Caught between two fires, I
behaved with an astonishing presence of mind: for I pacified
the dogs by whistling and making friendly signs to them.
behaved with an astonishing presence of mind: for I pacified
the dogs by whistling and making friendly signs to them.
Poland - 1919 - Krasinski - Anonymous Poet of Poland
If I don't go there I am lost.
.
.
But listen to my
voice yet once more, that voice that you sometimes loved to
hear. I am alone, and everything is an obstacle to me, nothing
is a help. My father is dying, as you say, weeping; the son can
well die, gnashing his teeth. Have you considered what you
write to me, advising me to get myself arrested? Do you be-
lieve me capable of adding one stone to the heap that has
stoned my father? Do you want me to go promenading
through France the disgrace of the man who won such glory
there? Do you want me, a hero with the gendarmes, to read
1 Correspondance. Reeve to Krasinski. Paris, May 24, 1831.
2 Ibid. May 25, 1831.
4--2
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The Anonymous Poet of Poland
in a newspaper two days later epithets of infamy lavished on
the name of my father, sprinkled with a few praises for my-
self? Yes, I say openly, but only to Henry Reeve, and to
none other in the world, my father has committed a grave,
a terrible fault; it is not my place to call him to account for it.
"I shall wait at Geneva for my father's answer. If it is
satisfactory, I go; if not, I go all the same; because then my
duties, though not cancelled, will be lightened. After all,
think what you will; say that there is a want of energy in my
soul, that I speak, and do not know how to act, that I am weak,
irresolute. Good! Be as unhappy as I am, and then judge me. "
His brain obviously unhinged for the moment under
his mental tortures, among which not the least was the
conviction of his everlasting disgrace, he continued:
Do not attempt to defend me any more, to uphold my
reputation. I do not ask you to answer: "No," when they tell
you I am "a wretched creature"; but think it only, that will be
enough for me. Shut deep in your heart the friendship you
have for me. If your face lets it out it will compromise you.
Carry to the post on the sly the letters you write to me;
disguise your handwriting. Let nobody suspect that Henry
Reeve has any relations with Sigismond Krasinski.
But he has still a flicker of hope that "one hour
can change all, and then they will know who I am ":
and if that hour never comes, then at all events his
best loved friend, Reeve, will know it.
"At least, during the days of uncertainty that are floating be-
tween my past and my agony, do not forget me, write to me
every day. . . Remember that if fate and men are against me, you
at least ought to remain neutral. . . that if, at the end, all is for
ever lost to me, name, glory, father, country, there must still
remain between us something in common--if only the thought
of Chamonix"--where they had been together--"and the
memory of the tears of Saint-Cergues "--where shortly before
they had said good-bye to each other1.
A mutual friend chanced to be in the room as
Zygmunt closed this packet. He added a few words
below Krasinski's signature, describing the violent agi-
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, May 28, 1831.
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tation into which Reeve's last letters had thrown
Krasinski, and how the latter, at the moment that the
friend sat and wrote, was hurrying with wild steps up
and down the room.
Reeve, now in England, scorned the idea of con-
cealing his friendship; tried at Krasinski's request to
find Henrietta Willan, whose silence her lover ascribed
to contempt for him; and told how his heart failed him at
the thought of going to a dance the evening that his
friend's outburst of misery lay in his pocket.
"Your part is taken," said Reeve. "The choice is terrible,
because that choice had to be made. Now that you have de-
cided to remain a son, pray, suffer, and love what is left to
you1. "
But Krasinski, who bore his burden unflinchingly
all his life long, in these early days doubted his strength
to carry through his sacrifice.
"You know me," he answered Reeve. "I am by no means
a being made for resignation. Fiery impulses, even if they
were to fling me into an abyss, cost me nothing; but per-
severance in good, as in evil, is supremely difficult to me.
"Skrzynecki [the Polish commander-in-chief] has had a
defeat. . . Nothing is lost. " It was the beginning of the end.
"She will be born again, that beautiful Poland2. "
At the same time he wrote the following letter to a
favourite cousin, Stanistaw Krasinski, who had been
wounded in the war.
This letter will find you on the bed where you are
suffering for Poland. With pride that I am related to you I
read in the papers that in an attack on a Russian battalion
you were seriously wounded. If my voice still counts for any-
thing with you, if you have not by now forgotten him who
promised to love you and always to wear your ring, accept
my good wishes. . . You alone are now a Krasinski. The rest
1 Correspondance. Reeve to Krasinski. London, June 6, 1831.
2 Ibid. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, June 12, 1831.
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? 54 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
of our glory has departed--but let our name disappear if only
Poland stays. Although appearances may be strong against
me, although I am now rotting far away from Poland, although
perhaps before long disgrace will fall and hang over my head,
believe that Zygmunt's heart is Polish, and will not cease to be
so till its last moment. Love me if you can still love one who
is remaining in Geneva while his brothers die. Believe, if you
still care to believe me, that the obstacle on my way must be
a weighty one when so far I have not been able either to re-
move it or pass over it. Good-bye, Stas'. Good-bye. Perhaps
God will give me such a blessing that before long I shall be
crying out at your side: "Hurrah, and death to the Mus-
covites. " Good-bye. I love you and adore your courage1.
