How extraordinarily sensitive he was to the approval
or disapproval of his father may be gathered from his
answer to the latter after Wincenty Krasinski, having
heard that his son had fought a duel, had written to
him in anger.
or disapproval of his father may be gathered from his
answer to the latter after Wincenty Krasinski, having
heard that his son had fought a duel, had written to
him in anger.
Poland - 1919 - Krasinski - Anonymous Poet of Poland
handle.
net/2027/wu.
89102083045 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-us-google
? The Initiation
11
his senior, had already entered into his exile in Russia.
His words and movements were under the supervision
of the Russian police ; his genius was held in shackles;
and yet he wrote his Konrad Wallenrod. Using the
figure of the struggle of Lithuania against the Teutonic
Knights he told a tale, understood by every Pole who
read it, of the vengeance to which an oppressed nation
may be forcedl. The poem was given to young Kra-
sinski by a cousin. He too was in his turn to write, on
widely different lines, of the son of a conquered race
preparing the destruction of the victor. But neither he
nor those around him could have guessed that the boy
of brilliant intellect, indeed, but with no capacity for
writing poetry, who read with ecstasy Mickiewicz's
splendid verse set against a great patriotic theme, was
to stand with the author of Konrad Wallenrod as one
of the trinity of Poland's most inspired poets. Knowing
as we do that the basis of Krasinski's future teaching
was the abjuration of revenge and hatred it is instruc-
tive to note how, when a youth, lurid Byronic avengers,
albeit not Byron but Walter Scott was Krasinski's
first love, always took his fancy. He chose them for
the heroes of his own novels : and, speaking of Konrad
Wallenrod to his father, he records the fascination
exercised upon him by the patriot whose weapons are
those of treachery and undying hatred. With the sadly
ripe experience of the Polish boy living under a foreign
yoke, he adds: "All the poem breathes grief and sad-
ness, the grief that is so appropriate to us2. "
In after years, when circumstances had not only
driven him from his home, but robbed it of all joy for
1 See my Adam Mickiewicz, Dent, 1911.
2 J. Kallenbach, op. tit.
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? 12 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
such short periods as he ever unwillingly returned to it,
Krasinski looked back yearningly to those hours of his
youth, the last before the catastrophe struck his life.
Gaszynski was his frequent visitor. The two talked
endlessly in Krasinski's room, or hunted, or roamed the
countryside round Opinogora. The "pipe era": so
Krasinski in his later letters to Gaszynski fondly calls
this part of his life from a joke they shared together.
Forbidden by his father to smoke, Zygmunt enjoyed a
pipe on the sly with Gaszynski till the General gave in;
when Gaszynski, finding Krasinski celebrating the
victory by smoking like a chimney, scrawled on the
mantelpiece in high glee : " Hail, era of the pipe! "
The end of 1828 saw Krasinski in a University
scrape, of a rather mild description, though it was taken
very seriously by the authorities. H eaded by K rasinski's
friend, Leo iaabienskL a band of youths stamped down
one of the professors to mark their disapproval of the
public reprimand of a student. Krasinski was foremost
among the ringleaders, and was sent to prison for two
days. Thence he scrawled on his blotting-paper re-
pentant letters to his father, promising that he would
never do such a thing again. "Please forgive me," he
writes in a very chastened frame of mind: "I solemnly
swear that I will keep my given word1. "
With this, our last, glimpse of a boyhood free from
tragedy, we may close the account of Krasinski's early
years. If we have dwelt somewhat at length upon their
influences and circumstances, it is because these were
of extraordinary significance to his subsequent history,
and because, at the same time, the character that his
life shows us is in strange--in noble--contradiction to
1 J. Kallenbach, op. tit.
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? The Initiation
13
many of them. The paradox is part of the complex
personality of Zygmunt Krasinski.
Those national events were now going forward
which changed the whole tenor of Krasinski's life, and
precipitated his country into the Rising and its long
and mournful sequel. The promises given by Alexan-
der I had fallen to the ground. The history of the
Kingdom of Poland had resolved itself into one
desperate struggle on the part of the Poles to preserve
their guaranteed rights. In 1825 Alexander died. He
had begun his career as a liberal ruler and the friend of
Poland. He ended it as a weak reactionary who had
violated the liberties that he had solemnly pledged
himself to respect. On his death the famous Decem-
brist rising broke out in Petersburg. The Russian
Liberals--those friends of Mickiewicz whose fate he
has mourned in one of the most tragic of his poems--
died on the gallows or were sent to the mines.
The Russian government then discovered that in
touch with the Russian Liberals there existed a
patriotic society in Poland, whose object was the
restoration of Polish independence. The leaders were
sent to join the numbers of their fellow-Poles who were
already languishing in the prisons: and Nicholas I
demanded their trial by the Senate of the Polish Diet.
They were brought before this tribunal. Bielinski
presided over it, and among its members sat Wincenty
Krasinski.
The Polish court was between two most difficult
alternatives. It must either obey the will of the Tsar
and condemn to death men who had been guilty of no
crime except the desire of their national restoration;
or it must declare the innocence of the accused, and
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? 14 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
thereby, by placing the nation in direct opposition to
the Tsar, jeopardize the very existence of the Kingdom,
where conditions were by now unworkable and strained
to the last point. It was manifestly impossible for a
Polish tribunal to brand as criminals Poles whose only
aim had been that of Polish independence. After a long
and intricate process, those who were convicted of
actual knowledge of the Russian Decembrist plot were
condemned to varying terms of imprisonment. The
remaining members of the patriotic association, amidst
the acclamations of the whole nation, were liberated.
One, and only one, member of the court voted for
the death sentence. That man was the father of
Zygmunt Krasinski. Opinions differ as to his motives.
Some say that he yielded to the dictates of his ambitious
and time-serving nature, and was determined to stand
well with the Tsar. Again, his friends maintain that he
saw the danger of Poland irrevocably losing that which
was still hers to lose if she and the Tsar came to
conflict on this matter. But, whichever of these judg-
ments be correct, the immediate result of his conduct
was a storm of execration that gathered against him.
Many of those who had been his best friends and the
most habitual intimates of his house would never set
foot again in the Krasinski palace.
The decision of the tribunal was given in the end
of 1828. In March, 1829, gielinski, who had been its
president, died. All Warsaw determined to honour him
by following his coffin to the grave. The funeral in
fact was to be a great national demonstration. The
University authorities, fearing a scene at this highly
delicate and critical moment, gave orders that the
students should not attend the obsequies, but should be
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? The Initiation
15
present at the lectures as usual. When the day came,
every student--with one exception--followed the bier
of the dead patriot, and, with wild enthusiasm, rushed
upon the coffin and tore pieces from the pall as relics.
