his cell, that drove the demon
forth, that took upon itself the penalty.
The remainder of the incomplete Part III. is
only connected by the slenderest of threads with
what has passed. Konrad leaves the scene until
the closing episode is reached. One link binds the
drama together--Poland's sufferings and the
supernatural presences with their power on the
soul for good or ill. The maiden, who is the
idealization of Mickiewicz's love for "Eva,"
prays for the prisoner unknown to her, and beholds
a vision of angels which, with its grace and light-
ness, breaks into the stern tragedy of the Ancestors
like a strain of celestial music. On the other hand,
the vision of the friar that immediately follows it,
with no apparent connection, is entirely national.
He gazes, and he cries out in horror:
"What see I? Long, white, the course of the
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 77
highway. Long are those roads we cannot see,
o'er wastes, o'er snows, all leading to the north.
There, there to a distant land like streams they
flow. They flow. Straight runs that road to a gate
of iron. See! o'er those roads is rushing a band of
carts, like clouds driven by the winds. All to one
goal. Ah, Lord, those are our youths who go there
to the north. Lord, Lord, exile is their fate!
And wilt Thou suffer them all to perish in their
youth? And wilt Thou destroy our generation
to the end? "
He foretells Poland's salvation by a child
who will grow to be her defender, her restorer,
whose name " shall be forty and four. Lord, wilt
Thou not deign to hasten his advent, to comfort
my nation ? " He sees that nation arraigned at
the world's tribunal as a Christ: and all this
passage, likening Poland to the Christ of the
nations, dying as Christ on the Cross for humanity,
victorious before all eyes, is Messianism in one of
its most pronounced forms. The vision ends by
the friar beholding the white robe of Poland
clothing the whole universe, as she, whom he fondly
calls his beloved, ascends to heaven and to her
glory. Then again rises before his thought the
same mysterious saviour, the " vicegerent on the
vale of earth, blind, but led by an angel page, the
man of three faces whose footstool is three cities,
at whose call three ends of the world tremble.
He, himself, is uncrowned, though he stands over
kings and peoples. And his life is toil of toils, and
his name forty and four. "
What is the clue to this allusion we do not
know. Was that restorer of the nation a curious
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POLAND
foreshadowing of the advent of the mystic Towi-
anski to whose spiritual authority Mickiewicz gave
himself up for years of his life, and from whom he
expected the regeneration of humanity? The
threefold face is said to refer to the triple message
that Towianski considered himself empowered
from on high to bring to Slavonia, France, and
Israel. It is a fact, moreover, that Towianski was
in his youth blind as the man of the friar's dream.
Or it has been suggested from a play on the Roman
figures that forty-four stands for Louis Napoleon,
who at one time seemed prepared to deliver
Poland. But these are conjectures, and we have
no means of interpreting what was passing in a
mind so strongly impregnated with mysticism as
Mickiewicz's. In moments of exaltation Mickie-
wicz uttered things that are not possible to
explain by ordinary laws.
Next come the dreams of Novosiltzov, and
these are horrible nightmares provoked by demons.
The scene shifts to the Warsaw salons where the
talk runs on what is happening in Lithuania.
Here one of the guests tells the history of his
friend Cichowski. The strong simplicity of the
language in which Mickiewicz relates this story
adds to the pity of its tragedy. I cannot attempt
to present this celebrated passage in anything
more than a prose translation which, while giving
no conception of the art of Mickiewicz's poem,
will, at least, reproduce its facts.
"I knew him when I was a child. He was young
then, lively, witty, and gay, famous for his good
looks. He was the life of the company. He amused
everyone with his stories and jgk^s, He loved
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 79
children, and took me often on his knee. Then he
married. I remember that he brought to us
children presents from his betrothed, and invited
us to his wedding. Then for a long time he never
came, and it was said in my home that he had
disappeared, no one knew where. The government
sought for him, but could find out no trace of
him. At last it was said that he had killed himself,
that he was drowned. The police found his cloak
on the banks of the Vistula. They brought the
cloak to his wife.