Krasinski was now completely unnerved by the sus-
pense he suffered in his father's silence, and by mental
conflict2. He confided to Reeve how "in the silence
of the night" he was preparing himself for the hour,
when, with the arrival of his father's letter, his decision
must be made; an hour "more terrible than that of
death, because a decision is preceded by a struggle that
exhausts the soul, and death is merely a victory gained
over us3. "
In the intervals of grappling with his own problem,
in his ever increasing sadness as the news from Poland
grew worse, Krasinski took to his writing and excessive
reading to deaden grief. The sufferings of his mind
were now telling upon his body. Racked with pain, he
spent the nights over his pen and books, with fatal
injury to his eyes, already half blinded by weeping.
He told Reeve that the only hours in which he could
be said to live were those in which he poured out his
sorrows in the figure of an autobiographical story.
This story--Adam le Fou--is only known to us from
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski. See Appendix to
Vol. II, pp. 435. 436.
2 J. Kallenbach, op. cit.
3 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, June 21, 1831.
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55
the scraps of French translations from the Polish that
Krasinski enclosed in his letters to Reeve. It presents
an idealized picture of Reeve as Lord Henry Gram ; a
Marie who stands for Henrietta Willan; while Kra-
sinski himself is represented as Adam, maddened by his
fate, Adam being one of Krasinski's own names.
Couched in a Byronic vein, it runs on the same lines as
the personal confidences that fill Krasinski's letters to
Reeve during the Rising. Adam sees himself despised
as a coward by the girl he loves; his name contemned,
his friends estranged. There seems to have been some
vague hope in Krasinski's mind that this story might
in a future day vindicate his honour by showing those
who held him cheap what his inaction in the war had
cost him1. But his idea came to nothing. Reeve
clamoured for it in vain: the Anonymous Poet would
never consent to divulge his name, or drag his father's
conduct into the public gaze2. The work breaks off
unfinished. Its remembrance of the Coliseum that had
so deeply affected Krasinski was afterwards ennobled
and purified in Iridion.
"I dreamt among the ruins," says Adam. "The ancient
world overthrown at my feet before a wooden cross. . . the
memories of my enslaved country, ran together in my brain.
I was comforted to contemplate Rome lying low in clay and
mud; for in my childhood I had sworn vengeance on another
Rome, and, as I trampled on the first, I thought that some
day I would trample on the second. " {Adam le Fou. )
Discussions on literary topics with Reeve afforded
Krasinski's overstrained mind some relief. He gave
Reeve a little lecture that proved to be strangely ap-
propriate, not to Reeve, but to Krasinski himself.
1 "Perhaps one day it will be the only proof that will witness in my
favour. " Corresfondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, July 25, 1831.
a J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 56 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
You ought not to hurry to finish your poem. Wait from
day to day now; life will become harder for you and, in pro-
portion to the load, your powers will grow. . . Laocoon, you
will wrestle; and from the struggle and the fight stars will
burst forth, I mean thoughts, unknown flights, stronger, more
gigantic, to the beautiful and sublime, because you will be
surrounded by baseness and ugliness. . . Till now, Henry, you
have only been a man in your moments of poetry, while you
walked in the circle of a child. But now, when your circle is
enlarged, when you are a man among men, struggling every
minute, you will be above man in your poetry, for to be a poet
is to carry his present reality to the past or future. . . to heaven
or hell1.
Then the Anonymous Poet, whose inspiration was
now clamouring for release, tells the friend, whom he
still believed possessed of gifts far greater than his own,
that at last he is convinced that he too has:
a spark of poetry in my bosom, very imperfect, it is true, as
rhythm is wanting in me. The proof is that, without any hope
of men ever reading me, I write and write. . . What is it to
be a poet if not to have a superabundance of thoughts which
rush in torrents over the surface of the soul, and which boil
there until they find an outlet? It matters little to him if this
outlet reaches the ears of men or the void, so long as he rids
himself of that fire which burns him, and gives him not one
moment's breathing space2.
On a July afternoon there is a glimpse of Krasinski
for once, in the thick of his troubles, at play. He went
to the garden of Reeve's adored Constance to steal a
rose for his friend.
In the road which passes the garden hedge I met the
Sautter father talking to a neighbour, while a string of oxen
plied before him. Between my teeth I murmured a Damn and
tied my horse to a little gate behind. Then I paced up and
down the road in the attitude of a man who awaits his adver-
sary to fight a duel. At last he [Sautter] came towards me,
and appeared to be considering me. I gave him back look for
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, June 23, 1831.