The lecture halls were empty--still with the exception
of one student. That student was Zygmunt Krasinski.
I n obedience to his father's command, the unhappy boy,
in dumb despair and rage, sat alone in the class-room,
while all his compatriots mourned at the grave of the
man who had defended Poland. It seems difficult to
conceive how a father, who was most fondly attached
to his son, could have had the cruelty to expose an
abnormally sensitive and intensely patriotic boy to such
a position. It is said that his vanity, always his master-
passion, was pricked by the knowledge of the unpopu-
larity that he had brought upon himself, and that he
was in consequence resolved to brave the opinions of
his countrymen1.
On the following day Zygmunt went to the lectures
as usual. There was never any lack of physical courage
in his character, and he showed no outward sign of the
mortal dread that must have filled his soul. As he
entered the class-room, crowded not only by students
but also by a public audience, a murmur of disapproba-
tion greeted him, only silenced by the entrance of
the professor. It must be remembered that it was a
time of great national tension when patriotic ardour,
especially among the young men, ran at fever heat. In
the eyes of these boy companions of Krasinski, many
of whom in less than two years were to fall fighting for
Poland, who, moreover, naturally could not enter into
1 Count Stanistaw Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski, Cracow, 1892
(Polish).
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? 16 The A nonymous Poet of Poland
the extraordinarily difficult situation in which Krasin-
ski was placed, both father and son were equally some-
thing like renegades to the Polish cause. When the
lecture was concluded, Zygmunt was set upon by his
fellow-students and mobbed. The ringleader who tore
from Krasinski's uniform the badge of the University
as one unworthy to bear it was his own friend, tubien-
ski. Konstanty Gaszynski, and in a further riot of
the kind that occurred another Konstanty, Danielewicz,,
stood by Zygmunt's side and stoutly defended the deli-
cate, undersized boy.
These scenes blasted the youth of Zygmunt
Krasinski. They were his baptism of fire. Never, in
all his after life, did he outlive their suffering and dis-
grace. Years later he told the story in accents of
passionate pain in his Unfinished Poem : and obviously
he could only bring himself to lift the veil for that once
in order to render a tribute of gratitude and affection to
Danielewicz, who had died in his arms. He repaid the
intervention of Danielewicz by a life-long love. On the
other hand when, two years afterwards, Lubienski
approached Krasinski in Switzerland with some attempt
at a renewal of friendship, Krasinski could neither
forgive him orpronounce his name except with loathing1.
Matters were patched up with the other youths who
had taken part in the demonstration against him when,
a few days after the original incident, Krasinski in the
University hall called upon them to prove that he was
a traitor to Bielinski's memory. But on the same
1 I shall return to this meeting of the two in Switzerland, as it gave rise
to a correspondence on the subject between Krasinski and Reeve that
throws very important light on the psychology of Krasinski and of his
Iridion.
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? The Initiation
17
occasion he publicly branded as a liar -Lubienski, who
had added to his original insult aspersions on Krasin-
ski's patriotism, and he then and there challenged him
to a duel. Brodzinski. the professor of Polish literature
and the father of its romantic revival, was hurriedly
summoned to the hall. By his temperate and kindly
persuasions, he got the two to the point of shaking
hands: but the reconciliation was only perfunctory, and
the deadly offence remained unwiped out in Krasinski's
mind. Duelling was against the rules of the Univer-
sity. For this cause, and also, as is clear from the
correspondence between the Rector of the University
and General Krasinski, because the authorities foresaw
that the position of the excitable, hotheaded boy among
his fellow-students would lead to endless difficulties,
Wincenty Krasinski was requested to remove Zygmunt
privately from the University for a year1. The father
on his side realized that his son's life in his own city
had become unlivable, and he decided to send him to
complete his studies in Geneva. The boy spent the
last months of his stay in his country--the last in which
that country was to be his home--between Warsaw and
Opinog6ra, writing feverishly to distract thought. The
tales and historical romances moulded on Scott that he
then wrote were published the following year. One of
them at least--Wiadystaw Herman--is somewhat
above the run of an ordinary boy's similar attempts;
but as Krasinski, when past early youth, never followed
up this line we need not linger on these first writings.
In the autumn of 1829 he left Poland. He was
never to see his beloved country again except as a
conquered province, given over to the fate of the
1 The correspondence is given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
G.
2
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? 18 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
vanquished. He was sent abroad with a sort of tutor,
Jakubowski, whom in their letters Krasinski and Henry-
Reeve call Jacky. Unable to tear himself away from
his son until the last moment possible, Wincenty
Krasinski went with the travellers for some part of the
way. Father and son then took farewell of each other,
separating under painful circumstances, in deep affection.
"The parting in 1829 was a sad one," writes Dr Kal-
lenbach: "but the meeting in 1832 was to be still
more bitter and tragic beyond all expression1. "
1 Op. cit.
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? CHAPTER II
THE FIRST EXILE
(1829-1830)
The homesick boy wrote sheaves ofletters to his father
and to the friends he had left in Poland, at every stage
of his journey. His imagination was enthralled by his
first sight of the Lake of Geneva: but, writes he to his
father, "Poland with her sandy stretches stood out to
me in far more alluring colours than the Swiss moun-
tains, and I would not give up the memory of the pond
at Opinog6ra for the Lake of Geneva1. " To Gaszynski
he pours out the rapture of a poet at the spectacle of
the autumn sunset over the lake; yet in his description
of the waves curling like fiery serpents, of the deep
blue lapis lazuli where the shadow of the mountains
fell upon the water, he pauses to note a "lonely pine,
reminding me of Poland. " "My eyes are fastened on
Leman," he ends his letter, "but my heart sighs for
Poland2. "
With his tutor, Zygmunt settled down in a pension,
kept by a widow, the age and undecorative aspect of
whose daughters displeased him greatly. His landlady,
who was related to the principal families in Geneva,
made haste to introduce him to Swiss society. It is
amusing to read that he was considerably annoyed by
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski, Vol. I, Lw6w, 1882. To Konstanty
Gaszynski. Geneva, 1829 (Polish).
