No More Learning

All the works of the Anonymous Poet are written in the
spirit we have essayed to portray in this succinct analysis.
He devoted himself to the development of these ideas, and

* The Revolution of 1848.



40 PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION.

to their introduction into the morals and life of his nation.
The mere singer of the beautiful, the worshiper of the
Muses, is elevated by him into sterner regions ; he uses
the poetic powers to enforce moral convictions, profound
thoughts, and conscientious patriotism. In other circum-
stances, and under another government than that to which
Poland is subjected, he would not have strung the lyre,
but would have mounted the rostrum, and become the
centre of political action. But neither rostrum nor po-
litical life was possible for him upon his native soil.
Through poetry alone could he popularize his conceptions
by preserving their precision in the frame of an exquisite,
imperishable, and easily-retained form : poetry is also the
delight of the nation, whose woes are cradled in its magic,
and whose soul palpitates in its divine accents, its lyric
enchantment. Therefore he bowed his genius to the exac-
tions of rhyme and rhythm. And never had he to com-
plain that he had so done, for not only did he attain the
proposed political aim, but he won a brilliant literary
glory, only surpassed by that of Mickiewicz.

Before closing this preface, one point remains to be
glanced at, which would furnish material for a long devel-
opment, a profound examination. The Anonymous Poet
is ranked in Poland among her Catholic writers. It would
be far more conformable with the truth to say that he pos-
sessed a religious soul, for, with regard to the doctrines
revealed in his works, it is very evident that there are wide
gaps to fill and important theses to be cut off, before it
would be possible reasonably to include them in any de-
fined limits of the dogmas of the Church. At all events,
a commentary would be required to establish their exact
meaning and bearing. But if the judgment of the public
upon this point is erroneous, it is because that public is
more logical than the author himself. Without following
him into his theosophic ideas, obscure even for those ac-
customed to such studies, his readers became imbued with
the moral side of his work, and seized upon its spirit, —
a spirit which was soon to find its final form in Catho-
licity, to which the author definitely returned toward the
close of his life.

This said, let the reader read and judge !



ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.



EXTRACTED FROM " T. ES SLAVES," A COURSE OF LECTURES DELIV-
ERED BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE (1842-43), BY THE MOST
RENOWNED MODERN POLISH POET, ADAM MICKIEWICZ.



[In this very remarkable work, by Adam Mickiewicz, written in
French, and which, by some strange oversight, has not yet appeared in
Engh'sh, no less than four lectures are devoted to a criticism upon " The
Undivine (or Infernal) Comedy. " The Essay of Julian Klaczko has
been found so long and exhaustive, that it is the intention of the Trans-
lator to give but a few condensed extracts from the analysis of Mickie-
wicz. The whole course of Lectures is recommended to the reader, as
full of information not elsewhere to be found; and, although in the
latter portion somewhat blemished by the elaboration of certain futile
theories, containing a mine of brilliant, deep, and highly original
thoughts. — Translator. ]

The word "Undivine" is used in preference to "Infernal" (the term
employed in the French translation) as better expressing the relation of
the drama to the " Divine Comedy" of Dante. The word is so appro-
priate that its coinage may be pardoned. — Editor.

It is my intention now to place before you the analysis
of a very remarkable work which appeared in 1834, en-
titled "The Undivine or Infernal Comedy. "

I will not call this work a fantastic Drama, although it
is now customary to give this name to all compositions
in which the characters and scenes are not immediately
derived from the world of prosaic reality. Utility and
Reality are indeed the boast of our century; but what
can be more variable, more contingent, than what we
choose to call solid reality, — that visible and material
world which is ever on the wing, which is always yet to
be, and which has no Present ? It is through the soul
alone that we are able to seize the connections and rela-

41



42



ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.



tions of the visible world ; it alone gives them fixity or
reality ; it alone generates ideas, institutions, litera-
ture, — the only things truly real, the only things which
penetrate the soul, become incorporated with it, and
constitute the living traditions of the human race. Every
work which causes the chords of souls to vibrate, which
generates new views of life, must be considered real;
and foreign writers render but justice to Polish Poetry in
declaring it, so regarded, as very real ; — and there is
nothing more palpitating in its strange actuality than the
work we are now about to consider.

The time, the place, the characters of "The Undivine
Comedy" are all of poetic creation. The scene of the
drama is laid in the future ; and, for the first time in the
history of art, an author has attempted to construct a
prophetic play, — to describe places, introduce persons, re-
count actions which are yet to be. The struggle of the
dying Past with the vigorous but immature Future forms
the groundwork of the drama. The coloring is not local
nor characteristic of any country in particular (though
we recognize it to be Polish by the melancholy contrast
felt rather than seen between the state of the nation and
that of the individuals who compose it), because the
truths to be illustrated are of universal application, and
are evolving their own solution in all parts of the civil-
ized world.

The soul of the hero. Count Henry, is great and vig-
orous ; he is by nature a poet. Belonging to the Future
by the very essence of his being, he becomes disgusted
with the debasing materialism into which its exponents,
the new men, have fallen ; he then loses all hope in the
possible progress of humanity, and is soon presented to
us as the champion of the dying but poetic Past. But in
this he finds no rest, and is involved in perpetual strug-
gles and contradictions. Baffled in a consuming desire
to solve the y)erplexing social and religious problems of
the day by the force of his own intellect ; longing for,
yet despairing of, human progress; discerning the im-
])racticability and chicanery of most of the modern i)lans
for social amelioration ; finding nowhere his ideal ; ^he
determines to throw himself into common life, — to bind



ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.



43



himself to his race by stringent laws and duties. The
drama opens when he is about to contract marriage.
The Angels desire to aid him, to open a way into the
Future for him through the accomplishment of his du-
ties j the Demons tempt him to embrace falsehood.

Voice of the Guardian Angel. " Peace be to men of good will ! Blessed
is the man who has still a heart : he may yet be saved !

Pure and true wife, reveal thyself to him ! And a child be born to their
House ! "

Thus the words once heard by the shepherds, and
which then announced a new epoch to humanity, open
the Drama. They are words spoken only to men oi good
win, — men who sincerely seek the truth, — who, in great
or new epochs, are able to comprehend it, or willing to
embrace it. The number of those who have preserved a
heart during the excited passions of such eras is always
very small, and without it they cannot be saved, for love
and self-abnegation are the essence of Christianity.

To instill new life and hope into the disappointed man,
the Angel ordains that a pure and good woman shall join
her fate with his, and that innocent young souls shall de-
scend and dwell with them. Domestic love and quiet
bliss are the counsel of the heavenly visitant.

Immediately after the chant of the Angel, the voice of
the Demon is heard seducing the Count from the safe
path of humble human duties. The glories of the ideal
realm are spread before him ; Nature is invoked with all
her entrancing charms ; ambitious desires of terrestrial
greatness are awakened in his soul ; he is filled with
vague hopes of paradisiacal happiness, which the Demon
whispers him it is quite possible to establish on earth. In
the temptations so cunningly set before him by the
Father of Lies, three widely-spread metaphysical systems
are shadowed forth: ist. The Ideal or Poetic; 2d. The
Pantheistic; 3d. The Anthropotheistic, which deifies
man. The vast symbolism of this drama is recom-
mended to the attention of the reader.