2 Ibid. July 13, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
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look and, seeing that he wouldn't learn any more about me, he
went off in the direction of the cornfields. I thought the
opportunity favourable, and I leaped the hedge. But at the
same instant two enormous dogs rushed out of a thicket, and
attacked me. I drew out my dagger and, thanks to the blade
that I presented at their heads, I made an honourable retreat
as far as the gate where I jumped on my horse. But there
behold! there was father Sautter, who reappeared among the
ears of corn on the other side.
Caught between two fires, I
behaved with an astonishing presence of mind: for I pacified
the dogs by whistling and making friendly signs to them. As
for father Sautter, when I saw him passing out on my right
ten steps away from me, I stretched myself out on my saddle,
I laid my head on the neck, my feet on the back of my horse,
and I made as if I were going to sleep. The lawful proprietor
of Bourdigny passed by, looking at me with a smile, as if I
had given him the impression of being an oddity, then he
retreated to his house, leaving me for company his two amiable
Cerberuses. . . Like a falcon dying of hunger I swooped upon a
rose and another flower which I arranged in my pocket-book,
and that I shall send you as soon as they are dried.
This letter was still open when the courier came
in from Petersburg.
"What can I say to you, my dear Henry? My distress only
grows worse. My father writes to me with a heart-rending
tenderness. He tells me he is ready to make a sacrifice of
himself and his child to his country; but he implores me to
wait, and declares that he will shortly join me. Henry, what
would you do if you were in my place? Ah ! what need have
I to ask another what he would do? I see that I am ruined.
I am a fool, I am a coward, I am a wretched being, I have the
heart of a girl, I do not dare to brave a father's curse. I ex-
pected an imperious, violent, forcible letter, and I was prepared
for a decisive, terrible, forcible struggle too. . . But when
yesterday's letter arrived; when instead of threats, I found
prayers; instead of fury, I saw blessings; instead of commands,
supplications; instead of sentiments at the thought of which
I shuddered, a love of Poland piercing through each word, all my
strength melted into tears "--these three words are in English.
"I had prepared my arm to strike a blow; and, when it fell,
I found no resistance. . . I am touched to tenderness, full of
affection for my father, for his bitter misfortunes, and I have
no longer sufficient strength to decide. That is my condition.
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The Anonymous Poet of Poland
You can cast on my head the curse of a friend ; but I tell you
I am no longer myself. I have, however, answered, promising
nothing, still saying that if the opportunity presents itself I
shall go to Poland. But where is that opportunity? . . . I have
just seen in the last few days a Pole. . . who informed me that
prince Gagarin told him in Rome that all the Russian em-
bassies have my description, and the order to arrest me and
send me straight to Saint Petersburg if I try and escape from
Geneva. That's nothing. When it is the case of duty one
faces everything. But my father, my father, he who once
powerful, rich, loaded with flatteries and glory, saw himself
the first man in Poland1,. . . to-day he is beaten down, he has
lost everything, and has only me in this vast universe. If this
'last support fails him, what will become of him? It is not
death I fear for him. It would be a benefit to us both, but it
is those long years of old age, full of heart-breaking recol-
lections, disgust and bitterness; it is his heart broken above
my tomb; it is the look that he will cast around him without
finding one who will stretch out a hand to him. . . Yet I have a
ray of hope remaining that he will fight for Poland, and I at
his side. . .
"However, I am in the most complete incertitude. The
advice of men can do nothing for me. I hope for inspiration
only from the Mother of God ; and when that inspiration comes
I will follow it. . .
"And that thought of suicide that still hovers in my brain,
it is odd it no longer has the effect on me of a crime. On the
contrary, it seems to me that it is a thing which is permitted. . .
But when I reason I see truly it is a crime. Oh! if to die were
to sleep for ever! Eternity? Oh, well, you will see, we shall
have new toils, new troubles, in that eternity. We shall curse
it one day as we curse the earth. . . Rest! Rest! Sleep ! but no
dream ! or rather dreams, sometimes, but those of a child. . .
"What a madman am I! What a fool! Judge by this where
I have got to. I, I am setting up for a materialist! I, I already
desire annihilation ! Ah! how suffering beats down the wings
of the soul'! "
Krasinski's every mood and emotion, and his con-
1 Here Krasinski's filial feelings led him to a considerable exaggera-
tion of his father's former position.
2 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, July 8, 12, 1831. The
letter quoted before this is obviously wrongly dated, having been written
before Krasinski heard from his father.
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tradictory impulses, flowed out in unchecked streams
to the ear of the only person to whom he could then
speak freely: so the weakening of religious faith of
which he speaks in this last letter may be taken as only
the wild words of a boy of nineteen, half beside himself.
Yet possibly they were the first steps towards the agony
of doubt which came upon him later.
Side by side with his confessions to Reeve, who, still
busy over mad plans on his friend's behalf, answered
in genuine, if somewhat sentimentally worded, sym-
pathy, Zygmunt continued to wrestle vainly with his
father.