2--2
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? 20 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
the bombardment of ignorant questions put to him by
his new acquaintances as to whether, says Dr Kallen-
bach, "this or that were known in Poland" : an ordeal
with which the Polish visitor in present-day England
has good reason to sympathize. Two days after his
arrival in Geneva Krasinski met at a party a tall, fair
English boy, with the face of a beautiful girl. "It, is
difficult to judge of him at first sight," Zygmunt
cautiously tells his father1: for, curiously enough,
Krasinski, who passionately loved, never lost his heart
at the outset, but surveyed the objects of his future
adoration rather coldly and critically. The English boy
was Henry Reeve, the most beloved companion of
Krasinski's youth.
In these early days Krasinski sorely missed his
father, home and friends. He wrote to his father his
boyish resolves to keep straight; recounted to him the
details of his new life; told him of his sadness at being
parted from him. "Except Poland, except you, except
Warsaw, there is nothing for me in the world2. " But
for all that there is, as CojinL. . Tarnowski observes,
already a reserve in the son's letters3. On one subject
he cannot speak: and Dr Kallenbach notices that his
effusions to his father are more those of a pupil to a
master, of whom he stands in some fear, than of a son
on terms of perfect ease and affection with a parent.
How extraordinarily sensitive he was to the approval
or disapproval of his father may be gathered from his
answer to the latter after Wincenty Krasinski, having
heard that his son had fought a duel, had written to
him in anger.
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, op. cit. 2 Ibid.
3 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? The First Exile 21
"Picturing to myself your uneasiness," replies Zygmunt, "I
sought in vain for any relief to my sadness, and could not sit
down in peace to my writing. I read a book, but did not
understand either the words or the sense. Even your portrait
hanging above my head looked changed to me. I reached
such a point that I dared not look at it. Although I was
entirely innocent, my father's anger tore my heart cruelly.
The distance that divides us, your ill health, the uncertainty
whether you would believe my words. . . and a thousand thoughts
coursing uninterruptedly through my mind made a most painful
impression upon my soul1. "
Although Krasinski yearned with homesickness
towards a country which draws those who are hers with
a spell peculiar to herself, although he passed lonely
hours cut off from his friends and relations in Poland
by a silence increasing with the difficulties of the times,
his first year at Geneva held many compensations. The
memory of what had exiled him from his country was,
it is true, burnt into his soul; his father had already
taken the first steps on the road that severed him morally
for ever from his son; but they were only the first steps,
and at present Zygmunt could not have foreseen what
was close upon him. The boy worked hard at his studies.
He did not take the regular University course, but
chose his own subjects; philosophy, political economy,
jurisprudence, and Roman history. The Roman history
lectures were given by Professor _RqssL_ Zygmunt
followed them with close attention: and it was upon
them that at a later period he built the splendid
colouring of Iridion. He made a special study of French
and devoted himself with ardour to that of English;
took up mathematics with the idea of learning military
tactics, and, in the amateur fashion of his epoch, dabbled
with music. His capacities for work were, according to
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, op. cit.
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? 22 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Dr Kallenbach, quite unusual1. He read enormously,
and now laid the stores of his profound after-knowledge.
In the afternoons he went for rides in the beautiful
neighbourhood of Geneva, or sailed on the lake with
young Reeve and a Polish youth, Au^ost_Zamojsk4-.
The evenings were often broken into by dinners, soirees,
dances. The undiluted Geneva society appears from
Krasinski's descriptions to have been decidedly dull.
Everyone knew each other too well, and a stiff con-
ventionality reigned in the salons. However, the strong
cosmopolitan element brought in some variety. The
foreign visitors were chiefly English: and, to an English
biographer of the Anonymous Poet of Poland, it is grati-
fying to record that the favoured two to whom the
heart of the sad and lonely boy went out in special
manner, during the first year that he spent alone in a
strange country, were an English boy and an English
girl.
Henry Reeve, the future editor of The Edinburgh,
Review, the political leader writer during many years
for The Times, was in 1829 living with his mother in
Geneva, finishing his education. In those days he was
romantic, poetical, enthusiastic even as Krasinski him-
self. The two became inseparable. To Henry Reeve
not only the student of Krasinski, but the whole Polish
nation, must ever owe a debt of gratitude. The dis-
covery in 1892 of the correspondence between Krasinski
and Reeve, consisting of a hundred and sixty-three
letters, mainly Krasinski's, which range from the early
summer of 1830 to the spring of 1838, has thrown in-
valuable light upon a period of the poet's life that is of
the highest psychological importance, and of which much
1 Op. cit.
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? The First Exile
23
hitherto had been left to conjecture. After the first
affectionate relations of their youth, Krasinski and
Reeve dropped entirely out of each other's lives1. But
more than forty years after Krasinski had left this earth
a Polish youth, a stranger--thus Dr Kallenbach de-
scribes the scene2--found his way to the country home
of Henry Reeve, then in extreme old age. Reeve saw
before him a young Pole whose face seemed vaguely
familiar. It was the grandson of the gifted boy, with
the strangely tragic history, whom Reeve had loved
when himself young. The old man handed over to
Count Adam Krasinski a bulky packet, containing not
only his and Krasinski's letters, but also some then un-
known literary fragments of Krasinski's French prose
that the poet had sent him directly*Mey were written*.
All these were edited and published with an illuminating
introduction by Dr Kallenbach in 1902.
From these letters it is apparent that during the
years in Geneva Krasinski and Reeve were like
brothers. They boated and rode and walked together;
shared every confidence; discussed literature, philo-
sophy, and politics; read and criticized each other's
literary productions; and sighed in company over the
respective ladies of their affections.
For Krasinski fell in love with an English girl, a
certain Henrietta Willan. Krasinski, the only son and
1 But that Krasinski spoke often and with strong affection of Reeve we
know from a letter that the poet's wife wrote after his death to Reeve, in
reply to the words of condolence that the latter had addressed on his loss
to Count Ladislas Zamojski, one of Krasinski's greatest admirers. John
Knox Laughton, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve,
London, 1898.
2 See his Preface to Correspondance de Sigismond Krasinski et de
Henry Reeve, Paris, 1902.
3 /did.
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? 24 ? The Anonymous Poet of Poland
heir of a great Polish magnate, could never hope to
obtain his father's consent to marriage with a young
Englishwoman of no standing. Both he and Henrietta
knew this well, but they promised each other endless
attachment. Under the inspiration of his love Krasinski
poured out French compositions, written for Henrietta,
given to Reeve, and only known to Poland after they
had lain seventy years in English keeping.
