No More Learning

But we anticipate. Alexander is not victorious
yet. The night that Irydion hails as the last night
of Rome is here. His armies are awaiting his
signal. Masinissa is at his side. With wild fury
Irydion exults in the thought that, before the
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 139
morning is upon them, Rome shall be in flames--
if, and upon this condition all depends, the
Christian auxiliaries join him. They delay. They
are singing their hymns, says Masinissa sardon-
ically. A messenger from Simeon summons Irydion.
He hastens to the catacombs. He finds Victor and
the priests on the altar steps, Simeon and his
youths in arms, panting for the fray, Cornelia
still uttering her frenzied war-cry. Irydion bursts
upon this assembly. He calls to Cornelia as to his
beloved; but pitted against him is Victor who
stands forth and, in the presence of all, exorcises
Cornelia. She returns to herself. She bears witness
that she and her fellow Christians have been
duped by an evil spirit that has possessed her and
spoken through her lips. In vain Irydion, with
one despairing effort, calls to her in the language
of love for the last time. She turns to him without
fear and with forgiveness. "Hieronimus, I
pardon thee. Hieronimus, pray to Christ "; and
so she dies, breathing the fragrance of the flowers
of Paradise.
Her testimony turns the Christians, loathing
and horror-stricken, from him whom they now
see in his true colours. The maddened Irydion
tears the cross he wears from his armour and,
dashing it to the ground, departs, doomed, as he
well knows, to failure. In the catacombs the
avenger has been brought up against the only
life-giving element in Rome. With that force
behind him, he can conquer. With it against
him, he can do nothing. All that is now left to
him is to fight a losing battle "morelike a demon
than a mortal man. " The envoy of Alexander
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? 140 POLAND
Severus brings him overtures of peace. He rejects
them with a certain noble contempt. His nation
has loved, and lived on, an idea. What has she
to do with an empire that has maintained herself
by blood and by the tears of the conquered? >.
So Irydion fights on; but ever and again his
sword falters in his hand and he turns pale, for he
hears Cornelia calling to him in the name of
Christ. He is defeated, and abandoned by all.
He steps on Elsinoe's funeral pyre and prepares to
perish in the flames. Masinissa descends, and
carries him away to a mountain top. In the dis-
tance lies Rome. The enemy of Irydion's race
stands out on her hills, her marbles flashing in
the sun, proud and invincible.
"Oh, thou whom I loved for thy sorrows, wast
thou but a shade ? " What now remains to Iry-
dion? The voice of the Christian maiden, whom
he sacrificed at Masinissa's bidding, wails in his
ear. He sees the cross at which she prayed. If her
God wete indeed a God above all gods, it is on
Him that he would now call.
"-Our Father, Who art in heaven," sneers
Masinissa, " give long days to Rome. Save those
who through alTtime have oppressed my native
land. "
'^Nay," is Irydion's reply. "Our Father Who
art in heaven, love Hellas as I have loved her. "
He then adjures Masinissa to tell him if Christ
is indeed the "Lord of heaven and earth. "
Masinissa confesses Him, but as his immortal
enemy. He bids Irydion gaze at the " city of his
hatred. " Who shall tear it from the hands of
Irydion's northern brothers when their hordes
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 141
Overwhelm Italy? The Nazarene. But Irydion
1 must not despair. A day will come when " on the
Forum only dust shall remain, in the Circus only
ruins, on the Capitol only shams-. " That day is so
- distant that Masinissa himself can hardly foresee
it; but, if Irydion will consent to renounce Christ
for ever, Masinissa will cast him into a slumber
of centuries till he awakes to behold the ruin of
Rome. A voice once known to Irydion cries in
anguish and entreaty: but he agrees to the bond,
and sinks into a deep sleep in a cavern in the hills
outside Rome.
Here the dramatic form of Irydion ends, and
the conclusion is told in an epilogue.
The ages roll over Irydion's head.
"Oh, my Thought "--the poet thus address-
ing Irydion--" thou hast lasted out the centuries!
Thou didst slumber in the day of Alaric and in
the day of the mighty Attila. Neither the ring of
the imperial crown on the rough brow of Char-
lemagne, nor Rienzi, the tribune of the people,
woke thee--and the consecrated lords of the
Vatican one after the other passed before thee, as
shades before a shade. But to-day thou shalt
arise, oh, my Thought! "
He rises in the strength of his youth at the
appointed hour--the days of Krasinski.