Abiding by the counsel of the Angel, our hero mar-
ries, thus involving another in his fate. He makes a



44 A. VA LYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.

solemn vow to be faithful, in the keeping of which vow
he takes upon himself the responsibility of the happiness
of one of God's creatures, a pure and trusting woman,
who loves him well. A husband and a father, he breaks
his oath. Tempted by the phantom of a long-lost love, —
the Ideal under the form of a maiden, — he deserts the
real duties he has assumed to pursue this Ideal, — per-
sonated indeed by Lucifer himself, and which becomes —
true and fearful lesson for those who seek the infinite in
the finite — a loathsome skeleton as soon as grasi)ed !
From the false and disappointing search into which he
had been enticed by the Demon, he returned to find the
innocent wife, whom he had deserted, in a mad-house.
False to human duties, his punishment came fast upon
the heels of crime.

In the scene which occurs in bedlam, we find the key
which admits us to the meaning of much of the sym-
bolism of this drama. We accompany the husband into
the mad-house to visit the broken-hearted wife, and are
there introduced into our still-existing society, — formal,
monotonous, cold, and about to be dissolved. Our hero
had married the Past, a good and devout woman, but
not the realization of his poetic dreams, which nothing
could have satisfied save the infinite. In the midst of
this strange scene of suffering, we hear the cries of the
Future, and ail is terror and tumult. This future, with
its tu'rbulence, blood, and demonism, is represented as
existing in its germs among the maniacs. Like the
springs of a volcanic mountain, which are always dis-
turbed before an eruption of fire, their cries break upon
us; the broken words and shrill shrieks of the madmen
are the clouds of murky smoke which burst from the ex-
plosive craters before the lava pours forth its burning
flood. Voices from the right, from the left, from al)ove,
from below, represent the conflicting religious opinions
and warring political parties of this dawning Future,
already hurtling against those of the dissolving Present.

Into this pandemonium, by his desertion of her for a
vain ideal, our hero has plunged his wife, the woman of
the Past, whom he had sworn to make happy. It is to
be observed that she was not necessarily his inferior, but.



ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVmE COMEDY. 45

in the world of heart, superior to himself. A true and
pure character, feeling its inferiority, and anxious to ad-
vance, cannot long remain in the background ; it has
sufficient power to attain the height of self-abnegating
greatness. God sometimes deprives men of the strength
necessary for action, but He never robs them of the foculty
of progress, of spiritual elevation. Meanness and grovel-
ing are always voluntary, and their essence is to resist
superiority, to struggle against it : thus all the bitter reac-
tions of the Past against the changes really needed for the
development of the Future, spring from a primeval root
of baseness.

An admirable picture of an exhausted and dying society
is given us in the person of the precocious, but decrepit
child ; the sole fruit of this sad marriage. Destined from
its birth to an early grave, its excitable imagination soon
consumes its frail body. Nothing could be more exquis-
itely tender, more true to nature, than the portraiture of
this unfortunate but lovely boy.

After the betrayal of our hero by his Ideal, the Guar-
dian Angel again appears to him to give him simple but
sage counsel :

" Return to thy house, and sin no more !
Return to thy house, and love thy child ! "

But vain this wise advice ! As if driven to the desert to
be tempted, we again meet our hero in the midst of storm
and tempest, wildly communing with Nature, trying to
read in her changeful phenomena lessons he should have
sought in the depths of his own soul ; seeking from her
dumb lips oracles to be found only in the fulfillment of
sacred duties; for thus alone is to be solved the perplex-
ing riddle of human destiny, — "Peace to men of good
will. " Roaming through the wilderness, sad and hope-
less, and in his despair about to fall into the gloomy and
blighting sin of caring for no one but himself, he hears
the angel, who once more chants to him the divine lesson
that only in self-sacrificing love and lowly duties can the
true j^ath to the Future be found :

"Love the sick, the hungry, the despairing!
Love thy neighbor, thy poor neighbor, as thyself, and thou wilt be re-
deemed ! '■

5



46 ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.

The reiterated warning is given to him in vain. The
Demon of political and warlike ambition then appears to
him under the form of a gigantic eagle, whose wings stir
him like the cannon's roar, the trumpet's call; he yields
to the temptation, and the Guardian Angel pleads no
more! He determines to become great, renowned, to
rule over men : military glory and political power are to
console him for the domestic ruin he has spread around
him, in having preferred the delusions of his own excited
imagination to the love and faith of the simple but tender
heart which God had confided to him in the holy bond of
marriage. The love and deification of self in the delu-
sive show of military and political glory is the lowest and
last temptation into which a noble soul can fall, for indi-
vidual fame is preferred to God's eternal justice, and men
are willing to die, if only laurel-crowned, with joy and
pride even in a bad cause.

In the third part of the comedy we are introduced into
the "new world. " The old world, with its customs,
prejudices, oppressions, charities, laws, has been almost
destroyed. The details of the struggle, which must have
been long and dreadful, are not given to us; they are to
be divined. Several years are supposed to have passed
between the end of the second and the beginning of the
third part; and we are called to witness the triumphs of
the victors, and the tortures of the vanquished. The
character of the "idol of the people" is an admirable
conception. All that is negative and destructive in the
revolutionary tendencies of European society is skillfully
seized upon and incarnated in a single individual. His
mission is to destroy. He possesses a great intellect, but
no heart. He says: '^0/ the blood we shed to-day, no
trace will be left to-? norrow. '' In corroboration of this
conception of the character of a modern reformer, it is
well known that most of the projected reforms of the
present century have proceeded from the brains of logi-
cians and philosophers.

This man of intellect succeeds in grasping power. His
appearance speaks his character. His forehead is high
and angular, his head is entirely bald, his expression cold
and impassible, his lips never smile, — he is of the same



ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.



47



type as many of the revolutionary leaders during the
French reign of terror. His name is Pancras, which
name, from the Greek, signifies the union of all material
or brute forces. It is not by cliance he received that name.
The profound truth in which this character is conceived
is also manifested in his distrust of himself, in his hesita-
tion. As he is acting from false principles, he cannot
deceive himself into that enthusiastic faith with which he
would fain inspire his disciples. He confides in Leonard
because he is in possession of that precious quality.

His monologue is very fine ; perhaps it stands next in
rank to that of Hamlet. It opens to us the strange secrets
of the irresolution and vacillation which have always
characterized the men who have been called upon by fate
alone to undertake vast achievements. In proof of this,
it is well known that Cromwell was anxious to conceal
the doubts and fears which constantly harassed him. It
was those very doubts and fears which led him to see and
re-see so frequently the dethroned Charles, and which at
last drove the conscience-stricken Puritan into the sepul-
chre of the decapitated king, that he might gaze into the
still face of the royal victim whose death he had himself
effected. Did the sad face of the dead calm the fears of
the living?