These semi-autobiographical pieces, a fragment of
a journal, Krasinski calls them, or a fragment of a
dream, are impregnated with the exaltation of a boy
in love. They contain certain characteristics that
strongly illustrate the psychology of Krasinski. It was
but natural that the imagination of a highly-strung boy
who had been born after a great political crime had
been inflicted on his country, and who had been brought
up with the results of that crime as a part of his daily
life, should occupy itself with lurid scenes of cataclysm
and bloodshed. These figure largely in the passages
he wrote for Henrietta, and to this nightmare style he
returns much later in his Polish prose poems: The
Dream of Cesara and A Legend. In these early pro-
ductions the vision of Henrietta is always there, but
it is never far away from the thought of his country.
So, in after life, is the image of the woman for whom
Krasinski wrote his love poems, intimately, inseparably,
united to a patriot's passion. Then, too, Krasinski's
sentiment for the English girl was ethereal and un-
practical, the germ of that idealization of human love
that gave Dawn to the Polish nation.
"I did not love her lips but her smile," writes the young
lover, "not her body but her immortal soul. I neither saw her
body nor mine," he continues, speaking of their reunion after
death, "but I felt that she was near me. We understood each
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? The First Exile
25
other better than on earth. All our beautiful thoughts, all our
sublime feelings, formed one chain that bound us together and
kept us near each other. Our memories stood to us in the
place of hope, for we were in a perfect beatitude. Her soul
mingled with mine. " {Fragment d'un Journal. March 24,1830. )
The Willan family left for England in the spring of
1830. Krasinski remained behind in a youthful lover's
despair. He relieved his feelings by the exchange of
letters with Henrietta and by literary composition.
"Two days after her departure ": "Five days after her
departure, at ten, eleven, twelve at night" : so he heads
the writings in which he deplores his solitude without
her. He dreams of fighting for freedom in the Polish
ranks, with her face before his eyes, or he chooses an
eternity of woe rather than be divided from her beyond
the grave. He sat in his room, overlooking the magni-
ficent panorama of the Lake of Geneva, covering reams
of paper by the light of two candles till far into the
night1. He wrote chiefly in French--sketches, me-
mories, reflections--but also short pieces in his native
language which were printed in the Polish paper of
which Gaszynski was sub-editor. It is a striking fact
that prophecies of woe and struggle, strangely prescient
of the Rising that the Polish nation was to see before
the year was out, repeat themselves again and again in
Krasinski's writings at this time. There is also the
sense not only of impending disaster, but of personal
frustration. No doubt we can find one reason in the
ever rankling wound of the blow that had befallen
Krasinski before he left his country. Furthermore, he
must have lived, if scarcely consciously to himself, under
a weight of oppression in those days when it was obvious
that the tension between the Kingdom of Poland and
1 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 26 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Nicholas I was bound to end in some sort of explosion.
But it must also be taken into account that now, like
every youth of the epoch, Krasinski was becoming
strongly affected by Byron.
It is a curious anomaly in Krasinski's history that
he who was to be one of the greatest of his nation's
poets, who read poetry with passion, was so far with-
out the instinct for self-expression in verse native to
every poetical boy or girl. While in Geneva he fell
under the spell of the English romantic poets. He was
fascinated by Southey, Campbell, Moore--whose name
he invariably spells wrongly--and Keats. With enthu-
siasm he read Shakspeare under Reeve's auspices. "If
it were not for poetry," he tells his father, "I don't
know what a man would do in this world, and how he
could live, surrounded only by cold reality1. " Yet, for
all the hours that, consumed by literary ambition, he
spent composing, he seems hardly to have even at-
tempted to write poetry, and when he did he failed.
Romantic, too, as were the tendencies of Krasinski's
mind, he possessed even when a boy--he kept it through
life--a curiously clear vision and accurate power of
observation.
His sarcastic descriptions of the Geneva salons are,
as Dr Kallenbach notes, borne out in every detail by
the accounts of other frequenters of the same society.
For all his dreams, Krasinski never lived with his head
in the clouds. If we may be permitted the expression,
he was always "all there. " His interest in politics,
inevitable in a Pole ever awaiting the turn of events
that would affect his country, was already strong. All
manner of subjects attracted his attention: and among
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, op. cit.
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? The First Exile
27
his French essays written in his first summer at Geneva
is an argument for and against the advisability of a
state clergy.
In the summer of 1830 Reeve and his mother left
Geneva for the vacation. Krasinski devoted his even-
ings to solitary rambles, ending in a garden near the
house in which Henrietta Willan had lived. In this spot,
gazing on the lake at his feet and at the snowy peaks
reddening to the setting sun, he wrote down the poetic
fancies with which his head was filled. His reflections
were faithfully handed on to Reeve: and now began
the eight years' correspondence between the two friends.
Had Krasinski left no line of poetry behind him, he
would still have lived in the literature of Poland by the
depth of thought, the beauty of expression, in the
several hundred of his letters that have as yet been
published. As regards literary power, his letters to
Reeve naturally cannot be compared with those to
Gaszynski, Sottan and his other Polish correspondents.
In the former Krasinski is writing in a foreign language,
admirably as he manipulated it. The greater part of
them were penned in early youth before he had reached
either the maturity of his genius or the full development
of his leading idea. But as an index to his character--
that strangely complicated, contradictory and most
appealing character--as the illustration of a poet and
philosopher's mental evolution, the letters to Reeve are
a priceless asset to the Krasinski student. They are
written in French with, at times, an excursion into an
English so peculiar that we can only describe it as the
reverse of conversational. This interchange of ideas
between two clever and enthusiastic boys is of course
largely coloured with the romanticism of the early
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? 28
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
thirties when Byron, Shelley and Keats were the idols
of the hour. It shows a certain amount of youthful
exaggeration, here and there boyish folly, a distinct
tinge of the posing that was then the fashion. But, as
Dr Kallenbach bids us notice, side by side with the
often callow sentiments of the earlier portion of the
correspondence, may be found those deep reflections
that were to make of Krasinski one of the most pro-
found and truest thinkers of his nation1. The first
letters were written before tragedy and shame had
changed a boy's heart, while he still played with emotion
and, to a certain extent, caressed a Byronic grief. After
the Rising of 1830 had broken out, bringing upon the
young Pole its double weight of national and private
anguish, the tone of the letters changes. They are no
longer those of a morbid and romantic boy who had
been reading a good deal of Byron, but of one whose
youth was immersed in an abyss of suffering where he
found his manhood. Studying these self-revelations of
an over sensitive and highly pitched nature, we see the
young Krasinski penetrating at the outset of life with
an almost startling acuteness into the mysteries of pain
and the spiritual psychology of conflict. That insight
is of itself a greater proof of the deep waters through
which his soul passed than even those many passages
in which he directly confides the details of his grief into
the ears of those he loved.
