2,6 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
his only calm moments were when he betook himself
to the contemplation of the Medici Venus:
For she is perfect beauty; and beauty, whether it be of
marble or flesh and blood, is always an anodyne in hours of
anguish, and, at the same time, a stimulus in hours of apathy.
his only calm moments were when he betook himself
to the contemplation of the Medici Venus:
For she is perfect beauty; and beauty, whether it be of
marble or flesh and blood, is always an anodyne in hours of
anguish, and, at the same time, a stimulus in hours of apathy.
Poland - 1919 - Krasinski - Anonymous Poet of Poland
Correspondance de Sigismond Krasinski et
de Henry Reeve.
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? The First Exile
29
for Reeve was more or less enamoured of a Swiss
girl, Constance Sautter.
"I must tell you that the day before yesterday I was in
such a state of distress, of disgust"--Krasinski underlines his
English words--" boredom, melancholy, that life weighed on
me more than ever and, for the first time, the degrading idea
came to me of finishing with this world which has brought me
but few joys, taken from me as soon as I felt them. It was the
first time in my life that I have had the idea of suicide, so I
marked it down in my pocket-book. But I soon repulsed with
disdain that thought which can sometimes rise in a delirious
brain, but which can never be carried out except by a cowardly
heart that lacks nobility. .
"The night before last, being unable to close my eyes, I
read the work of M. Boissier, ' Shall we find them in a better
world? ' and I found there consolation, life and hope, though
the style is dry and dusty--and not one grain of poetry. When
I have finished the romance that is occupying me at present,
I shall write a work like it in Polish, but adding to it all the
charms of imagination and poetry that my weak mind can put
together--and I shall dedicate it to Her who inspired me with
it. You can well understand that it will be without name.
People can take it for a work of my imagination, and it will
rather be that of my heart1. "
Krasinski then gives Reeve a sketch of an essay
he had just been showing to their French teacher, and
asks for his opinion. It contains so strange a fore-
boding of what he suffered during the Rising that we
cannot altogether pass it by. Beginning with the words:
"I have known a really unhappy man," it goes on to
describe a youth at heart a poet, but who cannot express
himself. He loves, and his love, too, ends in failure, his
beloved casting him off by reason of his seeming
ineptitude. He becomes "dumb and stupefied " by his
misfortune. "It was given to the voice of an oppressed
country to wake him from this fearful lethargy. The
1 Correspondence de Sigisntond Krasinski et de Henry Reeve. Letter
to Reeve. Geneva, June 26, 1830.
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? 3<3 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
love of his native soil gave him back his moral strength.
Like the others, he was fain to march with a rapid step
to glory. " He goes to battle, but, worn out with grief, is
physically too weak to fight.
He was forced to exchange the field of honour for a bed
of suffering, while each of his brothers gave his blood for
liberty. Thus could he never express himself either in action
or in word. Despised, his heart torn by the cries of victory in
which he could not share, he died, leaving no name, exciting
no enthusiasm and moving no pity. (Fragment. June 24, 1830. )
Both Krasinski and Reeve were devoured with the
passion of the pen. Krasinski carefully keeps Reeve
informed upon everything that he writes and plans.
These include a pleasing story of the Polish legions,
animated with patriotic feeling and with the verve of a
soldier's son who had been brought up on the tradi-
tions of the legions, which came out in a Swiss magazine,
besides The Confession of Napoleon that stayed un-
known in Reeve's possession for more than half a
century. The last-named is very typical of the almost
religious veneration for Bonaparte that was to stand
for so much in the Anonymous Poet's philosophy.
On his side, Reeve sent Krasinski his verses for
inspection. Krasinski's friendships were always of a
markedly robust nature. He idealized every man and
woman he loved: but he never hesitated, as we see
from his correspondence with his friends, to remonstrate
fearlessly when he disapproved in any way of their
conduct or opinions. In his letters to Reeve, he
candidly criticizes the latter's literary attempts; yet the
generosity of a man who, in his own career as a writer
never envied or detracted another's fame, is already
patent. He thinks Reeve immeasurably superior to
himself, and although he takes exception to some of his
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? The First Exile
31
friend's expressions he is always eager to seize upon
anything that he can praise. In this case it must be
confessed that Krasinski's heart triumphed over his
head, for it is obvious that he genuinely admired the
shocking doggerel that Reeve turned out.
"I have received," writes he, italicizing as usual his English
phrases, "your piece about Polish Freedom. 'Here a nation lies'
is exceedingly good and beautiful. But, my dear fellow, I will
tell you my opinion frankly. The verses are written rather
hastily and carelessly; but as for the rest it is a beautiful piece,
the more beautiful for me because it reminds me both of a
native country and of a friend who wrote it.
"You are, my dear Reeve," he goes on, reverting to their
love affairs, "admirably cold blooded for a man in love. You
write me these words: 'whom perhaps I shall never see again':
without a fault in spelling, and without so far as I can see your
pen having trembled in your hand. My dear fellow, I envy
you that energy, that strength, that want of feeling, or rather
that calm, that resignation. I could not be capable of them1. "
"'Those whom the gods love die young,'" writes, on an-
other occasion, the poet who was never to see old age. "It
is the truest saying I have ever read or heard. And what shall
we do, my dear Henry, when life will be only vegetation? The
rose we once loved and adored as an emblem and a symbol,
we shall be dissecting then to find out how many petals it
has and how many lines lengthwise its calyx has. Where we
saw soul and life we shall only see matter and weight. A pair
of compasses and circle are what await us. Love and poetry
are what we shall leave behind us. But perhaps God will not
let us thus change; perhaps our grave is not far off, and the
flowers are about to grow above us2.
"If we might only be consumed away with great thoughts
and a slow agony in the arms of those we adore! This is my
wish as a poet, but as a man, as a Pole, can it be the same?
No. I must think of other things; and while for you the heart
may be your world, for me love is only a song piped in the
intervals of the acts of life; and yet I would give all for love
to be my life. My dear Henry, do not think that my affairs
are going so badly. No. She loves me still. . . . And even if that
1 Op. cit. To Reeve. July 8, 1830.
2 The italics in the text are always Krasinski's own which he employs
when he writes in English.
