Behold us instantaneously
launched
in the midst of the
horrors of a social revolution !
horrors of a social revolution !
Krasinski - The Undivine Comedy
He now calls to his aid all the vigor
he had once devoted to earth's agonies, and has recourse
to arms and the principles of other days. Formerly he
esteemed but lightly the advantages of birth and the priv-
ileges of assured position ; but now he draws himself to
his full height in his pride of being a gentleman ; he ap-
peals to the lessons of history consecrated by past centu-
ries. Formerly he only spoke of God in the humanitarian
and vague language so dear to our speculative pantheism,
or, still further astray, he only addressed his j)rayers to
^'Mother Nature ;" but now he assumes as his war-cry the
names of "Jesus'' and of "Mary,'' and chooses for his
last bulwark a crumbling feudal tower, which bears the
name of " The Holy Trinity. " With a convulsive grasp
7
7°
POLISH POETRY IN
he clings to the ruins of a dying generation, and bursts
into demoniac laughter at the word once of such power :
"Progress! " "Progress! " he replies to the chief of the
democratic party, "happiness of the human race! I
too once believed it possible ! Here, take my head, if it
may be. . . . The first man in the desert died, and we
may ne'er re-enter Paradise ! . . . It might have been
perhaps, . . . but it is no longer possible. . . . Nothing
but murder now will satisfy, — unceasing war and ceaseless
mutual slaughter! " . . . It is not, however, tliat he has
a single hope left in the happy issue of the struggle, nor
even that he has any faith in the absolute justice of his
espoused cause. If the new order of things inspires him
only with horror, he has not therefore learned to esteem
the cause he defends! '■'■Your side I hate : the other I
despise,^'' is the confession which escapes him even in
the presence of the chief of the inimical party. What
an avowal ! what a position ! and above all, what a
startling change !
Nevertheless, it is not so strange as it may appear at
first sight, and the only thing which should really astonish
us in this exciting creation is, that it should in iSj^
have so fully divined the situation which zvould be forced
upon us in 1848 / In truth, does not this poem resemble
and recount in the fnost singular manner recent realities ?
Does it not contain the itiner history of nearly all men
among us ? Have we not all of us also been rocked for
our hour in these enchanting dreams of infinite progress?
have we not all been associated in hopes or in act with
those who "aspired and conspired,''^ or who "worked in
the darkness at the edifice of the Future" ? There was a
time in which all new doctrines found eager acceptance
among us ; every Utopia was met with a benevolent smile.
The infallibility of majorities had become for us a dogma,
the organization of labor pleased us for the moment, even
socialism might ])rove effective, and a man truly liberal
was close on the admission of the "frte woman P^ Then
came the day in which the spirits so long evoked and
flattered suddenly rose, imperious and menacing, sum-
moning us to keep our promises, to fulfill the dreoms we
had excited, or the people in their collected strength
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
71
would hurl themselves upon us, and seize with their own
hands the happiness of which we were defrauding them ;
— and we all recoiled in terror ! Then in order to save
society menaced to its base, we too made our ap])eal to a
personal, helpful, and incarnate God, — truly hitherto a
little too much forgotten by us, — we seized arms which
had been rusting for ages, and escaped for shelter be-
hind the remains of the thrones and altars still left stand-
ing upon the earth ; " to the fortress of the holy Trinity ! "
To the socialism of the future, we opposed the society of
the past ; we were seized with a sudden veneration for
the memories, the institutions, and even the abuses of
feudalism ; we smiled contemptuously on all who spoke
of progress. ''Progress! " we exclaimed with Count
Henry. "We too once believed it possible, — but it is
no longer of that the masses speak, — it is of a return to
the state of the savage 1" " Unceasing war and ceaseless
mutual slaughter 1"
Alas ! in this just and holy struggle we found ourselves
associated with strange auxiliaries and marching some-
times under still stranger flags, and we confounded more
than one righteous claim from civilized Peoples with the
iniquitous nnd bloodthirsty pretensions of the barbarous
masses. Every revolt against oppression then seemed
odious in our eyes ; every cry of liberty filled us with
terror; and we might well have made the confession so
comically tragic of Falstaff, that "we had become cowards
through conscience f" No humiliation had been spared to
our pride, no recantation to our ancient faith, no trouble
nor remorse to our innermost feelings. Truly we have
had personal experience enough to enable us now perfectly
to understand Count Henry, — to pity him also, — it is so
sweet to compassionate ourselves I
We must not, however, compassionate him too deeply ;
let us rather preserve the strict impartiality of the author
toward him. The fall was not undeserved, and the poet
acknowledges it in an apostrophe to his hero, of which
every word has its meaning. He says :
" Stars are around thy head — under thy feet surges the sea — a rainbow
forever floats upon the waves before thee and disperses the clouds ! Wliat-
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POLISH rOETRY IN
soever thou lookest upon is thine, -^thc shore? ;, the cities, the men belong
to thee, — the heavens are thine, — and nothing seems to equal thy glory :
"To listening ears thou chantest airs of rapture inconceivable, — thou
twinest hearts and then unwreatliest them, like a garland, at the caprice
of thy skilled fingers ! Thou forcest tears, then driest them by a smile. —
and then thou frightenest the smile away for a moment — an hour — too
often forever . . . . ! But what dost thou feel ? What creates! thou ?
Of what dost think? The stream of beauty flows through thee, but
thou art not beauty ! Woe to thee ! woe 1 The child weeping upon its
mother's breast, the field flower ignorant of its gift of perfume, have
more merit than thou before the Lord !
" Whence comest thou, ephemeral shadow, bearing witness to the light
which vet thou knowest not, hast never seen, and never art to see? In
anger or in mockery wert thou made ? Who gave to thee this life so
wretched and delusive, that thou canst play the angel till the moment of
thy f. ill, when thou wilt creep a reptile to be stifled in thine own corrup-
tion? Thou and the woman have one origin !
"And yet thou sufferest, although thy agony brings naught to birth,
and serves for nothing ! The groans of the lowest beggar are counted
in heaven, compensated amid the music of the angels' haqis ; but thy
despair and sighs fall to the bottomless abyss, and Satan gathers them
and adds them with joy to his delusions, lies ! "
The meaning of this apostrophe is easily understood.
Count Henry certainly aspireti to the ideal, and had
borne bitter grief; but he had never tried to reproduce
the ideal within his own soul; he had only drawn vanity
and severity from his afflictions. His enthusiasm was not
only false, but for the false. He had rather sought emo-
tions than experienced true feelings. "He and the
woman have one origin. " He had had neither simplicity
nor spontaneity. Pride had taken possession of his soul,
and, while he believed that he loved and adored human-
ity, he only loved and adored himself and his own
thoughts. " Peace to men of good will ! " the Guardian
Angel cries at the commencement of the Drama; but it
is rather a warning than a benediction. Let us notice in
passing these words of "good tvi/I. '" They are the first
words, as they will be the last, of the magnanimous
poetry of the anonymous author ! These words are at
the commencement of his "Infernal Comedy," as they
will form, at a later date, the title of the last of his
"P. salms. " This '' good will '' the existence of which
the poet does not acknowledge in his Count Henry, the
himianitarian dreamer, or defender of established order,
he understands as comprising good faith, sincerity, uj)-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
73
right and pure intentions : " that tranquil and loving
force against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. "
From the cold and troubled source of false exaltation he
makes all the misfortunes of his hero flow ; the misery of
the man, the embarrassment of the citizen, the distrac-
tions of his public and private life.
The drama commences with a wedding scene. After
having lived long alone with his thoughts and his dreams.
Count Henry ^^ descends to terrestrial vows," and con-
tracts a marriage. ' For a moment we are induced to be-
lieve that the visionary dreamer at last understands the
true vocation of life, and the sweetness it still holds in
reserve for him ; that he will taste the happiness of a pure
and lasting love; that he will found a family; but a few
words, eloquent in their brevity, soon dispel such illu-
sions. With the straightforward sense of a loving soul,
the young bride says to the husband : "I will be to thee
a faithful wife, as my mother has taught me, as my own
heart dictates to me. " To which he replies: "Thou
shalt be my song for eternity. " The wife speaks the
language of society; he responds with the accents of
poetry ! She is fatigued with the noisy ball, forming so
painful a contrast with the soft emotions of her heart,
and feels faint ; but the Count finds her so lovely in her
exhaustion and pallor, that he begs her to return to the
dance. "I will remain here and gaze upon thee, as I
have often watched the floating angels in my dreams. "
She still complains of weariness, but he insists, implores,
and is obeyed ! By such traits as these the poet reveals
his character from the very commencement. Thus one is
not astonished in so soon finding Count Henry wander-
ing about the mountains, in dark and stormy nights, in
pursuit of his old phantoms. "Since my marriage, I
have slept the sleep of the benumbed, eating and drink-
ing and sleeping like a German artisan! " His wife is
"born for home and hearth," but "not for him;" she
is not what he dreamed. He certainly does not fail in
finding words for the expression of a grand sorrow, nor
lacks he powerful images ; but how much deeper and
even more poetic is the sentiment of the young wife in
these simple words; "Yesterday I went to confession ; I
7*
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POLISH POETRY IN
examined into all my sins; but I could find nothing
which ought to offend thee ! "
A son is born of this union; but the father is not
present at the ceremony of baptism, at the moment
when his infant receives a name and enters into the
human city. The mother comes forward tottering, her
eyes haggard and wandering in delirium, and cries, to
the amazement of the assistants: " I bless thee, George !
I bless thee, O my child ! Become a Poet, that thy
father may love thee ; that he may not one day deny
thee! Thou wilt merit well of thy father thus; thou
wilt please him, and then he will pardon thy mother.
. . . I curse thee, George, if thou becomest not a
Poet ! " . . . She becomes mad, and is taken to an
asylum for the insane. At this frightful news the soul of
the husband is torn ; he breaks into sobs of remorse.
"I promised her fidelity and happiness, and I have
thrown her, living still, into the hell of those already
damned ! I blast all upon whom I breathe, and am
doomed to destroy myself. Hell has thrown me here,
that I might be to men its image upon earth ! Upon
what pillow of horror lays she now her head ! With
what harmonies have I surrounded her? The howls of
madmen ! " He would perhaps have pursued this mono-
logue for a longer time, if a mysterious and sardonic
voice had not suddenly cried to him : " Thou cJuxfitest a
Drama r'
This madness of the wife is a masterly invention ; it is
indeed with an art akin to the genius of Shakespeare that
])oetic justice is here administered to the hero of the
Drama. He had found his wife too practical, — tran-
quilly sleeping at regular hours, and never soaring above
the earth. Well ! She will quit the earth ; she will sleep
no more, save with the tossing restlessness of the de-
ranged ! The sense of reality will altogether escape her,
and she will lose her earthly reason ! He was a dreamer;
she will become a lunatic; she will in good faith practice
the exaltation of which he has only dreamed, and to his
poetic inspirations she will reply in delirium. "Thou
wilt no longer despise me, Henry ! " she says to him
when they meet in the mad-house. " I am full of inspira-
THE XLXETEENTIl CENTURY. 75
tion now ; my soul has left my heart and mounted into my
brain ! Look at me ! Am I not thine equal now ? I
can comprehend all now, — express it, sing it; I chant
the sea, the stars, the clouds, battles, — no, I have never
seen a battle. You must take me there ! I must see and
describe a corpse, a shroud, blood, air, the dew, a coffin.