? 66
POLAND
The story ends, and none of the listeners can
speak. Presently they pull themselves together,
and sing and make merry. One of them sings a
blasphemous song, at which Konrad, for all he
declares that he has little faith left, angrily inter-
poses, intimating that he will not allow the name
of Mary to be treated with anything but rever-
ence. He sits apart, as he has sat all the evening,
brooding and gloomy, till his friends lay hold of
him and, with a burst of chaff, insist that he shall
improvize to Frej end's flute. This is one of the
intimate touches that illustrate how close is the
connection of Konrad with his author. Mickiewicz
possessed the gift of improvization and, while he
was waiting in Wilna for his final sentence, im-
provized, always accompanied by the flute of
that same Frej end.
Konrad flings out a wild song breathing revenge
on Russia, for which he is sternly reproved by a
priest among the prisoners and by the corporal.
He sings on in a poetic frenzy that degenerates
into delirium, and ends in a swoon. The corporal
gives the alarm that the guard is returning. The
{>risoners all rush to their cells, leaving Konrad
ying unconscious.
Now enters the great moment of the drama.
Konrad, alone in his cell, sings the Improvization,
the most splendid piece of inspiration that Mickie-
wicz ever reached. On one side, it is the unveiling
of the poet's mind at the actual moment of his
ecstasy: an Adam waking to life, as in Michel-
angelo's fresco, at the finger of his creator. On
the other, the wounds of the Polish soul that sees
his nation suffering, unavenged by either man or
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 6y
God, are here laid open, bare and bleeding, to the
vision.
Konrad is in a dungeon; but what bonds of
man's devising can enchain his spirit?
"My songs, ye do not need men's eyes, men's
ears! Oh, God, oh, nature, hearken unto me!
Worthy of you my music and my song. I am the
master! I, the master, stretch forth my hands, I
stretch them even to the skies, and lay my hands
upon the stars, as on the crystal wheels of an
harmonica. Now fast, now slow, as my soul wills, I
turn the stars. Millions of sounds flow forth.
'Twixt million sounds each sound I caught, each
sound I know. I weave them into rainbows,
harmonies, and verse. I pour them forth in music
and in lightning streamers.
"I have taken away my hands. I have raised
them above the borders of the world, and the
harmonica's wheels are held in their flight. Alone
I sing. I hear my songs. Long, wailing, as the
breathing of the tempest's blast, they moan with
grief, they roar with storm, and the ages answer
with deep echoings. And each sound together
plays and flames. I see each one, I hear each one,
as I hear the flight of the wind when, whistling,
it rocks the waves, as I see it in its robe of cloud.
"Worthy of God and nature such a song!
That song is great, that song is creation, that song
is strength, is power, that song is immortality. I
feel immortality, I create immortality. What
greater couldst Thou do, oh, God? "
Has any other poet, any other wise man, cries
he in the rapture of his inspiration, ever felt:
"As I feel to-night, in this lonely night, when
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alone I sing within myself, alone I sing unto myself.
Yea, I feel, and I am mighty, and I understand.
To-night is my zenith, to-night is the crisis of
my power. I will cast off my body, and as a spirit
I will take pinions only. I will fly forth from the
turning-wheel of stars and planets, I will reach to
the boundary of the Creator and of nature.
"And I have them, I have them, I have these
two wings. They will suffice. I will strike the past
with the left, the future with the right, and on
the flames of feeling I will come to Thee. And I
will gaze into Thy feeling, oh, Thou, of Whom
they say that Thou feelest in the heavens. I am
here, I have come here, Thou seest what is my
power, my wings reach even here. But I am man,
and my body is there on earth. There did I love,
and in my country hath remained my heart.