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? 32 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
were not the case She has loved me. That is enough. The
thoughts that have turned towards me can no more be lost.
Thought is immortal, and her love will be immortal as her
thought is. In the same manner if C. has loved you each of
her great and sublime thoughts has departed from her heart
like a ray of the sun, and mounted to heaven. You have a
great, an enormous advantage over me. Your kingdom can
be not of this world, if you will. Mine is in part chained to
the earth by my country. I am like Vulcan falling from
heaven, and unable either to return to heaven or reach the
earth. I am suspended in space by a chain of steel that
penetrates my heart, that gnaws it and will perhaps break it1. "
Here, with Reeve's return to Geneva, the corre-
spondence ceased for some months. In August the
friends took a trip into the mountains. Among the
beautiful scenes through which they passed Krasinski
dreamed constantly of Henrietta. He beguiled away
a tedious journey on muleback by writing a poem to
her: apparently a very bad one, for he and the Polish
poet, Jijdward OdyriieCj to whom he showed it, laughed
over it together.
Odyniec, who had been a frequent guest at the
Krasinski palace, was now in Switzerland, travelling
with Mickiewicz. When he had last seen Krasinski in
his father's house he had thought him nothing more
than a lively and clever boy. He found now, he says
himself, a youth full of fire and genius, "if not yet a
thinker, at least a dreamer-poet; though he does not
know how to write poetry and only tries his powers in
prose .
- In common with all Polish youths Krasinski wor-
shipped Mickiewicz and had devoured his poems: but,
brought face to face with him, the enthusiastic boy's
first impressions were those of disappointment. The
1 Op. cit. To Reeve. Geneva, July 14, 1830.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? The First Exile
33
three--Mickiewicz, Odyniec and Krasinski--started on
a tour through Switzerland. They had not been to-
gether long before Krasinski was carried away with
admiration for the great poet whose devotion to the
moral welfare of the youth of Poland had sent him in-
to prison and exile.
"I have learnt from him," wrote Krasinski to his father,
"to look at the things of this world more coolly, in a finer way,
more impartially. I have got rid of many prejudices and false
ideas1. "
The journey at close quarters with one of the
greatest poets in Europe filled Krasinski with inspi-
ration. Its first result was that in a French journal of
the expedition which he wrote as he went along, nomi-
nally for Henrietta, he had already corrected some of
the affectations in his style3. The descriptions of
scenery given in this diary are so true to life that Dr
Kallenbach speaks of its pages as "impregnated with
the breath of Switzerland. " But, poetical as are Kra-
sinski's pictures of nature, they always lack the wonder-
ful charm of Mickiewicz's magnificent word-paintings.
Krasinski loved nature: but the moments where she
plays any part in his poetry--exquisite and ethereal
moments, it is true--are rare, and are invariably only
there as the necessary accompaniment to a deeper
passion behind.
In the dungeon of Chillon Mickiewicz, looking
round at a scene that reminded him of the prison
where he and his dearest friends had once languished,
spoke to his companions of human tyranny and its in-
capacity to touch the soul. Zygmunt, hearing for the
first time Mickiewicz discoursing in his own particular
1 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunl Krasinski. 2 Op. at.
3
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? 34 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
and enthralling manner, hung on his words so that, even
in the spot immortalized by Byron, he forgot the Eng-
lish poet to whom his heart had hitherto gone out.
This episode in the castle of Chillon was to give Polish
literature one of Krasinski's most tragic poems: The
Last.
It was after a conversation with Mickiewicz that
Krasinski wrote the essay on the meeting of souls in
the next world, of which he had spoken to Reeve. It
was published the same year--1830--in Warsaw under
the title: Fragment from an old Slavonic manuscript.
Tender and poetical, philosophical rather than religious,
it bases the certainty that there shall not be endless
parting on the power of the will to compass its desire,
on the innate love planted by the Creator in the soul
for no transitory purpose, and on the fact of that love
being stronger than death. It presents a decided
spiritual link with the Treatise of the Trinity, written
years later. The mystical bent of Krasinski's mind
shows itself already in the tendency of his youthful
writings to deal with semi-spiritual topics, which from
an orthodox point of view he handles rather vaguely.
The French papers that streamed from Krasinski's
pen, in the autumn months of 1830 before he left
Geneva, range for the most part on melancholy themes.
Death is the subject of many of them. Ecrit la Nuit,
"with emotion and fear," he adds in Polish, where his
soul goes out with questioning and yearning to the
spirits of the dead, is the anticipation of his Three
Thoughts1. Le fournal dun Mourant, La Vie, the
latter a morbidly gloomy description of man's life,
1 J. Kallenbach, Prdface. Correspottdance de Sigismond Krasinski et
de Henry Reeve.
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? The First Exile
35
and other fragments of the kind, close Krasinski's first
and singularly strenuous year in Switzerland. .
In the October of 1830 it seemed probable that
war between Russia and France would follow on the
Revolution of July. Krasinski's father was anxious to
remove his only son from the vicinity of a belligerent
country, and sent him into Italy, deaf to Zygmunt's
entreaty that the England of his Henrietta might be
his destination. On the third of November Krasinski
and Jakubowski set out over the Simplon. Reeve and
the Pole, Zamojski, went with Krasinski as far as the first
mile out of Geneva, and then the boys bade each other
a regretful farewell. Krasinski, giving himself up to the
pain of parting with those who had been his favourite
companions for a year past, cared nothing for what
he saw before his eyes during his journey, and his
chief emotion on arriving at Florence was that he
had reached a crisis with Henrietta Willan. He wrote
to her from Florence in reply to some apparently rather
hysterical letters that he found waiting for him there,
telling her clearly that though he would love her for
ever he could never marry her, and could only write
to her as her lover till she married, from which time he
would be her faithful friend, and that alone.