The letters to Reeve open, as we should expect,
with lamentations for Henrietta Willan's absence.
Krasinski complains that the peaceful scenery of the
Swiss lakes ill accords with the mood of two lovers:
1 J. Kallenbach, Preface. Correspondance de Sigismond Krasinski et
de Henry Reeve.
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? The First Exile
29
for Reeve was more or less enamoured of a Swiss
girl, Constance Sautter.
"I must tell you that the day before yesterday I was in
such a state of distress, of disgust"--Krasinski underlines his
English words--" boredom, melancholy, that life weighed on
me more than ever and, for the first time, the degrading idea
came to me of finishing with this world which has brought me
but few joys, taken from me as soon as I felt them. It was the
first time in my life that I have had the idea of suicide, so I
marked it down in my pocket-book. But I soon repulsed with
disdain that thought which can sometimes rise in a delirious
brain, but which can never be carried out except by a cowardly
heart that lacks nobility. .
"The night before last, being unable to close my eyes, I
read the work of M. Boissier, ' Shall we find them in a better
world? ' and I found there consolation, life and hope, though
the style is dry and dusty--and not one grain of poetry. When
I have finished the romance that is occupying me at present,
I shall write a work like it in Polish, but adding to it all the
charms of imagination and poetry that my weak mind can put
together--and I shall dedicate it to Her who inspired me with
it.
? The Initiation
11
his senior, had already entered into his exile in Russia.
His words and movements were under the supervision
of the Russian police ; his genius was held in shackles;
and yet he wrote his Konrad Wallenrod. Using the
figure of the struggle of Lithuania against the Teutonic
Knights he told a tale, understood by every Pole who
read it, of the vengeance to which an oppressed nation
may be forcedl. The poem was given to young Kra-
sinski by a cousin. He too was in his turn to write, on
widely different lines, of the son of a conquered race
preparing the destruction of the victor. But neither he
nor those around him could have guessed that the boy
of brilliant intellect, indeed, but with no capacity for
writing poetry, who read with ecstasy Mickiewicz's
splendid verse set against a great patriotic theme, was
to stand with the author of Konrad Wallenrod as one
of the trinity of Poland's most inspired poets. Knowing
as we do that the basis of Krasinski's future teaching
was the abjuration of revenge and hatred it is instruc-
tive to note how, when a youth, lurid Byronic avengers,
albeit not Byron but Walter Scott was Krasinski's
first love, always took his fancy. He chose them for
the heroes of his own novels : and, speaking of Konrad
Wallenrod to his father, he records the fascination
exercised upon him by the patriot whose weapons are
those of treachery and undying hatred. With the sadly
ripe experience of the Polish boy living under a foreign
yoke, he adds: "All the poem breathes grief and sad-
ness, the grief that is so appropriate to us2. "
In after years, when circumstances had not only
driven him from his home, but robbed it of all joy for
1 See my Adam Mickiewicz, Dent, 1911.
2 J. Kallenbach, op. tit.
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? 12 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
such short periods as he ever unwillingly returned to it,
Krasinski looked back yearningly to those hours of his
youth, the last before the catastrophe struck his life.
Gaszynski was his frequent visitor. The two talked
endlessly in Krasinski's room, or hunted, or roamed the
countryside round Opinogora. The "pipe era": so
Krasinski in his later letters to Gaszynski fondly calls
this part of his life from a joke they shared together.
Forbidden by his father to smoke, Zygmunt enjoyed a
pipe on the sly with Gaszynski till the General gave in;
when Gaszynski, finding Krasinski celebrating the
victory by smoking like a chimney, scrawled on the
mantelpiece in high glee : " Hail, era of the pipe! "
The end of 1828 saw Krasinski in a University
scrape, of a rather mild description, though it was taken
very seriously by the authorities. H eaded by K rasinski's
friend, Leo iaabienskL a band of youths stamped down
one of the professors to mark their disapproval of the
public reprimand of a student. Krasinski was foremost
among the ringleaders, and was sent to prison for two
days. Thence he scrawled on his blotting-paper re-
pentant letters to his father, promising that he would
never do such a thing again. "Please forgive me," he
writes in a very chastened frame of mind: "I solemnly
swear that I will keep my given word1. "
With this, our last, glimpse of a boyhood free from
tragedy, we may close the account of Krasinski's early
years. If we have dwelt somewhat at length upon their
influences and circumstances, it is because these were
of extraordinary significance to his subsequent history,
and because, at the same time, the character that his
life shows us is in strange--in noble--contradiction to
1 J. Kallenbach, op. tit.
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? The Initiation
13
many of them. The paradox is part of the complex
personality of Zygmunt Krasinski.
Those national events were now going forward
which changed the whole tenor of Krasinski's life, and
precipitated his country into the Rising and its long
and mournful sequel. The promises given by Alexan-
der I had fallen to the ground. The history of the
Kingdom of Poland had resolved itself into one
desperate struggle on the part of the Poles to preserve
their guaranteed rights. In 1825 Alexander died. He
had begun his career as a liberal ruler and the friend of
Poland. He ended it as a weak reactionary who had
violated the liberties that he had solemnly pledged
himself to respect. On his death the famous Decem-
brist rising broke out in Petersburg. The Russian
Liberals--those friends of Mickiewicz whose fate he
has mourned in one of the most tragic of his poems--
died on the gallows or were sent to the mines.
The Russian government then discovered that in
touch with the Russian Liberals there existed a
patriotic society in Poland, whose object was the
restoration of Polish independence. The leaders were
sent to join the numbers of their fellow-Poles who were
already languishing in the prisons: and Nicholas I
demanded their trial by the Senate of the Polish Diet.
They were brought before this tribunal. Bielinski
presided over it, and among its members sat Wincenty
Krasinski.
The Polish court was between two most difficult
alternatives. It must either obey the will of the Tsar
and condemn to death men who had been guilty of no
crime except the desire of their national restoration;
or it must declare the innocence of the accused, and
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? 14 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
thereby, by placing the nation in direct opposition to
the Tsar, jeopardize the very existence of the Kingdom,
where conditions were by now unworkable and strained
to the last point. It was manifestly impossible for a
Polish tribunal to brand as criminals Poles whose only
aim had been that of Polish independence. After a long
and intricate process, those who were convicted of
actual knowledge of the Russian Decembrist plot were
condemned to varying terms of imprisonment. The
remaining members of the patriotic association, amidst
the acclamations of the whole nation, were liberated.
One, and only one, member of the court voted for
the death sentence. That man was the father of
Zygmunt Krasinski. Opinions differ as to his motives.
