Although Henryk knows that his doom is close upon
him, he still delights in his lordship.
him, he still delights in his lordship.
Poland - 1919 - Krasinski - Anonymous Poet of Poland
The Undivine Comedy
123
We weep for Christ. . . Where is our God? Where is His
Church?
Husband. Faster, faster to the sword, to battle! I will give
Him back to you. I will crucify His enemies on a thousand
crosses. Jesus and my sword!
Voices in the bushes. Mary and our swords! Long life to
our lord!
Husband. Follow me! Follow me! Jesus and Mary!
And henceforth Henryk becomes the champion of
Christianity. Often before this scene the language of
some sort of piety has been surprised on Henryk's lips;
and yet it might have seemed as though a man of his
stamp would have rather chosen a species of refined
agnosticism as his appropriate setting. Had Krasinski
adopted this perfectly obvious treatment part at least
of the terrible truth with which he presents Henryk
would have been sacrificed. Henryk's is the type of a
lip religion. He talks in exquisite phraseology of the
sacred things which have no bearing on the conduct of
his daily life. He will freely utter the old Polish battle
cry of Jesus and Mary or the name of God when the
poetry of the situation demands it: as his defence
against moral fall, never. Religion in his conception
adds beauty to the world. It is picturesque. It is, be-
sides, his aristocratic inheritance that descends to him
with his great name and estates. His pose is to be
something in the nature of a crusader. Atheism he
leaves to Pankracy, to the vulgar. For one moment
we saw him take a poetical excursion into the regions
of scepticism when rebelling against his son's fate: but
this was obviously one of his situations, and holds no
particle of the agony . that broke the heart of Mickiewicz's
Konrad when grief for his nation drove him into
blasphemy.
The hour has struck for the secret midnight interview
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? 124 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
between Henryk and Pankracy. Henryk awaits his
opponent in a palatial hall of the castle, drawn from
Krasinski's memories of his own home. The portraits
of Henryk's ancestors hang around the walls; his
armorial bearings shine on a pillar; silver goblets and
tankards glitter on the tables.
"In a moment will stand before me," soliloquizes Henryk
to imaginary spectators, " the man without a name, without
ancestors, who rose from nothingness, and perchance will
begin a new epoch if I do not thrust him down into nothingness.
My ancestors, inspire me with what made you the rulers of
the world ! . . . Let descend upon me a blind, inexorable, burn-
ing faith in Christ and His Church, the inspiration of your
deeds on earth, the hope of immortal glory in heaven: and I
will slay the enemies, I, the son of a hundred generations, the
last inheritor of your thoughts and deeds, your virtues and
your errors. (Midnight strikes. ) Now am I ready. "
Pankracy is led in, and he and Henryk are left
alone together.
Pankracy. I greet Count Henryk. That word "Count"
sounds strangely in my throat. (He fixes his eyes on the pillar
where the coat of arms hangs. ) If I am not mistaken, those red
and blue badges are called coats of arms in the language of
the dead. There are ever fewer such little dots on the surface
of the earth.
Husband. With the help of God you will shortly see thou-
sands of them.
Pankracy. There is my old nobility--always sure of them-
selves, proud, obstinate, flourishing with hope, and without a
farthing, without a weapon, without soldiers, believing, or
pretending that they believe, in God, because it would be
difficult to believe in themselves. But show me the thunderbolts
sent down in your defence, and the regiments of angels from
heaven.
Husband. Laugh at your own words. Atheism is an old
formula, and I expected something new from you.
Pankracy. Laugh at your own words. I have a stronger,
mightier faith than yours. The groan torn by despair and
pain from thousands of thousands, the hunger of artisans, the
misery of peasants, the shame of their wives and daughters,
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? The Undivine Comedy 125
the degradation of humanity: that is my faith and my God for
to-day.
Husband. I have placed my strength in the God Who
gave the rule to my ancestors.
Pankracy. And all your life you have been the plaything
of the devil. But I leave the rest of this discourse to theo-
logians if some pedant of that trade still exists in the country.
To business! I came here, because I wanted to know you, and,
secondly, to save you.
Husband. I am obliged to you for the first. The second,
leave to my sword.
Pankracy. Your sword is glass, your God is a dream. You
are condemned by the voice of thousands, you are hemmed
round with the arms of thousands. A few spans of earth
remain yours that will scarcely suffice for your graves. You
cannot defend yourselves twenty days. Where are your cannon,
your stores, your provisions--and, finally, where is your
courage?
His insults, says Henryk, escape with impunity only
because the aristocrat has given his word that the
leader of the people shall leave his roof unscathed.
"Knightly honour has come upon the scene," sneers
Pankracy. "It is a worn-out rag on the banner of humanity.