. . . I am so happy ! "
These incoherent speeches — in which, however, each
word has its own tale to tell — are interrupted at intervals
by cries still more incoherent breaking from all sides.
They are the cries of the insane who are confined in
other cells in the house. But let us take good care not
to imagine all this to be only a puerile effort to produce
a tragic scene ! Alas I these voices have a profound sig-
nificance in themselves; this symphony of madness has
its dominant key ; the mad poetry of the wife is de-
signedly interrupted by these wild cries, which are the
precursory signs of the approaching delirium of society
entire; and through the domestic anguish is already seen
the misery of the world.
^^A voice from above. You have chained up God !
One is already dead upon the Cross. I am the second
God, and you have given me also up to the execu-
tioners !
"•^A voice from beloiv. To the scaffold with the heads
of kings and nobles ! Through me will begin the liberty
of the people.
"^ voice from the left. The comet tracks its way in
fire across the sky; the awful Day of Judgment draweth
near.
"y4 voice from below. I have killed three kings with
my own hands ; ten still remain and a hundred priests
who still sing mass. "
"Are not these people terribly deranged? " asks the
wife, in listening to these infernal cries. "They do not
know what they are saying," she continues; "but lean tell
you what would happen if God Himself should go mad ! "
If God should go 7nad ! The thought is of a ferocity, but
also of an energy almost unequaled, nor does it lessen in its
wild development. " But I can tell you what would happen
if God should go mad. " (She seizes him by the hand. )
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POLISH POETRY IN
"All the worlds would fly about in space, mount up on
high, or roll in the abyss : and every creature, every worm,
would cry, / am God ! and they would all die one after
another, and all the comets and suns would go out in
the sky : and Jesus Christ would save us no longer !
Tearing his hands from the nails, with both hands he
would hurl his cross into the abyss ! Listen ! how this
cross, the hope of millions, falls from star to star! It
breaks at last, and covers with its ruins the universe en-
tire ! The Holy Virgin alone continues to pray, and the
stars, her servants, are still faithful to her, — but she too
will plunge where all created things are plunging down
— for God is mad ! " . . .
Between these scenes of domestic life so vigorously
sketched, and those of public life soon so stormily to
unroll, is placed a melancholy idyl : a series of episodes
between the father and child, the widower and orphan.
And rarely has the imagination of a poet created a form
so exquisitely graceful, or of a symbolism so deep, as the
little George of the drama. His mother's prayers have
been but too well answered ; her son, like the Count, is
also a poet, indeed, a poet in a higher sense, for he does
not seek emotions, they rise spontaneously in his heart ; his
soul vibrates like a harp, and multiform images, even
against his will, ferment in his brain and "give him pain
in his head. " He recites sweet and harmonious songs,
he says he hears his mother sing them, whom he has never
known ; he declares that he hears celestial voices, but in
spite of high nervous energy he is weak and sickly. At
the age of ten years the child withers away, becomes
blind, and finds life only within his own soul. It is easily
divined that the poet meant to personify in George those
pure and contemplative natures which are often met even
in the midst of the most agitated society and in the most
stormy times ; na'ive and delicate souls with high thoughts
and refined perceptions, but timid and shut up in them-
selves ; blind to all the things of this earth, and under-
standing nothing of the commonplace facts of the workl,
which are, however, its stern necessities. Little George
has strong religious instincts ; he wants to j^ray always, he
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
77
refers everything to God. But let us not be deceived ; it
is not really faith, it is rather the necessity of belief, the
eager desire of certainty. The piety of the child pro-
ceeds too much from the poetry of the father; this the
author indicates in the most ingenious manner. The
Count takes his son to the cemetery ; George kneels before
the tomb of his mother, and recites the "Ave" : " Hail
Mary, full of grace ! Mary, Queen of heaven. Lady of all
that blooms on earth, that scents the fields, that paints
the fringes of the streams. " . . . The father silences
and reproaches him. He recommences: "Hail Mary,
full of grace ! The Lord is with thee ! The angels bless
thee, and as thou glidest softly through them each plucks
a rainbow from his wings to cast beneath thy feet. " . . .
Who does not know this tendency to endeavor to increase
faith by poetry, to adorn the words of the gospel, to beau-
tify Golgotha itself? But is this really religion ? It is
indeed a religion able to produce internal delights and
mystic raptures, but it can give neither dogmas to the
intellect nor rules to the conscience, nor can a society
tottering to its base find any support therein. In the
social war so soon to burst forth, little George dies from
a wandering ball.
Behold us instantaneously launched in the midst of the
horrors of a social revolution ! The transition is abrupt
and violent ; it is a surprise in the Drama, as it also was
in our history. The Count, undeceived by time and
grief, cured of his chimeras upon the progress of the
human race, has now taken in hand the defense of society
menaced at all points, — and further commentary is un-
necessary ! Let us, however, remark that in this new
transformation our hero no less retains the original vice
of his nature, the capital sin of which consists in seeking
impressions, emotions, rather than searching for truth; in
burrowing into his imagination rather than scrutinizing
his conscience. He regards this civil war only as a fatal
and bitter task ; and yet he sometimes surprises himself by
his keen relish for its savage poetry, representing in ad-
vance to himself its fields of battle, its torrents of blood.
It is the '^sublime horror of the cannon,'^ admired from
the opposite point of view ! His pride, hitherto latent,
78 POLISH POETRY IN
flashes into ominous light. He delights in playing his
rcMe as a Titan ; and we are often tempted to ask if, at
his pleasure, he does not exaggerate the perversity of
human nature, as he had before exaggerated its indefinite
perfectibility. The dangers which threaten civilization
are, nevertheless, great and real; and the dissolution of
society is painted with the direst and most frightful hues.
Let the reader turn to the new " Walpurgis Night" in "The
Undivine Comedy," at which Count Henry, unknown,
assists ; let him look into the wild Saturnalia of the fam-
ished masses eager for pillage and murder, in the midst
of which our hero recognizes some of his old acquaint-
ances, his ancient associates in the '■'■Great work of the
Future I' ^ Let the reader survey these scenes of misery
and carnage, in the midst of which stands out one of
masterly power, — the interview between Count Henry
and the chief of the revolutionists.
In vain may the plebeians hate and curse all social
superiority ; it will not the less exercise upon them a
disturbing and mysterious attraction ! Li the ingenious
picture of Paul Delaroche, it is evident that the beheaded
Stuart still awes Cromwell from the folds of his shroud ;
he imposes upon him even to his wliite hand, so long and
taper, so skillfully brought in close contact with the rough
and bony fist of the Puritan chief. It is not, then, aston-
ishing that Pancras should feel an irresistible desire to see
his aristocratic adversary, to speak to him, that he should
even desire to save him ; but why should the Count, on
his side, feel an equal attraction, and consent to an inter-
view of which he must so well have known the futility?
Alas ! that which forced it upon him was the attraction
which sometimes induces us to open a grave that we may
contemplate a face, now deformed and revolting — once
idolized ! In this broken mirror, the Count wished to
gaze upon his own image, wildly altered and distorted.
Strange, and well calculated to excite despair, is the fact
that in this contest between Count Henry and Pancras,
nothing determinative is brought to light ; only their own
individual sources of complaint are justly put, and well
founded ; no brilliant fusing si)ark of universal truth
flashes from the contact of these negative poles. Pancras
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
79
says: "You who are old, rotten, satiated with food and
drink, worm-eaten and crumbling into dust, give place to
those who are young, vigorous, hungry and robust ! " —
"Ah! I know you too," replies the Count; "I have
visited your camp at night, and have seen the bloody
dance of fools and barbarians; their floor was the decapi-
tated heads of those who differed in opinion from them !
I recognized all the vices of the Old World peering from
the new garments ; they sang a new song, but it ended
ever in the old refrain : Bread, meat, gold, and blood ! "
" Your ancestors were robbers! " cries Pancras. "And
yours were slaves I" replies the Count.
The adversaries separate ; the struggle recommences
more furiously and implacably than before, and in the final
moment, when the last bastion crumbles, the Count kills
himself by leaping from the top of the precipice. He
had already heard the doom of Heaven, which condemned
him because "he had esteemed nothing, loved nothing
but himself and his own thoughts;" — and it was his own
son who must explain to him the meaning of those voices
from the sky ! The death of Pancras is still more sudden ;
it is unforeseen, unprepared, and therefore deeply signifi-
cant. Scarcely has he reached in triumph the top of the
ramparts when the victorious chief suddenly and without
apparent cause grows faint ; he totters and expires, only
indicating with his hand a bloody cross which appears
in the heavens, and uttering but the words : " Galilaee,
Vicisti! "
We have already said that the most despairing phase of
"The Undivine Comedy" is found precisely in this termi-
nation without solution ; this universal triumph of nothing-
ness, in which all the principal actors in the drama, the
Count, his wife, Pancras, and even poor little George,
have been engulfed. Are we, then, forever to despair?
or must we seek among the actors of the second rank a
figure, a shadow to whom an interest, a hope may be
attached? May it perhaps be Leonard, the beloved dis-
ciple of Pancras, the sincere enthusiast, who shared all
the dislikes, all tlie ideas of his master, but whose hands
are unstained with blood, and who, either by chance, in-
stinct, or good fortune, has no crimes with which to re-
So POLISH POETRY IX
proach himself? Has the task of reconciliation been re-
served for him (the type of the rising generation) who
has shared in our struggles, seen our misery, taken a part
in our follies, but has kept himself pure from our atro-
cities? At all events, the role of this generation will be
vast; it will have much to forget and much to learn. It
must above all things weigh well the words addressed to
our tragical hero by his Good Genius : " Thou wishest to
salute the new sun ; and for that thou fixest thine eyes
upon the highest point of the heavens ! Look rather round
thine own horizon /' * Let us too watch our horizons / Let
us each measure and cultivate with care the field given
to his individual action ; let us mount from the known to
the unknown, from ourselves to the human race, and who
can say that we will not again find ourselves in the pres-
ence of our " lost God" ?
However that may be, it is, alas ! certain that we have
by no means reached the term of our trials, and that The
Undivine Comedy will %i\\\for a longtime continue to be the
Drama of the Future. The dangers threatening society
will force us more than once to prefer the established
order to the moral order, and will more than once surprise
us into invoking the phantoms of the Middle Ages from
the fear of the red spectre ; into playing the sons of the
crusaders without even being the children of the cross;
into proclaiming ourselves Papists, without even being
Catholics !
Taken in a general sense, the problem developed in " The
Undivine Comedy"#is not at all restricted to the present
time; it has already traversed more than one phase, and
found its expression in more than one masterpiece. The
problem is in truth no other than the struggle between
the ideal and society ; the situation forced upon the man
who, bearing in his conscience a fancied type of justice
and happiness, must find it realized in the world surround-
ing him, or impose it upon it. Even the Middle Ages
had endeavored to formulate this problem in the creation
of Perceval, a hero of pure soul and high aspirations, who
takes the first passers-by for angels, seeks an ideal city
through numberless trials and struggles, and ends by find-
ing it, conformably to the ascetic character of the times,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 8 1
in a monastic and mysterious order, that of the Templars,
the Guardians of the Holy Grail, of whom he becomes
the King. But above all, Shakespeare has created in
Hamlet the eternally tragic type of a man placed between
his ideal and society ; of a man such as the upheaval of
religious opinions and the revival of learning have made
him; with an immense extent of knowledge, but without
any interior power to govern it ; with the precious gift
of being able to look at all things from their varying
stand-points, but without any instinctive and genuine con-
victions ; with a susceptibleand quest ioning conscience,
but which for that very reason has grown more hesitating,
more uncertain with regard to good as well as to evil ; in
short, with that excited and luxuriant imagination which
too often supplies the want of will or force by brilliant
and unreliable fantasies.