Some say that he yielded to the dictates of his ambitious
and time-serving nature, and was determined to stand
well with the Tsar. Again, his friends maintain that he
saw the danger of Poland irrevocably losing that which
was still hers to lose if she and the Tsar came to
conflict on this matter. But, whichever of these judg-
ments be correct, the immediate result of his conduct
was a storm of execration that gathered against him.
Many of those who had been his best friends and the
most habitual intimates of his house would never set
foot again in the Krasinski palace.
The decision of the tribunal was given in the end
of 1828. In March, 1829, gielinski, who had been its
president, died. All Warsaw determined to honour him
by following his coffin to the grave. The funeral in
fact was to be a great national demonstration. The
University authorities, fearing a scene at this highly
delicate and critical moment, gave orders that the
students should not attend the obsequies, but should be
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? The Initiation
15
present at the lectures as usual. When the day came,
every student--with one exception--followed the bier
of the dead patriot, and, with wild enthusiasm, rushed
upon the coffin and tore pieces from the pall as relics.
The lecture halls were empty--still with the exception
of one student. That student was Zygmunt Krasinski.
I n obedience to his father's command, the unhappy boy,
in dumb despair and rage, sat alone in the class-room,
while all his compatriots mourned at the grave of the
man who had defended Poland. It seems difficult to
conceive how a father, who was most fondly attached
to his son, could have had the cruelty to expose an
abnormally sensitive and intensely patriotic boy to such
a position. It is said that his vanity, always his master-
passion, was pricked by the knowledge of the unpopu-
larity that he had brought upon himself, and that he
was in consequence resolved to brave the opinions of
his countrymen1.
On the following day Zygmunt went to the lectures
as usual. There was never any lack of physical courage
in his character, and he showed no outward sign of the
mortal dread that must have filled his soul. As he
entered the class-room, crowded not only by students
but also by a public audience, a murmur of disapproba-
tion greeted him, only silenced by the entrance of
the professor. It must be remembered that it was a
time of great national tension when patriotic ardour,
especially among the young men, ran at fever heat. In
the eyes of these boy companions of Krasinski, many
of whom in less than two years were to fall fighting for
Poland, who, moreover, naturally could not enter into
1 Count Stanistaw Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski, Cracow, 1892
(Polish).
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? 16 The A nonymous Poet of Poland
the extraordinarily difficult situation in which Krasin-
ski was placed, both father and son were equally some-
thing like renegades to the Polish cause. When the
lecture was concluded, Zygmunt was set upon by his
fellow-students and mobbed. The ringleader who tore
from Krasinski's uniform the badge of the University
as one unworthy to bear it was his own friend, tubien-
ski. Konstanty Gaszynski, and in a further riot of
the kind that occurred another Konstanty, Danielewicz,,
stood by Zygmunt's side and stoutly defended the deli-
cate, undersized boy.
These scenes blasted the youth of Zygmunt
Krasinski. They were his baptism of fire. Never, in
all his after life, did he outlive their suffering and dis-
grace. Years later he told the story in accents of
passionate pain in his Unfinished Poem : and obviously
he could only bring himself to lift the veil for that once
in order to render a tribute of gratitude and affection to
Danielewicz, who had died in his arms. He repaid the
intervention of Danielewicz by a life-long love. On the
other hand when, two years afterwards, Lubienski
approached Krasinski in Switzerland with some attempt
at a renewal of friendship, Krasinski could neither
forgive him orpronounce his name except with loathing1.
Matters were patched up with the other youths who
had taken part in the demonstration against him when,
a few days after the original incident, Krasinski in the
University hall called upon them to prove that he was
a traitor to Bielinski's memory. But on the same
1 I shall return to this meeting of the two in Switzerland, as it gave rise
to a correspondence on the subject between Krasinski and Reeve that
throws very important light on the psychology of Krasinski and of his
Iridion.
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? The Initiation
17
occasion he publicly branded as a liar -Lubienski, who
had added to his original insult aspersions on Krasin-
ski's patriotism, and he then and there challenged him
to a duel. Brodzinski. the professor of Polish literature
and the father of its romantic revival, was hurriedly
summoned to the hall. By his temperate and kindly
persuasions, he got the two to the point of shaking
hands: but the reconciliation was only perfunctory, and
the deadly offence remained unwiped out in Krasinski's
mind. Duelling was against the rules of the Univer-
sity. For this cause, and also, as is clear from the
correspondence between the Rector of the University
and General Krasinski, because the authorities foresaw
that the position of the excitable, hotheaded boy among
his fellow-students would lead to endless difficulties,
Wincenty Krasinski was requested to remove Zygmunt
privately from the University for a year1. The father
on his side realized that his son's life in his own city
had become unlivable, and he decided to send him to
complete his studies in Geneva. The boy spent the
last months of his stay in his country--the last in which
that country was to be his home--between Warsaw and
Opinog6ra, writing feverishly to distract thought. The
tales and historical romances moulded on Scott that he
then wrote were published the following year. One of
them at least--Wiadystaw Herman--is somewhat
above the run of an ordinary boy's similar attempts;
but as Krasinski, when past early youth, never followed
up this line we need not linger on these first writings.
In the autumn of 1829 he left Poland. He was
never to see his beloved country again except as a
conquered province, given over to the fate of the
1 The correspondence is given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
G.
2
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? 18 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
vanquished. He was sent abroad with a sort of tutor,
Jakubowski, whom in their letters Krasinski and Henry-
Reeve call Jacky. Unable to tear himself away from
his son until the last moment possible, Wincenty
Krasinski went with the travellers for some part of the
way. Father and son then took farewell of each other,
separating under painful circumstances, in deep affection.
"The parting in 1829 was a sad one," writes Dr Kal-
lenbach: "but the meeting in 1832 was to be still
more bitter and tragic beyond all expression1. "
1 Op. cit.
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? CHAPTER II
THE FIRST EXILE
(1829-1830)
The homesick boy wrote sheaves ofletters to his father
and to the friends he had left in Poland, at every stage
of his journey. His imagination was enthralled by his
first sight of the Lake of Geneva: but, writes he to his
father, "Poland with her sandy stretches stood out to
me in far more alluring colours than the Swiss moun-
tains, and I would not give up the memory of the pond
at Opinog6ra for the Lake of Geneva1. " To Gaszynski
he pours out the rapture of a poet at the spectacle of
the autumn sunset over the lake; yet in his description
of the waves curling like fiery serpents, of the deep
blue lapis lazuli where the shadow of the mountains
fell upon the water, he pauses to note a "lonely pine,
reminding me of Poland. " "My eyes are fastened on
Leman," he ends his letter, "but my heart sighs for
Poland2. "
With his tutor, Zygmunt settled down in a pension,
kept by a widow, the age and undecorative aspect of
whose daughters displeased him greatly. His landlady,
who was related to the principal families in Geneva,
made haste to introduce him to Swiss society. It is
amusing to read that he was considerably annoyed by
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski, Vol. I, Lw6w, 1882. To Konstanty
Gaszynski. Geneva, 1829 (Polish).