Oh! I know you. You are full of life, and you ally yourself
with the dying, because you want to deceive yourself, because
you still want to believe in caste, in the bones of your great-
grandmothers, in the word 'my country': but in the depths
of your heart you know yourself that the penalty is owing to
your brethren, and after the penalty, oblivion. "
Husband. And what else is there for you and yours?
Pankracy. Victory and life. I recognize only one law. It
is your destruction. It cries by my lips; "Decrepit worms,
full of food and drink, yield to the young, the hungry and
the strong. "
Pankracy then speaks of the new epoch that is to
be born from his word, when the earth shall be rich
and flourishing from pole to pole, man free, great and
happy. But that the true fire is not in him we gather
from Henryk's rejoinder: "Your words lie, but your
unmoved, pale countenance cannot counterfeit inspira-
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? 126 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
tion. " Still Pankracy knows how to appeal not only to
the ambition of the poet, but to that in him which was
once, long ago, noble.
"If you would attain immortality," he says, "if you love
truth and have sought it sincerely, if you are a man in the
pattern of humanity, not in the fashion of nursery fables, do
not throw away this moment of salvation. Not a trace will
remain to-morrow of the blood which we will both shed to-
day. If you are what you once seemed, forsake your house
and come with me. "
For the first time Henryk wavers. His wish to see
the man of those dreams that had once been his was
not mere curiosity: it was a desire to gaze, as it were,
upon his own marred face1. Pankracy's words recall
to his memory the visions of a long past day. The
higher voices to which he had listened in his now
doubly dead youth call faintly to him once more. He
rises. He paces the room, murmuring to himself in
broken whispers: "Vain dreams! Who shall fulfil them?
Progress, the happiness of the human race--and I once
believed in them. " Is there here an undertone of real,
if fruitless, regret for his ruined self? Pankracy, watch-
ing the transitory struggle as the caustic spectator,
congratulates himself that he has "touched the nerve
of poetry"; proof that for his part his language had not
been actuated by sincere and passionate faith.
Both Pankracy and Henryk, as is apparent from their
respective taunts, know that his adversary is doubting
within himself. No spark of truth, says Klaczko, comes
out in either2. In the midst of what appears an out-
burst of real emotion Pankracy betrays himself by the
admission that he has succeeded in playing upon Hen-
ryk's poetical fancy. The duologue must end where it
1 J. Klaczko, Le Polte Anonyme de la Pologne. 2 Op. cit.
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? The Undivine Comedy 127
began. The Undivine Comedy is not to tell of success,
but of failure, of negation*. With contempt Henryk
rejects Pankracy's proposal, and makes mockery of his
base birth. With equal contempt, Pankracy points to
the portraits of Henryk's ancestors, and rakes up the
scandals of each. The interview concludes merely with
a mutual bandying of words. The final issue will be
played out on the ramparts of the Trinity.
Part IV opens with a short prose poem descriptive
of the morning breaking over the doomed castle. Mic-
kiewicz, himself a master of word painting, likens its
effects of light, mist and cloud to a canvas of Salvator
Rosa1. In preparation for the last struggle Henryk
is solemnly blessed as the leader by the Archbishop,
while choirs of priests sing, and Henryk's brother nobles
watch coldly and grudgingly.
First Count. See with what pride he looks on us all!
Second. He thinks he has subjugated the world.
Third. And he only got through a camp of peasants in the
night.
All swear in reply to his harangue--the usual one
on such occasions--that they will be faithful to him till
death. Yet where will such resolution be found in this
effete band? Krasinski's loss of faith in the society of
his generation and his sense of its demoralization are
openly expressed in these closing scenes of The Undivine
Comedy. Yet Krasinski himself was a son of one of the
most courageous races in Europe, and when he wrote
The Undivine Comedy the spectacle was still recent
of Polish men and women shedding their life-blood,
parting with every joy in life, for their country's sake.
The craven, time-serving aristocrats of The Undivine
1 Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
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? 128 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Comedy are not Polish types. As we have said before
there is nothing national in the play. Indeed the absence
of Polish colouring in the depictment of character is
the one reproach that Mickiewicz makes against The
Undivine Comedy.
All hope of victory is gone. The nobles gather round
Henryk. One whispers to him:
What, is all lost then?
Husband. Not all--unless your hearts fail you before the
time.
Count. What time?
Husband. Death.
Baron (leading him to the other side). Count, you have
probably seen that dreadful man. Will he have if only a little
mercy on us when we fall into his hands?
Husband. I tell you truthfully that none of your ancestors
ever heard of a mercy like that. It is called the gallows.
Baron. We must defend ourselves as best we can.