Magnificent indeed is the conception Hamlet forms of
man in the abstraction of his philosophy, " So like a god
in reason, so sublime ! " But how little conformable with
this ideal appears to him the society in which he is caMed
to live ! How well he knows how to ridicule and scathe the
rogues and villains who reign and govern, the politicians
who would deceive God himself, and how full is his soul
of melancholy indignation against " The whips and scorns
of time, the oppressor's wrong, the ])roud man's con-
tumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the
spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes. " . . .
His own noble inspirations, his dearest interests, the sum-
monings even from another world, — all call and urge him
to undertake a work of reparation. The task is with him
almost a personal question ; he has a father to avenge and
a throne to reconquer, but when this work is placed be-
fore him, he grows weak, hesitates, his reason totters.
His refined conscience suggests to him, at the same time,
the most subtle scruples as well as the most perfidious
cruelties, and after having weighed and scrutinized every-
thing, he comes to the strange conclusion that " nothing
in itself is good or bad, but that our thinking makes it
so. " He takes refuge in his imagination, and stifles all
action in profound and brilliant soliloquies. '■^ He com-
poses for himself a drama, ^' gives himself as spectacle to
82 POLISH POETRY IN
himself, and enjoys his success as an artist ; he selects the
most ingenious means for the simplest objects, and forgets
the end in his complicated means. Through the very
force of his determination to foresee everything, to leave
nothing to chance or remorse, he ends by becoming the
mere plaything of the most fortuitous circumstances, and
by committing the most atrocious as well as the most use-
less crimes. He spares his enemy, and only strikes those
who had loved him, or who had done him no harm, and
pronounces judgment on himself in those melancholy
lines which bear witness at the same time to his desire
that the right should prevail and his want of power to
accomplish it, —
" The time is out of joint ; O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right ! "
The hero of " The Undivine Comedy" reminds us by
more than one trait of the Prince of Denmark : he has
the same imagination and the same sensibility ; he loves
to make soliloquies and compose for himself dramas ; he
joins to highly elevated and generous aspirations weak-
ness and impotence ; and his conscience, refined to ex-
cess, at last grows hard and sinks to cruel actions. There
is more than one element common to the two works ;
among others, the poetic justice which punishes Count
Henry's determinate exaltation by the madness of his wife,
is very like that which punishes the counterfeit madness
of Hamlet, by the too real insanity of Ophelia, But let
us not be deceived by this resemblance ; if the character
of the catastrophe is the same, the j////^? //W/ is aggravated,
and the denouement becomes more saddening. The hero
of the Polish poet not only recalls the type created by
Shakespeare, he continues it, — continues it under entirely
new conditions, created by contemporary and still more
heart-rending disasters. It is certainly very sad to will
and see the Good, and yet feel utterly powerless before
the Evil ; the Prince of Denmark fully felt this terrible
anguish ; — but it was reserved for the man of our times to
endure a torment far more horrible, — that of aspiring to
the Good, and to be not only forced to tolerate the Evil,
but even to defend it — through fear ofxvorse, — through dread
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 83
of utter destruction and the abyss of nothingness f Hamlet
defending the reign of fools and rogues, of the Poloniuses
and Osrics ; Hamlet making his breast and heart a ram-
part for the throne of the crowned murderer, Clodius, —
and all this to escape the spicy logic of the ''grave-dig-
gers," who found the greatest nobility should belong to the
tanners and undertakers : — certainly the irony would be
bitter — satanic ! This is, however, precisely the role which
devolved upon Count Henry ; the kind of combat to
which a liberal man of the nineteenth century is some-
times called ! The contest is sad and deceptive in a very
different manner from what it was in times not far re-
moved from our own, for in the present struggle we sur-
prise ourselves not only in wanting faith, but in failing to
act in good faith ; — and the drama becomes so much the
more poignant that, in being tragic and infernal, it does
not the less resemble a comedy !
III.
There is one thing very remarkable in considering the
collective works of the Anonymous Poet : that is, — if I
may so term it, — the descending movement of his mind
from universal questions embracing all humanity to na-
tional or psychologic subjects. The phenomenon is sur-
prising, because it is not the common movement of poetic
genius. Take Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe, you will
find them gradually rising from the special to the general,
from the finite to the infinite, from the Vita Nuova to the
Song of Paradise ; from the historic and national drama,
and from Rotneo, to the vast and deep conceptions of
Macbeth and Hamlet ; from Werther and Goetz von Ber-
lichingen to the second part of Faust, and Wilhelm Meister.
But without leaving the regions of Polish poetry, the
career of Mickiewicz offers a most striking example of a
development always ascending. He begins by ballads and
romances based upon traditions and popular legends ; that
is to say, by that which is the most inherent in the natal
soil, the most closely shut in by the domestic horizon.
He rises afterwards to the tale of Grazyna, in which the
84 POLISH POETRY IN
memoiies of a feudal past are depicted ; to IVa/leiirod,
where he presents to us the present of the nation with all
its feverish preoccupations; we hear already in it the tocsin
of 1830. He afterwards, in his Sir Thaddeus, repre-
sents to us the national life collectively in its customs and
memories, and in the most minute analysis of its internal
being, — and only then, for the first time, does the poet
enter upon the problems of the Future. It is exactly the
reverse with the Anonymous Poet. At the very beginning
of his career, at the age of twenty-three, he wings his first
flight into the highest regions of speculation, pierces with
a single look the whole structure of Society and Morals,
but this sphere once flown over, or rather, passed through,
he never returns to it ; he folds designedly his wings,
tracing circles ever more and more narrow; and the choice
of the forms successively adopted by the poet is like an
image of his own internal development. P'or his first
works, he preferred the Allegoric Drama, the widest and
freest form which can be found; then he limited himself
to the Tale, to the imaginative, or rather, visionary tale,
it is true, but a species of composition far more closely
united and regular than the dramatic allegory; and he
finally ended by restricting himself to the most individual
and concentrated expression possible, — to a severe and
measured lyricism.
We might perhaps try to explain this phenomenon of a
development so different from that of Mickiewicz by
purely external circumstances; by stating that Mickie-
wicz had lived for a long time in his own country, and
had only gradually attained a position which might be
termed cosmopolitan, while the Anonymous Poet had
been early and violently thrown into other lands, among
the ideas and prepossessions of the West, and only
through the force of will and reflection returned to the
feelings and wants of his own people. But there are far
more inherent, far deeper causes for the fact. A moral
question here leads the historic or literary inquiry, and
the concentric development of the genius of the poet is
in exact correspondence with the leading ideas which he
had formed upon the duties of the present, upon the
mission of man and of nations in the critical epoch we
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 85
are now traversing. " The Undivine Comedy" was rather
a farewell than a salutation ; it was an energetic protest
against a fatal delusion of the age, in which it was
thought possible to regenerate humanity without having
first regenerated man; to establish universal rights, with-
out having first strengthened the individual in his duties.
The noble precept, that " in order to salute the sun, we
must look at our horizon," the poet was resolved to put
into practice. He did look at his own horizon; he
labored more and more to understand the ground given
to him to cultivate, — the field left to his action and good
will ; he tried to formulate more and more exactly his
individual mission with the means accorded him, and
under the circumstances in which he found himself
placed, and thus, in successively narrowing his circles, he
arrived at a point, — the human soul ; according to the
national expression, "the Polish soul," — "at that im-
perceptible point which nevertheless has an infinite
periphery, since it contains God. "
At the first glance, however, the work which so closely
followed "The Undivine Comedy" (1836) resembles it
in many respects. First, as to form, it also is a dramatic
allegory, with varied scenes boldly sketched, and inter-
woven with lyric digressions. Secondly, as to subject, it
also represents the fall of a world, the crumbling away of
a society. But that which from the first distinguishes
"Iridion" from "The Undivine Comedy" is, that the
scenes are no longer to be played in the future; they
occur in a well-known and determinate past. With the
rare intelligence of sublime conceptions, the poet places
himself on the very knot of these three elements, viz. ,
the classic element, the barbaric element, and the Chris-
tian element : the tissue of which three, providentially
combined, interwoven, and developed by the centuries,
has formed our modern civilization.
The triple name borne by the hero of this poem —
Iridion, Sigurd, Hieronymus — immediately indicates the
point of intersection in the history of humanity in which
the drama is set. Is it due to the possession of an his-
toric base that the second work has over the first the ad-
vantage of a firmer, yet more plastic, design ? Or should
8*
86 POLISH POETRY IN
it not rather be attributed to the special place chosen by
the poet, — to the antique world whose genius, even in
decline, seems to have had the gift of giving lucidity and
transparency to all with which it came in contact? At
all events, it is certain that this second composition is in
bolder relief, and more harmoniously ordered, than " The
Undivine Comedy;" the figures are no longer mere sym-
bols; they have marked traits, sculptured by a skillful
graver; they are stamped with distinct individuality, and
the characters are largely developed. However, that
which most distinguishes it from "The Undivine Com-
edy" is, that in place of a cosmopolitan and humanita-
rian tendency, it has a patriotic bearing; it aims at the
special situation forced upon Poland since her dismem-
berment, which must not be forgotten as we read.
Without doubt, history is familiar with more than one
country which has gnawed its chains of foreign domina-
tion in despair; it knows even nations which, like
Greece, after ages of oppression, awake to the full en-
ergy of patriotic feeling ; but, with the exception of
Spain under the yoke of the Moors, it offers no nation
which has struggled as constantly as Poland against its
subjection. A century has elapsed since the division of
Poland ; and how many insurrections does she not count
in her sad. annals? how many efforts always conquered
yet always springing forth anew? And what untold bit-
terness must have accumulated in hearts always crushed
yet always obstinate to combat ! Above all, let us not
forget that, for the most part, the generations born after
the division have never known, in its living reality, the
country for which they have fought without cessation ;
the fatherland has only been for them a mournful mem-
ory, — the recollection of a great grief, of a great crime
remaining unpunished, and forever calling upon them for
vengeance. Let us likewise note that to a material dis-
memberment a spiritual dismemberment had also cor-
responded ; that a current of emigration was renewed
after every catastrophe, the chief cause of which lay in
an undying feeling of protestation against the cruel work
of the invaders. A strange situation has grown up from
these facts, — one beyond the limits of all ordinary rules ;
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. g-j
a situation of constant excitement, feverish and delete-
rious, calculated to mine the morality of the nation, and
threatening to pervert the delicate sense of the just, of
the upright. Foreign domination is not only odious in
what she permits herself to inflict upon the oppressed ; she
is more horrible through that which the oppressed deem jus-
tifiable to inflict in turn upon her !