It is well known that Danton addressed to himself the
most dreadful reproaches. Even at the epoch of his
greatest power, Robespierre was greatly annoyed because
he could not convince his cook of the justice and perma-
nence of his authority. Men who are sent by Provi-
dence only to destroy, feel within them the worm w^hich
gnaws forever: it constantly predicts to them, in vague
but gloomy presentiments, their own approaching destruc-
tion.

A feeling of this nature urges Pancras to seek an inter-
view with his most powerful enemy, the Count; he is
anxious to gain the confidence of his adversary, because
he cannot feel certain of his own course while a single
man of intellectual power exists capable of resisting his
ideas. In the interview which occurs between the two
antagonistic leaders of the Past and Future, the various
questions which divide society, literature, religion, phi-



48 ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDO.

losophy, politics, are discussed. Is it not a profound
truth that in the real world also /«<'/? /«/ encounters always
precede wa/i'r/rt'/ combats ; that men always measure their
strength, spirit to spirit, before they meet in external fact,
body to body ? The idea of bringing two vast systems face
to face through living and highly dramatic personifica-
tions is truly great, suggestive, and original.

But as the Truth is neither in the camp of Pancras nor
in the feudal castle of the Count our hero, the victory will
profit neither party !

The opening of the last act is exceedingly beautiful.
No painter could reproduce on canvas the sublime scenery
sketched in its prologue; more gloomy than the pictures
of Ruysdael, darker than those of Salvator Rosa. Before
describing the inundation of the masses, our author natu-
rally recalls the traditions of the Flood. The nobles, the
representatives of the Past, with their few surviving ad-
herents, have taken refuge in their last stronghold, the
fortress of the Holy Trinity, securely situated upon a high
and rocky peak overhanging a deep valley, surrounded and
hedged in by steep cliffs and rocky precipices. Through
tliese straits and passes once howled and swe])t the waters
of the deluge. As wild an inundation is now upon them,
for the valley is almost filled with the living surges of the
myriads of the " New Men," who are rolling their millions
into its depths. But everything is hidden from view by
an ocean of heavy vapor, wrapping the whole landscape
in its white, chill, clinging shroud. The last and only
banner of the Cross now raised upon the face of the
earth streams from the highest tower of the Castle of the
Holy Trinity; it alone pierces through and floats above
the cold, vague, rayless heart of the sea of mist, — nauglit
save the mystic symbol of God's love to man soars into
the unclouded blue of the infinite sky !

After frequent defeats, after the loss of all hope, the
hero, wishing to embrace for the last time his sick and
blind son, sends for the precocious boy, whose death-hour
is to strike before his own. I doubt if the scene which
then occurs has, in the whole range of fiction and poetry,
ever been surpassed. This poor boy, the son of an insane
mother and a poet-father, is gifted with supernatural facul-



ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.



49



ties, with second or spiritual sight. Entirely blind, con-
sequently surrounded by perpetual darkness, it mattered
not to him if the light of day or the gloom of midnight
was upon the earth ; and in his rayless wanderings he had
made his way into the dungeons, sepulchres, and vaults
which were lying far below the foundations of the castle,
and which had for centuries served as places of torture,
punishment, and death for the enemies of his long and
noble line. In these secret charnel-houses were buried
the bodies of the oppressed, while in the haughty tombs
around and above them lay the bones of their oppressors.
The unfortunate and fragile boy, the last scion of a long
line of ancestry, had there met the thronging and com-
plaining ghosts of past generations. Burdened with these
dreadful secrets, when his vanquished father seeks him to
embrace him for the last time, he shudderingly hints to
him of fearful knowledge, and induces him to follow him
into the subterranean caverns. He then recounts to him
the scenes which are passing before his open vision among
the dead. The spirits of those who had been chained,
tortured, oppressed, or victimized by his ancestors appear
before him, complaining of past cruelties. They form a
mystic tribunal to try their old masters and oppressors;
the scenes of the dreadful Day of Judgment pass before
him ; the awe-struck and loving boy at last recognizes his
own father among the criminals ; he is dragged to that
fatal bar, he sees him wring his hands in anguish, he hears
his dreadful groans as he is given over to the fiends for
torture, — he hears his mother's voice calling him above,
but, unwilling to desert his father in his anguish, he falls
to the earth in a deep and long fainting fit, while the
wretched father hears his own doom pronounced by that
dread but unseen tribunal : ^'■Because thou hast loved no-
thing but thyself, reve}'ed nothing but thyself and thine own
thoughts, thou art damned to all eternity /' '

It is true this scene is very brief, but, rapid as the light-
ning's flash, it lasts long enough to scathe and blast ; —
breaking the darkness but to show the surrounding horror,
to deepen into despair the fearful gloom. Although of
bald and severe simplicity, it is sublime and terrible. It
is so concise that our hearts actually long for more, un-

5*



5°



ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.



willing to believe in the reality of the doom of that ghostly
tribunal. It repeats the awful lessons of Holy Writ, and
our conscience awakes to our own deficiencies, while the
marrow freezes in our bones as we read. >

Nor is the close of the drama less sublime. Because
the Truth was neither in the camp of Pancras nor in the
Castle of the Count, IT appears in the clouds to con-
found them both.

After Pancras has conquered all that has opposed him —
has triumphantly gloated over his Fourieristic schemes for
the material well being of the race whom he has robbed
of all higher faith — he grows agitated at the very name
of God when it falls from the lips of his confidant, Leon-
ard: the sound seems to awaken him to a consciousness
that he is standing in asea of blood, which he has himself
shed ; he feels that he has been nothing but an instrument
of destruction, that he has done certain evil for a most
uncertain good. All this rushes rapidly upon him, when,
on the bosom of a crimson sunset cloud, he perceives a
mystic symbol, unseen save by himself: "The extended
arms are lightning flashes ; the three nails shine like stars,"
— his eyes die out as he gazes upon it, — he falls dead to the
earth, crying, in the strange words spoken by the apos-
tate Emj^eror Julian with his parting breath, "ViciSTi
Galilee ! " Thus this grand and complex drama is really
consecrated to the glory of the Galilean !

Nothing more intensely melancholy than this poem has
ever been written. The author could only have been born
in a country desolated for ages ! Therefore this drama is
eminently Polish. The grief is too bitter to express itself
oratorically. Its hopeless perplexity of woe has also its
root in the character and depth of the truths therein de-
veloped. The poet-hero aspires for the Future ; it dis-
apjioints him ; — he then grasps the dying Past, because,
as he himself says, " God has enlightened his reason, but
not warmed liis heart. " His thoughts and feelings cannot
be brought into harmony. The tortures and agonies of
struggling with pressing but insoluble questions are not
manifested in artistic declamations, in highly-wrought
])]irases, nor in glowing rhetorical passages proper for
citation. The Drama is as prosaic and bitter as life itself;



AxVALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY. 51

as gloomy as death and judgment! The style is one of
utter, nay, bald, simi>licity. The situations are merely in-
dicated ; and the characters are to be divined, as are those
of the living, rather from a few words in close connection
with accompanying facts, than from eloquent utterances,
sharp invectives, or bitter complaints. There are no
highly-wrought amplifications of imaginative passions to
be found in its condensed pages, but every 7vord is in itself
a drop of gall, reflecting from its sphered surface a world of
grief, — of voiceless agony /

The characters are not fleshed into life ; they pass before
us like shadows thrown from a magic lantern, showing
only their profiles, and but rarely their entire forms.
Flitting rapidly o'er our field of vision, they leave us
but a few lines ; but so true are the lines to nature, so
deeply significant, that we are at once able to produce
from the shifting and evanescent shadows a complete and
rounded image. Thus we are enabled to form a vivid
conception of all who figure in these pages ; we know the
history of their i)ast, we divine the part they will play in
the future. We know the friends; the stilted godfather
with his stereotyped speeches; the priest, in whom we
recognize an admirable sketch, the original of which could
only be found in a decomposed and dying society.