Prince. Two words with you in private. All that is good
for the common people, but between ourselves it is obvious
that we cannot resist. You have been chosen leader, and there-
fore it is your business to open negotiations.
Husband {turning to the crowd). Who mentions surrender
will be punished by death.
Baron, Count, Prince (all together). Who mentions surrender
will be punished by death.
Although Henryk knows that his doom is close upon
him, he still delights in his lordship. The sinking sun,
as he watches it from the towers of the fort, seems to
him the fiery and fit ending to his life in the wild glory
of which he had always dreamt.
I stand here on the boundaries of the eternal sleep, the
leader of all those who yesterday were my equals.
And on these words breaks once more the avenger
of that past from which the husband and father cannot
escape, the witness to his eternal failure--the blind boy.
He has heard without fear or interest the sounds of the
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? The Undivine Comedy 129
battle raging round the walls of the fortress. His heart
is not with outer things, it is in his visions: and it is
there that the delicately strung soul, incapable of coping
with the tempests of the world, will take refuge1.
Everything about this unhappy child is weak. Even
his religion, notes Klaczko, is not his mother's deep
piety. It partakes more of the nature of his father's
poetizing, a thin, sentimental stream from which he can
draw no strength either for himself or a battling world3.
His very end is pointless. He falls a useless sacrifice
to a random shot'.
He leads Henryk into the subterranean caverns of
the fortress.
Do you not hear their voices, do you not see their forms?
Husband. There is the silence of the grave, and the torch
lights but a few steps before us.
George. Ever nearer, ever clearer, they come from under
the narrow vaults.
Husband. In your madness is my curse. You are mad,
child: and you are destroying my strength at the moment I
most need it.
George. I see their pale forms assembling for the dreadful
judgment. The prisoner advances. He has wrung his hands.
Husband. Who is he?
George. Oh, father, father!
Choir. Because thou hast loved nought, because thou hast
worshipped nought but thyself, thou art damned--damned for
all eternity.
The eyes of the child then see the vision of Henryk
being tortured.
"I hear your groans," cries he, falling on his knees at his
father's feet. "Father, forgive me. In the middle of the night
my mother came to me and bade me "--He faints.
Husband. Only this was wanting. My own child has led
me to the threshold of hell. Marya! Inexorable spirit! There
begins the eternity of torments and of darkness. I must still
fight with men. Afterwards the eternal war.
1 J. Klaczko, Le Polte Anonyme de la Pologne. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.
G.
9
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? 130 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
He leaves the vaults, while the spirit voices wail
after him:
Because thou hast loved nought, worshipped nought save
thyself, thou art damned--damned for all eternity.
The starving inhabitants of the besieged fortress
throng round the leader, clamouring to him to make
terms. The godfather, who has no mind to face ex-
tremities, has taken upon himself to treat with the
revolutionaries.
All my life has been a true citizen's, and I do not heed your
reproaches, Henryk. If I have undertaken the office of envoy,
it is because I understand my century and know how to appre-
ciate its worth.
Turning to the crowd, the baron, the prince and the
rest of them who are all prepared to save their skins by
going over to Pankracy, he tells them: "The great man
who has sent me promises your lives on the condition
that you join him and acknowledge the tendency of the
age. "
"We do acknowledge it," they cry. Yet it wants
only a few words from Henryk, whose role is that of
the glorious champion who will die but not yield, and
the appearance of an armed band of his soldiers, and
once more the waverers are more or less with him again.
For the moment the enemy is driven off: but it is with
the last shots of the defenders. Henryk's servant comes
to tell him that there is no more powder, no more bullets.
"Then bring me my son," says Henryk, "that I may em-
brace him once again. "
The servant leads in the blind boy.
Come, son. Put your hand in mine. Touch my lips with
your forehead. Your mother's forehead was once as white and
soft.
George. I heard her voice to-day, and she said: "This
evening thou shalt be sitting with me. "
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? The Undivine Comedy 131
/
Husband. Did she so much as mention my name?
George. She said: "This evening I expect my son. "
Husband (aside). Will my strength fail me at the end of
the road? Oh, God, permit it not! For one moment of courage
Thou shalt have me as Thy prisoner for all eternity. (Aloud)
Oh, son, forgive me that I gave you life. You will forget me
among the angelic choirs. Oh, George, George, oh, my son!
A shot resounds, and George lies dead at his father's
feet. The father seizes his sword and, shouting to his
men, rushes into the hopeless combat. The enemy are
in the castle. Henryk's followers are slain: the remain-
ing defenders of the fortress fall on their knees before
the victor, whining for mercy. Pankracy's soldiers run
through the castle, looking for Henryk. Covered with
blood, he stands on the angle of the bastion that over-
hangs the precipice.