"I would give my life if I could see you somewhere else," he
wrote to the General, "and to embrace you once more before
I die. . . . I love, oh, I love my father, and with folded hands I
stay far from Poland. Have pity on me! "
He reminds his father of the forty wounds the latter
bore on his body for Poland, and implores him to con-
sider what comfort can the son ever have in the re-
maining years of his life, the son who remained behind
when his country summoned him? He has in his heart
that which no argument can pacify or destroy:
I allude to that desire to fight for Poland, that deep con-
viction that it is my duty, to that terrible fear that I shall be
cursed by men and God for sitting quietly here.
Carrying that fiery coal in my bosom, I have not one, not
one moment of peace. Lethargy and fever--those are the two
states which master me by turns. Two days of fever, two days
of lethargy--that is my life! Take pity on me, dear father! . . .
I repeat again, that feeling of duty and the fear of disgrace
torment me so much that sometimes I go out of my senses
when I think about it. I am unhappy! In the past I used
to say that from Romanticism; to-day, alas! it has become
reality1.
The father's move was to appeal once more to the
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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The Anonymous Poet of Poland
son's affections and to assure him that the Rising was
no national movement, but the work of a few revolu-
tionaries. His eyes opened to the fact, bitterer to him
than death, that his father in Petersburg was listening
to the enemies of his country, belittling a conflict that
all Europe regarded as a national war, Krasinski re-
torted by a noble defence of a great cause, prophetical
of the Anonymous Poet's future philosophy.
It is the war of the weak against the mighty, of those con-
secrated to death against their old aggressors, of men mindful
that they have had great ancestors. . . And the more Poland is
covered with blood, flames, corpses, the more holy does her
cause become to my heart, the more do I see in this cause the
finger and the Providence of God, for to those whom He pro-
tects He is not wont to give victory without toil and sorrow.
Those, on the contrary, whom He sends for the punishment
of the human race, those, I say, He surrounds with ease and
benefits without labour; but, for those whom He has charged
with any great work of redemption, He places obstacles in
the way, He bids them suffer and die, for, by the fault of men
themselves, it is one of the laws of this unhappy world that
there can be nothing beautiful or salutary without suffering
and pain. . . To save the world the death of God was necessary.
To save one nation, how much more are necessary human
deaths and afflictions1!
So the duel dragged on between father and son
during the summer months of 1831 : the son writing
to his father, with tears in his eyes and rage in his
heart'', the letters that were a torment to write, pass-
ing through crises that, so he tells Reeve, took years
from his life. The while, defeat after defeat in Poland
were telling plainly of the end. To Reeve, who com-
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 "Though I am in a very bad moment for criticizing, though I have
just finished a letter for my father and I have tears in my eyes and rage
in my heart, let us speak of Maria]' a poem by Reeve. Correspondance.
Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, Sept. 18, 1831.
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61
plained that he could not love his own country, the
Pole replied:
Henry, do not imitate Byron. If you hate the men, adore
the land. . . Wait till your country is unhappy. Wait for the
day when the tears of your sisters will be mingled with the
ocean, when the groans of your brothers will prevent you from
closing your eyes, when you see your country ravaged. . . en-
tangled in chains, shamed by her degradation; and then you
will love your country more than you love the inspiration of
poetry, more than your mother, more than everything that
could awaken in you a feeling of affection, friendship, love.
"Better to perish in the first battle than to live far
from one's country," the writer mournfully said, as he
gazed out on the lake and mountains of Geneva, and
thought of the Polish plains, where war was raging1.
Out of that acute shame in his own position, which
is scarcely ever absent from his correspondence during
the Rising, sudden insight flashed upon the poet who
chose to remain anonymous and unknown.
I now know that at the bottom of the heart every noble
soul possesses something more holy than glory: it is the idea
of sacrifice ignored [he underlined the words], dumb, silent, of
the duty to be accomplished for one's own interior glory, and
not for the fame that goes forth from the same mouth as
calumny2.
As he watched his country's doom closing on her,
he added:
If Poland is going once more to perish, I feel no longer
the strength to remain upon this earth. The day that War-
saw surrenders will be the signal to a Polish soul to leave the
body3.
It was in these September days that Poland's last
desperate stand was made. After a heroic defence,
Warsaw fell on September 7, 1831. The Rising was
over.
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, August 24, 1831.
Ibid, Sept. 2, 1831. 3 Ibid.
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? 62 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
"Warsaw has surrendered": so, under the first
shock of the blow, Krasinski wrote to Reeve, who was
awaiting almost with terror its effect upon his friend.
How I now adore that land, bleeding, sacred with so many
sorrows and disasters, bathed in the blood of martyrs. . . All
for her, my life, my endeavours, my days, my nights, my
sadness, my joys! All for her, my sword, my lyre, all, to my
last sigh1!
Again he wrote in an outburst of passionate grief:
Henry!
