HISTORY: OE POLISH
LITERATURE
39
"Beniowski.
"Beniowski.
Poland - 1911 - An Outline of the History of Polish Literature
net/2027/mdp.
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? 28 AN OUTLINE OE THE
his footsteps, and the lyrical Percy Bysshe Shelley
added to the laurels of English poetry; but the
pillar of the romantic edifice, and the main repre-
sentative of the new poetry was George Noel
Gordon, Lord Byron, a poet of genius, endowed
with a marvellous power of fantasy and feeling,
a passionate and stormy temperament, independent
and full of noble impulses. It is scarcely neces-
sary to insist upon his extraordinary influence on
the literature of the world.
Literary epochs throughout all ages are con-
nected like the links of a chain and represent
in unbroken whole. In Poland the eighteenth
century, by raising the educational level and the
aesthetic standards lowered in the seventeenth cen-
tury, and cleansing the polluted language, gradu-
ally prepared the way for the nineteenth century,
which alone merits the name of "The Golden Age
of Polish Literature "--the age which, by the far-
reaching radiation of its influence, by the noble
character of its ideas, by the supreme value of
its creations, banishes all former epochs to the
shadow, and shines with such effulgence that it
need fear no eclipse from the suns that blaze in
other literary firmaments.
In Poland the romantic epoch lasted almost fifty
years, and may be divided into, three periods: the
stage of its initial evolution commencing in 1815
and ending with the outbreak of the November
revolution in 1830; its highest flight between that
date and 1848: its decline down to 1863.
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? HISTORY OE POLISH LITERATURE 29
If one wished to give the fundamental char-
acteristic of this new literary tendency, one would
have to say that the source from which it sprang
was the unusually powerful development of indi-
vidualism as a factor in the cultural evolution of
civilized humanity; the individual apprehends his
rights, breaks his fetters, and begins to display
his power in all fields of mental, social, and political
life; in literature individualism gives scope for
independence in creation; the works of the epoch
bear the stamp of idealism, sentimentality, and fan-
tasy sometimes carried to exaltation; poetry has
absorbed not only the folk-lore and mediaeval
legends, but everywhere has acquired a nationalist
bias.
This happened especially in Poland, where the
national misfortune, so strongly felt by the whole
nation, was bound to find its expression in the
poetry. Romanticism here did not provoke the
isolation of souls as in Germany, nor did it render
them wildly independent as in England; on the
contrary, it drew them closer together in an exalted
feeling of compatriotism. Polish romantic litera-
ture would have a much greater universal signi-
ficance were it not for the European ignorance of
the language in which it is written; yet the direct
influence of the great Polish masters may be ex-
emplified in the power of Mickiewicz over the
minds of Pushkin and Lamennais; the latter copied
Mickiewicz's "Rook of Pilgrimage" in his "Word
of a Reliever. " fiefore the national ballads in-
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? 30 AN OUTLINE OF THE
spired the greatest poet of Poland, the way was
prepared for him by the three immediate followers
of Brodzinski--by Malczewski, Zaleski, and Gosz-
czynski; these form what is called to-day the
Ukrainian group.
Antoni Malczewski was born in Wolyn in 1793,
and died when only thirty-three, unknown and un-
recognized. He was the son of a Polish general,
and, as the fashion then was, received the French
culture of his sphere. In his travels he encoun-
tered Byron in Venice. Both belonged to the same
social rank, both were melancholy and sensual,
and soon became friends. There Malczewski gave
Byron the idea for his poem "Mazeppa. " Mal-
czewski's reputation rests on one poem, "Marja,
an Ukrainian Tale," now one of the most celebrated
in Polish literature. It recalls in style Byron's early
epics, though it is considerably deeper in sentiment.
Bogdan Zaleski, born in 1802, is the next of the
same group. He sang the beauty of his beloved
steppes of the Dnieperland, and, somewhat mildly
and elegiacally, the dangerous life and solitary
death of the Kozak (Cossack). One of his best-
known poems, however, is "The Holy Family," a
slightly bloodless Christian idyll. After the col-
lapse of the revolution in 1831 he emigrated to
Paris, and, with the great Polish masters Mickie-
wicz and Slowacki, fell under the influence of
Towianski, a Polish mystic philosopher, who exer-
cised an extraordinary, power over much greater
minds than his own.
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? HISTORY OF. POLISH LITERATURE 31
The third of this group, Severyn Goszczynski,
was born in the neighbourhood of Kief in 1801.
He was endowed with great dramatic talent; his
poems, in which love takes only a secondary place,
sound like a battle-trumpet or the howling of the
tempest. His principal poem is the "Castle of
Kaniow," and treats of a sanguinary peasant revolt
at the end of the eighteenth century.
Above all other poets of the epoch stand, like
giant oaks amid saplings, Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and
Krasinski, the Polish national prophets. Of the
three Adam Mickiewicz exerted the greatest in-
fluence upon the masses. He was born on
December 24, 1798, near the town of Nowogrodek,
at Zaosie, a village inhabited by a small-holding
nobility--a frequent phenomenon in Lithuania.
While still a child he, of course, came much in
contact with the villagers, who stored his mind
with tales and legends, which, as his ballads show,
were not stifled by his education at the Dominican
monastery in Wilno, where he was sent in 1808.
A particular feature of these monastic schools was
a tendency to develop subtlety of feeling as much
as the mental powers of the pupils. Mickiewicz
studied at the Wilno University from 1815 to 1819.
He was a member of both the student societies,
Philaretans and Philomatians, the latter consisting
of only twelve members selected from the best
minds among the students. "Country, Science, and
Virtue" was the watchword of these societies.
While still at the University he published his
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? 32 AN OUTLINE OE THE
first works in the T. ygodnik Wilenski in 1818, and
already the unguis leonis reveals itself in these
youthful attempts. In 1820 and 1821 he wrote
all the ballads in which we find the reflection of
the tales he listened to in childhood: "Lilje"
(" Lilies "), "Ucieczka" (" The Fugue "), "Tukaj,"
"Switezianka" (" Lady of the Switez Lake "), and
"Romantycznosc" ("Romanticism"), noteworthy
for its expression of the tendency of the epoch,
declaring a preference for the poet's clairvoyance
as against the dry investigating mind of the
scientist. Then he wrote the "Song of the Phila-
retans," "Ode to Youth," several short poems, and
the fourth part of his "Dziady," the first poem
of betrayed love occurring in Polish literature.
After this came an innovation in the shape of
"Grazyna," a romance in verse.
Then the poet was confronted by the grim realities
of life. Against the Society of Philaretans (founded
in 1820 by Tomasz Zan) proceedings were taken
in 1823 by the senator Nicholas Novosiltzev.
Although these societies only aimed at the intel-
lectual and moral development of the students, they
could not escape the persecuting fury of the Russian
authorities; they were dissolved, and Mickiewicz,
together with the other members, was imprisoned
and exiled to Russia. He quitted for ever Wilno
and his beloved Lithuania on October 24, 1824.
After a stay in Odessa he went to Moscow, and
there wrote his "Crimean Sonnets," notable for
their, marvellous force of expression and their novel
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? HISTORY OF. POLISH LITERATURE 33
style, scintillating with all the colours of the East.
They were published in 1826. Although written in
Polish, these sonnets made a great impression in
Moscow. Poets began to gather round Mickiewicz.