Our author also stigmatizes the medical art of our day
as a science of death and moral torture. While the an-
guished father tries to penetrate the decrees of Providence,
and in his agony demands from God how the innocent and
helpless infant can have deserved a punishment so dread-
ful as the loss of sight, the doctor admires the strength of
the nerves and muscles of the blue eyes of the fair child,
at the same time pedantically announcing to his father
that he is struck with total and hopeless blindness ! Im-
mediately after the annunciation of this fearful sentence,
he turns to the distressed i)arent to ask him if he would
like to know the name of this malady, — that in Greek it
is called aiiaopwai^.

Through the whole of this melancholy scene, only one
human being manifestsany deep moral feeling — a woman :
a servant ! Falling upon her knees, she prays the Holy
Virgin to take her eyes, and place them in the sightless



52



ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.



sockets of the young heir, her fragile but deeply-loved
charge ! Thus it is a woman of the people who, in the midst
of the corru|)t and dying society, alone preserves the sacred
traditions of sympathy and self-sacrifice.

The cruel tyranny of Pancras and the mob is also full
of important lessons. From it we gather that despotism
does not consist in the fact of the whole power being
vested in the hands of one or many, but in the fact that
the government is without love for the governed, whatever
may be its constitutional form. One or many, an assembly
of legislators or a king, an oligarchy or a mob, may be
equally despotic, if Love be not the ruling principle !



POLISH POETRY IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY.

THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND : HIS INFLUENCE UPON THE SOULS
OF HIS COUNTRYMEN IN THEIR STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM IN 1861.

BY JULIAN KLACZKO.
Translated from La Revue des Deux Mondes of jfan. i, 1863.



The events occurring in Poland since the commence-
ment of the year 1861, stamped as they are with a char-
acter so remarkably original, and so difficult of compre-
hension in Western Euroj^e, so skeptical with regard to
all magnanimous political aspirations, have had among
other results that of concentrating attention upon a writer
who died about three years ago, and whose renown has
been, as yet, almost confined within the limits of his own
country. But such a fame can no longer be thus limited.
The strange influence of the Anonymous Poet of Poland
in the national movement which has broken out upon the
banks of the Vistula, and the marvelous power, so clearly
seen throughout the progress of the recent agitation, which
his writings have exercised upon the spirit of his People,
have been already noticed in this Review. What more
astonishing spectacle could indeed be presented than the
transmutation of ideal, nay, even mystical thought, into
living, suffering, and palpable reality? A marvel truly
in this age of utter practicality, is the moral and posthu-
mous power exercised over a whole people by a solitary
and contemplative genius, who, step by step, succeeded in
impregnating an impassioned Nation with the most power-
ful, yet wholly abstract convictions, with a love of truths,
the more difficult of comprehension as they were in a

53



54



POLISH POETRY IN



measure metaphysical, and utterly opposed to the natural
instincts of the masses ! Marvelous indeed that capa-
bility of creating a policy hitherto unprecedented and
nowhere understood, and yet well fitted to disconcert a
powerful and subtle adversary ! Ah ! apart from all feel-
ings of justice and outraged national rights so vividly
engaged in the formidable Polish question, is there not an
interest of the very highest order in this novel phenome-
non of a living poetry throwing the light of a new day
upon the most startling events, a poetry which, while in-
carnating itself in the form of palpitating actuality, does
not the less continue to hold its being in the realm of the
Ideal, to retain its character as one of the most remark-
able manifestations of modern genius, marked with that
seal of excellence stamped upon the highest works of art ?
Truly here is food for thought 1 Such has been the power,
and such is the poetry of the author of "The Undivine Comedy," of " Iridion," of " The Psalms of the Future"
— a spirit as mighty as unknown !

For those who love to seize genius, in its passage across
this earth, in the joys and sorrows of its human existence,
who seek above all in the works of a great author the mys-
tic alphabet by which they may learn to read the man
himself, the life of the Polish writer, in its details and catas-
trophes, presents a study as curious as pathetic. Even
the name of "Anonymous Poet," which the author of
" Iridion" retained during life, and which remains his even
after death, is sufficient to force us to acknowledge that
we stand in the presence of a situation by no means com-
mon, perhaps of a state of suffering happily exceedingly
uncommon, and which at once commands our respect.
For no longer do we live in the days of modesty and
innocence, when the painter gave himself but a little
corner in his picture, and disappeared in his work ! In
our times, the artist is too apt to make his own personality
the one luminous point of his composition ! And well
indeed it were if only the truly imperial genius should
thus seize the wreath of laurel to crown himself; or if the
halo of glory were only wreathed by those who merit at
least some degree of public attention. But where is now
the talent, however wretched, to be found, which will re-



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.



55



noiince one iota of its own claim to glare, to celebrity, if
even but for a day; where is the name which will refuse
to be bruited abroad, however ephemeral the worthless
echo? Yet here is a man of the most incontestable
genius, whose precepts have modeled the soul of a nation ;
a writer applauded by a whole people, and yet who
through life steadfastly declined to receive the homage so
sincerely offered ; who never suffered the confession of
that which was his glory to be torn from him even by his
most intimate friends, and who preserved until death
sealed his eloquent lips his position of renunciation and
abnegation. In times so full of personal infatuation, so
eager for success, so intoxicated with the incense of vanity,
is not this renunciation of self calculated to excite our
astonishment? But astonishment turns to sympathetic
emotion, when we learn that this act of absolute self-
abnegation was at the same time an act of painful expia-
tion ; that by this silence constantly kept with regard to
himself, the author in a manner implored silence with re-
gard to another ; — that it was a son who thus magnani-
mously immolated his own memory to win the boon of
forgetfulness for that of a gvc\\^y father !