Have you heard it, the last cry of my great nation? Has
the iron of the victorious horses resounding on the pavement
of Warsaw reached your ears? Have you contemplated in a
dream of despair the Satan of pride and crime rushing through
the ranks of an appalled crowd, making his entry into the
streets of an expiring city? For death is there where liberty
is no more.
voice yet once more, that voice that you sometimes loved to
hear. I am alone, and everything is an obstacle to me, nothing
is a help. My father is dying, as you say, weeping; the son can
well die, gnashing his teeth. Have you considered what you
write to me, advising me to get myself arrested? Do you be-
lieve me capable of adding one stone to the heap that has
stoned my father? Do you want me to go promenading
through France the disgrace of the man who won such glory
there? Do you want me, a hero with the gendarmes, to read
1 Correspondance. Reeve to Krasinski. Paris, May 24, 1831.
2 Ibid. May 25, 1831.
4--2
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? 52
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
in a newspaper two days later epithets of infamy lavished on
the name of my father, sprinkled with a few praises for my-
self? Yes, I say openly, but only to Henry Reeve, and to
none other in the world, my father has committed a grave,
a terrible fault; it is not my place to call him to account for it.
"I shall wait at Geneva for my father's answer. If it is
satisfactory, I go; if not, I go all the same; because then my
duties, though not cancelled, will be lightened. After all,
think what you will; say that there is a want of energy in my
soul, that I speak, and do not know how to act, that I am weak,
irresolute. Good! Be as unhappy as I am, and then judge me. "
His brain obviously unhinged for the moment under
his mental tortures, among which not the least was the
conviction of his everlasting disgrace, he continued:
Do not attempt to defend me any more, to uphold my
reputation. I do not ask you to answer: "No," when they tell
you I am "a wretched creature"; but think it only, that will be
enough for me. Shut deep in your heart the friendship you
have for me. If your face lets it out it will compromise you.
Carry to the post on the sly the letters you write to me;
disguise your handwriting. Let nobody suspect that Henry
Reeve has any relations with Sigismond Krasinski.
But he has still a flicker of hope that "one hour
can change all, and then they will know who I am ":
and if that hour never comes, then at all events his
best loved friend, Reeve, will know it.
"At least, during the days of uncertainty that are floating be-
tween my past and my agony, do not forget me, write to me
every day. . . Remember that if fate and men are against me, you
at least ought to remain neutral. . . that if, at the end, all is for
ever lost to me, name, glory, father, country, there must still
remain between us something in common--if only the thought
of Chamonix"--where they had been together--"and the
memory of the tears of Saint-Cergues "--where shortly before
they had said good-bye to each other1.
A mutual friend chanced to be in the room as
Zygmunt closed this packet. He added a few words
below Krasinski's signature, describing the violent agi-
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, May 28, 1831.
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tation into which Reeve's last letters had thrown
Krasinski, and how the latter, at the moment that the
friend sat and wrote, was hurrying with wild steps up
and down the room.
Reeve, now in England, scorned the idea of con-
cealing his friendship; tried at Krasinski's request to
find Henrietta Willan, whose silence her lover ascribed
to contempt for him; and told how his heart failed him at
the thought of going to a dance the evening that his
friend's outburst of misery lay in his pocket.
"Your part is taken," said Reeve. "The choice is terrible,
because that choice had to be made. Now that you have de-
cided to remain a son, pray, suffer, and love what is left to
you1. "
But Krasinski, who bore his burden unflinchingly
all his life long, in these early days doubted his strength
to carry through his sacrifice.
"You know me," he answered Reeve. "I am by no means
a being made for resignation. Fiery impulses, even if they
were to fling me into an abyss, cost me nothing; but per-
severance in good, as in evil, is supremely difficult to me.
"Skrzynecki [the Polish commander-in-chief] has had a
defeat. . . Nothing is lost. " It was the beginning of the end.
"She will be born again, that beautiful Poland2. "
At the same time he wrote the following letter to a
favourite cousin, Stanistaw Krasinski, who had been
wounded in the war.
This letter will find you on the bed where you are
suffering for Poland. With pride that I am related to you I
read in the papers that in an attack on a Russian battalion
you were seriously wounded. If my voice still counts for any-
thing with you, if you have not by now forgotten him who
promised to love you and always to wear your ring, accept
my good wishes. . . You alone are now a Krasinski. The rest
1 Correspondance. Reeve to Krasinski. London, June 6, 1831.
2 Ibid. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, June 12, 1831.
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? 54 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
of our glory has departed--but let our name disappear if only
Poland stays. Although appearances may be strong against
me, although I am now rotting far away from Poland, although
perhaps before long disgrace will fall and hang over my head,
believe that Zygmunt's heart is Polish, and will not cease to be
so till its last moment. Love me if you can still love one who
is remaining in Geneva while his brothers die. Believe, if you
still care to believe me, that the obstacle on my way must be
a weighty one when so far I have not been able either to re-
move it or pass over it. Good-bye, Stas'. Good-bye. Perhaps
God will give me such a blessing that before long I shall be
crying out at your side: "Hurrah, and death to the Mus-
covites. " Good-bye. I love you and adore your courage1.