The state of being forced upon Poland by the triple
yoke, recommenced in her interior in the necessity of
simulating and dissimulating, in raising cunning to the
height of a civic duty, while the art of deceiving the op-
pressors becomes almost a virtue ; and for her children
thrown into exile, it created externally the mission of
struggling against the enemy upon every battle-field, and
through every available means. The example of Bem
alone would be sufficient to make evident the danger in-
curred in the possible distortion of the most sacred feel-
ings of a nation by this constant and violent struggle
without quarter. That the glorious soldier of Ostro-
lenka and Transylvania should have embraced the faith
of Mahomet, only in the hope of still making war upon
the Russians, is sufficient to prove how the moral sense
may sometimes be eclipsed even in the most heroic soul ;
but that the illustrious renegade should have lost none of
his prestige with a nation so fervent in its faith, and
whose whole past history had been an unceasing combat
against Islamism ; that the pious peasant of Posen should
have still continued to hear and salute in the sound of
the bells of his church the magical and still venerated
name of "Bem," — this becomes a grave matter, and
shows with what feelings the country is animated for
those who love it ! And what can be said of the ideas of
a vengeful Fanslavism, which were already beginning to
germ and delude souls, at the time when the Anony-
mous Poet was composing his work ? How are we to
speak of this strange and satanic doctrine which preaches
suicide, that death may be given to others? which
recommends voluntary slavery, the reconciliation with
the most cruel but also the strongest of the adversaries,
that thus vengeance may be wreaked on the less guilty?
that pleases itself in the hope of preparing a new Attila
88 * POLISH POETRY IN
for a world which remained an impassive spectator during
the agonies of the crucifixion of a people ? . . .
It is difficult, nay, it is almost impossible, for the
happy upon earth, for those who enjoy a free and inde-
pendent country, to comprehend the surging hell of
temptations, of torments, which are massed in the single
word, Slavery, for a subjugated people ! But the Anon-
ymous Poet understood this Hell, and shuddered at the
sight! Diving into the tortured depths of the "Polish
soul," he suddenly encountered this current of sombre
and ferocious ideas, — " they chilled his soul ! " He was
appalled at the force of that national feeling feeding
itself upon hate of the oppressors ; he was frightened at
that love of country stronger far than death, but which
began to think of giving death to others ! He wished
to give a warning to his people, and thus he wrote
"Iridion. "
The Anonymous Poet depicts the patriotic grief caused
by foreign oppression in its most legitimate, as well as in
its most vivid aspects. What could be more touching,
more attractive to our imagination, than the memories of
Hellas, the classical home of art, of poetry, and of that
love of country which brought forth so many heroes and
originated so many illustrious actions? What could be
more justifiable than the resentment of a descendant' of
Themistocles and Miltiades "against the people born of
a wolf;" against the Roman who came to Corinth as a
liberator, friend, and then became the proud and cruel
master of Greece, nay, of the entire world? " Iridion"
gives us the genius of Hellas meditating a great stroke of
vengeance after ages of subjection and oppression. The
scene is placed at the epoch of Caracalla and Heliogaba-
lus, in the time of the deepest abasement of the empire,,
when the grandeur of Rome was naught but monstrosity,
seeming ready to fall before any bold attack. Thus
heightened by the splendor of a glorious past, justified by
causes of well-founded complaint, favored by the most
propitious circumstances, the attempt of " Iridion" offers
still another element of success: it is not the siulilen
growth and bloom of a single will, a single age; it was
prepared afar off by a generation which gave itself up in
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 89
advance to the task of sowing, without the hope of har-
vesting, even of living, save in its successors ! This is
the deep thought developed in the Prologue, in which
two persons are boldly sketched who are doomed to die
before the real Drama actually begins, but who give birth
to the future hero, to the '■'■Son of Vengeance. ^^
Amphilochus, a Greek of illustrious race, counting even
Philopoemen among his ancestors, had deeply felt all
the woes of his subjugated people: "a slave because a
Greek, he was by nature an avenger. " With the clear-
sightedness of hate, we had almost said the hate of the
exile, he had seen on the still clear horizon the dark speck
from which the tempest would one day break forth, and
had divined in the barbaric race of the Northmen the future
destroyers of the Eternal City. He went to the Cimbric
Chersonesus, to the land of " Silver- Torrents," among
the Scandinavians, not to induce them to move against
the common enemy, Rome, but to find a wife ; an oracle
having predicted to him that great misfortunes to the im-
perial city would be the fruit of such an alliance. The
contrast between the Greek genius, refined almost to sub-
tlety, and the uncultivated but heroic character of the
Scandinavian, briefly indicated as it is, is yet portrayed
with the highest skill. The Greek fixes his choice upon
the purest of virgins, upon Crimhild, the High-Priestess
of Odin, the daughter of King Sigurd : a civilized Othello
fascinating a barbaric Desdemona ! She says to him : " I
know not thy country ; I have not even seen it in my
dreams ; nor do I know thine enemies ; and yet, O mis-
erable virgin, dishonored Priestess, struck by the curse of
Odin, I will follow thee! " The scene in which Crim-
hild appears for the last time to take her place upon the
stone of sacrifice, to sing her last hymn in the holy forest
of the God of the North, surrounded by the chiefs of the
hordes, by the lords of the plains, by the kings of the sea,
is stamped with massive grandeur. Filled with mystic
inspiration, her eyes gazing into infinite space, she fore-
sees the ages yet to come, hears the hammer of Thor
breaking the helmets and bucklers, the breasts and skulls
of men into dust ; she sees her brothers, her people,
leaving the land of Silver-Torrents, precipitate themselves
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POLISH POETRY IN
upon an immense city, a city on seven hills, of which she
vainly tries to find the name, — this name suffocates and
escapes her — she writhes to find it — but no utterance re-
lieves her tortured breast — she falls to the earth. The
Greek then advances from the ranks of the breathless
crowd; amidst the universal stupefaction and indigna-
tion, he enters the dread and sacred circle, and, bending
over the priestess, says to her: "In the name of Rotne,
name of thy enemy and mine, I call thee back to life !
Crimhild, rise! " Then turning to the crowd, he thrice
cries: Rome! Rome! Rome! The virgin rises, repeats
after him the mysterious name, and then follows the
stranger "as the wife, the husband ! "
From this union so strangely assorted by destiny, from
this pair settled in an island of the Ionian Sea, where
everything recalls the past, two children, pledges of love,
are born, whom Amphilochus, on his return from his
expeditions in the neighboring archipelagoes, blesses in
their sleep with the words : " Remember to hate Rome !
When you shall be grown up, let each of you pursue it
with curses ; Iridion, with fire and sword; and Elsinoe
with all the genius and subtleties of woman ! " The Pro-
logue ends with the touching picture of the death of
Crimhild.
Many years pass, and we are transported to Rome,
whither Amphilochus had taken the ashes of his wife, his
household gods, and his hate. He too is dead, but has
left his designs to his son, beautiful as a demigod, " but
pale, because of all the Roman blood yet wanting to his
cheeks! " Amphilochus has also left his son, as coun-
selor, guardian, and friend, Masinissa, an old man whom
he had first met in the land of the Getulians when he
had lost his way upon a tiger-hunt : he is the wa'ide-
lote of the classic Wallenrod. The work of the Greek has
ripened, and Iridion has now immense forces at his com-
mand, destined to be employed against the accursed city.
Through his father he belongs to Hellas and the part
of Asia so thoroughly hellenized ; through his mother he
is affiliated with the Germans, who begin to throng into
Italy, filling the ranks of the cohorts and legions. He
has with him the ancient world and the modern, even the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
91
Romans are on his side, — not the abject freedmen whom
the conqueror of Numantia had already repudiated with
scorn, and who then formed the senattis populusque, but
the true Romans, the legitimate descendants of the old
patricians. There is a fine scene in which a wretch named
Sporus, by the command of a jester of Heliogabalus comes
to assassinate Iridion ; but, " he was hungry, and in the
Palace of Amphilochus they had given him food ; he was
thirsty, and they gave him wine ; he had heard his
brother gladiators bless the name of the Greek," and he
gives his secret and himself to Iridion. Iridion is struck
by the language of the slave ; he discerns the traces of
past greatness upon his brow, shining like a lamp in a
tomb. . . . "Thy name? " — "Sporus, but formerly
Scipio. " . . . "I can bring thee a Verres, a Capius, a
Sylla, all gladiators like myself. " . . . And the son of
Amphilochus is filled with joy. But all this is not yet
enough ; he must have a vengeance more refined, and
above all he must secure himself against the Fatum of the
Eternal City. What if he could gain the Emperor himself
to side against the empire ! If he could but make the
successor of Augustus the instrument of his vengeance,
and force the last of the Caesars to destroy with his own
hands the last of the Romans ! . . . And why should that
be impossible ? Had not Nero already tried to burn the
city? and the present occupant of the throne, the foolish
son of the mad Caracalla, was he not more insensate than
Nero, and even more of an artist than he who loved to
see the flames flash high ? Besides, the grasp of the
Greek was already upon Caesar ! Heliogabalus had be-
come deeply enamored of Elsinoe, whom Amphilochus
had consecrated from her infancy to pursue his work " by
all the genius, all the perfidy of woman ! "
The drama opens precisely at this point, when Iridion
is saying farewell to his sister, who is about to be taken to
the palace of Caesar. Our poet possesses in the highest
degree the difficult art of creating female characters, and
his works contain a gallery of feminine figures full of
pathos and originality. The daughter of Amphilochus
has been brought up from infancy in the idea that she is
to be the victim to expiate the shame of her fathers and
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POLISH POETRY IN
the sufferings of many nations ; she has been taught by
Masiiiissa; and the decrees of her brother have hitherto
been her law. But Avhen the fatal moment arrives for the
accomplishment of her destiny, her soul revolts, and, like
Antigone, she bursts into lamentations upon her doom,
upon her youth condemned to pain, her beauty to pro-
fanation. Iridion remains inexorable, and refuses all
temptation to pity. He leads Elsinoe to the statue of their
father.
" Formerly" — he says to her — " the sacrifice of the life
of a man sufficed for nations; now even honor must be
offered up ! . . . Maiden, listen to me as to the dying, as
if never again to hear my voice on earth ! Thou art to
enter the Palace of the Accursed, to live with the damned ;
to yield thy body to the son of shame: — see to it that
thy soul remains high, pure, and free ! Let Caesar never
sleep upon thy breast ! Alarm him constantly with cries
that the Praetorians call to arms, that the patricians con-
spire, and that the people storm his palace gates ! and
slowly, day by day, and hour by hour, madden him with
rage and fear ; drink all the life-blood of his heart ! Now
rise and bow thy head ! Conceived in the desire of ven-
geance, grown up in hope of this revenge, destined to
shame and to perdition, I consecrate thee to the infernal
gods — and to the manes of Amphilochus the Greek. "
It has sometimes been given to poetry to render history
probable, thus, for example, the Richard III. of the Chro-
nicles first becomes possible for our intellect, or acceptable
for our imagination, in the tragedy of Sliakespeare. The
Anonymous Poet has, in the same manner, succeeded in
making us believe in the existence, the reality, of one of
those Roman Csesars, who, in spite of Suetonius and
Tacitus, have always seemed to us inexplicable enigniiis.