"Thou didst stand in the Roman Campagna.
She hath nought with which to hide her shame
before thy gaze. The aqueducts running to the
city, finding no city, have halted. The stones
fallen from them lie in graveyard heaps.
"The son of the ages saw and rejoiced in the
justice of his vengeance. Each ruin, and the plains,.
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? i42 POLAND
widowed of amphitheatres, and the hills, orphaned
of temples, were his recompense. "
He passes on to Rome, guided by Masinissa.
He beholds the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla,
the Appian way laid waste, the Forum a mass of
fragments. He halts in the Coliseum. As he stands
in the arena, surrounded by the gaping walls
about which festoons of greenery cling, some
strange emotion stirs within the Greek. He looks
upon the cross that stands there--as it stood in
Krasinski's youth--with some far off recollection
of a maiden's face; and he knows that now he no
longer desires war with the cross, for it seems to
him as though that cross is " weary as he, sorrow-
ing as once Hellas sorrowed--and holy for ever-
more. "
Then begins in the Coliseum, at the foot of the
cross, the judgment upon Irydion's soul--a scene
that had developed in Krasinski's heart since
he had wandered, when little more than a boy,
about the ruin in the moonlight. The amphi-
theatre resounds with the sighs of the martyrs
who shed their blood there, with the wailing of
the angels above. Below the cross stands Irydion
with prayerless lips. Masinissa claims the damned
soul for his own. In the light of the moon shines
a beautiful face, angelic wings flash, as Cornelia
battles for the salvation of him who wronged her.
"Immortal Enemy," is the cry of Masinissa, " he
is mine, for he lived in revenge, and he hated
Rome. " "Oh, Lord, he is mine," rings the cry
of Cornelia, " for he loved Greece. "
The plea of love prevails, as in the scheme of
Irydion it must prevail. Irydion had. h. a'tsd ? but,
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? ZTGMUNT KRAS1NSK1 ^3
unlike Henryk of the Undivine Comedy, who was
damned because he had loved nothing, Irydion
had loved Greece. He had sinned, but sinned
because he had loved. He is, therefore, saved, but
not without a long expiation. He who had worked
in hatred, and whose work had therefore resulted
only in its own destruction, is now sent to a labour v
of love for a fallen country that will surely save
both him and her. In the sentence pronounced by
heaven upon Irydion--Krasinski's mystic and
national Thought--the poet throws off, in part, the-
allegory, and speaks more plainly to his brother
Poles. Irydion is bidden
"'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
ruined huts of the poor and the destroyed palaces
of the exiles. Thou shalt know it by the sighs of
My angels, flying over it by night. '
"' Go and dwell among the brothers that I
give thee. There, is thy second trial. For the
second time thou shalt behold thy love trans-
pierced, dying--and the sorrows of thousands
shall be born in thy one heart. '
"'Go and trust in My name. Ask not for thy
glory, but for the good of those whom I entrust
to thee. And, after long martyrdom, I will give ye
what I gave My angels--happiness--and what I
promised to mankind on the heights of Golgotha
--freedom. '
"' Go and act. Although thy heart shall faint in
thy bosom, although thou shalt doubt thy brethren,
although^thou shouldst despair of Me Myself,
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? 144
POLAND
act ever and without rest. And thou shalt rise,
not from sleep as erst, but from the work of
ages--and thou shalt be the free son of heaven. '
"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. "
Irydion is the confession of one who knew the
onslaughts of despair and hatred, and who over-
came them, both for himself and his nation, by
holding fast to the principles of an unflinching
national morality. Criticising his drama from the
ethical standpoint, which was the only aspect
under which Krasinski ever spoke of his work in
his correspondence with his friends, the poet said:
"To prove its truth, the author might call
upon the shades of the dead and the tears of the
living. He might ask many a one: 'Didst thou
not feel this, didst thou not dream thus ? ' And
many a one would answer: 'It is so. ' Not many
a one, but a whole nation. "A
V III
The development of Krasinski's thought was
not, as might have been imagined, a triumphal
progress from Irydion onwards. After the com-
pletion of the latter, darkness and confusion
swept down upon the poet. From his own testi-
mony in the opening lines to Dawn, we know that
it was his grief for his country that shook both his
* Letters of Zygmunt Krasinsii. Vol. I. To Constantine
pasizynski, June 6, 1837.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 145
religious and national faith, always closely inter-
woven in Krasinski's soul. At this time he wrote
but little, and nothing that was worthy of his
genius, chiefly obscure allegories in poetic prose,
overladen with excessive imagery, tinged here
and there with pantheism, and indicative of the
spiritual perplexity in which he dwelt. Yet
through The Temptation, The Summer Night,
through the strange, nightmare visions of the
Three Thoughts, there runs the one thread that
nothing could ever destroy or weaken in Kras-
inski's life, which was at once his ruling passion
and the chief source of all his suffering: devotion
to Poland. They are the cry of one bewildered
with pain, unable to see with certainty his nation's
deliverance.
