No More Learning

Iridioti. On the same pyre and at the same moment, both
he and Severus.
Elsinoe. Not so, not so. Let me be given my last desire.
Spare Alexander on the field of battle. He alone with one
look calmed my despair. He alone guessed--ah! why hast
thou turned thy face away from me?
Iridion. Think not of him. He alone is now tearing Rome
from the clasp of my hatred.
Elsinoe. Then once more press thy sister to thy bosom.
Feelest thou how this heart throbs? Ere thou returnest it will
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? Iridion
157
have broken, son of Amphilochus. But remember Elsinoe
desired no blood of thee. Let live all, all! Even he, the abomi-
nated, let him live.
Voices outside the palace. Forward, in the name of the
Fortune of Iridion the Greek!
Iridion. Away with untimely mourning when Nemesis
already holds the crown of vengeance for us in each hand. In
that clash of arms, in those cries leaps my life: and must thou
die? Rather be happy and proud. What thy father invoked,
what long centuries have besought of the gods with tears, ap-
proacheth with the swiftness of the thunderbolt.
Voices. Iridion! Iridion!
Iridion. Farewell.
Elsinoe. Go! Be thou happy and great: and if ever thou
shalt sail on the Aegean waters cast a handful of my ashes on
Chiara's shores.
They part, never to see each other more. It is the
night for which Iridion has lived, the night of Rome's
destruction. His barbarians, the slaves he has bribed
by his gifts, his gladiators, his soldiers, are outside
his palace together with Masinissa. Scarcely able to
brook the delay before Rome's funeral pyre shall be
fired, Iridion feverishly awaits the advent of Simeon's
Christians, when the slaughter is to begin.
Iridion. The whole city is in flames. Nay--it was but in
my eyeballs that fires burst forth. Where are they? Where
are the Christians? If they have betrayed me I am lost.
Masinissa. They are finishing their hymns.
A messenger from Simeon here hurries in, summon-
ing Iridion to the catacombs. Victor is keeping back
the Christians.
From a literal point of view the refusal of the
Christians to rally round Iridion could not doom to
failure a leader who had by now nearly every element
in Rome under his control1. But Iridion is not meant
to be taken literally. It is an allegory, and as such
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 158 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
must be read, with on the one hand its various historical
inaccuracies, required by Krasinski for his purpose, such
as the open displayal of the cross in the catacombs, with,
on the other, its strong colouring of historical truth.
Iridion's dependence on the Christians is one of the
ethical foundations upon which the whole of Krasinski's
conception rests. Whatever the material strength on
Iridion's side he cannot win because hatred is only
destructive, and in the Krasinskian theory love only
can build the edifice. The work, therefore, of the son
of vengeance must be shattered by the only force in
Rome that is more powerful than his, because this force
only is the force of love.
Iridion rushes to the catacombs. On the steps of
the altar stands Victor with his priests behind him. On
one side kneels Simeon, on the other Cornelia. Further
off are Christians fully armed, but also on their knees.
Stern and immovable, Victor sees the delusions of Satan
equally in Simeon's whole-hearted but filial pleadings
for war and in the frenzy of Cornelia. Into this scene
of discord bursts Iridion, greeted by Cornelia as Christ,
calling upon the Christians to follow him where:
Caesar and the gods of the city only await the resurrection of
the saints to perish.
Simeon. Hieronimus, Hieronimus, I stretch my hands forth
to thee, unto our hopes.
Choir. Ask Victor.
Iridion. Father!
Victor. To-day thou hast lost thy Father Who is in heaven.
Cornelia (to Iridion). Forgive him, Lord! He knoweth not
what he doth. To arms! To arms!
Then Victor is suddenly moved to give his flock a
sign that will convince them. He constrains Cornelia
to kneel before the chalice, he takes holy water, and
begins the exorcism. For the last time she cries:
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? Iridion 159
To arms!