At the house of N. Polevoi, editor of the Moscow
Telegrams, he met Pushkin, and a friendship sprang
up between the two young men. His growing fame
opened to him the house of Princess Zeneida
Volkonskaia. To his Russian confreres gathered
there he read fragments of "Konrad Wallenrod,"
published in Moscow in 1828, the poem in which
the sentiment of patriotism finds its best expres-
sion. It is superior to "Grazyna" chiefly owing
to the greater profoundity of sentiment, the beauty
and picturesqueness of description, and the ravish-
ing versification. In 1828 he moved to St. Peters-
burg. There he wrote two of his best ballads,
already free from any agency of the supernatural,
"Trzech Budrys6w" ("The Three Budrys") and
"Czaty" (" Ambuscade "), and one of his master-
pieces, the poem "Farys. "
In 1829 he received a passport for Europe.
Through Berlin and Dresden he arrived at Weimar,
where he made the acquaintance of the octogenarian
Goethe, the Belgian savant Quetelet, and the famous
French sculptor David d'Angers. Thence he jour-
neyed to Rome, which he left in 1831 for Paris,
where he came in contact with the colony of Polish
exiles driven thither by the collapse of the Novem-
ber revolution. Paris depressed him greatly, and
nostalgia overwhelmed him. He made a desperate
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? 34 AN OUTLINE OF THE
effort to return to her country, but permission
was refused him by the Russian Government.
1831] finds him1 in Dresden, where the third
part of "Dziady" was finished. This third
part, which in logical sequence ought to follow
the fourth, is remarkable for its lofty ideas
and its graphic representation of detail. In the
same year he returns to Paris. Here, from his
gifted pen, flow the "Books of the Nation" and
the "Books of the Polish Pilgrimage," from which
the quotation, "Inasmuch as you broaden and im-
prove your souls, so much do you improve your
rights and widen your frontiers," the best explains
its leading idea. Haunted by the memories of his
country and his longing for it, in 1833 he writes
the best poem known in the annals of literature,
the famous "Pan Tadeusz," which he himself calls
the "Poem of the Nobility," the most powerful
epopoeia of the age, a genre picture of the life of
the Lithuanian country nobility, in which the love
and passionate yearning for his country breathes
in every line and in every syllable. European
literature knows no other poetical work equal to
this; it is unrivalled as an account of the beauties
of the Polish land which "he saw and described,
for he longed for it. "
In 1839 the Chair of Latin Literatures at the
Lausanne University was offered to him. It was
in this period that George Sand, through an essay
published in the Revue des deux Mondes, comparing
him to Byron and Goethe, made him known to the
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE 35
world. In 1840, after much pressing, he accepted
the Chair of Slavonic Literatures at the Paris Sor-
bonne, where in his lectures he proved to be the
possessor of a wonderful gift of improvisation. His
sharp criticism of the unjust French governmental
policy was rewarded by the offer of a long leave
of absence from his post, and his resignation
followed in 1844, but in 1852, in view of his great
merits and his contributions to the store of French
knowledge, he was offered the directorship of the
Arsenal Library. In 1855 he went to Constanti-
nople with the idea of forming Polish Legions to
redeem his country from servitude. He succeeded,
but his hopes were destroyed by the illness which
ended in his death on November 26, 1855. His
embalmed body was transported on January 21,
1856, to the cemetery of Montmorency, near
Paris, and on July 4, 1890, to Cracow, where
with royal honours, it was laid to rest in the
Royal Crypt of Wawel Cathedral, close to Kos-
ciuszko's tomb. The nation paid this tribute to its
greatest poet.
There is no other poetic genius of such luxuriant,
luminous, ethereally light fantasy, and yet so deeply
and charmingly melancholy withal, as Juljusz
Slowacki, no other who disposes of a wider range
of sentiment. He is the poet of great hearts, capable
not only of feeling deeply but of analysing their
feelings; in this respect he is nearer our own times
than is Mickiewicz. His imagination is volatile as
thought, flexible, darting, rich as Nature herself;
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? 36 AN OUTLINE OE THE
his is the poetry of deep thought and brilliant
form.
He was born on August 23, 1809, at Krzemieniec,
in Wolyn. He came of a cultured family, his father
being a poet, and later, in 1811, professor of poetry
and oratory at the University of Wilno, where
Slowacki was admitted to the public school, through
which he passed in six years, having always been
a remarkably good pupil. In 1825 he entered the
faculty of law at the Wilno University. After having
finished his studies he went in 1829 to Warsaw,
where he wrote and published his first poem,
"Hugo," in which his untried wings are still
fettered by classicism. Soon, however, he shook
himself free, and his " Kulig," written shortly after-
wards, already shows unmistakable traces of his
imaginative genius.
The outbreak of the Revolution of 1830 was to
him, as to many, a surprise. He left Warsaw in
March 1831 for Dresden, where a mission was
confided to him together with a letter to General
Grouchy, who was then in London. Slowacki liked
England, where he greatly enjoyed his short stay,
but September 9th found him already in Paris.
There he published two small volumes of poetry,
which were received with an indifference painful to.
the young poet. Publishing the third volume in
1833, he wrote in the preface: "Neither encouraged
by praise, nor killed as yet by criticism, I throw this
third volume into the gulf of silence which has
swallowed the other two. " Recognition came to
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE 37
him later. His Byronism at this time was extreme.
All six of his romances in verse, "Hugo," "Arab,"
"Mnich," "Jan Bielecki," "Zmija," "Lambro,"
and both his dramas, "Mindowe" and "Marja
Stuart," have in common the same, sometimes
insufficiently justified, violence of feeling and
intentional complication of action.
In 1834 in Geneva he wrote and published
anonymously "Kordjan," a drama, the hero of
which is the embodiment of the Polish national
spirit. This was the work in which his genius
fully revealed itself. Fragments of "Kordjan" can
bear comparison with the best passages from the
works of Shakespeare and Schiller. In the same
period he wrote his drama, "Balladyna," which is
slightly akin to "King Lear," but the combination
of divers elements of tragedy which, with a char-
acteristic contempt of rules, he succeeds in har-
monizing, confers upon it the stamp of originality.
About the same time he wrote the tragedy "Horsz-
tynski," of which only a few fragments have
reached us. Some innocent love entanglements
drove him to Veytoux, and there, in 1835, he com-
posed the superb lyrics, "Rozlaczenie" (" [Part-
ing"), "Przeklenstwo" ("The Malediction"),
"Stokrotki" ("Daisies"), and "The Last Adieu
to Laure. "
A journey to Egypt and Palestine contributed
not a little to the enrichment of his imagination,
and resulted in his writing "The Voyage to the
Holy Land," the "Hymn at Sunset on the Sea,"
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? 38 AN OUTLINE OF THE
"To Teofil Januszewski," "Letter to Alexander
H. ," "Pyramids," and "The Father of the Plague-
stricken," a short poem descriptive of the despair
of a father imprisoned in quarantine and unable to
save the lives of his children, who die one by one.
This is perhaps the best poem of the series from a
structural point of view. In 1837 he returned to
Florence, bringing with him one of his most
original works, the prose poem "Anhelli," written
in the calm of the Betheshban Monastery at the
foot of Mount Lebanon. In this poem he leads
us among the exiles in Siberia, and shows us their
sufferings and his visions of the restoration of
Poland. One does not know which to admire the
most, his unbounded imagination or his prose, to
which, disdaining the use of pathos, he gives the im-
pressiveness and voluminousness of flowing music.