Curiously enough, Krasinski, the dreamer, the
poet, the mystic, was above all things a logician.
His national philosophy must be founded on a
rational system, it must convince his mind no less
than his heart, before it could satisfy him. Through
the years of mental suffering that stretched be-
tween the writing of Irydion and Dawn, he was
seeking a theory that would give the key to the
mystery of PolandVtragedy, provide her with a
hope, proclaim a vocation for her in the future.
Every philosophical development, every political
event, was significant in this connection alone. At
last, he found what his soul had asked. Dawn is
the hymn of his spiritual and patriotic victory.
His idea may be thus roughly summarized.
The signs of the times that immediately preceded
the birth of Christ--religious doubt, moral de-
cadence, strange faiths--are almost identical with
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? 146
POLAND
those of Krasinski's age. The conquests of Julius
Csesar paved the way for the coming of Christ by
obliterating the frontiers between nations. In
the nineteenth century we have the Napoleonic
conquests; and these, in their turn, prepared the
world for Christ's second and spiritual advent.
Not again in our flesh. But as He christianized
the individual, so now He will christianize govern-
ments, and harmonize the relations between them
and their subjects, between nation and nation.
As long as the dismemberment of Poland, that
crime against law and right, is permitted to be
an established fact, so long is Christ's intention
violated. Her restoration will be the herald of
the transfiguration of the political sphere into
the religious sphere, an earnest of the higher epoch
of the world's history.
Thus Krasinski in his prose introduction to
Dawn* And hence the mystic rapture with which
he can announce to his people that Poland's
death leads to her resurrection, her shame to the
glorious re-birth of the human race.
"Hodie scietis quia veniet Dominus et salvabit
nos et mane videbitis gloriam ejus. " These words
from the office of his Church for Christmas Eve,
Krasinski places at the head of the poem that is
one of the noblest expressions in literature of a
nation's suffering and a nation's hope.
As Dante's Divina Commedia is the spiritual
apotheosis of a woman, so Dawn is the idealization
of her whom Krasinski etherealized as his Beatrice,
and who likewise inspired Poland's greatest
See. Chapter II.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI i4>
musician--Delphina Potocka. F In the lines which*
open Dawn the poet sings how he was driven forth
from the land of his fathers to tread strange soil,
hearing from afar the triumphal cries of those who
had laid his country low. ?
"Like Dante, during life, I passed through hell.
"At first, I trusted that the pitying God, Who
is proud to the proud, to the faithful full of faith;
at first, I trusted after days but few He would
send avenging angels from above, and burst that
grave that stands before the world. But the days
passed by, and passed away the years. In vain
dawn struggled with the blinded strength of
night. No sun arose above the grave of saints;
and ever more abased did this earth of ours be-
come. Then sank my soul into that chaos of doubt,
where all light is changed into eternal night:
and, from all the circle of those lived out days, one
inscription standeth: There is no hope here.
"Ah, I dwelt, dwelt long in that abyss, driven
by wild rage and a measureless despair. My death
would then have seemed to me but my second
death. Like Dante, during life, I passed through
hell. But, to aid me also, a lady hastened down,
before whose very look the evil spirits fear. Me,
too, an angel from the pit redeemed. And I too
had a Beatrice of my own.
"Oh, beautiful as she! From this world of
gloom thou didst not wing thy way, leaving me
alone, to ascend to heaven--heavenly--to dwell
there without pain. Oh, beautiful as she, thou wast
more Christian far! For there, where sorrow
* Chopin dedicated a piano concerto to Delphina Potocka ; and
it was she who came and sang to him when he lay dying.