Krasinski was now completely unnerved by the sus-
pense he suffered in his father's silence, and by mental
conflict2. He confided to Reeve how "in the silence
of the night" he was preparing himself for the hour,
when, with the arrival of his father's letter, his decision
must be made; an hour "more terrible than that of
death, because a decision is preceded by a struggle that
exhausts the soul, and death is merely a victory gained
over us3. "
In the intervals of grappling with his own problem,
in his ever increasing sadness as the news from Poland
grew worse, Krasinski took to his writing and excessive
reading to deaden grief. The sufferings of his mind
were now telling upon his body. Racked with pain, he
spent the nights over his pen and books, with fatal
injury to his eyes, already half blinded by weeping.
He told Reeve that the only hours in which he could
be said to live were those in which he poured out his
sorrows in the figure of an autobiographical story.
This story--Adam le Fou--is only known to us from
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski. See Appendix to
Vol. II, pp. 435. 436.
2 J. Kallenbach, op. cit.
3 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, June 21, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
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the scraps of French translations from the Polish that
Krasinski enclosed in his letters to Reeve. It presents
an idealized picture of Reeve as Lord Henry Gram ; a
Marie who stands for Henrietta Willan; while Kra-
sinski himself is represented as Adam, maddened by his
fate, Adam being one of Krasinski's own names.
Couched in a Byronic vein, it runs on the same lines as
the personal confidences that fill Krasinski's letters to
Reeve during the Rising. Adam sees himself despised
as a coward by the girl he loves; his name contemned,
his friends estranged. There seems to have been some
vague hope in Krasinski's mind that this story might
in a future day vindicate his honour by showing those
who held him cheap what his inaction in the war had
cost him1. But his idea came to nothing. Reeve
clamoured for it in vain: the Anonymous Poet would
never consent to divulge his name, or drag his father's
conduct into the public gaze2. The work breaks off
unfinished. Its remembrance of the Coliseum that had
so deeply affected Krasinski was afterwards ennobled
and purified in Iridion.
"I dreamt among the ruins," says Adam. "The ancient
world overthrown at my feet before a wooden cross. . . the
memories of my enslaved country, ran together in my brain.
I was comforted to contemplate Rome lying low in clay and
mud; for in my childhood I had sworn vengeance on another
Rome, and, as I trampled on the first, I thought that some
day I would trample on the second. " {Adam le Fou. )
Discussions on literary topics with Reeve afforded
Krasinski's overstrained mind some relief. He gave
Reeve a little lecture that proved to be strangely ap-
propriate, not to Reeve, but to Krasinski himself.
1 "Perhaps one day it will be the only proof that will witness in my
favour. " Corresfondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, July 25, 1831.
a J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 56 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
You ought not to hurry to finish your poem. Wait from
day to day now; life will become harder for you and, in pro-
portion to the load, your powers will grow. . . Laocoon, you
will wrestle; and from the struggle and the fight stars will
burst forth, I mean thoughts, unknown flights, stronger, more
gigantic, to the beautiful and sublime, because you will be
surrounded by baseness and ugliness. . . Till now, Henry, you
have only been a man in your moments of poetry, while you
walked in the circle of a child. But now, when your circle is
enlarged, when you are a man among men, struggling every
minute, you will be above man in your poetry, for to be a poet
is to carry his present reality to the past or future. . . to heaven
or hell1.
Then the Anonymous Poet, whose inspiration was
now clamouring for release, tells the friend, whom he
still believed possessed of gifts far greater than his own,
that at last he is convinced that he too has:
a spark of poetry in my bosom, very imperfect, it is true, as
rhythm is wanting in me. The proof is that, without any hope
of men ever reading me, I write and write. . . What is it to
be a poet if not to have a superabundance of thoughts which
rush in torrents over the surface of the soul, and which boil
there until they find an outlet? It matters little to him if this
outlet reaches the ears of men or the void, so long as he rids
himself of that fire which burns him, and gives him not one
moment's breathing space2.
On a July afternoon there is a glimpse of Krasinski
for once, in the thick of his troubles, at play. He went
to the garden of Reeve's adored Constance to steal a
rose for his friend.
In the road which passes the garden hedge I met the
Sautter father talking to a neighbour, while a string of oxen
plied before him. Between my teeth I murmured a Damn and
tied my horse to a little gate behind. Then I paced up and
down the road in the attitude of a man who awaits his adver-
sary to fight a duel. At last he [Sautter] came towards me,
and appeared to be considering me. I gave him back look for
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, June 23, 1831.
2 Ibid. July 13, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
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look and, seeing that he wouldn't learn any more about me, he
went off in the direction of the cornfields. I thought the
opportunity favourable, and I leaped the hedge. But at the
same instant two enormous dogs rushed out of a thicket, and
attacked me. I drew out my dagger and, thanks to the blade
that I presented at their heads, I made an honourable retreat
as far as the gate where I jumped on my horse. But there
behold! there was father Sautter, who reappeared among the
ears of corn on the other side.
