Not only are the terseness
and the reserve of The Undivine Comedy entirely absent
from Iridion: but whereas in The Undivine Comedy we
seem to move in an atmosphere of a heavy and op-
pressive greyness, there is the sensation throughout
Iridion of the blue skies of Rome, the glittering marbles
of the temples, the many-hued splendours of the
Imperial City.
and the reserve of The Undivine Comedy entirely absent
from Iridion: but whereas in The Undivine Comedy we
seem to move in an atmosphere of a heavy and op-
pressive greyness, there is the sensation throughout
Iridion of the blue skies of Rome, the glittering marbles
of the temples, the many-hued splendours of the
Imperial City.
Poland - 1919 - Krasinski - Anonymous Poet of Poland
Klaczko has finely said that The Undivine
Comedy is:
a farewell rather than a greetingaddressedby thepoettohumani-
tarian inspirations, a strong protest against the fatal illusion
of the age which believes it can regenerate humanity without
having first regenerated man, and establish universal right
without having first strengthened the individual in his duties3.
1 Krasinski seldom in his correspondence alludes to his works, and
when he does so it is almost exclusively under their moral and national
aspect. The Undivine is that one which he most often mentions. There
is a curious passage in one of his letters to Cieszkowski illustrating this
impartial outlook upon his Undivine Comedy. In 1848 he was startled
by hearing his little son repeating prophecies of great evil to befall France
that he told his father he had heard from God during the night. "It
reminded me," says Krasinski, "of the Undivine and George--and I went
away sad. " Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski to August Cieszkowski.
Baden, Dec. 3, 1848. Cracow, 1912 (Polish).
2 J. Klaczko, op. cit. There is in English literature a feeble reflection
of The Undivine Comedy in Owen Meredith's Of vol. Lord Lytton read
a French rendering of Krasinski's drama, and made a species of transcrip-
tion from it into English. The result is that while the plot and the
arrangement of the scenes remain more or less the same, the English play,
particularly in its utter loss of the stern conciseness that gives The Undivine
Comedy its strength, is so unlike the Polish original that it cannot be con-
sidered even in the nature of a rough translation.
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? CHAPTER VII
IRIDION
Krasinski spent the winter of 1833-34 'n Rome. He
had destroyed in Warsaw all that he had already written
of Iridion: but back in the Eternal City, where the
ruins of an empire spoke with eloquence to the Pole's
heart of the downfall of brute force, the figure of his
Greek, nursing implacable revenge under the eyes of
the Caesars, obsessedhim: his "Thought," as he always
called it.
"For a whole year it has given me no rest," he wrote to his
father from Rome. "Here it has appeared to me. Here I have
seen my Iridion, walking in the Forum; I do not create him
any longer, I only observe him. That man walks with me
through all the ruins1. "
He wrote thus in 1833: Dut i* was not until 1836
that Iridion was published. A disastrous passion robbed
its author of the power to finish the play. In the early
months of 1834 he met in Rome Joanna Bobrowa. She
was a married woman, five years his senior and the
mother of two children. His affection for Henrietta
Willan and Amelia Zatuska had been in the nature of
a schoolboy sentiment: but now he fell headlong into
the white heat of passion for her who, as he once told
his father, had first loved him because he was unhappy2.
Giving an account of himself to Reeve the summer
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 136 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
after he had first known Mme Bobrowa, he tells him
how he had that spring felt a wild craving for life and
action from which his physical health debarred him,
and that he had found them in his love1.
At this time begins Krasinski's spiritual wavering.
We know from his introductory lines to Dawn that it
was the fate of his country that first shook his religious
faith: but his unlawful love contributed likewise to its
weakening. Both he and the woman who loved him
had too deep-seated a religious sense not to be torn by
bitter self-reproach. Krasinski's remorse and misery
increased with the lapse of time, especially after Mme
Bobrowa was compromised in the eyes of the world and
estranged from her husband. But at the outset it was
the impossibility of reconciling his passion for her
with the precepts of the Church to which he belonged,
and the fact that the tortures of conscience increased
both his, and in a still greater measure Mme Bobrowa's,
sufferings, that combined to turn him to a certain
extent against the faith in which he had been brought
up. Moreover, to justify the falsity of his own moral
position he was driven to warp those high spiritual
precepts in which he had once found strength.
"Physical pain," he writes to Reeve, "makes you return to
God. . . But moral pain repulses, separates, you from heaven. . .
You will be astonished, Henry, to hear the man speak thus
who formerly believed and hoped so much in God; but I have
travelled fast on a fatal road. Oh! if you know where there
is a ray of hope, a new dawn, a faith young and able to fill my
heart, tell me'! "
Yet Krasinski's complex character is a mass of
contradictions. Not long after he had expressed him-
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Wiesbaden, Aug 25, 1834.
* Ibid. Rome, Nov. 12, 1834.
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? Iridion 137
self thus to Reeve, to whom earlier in the year he had
written that: "For five months," namely, since he first
loved Mme Bobrowa, " I have not said a single prayer:
and yet I feel no remorse, so strong in me was that
necessity for action which has driven me to love with
all my faculties, to look for salvation where others find
death1" ; he writes to Gaszynski:
What I do congratulate you on from my heart is that you
have returned to God. There is nothing else for man in the
world than to believe and love. . . Since some time I have grown
cold. My faith is not destroyed, but has slept3.
The history of Krasinski's love was retailed in its
fulness to neither Reeve nor Gaszynski3, but to another
Pole, Adam^Softan^ who, through the Radziwifts, was
related to Krasinski. Belonging to a family that had
distinguished itself for generations by its patriotism,
Sottan commanded a regiment during the Polish Rising,
and was driven into exile at its close. The Russian
government confiscated his estates, and took his five
children from him. His young sons--the youngest a
child of three years old--were carried off to Petersburg
to be brought up by the Russian state. His daughters
were placed in a convent of their own religion, where
the Russian authorities kept them under supervision.