Reserve is a duty toward him who, during his whole
life, tried to hide himself from all public notice. Let us,
however, endeavor to reanimate this noble figure by some
of those general and almost impersonal traits of which he
himself made use in portraying more than one of the
heroes of his dramas. He assigned them no dates, he
gave them no family names, they were rather symbols
than persons. To present him thus to our readers will
be to give them a type rather than a person. Let us im-
agine, then, a man of large fortune, of ancient family,
allied even with some of the reigning sovereigns; a man
who numbered among his ancestors leaders in a national
war held in perpetual veneration, and who was brought
up to reverence his own father, then dear to the country,
and illustrious in many famous battles. A day came when
that idolized father, so intrepid in the fire of combat, gave
proof of pusillanimity in civil life,* and deviated from the

* Vincent Krasinski, the father of the Anonymous Poet, replaced Prince
Poniatowski in the command of the PoUsh army at the end of the Em-



56 POLISH POETRY IN '

path of patriotic duty, at least as the Nation then under-
stood it. It was neither treachery nor treason, still less
could the act be attributed to motives of personal inter-
est ; it was but the infirmity of a weak character, whose
vanity had yielded to the subtle seductions of the ruler
of Poland. But the public indignation was not lessened
by such considerations, and it fell upon the^on, then but
seventeen ; an insult was at that time inflicted upon him
for which nothing could console the man of honor, the
high-spirited gentleman. This was, however, but the
commencement of trials far more severe ; three years
later, the unfortunate son was to find in his father a per-
jured traitor, overwhelmed alike by the curses of his
country and the honors pouring upon him from the tri-
umphant oppressor, the blood-stained conqueror of an
outraged jjeople.

A haughty soul would have found in such circumstances
the pretext for an extreme decision ; it would perhaps
have sought in the unmerited insult and persecution an
excuse for the acceptance of a situation which it had no't'
created for itself, and toward which the animadversions
of the conquered, and the splendid temptations of the
conqueror, equally urged it. On the other hand, an
unscrupulous spirit, yielding to the weakness of an age
which proclaims the sovereignty of the end, and places our
duties to a public cause above all family ties, would have
seized this occasion to gain a popularity as easily won as

pire, and afterwards took part in the government of the kingdom of
Poland after the Restoration. He was a descendant of one of the leaders
of the Confederation of Bar. General Krasinski unfortunately e. \cited
the national sentiment agamst himself by his vote in the Senate'in a trial
for conspiracy in 1828, and the young Sigismund in consequence received
a deadly insult upon the public square from his fellow-students ; this
filled him with anguish, and, at the request of his father, he left Poland.
When the Revolution of November 29, 1830, broke out, he started im-
mediately for his native land, but was forced to stop at Berlin. His
father had been taken at Warsaw by the insurgents ; he saved himself by
a promise of devoting himself to the national cause, — but soon after set
out for St. Petersburg. This treachery filled Sigismund with despair, his
health failed, he could no longer dwell in the land he loved, but lived al-
most entirely abroad, devoting himself to poetry, publishing successively
his poems without ever confessing himself to be their author. Through
him Polish patriotism found a new expression, a mode of thought as yet
unknown in the actual world. — From Charles dc Mazade. Tr.



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.



57



brilliant, and would at once have sought and published
a rupture, which would have been everywhere welcomed
with applause. But this unhappy son was neither a Co-
riolanus nor a Brutus; he was only a Christian! He
received in utter simplicity the simple command of God :
" Honor thy father and mother. " He never believed
he had the right to deny him who had given him life, nor
even to sit in judgment upon his actions ; but at the same
time he felt himself as strongly the son of the nation, — he
shared in all hecagonies, and in all the hopes of his op-
pressed and murdered country. Thus placed by God be-
tween his flither and his country, with sublime resignation
he accepted the unceasing struggle without any possible
issue, which two sentiments equally sacred were to wage
forever in his soul. He lived almost always abroad, thus
avoiding a contact more bitter than dangerous ; without,
however, ever being able to withdraw himself from the
pitiless arms which forever weighed upon him and his.
He once said to us: " My footsteps have almost always
'pressed a foreign soil. I have only heard from afar the
groans of the victims; but I /^^/ every where the hand of
the executioner. " Thus it was upon a foreign soil that he
became a poet, but he only accepted this celestial gift from
Heaven as a means of penitence on earth ; and in giving
such master-works to his suffering country, he forever re-
nounced the reward so dear to poets — glory. He believed
it to be his duty to expiate a fault not his own, by immo-
lating the most legitimate and purest personal fame, and
always pleaded for another by this persistent sacrifice of
silence, or at most, by these brief and timid words, heart-
breaking in their patiios for those who understand them :
•' O my Country, my mother thrice murdered 1 They who
merit most thy tears, are perhaps they who merit not thy
pardon ! " Thus he knew all the torments of creative
genius without ever tasting its raptures! Erostratus re-
versed, he passed his whole life in erecting a temple, that
a 7iame might be forever forgotten !

Certainly such a life has that in it which must touch the
soul, and in a time when poets so often shock us by facti-
tious griefs, and a parade of wounds upon which they en-
large at pleasure, one is consoled — we were about to say,

6



58 POLISH POETRY IN

happy — to see a great and noble grief supported with such
true and quiet dignity. And that which seems to us to
merit still higher esteem is the great moral vigor which
the Anonymous Poet displays in his work of expiation, the
unflinching integrity, the firm tread of a conscience ever
bearing so heavy a burden. It is the peculiarity, as well
as the dangerous shoal of all efforts at rehabilitation, to
exceed due measure, to fall into excess; and to whom
would the world have more readily pardoned the adop-
tion of extreme passions and sublimated ideas, of ultra
and excited patriotism, than to this son, the labor of
whose life it was to cause his father's name to be forgot-
ten, and who, to effect that end, had taken up the arms
of poetry, — that is to say, even the weapons of passion and
exaltation? He was, however, strong enough to resist
this dangerous temptation, and he who bore in his heart
such a touching necessity to win tlie favor of the public,
has almost constantly braved it in its inclinations and
caprices ! He was, without doubt, faithful to the national
sentiment, but refused to submit to its entrancements of
the hour; on the contrary, he boldly stemmed the cur-
rent of whatsoever he believed wrong or injudicious, even
at the risk of drawing upon himself an unpopularity which
would have been to him doubly grievous. Ah ! let us for
one moment consider the grandeur, virtue, and merit of
such courage in the painful position he occupied. His
first literary effort was distinguished by a defiance boldly
thrown at the humanitarian and socialistic systems, then
so much in vogue in his own country ; and at a later date,
he armed himself with all his poetic lightning to combat
a democratic propaganda, of which he clearly saw the
fatal consequences, but which had at that time subjugated
almost all minds. Not only did he wound his nation in
its transitory j)olitiral predilections; he was not afraid to
strike it in its sentiments the most profound, the most
deeply rooted in its heart. As an example of this, he
preached the utter powerlessness of vengeance, of hate,
to a subjugated people, chafing under oppression, gnawed
by despair, proclaimed dead, and who saw in this ever-
vivid vengeance, this persistent hate, the ever-living proof
of its own vitality. He sung to them the majesty of a



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 59

wholly moral resistance, the glory of a quiet martyrdom
without combat: ideas not calculated to be agreeable to
the masses, especially to a people warlike by instinct, and
gifted by nature with a temperament of fire. He preached
to the cruelly wronged, a theory of sublime mysticism
filled with such divine forgiveness that it exposed itself to
criticism and suspicion, as it seemed to border upon an
enervating submission, and could easily be confounded
with it. Indeed, a long time after the death of the poet,
on the eve of the late events in Warsaw, a maddened de-
mocracy was not ashamed to rail at the "lyric cowardice
of the great anonymous poet. "* He, however, was
neither discouraged by raillery nor by bitter and cruel
invective. His faith was deep in the truths he pro-
claimed, and for all further results he trusted to time, to
justice, and — why should we not say it? — to his inspired
words, of which he knew the irresistible power among his
people.