In Florence, surrounded by souvenirs of Dante, he
wrote t3wo poems, "Piast Dantyszek, Herbu
Leliwa" and "Waclaw," neither of which belong
to his best works, in contrast to his next poem, " In
Switzerland," which is one of his chef d'ceuvres.
He spent the remainder of his days in Paris,
where he returned in December 1838. From 1839
to 1841 he wrote two groups of works, with dis-
tinct traces of Byronism in the first, and with the
criticism of Byronism resounding loudly in the
second. To the first group belong the dramas
"Lilla Weneda" and "Mazepa," and a tragedy
"Beatrix Cenci'\; to the second his incomparable
". Voyage to the Holy Land," "Inoorrigibles," and!
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HISTORY: OE POLISH LITERATURE 39
"Beniowski. " In the latter poem, in spite of his
abjuration of Byronism, Byron was his leader. In
this, the ripest of his masterpieces, sound faint
echoes of "Don Juan," just as much as of Ariosto's
"Orlando Furioso. " His heroes are merely a pre-
text, a peg on which to hang the digressions which
are continually either making incursions into the
realm of his personal emotions or fulminating
against the critics, or sending sword-thrusts into
the domain of religion, society, and politics, and
are ever ranging from frivolity and gaiety, tender-
ness and melancholy, to irony, satire, and biting
sarcasm. Although his uncontrollable genius some-
times overthrows the propriety of form, it is done
in such brilliant fashion, and in such vibrant lan-
guage, that one waits with impatience for the
thrilling pleasure of a recurrent occasion. Later
he published the mystic dramas "Ksiadz Marek"
(" Priest Marek "), 1843; "Sen Srebrny Salomei"
("The Silver Dream of Salomea"), 1844; and
"Krol Duch" ("King Spirit"), unfortunately left
unfinished. The basic idea of this last poem is
the transmigration of the soul, which, through in-
describable sufferings, triumphs over evil and
reaches perfection. Slowacki died in Paris on
April [4, 1848. His body was transported to the
church St. Philippe du Roule and buried at the
cemetery of Montmartre, where it still remains.
Although Count Zygmunt Krasinski was not the
creator of the Polish philosophic-political poetry--
in this he had been forestalled by the prematurely.
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? 40 AN OUTLINE OF THE
deceased Stefan Garczynski--he it was who brought
it to the highest pitch of perfection. He voiced
noble and lofty principles, strove for the har-
monious co-operation of all social classes, stirred
universal problems, made extensive philosophical
generalizations, and so linked Polish poetry to the
poetry of other civilized nations.
No one of the great Polish poets developed in
such early youth as Krasinski. He was born in
Paris, in an aristocratic sphere, on February 19,
1812. Baroness de la Haye superintended his up-
bringing, and her grateful nursling, at the age of
six years, wrote for her stories under the title of
"La Bonne Fee Marie. " When only fifteen years
of age he wrote a fair-sized historical novel, natur-
ally full of heartrending tragedies, entitled "The
Tomb of the Family of Reichstal," published in
1828. A certain routine can be discerned in his
next historical novel, "Wladyslaw Herman and his
Court. " This was published in 1830, when he
was already abroad. He visited Switzerland and
Italy, and from this period dates the short fragment
"Exile," which he wrote, together with a number
of other works, all unfortunately lost except "Agaj
Han" (published in 1834), an historical novel, the
heroine of which was the Tsaritsa Maryna after the
assassination of the false Dmitry. In this youthful
novel, where the outline of the principal characters
is not yet sufficiently firm, he makes a tentative
effort to impress by a pathetic and sonorous
language.
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE '41
The democratic movement of these times (Louis
Philippe) in France directed his mind towards
more general problems and towards poetry, "which
gathers eternity and the infinite under its wings. "
He found himself confronted with the problem:
what is to be the result of the war declared by
the French Revolution on the ideals of the past?
In 1833, at the age of twenty-one, he wrote his
"Godless Comedy," a fantastic drama. He intended
it to be "the defence of what is attacked by the
rabble: religion and the glory of the past"; but
inspiration carried the poet away--it did not
permit him to become an upholder of the interests
of one class, but gave him a deep insight into
the social and political movement in its entirety.
The impressive close of this dramatic poem
cries that not the fratricidal struggle, but love
alone, will lead humanity to true liberty and
happiness.
The winter of 1834 Krasinski spent in Rome,
where he wrote his second fantastic drama
"Irydion," which, although placed in an imaginary
epoch, testifies to the poet's profound eruditeness
in the matter of Roman customs of the third cen-
tury. From 1836 he published nothing till 1841,
then appeared the short prose poem "Temptation"
and "A Summer Night"; these were followed by
"Three Thoughts remaining after the late Henryk
Ligeza," "Legend," "The Son of Darkness," "The
Dream of Cesara," a small treatise "The Trinity
and the Incarnation," and another "On the Eternal
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? '42 AN OUTLINE OF THE
Life. " In 1845 he published "The Psalms of the
Future" (Faith, Hope, and Love), in which he is
rather a publicist than a poet, and several short
lyric poems.
He died in Paris on February 23, 1859.
Sprinkled among the great stars of the literary
firmament were many minor poets, often friends
and followers of the illustrious masters. Ballads
were in favour with A. E. Odyniec (1804-84) and
Al. Chodzko (1804-91). Juljan Korsak (died 1855),
although a worshipper of the great poets, did not
succumb to the prevailing balladomania. The
secret of the widespread popularity of some of
these minor poets was that they so well formulated
the views and catered for the sentimental needs
of the epoch. The best known are Konstanty
Gaszynski and Wincenty Pol, a man of real
talent.
Of course the critics waged a bitter war against
the new romantic tendencies. The most talented
of them, Maurycy Mochnacki (1804-34), in his
essay on the Polish literature of the nineteenth cen-
tury, was unable to reconcile his German aesthetic
rules with the all-invading romanticism, which,
however, conquered him later. F. S. Dmo-
chowski's rage drove him to write a good deal of
nonsense on the subject, and only a wide know-
ledge of European literature led the incisive
critic, F. Morawski, to stand by the new
ideas.
The field of philosophy yielded a rich harvest.
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? HISTORY OE POLISH LITERATURE '43
Jozef Kremer was the first to acquaint Roland with
Hegel's system. More independent than the former
was F. B. Trentowski, whose writings made a deep
impression on Mickiewicz. A characteristic sign
of the times was that Karol Libelt desired to base
his philosophical system on the popular creeds,
and to construct a philosophy of imagination, un-
like his contemporary, Count August Cieszkowski,
who endeavoured to create a philosophy of will;
but the most gigantic mentality among the Polish
philosophers of the period was that of J6zef Hoene-
Wronski (1778-1853). There was no field of
science that this marvellous mind did not make
its own.
The fertile soil of this epoch also produced
novels in the modern sense of the word, as, for
instance, "Unwise . Vows" by Felix Bernatowicz.
The historical novel had its representative in Count
Fryderyk Skarbek, Professor of Political Economy
at the Warsaw University. The theatre was sup-
plied with drama by J6zef Korzeniowski and with
comedy by Count Alexander Fredro, a man of
hearty jovial laughter, whose works have not
escaped the romantic contagion.