Sottan's father, already parted from his son, died of
grief on the loss of his grandchildren. Sottan himself
* Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Wiesbaden, Aug. 25, 1834.
2 Letters to Gaszynski. Naples, March 29, 1835.
3 Krasinski's silence upon the subject in his correspondence with
Gaszynski may be accounted for by Dr Kallenbach's conjecture that
Gaszynski suppressed for publication all those passages relating to it;
for, as Krasinski chose to tell Reeve with whom his friendship was fast
waning part at least of what was filling his heart, it is very improbable that
Gaszynski, one of his dearest friends to the last, was not confided in far
more fully.
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? 138 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
passed his years in exile, bereft of his children, for-
bidden to hold any communication with them, racked
by anxiety for their fate1. His upright character, his
peculiarly sympathetic nature, no less than his sorrows,
gained for him Krasinski's undying affection. The
sufferings of those whom Krasinski loved were as his
own, their interests his. He spared no pains to use the
General's influence in gathering for his friend every scrap
of information that could be gleaned concerning the
sons, and to give the children in their turn news of
their father: and it was he who finally brought about
the restoration to Sottan of the only daughter who
survived. Krasinski's trust in this beloved friend was
unbounded. To him he confided without reserve all
that passage of his life which we have now reached.
Meeting Mme Bobrowa in the summer of 1835, after
the winter's absence: "perhaps," writes Krasinski to
Sottan, "you will be pleased to hear that he who loves
you has reached paradise, and writes to you from
paradise2. " Again to Sottan he wrote in a very different
strain a month later when, the affection between himself
and Mme Bobrowa having become the subject of
public comment, Krasinski compelled himself for the
sake of her good name to leave Ischl where she was
staying. .
I felt a sacred duty, the stern necessity of going away, so as
not to injure her honour. She entreated me to stay, because
above all things she loved. But it had to be: I left, cursing the
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Ibid. Those letters of Krasinski that concern Mme Bobrowa are
not printed in the published collection of the Soltan correspondence,
Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski. Vol. 11. To Adam Sottan. Lw6w, 1883
(Polish). They are given in the first instance by Count Tarnowski in his
monograph and are quoted also by Dr Kallenbach.
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? Iridion
139
world and the base and wretched people who revenge themselves
on those who feel, because they themselves feel nothing. . . I left
her in despair: such, Adam, is the end of my paradise. I am
as one damned. I never loved before: I did not know what
love is. . . To-day I walk the scorched pavement of this town,
and I would fain lie down on it and die, such pain does each
moment without her cause me. If there were some faults, God
will forgive us. It is hard to struggle as much as she does, to
love and respect as much as I do1.
And a little later, while she was in Trieste, he in
Venice, he writes to Sottan in similar language, exe-
crating those who condemned the woman without
knowing or caring how she had fought against herself,
and acknowledging that he felt driven to suicide3. Then,
shortly before the moment of parting:
You have no idea of what I have suffered. How happy I
was likewise few could know. But it was that kind of happi-
ness which destroys rather than augments strength. From all
this has remained what is dearest to me, namely, the thought
that there is no nobler woman on earth. . . Ah! what is poisoning
my life is that she insists on returning to her house. Her
husband knows all. She herself wrote it to him. So she knows
what is awaiting her. But she considers it her duty to take
her children to her husband and to suffer. She sees in this a
species of expiation8. "
Count Tarnowski here notices that, culpable as both
had been, neither of these "suffering and struggling"
human beings was wanting in nobility. The woman
voluntarily chose her penalty. The man reverenced the
action which destroyed his own happiness4. The short-
lived rapture that Krasinski's love had brought him
was now over. Until the final break in 1838 it was to
be agony and remorse.
During this time Krasinski had written Iridion,
"which," as he told Reeve, "torn up three times, ten
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. * Ibid.
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? 140 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
times broken off either by my sufferings or by my
passions, for three years has not ceased to torture my
brain1. "
From Venice he went in the September of 1835 to
Vienna. While waiting there with Danielewicz to see
once more Mme Bobrowa on her way to her husband
in Poland, before the emotions of those farewell weeks
with her impeded him, aggravated as they were by the
false position in which he stood and by the remon-
strances of his friend, he finished the drama. Both
it and The Undivine Comedy, which latter was written
before he had known her, but published later, were
dedicated to Mme Bobrowa: and it is said that she is
the original of Cornelia in Iridion.
Iridion is the Anonymous Poet's first direct appeal
to his nation. We have seen how the thought of it
flashed across him when, mourning for his country's
defeat alone in Petersburg, he remembered Argos. It
matured through the years while he watched in bitter
grief the tragedy of Poland, and behind the gallows and
endless deportations to Siberia, behind the prohibition
to a Pole of all Polish possessions, saw the danger to
his country that he most dreaded: the moral degrada-
tion of hatred which such an oppression was calculated
to engender. This thought, intensified by Krasinski's
own intimate experience of the warring of the dictates
of vengeance against a higher law, could, as he had
himself expressed it, give him no rest until he sent it
forth as a warning to his people. But if it were to
reach Poland where Siberia was the penalty alike for
the authors of the national Polish writings and their
readers, it could only be told in some veiled form.
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Florence, June 3, 1835.
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? Iridion
141
Krasinski therefore allegorized it under the figure of
the Greek, Iridion Amphilochides.