2--2
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? 20 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
the bombardment of ignorant questions put to him by
his new acquaintances as to whether, says Dr Kallen-
bach, "this or that were known in Poland" : an ordeal
with which the Polish visitor in present-day England
has good reason to sympathize. Two days after his
arrival in Geneva Krasinski met at a party a tall, fair
English boy, with the face of a beautiful girl. "It, is
difficult to judge of him at first sight," Zygmunt
cautiously tells his father1: for, curiously enough,
Krasinski, who passionately loved, never lost his heart
at the outset, but surveyed the objects of his future
adoration rather coldly and critically. The English boy
was Henry Reeve, the most beloved companion of
Krasinski's youth.
In these early days Krasinski sorely missed his
father, home and friends. He wrote to his father his
boyish resolves to keep straight; recounted to him the
details of his new life; told him of his sadness at being
parted from him. "Except Poland, except you, except
Warsaw, there is nothing for me in the world2. " But
for all that there is, as CojinL. . Tarnowski observes,
already a reserve in the son's letters3. On one subject
he cannot speak: and Dr Kallenbach notices that his
effusions to his father are more those of a pupil to a
master, of whom he stands in some fear, than of a son
on terms of perfect ease and affection with a parent.
How extraordinarily sensitive he was to the approval
or disapproval of his father may be gathered from his
answer to the latter after Wincenty Krasinski, having
heard that his son had fought a duel, had written to
him in anger.
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, op. cit. 2 Ibid.
3 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? The First Exile 21
"Picturing to myself your uneasiness," replies Zygmunt, "I
sought in vain for any relief to my sadness, and could not sit
down in peace to my writing. I read a book, but did not
understand either the words or the sense. Even your portrait
hanging above my head looked changed to me. I reached
such a point that I dared not look at it. Although I was
entirely innocent, my father's anger tore my heart cruelly.
The distance that divides us, your ill health, the uncertainty
whether you would believe my words. . . and a thousand thoughts
coursing uninterruptedly through my mind made a most painful
impression upon my soul1. "
Although Krasinski yearned with homesickness
towards a country which draws those who are hers with
a spell peculiar to herself, although he passed lonely
hours cut off from his friends and relations in Poland
by a silence increasing with the difficulties of the times,
his first year at Geneva held many compensations. The
memory of what had exiled him from his country was,
it is true, burnt into his soul; his father had already
taken the first steps on the road that severed him morally
for ever from his son; but they were only the first steps,
and at present Zygmunt could not have foreseen what
was close upon him. The boy worked hard at his studies.
He did not take the regular University course, but
chose his own subjects; philosophy, political economy,
jurisprudence, and Roman history. The Roman history
lectures were given by Professor _RqssL_ Zygmunt
followed them with close attention: and it was upon
them that at a later period he built the splendid
colouring of Iridion. He made a special study of French
and devoted himself with ardour to that of English;
took up mathematics with the idea of learning military
tactics, and, in the amateur fashion of his epoch, dabbled
with music. His capacities for work were, according to
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, op. cit.
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? 22 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Dr Kallenbach, quite unusual1. He read enormously,
and now laid the stores of his profound after-knowledge.
In the afternoons he went for rides in the beautiful
neighbourhood of Geneva, or sailed on the lake with
young Reeve and a Polish youth, Au^ost_Zamojsk4-.
The evenings were often broken into by dinners, soirees,
dances. The undiluted Geneva society appears from
Krasinski's descriptions to have been decidedly dull.
Everyone knew each other too well, and a stiff con-
ventionality reigned in the salons. However, the strong
cosmopolitan element brought in some variety. The
foreign visitors were chiefly English: and, to an English
biographer of the Anonymous Poet of Poland, it is grati-
fying to record that the favoured two to whom the
heart of the sad and lonely boy went out in special
manner, during the first year that he spent alone in a
strange country, were an English boy and an English
girl.
Henry Reeve, the future editor of The Edinburgh,
Review, the political leader writer during many years
for The Times, was in 1829 living with his mother in
Geneva, finishing his education. In those days he was
romantic, poetical, enthusiastic even as Krasinski him-
self. The two became inseparable. To Henry Reeve
not only the student of Krasinski, but the whole Polish
nation, must ever owe a debt of gratitude. The dis-
covery in 1892 of the correspondence between Krasinski
and Reeve, consisting of a hundred and sixty-three
letters, mainly Krasinski's, which range from the early
summer of 1830 to the spring of 1838, has thrown in-
valuable light upon a period of the poet's life that is of
the highest psychological importance, and of which much
1 Op. cit.
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? The First Exile
23
hitherto had been left to conjecture. After the first
affectionate relations of their youth, Krasinski and
Reeve dropped entirely out of each other's lives1. But
more than forty years after Krasinski had left this earth
a Polish youth, a stranger--thus Dr Kallenbach de-
scribes the scene2--found his way to the country home
of Henry Reeve, then in extreme old age. Reeve saw
before him a young Pole whose face seemed vaguely
familiar. It was the grandson of the gifted boy, with
the strangely tragic history, whom Reeve had loved
when himself young. The old man handed over to
Count Adam Krasinski a bulky packet, containing not
only his and Krasinski's letters, but also some then un-
known literary fragments of Krasinski's French prose
that the poet had sent him directly*Mey were written*.
All these were edited and published with an illuminating
introduction by Dr Kallenbach in 1902.
From these letters it is apparent that during the
years in Geneva Krasinski and Reeve were like
brothers. They boated and rode and walked together;
shared every confidence; discussed literature, philo-
sophy, and politics; read and criticized each other's
literary productions; and sighed in company over the
respective ladies of their affections.
For Krasinski fell in love with an English girl, a
certain Henrietta Willan. Krasinski, the only son and
1 But that Krasinski spoke often and with strong affection of Reeve we
know from a letter that the poet's wife wrote after his death to Reeve, in
reply to the words of condolence that the latter had addressed on his loss
to Count Ladislas Zamojski, one of Krasinski's greatest admirers. John
Knox Laughton, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve,
London, 1898.