It is, indeed, ah exceedingly difficult thing for any
foreigner to estimate aright the immense and sovereign
power which Poetry exercises upon that unfortunate na-
tion. This arises from the fact that a very false and in-
complete idea is generally held of the position of the
country, and of the kind of foreign domination which has
tortured it, especially in Russian Poland, and under the
rule of Nicholas. We do not now speak of the scattered
persecutions always arising upon the discovery of con-
spiracies as little dangerous as cruelly punished; we speak
of the ordinary state of things, the every-day life in Poland.
Religious faith constantly annoyed and suspected as a
symptom of ill will toward the government ; no univer-
sities nor institutions of science ; all schools given entirely
up to a foreign tongue, and regulated by officers or sub-
officers from the heart of Russia ; a censorship ignorant,
susceptible, and timid sitting in judgment upon every
thought diud every word; the administration, government,
and courts of justice directed by foreigners speaking a
language rarely understood, and universally detested ; the
manners, customs, and habits of the country violently up-

* Mieroslawski : Insurrection of Poscn. Second edition, i860.



6o POLISH POETRY I. V

rooted ; every glori(;us memorial of the past destroyed or
severely ])iinished ; a police of spies forever upon the
watch to entraj) the unwary ; menace and the most fearful
punishments suspended over every Polish head ; in a word,
repose nowhere, and death everywhere ! In such a state
of affairs, the moral life, which is, whatever may be said,
the national life, finds its only refuge in Religion and in
Poetry.

This is not the time to appreciate aright the part held
by religion in this whirl of torment ; but it may be said
without exaggeration that Poetry divides the influence
over souls with religion, if with some natures it does not
even monopolize it. Works of imagination do not con-
stitute in Poland, as in more happy lands, the mere de-
li^ht of the intellect ; they are not read in saloons, nor
discussed in freedom and with eager play of thought.
Imported secretly by the Jews, they are bought literally
at their weight in gold ; and such poems are devoured in
mystery, often at midnight, in the miflst of friends long
and fully tried, and who are all sworn to keep the secret.
The doors are bolted, the shutters barred, and one of the
Faithful is always placed in the street to give the alarm
should the enemy approach ; for the discovery would be
Siberia or death ! After such readings have been again
and again repeated, feverish and palpitating as they 5re
rendered by the attendant precautions and risks, the
pages of the poem are given to the flames, but the verses
remain indelibly graven upon the excited memory.
Under such circumstances do our unfortunate youths
hear the burning words of our poets, which alone speak
to them of country, liberty, hope, virtue, and combat.
It is often only through the "Sir Thaddeus" and "The
Ancestors" of Mickiewicz that the greater part of our
young men and maidens may learn anything of the his-
tory of their own times. A Polish writer once made the
profoundly true remark, that history could only point to
two nations which had received an education exclusively
poetic: Greece in ancient times, and the Poland of the
nineteenth century. Is such an education harmless, irre-
proachable? Is it devoid of the greatest dangers both
for the man and the citizen? We are far from pretend-



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 6 1

ing it is so, but beyond doubt it is the only practical —
alas ! the only possible — course ; and it alone explains the
strange sovereignty exercised by poetic genius in that
country.

Such sovereignty, like all others, has its cares, nay,
even its agonies and remorse ; and Mickiewicz has ad-
mirably symbolized the glory and the misery of the poetic
mission in Poland in the famous Banquet Scene in "Wal-
lenrod. " Our readers will doubtless recollect the sub-
ject of this celebrated tale. Wallenrod, while still an
infant, had been torn from his own country, and brought
up in the midst of its enemies ; he had held the highest po-
sitions, and would perhaps have forgotten his origin, had
he not been accompanied by an old blind man, a poor
Bard, a " VVaidelote," to remind him always of his birth,
and reanimate his hate. This Bard enters in the midst
of a banquet, and in the very presence of the con-
querors, in a language which they cannot understand,
pours into the ears of the young Wallenrod his sonorous
chant, the memories of his childhood, his plighted faith,
his oaths, and the duties still to be accomplished. And
such has indeed been the glorious role of the Polish Poet
in recent times ; but how cruel and terrible this role
often is, is also indicated at the close of this pathetic
scene, when Wallenrod, subdued and fascinated by the
words of the poet, renews his oaths, but at the same
time makes him responsible for the calamities certain to
ensue. He says to the Bard :

" You desire struggle? You urge me on to combat? Amen! But
let the blood which must flow be upon your own head ! Oh ! I know, I
know you! Every hymn of the Bard is a presage of misfortune, like
the howling of hounds at midnight ! Death and devastation are your
favorite chants ; to us you leave the j^lory and the piuiishnieiit ! From
the very cradle your perfidious songs twine their serpent rings round the
bosom of the infimt, breathing into his soul deadly and subtle poison, — a
stupid passion for glory , and a wild love of country I and these songs
forever haunt a young man like the ghost of a dead enemy, appearing in
the midst of every festival to mingle blood with the full cups of wine I
Aye, I have heard them, these songs ; I have hearkened too much to them !
The die is cast, and you have won the throw ! // -cuill be the death of the
disciple, the triumph of the poet t''

This will serve to give us a conception of the sombre
and appalling nature of the power exercised in that

6*



62 roi. rsn poktry in

country by the inspired words of the poet, who has not
only the moral responsiijility for the ideas ])ropagated
which every writer must incur, but who must also assume
that of the material fact of publication, with the conse-
quences it entails upon all concerned in such publica-
tion, endangering the safety of publishers, readers, and
])ossessors ! Let the reader strive to conceive the tor-
ments endured by a poet of loyal soul and upright de-
sires, urged on the one side by genius, perhaps more
strongly still by conscience, to keep up the sacred fire in
human hearts by the propagation of original and impas-
sioned ideas ; yet who, on the other side, shudders at the
thought that the pages written when ^^ was safe from per-
secution may, in other hands, become proofs of a crime
always severely punished, give cause for protracted tor-
tures, and expose the innocent to death ! As an ex-
ample : Young Levitoux, on a certain day, was seized
and confined in the citadel at Warsaw, because a copy of
"The Ancestors," by Mickiewicz, had been found in his
possession. Wrung and exasperated by torture, and above
all fearing that he should become delirious under its in-
fliction, and betray the names of his companions in the
crime, a confession of which was sought to be torn from
him, the prisoner drew the night lamp closer with his
manacled hands, placed it under his bed, and actually
burned himself to death !