The keynote of the play is that the weapons of
hatred will turn against those who use them, how-
ever sacred their object, and that evil means can bring
nothing but destruction to the cause for which they are
employed. It is evident; from certain expressions in the
prologue that Krasinski began the drama with the
intention that the Greek who, to compass his end, has
ruined everything he touched shall be eternally ruined
himself. As the author closed the work he modified his
idea, and we have the noble conclusion, the first step
of the stairway that leads to the triumph and the
unearthly glory of Krasinski's next great national song:
Dawn.
In style Krasinski's second prose drama bears no
resemblance to his first.
Not only are the terseness
and the reserve of The Undivine Comedy entirely absent
from Iridion: but whereas in The Undivine Comedy we
seem to move in an atmosphere of a heavy and op-
pressive greyness, there is the sensation throughout
Iridion of the blue skies of Rome, the glittering marbles
of the temples, the many-hued splendours of the
Imperial City.
Krasinski places his drama in the reign of Helio-
gabalus when the Roman world was profoundly de-
moralized, and the fall of the empire seemed not far
off. He saw, as we know, like elements of dissolution
in the society in which he lived: and thus the applica-
tion of his symbolized national thought to the present
is evident. He pointed, in a few words of introduction,
to the three systems which at that period of Rome's
history stood side by side: paganism, barren of life and
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? 142 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
overlaid by alien religions from the East; Christianity,
hidden and persecuted, but ever growing; and the
barbarians, gradually pressing on Italy like a blinded
and relentless force of nature. On these three elements
the drama of Iridion is built: and all three are to be
found represented in the character of Iridion himself;
Iridion the Greek, who bears the second name of
Sigurd from his Scandinavian mother, and who, to the
Christians, is Hieronimus1.
"The ancient world is now drawing nigh its end":
so the drama begins in a prologue of stately prose that
Count Tarnowski ranks among the masterpieces of the
Polish language2.
All that dwelt therein is rotting, is dissolving, is demented.
Amid the chaos I lift the song that is torn by violence from
my bosom. May the spirit of destruction come to my aid!
May my inspiration resound on every side, like the thunder of
the tempest which is now rolling over the ages of the past and
thrusting all life down into the abyss! --and then let it die
away, even as thunder after its work is done. There, in the
east, is the new dawn. But with that I have nought to do.
This chaos, observes Dr Kallenbach, does not
refer merely to the historical background upon which
Krasinski chose to found his secret thoughts3. It is also
an allusion to the moral confusion in which Krasinski
wrote the play, which was often put aside because
the heart of its author was too disturbed and tempest-
tossed to be able to work out his idea. Intrinsic
evidences of this wavering of mental and spiritual
outlook are distinctly traceable in the course of the
drama.
1 J. Klaczko, Le Pohte Anonyme de la Pologne
2 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
3 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? Iridion
H3
Where, oh, Rome [continues the prologue], are the forms
which of old so proudly and superbly trod thy seven hills?
Where thy patricians, the sires of tribes, the oppressors of the
plebs, the conquerors of Italy and Carthage? Where is the
Vestal silently ascending the steps of the Capitol with the holy
fire? Where are thy orators, standing above the waves of the
people, encircled by the hum of murmured words and the storm
of plaudits? Where the soldiers of the legions, sleepless,
mighty, with visages lit up by the flash of swords? The past
has gathered them to herself, and like a mother folds them in
her bosom.
In their place rise forms till now unknown,strange, glittering
with gold, with wreaths on their heads, with goblets in their
hands.
I sis and Mithras have supplanted the gods of
Rome. Barbarians stalk through the streets of the
city.
From this world which writhes and dies I shall draw forth
only one thought more. In it shall be my love, albeit it is the
daughter of rage and the herald of destruction.
On, in your frenzy, gods and men, around my Thought.
Be ye the music that sings an accompaniment to its dreams,
the tempest through which like lightning it shall break. I will
give to it a name, I will give to it a form, and, albeit conceived in
Rome, the day when Rome shall perish shall not be its last.
It shall live as long as earth and earthly nations--but there is
no place for it in heaven1.
The history is then given of the parentage of Iridion,
the " son of vengeance," the symbolization of the mystic
"Thought" of the Anonymous Poet. Iridion's father
is Amphilochus, the Greek, his mother, Grimhilda, a
Scandinavian priestess. This union of bloods in the
person of Iridion is deeply significant. He must be the
child of an oppressed race, and must also be linked
with the force to which Rome ultimately succumbs.
1 This phrase is one of the proofs that when Krasinski began the play
he had no intention of finishing it as he did, and that Iridion was to
have been the incarnation of vengeance only.
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? 144 The Anonymous Poet of Polana
Some hint too of the north is requisite for the Thought
that the Anonymous Poet will send "to the north, the
land of graves and crosses. "
Burning with hatred for the city that has enslaved
Hellas, Amphilochus carries the priestess from her
native land that he may learn from her inspiration how
to vanquish Rome. Iridion is brought up to the destiny
of avenging his nation, taught detestation of Rome
from his cradle. After the death of Amphilochus who
bequeaths the inheritance of revenge to his son with
his last breath, Iridion and his sister, Elsinoe, live
in the dead man's Roman palace, together with a
mysterious aged man, the guardian of their childhood,
Masinissa. With the stealth of the panther Iridion is
working towards the compassing of his end. He is not
concerned with the vision of a restored country. His
one desire is revenge: to see Rome humbled to the
dust. No sense of rectitude or of pity can stay his
hand. No means are too base if they can but bring
ruin on Rome.
When the play begins Iridion is about to carry into
execution the project which he has harboured for years,
namely, by giving his beautiful sister to Heliogabalus
to win through her the domination over the young
emperor that he requires for his schemes. The first
scene opens upon Elsinoe's last hours in her father's
house, as she awaits the moment when Heliogabalus's
slaves shall arrive to bear her to the imperial palace.