Victor. Silence, evil spirit, that speakest through her delu-
sion. With the sign of the cross I encompass thee. With the
word "Jesus" I command thee.
Cornelia. I hear a hundred wails in my bosom that are not
mine.
Iridion. Here, beloved, to my arms!
Cornelia. Oh, earth, sink under me, hide me from his deadly
look!
Iridion. Cornelia, thou, thou art mine.
Cornelia. Call her not by that name. She trusted thee. She
hath perished for ever. Laughter tears the air. Black spectres
circle round thee.
Victor. Apage, Satanas!
Cornelia. Come not thou near me. Where is my God?
Victor {showing her the cross). Here, daughter.
Cornelia. Give it to my lips. {She kisses the cross. ) Forgive
me, forgive me!
Victor. Dost thou abjure the evil spirit?
Cornelia. I abjure him. {She falls. ) Brothers, he duped her,
he duped you all. I die. But listen! listen! I die in the Lord.
She sinks at the feet of Victor with his blessing in
her ear. One last cry of Iridion calls her to his arms in
vain. "Hieronimus, I pardon thee. Hieronimus, pray
thou to Christ": and she speaks to him no more, dying
amidst the scent of flowers from paradise.
Not a Christian, except those few from the north
who are faithful to the son of Grimhilda, will now join
Iridion. He dashes away the cross that he carried upon
his armour: then rushes to the war whence as he knows
all hope has gone. Soon a slave escapes from the palace,
which Alexander's troops have captured, to carry to
Iridion the account of the death of Heliogabalus and
Elsinoe. Whimpering and singing by turns, Helioga-
balus was found by the soldiers fingering the cup of
poison that he was afraid to drink: and they despatched
him off the stage as ignominiously as he had lived upon
it. But Elsinoe,. having robed herself in imperial purple
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? 160 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
and taken a dagger in her hand, sat silent and calm on
the throne, listening as the clamour of the conflict
swelled ever nearer. Soldiers rushed into her apartment
with, at their head, Alexander shouting to them to save
her life. The slave who had protected her with his own
body falters out to the brother her last words: "Iridion,
I will not love thine enemy": and--a victim to the end
--she stabbed herself and died.
"Death to Alexander! " is now Iridion's cry. He is
seen by his foes, fighting, says Ulpianus, "more like the
spirit of incarnate hatred than mortal man. " The chorus
of the mourning women has not died away around
Elsinoe's bier in her father's palace when Ulpianus
crosses the threshold, with overtures of peace from the
new emperor, Alexander Severus.
Now for the first time Iridion throws off the mask
which he has been compelled to wear in the face of
Rome, and appears as his true self, the avenger upon
the race that has destroyed Greece. He is no longer
the feigned favourite of a despicable tyrant, or a cunning
intriguer. In this scene he has the grandeur of one who
is speaking in the name of a wronged cause to the repre-
sentative of a nation whose right is might, who--such
is Ulpianus's proud boast--has conquered the world by
iron and will keep it by iron: and Krasinski strengthens
the position by making the spokesman of Rome no
effete decadent but the survivor of the best traditions
of a bloodthirsty and overbearing race. The question at
odds is that of the unending war between the material,
represented by Rome, and the beautiful and ideal,
represented by artistic Greece: it is that of the struggle
between brute force and the idea: but neither of these,
reading between Krasinski's lines, was uppermost in
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? Iridion 161
his mind. This last colloquy between Roman and Greek
is in truth one of Krasinski's great outbursts of nation-
alism. In the impassioned reproaches of the Greek are
those of the Pole, speaking in the person of his Iridion
the complaints of another conquered people against
another empire in the only language free to him to utter
--the language of symbolism.
"Tell him," says Iridion, motioning to his crowd of gladiators
and slaves, "who was it that thrust you from the highroad
of the human race and forced you to tread the paths of dark-
ness? Who from your cradles stamped on your brows the sign of
hunger and thirst? Who would not suffer you to love a woman
and to sit in the light of your domestic hearth? Who, herself
mortal, based her sweetest hopes in the misery and degradation
of mortals? Who hath emptied to its dregs the chalice of the
world's woe? Who hath grown drunken in the nectar of tears
and blood? "
And the answer of all is: Rome.