I see it all black, floating towards me in spaceless tracts
of darkness, my eternity without shores, without end, and in
its midst God as a sun that shines eternally--and lights nothing.
(He takes a step forward? ) They are running. They have seen
me.
And with the words: "Jesus, Mary ! "--on his lips
the romantic call to battle of his ancestors rather than
the last prayer of the departing soul--crying, " Poetry,
be thou cursed by me as I shall be cursed for all eter-
nity," with his arms flung out as the swimmer about to
take his plunge, he leaps into the abyss.
Pankracy is left apparently the conqueror of the field.
He sits in judgment in the castle court, condemning
to death each wretched survivor of the aristocrats as
they appear before him in chains, in a scene that is the
reflection of the revolutionary tribunals of the French
Revolution. He then leads Leonard to the bastions and,
standing on the spot where Henryk perished, points to
the world he has won.
9--2
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? 132 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Gaze on those vast tracts. I must people those deserts,
tunnel through those rocks, divide out land to each man.
Leonard. The god of liberty will give us strength.
Pankracy. Why do you speak of God? It is slippery here
from human blood. Whose blood is it? We are alone, and it
seems to me as if some third were here.
For now the hour of his defeat is upon him also.
He points to the mountains, and cries in terror:
See you there on high--on high?
Leonard. I see over the rugged mountain peak a drooping
cloud in which the rays of the sun are going out.
Pankracy. A terrible sign is flaming over it. Women and
children have babbled fables that He shall thus appear, but
not until the last day.
Leonard. Who?
Pankracy. Like a pillar of snow-white brilliance He stands
above the precipices. Both hands lean on a cross as an
avenger's on his sword. Of woven thunderbolts is His crown
of thorns. From the lightning of that look he must die who
lives. Lay your hands on my eyes. Smother my eyeballs with
your fists. Part me from that look which shatters me to dust.
Your hands are transparent as water--transparent as glass--
transparent as air. 1 see still.
Leonard. Lean on me.
Pankracy. Give me if only a crumb of darkness.
Leonard. Oh, my master!
Pankracy. Darkness--darkness!
Leonard. Hey, citizens! brothers! democrats! Help, help,
help!
Pankracy. Galilaee, vicisti! (He falls into Leonard's arms
and expires? )
So ends this powerful and painful drama--ruin and
failure are all that is left in a world whence every
known landmark has been swept away. Krasinski dis-
cerned no hope for the future in either of the two hostile
principles between which he saw mankind divided. He
beheld a truth greater than either, and above both1.
Therefore the leader of a cause that held no germ of life
1 Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
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? The Undivine Comedy 133
in its bosom dies in a final act of despair. Therefore
the leader of the opposing cause, at the moment of a
triumph that could not endure because he had nothing
to give the human race in the place of what he had taken
from it, is struck down, witness to a power that had
conquered his. And yet the final, scathing apparition
of the Crucified, terrible to the eyes of the man who had
denied Him, casting a light more lurid than that of the
blood-red sunset over a ruined world, does not remove
that impression of chaos, of universal desolation upon
which The Undivine Comedy closes. Christ here appears
an image of terror: an avenger, not a saviour. Still the
fact that the drama ends with that last testimony to His
triumph holds the link that would otherwise be hard
to find between the Undivine Comedy and Krasinski's
subsequent work--Dawn, the Psalms of the Future,
Resurrecturis--where the weariness and pessimism of
the Anonymous Poet's first great masterpiece are un-
known.
"This poem," said Mickiewicz, "is the cry of des-
pair of a man of genius who recognizes the greatness,
the difficulty of social questions "; without being able
to solve them1. At the moment that Krasinski wrote
The Undivine Comedy socialistic dreams were widespread
among the Polish youth, who saw in some universal
social convulsion the only hope for their nation in the
terrible conditions under which she was then labouring.
Krasinski never shrank from boldly proclaiming what
he deemed a salutary truth, however unwelcome: and
thus in the midst of Utopian theories were heard the
warning accents of an Undivine Comedy*. Years after
1 Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
1 J. Klaczko, Le Poite Anonyme de la Pologne.
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? 134 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
it came out, with the strange impersonality of one who
had spoken sinister prophecies because he was con-
strained to speak them, Krasinski in letters to friends
pointed to the European revolutions through which he
lived as the fulfilment of what he had foretold in his
youth1. Klaczko has finely said that The Undivine
Comedy is:
a farewell rather than a greetingaddressedby thepoettohumani-
tarian inspirations, a strong protest against the fatal illusion
of the age which believes it can regenerate humanity without
having first regenerated man, and establish universal right
without having first strengthened the individual in his duties3.