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? 148 POLAND
groweth, there, where tears are born, there, thou
with thy brother didst remain upon this earth.
Together walked we, wearing the self-same crown
of thorns. Blood from my hands with blood
empurpled thine. And the same empoisoned
draught of one hellish spring, we did drink to-
gether, oh, Beatrice of mine.
"And yet, and yet my groaning and thy sighs,
mingled with each other, they passed away to
song. From two sorrows linked in bridal of the
soul, one only voice was raised--^and oh! that--
voice was joy. Ah ! joyousness of faith, ah ! mighty
strength of hope, that into my heart returned by
thy look! So do clouds of darkness, full of tears
above, meet each other for a funeral in the skies.
Light is torn forth from their weeping by a blast
of thunder; and the mist becomes the golden
house of God. "
Dawn consists of a series of lyrics. Their sub-
jects are love, self-sacrifice, and suffering, considered
as a road of glory that leads to Poland's mystic
. . triumph. But though the application is to Poland,
Krasinski's nationalism, as I have already pointed o
. t out, touches so closely the mysticism of the
human soul that Dawn does not speak only to one
nation. Its message is universal.
Krasinski and his Beatrice are alone together
in a boat on an Italian lake. Above them are the
eternal snows of the Alps, the skies of Italy.
"There is one beauty and one God," cries the
poet, in joy that was rarely his. With harp in hand
and inspired eyes, Beatrice stands silvery, trans-
figured, as though rapt to heaven, in the light of
the moon rising over the snows.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 149
1
"Thou with. me and we alone.
Oh, the angels cannot feel
What I feel now in this hour.
Sister mine, to me it seemeth
That our holy one* ariseth
At this moment from the coffin. "
If only a dream, let him dream on. Let him and
her be of good heart, for, before the miracle shall
descend that will save them, they will not allow
j their hearts to bleed for doubt, their brows to
grow heavy with fear. In the inspiration of their
common dreams, driven by the storm of pain in
the sorrows of this changing life, " within, beyond
them, we feel God. " v
"We are the children of a mother slain, 'we
who never have beheld how a mother's eyes shine
as an angel's on her child. " They look to heaven
as an orphan looks. Moon, stars, and sun, nature's
beauty which is about them, as the boat cleaves
its way through the water, all make up one great
harp. Only the name of Poland is wanting to the
harmony of the universe. But, as God is in heaven, -
"evea^o will He restore her once again.
"To-day or to-morrow Thou wilt grant it to
us, Lord! Oh, grant it for Thy justice sake;
because Thou owest it, not to us, but to Thyself. "
"When I spoke thus, thou wast kneeling,
Wailing with thy harp's stringed wailing;
For thou leanedst thy snow-white forehead
On the strings the moon made shiver
All around in streams of gold.
* Poland.
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? POLAND
And, thus kneeling, thou wast sighing.
Pray, oh, sister, with thy sighing.
God knows well that in this day
Sighing is thy country's name. "
That country died a victim for the world's sin.
"Think you that who loves and dies can
perish? To your eyes,-to eyes of dust, but not
in sooth, nor to the universal life. Who died in the
hour of sacrifice has but passed into the lives of
others, and dwells in the hiding place of human
hearts; and with each day, each little moment,
living, shall grow within that tomb, giving to all
and giving self. " Invisible, she shall " burn with
fire the stones of hearts, soften with tears the
rocks of souls, and, by the sorrows and toils of the
grave, by the harmonious song of death, she shall,
though herself torn asunder, unite the nations in
one love. "
The body has been slain. But "know you not
that in the world of the spirit love and death are
one? Eternal is he who by his death gives birth
to life. But whoso by his life gives death he when
he dies shall rise no more. "
Then the apostle of the ideal, of spiritual forces,
pours forth his wrath upon the wielders of brute
might and those who seek to corrupt the soul.
And now begins the series of his visions. He had
been parted, as he once said to a friend, by the
sword of Damocles from the land of his youth;
and he asks of Beatrice:
"Knowest thou the love which eternally lures
the soul into the land of memory? Does the cry
of the angel of thy country call thee by night, and
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? ZTGMUNT KR4SINSKI 151
bid thee gaze into the living faces of those long
dead? " He leads her in fancy to the snow-
covered steppe where the bones of his ancestors
rest, above which shine the moon and one star
--the Polar star of the north.