"Wouldst thou," disdainfully asks the Roman, "give the
sceptre to playing, singing Hellas? Rule is with the power
of arms under the protection of unfaltering reason. "
To which Iridion:
The martyrs of the nations have heard of your reason.
Thou hast spoken truth. Never has Hellas polluted herself
with a like reason.
What have you done with the world since the gods of evil
gave it to your hands? There stand triumphal arches and the
highroads of the aediles. Ye have inscribed the stones of them
with the blood and sweat of the dying. Where have thy for-
bears lulled the grief of the conquered with tender song, with
the teaching of wisdom?
Ulpianus. Dost thou refuse the mercy of thy lord?
Iridion. Who is my lord? I have known none on earth.
I have had enemies only, a few brothers who served me faith-
fully, and one godlike moment, short as the clash of swords
that are shattered at one stroke. The torch of vengeance flared
in this hand. The doomed city lay at my feet. Ah! Nemesis!
(He leans on the statue of Amphilochus. )
Cursing Rome, he returns to the battle. An unseen
G.
ii
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? 162 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
presence hovers about him, at the thought of which his
cheek blanches and his sword trembles in his hand.
Ah, why dost thou pursue me, invisible spirit? Christ--
Christ--what is that name to me? Off! Torment me not,
Cornelia.
His soldiers abandon him for Alexander. He steps
upon his sister's funeral pyre, and summons death.
Masinissa snatches him from the flames: and the two
disappear to human sight.
They are on a mountain near Rome. There lies the
city in the mists of distance, beautiful, superb, eternal.
For what had Iridion sacrificed himself and all those
whom his road had crossed?
Oh, thou whom I loved for thy sorrows, Hellas, Hellas, wert
thou but a shade? Thy enemy stands unmoved as erst, and
displays her marbles to the sun like the white fangs of the tiger.
Wherefore am I here?
He flings himself upon the ground.
Masinissa. Thy calling is not over yet.
Iridion. Torture me not. My father died in thy arms.
My sister expired in the palace of the Caesars. I at thy feet
breathe my last. Is not this enough for thee? The innocent
maiden I sacrificed to thee hath floated in the sky on mournful
wailings. Ah! if her God lived over all other gods--if He were
the one truth of the world!
Masinissa. What wouldst thou do then?
Iridion. Dying with this shattered steel in my hands I would
call upon Him.
Masinissa. Our Father Who art in heaven give long days
to Rome. Forgive them who betrayed me. Save them who
through all time have oppressed my native land.
Iridion. Nay. Our Father Who art in heaven love Hellas
as I loved her. Tell me in this last hour, Masinissa, thou who
hast deceived me,--oh, speak swifter, swifter,--if Christ is the
lord of heaven and earth.
This witness Masinissa bears. It is that of an
immortal enemy to his immortal Enemy. Gaze on the city of
thy hatred. Knowest thou who shall tear it from the hands
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? Iridion
163
of thy brothers when they shall plough Italy into furrows of
blood and beds of ashes? The Nazarene! For the second time
He shall deify Rome before the nations of the world.
Iridion. Ah! I desired without measure, I laboured without
rest to destroy, even as others desire without measure, labour
without rest to love. And now to one who dieth thou announc-
est the immortality of Rome.
Masinissa. Despair not, for the time shall come when the
cross shall in vain stretch out its arms to shelter in its bosom
those departing from it. Then at all the gates of the city shall
be heard complaints and lamentation--then the genius of Rome
shall again hide her face, and her weeping shall have no end:
for on the Forum shall remain only dust, in the Circus only
ruins, on the Capitol only shame. And my war on earth shall
be drawing near its end.
Iridion. My heart beats once more. Is that day still far?
Masinissa. I myself can scarce foresee it.