Through an ingenious and ])rofound art our author has
succeeded in unraveling all the elements constituting that
remarkable and fantastic being called Heliogabalus. Born
under the burning sky of Asia, the son of Caracalla became
High-Priest at Emesus at fourteen years of age, and was
familiar with all the sanguinary voluptuousness of the
worship of Mithras. At seventeen, he was Cnesar, master
of the world ; and placed upon this giddy height, the
TIJE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
he had once devoted to earth's agonies, and has recourse
to arms and the principles of other days. Formerly he
esteemed but lightly the advantages of birth and the priv-
ileges of assured position ; but now he draws himself to
his full height in his pride of being a gentleman ; he ap-
peals to the lessons of history consecrated by past centu-
ries. Formerly he only spoke of God in the humanitarian
and vague language so dear to our speculative pantheism,
or, still further astray, he only addressed his j)rayers to
^'Mother Nature ;" but now he assumes as his war-cry the
names of "Jesus'' and of "Mary,'' and chooses for his
last bulwark a crumbling feudal tower, which bears the
name of " The Holy Trinity. " With a convulsive grasp
7
7°
POLISH POETRY IN
he clings to the ruins of a dying generation, and bursts
into demoniac laughter at the word once of such power :
"Progress! " "Progress! " he replies to the chief of the
democratic party, "happiness of the human race! I
too once believed it possible ! Here, take my head, if it
may be. . . . The first man in the desert died, and we
may ne'er re-enter Paradise ! . . . It might have been
perhaps, . . . but it is no longer possible. . . . Nothing
but murder now will satisfy, — unceasing war and ceaseless
mutual slaughter! " . . . It is not, however, tliat he has
a single hope left in the happy issue of the struggle, nor
even that he has any faith in the absolute justice of his
espoused cause. If the new order of things inspires him
only with horror, he has not therefore learned to esteem
the cause he defends! '■'■Your side I hate : the other I
despise,^'' is the confession which escapes him even in
the presence of the chief of the inimical party. What
an avowal ! what a position ! and above all, what a
startling change !
Nevertheless, it is not so strange as it may appear at
first sight, and the only thing which should really astonish
us in this exciting creation is, that it should in iSj^
have so fully divined the situation which zvould be forced
upon us in 1848 / In truth, does not this poem resemble
and recount in the fnost singular manner recent realities ?
Does it not contain the itiner history of nearly all men
among us ? Have we not all of us also been rocked for
our hour in these enchanting dreams of infinite progress?
have we not all been associated in hopes or in act with
those who "aspired and conspired,''^ or who "worked in
the darkness at the edifice of the Future" ? There was a
time in which all new doctrines found eager acceptance
among us ; every Utopia was met with a benevolent smile.
The infallibility of majorities had become for us a dogma,
the organization of labor pleased us for the moment, even
socialism might ])rove effective, and a man truly liberal
was close on the admission of the "frte woman P^ Then
came the day in which the spirits so long evoked and
flattered suddenly rose, imperious and menacing, sum-
moning us to keep our promises, to fulfill the dreoms we
had excited, or the people in their collected strength
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
71
would hurl themselves upon us, and seize with their own
hands the happiness of which we were defrauding them ;
— and we all recoiled in terror ! Then in order to save
society menaced to its base, we too made our ap])eal to a
personal, helpful, and incarnate God, — truly hitherto a
little too much forgotten by us, — we seized arms which
had been rusting for ages, and escaped for shelter be-
hind the remains of the thrones and altars still left stand-
ing upon the earth ; " to the fortress of the holy Trinity ! "
To the socialism of the future, we opposed the society of
the past ; we were seized with a sudden veneration for
the memories, the institutions, and even the abuses of
feudalism ; we smiled contemptuously on all who spoke
of progress. ''Progress! " we exclaimed with Count
Henry. "We too once believed it possible, — but it is
no longer of that the masses speak, — it is of a return to
the state of the savage 1" " Unceasing war and ceaseless
mutual slaughter 1"
Alas ! in this just and holy struggle we found ourselves
associated with strange auxiliaries and marching some-
times under still stranger flags, and we confounded more
than one righteous claim from civilized Peoples with the
iniquitous nnd bloodthirsty pretensions of the barbarous
masses. Every revolt against oppression then seemed
odious in our eyes ; every cry of liberty filled us with
terror; and we might well have made the confession so
comically tragic of Falstaff, that "we had become cowards
through conscience f" No humiliation had been spared to
our pride, no recantation to our ancient faith, no trouble
nor remorse to our innermost feelings. Truly we have
had personal experience enough to enable us now perfectly
to understand Count Henry, — to pity him also, — it is so
sweet to compassionate ourselves I
We must not, however, compassionate him too deeply ;
let us rather preserve the strict impartiality of the author
toward him. The fall was not undeserved, and the poet
acknowledges it in an apostrophe to his hero, of which
every word has its meaning. He says :
" Stars are around thy head — under thy feet surges the sea — a rainbow
forever floats upon the waves before thee and disperses the clouds ! Wliat-
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POLISH rOETRY IN
soever thou lookest upon is thine, -^thc shore? ;, the cities, the men belong
to thee, — the heavens are thine, — and nothing seems to equal thy glory :
"To listening ears thou chantest airs of rapture inconceivable, — thou
twinest hearts and then unwreatliest them, like a garland, at the caprice
of thy skilled fingers ! Thou forcest tears, then driest them by a smile. —
and then thou frightenest the smile away for a moment — an hour — too
often forever . . . . ! But what dost thou feel ? What creates! thou ?
Of what dost think? The stream of beauty flows through thee, but
thou art not beauty ! Woe to thee ! woe 1 The child weeping upon its
mother's breast, the field flower ignorant of its gift of perfume, have
more merit than thou before the Lord !
" Whence comest thou, ephemeral shadow, bearing witness to the light
which vet thou knowest not, hast never seen, and never art to see? In
anger or in mockery wert thou made ? Who gave to thee this life so
wretched and delusive, that thou canst play the angel till the moment of
thy f. ill, when thou wilt creep a reptile to be stifled in thine own corrup-
tion? Thou and the woman have one origin !
"And yet thou sufferest, although thy agony brings naught to birth,
and serves for nothing ! The groans of the lowest beggar are counted
in heaven, compensated amid the music of the angels' haqis ; but thy
despair and sighs fall to the bottomless abyss, and Satan gathers them
and adds them with joy to his delusions, lies ! "
The meaning of this apostrophe is easily understood.
Count Henry certainly aspireti to the ideal, and had
borne bitter grief; but he had never tried to reproduce
the ideal within his own soul; he had only drawn vanity
and severity from his afflictions. His enthusiasm was not
only false, but for the false. He had rather sought emo-
tions than experienced true feelings. "He and the
woman have one origin. " He had had neither simplicity
nor spontaneity. Pride had taken possession of his soul,
and, while he believed that he loved and adored human-
ity, he only loved and adored himself and his own
thoughts. " Peace to men of good will ! " the Guardian
Angel cries at the commencement of the Drama; but it
is rather a warning than a benediction. Let us notice in
passing these words of "good tvi/I. '" They are the first
words, as they will be the last, of the magnanimous
poetry of the anonymous author ! These words are at
the commencement of his "Infernal Comedy," as they
will form, at a later date, the title of the last of his
"P. salms. " This '' good will '' the existence of which
the poet does not acknowledge in his Count Henry, the
himianitarian dreamer, or defender of established order,
he understands as comprising good faith, sincerity, uj)-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
73
right and pure intentions : " that tranquil and loving
force against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. "
From the cold and troubled source of false exaltation he
makes all the misfortunes of his hero flow ; the misery of
the man, the embarrassment of the citizen, the distrac-
tions of his public and private life.
The drama commences with a wedding scene. After
having lived long alone with his thoughts and his dreams.
Count Henry ^^ descends to terrestrial vows," and con-
tracts a marriage. ' For a moment we are induced to be-
lieve that the visionary dreamer at last understands the
true vocation of life, and the sweetness it still holds in
reserve for him ; that he will taste the happiness of a pure
and lasting love; that he will found a family; but a few
words, eloquent in their brevity, soon dispel such illu-
sions. With the straightforward sense of a loving soul,
the young bride says to the husband : "I will be to thee
a faithful wife, as my mother has taught me, as my own
heart dictates to me. " To which he replies: "Thou
shalt be my song for eternity. " The wife speaks the
language of society; he responds with the accents of
poetry ! She is fatigued with the noisy ball, forming so
painful a contrast with the soft emotions of her heart,
and feels faint ; but the Count finds her so lovely in her
exhaustion and pallor, that he begs her to return to the
dance. "I will remain here and gaze upon thee, as I
have often watched the floating angels in my dreams. "
She still complains of weariness, but he insists, implores,
and is obeyed ! By such traits as these the poet reveals
his character from the very commencement. Thus one is
not astonished in so soon finding Count Henry wander-
ing about the mountains, in dark and stormy nights, in
pursuit of his old phantoms. "Since my marriage, I
have slept the sleep of the benumbed, eating and drink-
ing and sleeping like a German artisan! " His wife is
"born for home and hearth," but "not for him;" she
is not what he dreamed. He certainly does not fail in
finding words for the expression of a grand sorrow, nor
lacks he powerful images ; but how much deeper and
even more poetic is the sentiment of the young wife in
these simple words; "Yesterday I went to confession ; I
7*
74
POLISH POETRY IN
examined into all my sins; but I could find nothing
which ought to offend thee ! "
A son is born of this union; but the father is not
present at the ceremony of baptism, at the moment
when his infant receives a name and enters into the
human city. The mother comes forward tottering, her
eyes haggard and wandering in delirium, and cries, to
the amazement of the assistants: " I bless thee, George !
I bless thee, O my child ! Become a Poet, that thy
father may love thee ; that he may not one day deny
thee! Thou wilt merit well of thy father thus; thou
wilt please him, and then he will pardon thy mother.
. . . I curse thee, George, if thou becomest not a
Poet ! " . . . She becomes mad, and is taken to an
asylum for the insane. At this frightful news the soul of
the husband is torn ; he breaks into sobs of remorse.
"I promised her fidelity and happiness, and I have
thrown her, living still, into the hell of those already
damned ! I blast all upon whom I breathe, and am
doomed to destroy myself. Hell has thrown me here,
that I might be to men its image upon earth ! Upon
what pillow of horror lays she now her head ! With
what harmonies have I surrounded her? The howls of
madmen ! " He would perhaps have pursued this mono-
logue for a longer time, if a mysterious and sardonic
voice had not suddenly cried to him : " Thou cJuxfitest a
Drama r'
This madness of the wife is a masterly invention ; it is
indeed with an art akin to the genius of Shakespeare that
])oetic justice is here administered to the hero of the
Drama. He had found his wife too practical, — tran-
quilly sleeping at regular hours, and never soaring above
the earth. Well ! She will quit the earth ; she will sleep
no more, save with the tossing restlessness of the de-
ranged ! The sense of reality will altogether escape her,
and she will lose her earthly reason ! He was a dreamer;
she will become a lunatic; she will in good faith practice
the exaltation of which he has only dreamed, and to his
poetic inspirations she will reply in delirium. "Thou
wilt no longer despise me, Henry ! " she says to him
when they meet in the mad-house. " I am full of inspira-
THE XLXETEENTIl CENTURY. 75
tion now ; my soul has left my heart and mounted into my
brain ! Look at me ! Am I not thine equal now ? I
can comprehend all now, — express it, sing it; I chant
the sea, the stars, the clouds, battles, — no, I have never
seen a battle. You must take me there ! I must see and
describe a corpse, a shroud, blood, air, the dew, a coffin.