"O my dear Henry" he cries in English, but passing im-
mediately into French, "if I wrote all that to her it is because
duty forced me to do it, for I love her more violently than
ever, and it would have been so sweet not to break this illusion
yet, to begin again the beautiful days of that love which made
me so happy. "
After some warm expressions of affection for Reeve, he
ends: "I am an enemy to tirades of friendship, but I will only
say these few words: I am your friend for life and till death1. "
He tells his friend how in the midst of his agitations
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Florence, Nov. 18, 1830.
3--2
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?
2,6 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
his only calm moments were when he betook himself
to the contemplation of the Medici Venus:
For she is perfect beauty; and beauty, whether it be of
marble or flesh and blood, is always an anodyne in hours of
anguish, and, at the same time, a stimulus in hours of apathy.
He entered Rome with indifference as he relates in
the same letter: "because strong emotions age the
soul, as strong shocks age the body. " But the con-
clusion of the letter changes to the more natural note
of the young Pole looking for the first time on the
grandeur of the Eternal City. With Mickiewicz, then
in Rome, he visited St Peter's, which moved him
religiously not at all. His great moment came to him
in the Coliseum. At the sight of the ruined amphi-
theatre, in Krasinski's day a scene of the most poetical
desolation, which to the Pole was the enduring testi-
mony of the triumph of an oppressed cause against an
empire's power, inspiration flooded the youth's soul.
Polish art has represented the Anonymous Poet dream-
ing within the walls of the Coliseum: for it was in its
moonlit arches that Krasinski conceived the idea of
Iridion, and there that he places what is not merely the
crisis of his mystical drama, but the great spiritual key-
note of the theory of salvation that he built up for his
people.
"On a beautiful moonlight night," thus the letter to Reeve,
"I entered under those arcades which have seen so many
generations, and have not crumbled away under the weight
of either men or time. "
He heard in fancy the discordant cries of the. Circus, the
"soft and tremulous" hymn of the Christian martyrs.
At this moment the moon appeared on the walls of the
Coliseum, as though she rose from a tangle of ivy which fell in
festoons from the summit of the building. Columns, arcades,
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? The First Exile 37
porticoes, the seats of the Caesars, of the senators, of the
populace, stood out, pallid and in ruins. The arena was laid
bare. In the centre rose a cross of black wood. To me that
cross is worth the Cathedral of Milan and the church of St
Peter's. That cross was persecuted in this spot, many centuries
ago, when the Coliseum represented all the might of those
who had built it. And that cross. . . to-day stands erect where
it was trampled underfoot, and the superb Coliseum which
proudly beheld its humiliation is now being consumed to dust
around it. But it has no aspect of pride in its triumph. In
silence it stretches its black arms to the two sides of the
building, and seems to cast a shadow of peace and benediction
on the earth where persecutors and persecuted sleep.
Let him who does not believe in Christ go to the Coliseum
on a fine night; and if he does not fall on his knees before
the symbol of faith that man, I say beforehand, has neither
soul nor heart1.
News travelled slowly in those days, and when Kra-
sinski penned these words he was ignorant of what had
happened in his country. Before his next letter, written
a week later, all Europe rang with the news that the
Polish nation had risen to arms. That gallant struggle,
with its tale of heroism, of failure and of martyrdom,
broke out in Warsaw on the night of November 29,
1830.
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Dec. 9, 1830.
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? /
CHAPTER III
THE SACRIFICE
(1830-1831)
For the next ten months Poland was the battle-field of a
nation fighting unaided for her life. The Rising of 1830
cannot correctly be called an insurrection. It was a war
for rights that had been guaranteed by a European
treaty, which all the powers of Europe had signed. It
was waged by a small but national army, swelled by
the rally to its banners of men and women of every class
and condition, who fought side by side with a passion
of patriotic abnegation. Brilliant victories marked the
first months of the war. For a time it seemed as though
Poland were about to secure her freedom.
The news of the November night was as the call
of the trumpet to the youth of Poland. In intense
agitation, Krasinski wrote off to Reeve. By way of
safeguard in case his letter should be opened by others
he wrote in English1. His father who, it must be re-
membered, held a high command in the Polish army,
was in the thick of events, of which Krasinski, far from
the scene, could gain no accurate information.
"The day-break is peeping. . . but at present we do not know
I whether it is the dawn of new life, or the glimpse which
appears when a nation is about to be destroyed. I am in great
anguish. The newspapers are full of obscure words. A thou-
sand thanks to God! I have been assured that my father
1 I always give Krasinski's English entirely as it stands, only correcting
what are obvious slips of the pen.
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? The Sacrifice
39
escaped the dangers of the 29th of November "--when the first
fighting began--"and that he sent his resignation to the
Emperor; but what will happen further? . . . No human strength
or aid can help us in this desperate cause, but the same God
who has said: 'Let there be light,' and light appeared, may
now say: ' Let Poland be,' and Poland will grow gigantic and
free. Write to me instantly what Zamojski thinks of doing.
I am in the greatest incertitude. Write to me very soon, for
every day may change my position and throw me forward to
fields of blood and death. "
He then alludes to an English friend of his own
and of Reeve in Rome to whom Krasinski says he will
give his last remembrances for Henrietta before he sets
out for the war. He assures Reeve that:
As often as I shall be able to give you news of me, I shall.
You, however, can still address me at Rome ; for I must remain
here until I receive certain instructions from my father. Par-
don me, I write in such a miserable manner in English, but I
am now troubled and agitated with fever in brain and body. . .
I must tell you that I am in a strange and difficult position.
The cause is too long to be explained in this letter, but if you
remember our talk on the subject you will understand fully
the devilish position in which I am. It always seems to me
that a fatal destiny hangs over my head as the sword of
Damocles. Heaven grant that it may be removed or that it
may fall soon; oh! soon, for to live amid tortures is to begin
hell on earth.
It is evident that Krasinski was already racked with
the misgiving that was to become a certainty. Even if he
did not--and he probably did--strongly suspect that
Wincenty Krasinski was not preparing to throw in his
lot with the national cause, his apprehensions that his
father would prevent his going to the war gave him no
rest. He adds several despairing pages, "mad and
troubled," as he says himself, feeling that he " was born
to defend my country, for I love it with the impassioned
love of the patriot, and my breast burns when I hear
its name," equally convinced that to his eternal shame
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? 40 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
in the eyes of his fellow-Poles, he was to remain
inactive1.