1 Krasinski seldom in his correspondence alludes to his works, and
when he does so it is almost exclusively under their moral and national
aspect.
123
We weep for Christ. . . Where is our God? Where is His
Church?
Husband. Faster, faster to the sword, to battle! I will give
Him back to you. I will crucify His enemies on a thousand
crosses. Jesus and my sword!
Voices in the bushes. Mary and our swords! Long life to
our lord!
Husband. Follow me! Follow me! Jesus and Mary!
And henceforth Henryk becomes the champion of
Christianity. Often before this scene the language of
some sort of piety has been surprised on Henryk's lips;
and yet it might have seemed as though a man of his
stamp would have rather chosen a species of refined
agnosticism as his appropriate setting. Had Krasinski
adopted this perfectly obvious treatment part at least
of the terrible truth with which he presents Henryk
would have been sacrificed. Henryk's is the type of a
lip religion. He talks in exquisite phraseology of the
sacred things which have no bearing on the conduct of
his daily life. He will freely utter the old Polish battle
cry of Jesus and Mary or the name of God when the
poetry of the situation demands it: as his defence
against moral fall, never. Religion in his conception
adds beauty to the world. It is picturesque. It is, be-
sides, his aristocratic inheritance that descends to him
with his great name and estates. His pose is to be
something in the nature of a crusader. Atheism he
leaves to Pankracy, to the vulgar. For one moment
we saw him take a poetical excursion into the regions
of scepticism when rebelling against his son's fate: but
this was obviously one of his situations, and holds no
particle of the agony . that broke the heart of Mickiewicz's
Konrad when grief for his nation drove him into
blasphemy.
The hour has struck for the secret midnight interview
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? 124 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
between Henryk and Pankracy. Henryk awaits his
opponent in a palatial hall of the castle, drawn from
Krasinski's memories of his own home. The portraits
of Henryk's ancestors hang around the walls; his
armorial bearings shine on a pillar; silver goblets and
tankards glitter on the tables.
"In a moment will stand before me," soliloquizes Henryk
to imaginary spectators, " the man without a name, without
ancestors, who rose from nothingness, and perchance will
begin a new epoch if I do not thrust him down into nothingness.
My ancestors, inspire me with what made you the rulers of
the world ! . . . Let descend upon me a blind, inexorable, burn-
ing faith in Christ and His Church, the inspiration of your
deeds on earth, the hope of immortal glory in heaven: and I
will slay the enemies, I, the son of a hundred generations, the
last inheritor of your thoughts and deeds, your virtues and
your errors. (Midnight strikes. ) Now am I ready. "
Pankracy is led in, and he and Henryk are left
alone together.
Pankracy. I greet Count Henryk. That word "Count"
sounds strangely in my throat. (He fixes his eyes on the pillar
where the coat of arms hangs. ) If I am not mistaken, those red
and blue badges are called coats of arms in the language of
the dead. There are ever fewer such little dots on the surface
of the earth.
Husband. With the help of God you will shortly see thou-
sands of them.
Pankracy. There is my old nobility--always sure of them-
selves, proud, obstinate, flourishing with hope, and without a
farthing, without a weapon, without soldiers, believing, or
pretending that they believe, in God, because it would be
difficult to believe in themselves. But show me the thunderbolts
sent down in your defence, and the regiments of angels from
heaven.
Husband. Laugh at your own words. Atheism is an old
formula, and I expected something new from you.
Pankracy. Laugh at your own words. I have a stronger,
mightier faith than yours. The groan torn by despair and
pain from thousands of thousands, the hunger of artisans, the
misery of peasants, the shame of their wives and daughters,
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? The Undivine Comedy 125
the degradation of humanity: that is my faith and my God for
to-day.
Husband. I have placed my strength in the God Who
gave the rule to my ancestors.
Pankracy. And all your life you have been the plaything
of the devil. But I leave the rest of this discourse to theo-
logians if some pedant of that trade still exists in the country.
To business! I came here, because I wanted to know you, and,
secondly, to save you.
Husband. I am obliged to you for the first. The second,
leave to my sword.
Pankracy. Your sword is glass, your God is a dream. You
are condemned by the voice of thousands, you are hemmed
round with the arms of thousands. A few spans of earth
remain yours that will scarcely suffice for your graves. You
cannot defend yourselves twenty days. Where are your cannon,
your stores, your provisions--and, finally, where is your
courage?
His insults, says Henryk, escape with impunity only
because the aristocrat has given his word that the
leader of the people shall leave his roof unscathed.
"Knightly honour has come upon the scene," sneers
Pankracy. "It is a worn-out rag on the banner of humanity.