"But that love of mine hath not rested on one
man, not on one family, not on one century. I
love a whole nation. I have gathered in my arms
all her past and future generations. I have pressed
her to my bosom as a friend, a lover, a husband, as
a father. I would fain raise her, give her joy. I
have no power to do it--and I have come here to
find it. I have come armed with the whole strength
of thought, that thought which tore Thy thunder-
bolts from heaven, that tracked Thy planets'
march, and flung open the deep bottom of the
sea. I have more; I have that power men do not
give, for I have feeling.
"I was born a creator. My powers came whence
came Thine to Thee. Thou hast them,Thou fearest
not to lose them--and I fear not. In the moments
of my strength, when I gaze on high a. t- the' trails
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? ADAM MICK1EWICZ 69
of clouds, and hear the wandering birds sailing on
wings scarce seen, I will; and with my eye I
hold them in the snare. Only corrupted man,
weak but immortal, does not serve me, does not
know me--does not know us both, Thee and me.
Here in heaven I seek the means of ruling him.
I would fain wield that power I have on nature
over human souls. Not with weapons, not with
songs, not with learning, not with miracles. I
would fain rule with the feeling that is in me,
rule even as Thou rulest over all. Let men be for
me as thoughts and words from which a house of
song is woven at my will. They say that even thus
Thou rulest. Thou knowest that I have not cor-
rupted thought, that I have not squandered
speech. If Thou wilt give me a like rule over souls,
I will create my nation as a living song, and greater
marvels will I work than Thou; I will entone a
song of joy. Give me the rule of souls ! I would
fain have power like Thou possessest. I would
fain rule souls even as Thou rulest them. "
Here the speaker halts, awaiting God's answer.
Part at least of the extent of Konrad's blas-
phemy will be made clear when we remember
that in Mickiewicz's scheme the brain and under-
standing cannot be the motive power of the
world's salvation. To him the heart, love, feeling,
must be the rulers of the human race. The works
of the intellect without the heart in the eyes of
this man of great mental power stood for brute
force, for militarism with all its consequences.
There is silence. Then Konrad cries:
"Thou art silent! Now I know, I have found
Thee out. He hath lied who called Thee love.
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POLAND
Thou art only wisdom. With the mind, not with
the heart, shall Thy ways be found. Thou hast
given the world to thought, and Thou leavest
the heart in eternal penance. "
The situation now develops its peculiar tragedy.
We have seen the poet carried on by lust of power
and intellectual pride to defy his Creator. But now
that poet merges into the Pole; the Pole who
represents the mental anguish of a nation; the
Pole who has lived among the deep and bitter
things of life, who has from his childhood known
misery and injustice. Konrad's temptation, said
in 1890 the son of Adam Mickiewicz, is the temp-
tation of the whole Polish nation. * Konrad
blasphemes, and it is his country's suffering that
drives him to his blasphemy. He entreats for
power, but for the power that will govern by love
in a world ground down by brute strength, the
power that will at last entone the hymn of joy
for Poland. It is the sorrow of his nation that
maddens him, not his own. Mickiewicz's heart
nearly broke within him as he uttered this cry of
despair. He wrote it in one night. The next
morning, he was found lying like Konrad uncon-
scious on the floor of his room.
"Once more I challenge Thee," goes on Kon-
rad, while around him angels and devils battle
for his soul. " Thou art silent? I challenge Thee.
Despise me not. I am not alone, although I am
raised to these heights alone. On earth my heart
is brothered with a great nation. I will wage with
Thee a bloodier war than Satan. He fought for
the intellect, I challenge for the heart. I have
* L. Mickiewicz, Life of Adam MiekiemicM. Posen, 1890 (Polish).
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 71
suffered, I have loved, I have grown in torments
and in love. When Thou didst tear from me my
personal joy, I did not raise my hand against
heaven.
"Now is my soul incarnate in my country.
I and my country are one. My name is Million,
because I love millions and for millions suffer
torment. I look on my unhappy land as a son upon
. his father broken on the wheel. I feel the sufferings
of the whole nation as the mother feels within
I her bosom the sufferings of her child. I suffer, I
madden--and Thou, wise and happy, ever rulest,
ever judgest, and they say Thou dost not err.