A month passed. The son waited in vain for his
father's summons to the field of action. Young Zamoj-
ski, whom Krasinski had wished to join in Geneva and
thence accompany to Poland, hurried to his country.
The boys who had sat with Krasinski in the school and
University benches joined the national ranks. He alone
was left behind, eating his heart out in rage, suspense,
despair. By this time, he probably knew that there
could be only one reason--when Polish mothers willing-
ly gave up their only sons to face death for their nation
--why his father withheld the permission to his son to
follow the traditions of his patriotic and famous house.
Apart from the outrage to his patriotism, the proud and
too sensitive boy, the descendant as he was of one of
the noblest families of Poland, was stung to the quick
by the disgrace of his position. Some adverse criticism
of both himself and his father appeared in Galignani.
Whether this was written by an enemy, perhaps -Lu-
bienski5, or whether it was the work of a well-wisher
of Krasinski, who, aware of his difficulties, intended
by this means to give him the advice he could not offer
in person, Zygmunt could not tell3. Half frenzied, after
Reeve had sent him the paper he wrote to his friend
a wild letter, which afterwards he begged Reeve to
burn and forget, or to keep it if he wished to see "what
extremities can drive a mind to, when tortured by pain":
the words are in English. Besides that letter several
others that passed between Reeve and Krasinski in these
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Dec. 18-22, 1830.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
3 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Jan. 22, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
41
days are missing. Probably both boys burnt communi-
cations that at this time of Krasinski's life were too
painful and too intimate to risk their being seen by
other eyes. But those that remain show us how Kra-
sinski was able to reveal to Reeve's sympathizing ears
the tortures of his soul which, even if he had not been
entirely cut off from them by the Rising, he could not
for his father's sake have confided to Polish friends.
"I am nailed to Rome until the moment when my
father writes to me to come," he tells Reeve in the
midst of his abandonment of anguish at sitting still
while others were dying for Poland, and at the thought
of how those who loved him, "and Henrietta herself,"
would be upbraiding him.
"The minister has refused me my passports; I have no
money: materially it is impossible for me to move. . . I pray,
for it is my only resource. My father will soon write to me to
join him. He is as good a Pole as any in Poland, and braver
than any of them. Yes," protests the son, refusing to look his
forebodings in the face, "he will send me the order to come,
and then I shall start. "
He breaks out again into English after that single
paragraph in French which, referring directly to his
father, is obviously written in a strain quite foreign to
the rest of the letter in case it should be opened in the
post by some other than Reeve.
"But it is impossible for another to suffer what I
do. I never leave my room except to visit Leach "--
the English friend referred to above:
I read, or rather I endeavour to read, in my lonely room. My
eyes, either filled with tears or dry with rage, cannot follow the
black letters upon the white paper. Oh! my dear Henry,
when rowing with you on blue Leman, when talking of love,
of hope, of future happiness, I never thought there would arrive
an hour in which I would see my fame stained and my honour
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? 42
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
gone, without being able to make the least endeavour to re-
cover them. Never, when I was happy in my love, when I
had many presentiments of future glory, did I think that I
would be obliged to dream while others are awake, to write
while others fight, to drink wine while others drink blood, and
to linger in a dungeon while others arise to freedom and light.
Then, clinging to his forlorn hope, he tells Reeve
that even yet a few weeks may see him riding in the
charge, and he speaks enthusiastically of Zamojski, the
friend by whose side he had longed to fight, and whose
exploits in the war he always followed with generous
admiration1.
Reeve wrote his answer, full of sympathy and of
somewhat tranquil advice ; seeking to reassure Zygmunt
with the fact that, from private letters, "I know that an
European war is inevitable," and "if so, Poland is
saved" : urging Krasinski to control his "unbridled en-
thusiasm "; and hinting broadly that against every
obstacle he had better make for Poland2.
In the early months of 1831, Rome was in a state
of panic, revolution having broken out in Italy. Orders
came from the Russian ambassador, bidding all Poles
who were natives of the Kingdom of Poland to quit
the Eternal City. Krasinski therefore went to Florence.
"I do not know what I shall do," he told Reeve,
writing in bad English, as he sat at his window, looking
down on the Arno. "I have no news neither from my
father nor from my friends in Poland. "
It appears from what follows, and from a passage
in the above letter from Reeve which crossed one of
Krasinski's, and in which Reeve begged him not to
heed what he--Reeve--had written, that in some letter
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Jan. 22, 1831.
2 Op- cit. Reeve to Krasinski. Geneva, Feb. 5, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
43
which Krasinski must have destroyed Reeve had used
expressions that had deeply wounded Krasinski, while
Krasinski in his turn had offended Reeve. Krasinski
declares passionately that Reeve is mistaken, that when
Zygmunt wrote to him whatever he did write he was
in mental delirium, broken-hearted. The strength of
the friendship that demanded perfect frankness was
proof against such misunderstandings on either side,
for which Krasinski's condition of mental overstrain,
apparent in the whole tenor of his reply to Reeve, was
probably responsible.
"Your last letter," says he," proves to me that I have gone
down in the estimation of my friend. Thank you for your
frankness. But you have never been in the position in which
I am, and you cannot allow for the influence on me of the
events, the cares of every day, of the want of hope and the
violence with which my soul is agitated within me. When a
man feels that he has just begun his career of misfortune, he
must resign himself to everything, arm himself with active
courage to hurl himself against obstacles, and with passive
courage to endure every torment, to expect the jeers of men,
the reproaches of his friends, the insults of mankind which so
much delights in insulting. . .
"I still write sometimes; but when I do I nearly always
play on the theme of some old legend concerning the fight of
man with the old enemy of the human race. I have begun to
read the Bible in English. Sublime! Manfred has also become
my favourite. " To a certain extent it influenced his Undivine
Comedy. "When the world casts us off, we must seek some-
thing above, and I have always loved the world of spirits.