Romanticism is immortal; it has outlived forms
of art and schools of art. The succeeding epoch
of positivism could do no more than cover it with
a layer of ashes, and we inevitably return to it in
the present day; but none of our present creative
spirits is fantastic or mystic: positivism has
stamped them with its brand. The new, romanti-
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? 44 HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE
cism is a healthy enthusiasm that quickens to
ecstasy our feelings for Nature, love, friendship,
common memories. In few literatures this abiding
romanticism has attained to an expression of such
beauty as in the Polish.
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? In 1848 the world-wide outburst of national
feeling disturbed the atmosphere in Poland. It
had not for result any important political change
in Europe, nor did it lessen the Polish attachment
to romanticism, which, although it sank nearer to
earth after the great national poets became silent,
still upheld in Polish souls the hope of the speedy
restoration of independence. It was only the catas-
trophic failure of the 1863 insurrection that tore
the rosy bandage of illusion from the eyes of the
people and showed them the stark reality. This
catastrophe did not kill the national spirit, but
the rivers of blood shed for the motherland, the
absence of her best sons, rotting in prisons or
exiled in long, winding processions to Siberia,
weakened the nation's physical force. Several years
of prostration and much-needed recuperation had
to elapse before the country could return to work,
under a new watchword, however, lent by Auguste
Comte's positivism, which found a ready echo in
the wearied minds of the Polish people. Romanti-
cism was pushed on one side by the might of
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? 46 AN OUTLINE OE THE
practical reason; science became utilitarian and1
politics sober under, the influence of the categorical
imperative, "Be positive'! " and all became positive,
even poetry.
The most prominent representative of this epoch
--still living to-day--is Alexander Swietochowski,
the champion of reason and the rights of man.
He was a good author but a better publicist, and
his influence upon the Polish mind was very deep.
His generation, however, cannot boast a single
genius, a single hero. It was several years before
the national pulse quickened and the literature
gathered force and once more spread its mighty
branches abroad in the face of the sun. Meanwhile
the prevailing positivism directed the minds towards
scientific research; historical studies undertaken
in Lwow and Cracow gave important results. In
the domain of belles-lettres about 1880 Jozef
Ignacy Kraszewski still held undisputed sway.
This exceedingly prolific author was not of the
race of eagles, but, had he no other merits, we
should be indebted to him for the staunching of
the flood of cheap Erench novels and their replace-
ment by his own works, imbued with a warm love
of the nation and its history, in which subject he
was profoundly versed.
Positivism found its best exponent in the person
of Eliza Orzeszko . (Orzeszkowa). Her novels are
hymns of praise to the ideals of progress, know-
ledge, duty. She has shown great intuition in
grasping the character of the then nascent social-
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE '47
ism in Poland, j Her "Meir Ezofowicz" is the
defence of the man in the Jew.
The novelist J. ZacharjasiewicZ gave us pseudo-
progressive novels confined to a narrow circle of
domestic virtues. One of the very few writers of
this epoch to fight against Philistine tendencies and
resignation to fate was T. T. Jez, who died in
1915, as an exile in Switzerland. Of his numerous
works the novels dealing with the Southern Slavs
are especially attractive. Among the Galician pro-
gressists the most popular was M. Balucki, a faith-
ful henchman of the lower middle-class as of a
free and conquering social element. A defender
of the ideals of the same class, but with a much
greater breadth of understanding, was the satiric
and witty Jan Lam.
The "Magnus Parens" of modern Polish poetry
was Adam Asnyk, a man of delicacy of sentiment
rather than any robuster qualities. In his younger
days he had dreamed a dream of souls who feel
their power, but after the collapse of the last Polish
insurrection, in which he took part, a deep change
came to the poet's mind. He then gave his country
in beautiful crystalline musical lyrics the result of
his long logical meditations. But it was left to*
Marja Konopnicka, the greatest of Roland's
women-poets, to add a new string to: the poet'a
lyre: the people, in the modern acceptance of the
word. To her powerful talent are due many
literary achievements of rich and varied form; one
of the latest is "Mister Balcer in Brazil," the
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? '48 AN OUTLINE OE THE
people's epopee, as "Pan Tadeusz" of Mickiewicz
is the epopee of the nobility. It stands out not
only as a literary landmark, but as a frontier post
in the culture of the people; it signifies that the
nation has risen above the class spirit, and has
admitted the people to its Pantheon.
Other poets of this epoch of the disintegration
and failure of positivism were . W. Gomulicki, a
son of rationalism, the first prominent and the
most refined representative of what is called "The
School of Parnassus",; Cz. Jankowski, an excel-
lent lyric poet and a brother spirit of Baumbach
and Heine, without the poison of Heine's sting;
A. Urbanski, K. Brzozowski, both singers of hero-
ism and martyrdom, and W. Stebelski, noteworthy
only for the fact that in his works sound the first
strains of a further stage of development in the
evolution of literature-of decadence.
The plays of the epoch do not testify to the
existence of any great talent among the playwrights.
There was, however, J6zef Szujski, historian, author
of several important works, whose occupation as a
professor of the University did not estrange him
from literature, and who wrote historical dramas
full of hopeless bitterness. Other theatrical fields
were taken possession of by the mediocrity.
Musical comedy (operette) and farce had a French
flavour, and comedy, deep in the grey, realities of
life, did not dazzle by. the radiance of the authors'
talent.
During the chilly era of positivism the mass of
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE '49
country gentry, stranded on the pavements of the
town by the economic crisis due to the policy of
the Russian Government, were forced to change
their skins, but in the new envelope of an employe"
or an engineer still dwelt the soul of the nobleman
of yesterday, with all its wealth of instincts and'
traditions; their adoration of the past and love
for the national distinctiveness were bound to burst
the crust of self-criticism and utilitarianism. The
inevitable reaction came, and created the atmo-
sphere necessary to Henryk Sienkiewicz for the
full development of his potent individuality. The
democratic and progressive was his preferred type
in his early novels, but the moment the first pro-
test against positivism became audible, Sienkiewicz
turned towards the past and spread its treasures
magnificently before the nation. His trilogy
"Ogniem i Mieczem" ("By Fire and Sword"),
"Potop" ("The Deluge"), and "Pan Wolody-
jowski" are not books, but great deeds. The nation
was yearning for a stimulus, was panting for fuller
breath, and it received a whirlwind of memories
and enthusiastic visions. Although his heroes are
average men, not of the race of philosophers, this
incomparable artist has made them so extraordi-
narily plastic that they live to-day among the people
as indubitable historical truths. He is a master in
the art of stirring the deepest emotions, as may
be found by the readers of his short stories and
his less voluminous works, but he is too great
a plastic artist to be quite fortunate in his search
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? 50 AN OUTLINE OE THE
for ideas in the modern whirlpool of psychological
conflicts. The intrinsic value of his novels, "With-
out Dogma" and "The Family of Polanieckis," is
due alone to his immense talent, which made
"Without Dogma'" a masterpiece of descriptive
psychology, though, against his intention, it is
rather a tragedy of love than of faith, just as "The
Family of Polanieckis" is an attempted synthesis
of all the spiritual elements of the epoch, for which
he tried to discover a formula. The moment he
returned to the domain of history he created two
chefs d'ceuvre, the world-famed "Quo Vadis" and
"Cruciferi," both planned on an heroic scale, and
studded with gems of untold beauty.