"Hearken! If that be true which I heard with
a son's faith when I came into this world, that
Thou lovest; if Thou, creating it, didst love
the world; if Thou hast a father's heart for what
Thou didst create; if beneath Thy rule love is
not a mere anomaly; if on the millions of men
crying ' Help ! ' Thou dost not look solely as on
the solution of a complicated sum; if love is
necessary for aught in Thy world and is not only
Thy mistaken figure--"
The cries of the angels and demons interrupt
him. Then his last entreaty breaks forth:
"Thou art silent! I have opened the depths
of my heart unto Thee. I implore Thee give me
power, one small part of power, a part of that
which on the earth pride has won. With that
small part what joy I would create! Thou art
silent! Thou wilt not give it to the heart, oh,
give it to the brain! Thou seest that I am the
first of men and of the crowd of angels. Worthy
I am that Thou shouldst share half of Thy power
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with me. If I have not divined Thee right, reply.
Thou art silent, and Thou trustest that Thou
hast a mighty hand. Know that feeling will burn
what the mind will not break. Thou seest that
feeling is my burning-glass.
"Answer me, for I will shoot against Thy
nature! If I do not overthrow it into ruins, then
I will shake the whole space of Thy dominions.
For I will shoot forth my voice through all the
boundaries of creation, that voice which shall
descend from generations to generations; I will
cry out that Thou art not the father of the world,
but . "
The voice of the demon puts his thought . into
words as he hesitates:
"The Tsar. "
We realize the point when we remember that
the Tsar of Mickiewicz's day, Nicholas I, was the
man whose vengeance on Poland was sending
thousands of Polish men and women to hopeless
and lifelong misery.
Hearing the culmination of his blasphemy,
Konrad staggers, then falls in a dead faint. With
wild cries, the demons rush upon him, to claim
their prey.
The key is turned. The corporal enters, accom-
panied by a friar whom he has fetched, being
disquieted by the sounds he has heard issuing from
Konrad's cell. There before them lies Konrad,
insensible, moaning out broken words.
"The pit . . . a thousand years . . . empty
. . . still more.
I shall last out ten thousands of
thousand years. . . . Pray. . . . Here prayer
availeth nought. . . . And was there such a
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ
bottomless and boundless pit ? I knew not . . . and
there was. "
"Thou hearest how he sobs," says the corporal.
"Son," says the priest, who has raised Konrad
in his arms, " thou art on a heart that loves thee. "
But there is something unusual here, and the
priest bids the corporal leave him alone with the
prisoner. Then, still unconscious, Konrad, out
of his broken heart, sobs out his fathomless despair.
"I see hence, yea, even hence, though it is
dark . . . deep. I see thee, Rollison ! * Brother!
thou, too, art in the prison, scourged, all stream-
ing with blood. And God has not listened to thee,
and thou art in despair. Thou seekest a knife,
thou tryest to dash thy head against the walls:
'Help! ' God does not give it, I cannot give it
thee. But I will show thee the way to death. Thou
hast a window. Dash it open, leap, leap down,
and break thy neck. f And fly with me to the deep,
to the dark. Let us fly to the pit, the abyss. That
abyss is better than the vale of earth. There,
there are no brothers, mothers, nations, tyrants. "
The priest perceives that Konrad is in the
possession of the demon. He begins the rites of
exorcism. The evil spirit, speaking in Konrad's
tones, answers in a meaningless and foolish poly-
glot, till the friar drives him forth. Konrad wakes.
"Dost thou raise me? Who art thou? Be-
ware lest thou thyself shalt fall into this pit. He
gives me his hand. Let us fly! Like a bird I fly
to the heights. I breathe sweet scents, I shine
? A fellow-prisoner who has been flogged in another cell,
t Here again Mickiewicz draws on a real incident. One of his
brother prisoners flung himself from his window.