Iridion. Oh, Amphilochus, then thy son was but a dream.
(To Masinissa) Go! On this rock, gazing in the eyes of Rome,
I will die as I have lived in solitude of soul.
The tempter's direct assault on a human soul now
opens. He is Satan undisguised. His instruments are
still man's higher instincts. He makes no attempt to
slay Iridion's newborn, if flickering, faith in Christ. On
the contrary he directs that faith itself against God1.
If Iridion will abjure Christ Masinissa promises him
that he shall behold the humiliation of Rome. He shall
be plunged into a sleep of ages to awake therefrom on
the day: "when on the Forum there shall be only dust,
in the Circus only bones, and on the Capitol shame. "
In exchange he must be Masinissa's eternal prey.
Iridion swears to the bond: and as the words leave his
lips a cry of grief and despair, uttered by the voice that
had once spoken to him of Christian prayer and pardon,
wails in the sky above him. He is led by Masinissa to
a cavern under a mountain where there is "nor dawn
1 J. Kleiner, History of the Thought 0/ Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 164 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
nor stars nor voice nor pain nor dreams. " There shall
he sleep till the day of vengeance.
Here ends the dramatic form of the play. Krasinski
tells the final fate of his Thought in an epilogue re-
sembling in style the introduction.
Oh, my Thought, thou hast lasted out the centuries. Thou
didst slumber in the day of Alaric and in the day of the great
Attila. Neither the ring of the imperial crown on the rough
brow of Charlemagne, nor Rienzi, tribune of the people, woke
thee. And the consecrated lords of the Vatican passed one
after the other before thee, as shadows before a shadow. But
to-day thou shalt arise, oh, my Thought!
The voice which reacheth not heaven but to which the earth
thundereth back from her hidden depths has cried: "Oh, my
son! "
and at the call of Masinissa Iridion rises and is led by
him over the Campagna into the Eternal City.
Thou hast stood in the Roman Campagna. She hath
nought with which to conceal her shame before thy gaze. The
aqueducts, running to the city, finding no city have halted.
The stones that have fallen from them lie there in graveyard
heaps.
The son of the ages beheld, and rejoiced in the justice of
his vengeance. Each ruin and the plains, widowed of amphi-
theatres, and the hills, orphaned of temples, were his recompense.
And by the road of graves his terrible guide led him to the
gates of Rome.
They traverse the streets of the city, the ruins of
imperial Rome. They reach the Forum, where Iridion
can "recognize nought, call nought by its name in the
hour of his triumph. " They behold on the Palatine shape-
less remains through which Iridion had last walked as
the Caesar's palace. They reach the Coliseum: and here
their pilgrimage is ended.
On the silent arena, on the silver sand, amidst arcades
changed into wild rocks, with ivy on their summits, with great
fissures in their wombs, thou didst praise the fates for fallen
Rome.
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? Iridion
165
As he stands where all is silence and decay he hears
in fancy the trumpets that shall never ring there again,
the cries of combatant and populace, the hymns of
Christian martyrs. He sees as he stands gazing on the
moonlit ruin, even as Krasinski himself stood there,
dreaming the dream of which Iridion is the realization,
a cross erect on the spot where its followers died.
In thee a strange feeling wakes: not pity for Rome, for her
desolation scarce sufficeth for her sins; not terror at thy chosen
lot, for thou hast suffered too much to fear: not grief at leaving
mother earth, for in thy sleep of ages thou hast forgotten the
love of life: but some remembrance of a maiden's face--some
sorrow for that cross which of old thou didst disdain. But now
it seemeth to thee that thou desirest war with it no more, that
it is weary as thou, mournful as erst the fate of Hellas--and
holy for evermore.
In the Coliseum begins the last struggle for Iridion's
soul. Masinissa, with the fury of the captor about to
claim his prey, strives to drag him from the cross where
with prayerless lips he stands. Below are the wails of
the martyrs whose blood once reddened the arena: on
high the wails of the angels. But above them all rings
a louder cry. In the light of the moon shines a radiant
form, and Iridion, raising his eyes, sees a face he knew,
now transfigured for ever, on which he gazes to take
his everlasting farewell.