? 28 AN OUTLINE OE THE
his footsteps, and the lyrical Percy Bysshe Shelley
added to the laurels of English poetry; but the
pillar of the romantic edifice, and the main repre-
sentative of the new poetry was George Noel
Gordon, Lord Byron, a poet of genius, endowed
with a marvellous power of fantasy and feeling,
a passionate and stormy temperament, independent
and full of noble impulses. It is scarcely neces-
sary to insist upon his extraordinary influence on
the literature of the world.
Literary epochs throughout all ages are con-
nected like the links of a chain and represent
in unbroken whole. In Poland the eighteenth
century, by raising the educational level and the
aesthetic standards lowered in the seventeenth cen-
tury, and cleansing the polluted language, gradu-
ally prepared the way for the nineteenth century,
which alone merits the name of "The Golden Age
of Polish Literature "--the age which, by the far-
reaching radiation of its influence, by the noble
character of its ideas, by the supreme value of
its creations, banishes all former epochs to the
shadow, and shines with such effulgence that it
need fear no eclipse from the suns that blaze in
other literary firmaments.
In Poland the romantic epoch lasted almost fifty
years, and may be divided into, three periods: the
stage of its initial evolution commencing in 1815
and ending with the outbreak of the November
revolution in 1830; its highest flight between that
date and 1848: its decline down to 1863.
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? HISTORY OE POLISH LITERATURE 29
If one wished to give the fundamental char-
acteristic of this new literary tendency, one would
have to say that the source from which it sprang
was the unusually powerful development of indi-
vidualism as a factor in the cultural evolution of
civilized humanity; the individual apprehends his
rights, breaks his fetters, and begins to display
his power in all fields of mental, social, and political
life; in literature individualism gives scope for
independence in creation; the works of the epoch
bear the stamp of idealism, sentimentality, and fan-
tasy sometimes carried to exaltation; poetry has
absorbed not only the folk-lore and mediaeval
legends, but everywhere has acquired a nationalist
bias.
This happened especially in Poland, where the
national misfortune, so strongly felt by the whole
nation, was bound to find its expression in the
poetry. Romanticism here did not provoke the
isolation of souls as in Germany, nor did it render
them wildly independent as in England; on the
contrary, it drew them closer together in an exalted
feeling of compatriotism. Polish romantic litera-
ture would have a much greater universal signi-
ficance were it not for the European ignorance of
the language in which it is written; yet the direct
influence of the great Polish masters may be ex-
emplified in the power of Mickiewicz over the
minds of Pushkin and Lamennais; the latter copied
Mickiewicz's "Rook of Pilgrimage" in his "Word
of a Reliever. " fiefore the national ballads in-
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? 30 AN OUTLINE OF THE
spired the greatest poet of Poland, the way was
prepared for him by the three immediate followers
of Brodzinski--by Malczewski, Zaleski, and Gosz-
czynski; these form what is called to-day the
Ukrainian group.
Antoni Malczewski was born in Wolyn in 1793,
and died when only thirty-three, unknown and un-
recognized. He was the son of a Polish general,
and, as the fashion then was, received the French
culture of his sphere. In his travels he encoun-
tered Byron in Venice. Both belonged to the same
social rank, both were melancholy and sensual,
and soon became friends. There Malczewski gave
Byron the idea for his poem "Mazeppa. " Mal-
czewski's reputation rests on one poem, "Marja,
an Ukrainian Tale," now one of the most celebrated
in Polish literature. It recalls in style Byron's early
epics, though it is considerably deeper in sentiment.
Bogdan Zaleski, born in 1802, is the next of the
same group. He sang the beauty of his beloved
steppes of the Dnieperland, and, somewhat mildly
and elegiacally, the dangerous life and solitary
death of the Kozak (Cossack). One of his best-
known poems, however, is "The Holy Family," a
slightly bloodless Christian idyll. After the col-
lapse of the revolution in 1831 he emigrated to
Paris, and, with the great Polish masters Mickie-
wicz and Slowacki, fell under the influence of
Towianski, a Polish mystic philosopher, who exer-
cised an extraordinary, power over much greater
minds than his own.
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? HISTORY OF. POLISH LITERATURE 31
The third of this group, Severyn Goszczynski,
was born in the neighbourhood of Kief in 1801.
He was endowed with great dramatic talent; his
poems, in which love takes only a secondary place,
sound like a battle-trumpet or the howling of the
tempest. His principal poem is the "Castle of
Kaniow," and treats of a sanguinary peasant revolt
at the end of the eighteenth century.
Above all other poets of the epoch stand, like
giant oaks amid saplings, Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and
Krasinski, the Polish national prophets. Of the
three Adam Mickiewicz exerted the greatest in-
fluence upon the masses. He was born on
December 24, 1798, near the town of Nowogrodek,
at Zaosie, a village inhabited by a small-holding
nobility--a frequent phenomenon in Lithuania.
While still a child he, of course, came much in
contact with the villagers, who stored his mind
with tales and legends, which, as his ballads show,
were not stifled by his education at the Dominican
monastery in Wilno, where he was sent in 1808.
A particular feature of these monastic schools was
a tendency to develop subtlety of feeling as much
as the mental powers of the pupils. Mickiewicz
studied at the Wilno University from 1815 to 1819.
He was a member of both the student societies,
Philaretans and Philomatians, the latter consisting
of only twelve members selected from the best
minds among the students. "Country, Science, and
Virtue" was the watchword of these societies.
While still at the University he published his
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? 32 AN OUTLINE OE THE
first works in the T. ygodnik Wilenski in 1818, and
already the unguis leonis reveals itself in these
youthful attempts. In 1820 and 1821 he wrote
all the ballads in which we find the reflection of
the tales he listened to in childhood: "Lilje"
(" Lilies "), "Ucieczka" (" The Fugue "), "Tukaj,"
"Switezianka" (" Lady of the Switez Lake "), and
"Romantycznosc" ("Romanticism"), noteworthy
for its expression of the tendency of the epoch,
declaring a preference for the poet's clairvoyance
as against the dry investigating mind of the
scientist. Then he wrote the "Song of the Phila-
retans," "Ode to Youth," several short poems, and
the fourth part of his "Dziady," the first poem
of betrayed love occurring in Polish literature.
After this came an innovation in the shape of
"Grazyna," a romance in verse.
Then the poet was confronted by the grim realities
of life. Against the Society of Philaretans (founded
in 1820 by Tomasz Zan) proceedings were taken
in 1823 by the senator Nicholas Novosiltzev.
Although these societies only aimed at the intel-
lectual and moral development of the students, they
could not escape the persecuting fury of the Russian
authorities; they were dissolved, and Mickiewicz,
together with the other members, was imprisoned
and exiled to Russia. He quitted for ever Wilno
and his beloved Lithuania on October 24, 1824.
After a stay in Odessa he went to Moscow, and
there wrote his "Crimean Sonnets," notable for
their, marvellous force of expression and their novel
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? HISTORY OF. POLISH LITERATURE 33
style, scintillating with all the colours of the East.
They were published in 1826. Although written in
Polish, these sonnets made a great impression in
Moscow. Poets began to gather round Mickiewicz.