Oh! I know you. You are full of life, and you ally yourself
with the dying, because you want to deceive yourself, because
you still want to believe in caste, in the bones of your great-
grandmothers, in the word 'my country': but in the depths
of your heart you know yourself that the penalty is owing to
your brethren, and after the penalty, oblivion. "
Husband. And what else is there for you and yours?
Pankracy. Victory and life. I recognize only one law. It
is your destruction. It cries by my lips; "Decrepit worms,
full of food and drink, yield to the young, the hungry and
the strong. "
Pankracy then speaks of the new epoch that is to
be born from his word, when the earth shall be rich
and flourishing from pole to pole, man free, great and
happy. But that the true fire is not in him we gather
from Henryk's rejoinder: "Your words lie, but your
unmoved, pale countenance cannot counterfeit inspira-
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? 126 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
tion. " Still Pankracy knows how to appeal not only to
the ambition of the poet, but to that in him which was
once, long ago, noble.
"If you would attain immortality," he says, "if you love
truth and have sought it sincerely, if you are a man in the
pattern of humanity, not in the fashion of nursery fables, do
not throw away this moment of salvation. Not a trace will
remain to-morrow of the blood which we will both shed to-
day. If you are what you once seemed, forsake your house
and come with me. "
For the first time Henryk wavers. His wish to see
the man of those dreams that had once been his was
not mere curiosity: it was a desire to gaze, as it were,
upon his own marred face1. Pankracy's words recall
to his memory the visions of a long past day. The
higher voices to which he had listened in his now
doubly dead youth call faintly to him once more. He
rises. He paces the room, murmuring to himself in
broken whispers: "Vain dreams! Who shall fulfil them?
Progress, the happiness of the human race--and I once
believed in them. " Is there here an undertone of real,
if fruitless, regret for his ruined self? Pankracy, watch-
ing the transitory struggle as the caustic spectator,
congratulates himself that he has "touched the nerve
of poetry"; proof that for his part his language had not
been actuated by sincere and passionate faith.
Both Pankracy and Henryk, as is apparent from their
respective taunts, know that his adversary is doubting
within himself. No spark of truth, says Klaczko, comes
out in either2. In the midst of what appears an out-
burst of real emotion Pankracy betrays himself by the
admission that he has succeeded in playing upon Hen-
ryk's poetical fancy. The duologue must end where it
1 J. Klaczko, Le Polte Anonyme de la Pologne. 2 Op. cit.
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? The Undivine Comedy 127
began. The Undivine Comedy is not to tell of success,
but of failure, of negation*. With contempt Henryk
rejects Pankracy's proposal, and makes mockery of his
base birth. With equal contempt, Pankracy points to
the portraits of Henryk's ancestors, and rakes up the
scandals of each. The interview concludes merely with
a mutual bandying of words. The final issue will be
played out on the ramparts of the Trinity.
Part IV opens with a short prose poem descriptive
of the morning breaking over the doomed castle. Mic-
kiewicz, himself a master of word painting, likens its
effects of light, mist and cloud to a canvas of Salvator
Rosa1. In preparation for the last struggle Henryk
is solemnly blessed as the leader by the Archbishop,
while choirs of priests sing, and Henryk's brother nobles
watch coldly and grudgingly.
First Count. See with what pride he looks on us all!
Second. He thinks he has subjugated the world.
Third. And he only got through a camp of peasants in the
night.
All swear in reply to his harangue--the usual one
on such occasions--that they will be faithful to him till
death. Yet where will such resolution be found in this
effete band? Krasinski's loss of faith in the society of
his generation and his sense of its demoralization are
openly expressed in these closing scenes of The Undivine
Comedy. Yet Krasinski himself was a son of one of the
most courageous races in Europe, and when he wrote
The Undivine Comedy the spectacle was still recent
of Polish men and women shedding their life-blood,
parting with every joy in life, for their country's sake.
The craven, time-serving aristocrats of The Undivine
1 Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
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? 128 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Comedy are not Polish types. As we have said before
there is nothing national in the play. Indeed the absence
of Polish colouring in the depictment of character is
the one reproach that Mickiewicz makes against The
Undivine Comedy.
All hope of victory is gone. The nobles gather round
Henryk. One whispers to him:
What, is all lost then?
Husband. Not all--unless your hearts fail you before the
time.
Count. What time?
Husband. Death.
Baron (leading him to the other side). Count, you have
probably seen that dreadful man. Will he have if only a little
mercy on us when we fall into his hands?
Husband. I tell you truthfully that none of your ancestors
ever heard of a mercy like that. It is called the gallows.
Baron. We must defend ourselves as best we can.
Prince. Two words with you in private. All that is good
for the common people, but between ourselves it is obvious
that we cannot resist. You have been chosen leader, and there-
fore it is your business to open negotiations.