Caught between two fires, I
behaved with an astonishing presence of mind: for I pacified
the dogs by whistling and making friendly signs to them. As
for father Sautter, when I saw him passing out on my right
ten steps away from me, I stretched myself out on my saddle,
I laid my head on the neck, my feet on the back of my horse,
and I made as if I were going to sleep. The lawful proprietor
of Bourdigny passed by, looking at me with a smile, as if I
had given him the impression of being an oddity, then he
retreated to his house, leaving me for company his two amiable
Cerberuses. . . Like a falcon dying of hunger I swooped upon a
rose and another flower which I arranged in my pocket-book,
and that I shall send you as soon as they are dried.
This letter was still open when the courier came
in from Petersburg.
"What can I say to you, my dear Henry? My distress only
grows worse. My father writes to me with a heart-rending
tenderness. He tells me he is ready to make a sacrifice of
himself and his child to his country; but he implores me to
wait, and declares that he will shortly join me. Henry, what
would you do if you were in my place? Ah ! what need have
I to ask another what he would do? I see that I am ruined.
I am a fool, I am a coward, I am a wretched being, I have the
heart of a girl, I do not dare to brave a father's curse. I ex-
pected an imperious, violent, forcible letter, and I was prepared
for a decisive, terrible, forcible struggle too. . . But when
yesterday's letter arrived; when instead of threats, I found
prayers; instead of fury, I saw blessings; instead of commands,
supplications; instead of sentiments at the thought of which
I shuddered, a love of Poland piercing through each word, all my
strength melted into tears "--these three words are in English.
"I had prepared my arm to strike a blow; and, when it fell,
I found no resistance. . . I am touched to tenderness, full of
affection for my father, for his bitter misfortunes, and I have
no longer sufficient strength to decide. That is my condition.
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? 58
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
You can cast on my head the curse of a friend ; but I tell you
I am no longer myself. I have, however, answered, promising
nothing, still saying that if the opportunity presents itself I
shall go to Poland. But where is that opportunity? . . . I have
just seen in the last few days a Pole. . . who informed me that
prince Gagarin told him in Rome that all the Russian em-
bassies have my description, and the order to arrest me and
send me straight to Saint Petersburg if I try and escape from
Geneva. That's nothing. When it is the case of duty one
faces everything. But my father, my father, he who once
powerful, rich, loaded with flatteries and glory, saw himself
the first man in Poland1,. . . to-day he is beaten down, he has
lost everything, and has only me in this vast universe. If this
'last support fails him, what will become of him? It is not
death I fear for him. It would be a benefit to us both, but it
is those long years of old age, full of heart-breaking recol-
lections, disgust and bitterness; it is his heart broken above
my tomb; it is the look that he will cast around him without
finding one who will stretch out a hand to him. . . Yet I have a
ray of hope remaining that he will fight for Poland, and I at
his side. . .
"However, I am in the most complete incertitude. The
advice of men can do nothing for me. I hope for inspiration
only from the Mother of God ; and when that inspiration comes
I will follow it. . .
"And that thought of suicide that still hovers in my brain,
it is odd it no longer has the effect on me of a crime. On the
contrary, it seems to me that it is a thing which is permitted. . .
But when I reason I see truly it is a crime. Oh! if to die were
to sleep for ever! Eternity? Oh, well, you will see, we shall
have new toils, new troubles, in that eternity. We shall curse
it one day as we curse the earth. . . Rest! Rest! Sleep ! but no
dream ! or rather dreams, sometimes, but those of a child. . .
"What a madman am I! What a fool! Judge by this where
I have got to. I, I am setting up for a materialist! I, I already
desire annihilation ! Ah! how suffering beats down the wings
of the soul'! "
Krasinski's every mood and emotion, and his con-
1 Here Krasinski's filial feelings led him to a considerable exaggera-
tion of his father's former position.
2 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, July 8, 12, 1831. The
letter quoted before this is obviously wrongly dated, having been written
before Krasinski heard from his father.
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tradictory impulses, flowed out in unchecked streams
to the ear of the only person to whom he could then
speak freely: so the weakening of religious faith of
which he speaks in this last letter may be taken as only
the wild words of a boy of nineteen, half beside himself.
Yet possibly they were the first steps towards the agony
of doubt which came upon him later.
Side by side with his confessions to Reeve, who, still
busy over mad plans on his friend's behalf, answered
in genuine, if somewhat sentimentally worded, sym-
pathy, Zygmunt continued to wrestle vainly with his
father.