At the house of N. Polevoi, editor of the Moscow
Telegrams, he met Pushkin, and a friendship sprang
up between the two young men. His growing fame
opened to him the house of Princess Zeneida
Volkonskaia. To his Russian confreres gathered
there he read fragments of "Konrad Wallenrod,"
published in Moscow in 1828, the poem in which
the sentiment of patriotism finds its best expres-
sion. It is superior to "Grazyna" chiefly owing
to the greater profoundity of sentiment, the beauty
and picturesqueness of description, and the ravish-
ing versification. In 1828 he moved to St. Peters-
burg. There he wrote two of his best ballads,
already free from any agency of the supernatural,
"Trzech Budrys6w" ("The Three Budrys") and
"Czaty" (" Ambuscade "), and one of his master-
pieces, the poem "Farys. "
In 1829 he received a passport for Europe.
Through Berlin and Dresden he arrived at Weimar,
where he made the acquaintance of the octogenarian
Goethe, the Belgian savant Quetelet, and the famous
French sculptor David d'Angers. Thence he jour-
neyed to Rome, which he left in 1831 for Paris,
where he came in contact with the colony of Polish
exiles driven thither by the collapse of the Novem-
ber revolution. Paris depressed him greatly, and
nostalgia overwhelmed him. He made a desperate
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? 34 AN OUTLINE OF THE
effort to return to her country, but permission
was refused him by the Russian Government.
1831] finds him1 in Dresden, where the third
part of "Dziady" was finished. This third
part, which in logical sequence ought to follow
the fourth, is remarkable for its lofty ideas
and its graphic representation of detail. In the
same year he returns to Paris. Here, from his
gifted pen, flow the "Books of the Nation" and
the "Books of the Polish Pilgrimage," from which
the quotation, "Inasmuch as you broaden and im-
prove your souls, so much do you improve your
rights and widen your frontiers," the best explains
its leading idea. Haunted by the memories of his
country and his longing for it, in 1833 he writes
the best poem known in the annals of literature,
the famous "Pan Tadeusz," which he himself calls
the "Poem of the Nobility," the most powerful
epopoeia of the age, a genre picture of the life of
the Lithuanian country nobility, in which the love
and passionate yearning for his country breathes
in every line and in every syllable. European
literature knows no other poetical work equal to
this; it is unrivalled as an account of the beauties
of the Polish land which "he saw and described,
for he longed for it. "
In 1839 the Chair of Latin Literatures at the
Lausanne University was offered to him. It was
in this period that George Sand, through an essay
published in the Revue des deux Mondes, comparing
him to Byron and Goethe, made him known to the
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE 35
world. In 1840, after much pressing, he accepted
the Chair of Slavonic Literatures at the Paris Sor-
bonne, where in his lectures he proved to be the
possessor of a wonderful gift of improvisation. His
sharp criticism of the unjust French governmental
policy was rewarded by the offer of a long leave
of absence from his post, and his resignation
followed in 1844, but in 1852, in view of his great
merits and his contributions to the store of French
knowledge, he was offered the directorship of the
Arsenal Library. In 1855 he went to Constanti-
nople with the idea of forming Polish Legions to
redeem his country from servitude. He succeeded,
but his hopes were destroyed by the illness which
ended in his death on November 26, 1855. His
embalmed body was transported on January 21,
1856, to the cemetery of Montmorency, near
Paris, and on July 4, 1890, to Cracow, where
with royal honours, it was laid to rest in the
Royal Crypt of Wawel Cathedral, close to Kos-
ciuszko's tomb. The nation paid this tribute to its
greatest poet.
There is no other poetic genius of such luxuriant,
luminous, ethereally light fantasy, and yet so deeply
and charmingly melancholy withal, as Juljusz
Slowacki, no other who disposes of a wider range
of sentiment. He is the poet of great hearts, capable
not only of feeling deeply but of analysing their
feelings; in this respect he is nearer our own times
than is Mickiewicz. His imagination is volatile as
thought, flexible, darting, rich as Nature herself;
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? 36 AN OUTLINE OE THE
his is the poetry of deep thought and brilliant
form.
He was born on August 23, 1809, at Krzemieniec,
in Wolyn. He came of a cultured family, his father
being a poet, and later, in 1811, professor of poetry
and oratory at the University of Wilno, where
Slowacki was admitted to the public school, through
which he passed in six years, having always been
a remarkably good pupil. In 1825 he entered the
faculty of law at the Wilno University. After having
finished his studies he went in 1829 to Warsaw,
where he wrote and published his first poem,
"Hugo," in which his untried wings are still
fettered by classicism. Soon, however, he shook
himself free, and his " Kulig," written shortly after-
wards, already shows unmistakable traces of his
imaginative genius.
The outbreak of the Revolution of 1830 was to
him, as to many, a surprise. He left Warsaw in
March 1831 for Dresden, where a mission was
confided to him together with a letter to General
Grouchy, who was then in London. Slowacki liked
England, where he greatly enjoyed his short stay,
but September 9th found him already in Paris.
There he published two small volumes of poetry,
which were received with an indifference painful to.
the young poet. Publishing the third volume in
1833, he wrote in the preface: "Neither encouraged
by praise, nor killed as yet by criticism, I throw this
third volume into the gulf of silence which has
swallowed the other two. " Recognition came to
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE 37
him later. His Byronism at this time was extreme.
All six of his romances in verse, "Hugo," "Arab,"
"Mnich," "Jan Bielecki," "Zmija," "Lambro,"
and both his dramas, "Mindowe" and "Marja
Stuart," have in common the same, sometimes
insufficiently justified, violence of feeling and
intentional complication of action.
In 1834 in Geneva he wrote and published
anonymously "Kordjan," a drama, the hero of
which is the embodiment of the Polish national
spirit. This was the work in which his genius
fully revealed itself. Fragments of "Kordjan" can
bear comparison with the best passages from the
works of Shakespeare and Schiller. In the same
period he wrote his drama, "Balladyna," which is
slightly akin to "King Lear," but the combination
of divers elements of tragedy which, with a char-
acteristic contempt of rules, he succeeds in har-
monizing, confers upon it the stamp of originality.
About the same time he wrote the tragedy "Horsz-
tynski," of which only a few fragments have
reached us. Some innocent love entanglements
drove him to Veytoux, and there, in 1835, he com-
posed the superb lyrics, "Rozlaczenie" (" [Part-
ing"), "Przeklenstwo" ("The Malediction"),
"Stokrotki" ("Daisies"), and "The Last Adieu
to Laure. "
A journey to Egypt and Palestine contributed
not a little to the enrichment of his imagination,
and resulted in his writing "The Voyage to the
Holy Land," the "Hymn at Sunset on the Sea,"
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? 38 AN OUTLINE OF THE
"To Teofil Januszewski," "Letter to Alexander
H. ," "Pyramids," and "The Father of the Plague-
stricken," a short poem descriptive of the despair
of a father imprisoned in quarantine and unable to
save the lives of his children, who die one by one.
This is perhaps the best poem of the series from a
structural point of view. In 1837 he returned to
Florence, bringing with him one of his most
original works, the prose poem "Anhelli," written
in the calm of the Betheshban Monastery at the
foot of Mount Lebanon. In this poem he leads
us among the exiles in Siberia, and shows us their
sufferings and his visions of the restoration of
Poland. One does not know which to admire the
most, his unbounded imagination or his prose, to
which, disdaining the use of pathos, he gives the im-
pressiveness and voluminousness of flowing music.