Accustomed as the country was to such scenes of
horror, the terrible torture endured by this brave boy of
seventeen excited profound emotion ; but he who suf-
fered most was the poet, Mickiewicz ; the idea of having
been, however involuntarily, the cause of such a death,
everywhere pursued him, and many years after the occur-
rence he could not think of it without a shudder. Nor
vvas the Anonymous Poet spared the anguish of such
literary successes/ He published in Paris a little tale
called "The Temptation," at the close of which is found
the sole cry from his sout which he ever allowed his lips
to utter upon his own situation, and in which it was gen-
erally believed is figured, under poetic types, a recital of
a real eveui, — a meeting between the poet and the Em-
pe^Qr P^icholas. The students of J^ithuanja resolved tQ



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 63

reprint the tale, wliich had indeed ay^peared in the
columns of a journal of that country, stamped with the
imprimatur oi the censor, who had understood notiiing
of the manuscript. But information soon came from St.
Petersburg, ari inquiry was ordered, and several hundred
young men were thereupon forced to make the journey to
Siberia ! They were the flower of young manhood, and
the grief of the bereaved families was heart-rending.
The distress of the Anonymous Poet must have been
great, and the relative security which he enjoyed at such
a moment must have oppressed his soul, especially when
he considered to what high protection he was indebted for
his own immunity.

Under conditions so full of difficulty, so appalling for
a scrupulous and delicate conscience, the Anonymous
Poet found a kind of solace in relinquishing fame, — in
being able to bear witness to himself that he never wrote
with any view to glory, that he never sacrificed to frivo-
lous tastes, or to the higher fantasy of art for the sake of
art. The author of "Iridion" and the " Psalms" never
sang but of his country, addressing himself only to the
moral, political, national, and religious thought of his
audience, — to the " Polish soul," as they say in that land.
He also sought other means to lighten the burden of
responsibility which almost stifled him, and, fantastic as
they may seem, they will yet be readily understood by
those who can trace the subtle and ingenious refinements
of a generous and anguished spirit. Yielding in a man-
ner to an imperious internal voice, he indttd pnb/ished
his poems, but he never took any steps to dissemiftate
them, to extend the circle of their influence, to augment
or multiply their editions. He was, on the contrary, in-
genious in his methods of decreasing their number, of
paralyzing their circulation. Thus he offered the contra-
dictory spectacle of an author desirous of influencing
public opinion, and at the same time striving to diminish
the means of such action ! He had adopted a belief
nearly fatalistic on this subject, which he suffered to
come to light under rather curious circumstances. His
short poem, " Resurrecturis," first appeared in the i'? ^-
vie7ii of Posen, an important and estimable publication



64 POLISH POETRY //V

without doubt, but wliich its gravity, its locality, and
above all its exceedingly conservative tendencies, pre-
cluded from any wide circulation. A friend of the poet
extracted this poem from the Review, and published an
edition of it in Paris of some thousands of copies. It
was no young, enthusiastic, and reckless student of
Lithuania who had conceived the idea of this republica-
tion ; it was a man of mature mind, an old general of
tried wisdom, and accustomed to weigh well his actions.
The complaints of the poet, however, were not the less
full of bitterness. " But the salutary truths contained in
the ' Resurrecturis,' " it was said to him, "would have
been almost lost for the nation in a review so difficult to
obtain. " "No," was the characteristic reply; '■'■the
soul which had need of those words would have found
them there, as well as elsejvhere ; the poem would have
been offered to them by destiny, by fatality ; why should we
pass from lip to lip a cup of bitterness ? ''

And this poetry, to speak only of it, — to say nothing
of the immense correspondence held by our author on all
sides, of which only extracts have as yet appeared, and
which for a long time yet to come may not see the light
of day, — this poetry, what is it? Polish poetry gener-
ally, that of the author of " Iridion" especially, has been
accused of being too obscure and symbolic, of speaking
in enigmas and allegories; in a word, of wanting that
serenity and transparency which are the true conditions
of all pure art. But art, in order to be true and living,
must always bear the marks of the moral surroundings in
which it has been developed, and, to judge impartially of
Polish poetry, the moral state of Poland itself must never
be lost sight of. In a country so long overwhelmed by
misery, all works of the imagination will necessarily be
cloudy and sombre. Also, where long-continued oppres-
sion has taught men to understand one another by a half-
word, a glance, the language of poetic inspiration must
content itself with occult signs. This becomes a custom,
almost an aesthetic necessity. We must again call the
attention of the reader to the fact that works of imagina-
tion cannot be read in Poland as with us; that they are
perused in secret, with guarded caution, and in the midst



THE NINETEEXTII CENTURY. 65

of dangers very real ; that tliey are committed to, and
graven \ipon the memory, and thus constitute for months,
for entire years, the nourishment of the soul. Such Po-
etry must hide in its bosom depths that thought may
slowly explore. The messenger received in mystery,
must speak of mysterious things, of mystical ideas, and
the least that can be demanded of books held at the risk
of life, and arriving like leaves of the Sibyl, is, that they
should speak the language of Oracles. This language is
never complained of there; they learn rapidly to under-
stand it; they grow accustomed to it, as one grows accus-
tomed to see in darkness. Besides, of all the works of
the Anonymous Poet, the " Undivine Comedy" is the only
one really of an enigmatic character. All the rest were
seized by the national intelligence from the first moment
of their appearance. Marvelous Poetry, born from the
situation forced upon Poland by her sufferings and mis-
fortunes, and which, next to that of Goethe, has, in our
times, devoted the most profound scrutiny to the mys-
teries of life, the emotions of the soul !



II.

"The Undivine Comedy" appeared in 1S35, being the
first work which attracted general attention to the Anon-
ymous Poet ; nor is its date one of the least original sides
of this vigorous creation. In fact, the jioem seemed like
a defiance thrown to the general tendencies of the time ;
a solemn protest against the contemporary aspirations.
Let us for a moment recall the character of that epoch, a
period of general effervescence in ideas, beliefs, and pas-
sions. The revolution of July had just given the world
an impetus which nothing had as yet arrested. Young
manhood almost universally dreamed of Republics; spirits
religiously inclined aj^pealed to the Gospel itself in sup-
port of Democracy ; new and mystic sects, supporting the
cause of those disinherited by fortune, accused the vicious
organization of the Social Status as the cause of wide-
spread miserv, and claimed for all human beings a riglit of
which they had hitherto been ignorant, and which was full



66 rOLISIl POETRY IN

of temptation : the right of happiness ! The novus rerum
ordooi Virgil was adopted as the creed of the millions; and
is it at all astonishing that this cry should be especially
heard and re-echoed by misery and poetry ; that is to say,
by the two things in the world the least inclined to be
content with that which really exists? Poland was then
suffering under immense evils, unmitigated woes, and
perhaps it needed nothing less than the conviction of an
approaching and universal upheaval, of an entire renova-
tion of society, to inspire its i^oets again with words of
faith and hope. Even the Muse of Mickiewicz, so dis-
couraged and hopeless once, as shown in his widely cele-
brated "Song of the Polish Mother," which appeared on
the eve of the combat of 1830, now acquired a serenity of
foresight, a haughty attractiveness, in the strangest con-
trast with the gloom of the deceptive reality, but which
gathered force and charm from the previsions of a new
era. These same previsions inspired another poet of ar-
dent and feverish genius, of vivid imagination, and still
more vivid passions, Slowaq:ki. None escaped the en-
trancement of this prophetic spirit ; even the sweet and
melodious singer of waves and plains, Bohdan Zaleski,
was borne into the universal current. The presentiment,
nay, the certainty, of a political, social, and religious trans-
formation, broke forth in all the inspired works which the
Polish poets then sent from the bosom of exile to their
desolate country as the harbingers of good news.