"I would give my life if I could see you somewhere else," he
wrote to the General, "and to embrace you once more before
I die. . . . I love, oh, I love my father, and with folded hands I
stay far from Poland. Have pity on me! "
He reminds his father of the forty wounds the latter
bore on his body for Poland, and implores him to con-
sider what comfort can the son ever have in the re-
maining years of his life, the son who remained behind
when his country summoned him? He has in his heart
that which no argument can pacify or destroy:
I allude to that desire to fight for Poland, that deep con-
viction that it is my duty, to that terrible fear that I shall be
cursed by men and God for sitting quietly here.
Carrying that fiery coal in my bosom, I have not one, not
one moment of peace. Lethargy and fever--those are the two
states which master me by turns. Two days of fever, two days
of lethargy--that is my life! Take pity on me, dear father! . . .
I repeat again, that feeling of duty and the fear of disgrace
torment me so much that sometimes I go out of my senses
when I think about it. I am unhappy! In the past I used
to say that from Romanticism; to-day, alas! it has become
reality1.
The father's move was to appeal once more to the
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 6o
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
son's affections and to assure him that the Rising was
no national movement, but the work of a few revolu-
tionaries. His eyes opened to the fact, bitterer to him
than death, that his father in Petersburg was listening
to the enemies of his country, belittling a conflict that
all Europe regarded as a national war, Krasinski re-
torted by a noble defence of a great cause, prophetical
of the Anonymous Poet's future philosophy.
It is the war of the weak against the mighty, of those con-
secrated to death against their old aggressors, of men mindful
that they have had great ancestors. . . And the more Poland is
covered with blood, flames, corpses, the more holy does her
cause become to my heart, the more do I see in this cause the
finger and the Providence of God, for to those whom He pro-
tects He is not wont to give victory without toil and sorrow.
Those, on the contrary, whom He sends for the punishment
of the human race, those, I say, He surrounds with ease and
benefits without labour; but, for those whom He has charged
with any great work of redemption, He places obstacles in
the way, He bids them suffer and die, for, by the fault of men
themselves, it is one of the laws of this unhappy world that
there can be nothing beautiful or salutary without suffering
and pain. . . To save the world the death of God was necessary.
To save one nation, how much more are necessary human
deaths and afflictions1!
So the duel dragged on between father and son
during the summer months of 1831 : the son writing
to his father, with tears in his eyes and rage in his
heart'', the letters that were a torment to write, pass-
ing through crises that, so he tells Reeve, took years
from his life. The while, defeat after defeat in Poland
were telling plainly of the end. To Reeve, who com-
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 "Though I am in a very bad moment for criticizing, though I have
just finished a letter for my father and I have tears in my eyes and rage
in my heart, let us speak of Maria]' a poem by Reeve. Correspondance.
Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, Sept. 18, 1831.
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61
plained that he could not love his own country, the
Pole replied:
Henry, do not imitate Byron. If you hate the men, adore
the land. . . Wait till your country is unhappy. Wait for the
day when the tears of your sisters will be mingled with the
ocean, when the groans of your brothers will prevent you from
closing your eyes, when you see your country ravaged. . . en-
tangled in chains, shamed by her degradation; and then you
will love your country more than you love the inspiration of
poetry, more than your mother, more than everything that
could awaken in you a feeling of affection, friendship, love.
"Better to perish in the first battle than to live far
from one's country," the writer mournfully said, as he
gazed out on the lake and mountains of Geneva, and
thought of the Polish plains, where war was raging1.
Out of that acute shame in his own position, which
is scarcely ever absent from his correspondence during
the Rising, sudden insight flashed upon the poet who
chose to remain anonymous and unknown.
I now know that at the bottom of the heart every noble
soul possesses something more holy than glory: it is the idea
of sacrifice ignored [he underlined the words], dumb, silent, of
the duty to be accomplished for one's own interior glory, and
not for the fame that goes forth from the same mouth as
calumny2.
As he watched his country's doom closing on her,
he added:
If Poland is going once more to perish, I feel no longer
the strength to remain upon this earth. The day that War-
saw surrenders will be the signal to a Polish soul to leave the
body3.
It was in these September days that Poland's last
desperate stand was made. After a heroic defence,
Warsaw fell on September 7, 1831. The Rising was
over.
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, August 24, 1831.
Ibid, Sept. 2, 1831. 3 Ibid.
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? 62 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
"Warsaw has surrendered": so, under the first
shock of the blow, Krasinski wrote to Reeve, who was
awaiting almost with terror its effect upon his friend.
How I now adore that land, bleeding, sacred with so many
sorrows and disasters, bathed in the blood of martyrs. . . All
for her, my life, my endeavours, my days, my nights, my
sadness, my joys! All for her, my sword, my lyre, all, to my
last sigh1!
Again he wrote in an outburst of passionate grief:
Henry!
Have you heard it, the last cry of my great nation? Has
the iron of the victorious horses resounding on the pavement
of Warsaw reached your ears? Have you contemplated in a
dream of despair the Satan of pride and crime rushing through
the ranks of an appalled crowd, making his entry into the
streets of an expiring city? For death is there where liberty
is no more.