In Florence, surrounded by souvenirs of Dante, he
wrote t3wo poems, "Piast Dantyszek, Herbu
Leliwa" and "Waclaw," neither of which belong
to his best works, in contrast to his next poem, " In
Switzerland," which is one of his chef d'ceuvres.
He spent the remainder of his days in Paris,
where he returned in December 1838. From 1839
to 1841 he wrote two groups of works, with dis-
tinct traces of Byronism in the first, and with the
criticism of Byronism resounding loudly in the
second. To the first group belong the dramas
"Lilla Weneda" and "Mazepa," and a tragedy
"Beatrix Cenci'\; to the second his incomparable
". Voyage to the Holy Land," "Inoorrigibles," and!
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?
HISTORY: OE POLISH LITERATURE 39
"Beniowski. " In the latter poem, in spite of his
abjuration of Byronism, Byron was his leader. In
this, the ripest of his masterpieces, sound faint
echoes of "Don Juan," just as much as of Ariosto's
"Orlando Furioso. " His heroes are merely a pre-
text, a peg on which to hang the digressions which
are continually either making incursions into the
realm of his personal emotions or fulminating
against the critics, or sending sword-thrusts into
the domain of religion, society, and politics, and
are ever ranging from frivolity and gaiety, tender-
ness and melancholy, to irony, satire, and biting
sarcasm. Although his uncontrollable genius some-
times overthrows the propriety of form, it is done
in such brilliant fashion, and in such vibrant lan-
guage, that one waits with impatience for the
thrilling pleasure of a recurrent occasion. Later
he published the mystic dramas "Ksiadz Marek"
(" Priest Marek "), 1843; "Sen Srebrny Salomei"
("The Silver Dream of Salomea"), 1844; and
"Krol Duch" ("King Spirit"), unfortunately left
unfinished. The basic idea of this last poem is
the transmigration of the soul, which, through in-
describable sufferings, triumphs over evil and
reaches perfection. Slowacki died in Paris on
April [4, 1848. His body was transported to the
church St. Philippe du Roule and buried at the
cemetery of Montmartre, where it still remains.
Although Count Zygmunt Krasinski was not the
creator of the Polish philosophic-political poetry--
in this he had been forestalled by the prematurely.
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? 40 AN OUTLINE OF THE
deceased Stefan Garczynski--he it was who brought
it to the highest pitch of perfection. He voiced
noble and lofty principles, strove for the har-
monious co-operation of all social classes, stirred
universal problems, made extensive philosophical
generalizations, and so linked Polish poetry to the
poetry of other civilized nations.
No one of the great Polish poets developed in
such early youth as Krasinski. He was born in
Paris, in an aristocratic sphere, on February 19,
1812. Baroness de la Haye superintended his up-
bringing, and her grateful nursling, at the age of
six years, wrote for her stories under the title of
"La Bonne Fee Marie. " When only fifteen years
of age he wrote a fair-sized historical novel, natur-
ally full of heartrending tragedies, entitled "The
Tomb of the Family of Reichstal," published in
1828. A certain routine can be discerned in his
next historical novel, "Wladyslaw Herman and his
Court. " This was published in 1830, when he
was already abroad. He visited Switzerland and
Italy, and from this period dates the short fragment
"Exile," which he wrote, together with a number
of other works, all unfortunately lost except "Agaj
Han" (published in 1834), an historical novel, the
heroine of which was the Tsaritsa Maryna after the
assassination of the false Dmitry. In this youthful
novel, where the outline of the principal characters
is not yet sufficiently firm, he makes a tentative
effort to impress by a pathetic and sonorous
language.
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE '41
The democratic movement of these times (Louis
Philippe) in France directed his mind towards
more general problems and towards poetry, "which
gathers eternity and the infinite under its wings. "
He found himself confronted with the problem:
what is to be the result of the war declared by
the French Revolution on the ideals of the past?
In 1833, at the age of twenty-one, he wrote his
"Godless Comedy," a fantastic drama. He intended
it to be "the defence of what is attacked by the
rabble: religion and the glory of the past"; but
inspiration carried the poet away--it did not
permit him to become an upholder of the interests
of one class, but gave him a deep insight into
the social and political movement in its entirety.
The impressive close of this dramatic poem
cries that not the fratricidal struggle, but love
alone, will lead humanity to true liberty and
happiness.
The winter of 1834 Krasinski spent in Rome,
where he wrote his second fantastic drama
"Irydion," which, although placed in an imaginary
epoch, testifies to the poet's profound eruditeness
in the matter of Roman customs of the third cen-
tury. From 1836 he published nothing till 1841,
then appeared the short prose poem "Temptation"
and "A Summer Night"; these were followed by
"Three Thoughts remaining after the late Henryk
Ligeza," "Legend," "The Son of Darkness," "The
Dream of Cesara," a small treatise "The Trinity
and the Incarnation," and another "On the Eternal
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? '42 AN OUTLINE OF THE
Life. " In 1845 he published "The Psalms of the
Future" (Faith, Hope, and Love), in which he is
rather a publicist than a poet, and several short
lyric poems.
He died in Paris on February 23, 1859.
Sprinkled among the great stars of the literary
firmament were many minor poets, often friends
and followers of the illustrious masters. Ballads
were in favour with A. E. Odyniec (1804-84) and
Al. Chodzko (1804-91). Juljan Korsak (died 1855),
although a worshipper of the great poets, did not
succumb to the prevailing balladomania. The
secret of the widespread popularity of some of
these minor poets was that they so well formulated
the views and catered for the sentimental needs
of the epoch. The best known are Konstanty
Gaszynski and Wincenty Pol, a man of real
talent.
Of course the critics waged a bitter war against
the new romantic tendencies. The most talented
of them, Maurycy Mochnacki (1804-34), in his
essay on the Polish literature of the nineteenth cen-
tury, was unable to reconcile his German aesthetic
rules with the all-invading romanticism, which,
however, conquered him later. F. S. Dmo-
chowski's rage drove him to write a good deal of
nonsense on the subject, and only a wide know-
ledge of European literature led the incisive
critic, F. Morawski, to stand by the new
ideas.
The field of philosophy yielded a rich harvest.
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? HISTORY OE POLISH LITERATURE '43
Jozef Kremer was the first to acquaint Roland with
Hegel's system. More independent than the former
was F. B. Trentowski, whose writings made a deep
impression on Mickiewicz. A characteristic sign
of the times was that Karol Libelt desired to base
his philosophical system on the popular creeds,
and to construct a philosophy of imagination, un-
like his contemporary, Count August Cieszkowski,
who endeavoured to create a philosophy of will;
but the most gigantic mentality among the Polish
philosophers of the period was that of J6zef Hoene-
Wronski (1778-1853). There was no field of
science that this marvellous mind did not make
its own.
The fertile soil of this epoch also produced
novels in the modern sense of the word, as, for
instance, "Unwise . Vows" by Felix Bernatowicz.
The historical novel had its representative in Count
Fryderyk Skarbek, Professor of Political Economy
at the Warsaw University. The theatre was sup-
plied with drama by J6zef Korzeniowski and with
comedy by Count Alexander Fredro, a man of
hearty jovial laughter, whose works have not
escaped the romantic contagion.