Perhaps one day, when you hear it said: 'He is dead,' you
will no longer think what you thought of me when you wrote
your last letter. That letter pierced my heart. . . You let your-
self go in all the bitterness of mocking at a man who is your
best friend. I do not love you less, my dear Henry; but you
know I never hide what I feel1. "
Shortly after Krasinski wrote thus, he returned to
Geneva.
de Henry Reeve.
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? The First Exile
29
for Reeve was more or less enamoured of a Swiss
girl, Constance Sautter.
"I must tell you that the day before yesterday I was in
such a state of distress, of disgust"--Krasinski underlines his
English words--" boredom, melancholy, that life weighed on
me more than ever and, for the first time, the degrading idea
came to me of finishing with this world which has brought me
but few joys, taken from me as soon as I felt them. It was the
first time in my life that I have had the idea of suicide, so I
marked it down in my pocket-book. But I soon repulsed with
disdain that thought which can sometimes rise in a delirious
brain, but which can never be carried out except by a cowardly
heart that lacks nobility. .
"The night before last, being unable to close my eyes, I
read the work of M. Boissier, ' Shall we find them in a better
world? ' and I found there consolation, life and hope, though
the style is dry and dusty--and not one grain of poetry. When
I have finished the romance that is occupying me at present,
I shall write a work like it in Polish, but adding to it all the
charms of imagination and poetry that my weak mind can put
together--and I shall dedicate it to Her who inspired me with
it. You can well understand that it will be without name.
People can take it for a work of my imagination, and it will
rather be that of my heart1. "
Krasinski then gives Reeve a sketch of an essay
he had just been showing to their French teacher, and
asks for his opinion. It contains so strange a fore-
boding of what he suffered during the Rising that we
cannot altogether pass it by. Beginning with the words:
"I have known a really unhappy man," it goes on to
describe a youth at heart a poet, but who cannot express
himself. He loves, and his love, too, ends in failure, his
beloved casting him off by reason of his seeming
ineptitude. He becomes "dumb and stupefied " by his
misfortune. "It was given to the voice of an oppressed
country to wake him from this fearful lethargy. The
1 Correspondence de Sigisntond Krasinski et de Henry Reeve. Letter
to Reeve. Geneva, June 26, 1830.
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? 3<3 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
love of his native soil gave him back his moral strength.
Like the others, he was fain to march with a rapid step
to glory. " He goes to battle, but, worn out with grief, is
physically too weak to fight.
He was forced to exchange the field of honour for a bed
of suffering, while each of his brothers gave his blood for
liberty. Thus could he never express himself either in action
or in word. Despised, his heart torn by the cries of victory in
which he could not share, he died, leaving no name, exciting
no enthusiasm and moving no pity. (Fragment. June 24, 1830. )
Both Krasinski and Reeve were devoured with the
passion of the pen. Krasinski carefully keeps Reeve
informed upon everything that he writes and plans.
These include a pleasing story of the Polish legions,
animated with patriotic feeling and with the verve of a
soldier's son who had been brought up on the tradi-
tions of the legions, which came out in a Swiss magazine,
besides The Confession of Napoleon that stayed un-
known in Reeve's possession for more than half a
century. The last-named is very typical of the almost
religious veneration for Bonaparte that was to stand
for so much in the Anonymous Poet's philosophy.
On his side, Reeve sent Krasinski his verses for
inspection. Krasinski's friendships were always of a
markedly robust nature. He idealized every man and
woman he loved: but he never hesitated, as we see
from his correspondence with his friends, to remonstrate
fearlessly when he disapproved in any way of their
conduct or opinions. In his letters to Reeve, he
candidly criticizes the latter's literary attempts; yet the
generosity of a man who, in his own career as a writer
never envied or detracted another's fame, is already
patent. He thinks Reeve immeasurably superior to
himself, and although he takes exception to some of his
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? The First Exile
31
friend's expressions he is always eager to seize upon
anything that he can praise. In this case it must be
confessed that Krasinski's heart triumphed over his
head, for it is obvious that he genuinely admired the
shocking doggerel that Reeve turned out.
"I have received," writes he, italicizing as usual his English
phrases, "your piece about Polish Freedom. 'Here a nation lies'
is exceedingly good and beautiful. But, my dear fellow, I will
tell you my opinion frankly. The verses are written rather
hastily and carelessly; but as for the rest it is a beautiful piece,
the more beautiful for me because it reminds me both of a
native country and of a friend who wrote it.
"You are, my dear Reeve," he goes on, reverting to their
love affairs, "admirably cold blooded for a man in love. You
write me these words: 'whom perhaps I shall never see again':
without a fault in spelling, and without so far as I can see your
pen having trembled in your hand. My dear fellow, I envy
you that energy, that strength, that want of feeling, or rather
that calm, that resignation. I could not be capable of them1. "
"'Those whom the gods love die young,'" writes, on an-
other occasion, the poet who was never to see old age. "It
is the truest saying I have ever read or heard. And what shall
we do, my dear Henry, when life will be only vegetation? The
rose we once loved and adored as an emblem and a symbol,
we shall be dissecting then to find out how many petals it
has and how many lines lengthwise its calyx has. Where we
saw soul and life we shall only see matter and weight. A pair
of compasses and circle are what await us. Love and poetry
are what we shall leave behind us. But perhaps God will not
let us thus change; perhaps our grave is not far off, and the
flowers are about to grow above us2.
"If we might only be consumed away with great thoughts
and a slow agony in the arms of those we adore! This is my
wish as a poet, but as a man, as a Pole, can it be the same?
No. I must think of other things; and while for you the heart
may be your world, for me love is only a song piped in the
intervals of the acts of life; and yet I would give all for love
to be my life. My dear Henry, do not think that my affairs
are going so badly. No. She loves me still. . . . And even if that
1 Op. cit. To Reeve. July 8, 1830.
2 The italics in the text are always Krasinski's own which he employs
when he writes in English.
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? 32 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
were not the case She has loved me. That is enough. The
thoughts that have turned towards me can no more be lost.