. . . I am so happy ! "
These incoherent speeches — in which, however, each
word has its own tale to tell — are interrupted at intervals
by cries still more incoherent breaking from all sides.
They are the cries of the insane who are confined in
other cells in the house. But let us take good care not
to imagine all this to be only a puerile effort to produce
a tragic scene ! Alas I these voices have a profound sig-
nificance in themselves; this symphony of madness has
its dominant key ; the mad poetry of the wife is de-
signedly interrupted by these wild cries, which are the
precursory signs of the approaching delirium of society
entire; and through the domestic anguish is already seen
the misery of the world.
^^A voice from above. You have chained up God !
One is already dead upon the Cross. I am the second
God, and you have given me also up to the execu-
tioners !
"•^A voice from beloiv. To the scaffold with the heads
of kings and nobles ! Through me will begin the liberty
of the people.
"^ voice from the left. The comet tracks its way in
fire across the sky; the awful Day of Judgment draweth
near.
"y4 voice from below. I have killed three kings with
my own hands ; ten still remain and a hundred priests
who still sing mass. "
"Are not these people terribly deranged? " asks the
wife, in listening to these infernal cries. "They do not
know what they are saying," she continues; "but lean tell
you what would happen if God Himself should go mad ! "
If God should go 7nad ! The thought is of a ferocity, but
also of an energy almost unequaled, nor does it lessen in its
wild development. " But I can tell you what would happen
if God should go mad. " (She seizes him by the hand. )
76
POLISH POETRY IN
"All the worlds would fly about in space, mount up on
high, or roll in the abyss : and every creature, every worm,
would cry, / am God ! and they would all die one after
another, and all the comets and suns would go out in
the sky : and Jesus Christ would save us no longer !
Tearing his hands from the nails, with both hands he
would hurl his cross into the abyss ! Listen ! how this
cross, the hope of millions, falls from star to star! It
breaks at last, and covers with its ruins the universe en-
tire ! The Holy Virgin alone continues to pray, and the
stars, her servants, are still faithful to her, — but she too
will plunge where all created things are plunging down
— for God is mad ! " . . .
Between these scenes of domestic life so vigorously
sketched, and those of public life soon so stormily to
unroll, is placed a melancholy idyl : a series of episodes
between the father and child, the widower and orphan.
And rarely has the imagination of a poet created a form
so exquisitely graceful, or of a symbolism so deep, as the
little George of the drama. His mother's prayers have
been but too well answered ; her son, like the Count, is
also a poet, indeed, a poet in a higher sense, for he does
not seek emotions, they rise spontaneously in his heart ; his
soul vibrates like a harp, and multiform images, even
against his will, ferment in his brain and "give him pain
in his head. " He recites sweet and harmonious songs,
he says he hears his mother sing them, whom he has never
known ; he declares that he hears celestial voices, but in
spite of high nervous energy he is weak and sickly. At
the age of ten years the child withers away, becomes
blind, and finds life only within his own soul. It is easily
divined that the poet meant to personify in George those
pure and contemplative natures which are often met even
in the midst of the most agitated society and in the most
stormy times ; na'ive and delicate souls with high thoughts
and refined perceptions, but timid and shut up in them-
selves ; blind to all the things of this earth, and under-
standing nothing of the commonplace facts of the workl,
which are, however, its stern necessities. Little George
has strong religious instincts ; he wants to j^ray always, he
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
77
refers everything to God. But let us not be deceived ; it
is not really faith, it is rather the necessity of belief, the
eager desire of certainty. The piety of the child pro-
ceeds too much from the poetry of the father; this the
author indicates in the most ingenious manner. The
Count takes his son to the cemetery ; George kneels before
the tomb of his mother, and recites the "Ave" : " Hail
Mary, full of grace ! Mary, Queen of heaven. Lady of all
that blooms on earth, that scents the fields, that paints
the fringes of the streams. " . . . The father silences
and reproaches him. He recommences: "Hail Mary,
full of grace ! The Lord is with thee ! The angels bless
thee, and as thou glidest softly through them each plucks
a rainbow from his wings to cast beneath thy feet. " . . .
Who does not know this tendency to endeavor to increase
faith by poetry, to adorn the words of the gospel, to beau-
tify Golgotha itself? But is this really religion ? It is
indeed a religion able to produce internal delights and
mystic raptures, but it can give neither dogmas to the
intellect nor rules to the conscience, nor can a society
tottering to its base find any support therein. In the
social war so soon to burst forth, little George dies from
a wandering ball.
Behold us instantaneously launched in the midst of the
horrors of a social revolution ! The transition is abrupt
and violent ; it is a surprise in the Drama, as it also was
in our history. The Count, undeceived by time and
grief, cured of his chimeras upon the progress of the
human race, has now taken in hand the defense of society
menaced at all points, — and further commentary is un-
necessary ! Let us, however, remark that in this new
transformation our hero no less retains the original vice
of his nature, the capital sin of which consists in seeking
impressions, emotions, rather than searching for truth; in
burrowing into his imagination rather than scrutinizing
his conscience. He regards this civil war only as a fatal
and bitter task ; and yet he sometimes surprises himself by
his keen relish for its savage poetry, representing in ad-
vance to himself its fields of battle, its torrents of blood.
It is the '^sublime horror of the cannon,'^ admired from
the opposite point of view ! His pride, hitherto latent,
78 POLISH POETRY IN
flashes into ominous light. He delights in playing his
rcMe as a Titan ; and we are often tempted to ask if, at
his pleasure, he does not exaggerate the perversity of
human nature, as he had before exaggerated its indefinite
perfectibility. The dangers which threaten civilization
are, nevertheless, great and real; and the dissolution of
society is painted with the direst and most frightful hues.
Let the reader turn to the new " Walpurgis Night" in "The
Undivine Comedy," at which Count Henry, unknown,
assists ; let him look into the wild Saturnalia of the fam-
ished masses eager for pillage and murder, in the midst
of which our hero recognizes some of his old acquaint-
ances, his ancient associates in the '■'■Great work of the
Future I' ^ Let the reader survey these scenes of misery
and carnage, in the midst of which stands out one of
masterly power, — the interview between Count Henry
and the chief of the revolutionists.
In vain may the plebeians hate and curse all social
superiority ; it will not the less exercise upon them a
disturbing and mysterious attraction ! Li the ingenious
picture of Paul Delaroche, it is evident that the beheaded
Stuart still awes Cromwell from the folds of his shroud ;
he imposes upon him even to his wliite hand, so long and
taper, so skillfully brought in close contact with the rough
and bony fist of the Puritan chief. It is not, then, aston-
ishing that Pancras should feel an irresistible desire to see
his aristocratic adversary, to speak to him, that he should
even desire to save him ; but why should the Count, on
his side, feel an equal attraction, and consent to an inter-
view of which he must so well have known the futility?
Alas ! that which forced it upon him was the attraction
which sometimes induces us to open a grave that we may
contemplate a face, now deformed and revolting — once
idolized ! In this broken mirror, the Count wished to
gaze upon his own image, wildly altered and distorted.
Strange, and well calculated to excite despair, is the fact
that in this contest between Count Henry and Pancras,
nothing determinative is brought to light ; only their own
individual sources of complaint are justly put, and well
founded ; no brilliant fusing si)ark of universal truth
flashes from the contact of these negative poles. Pancras
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
79
says: "You who are old, rotten, satiated with food and
drink, worm-eaten and crumbling into dust, give place to
those who are young, vigorous, hungry and robust ! " —
"Ah! I know you too," replies the Count; "I have
visited your camp at night, and have seen the bloody
dance of fools and barbarians; their floor was the decapi-
tated heads of those who differed in opinion from them !
I recognized all the vices of the Old World peering from
the new garments ; they sang a new song, but it ended
ever in the old refrain : Bread, meat, gold, and blood ! "
" Your ancestors were robbers! " cries Pancras. "And
yours were slaves I" replies the Count.
The adversaries separate ; the struggle recommences
more furiously and implacably than before, and in the final
moment, when the last bastion crumbles, the Count kills
himself by leaping from the top of the precipice. He
had already heard the doom of Heaven, which condemned
him because "he had esteemed nothing, loved nothing
but himself and his own thoughts;" — and it was his own
son who must explain to him the meaning of those voices
from the sky ! The death of Pancras is still more sudden ;
it is unforeseen, unprepared, and therefore deeply signifi-
cant. Scarcely has he reached in triumph the top of the
ramparts when the victorious chief suddenly and without
apparent cause grows faint ; he totters and expires, only
indicating with his hand a bloody cross which appears
in the heavens, and uttering but the words : " Galilaee,
Vicisti! "
We have already said that the most despairing phase of
"The Undivine Comedy" is found precisely in this termi-
nation without solution ; this universal triumph of nothing-
ness, in which all the principal actors in the drama, the
Count, his wife, Pancras, and even poor little George,
have been engulfed. Are we, then, forever to despair?
or must we seek among the actors of the second rank a
figure, a shadow to whom an interest, a hope may be
attached? May it perhaps be Leonard, the beloved dis-
ciple of Pancras, the sincere enthusiast, who shared all
the dislikes, all tlie ideas of his master, but whose hands
are unstained with blood, and who, either by chance, in-
stinct, or good fortune, has no crimes with which to re-
So POLISH POETRY IX
proach himself? Has the task of reconciliation been re-
served for him (the type of the rising generation) who
has shared in our struggles, seen our misery, taken a part
in our follies, but has kept himself pure from our atro-
cities? At all events, the role of this generation will be
vast; it will have much to forget and much to learn. It
must above all things weigh well the words addressed to
our tragical hero by his Good Genius : " Thou wishest to
salute the new sun ; and for that thou fixest thine eyes
upon the highest point of the heavens ! Look rather round
thine own horizon /' * Let us too watch our horizons / Let
us each measure and cultivate with care the field given
to his individual action ; let us mount from the known to
the unknown, from ourselves to the human race, and who
can say that we will not again find ourselves in the pres-
ence of our " lost God" ?
However that may be, it is, alas ! certain that we have
by no means reached the term of our trials, and that The
Undivine Comedy will %i\\\for a longtime continue to be the
Drama of the Future. The dangers threatening society
will force us more than once to prefer the established
order to the moral order, and will more than once surprise
us into invoking the phantoms of the Middle Ages from
the fear of the red spectre ; into playing the sons of the
crusaders without even being the children of the cross;
into proclaiming ourselves Papists, without even being
Catholics !
Taken in a general sense, the problem developed in " The
Undivine Comedy"#is not at all restricted to the present
time; it has already traversed more than one phase, and
found its expression in more than one masterpiece. The
problem is in truth no other than the struggle between
the ideal and society ; the situation forced upon the man
who, bearing in his conscience a fancied type of justice
and happiness, must find it realized in the world surround-
ing him, or impose it upon it. Even the Middle Ages
had endeavored to formulate this problem in the creation
of Perceval, a hero of pure soul and high aspirations, who
takes the first passers-by for angels, seeks an ideal city
through numberless trials and struggles, and ends by find-
ing it, conformably to the ascetic character of the times,
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 8 1
in a monastic and mysterious order, that of the Templars,
the Guardians of the Holy Grail, of whom he becomes
the King. But above all, Shakespeare has created in
Hamlet the eternally tragic type of a man placed between
his ideal and society ; of a man such as the upheaval of
religious opinions and the revival of learning have made
him; with an immense extent of knowledge, but without
any interior power to govern it ; with the precious gift
of being able to look at all things from their varying
stand-points, but without any instinctive and genuine con-
victions ; with a susceptibleand quest ioning conscience,
but which for that very reason has grown more hesitating,
more uncertain with regard to good as well as to evil ; in
short, with that excited and luxuriant imagination which
too often supplies the want of will or force by brilliant
and unreliable fantasies.