Never is Krasinski a greater artist than when he treats
episodes that for their horror seem beyond the range
of art. The delicacy with which he handles them, the
restraint that gives them their extraordinary power,
where no word too much is said, no word too little, are
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? Iridion
145
nowhere more apparent than in this parting between
the brother and the sister whose honour he has sacri-
ficed. It passes in a hall in Iridion's palace. The
fountain plays in the middle. Slaves are lighting the
lamps. Iridion, sunk in anguish, has bowed his head
upon the feet of his father's statue. His slaves,
whispering to one another, reproach him for slumbering
while his sister is weeping and swooning in her apart-
ments. He summons her. She enters.
Elsinoe. Have the slaves come already?
Iridion. Not yet: but I would fain inspire thee for the last
time with thy father's spirit.
Elsinoe. Oh, brother!
Iridion. Thou knowest that the Caesar insists in his passion,
and the senate hath commanded thy statues to be placed in
the temples of the city. Thou knowest that thou art not my
sister, thou art not the bright-haired Elsinoe, the hope of thy
natal house, the darling of my heart. Thou art the victim
appointed for the suffering of many and for the shame of thy
sires.
Elsinoe. Yea. You all have taught me this from my child-
hood, and I am ready. But not to-day, not to-morrow. A
little later, when I have gathered strength, when I have
listened to my fill to the teaching of Masinissa and thy com-
mands, when I have drunk to the dregs of the chalice of your
poison.
Iridion. Chosen maiden, prepare thee for thy fate. It
behoves us to hasten on the road which we tread.
Elsinoe. Remember how I loved thee when we played on
the grass-plots of Chiara. Oh, have mercy on me!
Iridion. Thou temptest me to pity. --In vain, in vain.
Elsinoe. Why so many prayers and lamentations? It
befell in the olden times that men and gods . might be bought
off by death. Thy dagger flashes yonder, Iridion. Let us
hasten annihilation for ourselves, Iridion.
Iridion. Thou blasphemest against my father's thought.
Oh, sister, of old the life of one man sufficed for the salvation
of nations. To-day the times are otherwise. To-day the
sacrifice must be of honour. (He clasps her in his arms. ) To-
day thou shalt be wreathed with roses, thou shalt be decked
in smiles. Oh, unhappy child, lay here thy doomed head.
G.
10
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? 146 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
For the last time in thy father's house thy brother presses thee
to his bosom. Take thy farewell of me in all the beauty of
thy maiden freshness. Never again will I behold thee young
--never, never again!
His heart faints within him. He cries aloud on
Masinissa: and at the entrance of the old man, majestic,
awe-inspiring, Iridion's hesitation is at an end, and
Elsinoe pleads no more. Serving girls carry in costly
robes, singing: "Even as Aphrodite, rising from the
azure ocean in the rainbows of the foam of the sea, so
shalt thou be. We bring thee roses, incense and pearls. "
Masinissa and Iridion lead her to her father's statue,
where Iridion gives her his parting charge. Never
must she allow the Caesar to sleep in peace. She must
drop into his ear as a slow poison reports of plots for
his assassination, of treachery, till he is beside himself
with terror. Then the brother lays his hand on Elsinoe's
head:
Conceived in thirst for vengeance, grown to womanhood in
the hope of vengeance, predestined to infamy and ruin, I con-
secrate thee to the infernal deities of Amphilochus the Greek.
Elsinoe. The voices of Erebus resound on every side--oh,
my mother!
Choir of Women {surrounding her). Why tremble thy limbs
under the snowy veil, under the ribbons of purple with which
we wreathe thy breasts? Why dost thou grow pale under the
garland we have woven for the adorning of thy brow?
Iridion. See, the unhappy child is swooning.
Masinissa. Nay. She is beginning to live as it behoves
her to live.
Elsinoe. I cast off my father's threshold. My father has
condemned me. My brother has condemned me. Oh, never
. more will I return. I go to torment and long mourning.
Iridion's aim is secured. Elsinoe successfully works
on the fears of the childish emperor. She shrouds her-
self in a haughty mystery that whets his superstition:
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? Iridion
H7
she throws over him the spell of her aloof and disdain-
ful beauty till he is wax in her hands. On his side
Iridion, having gained through his sister constant access
to the emperor, plays the game of feigning that he
is Heliogabalus's only faithful adherent. By skilfully
manoeuvring with the young emperor's arrant cowardice
and love of pleasure Iridion's cue is to induce him to
consent to the destruction of Rome, and to retire to the
East where he will be lapped in security and free to
follow his indulgences. And all the while the Greek
is carrying on intrigues among the praetorians, the
gladiators, the slaves, the barbarians, the rabble of
Rome. They are ready. Iridion has only to give the
sign and they will follow him.
Heliogabalus is one of the types in the play whom
Krasinski has depicted with the most consummate art:
a half crazy vicious boy, a whipped cur at the feet of
the beautiful Elsinoe, amusing himself like a child with
his baubles, dabbling with the degraded mysteries of
eastern religions, clinging in terror for his life to the
false friend who is betraying him. In him Krasinski
concentrates the moral decay of Rome and the pagan
world. But Iridion has to contend against yet another
element than that of which Heliogabalus is representa-
tive, an element on which he reckons for his victory or
his failure: the Christians. We have here the pivot on
which the whole drama turns. No new life to revivify the
Roman world can be born of the pagan Rome of Helio-
gabalus, nor yet of the one virtuous heathen trio whom
Krasinski places against the universal degradation;
Alexander Severus, his mother, and the Stoic Ulpianus,
the last a fine example of ancient Roman integrity.