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POLAND
with light. Who gave me his hand? Good men
and angels. Whence your pity that for me descen-
ded to this pit? Men? I despised men, the
angels I have not known. "
"Pray," answers the priest, "for the hand of
the Lord hath terribly touched thee. The lips
with which thou hast outraged the Eternal
Majesty, those lips the evil spirit hath polluted
with hideous words. God giant that the words of
folly, heaviest punishment for the learned lips,
be counted as thy penance, God grant thou shalt
forget them. "
Konrad: "They are there--hammered in. "
The Priest: "God grant, oh, sinner, that
thou thyself shalt never more decipher them, that
God shall never ask thee an account of them. "
He kneels, as Konrad falls asleep. " Thy mercy,
Lord, is without bounds," he cries. Prostrating
himself on the ground, he implores the divine
forgiveness, offering himself as a victim in ex-
piation of Konrad's sin. Even as on the Christmas
Eve which Mickiewicz and his companions spent
in Adam's prison cell, they heard the Polish
Christmas carols ringing out from a church near by,
which, says a fellow-prisoner of the poet, "trans-
ported us to our firesides where our mothers
and sisters were weeping for us " ;* so now into
the dungeon where the priest and prisoner are
alone penetrates the music of these hymns.
Above them resound the voices of alternate choirs
of angels, crying the one for mercy, the other for
justice, on the sinner.
* Ignacy Domeyko, The Philarctians and Philomathians, quoted
by L. Mickiewicz, Life of Adam Mickiemic*.
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 75
The -first archangel: "Oh, Lord, he hath
sinned, he hath grievously sinned against Thee. "
The second archangel: "But Thy angels are
weeping for him, Thy angels are praying for
him. "*
The first archangel: "Tread down, oh, Lord,
break to fragments, oh, Lord, those who despise
Thy holy decrees. "
The second archangel: "But forgive those who
have not understood Thy holy decrees. "
An angel: "When, flying with the star of
hope, I shone upon Judea, the angels sang the
hymn of birth. The wise men saw us not. Kings
hearkened not to us. But shepherds saw, and ran
to Bethlehem. Poor, simple, lowly men first
welcomed the Eternal wisdom, and owned the
Eternal rule. "
The first archangel: "When the Lord saw
pride and craft in the hearts of His servant arch-
angels, the Lord did not forgive the eternal spirits,
the pure angels. Bands of angels fell like a rain of
stars from the heavens, and the rain of the minds
of learned men fall with them every day. "
The second archangel: "He did not search into
Thy decrees as one curious to know. Nor was it for
human wisdom that he sought, nor yet for fame. "
The first archangel: "He knew Thee not, he
revered Thee not, oh, our great Lord. He did not
love Thee, he did not call upon Thy name, oh,
our Redeemer. "
* This is said to refer to the prayers of two Polish girls with
whom Mickiewicz had formed a close spiritual intimacy when in
Rome. With the one of these who lives in his poetry as Eva, he
fell in love, but the opposition of the father intervened, and they
never married.
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The second archangel: "But he honoured the
name of Thy most holy Mother. He loved a
nation, he loved much, he loved many. "
Both choirs of archangels: "Lift Thou his head.
He shall arise from the dust, he shall reach to the
heavens, and of his own will he will fall and
honour the cross. May the whole world with him
prostrate itself at the foot of the cross; and let it
Eraise Thee for Thy justice and Thy mercy, our
. ord and our God. "
Thus Mickiewicz's Ancestors rises above the
mere sceptical drama. Love saves the sinner. The
heart breaks down the barrier of intellectual
pride. Heaven replies to Konrad's agonized appeal;
but not by language that could convince his
reason: rather by the charity that sought the
blasphemer in his cell, that drove the demon
forth, that took upon itself the penalty.