Magnificent indeed is the conception Hamlet forms of
man in the abstraction of his philosophy, " So like a god
in reason, so sublime ! " But how little conformable with
this ideal appears to him the society in which he is caMed
to live ! How well he knows how to ridicule and scathe the
rogues and villains who reign and govern, the politicians
who would deceive God himself, and how full is his soul
of melancholy indignation against " The whips and scorns
of time, the oppressor's wrong, the ])roud man's con-
tumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the
spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes. " . . .
His own noble inspirations, his dearest interests, the sum-
monings even from another world, — all call and urge him
to undertake a work of reparation. The task is with him
almost a personal question ; he has a father to avenge and
a throne to reconquer, but when this work is placed be-
fore him, he grows weak, hesitates, his reason totters.
His refined conscience suggests to him, at the same time,
the most subtle scruples as well as the most perfidious
cruelties, and after having weighed and scrutinized every-
thing, he comes to the strange conclusion that " nothing
in itself is good or bad, but that our thinking makes it
so. " He takes refuge in his imagination, and stifles all
action in profound and brilliant soliloquies. '■^ He com-
poses for himself a drama, ^' gives himself as spectacle to
82 POLISH POETRY IN
himself, and enjoys his success as an artist ; he selects the
most ingenious means for the simplest objects, and forgets
the end in his complicated means. Through the very
force of his determination to foresee everything, to leave
nothing to chance or remorse, he ends by becoming the
mere plaything of the most fortuitous circumstances, and
by committing the most atrocious as well as the most use-
less crimes. He spares his enemy, and only strikes those
who had loved him, or who had done him no harm, and
pronounces judgment on himself in those melancholy
lines which bear witness at the same time to his desire
that the right should prevail and his want of power to
accomplish it, —
" The time is out of joint ; O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right ! "
The hero of " The Undivine Comedy" reminds us by
more than one trait of the Prince of Denmark : he has
the same imagination and the same sensibility ; he loves
to make soliloquies and compose for himself dramas ; he
joins to highly elevated and generous aspirations weak-
ness and impotence ; and his conscience, refined to ex-
cess, at last grows hard and sinks to cruel actions. There
is more than one element common to the two works ;
among others, the poetic justice which punishes Count
Henry's determinate exaltation by the madness of his wife,
is very like that which punishes the counterfeit madness
of Hamlet, by the too real insanity of Ophelia, But let
us not be deceived by this resemblance ; if the character
of the catastrophe is the same, the j////^? //W/ is aggravated,
and the denouement becomes more saddening. The hero
of the Polish poet not only recalls the type created by
Shakespeare, he continues it, — continues it under entirely
new conditions, created by contemporary and still more
heart-rending disasters. It is certainly very sad to will
and see the Good, and yet feel utterly powerless before
the Evil ; the Prince of Denmark fully felt this terrible
anguish ; — but it was reserved for the man of our times to
endure a torment far more horrible, — that of aspiring to
the Good, and to be not only forced to tolerate the Evil,
but even to defend it — through fear ofxvorse, — through dread
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 83
of utter destruction and the abyss of nothingness f Hamlet
defending the reign of fools and rogues, of the Poloniuses
and Osrics ; Hamlet making his breast and heart a ram-
part for the throne of the crowned murderer, Clodius, —
and all this to escape the spicy logic of the ''grave-dig-
gers," who found the greatest nobility should belong to the
tanners and undertakers : — certainly the irony would be
bitter — satanic ! This is, however, precisely the role which
devolved upon Count Henry ; the kind of combat to
which a liberal man of the nineteenth century is some-
times called ! The contest is sad and deceptive in a very
different manner from what it was in times not far re-
moved from our own, for in the present struggle we sur-
prise ourselves not only in wanting faith, but in failing to
act in good faith ; — and the drama becomes so much the
more poignant that, in being tragic and infernal, it does
not the less resemble a comedy !
III.
There is one thing very remarkable in considering the
collective works of the Anonymous Poet : that is, — if I
may so term it, — the descending movement of his mind
from universal questions embracing all humanity to na-
tional or psychologic subjects. The phenomenon is sur-
prising, because it is not the common movement of poetic
genius. Take Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe, you will
find them gradually rising from the special to the general,
from the finite to the infinite, from the Vita Nuova to the
Song of Paradise ; from the historic and national drama,
and from Rotneo, to the vast and deep conceptions of
Macbeth and Hamlet ; from Werther and Goetz von Ber-
lichingen to the second part of Faust, and Wilhelm Meister.
But without leaving the regions of Polish poetry, the
career of Mickiewicz offers a most striking example of a
development always ascending. He begins by ballads and
romances based upon traditions and popular legends ; that
is to say, by that which is the most inherent in the natal
soil, the most closely shut in by the domestic horizon.
He rises afterwards to the tale of Grazyna, in which the
84 POLISH POETRY IN
memoiies of a feudal past are depicted ; to IVa/leiirod,
where he presents to us the present of the nation with all
its feverish preoccupations; we hear already in it the tocsin
of 1830. He afterwards, in his Sir Thaddeus, repre-
sents to us the national life collectively in its customs and
memories, and in the most minute analysis of its internal
being, — and only then, for the first time, does the poet
enter upon the problems of the Future. It is exactly the
reverse with the Anonymous Poet. At the very beginning
of his career, at the age of twenty-three, he wings his first
flight into the highest regions of speculation, pierces with
a single look the whole structure of Society and Morals,
but this sphere once flown over, or rather, passed through,
he never returns to it ; he folds designedly his wings,
tracing circles ever more and more narrow; and the choice
of the forms successively adopted by the poet is like an
image of his own internal development. P'or his first
works, he preferred the Allegoric Drama, the widest and
freest form which can be found; then he limited himself
to the Tale, to the imaginative, or rather, visionary tale,
it is true, but a species of composition far more closely
united and regular than the dramatic allegory; and he
finally ended by restricting himself to the most individual
and concentrated expression possible, — to a severe and
measured lyricism.
We might perhaps try to explain this phenomenon of a
development so different from that of Mickiewicz by
purely external circumstances; by stating that Mickie-
wicz had lived for a long time in his own country, and
had only gradually attained a position which might be
termed cosmopolitan, while the Anonymous Poet had
been early and violently thrown into other lands, among
the ideas and prepossessions of the West, and only
through the force of will and reflection returned to the
feelings and wants of his own people. But there are far
more inherent, far deeper causes for the fact. A moral
question here leads the historic or literary inquiry, and
the concentric development of the genius of the poet is
in exact correspondence with the leading ideas which he
had formed upon the duties of the present, upon the
mission of man and of nations in the critical epoch we
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 85
are now traversing. " The Undivine Comedy" was rather
a farewell than a salutation ; it was an energetic protest
against a fatal delusion of the age, in which it was
thought possible to regenerate humanity without having
first regenerated man; to establish universal rights, with-
out having first strengthened the individual in his duties.
The noble precept, that " in order to salute the sun, we
must look at our horizon," the poet was resolved to put
into practice. He did look at his own horizon; he
labored more and more to understand the ground given
to him to cultivate, — the field left to his action and good
will ; he tried to formulate more and more exactly his
individual mission with the means accorded him, and
under the circumstances in which he found himself
placed, and thus, in successively narrowing his circles, he
arrived at a point, — the human soul ; according to the
national expression, "the Polish soul," — "at that im-
perceptible point which nevertheless has an infinite
periphery, since it contains God. "
At the first glance, however, the work which so closely
followed "The Undivine Comedy" (1836) resembles it
in many respects. First, as to form, it also is a dramatic
allegory, with varied scenes boldly sketched, and inter-
woven with lyric digressions. Secondly, as to subject, it
also represents the fall of a world, the crumbling away of
a society. But that which from the first distinguishes
"Iridion" from "The Undivine Comedy" is, that the
scenes are no longer to be played in the future; they
occur in a well-known and determinate past. With the
rare intelligence of sublime conceptions, the poet places
himself on the very knot of these three elements, viz. ,
the classic element, the barbaric element, and the Chris-
tian element : the tissue of which three, providentially
combined, interwoven, and developed by the centuries,
has formed our modern civilization.
The triple name borne by the hero of this poem —
Iridion, Sigurd, Hieronymus — immediately indicates the
point of intersection in the history of humanity in which
the drama is set. Is it due to the possession of an his-
toric base that the second work has over the first the ad-
vantage of a firmer, yet more plastic, design ? Or should
8*
86 POLISH POETRY IN
it not rather be attributed to the special place chosen by
the poet, — to the antique world whose genius, even in
decline, seems to have had the gift of giving lucidity and
transparency to all with which it came in contact? At
all events, it is certain that this second composition is in
bolder relief, and more harmoniously ordered, than " The
Undivine Comedy;" the figures are no longer mere sym-
bols; they have marked traits, sculptured by a skillful
graver; they are stamped with distinct individuality, and
the characters are largely developed. However, that
which most distinguishes it from "The Undivine Com-
edy" is, that in place of a cosmopolitan and humanita-
rian tendency, it has a patriotic bearing; it aims at the
special situation forced upon Poland since her dismem-
berment, which must not be forgotten as we read.
Without doubt, history is familiar with more than one
country which has gnawed its chains of foreign domina-
tion in despair; it knows even nations which, like
Greece, after ages of oppression, awake to the full en-
ergy of patriotic feeling ; but, with the exception of
Spain under the yoke of the Moors, it offers no nation
which has struggled as constantly as Poland against its
subjection. A century has elapsed since the division of
Poland ; and how many insurrections does she not count
in her sad. annals? how many efforts always conquered
yet always springing forth anew? And what untold bit-
terness must have accumulated in hearts always crushed
yet always obstinate to combat ! Above all, let us not
forget that, for the most part, the generations born after
the division have never known, in its living reality, the
country for which they have fought without cessation ;
the fatherland has only been for them a mournful mem-
ory, — the recollection of a great grief, of a great crime
remaining unpunished, and forever calling upon them for
vengeance. Let us likewise note that to a material dis-
memberment a spiritual dismemberment had also cor-
responded ; that a current of emigration was renewed
after every catastrophe, the chief cause of which lay in
an undying feeling of protestation against the cruel work
of the invaders. A strange situation has grown up from
these facts, — one beyond the limits of all ordinary rules ;
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. g-j
a situation of constant excitement, feverish and delete-
rious, calculated to mine the morality of the nation, and
threatening to pervert the delicate sense of the just, of
the upright. Foreign domination is not only odious in
what she permits herself to inflict upon the oppressed ; she
is more horrible through that which the oppressed deem jus-
tifiable to inflict in turn upon her !