But Masinissa, the Mephistopheles of the play, foresees
10--2
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? 148 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
that Rome will not pass away into the lost empires of
history, because on her ashes shall rise from the cata-
combs another Rome. Iridion, therefore, cannot hope
for the downfall of Rome unless he gains the Christians
to his side. But their faith forbids them to wage war
against their persecutors. Consequently Iridion must,
Masinissa tells him, undermine their morals, deceive
them, bring into their midst a new and fatal discord.
Comedy is:
a farewell rather than a greetingaddressedby thepoettohumani-
tarian inspirations, a strong protest against the fatal illusion
of the age which believes it can regenerate humanity without
having first regenerated man, and establish universal right
without having first strengthened the individual in his duties3.
1 Krasinski seldom in his correspondence alludes to his works, and
when he does so it is almost exclusively under their moral and national
aspect. The Undivine is that one which he most often mentions. There
is a curious passage in one of his letters to Cieszkowski illustrating this
impartial outlook upon his Undivine Comedy. In 1848 he was startled
by hearing his little son repeating prophecies of great evil to befall France
that he told his father he had heard from God during the night. "It
reminded me," says Krasinski, "of the Undivine and George--and I went
away sad. " Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski to August Cieszkowski.
Baden, Dec. 3, 1848. Cracow, 1912 (Polish).
2 J. Klaczko, op. cit. There is in English literature a feeble reflection
of The Undivine Comedy in Owen Meredith's Of vol. Lord Lytton read
a French rendering of Krasinski's drama, and made a species of transcrip-
tion from it into English. The result is that while the plot and the
arrangement of the scenes remain more or less the same, the English play,
particularly in its utter loss of the stern conciseness that gives The Undivine
Comedy its strength, is so unlike the Polish original that it cannot be con-
sidered even in the nature of a rough translation.
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? CHAPTER VII
IRIDION
Krasinski spent the winter of 1833-34 'n Rome. He
had destroyed in Warsaw all that he had already written
of Iridion: but back in the Eternal City, where the
ruins of an empire spoke with eloquence to the Pole's
heart of the downfall of brute force, the figure of his
Greek, nursing implacable revenge under the eyes of
the Caesars, obsessedhim: his "Thought," as he always
called it.
"For a whole year it has given me no rest," he wrote to his
father from Rome. "Here it has appeared to me. Here I have
seen my Iridion, walking in the Forum; I do not create him
any longer, I only observe him. That man walks with me
through all the ruins1. "
He wrote thus in 1833: Dut i* was not until 1836
that Iridion was published. A disastrous passion robbed
its author of the power to finish the play. In the early
months of 1834 he met in Rome Joanna Bobrowa. She
was a married woman, five years his senior and the
mother of two children. His affection for Henrietta
Willan and Amelia Zatuska had been in the nature of
a schoolboy sentiment: but now he fell headlong into
the white heat of passion for her who, as he once told
his father, had first loved him because he was unhappy2.
Giving an account of himself to Reeve the summer
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 136 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
after he had first known Mme Bobrowa, he tells him
how he had that spring felt a wild craving for life and
action from which his physical health debarred him,
and that he had found them in his love1.
At this time begins Krasinski's spiritual wavering.
We know from his introductory lines to Dawn that it
was the fate of his country that first shook his religious
faith: but his unlawful love contributed likewise to its
weakening. Both he and the woman who loved him
had too deep-seated a religious sense not to be torn by
bitter self-reproach. Krasinski's remorse and misery
increased with the lapse of time, especially after Mme
Bobrowa was compromised in the eyes of the world and
estranged from her husband. But at the outset it was
the impossibility of reconciling his passion for her
with the precepts of the Church to which he belonged,
and the fact that the tortures of conscience increased
both his, and in a still greater measure Mme Bobrowa's,
sufferings, that combined to turn him to a certain
extent against the faith in which he had been brought
up. Moreover, to justify the falsity of his own moral
position he was driven to warp those high spiritual
precepts in which he had once found strength.
"Physical pain," he writes to Reeve, "makes you return to
God. . . But moral pain repulses, separates, you from heaven. . .
You will be astonished, Henry, to hear the man speak thus
who formerly believed and hoped so much in God; but I have
travelled fast on a fatal road. Oh! if you know where there
is a ray of hope, a new dawn, a faith young and able to fill my
heart, tell me'! "
Yet Krasinski's complex character is a mass of
contradictions. Not long after he had expressed him-
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Wiesbaden, Aug 25, 1834.
* Ibid. Rome, Nov. 12, 1834.
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? Iridion 137
self thus to Reeve, to whom earlier in the year he had
written that: "For five months," namely, since he first
loved Mme Bobrowa, " I have not said a single prayer:
and yet I feel no remorse, so strong in me was that
necessity for action which has driven me to love with
all my faculties, to look for salvation where others find
death1" ; he writes to Gaszynski:
What I do congratulate you on from my heart is that you
have returned to God. There is nothing else for man in the
world than to believe and love. . . Since some time I have grown
cold. My faith is not destroyed, but has slept3.
The history of Krasinski's love was retailed in its
fulness to neither Reeve nor Gaszynski3, but to another
Pole, Adam^Softan^ who, through the Radziwifts, was
related to Krasinski. Belonging to a family that had
distinguished itself for generations by its patriotism,
Sottan commanded a regiment during the Polish Rising,
and was driven into exile at its close. The Russian
government confiscated his estates, and took his five
children from him. His young sons--the youngest a
child of three years old--were carried off to Petersburg
to be brought up by the Russian state. His daughters
were placed in a convent of their own religion, where
the Russian authorities kept them under supervision.
Sottan's father, already parted from his son, died of
grief on the loss of his grandchildren. Sottan himself
* Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Wiesbaden, Aug. 25, 1834.