"Immortal Enemy," cries Masinissa, "he is mine
because he lived in revenge and he hated Rome. " But
the arena is silver with the wings of her who is wrest-
ling for Iridion's salvation, whose cry is ever: "Oh,
Lord, he is mine because he loved Greece. "
This conflict between the pleas of love and hatred
can by the very idea of Iridion end only in the victory
of love. Hatred falls beaten twofold. Because though
Iridion had hated Rome he had loved Greece. He had
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? 166 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
sinned, not because like Henrykof The UndivineComedy
he had loved too little, but because he had loved much:
because the love of Cornelia, whom he had wronged,
and who, forgiving him all, saved him by her prayers,
must be stronger to bring about its end than the hatred
of a Masinissa.
Arise, oh, son of Greece! In the mist of dawn the linea-
ments of thy foe fade ever more darkly away. His voice is
now only as the murmur of far off waters. By Cornelia's
testimony, by Cornelia's prayers, thou art saved, because thou
didst love Greece.
But because for the love of Greece he had hated,
and had fought for her with ignoble means, he can only
work out his promised salvation by expiation. Herein
lies the grandeur of the Polish poet's conception and
the peculiar point of all his work for his country. The
fruit of hatred is death and destruction. Love only is
constructive. Iridion worked in hatred and his work
failed. Now he shall work in love, and his work shall
triumph. I n the sentence pronounced upon him by God,
as he still stands in the Coliseum, the Anonymous Poet
abandons so far as might be the allegory under which
he was constrained to tell his Thought, and speaks as
directly as he dared to Poland.
"Go to the north in the name of Christ Go and halt not
till thou standest in the land of graves and crosses. Thou shalt
know it by the silence of men and the sadness of little children,
by the burnt huts of the poor and the ruined palaces of the
exiles. Thou shalt know it by the wailings of My angels, flying
over it by night.
"Go and dwell among the brothers that I give thee. There
is thy second test. For the second time thou shalt see thy love
transpierced, dying, and thou canst not die: and the sufferings
of thousands shall be born in thy one heart.
"Go and trust in My name. Ask not for thy glory, but for
the welfare of those whom I entrust to thee. Be calm before
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? Iridion 167
the pride and oppression and derision of the unjust. They shall
pass away, but thou and My word shall not pass away.
"And after long martyrdom I will send My dawn upon you.
I will give you what I gave My angels before the ages--happi-
ness--and what I promised on the summit of Golgotha--
freedom. "
And the sun rose above the ruins of Rome: and there was
none whom I might tell where were the traces of my Thought
--but I know that it lasts and lives.
Such is Iridion, the Thought that the Anonymous
Poet of Poland conceived in his and his nation's anguish.
It represents the spiritual victory of one who at the cost
of his heart's blood tore the truth that would give life
to his people from his own passion and conflict. His
secret sympathies could not but be, as he told Gaszynski
in the letter on the play that we have already quoted,
with the Iridion who craved for vengeance. But, thus
continues this letter which was the answer that Krasinski
desired Gaszynski to give a critic of Iridion, worded
for the sake of preserving his anonymity as though
the poet had held a conversation with the unknown
author, "logic, necessity, led the author to that end. What
is, is. It is not our caprices that rule the world, but the
mind of God1. " Krasinski freely owns that the faults
of execution in Iridion are many2. The play is in fact
of excessive length. It is at times overladen with ir-
relevant details and side scenes that distract the
attention from the broad lines of a magnificent idea. But
these are mere blemishes. Iridion remains one of the
splendid monuments of Polish literature and thought:
an enduring witness to that high spiritual vision by
which the Polish nation has risen above the powers of
evil set loose against her by an oppression which has
striven in vain to destroy her soul.