Husband {turning to the crowd). Who mentions surrender
will be punished by death.
Baron, Count, Prince (all together). Who mentions surrender
will be punished by death.
Although Henryk knows that his doom is close upon
him, he still delights in his lordship. The sinking sun,
as he watches it from the towers of the fort, seems to
him the fiery and fit ending to his life in the wild glory
of which he had always dreamt.
I stand here on the boundaries of the eternal sleep, the
leader of all those who yesterday were my equals.
And on these words breaks once more the avenger
of that past from which the husband and father cannot
escape, the witness to his eternal failure--the blind boy.
He has heard without fear or interest the sounds of the
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? The Undivine Comedy 129
battle raging round the walls of the fortress. His heart
is not with outer things, it is in his visions: and it is
there that the delicately strung soul, incapable of coping
with the tempests of the world, will take refuge1.
Everything about this unhappy child is weak. Even
his religion, notes Klaczko, is not his mother's deep
piety. It partakes more of the nature of his father's
poetizing, a thin, sentimental stream from which he can
draw no strength either for himself or a battling world3.
His very end is pointless. He falls a useless sacrifice
to a random shot'.
He leads Henryk into the subterranean caverns of
the fortress.
Do you not hear their voices, do you not see their forms?
Husband. There is the silence of the grave, and the torch
lights but a few steps before us.
George. Ever nearer, ever clearer, they come from under
the narrow vaults.
Husband. In your madness is my curse. You are mad,
child: and you are destroying my strength at the moment I
most need it.
George. I see their pale forms assembling for the dreadful
judgment. The prisoner advances. He has wrung his hands.
Husband. Who is he?
George. Oh, father, father!
Choir. Because thou hast loved nought, because thou hast
worshipped nought but thyself, thou art damned--damned for
all eternity.
The eyes of the child then see the vision of Henryk
being tortured.
"I hear your groans," cries he, falling on his knees at his
father's feet. "Father, forgive me. In the middle of the night
my mother came to me and bade me "--He faints.
Husband. Only this was wanting. My own child has led
me to the threshold of hell. Marya! Inexorable spirit! There
begins the eternity of torments and of darkness. I must still
fight with men. Afterwards the eternal war.
1 J. Klaczko, Le Polte Anonyme de la Pologne. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.
G.
9
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? 130 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
He leaves the vaults, while the spirit voices wail
after him:
Because thou hast loved nought, worshipped nought save
thyself, thou art damned--damned for all eternity.
The starving inhabitants of the besieged fortress
throng round the leader, clamouring to him to make
terms. The godfather, who has no mind to face ex-
tremities, has taken upon himself to treat with the
revolutionaries.
All my life has been a true citizen's, and I do not heed your
reproaches, Henryk. If I have undertaken the office of envoy,
it is because I understand my century and know how to appre-
ciate its worth.
Turning to the crowd, the baron, the prince and the
rest of them who are all prepared to save their skins by
going over to Pankracy, he tells them: "The great man
who has sent me promises your lives on the condition
that you join him and acknowledge the tendency of the
age. "
"We do acknowledge it," they cry. Yet it wants
only a few words from Henryk, whose role is that of
the glorious champion who will die but not yield, and
the appearance of an armed band of his soldiers, and
once more the waverers are more or less with him again.
For the moment the enemy is driven off: but it is with
the last shots of the defenders. Henryk's servant comes
to tell him that there is no more powder, no more bullets.
"Then bring me my son," says Henryk, "that I may em-
brace him once again. "
The servant leads in the blind boy.
Come, son. Put your hand in mine. Touch my lips with
your forehead. Your mother's forehead was once as white and
soft.
George. I heard her voice to-day, and she said: "This
evening thou shalt be sitting with me. "
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? The Undivine Comedy 131
/
Husband. Did she so much as mention my name?
George. She said: "This evening I expect my son. "
Husband (aside). Will my strength fail me at the end of
the road? Oh, God, permit it not! For one moment of courage
Thou shalt have me as Thy prisoner for all eternity. (Aloud)
Oh, son, forgive me that I gave you life. You will forget me
among the angelic choirs. Oh, George, George, oh, my son!
A shot resounds, and George lies dead at his father's
feet. The father seizes his sword and, shouting to his
men, rushes into the hopeless combat. The enemy are
in the castle. Henryk's followers are slain: the remain-
ing defenders of the fortress fall on their knees before
the victor, whining for mercy. Pankracy's soldiers run
through the castle, looking for Henryk. Covered with
blood, he stands on the angle of the bastion that over-
hangs the precipice.
I see it all black, floating towards me in spaceless tracts
of darkness, my eternity without shores, without end, and in
its midst God as a sun that shines eternally--and lights nothing.