Thought is immortal, and her love will be immortal as her
thought is. In the same manner if C. has loved you each of
her great and sublime thoughts has departed from her heart
like a ray of the sun, and mounted to heaven. You have a
great, an enormous advantage over me. Your kingdom can
be not of this world, if you will. Mine is in part chained to
the earth by my country. I am like Vulcan falling from
heaven, and unable either to return to heaven or reach the
earth. I am suspended in space by a chain of steel that
penetrates my heart, that gnaws it and will perhaps break it1. "
Here, with Reeve's return to Geneva, the corre-
spondence ceased for some months. In August the
friends took a trip into the mountains. Among the
beautiful scenes through which they passed Krasinski
dreamed constantly of Henrietta. He beguiled away
a tedious journey on muleback by writing a poem to
her: apparently a very bad one, for he and the Polish
poet, Jijdward OdyriieCj to whom he showed it, laughed
over it together.
Odyniec, who had been a frequent guest at the
Krasinski palace, was now in Switzerland, travelling
with Mickiewicz. When he had last seen Krasinski in
his father's house he had thought him nothing more
than a lively and clever boy. He found now, he says
himself, a youth full of fire and genius, "if not yet a
thinker, at least a dreamer-poet; though he does not
know how to write poetry and only tries his powers in
prose .
- In common with all Polish youths Krasinski wor-
shipped Mickiewicz and had devoured his poems: but,
brought face to face with him, the enthusiastic boy's
first impressions were those of disappointment. The
1 Op. cit. To Reeve. Geneva, July 14, 1830.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? The First Exile
33
three--Mickiewicz, Odyniec and Krasinski--started on
a tour through Switzerland. They had not been to-
gether long before Krasinski was carried away with
admiration for the great poet whose devotion to the
moral welfare of the youth of Poland had sent him in-
to prison and exile.
"I have learnt from him," wrote Krasinski to his father,
"to look at the things of this world more coolly, in a finer way,
more impartially. I have got rid of many prejudices and false
ideas1. "
The journey at close quarters with one of the
greatest poets in Europe filled Krasinski with inspi-
ration. Its first result was that in a French journal of
the expedition which he wrote as he went along, nomi-
nally for Henrietta, he had already corrected some of
the affectations in his style3. The descriptions of
scenery given in this diary are so true to life that Dr
Kallenbach speaks of its pages as "impregnated with
the breath of Switzerland. " But, poetical as are Kra-
sinski's pictures of nature, they always lack the wonder-
ful charm of Mickiewicz's magnificent word-paintings.
Krasinski loved nature: but the moments where she
plays any part in his poetry--exquisite and ethereal
moments, it is true--are rare, and are invariably only
there as the necessary accompaniment to a deeper
passion behind.
In the dungeon of Chillon Mickiewicz, looking
round at a scene that reminded him of the prison
where he and his dearest friends had once languished,
spoke to his companions of human tyranny and its in-
capacity to touch the soul. Zygmunt, hearing for the
first time Mickiewicz discoursing in his own particular
1 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunl Krasinski. 2 Op. at.
3
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? 34 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
and enthralling manner, hung on his words so that, even
in the spot immortalized by Byron, he forgot the Eng-
lish poet to whom his heart had hitherto gone out.
This episode in the castle of Chillon was to give Polish
literature one of Krasinski's most tragic poems: The
Last.
It was after a conversation with Mickiewicz that
Krasinski wrote the essay on the meeting of souls in
the next world, of which he had spoken to Reeve. It
was published the same year--1830--in Warsaw under
the title: Fragment from an old Slavonic manuscript.
Tender and poetical, philosophical rather than religious,
it bases the certainty that there shall not be endless
parting on the power of the will to compass its desire,
on the innate love planted by the Creator in the soul
for no transitory purpose, and on the fact of that love
being stronger than death. It presents a decided
spiritual link with the Treatise of the Trinity, written
years later. The mystical bent of Krasinski's mind
shows itself already in the tendency of his youthful
writings to deal with semi-spiritual topics, which from
an orthodox point of view he handles rather vaguely.
The French papers that streamed from Krasinski's
pen, in the autumn months of 1830 before he left
Geneva, range for the most part on melancholy themes.
Death is the subject of many of them. Ecrit la Nuit,
"with emotion and fear," he adds in Polish, where his
soul goes out with questioning and yearning to the
spirits of the dead, is the anticipation of his Three
Thoughts1. Le fournal dun Mourant, La Vie, the
latter a morbidly gloomy description of man's life,
1 J. Kallenbach, Prdface. Correspottdance de Sigismond Krasinski et
de Henry Reeve.
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? The First Exile
35
and other fragments of the kind, close Krasinski's first
and singularly strenuous year in Switzerland. .
In the October of 1830 it seemed probable that
war between Russia and France would follow on the
Revolution of July. Krasinski's father was anxious to
remove his only son from the vicinity of a belligerent
country, and sent him into Italy, deaf to Zygmunt's
entreaty that the England of his Henrietta might be
his destination. On the third of November Krasinski
and Jakubowski set out over the Simplon. Reeve and
the Pole, Zamojski, went with Krasinski as far as the first
mile out of Geneva, and then the boys bade each other
a regretful farewell. Krasinski, giving himself up to the
pain of parting with those who had been his favourite
companions for a year past, cared nothing for what
he saw before his eyes during his journey, and his
chief emotion on arriving at Florence was that he
had reached a crisis with Henrietta Willan. He wrote
to her from Florence in reply to some apparently rather
hysterical letters that he found waiting for him there,
telling her clearly that though he would love her for
ever he could never marry her, and could only write
to her as her lover till she married, from which time he
would be her faithful friend, and that alone.
"O my dear Henry" he cries in English, but passing im-
mediately into French, "if I wrote all that to her it is because
duty forced me to do it, for I love her more violently than
ever, and it would have been so sweet not to break this illusion
yet, to begin again the beautiful days of that love which made
me so happy. "
After some warm expressions of affection for Reeve, he
ends: "I am an enemy to tirades of friendship, but I will only
say these few words: I am your friend for life and till death1. "
He tells his friend how in the midst of his agitations
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Florence, Nov. 18, 1830.
3--2
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?