But in the midst of this unanimous concert in honor of
the regeneration of humanity, all at once tolls a knell of
doom : an anonymous author takes up the theme then so
popular, — the trial of the Past and of the Future, the final
struggle of the Old World and the New, — and in his drama
a Count Henry (the last defender of a state of things
which has reached its final term) is seen to fall, if not
without eclat, without appeal, before Pancras, the ener-
getic representative and avenger of the oppressed and
disiniierited of our times. The theme was indeed well
known, but the picture was combined and painted in
such a manner, that it was not necessary to be endowed
with the soul of Cato, it was sufficient to be simply hu-
man, to become interested in the conquered cause, lo



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 67

be forced to withdraw a moment from the heavy conflict,
and to fear the triumph. But of triumph, properly speak-
ing, the Drama proclaims none, for the adversary, tri-
umphant only for a moment, suddenly sinks, confessing
himself conquered in his turn ; the combat only ends for
want of combatants, and it is precisely this end, which is
no solution, which adds so wondrously to the horror of
the picture. In this Infernal Comedy nothing remains
standing upon the upheaved soil ; the horizon is closed
around us at every point. At the final catastrophe, the
Cross alone appears, flaming and bloody, rather as sign of
condemnation than redemption ; it seems only to descend
upon the earth as the funereal seal upon a grave immense
as the universe !

As strange, as contradictory to the aspirations and
hopes of the epoch as this work appeared, it did not the
less take hold of all intellects by a sort of provoking fas-
cination. In one very fine scene of the drama, the leader
of the incarnate democracy, irresistibly attracted to his
great adversary, curious to know him, having eagerly
sought the interview that he might penetrate his thoughts
and motives, is introduced. The "aristocratic" poem
seemed to exercise the same kind of mysterious attraction
upon a public then in a measure imbued with the ideas of
Pancras; the readers returned again and again to the
startling figure of Count Henry, with a shivering eager-
ness partaking at the same time of repulsion and sympathy.
Tlie true problem, the enigma of the drama, was indeed
the adversary of Pancras, the champion of the Past, the
defender of a dying society. It was truly difficult to un-
derstand this enemy of the democracy, who yet seemed
attached to it by more than one secret and unconquerable
affinity ; this friend of the rich, of the nobles, who yet
esteemed them so little; who even overwhelmed them
with his contempt ; this martyr without enthusiasm, this
confessor without faith ! The experience taught by a
revolution, the painful trials of 1848, were necessary to
enable even the critics to understand the mysterious hero
of the Anonymous Poet ; and it may well be said that it
was only by the light of the flames that kindled all Eu-
rope that for the first time, in all its palpable and salient



6S POLISH POETRY IN

truth, this idea of a skeptical defender of a dying world
was seen and comprehended.

Let us here endeavor to retrace the meaning of this
figure, to unite its principal and characteristic traits.
'I'hey may be found in "The Undivine Comedy," as in the
"Fragment," in which the author handles the same sub-
ject under different treatment, which "Fragment," how-
ever, remains but a sketch, published after the death of
the atitlior. They are strangely mistaken who receive to
the letter the position forced upon the adversary of demo-
cracy by the fatality of the passions and times, and who
can only see in Count Henry the Aristocrat with narrow
j)rejudices and timid foresight. He himself tells us " that
he had had his nights of stars, in which his soul had
believed it possessed sufficient strength to float through all
the worlds suspended in the infinite azure, and to reach
the threshold even of God without losing breath. " In a
sublime episode of the " Fragment" entitled "A Dream,"
all the evils, all the miseries of our century appear before
the eyes of the hero: armies drilled in the art of fighting
against the indejjendence of the nations, and stifling the
liberties of the citizens; the Police suspending over all
its vigilant eye, like the immense and movable vault over
a prison, picking up everything, even to a pin, for a pin
might grow and become a formidable weapon in the
hands of the oppressed ; the workers famished, emaciated,
crowded into subterranean and deadly caverns, strange
Cycloi)S with lamps fastened upon their foreheads, drilling
without rest the heads of needles, with fingers soft aiul
weak as wax, and sighing in vain for the sunshine ; nations
buried alive, strike their chains forever against the walls
of their sepulchre, while men of religion, crushed into
slavery, advise them to die in silence, so that they may
neither break the repose nor trouble the enjoyment of
the "Powerful upon earth! " . . . In another grand
episode of the same " Fragment," the centuries past are
made to defile before us in the most ingenious symbolism,
and in that magical order which the philosophy of history
so delights in developing. Liberty appears slowly disen-
gaging herself from epoch to epoch, ever increasing with
every people, antl with every new elevation of humanity:



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 69

surely the meaning of these two pictures is evident. Count
Henry has shared in all the virtuous indignation, as well
as in all the generous aspiration of his century. We hear
him break forth into imprecations against the robbers who
wear crowns; against the priests who counsel men "to
die in slavery;" against the bankers and merchants, " who
would bargain for the nails with which the feet of Christ
were fiistened to the Cross, and who will scarcely admit
that God could have created the world without capital^
We see him affiliating himself to secret societies: "to
those who aspire and conspire; who labor in darkness on
the work of the Future! " " The increasing insolence of
vice had seemed to him the most certain sign of approach-
ing downfall, the moment had once appeared to him not
very distant when Justice should reign upon the earth,
when all nations should conquer their independence, when
man would regain his dignity, and even woman rise from
the state of degradation in which laws without either jus-
tice or love had thrown her. "

It is, however, the same man who is soon after to appear
as the determined adversary of the cause of the people ;
as the obstinate advocate of an order of things which he
had so often cursed ! When his own invocations to liberty
and humanity are repeated to him by immense and palpi-
tating choirs of the people, the inspired prophet of the
Future becomes at once the resolute soldier of the Past,
acknowledging nothing but his vocation, and repulsing
all compromise. He now calls to his aid all the vigor
he had once devoted to earth's agonies, and has recourse
to arms and the principles of other days. Formerly he
esteemed but lightly the advantages of birth and the priv-
ileges of assured position ; but now he draws himself to
his full height in his pride of being a gentleman ; he ap-
peals to the lessons of history consecrated by past centu-
ries. Formerly he only spoke of God in the humanitarian
and vague language so dear to our speculative pantheism,
or, still further astray, he only addressed his j)rayers to
^'Mother Nature ;" but now he assumes as his war-cry the
names of "Jesus'' and of "Mary,'' and chooses for his
last bulwark a crumbling feudal tower, which bears the
name of " The Holy Trinity. " With a convulsive grasp

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POLISH POETRY IN



he clings to the ruins of a dying generation, and bursts
into demoniac laughter at the word once of such power :
"Progress! " "Progress! " he replies to the chief of the
democratic party, "happiness of the human race! I
too once believed it possible ! Here, take my head, if it
may be. . . . The first man in the desert died, and we
may ne'er re-enter Paradise ! . . . It might have been
perhaps, . . . but it is no longer possible. . . .