The remainder of the incomplete Part III. is
only connected by the slenderest of threads with
what has passed. Konrad leaves the scene until
the closing episode is reached. One link binds the
drama together--Poland's sufferings and the
supernatural presences with their power on the
soul for good or ill. The maiden, who is the
idealization of Mickiewicz's love for "Eva,"
prays for the prisoner unknown to her, and beholds
a vision of angels which, with its grace and light-
ness, breaks into the stern tragedy of the Ancestors
like a strain of celestial music. On the other hand,
the vision of the friar that immediately follows it,
with no apparent connection, is entirely national.
He gazes, and he cries out in horror:
"What see I? Long, white, the course of the
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 77
highway. Long are those roads we cannot see,
o'er wastes, o'er snows, all leading to the north.
There, there to a distant land like streams they
flow. They flow. Straight runs that road to a gate
of iron. See! o'er those roads is rushing a band of
carts, like clouds driven by the winds. All to one
goal. Ah, Lord, those are our youths who go there
to the north. Lord, Lord, exile is their fate!
And wilt Thou suffer them all to perish in their
youth? And wilt Thou destroy our generation
to the end? "
He foretells Poland's salvation by a child
who will grow to be her defender, her restorer,
whose name " shall be forty and four. Lord, wilt
Thou not deign to hasten his advent, to comfort
my nation ? " He sees that nation arraigned at
the world's tribunal as a Christ: and all this
passage, likening Poland to the Christ of the
nations, dying as Christ on the Cross for humanity,
victorious before all eyes, is Messianism in one of
its most pronounced forms. The vision ends by
the friar beholding the white robe of Poland
clothing the whole universe, as she, whom he fondly
calls his beloved, ascends to heaven and to her
glory. Then again rises before his thought the
same mysterious saviour, the " vicegerent on the
vale of earth, blind, but led by an angel page, the
man of three faces whose footstool is three cities,
at whose call three ends of the world tremble.
He, himself, is uncrowned, though he stands over
kings and peoples. And his life is toil of toils, and
his name forty and four. "
What is the clue to this allusion we do not
know. Was that restorer of the nation a curious
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POLAND
foreshadowing of the advent of the mystic Towi-
anski to whose spiritual authority Mickiewicz gave
himself up for years of his life, and from whom he
expected the regeneration of humanity? The
threefold face is said to refer to the triple message
that Towianski considered himself empowered
from on high to bring to Slavonia, France, and
Israel. It is a fact, moreover, that Towianski was
in his youth blind as the man of the friar's dream.
Or it has been suggested from a play on the Roman
figures that forty-four stands for Louis Napoleon,
who at one time seemed prepared to deliver
Poland. But these are conjectures, and we have
no means of interpreting what was passing in a
mind so strongly impregnated with mysticism as
Mickiewicz's. In moments of exaltation Mickie-
wicz uttered things that are not possible to
explain by ordinary laws.
Next come the dreams of Novosiltzov, and
these are horrible nightmares provoked by demons.
The scene shifts to the Warsaw salons where the
talk runs on what is happening in Lithuania.
Here one of the guests tells the history of his
friend Cichowski. The strong simplicity of the
language in which Mickiewicz relates this story
adds to the pity of its tragedy. I cannot attempt
to present this celebrated passage in anything
more than a prose translation which, while giving
no conception of the art of Mickiewicz's poem,
will, at least, reproduce its facts.
"I knew him when I was a child. He was young
then, lively, witty, and gay, famous for his good
looks. He was the life of the company. He amused
everyone with his stories and jgk^s, He loved
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? ADAM MICKIEWICZ 79
children, and took me often on his knee. Then he
married. I remember that he brought to us
children presents from his betrothed, and invited
us to his wedding. Then for a long time he never
came, and it was said in my home that he had
disappeared, no one knew where. The government
sought for him, but could find out no trace of
him. At last it was said that he had killed himself,
that he was drowned. The police found his cloak
on the banks of the Vistula. They brought the
cloak to his wife.