2,6 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
his only calm moments were when he betook himself
to the contemplation of the Medici Venus:
For she is perfect beauty; and beauty, whether it be of
marble or flesh and blood, is always an anodyne in hours of
anguish, and, at the same time, a stimulus in hours of apathy.
He entered Rome with indifference as he relates in
the same letter: "because strong emotions age the
soul, as strong shocks age the body. " But the con-
clusion of the letter changes to the more natural note
of the young Pole looking for the first time on the
grandeur of the Eternal City. With Mickiewicz, then
in Rome, he visited St Peter's, which moved him
religiously not at all. His great moment came to him
in the Coliseum. At the sight of the ruined amphi-
theatre, in Krasinski's day a scene of the most poetical
desolation, which to the Pole was the enduring testi-
mony of the triumph of an oppressed cause against an
empire's power, inspiration flooded the youth's soul.
Polish art has represented the Anonymous Poet dream-
ing within the walls of the Coliseum: for it was in its
moonlit arches that Krasinski conceived the idea of
Iridion, and there that he places what is not merely the
crisis of his mystical drama, but the great spiritual key-
note of the theory of salvation that he built up for his
people.
"On a beautiful moonlight night," thus the letter to Reeve,
"I entered under those arcades which have seen so many
generations, and have not crumbled away under the weight
of either men or time. "
He heard in fancy the discordant cries of the. Circus, the
"soft and tremulous" hymn of the Christian martyrs.
At this moment the moon appeared on the walls of the
Coliseum, as though she rose from a tangle of ivy which fell in
festoons from the summit of the building. Columns, arcades,
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? The First Exile 37
porticoes, the seats of the Caesars, of the senators, of the
populace, stood out, pallid and in ruins. The arena was laid
bare. In the centre rose a cross of black wood. To me that
cross is worth the Cathedral of Milan and the church of St
Peter's. That cross was persecuted in this spot, many centuries
ago, when the Coliseum represented all the might of those
who had built it. And that cross. . . to-day stands erect where
it was trampled underfoot, and the superb Coliseum which
proudly beheld its humiliation is now being consumed to dust
around it. But it has no aspect of pride in its triumph. In
silence it stretches its black arms to the two sides of the
building, and seems to cast a shadow of peace and benediction
on the earth where persecutors and persecuted sleep.
Let him who does not believe in Christ go to the Coliseum
on a fine night; and if he does not fall on his knees before
the symbol of faith that man, I say beforehand, has neither
soul nor heart1.
News travelled slowly in those days, and when Kra-
sinski penned these words he was ignorant of what had
happened in his country. Before his next letter, written
a week later, all Europe rang with the news that the
Polish nation had risen to arms. That gallant struggle,
with its tale of heroism, of failure and of martyrdom,
broke out in Warsaw on the night of November 29,
1830.
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Dec. 9, 1830.
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? /
CHAPTER III
THE SACRIFICE
(1830-1831)
For the next ten months Poland was the battle-field of a
nation fighting unaided for her life. The Rising of 1830
cannot correctly be called an insurrection. It was a war
for rights that had been guaranteed by a European
treaty, which all the powers of Europe had signed. It
was waged by a small but national army, swelled by
the rally to its banners of men and women of every class
and condition, who fought side by side with a passion
of patriotic abnegation. Brilliant victories marked the
first months of the war. For a time it seemed as though
Poland were about to secure her freedom.
The news of the November night was as the call
of the trumpet to the youth of Poland. In intense
agitation, Krasinski wrote off to Reeve. By way of
safeguard in case his letter should be opened by others
he wrote in English1. His father who, it must be re-
membered, held a high command in the Polish army,
was in the thick of events, of which Krasinski, far from
the scene, could gain no accurate information.
"The day-break is peeping. . . but at present we do not know
I whether it is the dawn of new life, or the glimpse which
appears when a nation is about to be destroyed. I am in great
anguish. The newspapers are full of obscure words. A thou-
sand thanks to God! I have been assured that my father
1 I always give Krasinski's English entirely as it stands, only correcting
what are obvious slips of the pen.
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? The Sacrifice
39
escaped the dangers of the 29th of November "--when the first
fighting began--"and that he sent his resignation to the
Emperor; but what will happen further? . . . No human strength
or aid can help us in this desperate cause, but the same God
who has said: 'Let there be light,' and light appeared, may
now say: ' Let Poland be,' and Poland will grow gigantic and
free. Write to me instantly what Zamojski thinks of doing.
I am in the greatest incertitude. Write to me very soon, for
every day may change my position and throw me forward to
fields of blood and death. "
He then alludes to an English friend of his own
and of Reeve in Rome to whom Krasinski says he will
give his last remembrances for Henrietta before he sets
out for the war. He assures Reeve that:
As often as I shall be able to give you news of me, I shall.
You, however, can still address me at Rome ; for I must remain
here until I receive certain instructions from my father. Par-
don me, I write in such a miserable manner in English, but I
am now troubled and agitated with fever in brain and body. . .
I must tell you that I am in a strange and difficult position.
The cause is too long to be explained in this letter, but if you
remember our talk on the subject you will understand fully
the devilish position in which I am. It always seems to me
that a fatal destiny hangs over my head as the sword of
Damocles. Heaven grant that it may be removed or that it
may fall soon; oh! soon, for to live amid tortures is to begin
hell on earth.
It is evident that Krasinski was already racked with
the misgiving that was to become a certainty. Even if he
did not--and he probably did--strongly suspect that
Wincenty Krasinski was not preparing to throw in his
lot with the national cause, his apprehensions that his
father would prevent his going to the war gave him no
rest. He adds several despairing pages, "mad and
troubled," as he says himself, feeling that he " was born
to defend my country, for I love it with the impassioned
love of the patriot, and my breast burns when I hear
its name," equally convinced that to his eternal shame
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? 40 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
in the eyes of his fellow-Poles, he was to remain
inactive1.
A month passed. The son waited in vain for his
father's summons to the field of action. Young Zamoj-
ski, whom Krasinski had wished to join in Geneva and
thence accompany to Poland, hurried to his country.