The state of being forced upon Poland by the triple
yoke, recommenced in her interior in the necessity of
simulating and dissimulating, in raising cunning to the
height of a civic duty, while the art of deceiving the op-
pressors becomes almost a virtue ; and for her children
thrown into exile, it created externally the mission of
struggling against the enemy upon every battle-field, and
through every available means. The example of Bem
alone would be sufficient to make evident the danger in-
curred in the possible distortion of the most sacred feel-
ings of a nation by this constant and violent struggle
without quarter. That the glorious soldier of Ostro-
lenka and Transylvania should have embraced the faith
of Mahomet, only in the hope of still making war upon
the Russians, is sufficient to prove how the moral sense
may sometimes be eclipsed even in the most heroic soul ;
but that the illustrious renegade should have lost none of
his prestige with a nation so fervent in its faith, and
whose whole past history had been an unceasing combat
against Islamism ; that the pious peasant of Posen should
have still continued to hear and salute in the sound of
the bells of his church the magical and still venerated
name of "Bem," — this becomes a grave matter, and
shows with what feelings the country is animated for
those who love it ! And what can be said of the ideas of
a vengeful Fanslavism, which were already beginning to
germ and delude souls, at the time when the Anony-
mous Poet was composing his work ? How are we to
speak of this strange and satanic doctrine which preaches
suicide, that death may be given to others? which
recommends voluntary slavery, the reconciliation with
the most cruel but also the strongest of the adversaries,
that thus vengeance may be wreaked on the less guilty?
that pleases itself in the hope of preparing a new Attila
88 * POLISH POETRY IN
for a world which remained an impassive spectator during
the agonies of the crucifixion of a people ? . . .
It is difficult, nay, it is almost impossible, for the
happy upon earth, for those who enjoy a free and inde-
pendent country, to comprehend the surging hell of
temptations, of torments, which are massed in the single
word, Slavery, for a subjugated people ! But the Anon-
ymous Poet understood this Hell, and shuddered at the
sight! Diving into the tortured depths of the "Polish
soul," he suddenly encountered this current of sombre
and ferocious ideas, — " they chilled his soul ! " He was
appalled at the force of that national feeling feeding
itself upon hate of the oppressors ; he was frightened at
that love of country stronger far than death, but which
began to think of giving death to others ! He wished
to give a warning to his people, and thus he wrote
"Iridion. "
The Anonymous Poet depicts the patriotic grief caused
by foreign oppression in its most legitimate, as well as in
its most vivid aspects. What could be more touching,
more attractive to our imagination, than the memories of
Hellas, the classical home of art, of poetry, and of that
love of country which brought forth so many heroes and
originated so many illustrious actions? What could be
more justifiable than the resentment of a descendant' of
Themistocles and Miltiades "against the people born of
a wolf;" against the Roman who came to Corinth as a
liberator, friend, and then became the proud and cruel
master of Greece, nay, of the entire world? " Iridion"
gives us the genius of Hellas meditating a great stroke of
vengeance after ages of subjection and oppression. The
scene is placed at the epoch of Caracalla and Heliogaba-
lus, in the time of the deepest abasement of the empire,,
when the grandeur of Rome was naught but monstrosity,
seeming ready to fall before any bold attack. Thus
heightened by the splendor of a glorious past, justified by
causes of well-founded complaint, favored by the most
propitious circumstances, the attempt of " Iridion" offers
still another element of success: it is not the siulilen
growth and bloom of a single will, a single age; it was
prepared afar off by a generation which gave itself up in
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 89
advance to the task of sowing, without the hope of har-
vesting, even of living, save in its successors ! This is
the deep thought developed in the Prologue, in which
two persons are boldly sketched who are doomed to die
before the real Drama actually begins, but who give birth
to the future hero, to the '■'■Son of Vengeance. ^^
Amphilochus, a Greek of illustrious race, counting even
Philopoemen among his ancestors, had deeply felt all
the woes of his subjugated people: "a slave because a
Greek, he was by nature an avenger. " With the clear-
sightedness of hate, we had almost said the hate of the
exile, he had seen on the still clear horizon the dark speck
from which the tempest would one day break forth, and
had divined in the barbaric race of the Northmen the future
destroyers of the Eternal City. He went to the Cimbric
Chersonesus, to the land of " Silver- Torrents," among
the Scandinavians, not to induce them to move against
the common enemy, Rome, but to find a wife ; an oracle
having predicted to him that great misfortunes to the im-
perial city would be the fruit of such an alliance. The
contrast between the Greek genius, refined almost to sub-
tlety, and the uncultivated but heroic character of the
Scandinavian, briefly indicated as it is, is yet portrayed
with the highest skill. The Greek fixes his choice upon
the purest of virgins, upon Crimhild, the High-Priestess
of Odin, the daughter of King Sigurd : a civilized Othello
fascinating a barbaric Desdemona ! She says to him : " I
know not thy country ; I have not even seen it in my
dreams ; nor do I know thine enemies ; and yet, O mis-
erable virgin, dishonored Priestess, struck by the curse of
Odin, I will follow thee! " The scene in which Crim-
hild appears for the last time to take her place upon the
stone of sacrifice, to sing her last hymn in the holy forest
of the God of the North, surrounded by the chiefs of the
hordes, by the lords of the plains, by the kings of the sea,
is stamped with massive grandeur. Filled with mystic
inspiration, her eyes gazing into infinite space, she fore-
sees the ages yet to come, hears the hammer of Thor
breaking the helmets and bucklers, the breasts and skulls
of men into dust ; she sees her brothers, her people,
leaving the land of Silver-Torrents, precipitate themselves
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POLISH POETRY IN
upon an immense city, a city on seven hills, of which she
vainly tries to find the name, — this name suffocates and
escapes her — she writhes to find it — but no utterance re-
lieves her tortured breast — she falls to the earth. The
Greek then advances from the ranks of the breathless
crowd; amidst the universal stupefaction and indigna-
tion, he enters the dread and sacred circle, and, bending
over the priestess, says to her: "In the name of Rotne,
name of thy enemy and mine, I call thee back to life !
Crimhild, rise! " Then turning to the crowd, he thrice
cries: Rome! Rome! Rome! The virgin rises, repeats
after him the mysterious name, and then follows the
stranger "as the wife, the husband ! "
From this union so strangely assorted by destiny, from
this pair settled in an island of the Ionian Sea, where
everything recalls the past, two children, pledges of love,
are born, whom Amphilochus, on his return from his
expeditions in the neighboring archipelagoes, blesses in
their sleep with the words : " Remember to hate Rome !
When you shall be grown up, let each of you pursue it
with curses ; Iridion, with fire and sword; and Elsinoe
with all the genius and subtleties of woman ! " The Pro-
logue ends with the touching picture of the death of
Crimhild.
Many years pass, and we are transported to Rome,
whither Amphilochus had taken the ashes of his wife, his
household gods, and his hate. He too is dead, but has
left his designs to his son, beautiful as a demigod, " but
pale, because of all the Roman blood yet wanting to his
cheeks! " Amphilochus has also left his son, as coun-
selor, guardian, and friend, Masinissa, an old man whom
he had first met in the land of the Getulians when he
had lost his way upon a tiger-hunt : he is the wa'ide-
lote of the classic Wallenrod. The work of the Greek has
ripened, and Iridion has now immense forces at his com-
mand, destined to be employed against the accursed city.
Through his father he belongs to Hellas and the part
of Asia so thoroughly hellenized ; through his mother he
is affiliated with the Germans, who begin to throng into
Italy, filling the ranks of the cohorts and legions. He
has with him the ancient world and the modern, even the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
91
Romans are on his side, — not the abject freedmen whom
the conqueror of Numantia had already repudiated with
scorn, and who then formed the senattis populusque, but
the true Romans, the legitimate descendants of the old
patricians. There is a fine scene in which a wretch named
Sporus, by the command of a jester of Heliogabalus comes
to assassinate Iridion ; but, " he was hungry, and in the
Palace of Amphilochus they had given him food ; he was
thirsty, and they gave him wine ; he had heard his
brother gladiators bless the name of the Greek," and he
gives his secret and himself to Iridion. Iridion is struck
by the language of the slave ; he discerns the traces of
past greatness upon his brow, shining like a lamp in a
tomb. . . . "Thy name? " — "Sporus, but formerly
Scipio. " . . . "I can bring thee a Verres, a Capius, a
Sylla, all gladiators like myself. " . . . And the son of
Amphilochus is filled with joy. But all this is not yet
enough ; he must have a vengeance more refined, and
above all he must secure himself against the Fatum of the
Eternal City. What if he could gain the Emperor himself
to side against the empire ! If he could but make the
successor of Augustus the instrument of his vengeance,
and force the last of the Caesars to destroy with his own
hands the last of the Romans ! . . . And why should that
be impossible ? Had not Nero already tried to burn the
city? and the present occupant of the throne, the foolish
son of the mad Caracalla, was he not more insensate than
Nero, and even more of an artist than he who loved to
see the flames flash high ? Besides, the grasp of the
Greek was already upon Caesar ! Heliogabalus had be-
come deeply enamored of Elsinoe, whom Amphilochus
had consecrated from her infancy to pursue his work " by
all the genius, all the perfidy of woman ! "
The drama opens precisely at this point, when Iridion
is saying farewell to his sister, who is about to be taken to
the palace of Caesar. Our poet possesses in the highest
degree the difficult art of creating female characters, and
his works contain a gallery of feminine figures full of
pathos and originality. The daughter of Amphilochus
has been brought up from infancy in the idea that she is
to be the victim to expiate the shame of her fathers and
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POLISH POETRY IN
the sufferings of many nations ; she has been taught by
Masiiiissa; and the decrees of her brother have hitherto
been her law. But Avhen the fatal moment arrives for the
accomplishment of her destiny, her soul revolts, and, like
Antigone, she bursts into lamentations upon her doom,
upon her youth condemned to pain, her beauty to pro-
fanation. Iridion remains inexorable, and refuses all
temptation to pity. He leads Elsinoe to the statue of their
father.
" Formerly" — he says to her — " the sacrifice of the life
of a man sufficed for nations; now even honor must be
offered up ! . . . Maiden, listen to me as to the dying, as
if never again to hear my voice on earth ! Thou art to
enter the Palace of the Accursed, to live with the damned ;
to yield thy body to the son of shame: — see to it that
thy soul remains high, pure, and free ! Let Caesar never
sleep upon thy breast ! Alarm him constantly with cries
that the Praetorians call to arms, that the patricians con-
spire, and that the people storm his palace gates ! and
slowly, day by day, and hour by hour, madden him with
rage and fear ; drink all the life-blood of his heart ! Now
rise and bow thy head ! Conceived in the desire of ven-
geance, grown up in hope of this revenge, destined to
shame and to perdition, I consecrate thee to the infernal
gods — and to the manes of Amphilochus the Greek. "
It has sometimes been given to poetry to render history
probable, thus, for example, the Richard III. of the Chro-
nicles first becomes possible for our intellect, or acceptable
for our imagination, in the tragedy of Sliakespeare. The
Anonymous Poet has, in the same manner, succeeded in
making us believe in the existence, the reality, of one of
those Roman Csesars, who, in spite of Suetonius and
Tacitus, have always seemed to us inexplicable enigniiis.
Through an ingenious and ])rofound art our author has
succeeded in unraveling all the elements constituting that
remarkable and fantastic being called Heliogabalus. Born
under the burning sky of Asia, the son of Caracalla became
High-Priest at Emesus at fourteen years of age, and was
familiar with all the sanguinary voluptuousness of the
worship of Mithras. At seventeen, he was Cnesar, master
of the world ; and placed upon this giddy height, the
TIJE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