2 Letters to Gaszynski. Naples, March 29, 1835.
3 Krasinski's silence upon the subject in his correspondence with
Gaszynski may be accounted for by Dr Kallenbach's conjecture that
Gaszynski suppressed for publication all those passages relating to it;
for, as Krasinski chose to tell Reeve with whom his friendship was fast
waning part at least of what was filling his heart, it is very improbable that
Gaszynski, one of his dearest friends to the last, was not confided in far
more fully.
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? 138 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
passed his years in exile, bereft of his children, for-
bidden to hold any communication with them, racked
by anxiety for their fate1. His upright character, his
peculiarly sympathetic nature, no less than his sorrows,
gained for him Krasinski's undying affection. The
sufferings of those whom Krasinski loved were as his
own, their interests his. He spared no pains to use the
General's influence in gathering for his friend every scrap
of information that could be gleaned concerning the
sons, and to give the children in their turn news of
their father: and it was he who finally brought about
the restoration to Sottan of the only daughter who
survived. Krasinski's trust in this beloved friend was
unbounded. To him he confided without reserve all
that passage of his life which we have now reached.
Meeting Mme Bobrowa in the summer of 1835, after
the winter's absence: "perhaps," writes Krasinski to
Sottan, "you will be pleased to hear that he who loves
you has reached paradise, and writes to you from
paradise2. " Again to Sottan he wrote in a very different
strain a month later when, the affection between himself
and Mme Bobrowa having become the subject of
public comment, Krasinski compelled himself for the
sake of her good name to leave Ischl where she was
staying. .
I felt a sacred duty, the stern necessity of going away, so as
not to injure her honour. She entreated me to stay, because
above all things she loved. But it had to be: I left, cursing the
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Ibid. Those letters of Krasinski that concern Mme Bobrowa are
not printed in the published collection of the Soltan correspondence,
Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski. Vol. 11. To Adam Sottan. Lw6w, 1883
(Polish). They are given in the first instance by Count Tarnowski in his
monograph and are quoted also by Dr Kallenbach.
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? Iridion
139
world and the base and wretched people who revenge themselves
on those who feel, because they themselves feel nothing. . . I left
her in despair: such, Adam, is the end of my paradise. I am
as one damned. I never loved before: I did not know what
love is. . . To-day I walk the scorched pavement of this town,
and I would fain lie down on it and die, such pain does each
moment without her cause me. If there were some faults, God
will forgive us. It is hard to struggle as much as she does, to
love and respect as much as I do1.
And a little later, while she was in Trieste, he in
Venice, he writes to Sottan in similar language, exe-
crating those who condemned the woman without
knowing or caring how she had fought against herself,
and acknowledging that he felt driven to suicide3. Then,
shortly before the moment of parting:
You have no idea of what I have suffered. How happy I
was likewise few could know. But it was that kind of happi-
ness which destroys rather than augments strength. From all
this has remained what is dearest to me, namely, the thought
that there is no nobler woman on earth. . . Ah! what is poisoning
my life is that she insists on returning to her house. Her
husband knows all. She herself wrote it to him. So she knows
what is awaiting her. But she considers it her duty to take
her children to her husband and to suffer. She sees in this a
species of expiation8. "
Count Tarnowski here notices that, culpable as both
had been, neither of these "suffering and struggling"
human beings was wanting in nobility. The woman
voluntarily chose her penalty. The man reverenced the
action which destroyed his own happiness4. The short-
lived rapture that Krasinski's love had brought him
was now over. Until the final break in 1838 it was to
be agony and remorse.
During this time Krasinski had written Iridion,
"which," as he told Reeve, "torn up three times, ten
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. * Ibid.
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? 140 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
times broken off either by my sufferings or by my
passions, for three years has not ceased to torture my
brain1. "
From Venice he went in the September of 1835 to
Vienna. While waiting there with Danielewicz to see
once more Mme Bobrowa on her way to her husband
in Poland, before the emotions of those farewell weeks
with her impeded him, aggravated as they were by the
false position in which he stood and by the remon-
strances of his friend, he finished the drama. Both
it and The Undivine Comedy, which latter was written
before he had known her, but published later, were
dedicated to Mme Bobrowa: and it is said that she is
the original of Cornelia in Iridion.
Iridion is the Anonymous Poet's first direct appeal
to his nation. We have seen how the thought of it
flashed across him when, mourning for his country's
defeat alone in Petersburg, he remembered Argos. It
matured through the years while he watched in bitter
grief the tragedy of Poland, and behind the gallows and
endless deportations to Siberia, behind the prohibition
to a Pole of all Polish possessions, saw the danger to
his country that he most dreaded: the moral degrada-
tion of hatred which such an oppression was calculated
to engender. This thought, intensified by Krasinski's
own intimate experience of the warring of the dictates
of vengeance against a higher law, could, as he had
himself expressed it, give him no rest until he sent it
forth as a warning to his people. But if it were to
reach Poland where Siberia was the penalty alike for
the authors of the national Polish writings and their
readers, it could only be told in some veiled form.
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Florence, June 3, 1835.
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? Iridion
141
Krasinski therefore allegorized it under the figure of
the Greek, Iridion Amphilochides.
The keynote of the play is that the weapons of
hatred will turn against those who use them, how-
ever sacred their object, and that evil means can bring
nothing but destruction to the cause for which they are
employed. It is evident; from certain expressions in the
prologue that Krasinski began the drama with the
intention that the Greek who, to compass his end, has
ruined everything he touched shall be eternally ruined
himself. As the author closed the work he modified his
idea, and we have the noble conclusion, the first step
of the stairway that leads to the triumph and the
unearthly glory of Krasinski's next great national song:
Dawn.
In style Krasinski's second prose drama bears no
resemblance to his first.