(He takes a step forward? ) They are running. They have seen
me.
And with the words: "Jesus, Mary ! "--on his lips
the romantic call to battle of his ancestors rather than
the last prayer of the departing soul--crying, " Poetry,
be thou cursed by me as I shall be cursed for all eter-
nity," with his arms flung out as the swimmer about to
take his plunge, he leaps into the abyss.
Pankracy is left apparently the conqueror of the field.
He sits in judgment in the castle court, condemning
to death each wretched survivor of the aristocrats as
they appear before him in chains, in a scene that is the
reflection of the revolutionary tribunals of the French
Revolution. He then leads Leonard to the bastions and,
standing on the spot where Henryk perished, points to
the world he has won.
9--2
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? 132 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Gaze on those vast tracts. I must people those deserts,
tunnel through those rocks, divide out land to each man.
Leonard. The god of liberty will give us strength.
Pankracy. Why do you speak of God? It is slippery here
from human blood. Whose blood is it? We are alone, and it
seems to me as if some third were here.
For now the hour of his defeat is upon him also.
He points to the mountains, and cries in terror:
See you there on high--on high?
Leonard. I see over the rugged mountain peak a drooping
cloud in which the rays of the sun are going out.
Pankracy. A terrible sign is flaming over it. Women and
children have babbled fables that He shall thus appear, but
not until the last day.
Leonard. Who?
Pankracy. Like a pillar of snow-white brilliance He stands
above the precipices. Both hands lean on a cross as an
avenger's on his sword. Of woven thunderbolts is His crown
of thorns. From the lightning of that look he must die who
lives. Lay your hands on my eyes. Smother my eyeballs with
your fists. Part me from that look which shatters me to dust.
Your hands are transparent as water--transparent as glass--
transparent as air. 1 see still.
Leonard. Lean on me.
Pankracy. Give me if only a crumb of darkness.
Leonard. Oh, my master!
Pankracy. Darkness--darkness!
Leonard. Hey, citizens! brothers! democrats! Help, help,
help!
Pankracy. Galilaee, vicisti! (He falls into Leonard's arms
and expires? )
So ends this powerful and painful drama--ruin and
failure are all that is left in a world whence every
known landmark has been swept away. Krasinski dis-
cerned no hope for the future in either of the two hostile
principles between which he saw mankind divided. He
beheld a truth greater than either, and above both1.
Therefore the leader of a cause that held no germ of life
1 Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
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? The Undivine Comedy 133
in its bosom dies in a final act of despair. Therefore
the leader of the opposing cause, at the moment of a
triumph that could not endure because he had nothing
to give the human race in the place of what he had taken
from it, is struck down, witness to a power that had
conquered his. And yet the final, scathing apparition
of the Crucified, terrible to the eyes of the man who had
denied Him, casting a light more lurid than that of the
blood-red sunset over a ruined world, does not remove
that impression of chaos, of universal desolation upon
which The Undivine Comedy closes. Christ here appears
an image of terror: an avenger, not a saviour. Still the
fact that the drama ends with that last testimony to His
triumph holds the link that would otherwise be hard
to find between the Undivine Comedy and Krasinski's
subsequent work--Dawn, the Psalms of the Future,
Resurrecturis--where the weariness and pessimism of
the Anonymous Poet's first great masterpiece are un-
known.
"This poem," said Mickiewicz, "is the cry of des-
pair of a man of genius who recognizes the greatness,
the difficulty of social questions "; without being able
to solve them1. At the moment that Krasinski wrote
The Undivine Comedy socialistic dreams were widespread
among the Polish youth, who saw in some universal
social convulsion the only hope for their nation in the
terrible conditions under which she was then labouring.
Krasinski never shrank from boldly proclaiming what
he deemed a salutary truth, however unwelcome: and
thus in the midst of Utopian theories were heard the
warning accents of an Undivine Comedy*. Years after
1 Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
1 J. Klaczko, Le Poite Anonyme de la Pologne.
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? 134 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
it came out, with the strange impersonality of one who
had spoken sinister prophecies because he was con-
strained to speak them, Krasinski in letters to friends
pointed to the European revolutions through which he
lived as the fulfilment of what he had foretold in his
youth1. Klaczko has finely said that The Undivine
Comedy is:
a farewell rather than a greetingaddressedby thepoettohumani-
tarian inspirations, a strong protest against the fatal illusion
of the age which believes it can regenerate humanity without
having first regenerated man, and establish universal right
without having first strengthened the individual in his duties3.
1 Krasinski seldom in his correspondence alludes to his works, and
when he does so it is almost exclusively under their moral and national
aspect.