Romanticism is immortal; it has outlived forms
of art and schools of art. The succeeding epoch
of positivism could do no more than cover it with
a layer of ashes, and we inevitably return to it in
the present day; but none of our present creative
spirits is fantastic or mystic: positivism has
stamped them with its brand. The new, romanti-
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? 44 HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE
cism is a healthy enthusiasm that quickens to
ecstasy our feelings for Nature, love, friendship,
common memories. In few literatures this abiding
romanticism has attained to an expression of such
beauty as in the Polish.
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? In 1848 the world-wide outburst of national
feeling disturbed the atmosphere in Poland. It
had not for result any important political change
in Europe, nor did it lessen the Polish attachment
to romanticism, which, although it sank nearer to
earth after the great national poets became silent,
still upheld in Polish souls the hope of the speedy
restoration of independence. It was only the catas-
trophic failure of the 1863 insurrection that tore
the rosy bandage of illusion from the eyes of the
people and showed them the stark reality. This
catastrophe did not kill the national spirit, but
the rivers of blood shed for the motherland, the
absence of her best sons, rotting in prisons or
exiled in long, winding processions to Siberia,
weakened the nation's physical force. Several years
of prostration and much-needed recuperation had
to elapse before the country could return to work,
under a new watchword, however, lent by Auguste
Comte's positivism, which found a ready echo in
the wearied minds of the Polish people. Romanti-
cism was pushed on one side by the might of
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? 46 AN OUTLINE OE THE
practical reason; science became utilitarian and1
politics sober under, the influence of the categorical
imperative, "Be positive'! " and all became positive,
even poetry.
The most prominent representative of this epoch
--still living to-day--is Alexander Swietochowski,
the champion of reason and the rights of man.
He was a good author but a better publicist, and
his influence upon the Polish mind was very deep.
His generation, however, cannot boast a single
genius, a single hero. It was several years before
the national pulse quickened and the literature
gathered force and once more spread its mighty
branches abroad in the face of the sun. Meanwhile
the prevailing positivism directed the minds towards
scientific research; historical studies undertaken
in Lwow and Cracow gave important results. In
the domain of belles-lettres about 1880 Jozef
Ignacy Kraszewski still held undisputed sway.
This exceedingly prolific author was not of the
race of eagles, but, had he no other merits, we
should be indebted to him for the staunching of
the flood of cheap Erench novels and their replace-
ment by his own works, imbued with a warm love
of the nation and its history, in which subject he
was profoundly versed.
Positivism found its best exponent in the person
of Eliza Orzeszko . (Orzeszkowa). Her novels are
hymns of praise to the ideals of progress, know-
ledge, duty. She has shown great intuition in
grasping the character of the then nascent social-
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE '47
ism in Poland, j Her "Meir Ezofowicz" is the
defence of the man in the Jew.
The novelist J. ZacharjasiewicZ gave us pseudo-
progressive novels confined to a narrow circle of
domestic virtues. One of the very few writers of
this epoch to fight against Philistine tendencies and
resignation to fate was T. T. Jez, who died in
1915, as an exile in Switzerland. Of his numerous
works the novels dealing with the Southern Slavs
are especially attractive. Among the Galician pro-
gressists the most popular was M. Balucki, a faith-
ful henchman of the lower middle-class as of a
free and conquering social element. A defender
of the ideals of the same class, but with a much
greater breadth of understanding, was the satiric
and witty Jan Lam.
The "Magnus Parens" of modern Polish poetry
was Adam Asnyk, a man of delicacy of sentiment
rather than any robuster qualities. In his younger
days he had dreamed a dream of souls who feel
their power, but after the collapse of the last Polish
insurrection, in which he took part, a deep change
came to the poet's mind. He then gave his country
in beautiful crystalline musical lyrics the result of
his long logical meditations. But it was left to*
Marja Konopnicka, the greatest of Roland's
women-poets, to add a new string to: the poet'a
lyre: the people, in the modern acceptance of the
word. To her powerful talent are due many
literary achievements of rich and varied form; one
of the latest is "Mister Balcer in Brazil," the
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? '48 AN OUTLINE OE THE
people's epopee, as "Pan Tadeusz" of Mickiewicz
is the epopee of the nobility. It stands out not
only as a literary landmark, but as a frontier post
in the culture of the people; it signifies that the
nation has risen above the class spirit, and has
admitted the people to its Pantheon.
Other poets of this epoch of the disintegration
and failure of positivism were . W. Gomulicki, a
son of rationalism, the first prominent and the
most refined representative of what is called "The
School of Parnassus",; Cz. Jankowski, an excel-
lent lyric poet and a brother spirit of Baumbach
and Heine, without the poison of Heine's sting;
A. Urbanski, K. Brzozowski, both singers of hero-
ism and martyrdom, and W. Stebelski, noteworthy
only for the fact that in his works sound the first
strains of a further stage of development in the
evolution of literature-of decadence.
The plays of the epoch do not testify to the
existence of any great talent among the playwrights.
There was, however, J6zef Szujski, historian, author
of several important works, whose occupation as a
professor of the University did not estrange him
from literature, and who wrote historical dramas
full of hopeless bitterness. Other theatrical fields
were taken possession of by the mediocrity.
Musical comedy (operette) and farce had a French
flavour, and comedy, deep in the grey, realities of
life, did not dazzle by. the radiance of the authors'
talent.
During the chilly era of positivism the mass of
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? HISTORY OF POLISH LITERATURE '49
country gentry, stranded on the pavements of the
town by the economic crisis due to the policy of
the Russian Government, were forced to change
their skins, but in the new envelope of an employe"
or an engineer still dwelt the soul of the nobleman
of yesterday, with all its wealth of instincts and'
traditions; their adoration of the past and love
for the national distinctiveness were bound to burst
the crust of self-criticism and utilitarianism. The
inevitable reaction came, and created the atmo-
sphere necessary to Henryk Sienkiewicz for the
full development of his potent individuality. The
democratic and progressive was his preferred type
in his early novels, but the moment the first pro-
test against positivism became audible, Sienkiewicz
turned towards the past and spread its treasures
magnificently before the nation. His trilogy
"Ogniem i Mieczem" ("By Fire and Sword"),
"Potop" ("The Deluge"), and "Pan Wolody-
jowski" are not books, but great deeds. The nation
was yearning for a stimulus, was panting for fuller
breath, and it received a whirlwind of memories
and enthusiastic visions. Although his heroes are
average men, not of the race of philosophers, this
incomparable artist has made them so extraordi-
narily plastic that they live to-day among the people
as indubitable historical truths. He is a master in
the art of stirring the deepest emotions, as may
be found by the readers of his short stories and
his less voluminous works, but he is too great
a plastic artist to be quite fortunate in his search
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? 50 AN OUTLINE OE THE
for ideas in the modern whirlpool of psychological
conflicts. The intrinsic value of his novels, "With-
out Dogma" and "The Family of Polanieckis," is
due alone to his immense talent, which made
"Without Dogma'" a masterpiece of descriptive
psychology, though, against his intention, it is
rather a tragedy of love than of faith, just as "The
Family of Polanieckis" is an attempted synthesis
of all the spiritual elements of the epoch, for which
he tried to discover a formula. The moment he
returned to the domain of history he created two
chefs d'ceuvre, the world-famed "Quo Vadis" and
"Cruciferi," both planned on an heroic scale, and
studded with gems of untold beauty.