Not only are the terseness
and the reserve of The Undivine Comedy entirely absent
from Iridion: but whereas in The Undivine Comedy we
seem to move in an atmosphere of a heavy and op-
pressive greyness, there is the sensation throughout
Iridion of the blue skies of Rome, the glittering marbles
of the temples, the many-hued splendours of the
Imperial City.
Krasinski places his drama in the reign of Helio-
gabalus when the Roman world was profoundly de-
moralized, and the fall of the empire seemed not far
off. He saw, as we know, like elements of dissolution
in the society in which he lived: and thus the applica-
tion of his symbolized national thought to the present
is evident. He pointed, in a few words of introduction,
to the three systems which at that period of Rome's
history stood side by side: paganism, barren of life and
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? 142 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
overlaid by alien religions from the East; Christianity,
hidden and persecuted, but ever growing; and the
barbarians, gradually pressing on Italy like a blinded
and relentless force of nature. On these three elements
the drama of Iridion is built: and all three are to be
found represented in the character of Iridion himself;
Iridion the Greek, who bears the second name of
Sigurd from his Scandinavian mother, and who, to the
Christians, is Hieronimus1.
"The ancient world is now drawing nigh its end":
so the drama begins in a prologue of stately prose that
Count Tarnowski ranks among the masterpieces of the
Polish language2.
All that dwelt therein is rotting, is dissolving, is demented.
Amid the chaos I lift the song that is torn by violence from
my bosom. May the spirit of destruction come to my aid!
May my inspiration resound on every side, like the thunder of
the tempest which is now rolling over the ages of the past and
thrusting all life down into the abyss! --and then let it die
away, even as thunder after its work is done. There, in the
east, is the new dawn. But with that I have nought to do.
This chaos, observes Dr Kallenbach, does not
refer merely to the historical background upon which
Krasinski chose to found his secret thoughts3. It is also
an allusion to the moral confusion in which Krasinski
wrote the play, which was often put aside because
the heart of its author was too disturbed and tempest-
tossed to be able to work out his idea. Intrinsic
evidences of this wavering of mental and spiritual
outlook are distinctly traceable in the course of the
drama.
1 J. Klaczko, Le Pohte Anonyme de la Pologne
2 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
3 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? Iridion
H3
Where, oh, Rome [continues the prologue], are the forms
which of old so proudly and superbly trod thy seven hills?
Where thy patricians, the sires of tribes, the oppressors of the
plebs, the conquerors of Italy and Carthage? Where is the
Vestal silently ascending the steps of the Capitol with the holy
fire? Where are thy orators, standing above the waves of the
people, encircled by the hum of murmured words and the storm
of plaudits? Where the soldiers of the legions, sleepless,
mighty, with visages lit up by the flash of swords? The past
has gathered them to herself, and like a mother folds them in
her bosom.
In their place rise forms till now unknown,strange, glittering
with gold, with wreaths on their heads, with goblets in their
hands.
I sis and Mithras have supplanted the gods of
Rome. Barbarians stalk through the streets of the
city.
From this world which writhes and dies I shall draw forth
only one thought more. In it shall be my love, albeit it is the
daughter of rage and the herald of destruction.
On, in your frenzy, gods and men, around my Thought.
Be ye the music that sings an accompaniment to its dreams,
the tempest through which like lightning it shall break. I will
give to it a name, I will give to it a form, and, albeit conceived in
Rome, the day when Rome shall perish shall not be its last.
It shall live as long as earth and earthly nations--but there is
no place for it in heaven1.
The history is then given of the parentage of Iridion,
the " son of vengeance," the symbolization of the mystic
"Thought" of the Anonymous Poet. Iridion's father
is Amphilochus, the Greek, his mother, Grimhilda, a
Scandinavian priestess. This union of bloods in the
person of Iridion is deeply significant. He must be the
child of an oppressed race, and must also be linked
with the force to which Rome ultimately succumbs.
1 This phrase is one of the proofs that when Krasinski began the play
he had no intention of finishing it as he did, and that Iridion was to
have been the incarnation of vengeance only.
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? 144 The Anonymous Poet of Polana
Some hint too of the north is requisite for the Thought
that the Anonymous Poet will send "to the north, the
land of graves and crosses. "
Burning with hatred for the city that has enslaved
Hellas, Amphilochus carries the priestess from her
native land that he may learn from her inspiration how
to vanquish Rome. Iridion is brought up to the destiny
of avenging his nation, taught detestation of Rome
from his cradle. After the death of Amphilochus who
bequeaths the inheritance of revenge to his son with
his last breath, Iridion and his sister, Elsinoe, live
in the dead man's Roman palace, together with a
mysterious aged man, the guardian of their childhood,
Masinissa. With the stealth of the panther Iridion is
working towards the compassing of his end. He is not
concerned with the vision of a restored country. His
one desire is revenge: to see Rome humbled to the
dust. No sense of rectitude or of pity can stay his
hand. No means are too base if they can but bring
ruin on Rome.
When the play begins Iridion is about to carry into
execution the project which he has harboured for years,
namely, by giving his beautiful sister to Heliogabalus
to win through her the domination over the young
emperor that he requires for his schemes. The first
scene opens upon Elsinoe's last hours in her father's
house, as she awaits the moment when Heliogabalus's
slaves shall arrive to bear her to the imperial palace.
Never is Krasinski a greater artist than when he treats
episodes that for their horror seem beyond the range
of art. The delicacy with which he handles them, the
restraint that gives them their extraordinary power,
where no word too much is said, no word too little, are
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? Iridion
145
nowhere more apparent than in this parting between
the brother and the sister whose honour he has sacri-
ficed. It passes in a hall in Iridion's palace. The
fountain plays in the middle. Slaves are lighting the
lamps. Iridion, sunk in anguish, has bowed his head
upon the feet of his father's statue. His slaves,
whispering to one another, reproach him for slumbering
while his sister is weeping and swooning in her apart-
ments. He summons her. She enters.