The boys who had sat with Krasinski in the school and
University benches joined the national ranks. He alone
was left behind, eating his heart out in rage, suspense,
despair. By this time, he probably knew that there
could be only one reason--when Polish mothers willing-
ly gave up their only sons to face death for their nation
--why his father withheld the permission to his son to
follow the traditions of his patriotic and famous house.
Apart from the outrage to his patriotism, the proud and
too sensitive boy, the descendant as he was of one of
the noblest families of Poland, was stung to the quick
by the disgrace of his position. Some adverse criticism
of both himself and his father appeared in Galignani.
Whether this was written by an enemy, perhaps -Lu-
bienski5, or whether it was the work of a well-wisher
of Krasinski, who, aware of his difficulties, intended
by this means to give him the advice he could not offer
in person, Zygmunt could not tell3. Half frenzied, after
Reeve had sent him the paper he wrote to his friend
a wild letter, which afterwards he begged Reeve to
burn and forget, or to keep it if he wished to see "what
extremities can drive a mind to, when tortured by pain":
the words are in English. Besides that letter several
others that passed between Reeve and Krasinski in these
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Dec. 18-22, 1830.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
3 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Jan. 22, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
41
days are missing. Probably both boys burnt communi-
cations that at this time of Krasinski's life were too
painful and too intimate to risk their being seen by
other eyes. But those that remain show us how Kra-
sinski was able to reveal to Reeve's sympathizing ears
the tortures of his soul which, even if he had not been
entirely cut off from them by the Rising, he could not
for his father's sake have confided to Polish friends.
"I am nailed to Rome until the moment when my
father writes to me to come," he tells Reeve in the
midst of his abandonment of anguish at sitting still
while others were dying for Poland, and at the thought
of how those who loved him, "and Henrietta herself,"
would be upbraiding him.
"The minister has refused me my passports; I have no
money: materially it is impossible for me to move. . . I pray,
for it is my only resource. My father will soon write to me to
join him. He is as good a Pole as any in Poland, and braver
than any of them. Yes," protests the son, refusing to look his
forebodings in the face, "he will send me the order to come,
and then I shall start. "
He breaks out again into English after that single
paragraph in French which, referring directly to his
father, is obviously written in a strain quite foreign to
the rest of the letter in case it should be opened in the
post by some other than Reeve.
"But it is impossible for another to suffer what I
do. I never leave my room except to visit Leach "--
the English friend referred to above:
I read, or rather I endeavour to read, in my lonely room. My
eyes, either filled with tears or dry with rage, cannot follow the
black letters upon the white paper. Oh! my dear Henry,
when rowing with you on blue Leman, when talking of love,
of hope, of future happiness, I never thought there would arrive
an hour in which I would see my fame stained and my honour
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89102083045 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 42
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
gone, without being able to make the least endeavour to re-
cover them. Never, when I was happy in my love, when I
had many presentiments of future glory, did I think that I
would be obliged to dream while others are awake, to write
while others fight, to drink wine while others drink blood, and
to linger in a dungeon while others arise to freedom and light.
Then, clinging to his forlorn hope, he tells Reeve
that even yet a few weeks may see him riding in the
charge, and he speaks enthusiastically of Zamojski, the
friend by whose side he had longed to fight, and whose
exploits in the war he always followed with generous
admiration1.
Reeve wrote his answer, full of sympathy and of
somewhat tranquil advice ; seeking to reassure Zygmunt
with the fact that, from private letters, "I know that an
European war is inevitable," and "if so, Poland is
saved" : urging Krasinski to control his "unbridled en-
thusiasm "; and hinting broadly that against every
obstacle he had better make for Poland2.
In the early months of 1831, Rome was in a state
of panic, revolution having broken out in Italy. Orders
came from the Russian ambassador, bidding all Poles
who were natives of the Kingdom of Poland to quit
the Eternal City. Krasinski therefore went to Florence.
"I do not know what I shall do," he told Reeve,
writing in bad English, as he sat at his window, looking
down on the Arno. "I have no news neither from my
father nor from my friends in Poland. "
It appears from what follows, and from a passage
in the above letter from Reeve which crossed one of
Krasinski's, and in which Reeve begged him not to
heed what he--Reeve--had written, that in some letter
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Jan. 22, 1831.
2 Op- cit. Reeve to Krasinski. Geneva, Feb. 5, 1831.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89102083045 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? The Sacrifice
43
which Krasinski must have destroyed Reeve had used
expressions that had deeply wounded Krasinski, while
Krasinski in his turn had offended Reeve. Krasinski
declares passionately that Reeve is mistaken, that when
Zygmunt wrote to him whatever he did write he was
in mental delirium, broken-hearted. The strength of
the friendship that demanded perfect frankness was
proof against such misunderstandings on either side,
for which Krasinski's condition of mental overstrain,
apparent in the whole tenor of his reply to Reeve, was
probably responsible.
"Your last letter," says he," proves to me that I have gone
down in the estimation of my friend. Thank you for your
frankness. But you have never been in the position in which
I am, and you cannot allow for the influence on me of the
events, the cares of every day, of the want of hope and the
violence with which my soul is agitated within me. When a
man feels that he has just begun his career of misfortune, he
must resign himself to everything, arm himself with active
courage to hurl himself against obstacles, and with passive
courage to endure every torment, to expect the jeers of men,
the reproaches of his friends, the insults of mankind which so
much delights in insulting. . .
"I still write sometimes; but when I do I nearly always
play on the theme of some old legend concerning the fight of
man with the old enemy of the human race. I have begun to
read the Bible in English. Sublime! Manfred has also become
my favourite. " To a certain extent it influenced his Undivine
Comedy. "When the world casts us off, we must seek some-
thing above, and I have always loved the world of spirits.
Perhaps one day, when you hear it said: 'He is dead,' you
will no longer think what you thought of me when you wrote
your last letter. That letter pierced my heart. . . You let your-
self go in all the bitterness of mocking at a man who is your
best friend. I do not love you less, my dear Henry; but you
know I never hide what I feel1. "
Shortly after Krasinski wrote thus, he returned to
Geneva.