"'Neath the earth is mournful ringing.
The burial place is trembling, living.
From the graves blow prayers and wailing.
Somewhere, swords are rattling hollow.
Clash of armour stern I hear,
As if our fathers, life remembering,
Turning on their sides, were dreaming
In death's sleep of Poland's sorrows. "
The tombs give up their occupants. Kings,
knights, senators arise. The poet falls upon his
face before them, weeping. What did they do
with their lives that they left to their descendants
neither power nor inheritance, only instead of a
country a dismembered body? A loud cry of
wrath goes up from the ghosts. The wraith of
Czarniecki, the great soldier of John Casimir's
days, answers that he grew, not from ease and
pleasure, but through pain. " To whom the Lord
gives torments He lays down His promises. " It
is not for the poet to seek the fault in his fathers.
They lived in their age as guests of other ages.
Fate was driving them to a higher calling: "To
the Poland which shall be. And from our blood
and from our sins, before this age shall pass away
shall rise the one people of the peoples. "
The steppe and the sky tremble and fade into
dreamland. The poet and Beatrice again float
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? 152
POLAND
upon the lake. The moon has sunk under a pall
of clouds. Surely that murmur they hear is no
sigh of the wind. A voice is weeping. The night
breeze carries to their ears a thousand wails. The
shores, the heights, become one prayer. The
spirits of the Polish dead are to appear to them
once more.
"On the waters there before us,
Like light dreams, a fluttering throng,
On the rocks and crags they float.
As will-o'-the-wisps, as wavering flamelets,
Now they sink, and now they rise. "
The poet cries to Beatrice to strike upon her
harp; to tear from the strings with the sound of
thunder the song of the legions: Poland hath not
perished. The voice of the harp rushes over the
water, throbbing in Krasinski's verse with the
music and the word echoes of the Polish language,
that make the passage impossible for English
rendering. The vast army appears to the watchers'
eyes. There wave the insignia of Poland's warfare,
the horsetails, the white plumes, terrible in many
a Polish charge, shields, banners, and coats of
arms, with the cross towering above all. In the
midst, the face of the Mother of Christ:
"As a star upon the darkness,
On high, on high suspended, rises,
Waning, glimmering, quivering, flaming.
Lo! her veil of blue and crimson
Shines about her as a rainbow.
Set with pearls, and set with flowers,
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 153
Flashes out her crown of diamonds.
Welcome, welcome! to the Queen,
Long a widow of her people,
To-day returning to her kingdom
Which, in Polish Czenstochowa,
Once our fathers gave to her.
And these fathers o'er the billows,
Lo, she leadeth. " * (
Let the harp cease. Its power sinks silenced
before that celestial rainbow. God's light has
touched the army of spirits. Dawn sparkles on
their helmets. The wings on their armour shine
as those of angels. In their glittering battle array --
they sweep, with swords upraised in her defence,
after their queen. She has descended to crush the
serpent's head for the second time. The hour of
mercy has struck. "Now, oh, now, and for all ages,
God will wipe our tears away. "
The heavenly hosts pass, and disappear into the
east, the dawn. They have gone, with their hope *
and the light as of a more splendid day that lit
the lake and mountains. All is now dark, as before.
But in the poet's heart they have left faith and
joy. "All is mine," cries he to Beatrice; "all is
fair. Mine the earth, the plains of heaven. I ring
forth the voice of life, for God's word is in my
heart. My Poland, Poland shall be! Praised be
1
* In gratitude for the repulse of the Swedes in 1655 at the walls
of Czenstochowa, which saved Poland, John Casimir proclaimed
the Blessed Virgin as Queen of Poland, and under that title she is
still addressed by the Polish nation. The ancient Byzantine
Madonna in the church of Czenstochowa has been for centuries
specially venerated by the Poles, and is described by Krasinski in
the above passage.
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? 154 POLAND
all and everything. Praised be through the ages
unto ages God, the spirits, man, and thou, and
praised the dead within their graves, and praised
be all who are alive, and praised the universal
world for ever, evermore! And to the skies
will I repeat: 1 Praise to Thee, Lord, I am
happy. '"
The third vision follows: neither on the waters
or mountains or clouds, but in some fathomless
region, where no man can say.