Elsinoe. Have the slaves come already?
Iridion. Not yet: but I would fain inspire thee for the last
time with thy father's spirit.
Elsinoe. Oh, brother!
Iridion. Thou knowest that the Caesar insists in his passion,
and the senate hath commanded thy statues to be placed in
the temples of the city. Thou knowest that thou art not my
sister, thou art not the bright-haired Elsinoe, the hope of thy
natal house, the darling of my heart. Thou art the victim
appointed for the suffering of many and for the shame of thy
sires.
Elsinoe. Yea. You all have taught me this from my child-
hood, and I am ready. But not to-day, not to-morrow. A
little later, when I have gathered strength, when I have
listened to my fill to the teaching of Masinissa and thy com-
mands, when I have drunk to the dregs of the chalice of your
poison.
Iridion. Chosen maiden, prepare thee for thy fate. It
behoves us to hasten on the road which we tread.
Elsinoe. Remember how I loved thee when we played on
the grass-plots of Chiara. Oh, have mercy on me!
Iridion. Thou temptest me to pity. --In vain, in vain.
Elsinoe. Why so many prayers and lamentations? It
befell in the olden times that men and gods . might be bought
off by death. Thy dagger flashes yonder, Iridion. Let us
hasten annihilation for ourselves, Iridion.
Iridion. Thou blasphemest against my father's thought.
Oh, sister, of old the life of one man sufficed for the salvation
of nations. To-day the times are otherwise. To-day the
sacrifice must be of honour. (He clasps her in his arms. ) To-
day thou shalt be wreathed with roses, thou shalt be decked
in smiles. Oh, unhappy child, lay here thy doomed head.
G.
10
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? 146 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
For the last time in thy father's house thy brother presses thee
to his bosom. Take thy farewell of me in all the beauty of
thy maiden freshness. Never again will I behold thee young
--never, never again!
His heart faints within him. He cries aloud on
Masinissa: and at the entrance of the old man, majestic,
awe-inspiring, Iridion's hesitation is at an end, and
Elsinoe pleads no more. Serving girls carry in costly
robes, singing: "Even as Aphrodite, rising from the
azure ocean in the rainbows of the foam of the sea, so
shalt thou be. We bring thee roses, incense and pearls. "
Masinissa and Iridion lead her to her father's statue,
where Iridion gives her his parting charge. Never
must she allow the Caesar to sleep in peace. She must
drop into his ear as a slow poison reports of plots for
his assassination, of treachery, till he is beside himself
with terror. Then the brother lays his hand on Elsinoe's
head:
Conceived in thirst for vengeance, grown to womanhood in
the hope of vengeance, predestined to infamy and ruin, I con-
secrate thee to the infernal deities of Amphilochus the Greek.
Elsinoe. The voices of Erebus resound on every side--oh,
my mother!
Choir of Women {surrounding her). Why tremble thy limbs
under the snowy veil, under the ribbons of purple with which
we wreathe thy breasts? Why dost thou grow pale under the
garland we have woven for the adorning of thy brow?
Iridion. See, the unhappy child is swooning.
Masinissa. Nay. She is beginning to live as it behoves
her to live.
Elsinoe. I cast off my father's threshold. My father has
condemned me. My brother has condemned me. Oh, never
. more will I return. I go to torment and long mourning.
Iridion's aim is secured. Elsinoe successfully works
on the fears of the childish emperor. She shrouds her-
self in a haughty mystery that whets his superstition:
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? Iridion
H7
she throws over him the spell of her aloof and disdain-
ful beauty till he is wax in her hands. On his side
Iridion, having gained through his sister constant access
to the emperor, plays the game of feigning that he
is Heliogabalus's only faithful adherent. By skilfully
manoeuvring with the young emperor's arrant cowardice
and love of pleasure Iridion's cue is to induce him to
consent to the destruction of Rome, and to retire to the
East where he will be lapped in security and free to
follow his indulgences. And all the while the Greek
is carrying on intrigues among the praetorians, the
gladiators, the slaves, the barbarians, the rabble of
Rome. They are ready. Iridion has only to give the
sign and they will follow him.
Heliogabalus is one of the types in the play whom
Krasinski has depicted with the most consummate art:
a half crazy vicious boy, a whipped cur at the feet of
the beautiful Elsinoe, amusing himself like a child with
his baubles, dabbling with the degraded mysteries of
eastern religions, clinging in terror for his life to the
false friend who is betraying him. In him Krasinski
concentrates the moral decay of Rome and the pagan
world. But Iridion has to contend against yet another
element than that of which Heliogabalus is representa-
tive, an element on which he reckons for his victory or
his failure: the Christians. We have here the pivot on
which the whole drama turns. No new life to revivify the
Roman world can be born of the pagan Rome of Helio-
gabalus, nor yet of the one virtuous heathen trio whom
Krasinski places against the universal degradation;
Alexander Severus, his mother, and the Stoic Ulpianus,
the last a fine example of ancient Roman integrity.
But Masinissa, the Mephistopheles of the play, foresees
10--2
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89102083045 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 148 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
that Rome will not pass away into the lost empires of
history, because on her ashes shall rise from the cata-
combs another Rome. Iridion, therefore, cannot hope
for the downfall of Rome unless he gains the Christians
to his side. But their faith forbids them to wage war
against their persecutors. Consequently Iridion must,
Masinissa tells him, undermine their morals, deceive
them, bring into their midst a new and fatal discord.