2 See his Preface to Correspondance de Sigismond Krasinski et de
Henry Reeve, Paris, 1902.
3 /did.
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? 24 ? The Anonymous Poet of Poland
heir of a great Polish magnate, could never hope to
obtain his father's consent to marriage with a young
Englishwoman of no standing. Both he and Henrietta
knew this well, but they promised each other endless
attachment. Under the inspiration of his love Krasinski
poured out French compositions, written for Henrietta,
given to Reeve, and only known to Poland after they
had lain seventy years in English keeping.
These semi-autobiographical pieces, a fragment of
a journal, Krasinski calls them, or a fragment of a
dream, are impregnated with the exaltation of a boy
in love. They contain certain characteristics that
strongly illustrate the psychology of Krasinski. It was
but natural that the imagination of a highly-strung boy
who had been born after a great political crime had
been inflicted on his country, and who had been brought
up with the results of that crime as a part of his daily
life, should occupy itself with lurid scenes of cataclysm
and bloodshed. These figure largely in the passages
he wrote for Henrietta, and to this nightmare style he
returns much later in his Polish prose poems: The
Dream of Cesara and A Legend. In these early pro-
ductions the vision of Henrietta is always there, but
it is never far away from the thought of his country.
So, in after life, is the image of the woman for whom
Krasinski wrote his love poems, intimately, inseparably,
united to a patriot's passion. Then, too, Krasinski's
sentiment for the English girl was ethereal and un-
practical, the germ of that idealization of human love
that gave Dawn to the Polish nation.
"I did not love her lips but her smile," writes the young
lover, "not her body but her immortal soul. I neither saw her
body nor mine," he continues, speaking of their reunion after
death, "but I felt that she was near me. We understood each
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89102083045 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? The First Exile
25
other better than on earth. All our beautiful thoughts, all our
sublime feelings, formed one chain that bound us together and
kept us near each other. Our memories stood to us in the
place of hope, for we were in a perfect beatitude. Her soul
mingled with mine. " {Fragment d'un Journal. March 24,1830. )
The Willan family left for England in the spring of
1830. Krasinski remained behind in a youthful lover's
despair. He relieved his feelings by the exchange of
letters with Henrietta and by literary composition.
"Two days after her departure ": "Five days after her
departure, at ten, eleven, twelve at night" : so he heads
the writings in which he deplores his solitude without
her. He dreams of fighting for freedom in the Polish
ranks, with her face before his eyes, or he chooses an
eternity of woe rather than be divided from her beyond
the grave. He sat in his room, overlooking the magni-
ficent panorama of the Lake of Geneva, covering reams
of paper by the light of two candles till far into the
night1. He wrote chiefly in French--sketches, me-
mories, reflections--but also short pieces in his native
language which were printed in the Polish paper of
which Gaszynski was sub-editor. It is a striking fact
that prophecies of woe and struggle, strangely prescient
of the Rising that the Polish nation was to see before
the year was out, repeat themselves again and again in
Krasinski's writings at this time. There is also the
sense not only of impending disaster, but of personal
frustration. No doubt we can find one reason in the
ever rankling wound of the blow that had befallen
Krasinski before he left his country. Furthermore, he
must have lived, if scarcely consciously to himself, under
a weight of oppression in those days when it was obvious
that the tension between the Kingdom of Poland and
1 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 26 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Nicholas I was bound to end in some sort of explosion.
But it must also be taken into account that now, like
every youth of the epoch, Krasinski was becoming
strongly affected by Byron.
It is a curious anomaly in Krasinski's history that
he who was to be one of the greatest of his nation's
poets, who read poetry with passion, was so far with-
out the instinct for self-expression in verse native to
every poetical boy or girl. While in Geneva he fell
under the spell of the English romantic poets. He was
fascinated by Southey, Campbell, Moore--whose name
he invariably spells wrongly--and Keats. With enthu-
siasm he read Shakspeare under Reeve's auspices. "If
it were not for poetry," he tells his father, "I don't
know what a man would do in this world, and how he
could live, surrounded only by cold reality1. " Yet, for
all the hours that, consumed by literary ambition, he
spent composing, he seems hardly to have even at-
tempted to write poetry, and when he did he failed.
Romantic, too, as were the tendencies of Krasinski's
mind, he possessed even when a boy--he kept it through
life--a curiously clear vision and accurate power of
observation.
His sarcastic descriptions of the Geneva salons are,
as Dr Kallenbach notes, borne out in every detail by
the accounts of other frequenters of the same society.
For all his dreams, Krasinski never lived with his head
in the clouds. If we may be permitted the expression,
he was always "all there. " His interest in politics,
inevitable in a Pole ever awaiting the turn of events
that would affect his country, was already strong. All
manner of subjects attracted his attention: and among
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, op. cit.
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? The First Exile
27
his French essays written in his first summer at Geneva
is an argument for and against the advisability of a
state clergy.
In the summer of 1830 Reeve and his mother left
Geneva for the vacation. Krasinski devoted his even-
ings to solitary rambles, ending in a garden near the
house in which Henrietta Willan had lived. In this spot,
gazing on the lake at his feet and at the snowy peaks
reddening to the setting sun, he wrote down the poetic
fancies with which his head was filled. His reflections
were faithfully handed on to Reeve: and now began
the eight years' correspondence between the two friends.
Had Krasinski left no line of poetry behind him, he
would still have lived in the literature of Poland by the
depth of thought, the beauty of expression, in the
several hundred of his letters that have as yet been
published. As regards literary power, his letters to
Reeve naturally cannot be compared with those to
Gaszynski, Sottan and his other Polish correspondents.
In the former Krasinski is writing in a foreign language,
admirably as he manipulated it. The greater part of
them were penned in early youth before he had reached
either the maturity of his genius or the full development
of his leading idea. But as an index to his character--
that strangely complicated, contradictory and most
appealing character--as the illustration of a poet and
philosopher's mental evolution, the letters to Reeve are
a priceless asset to the Krasinski student. They are
written in French with, at times, an excursion into an
English so peculiar that we can only describe it as the
reverse of conversational. This interchange of ideas
between two clever and enthusiastic boys is of course
largely coloured with the romanticism of the early
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? 28
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
thirties when Byron, Shelley and Keats were the idols
of the hour. It shows a certain amount of youthful
exaggeration, here and there boyish folly, a distinct
tinge of the posing that was then the fashion. But, as
Dr Kallenbach bids us notice, side by side with the
often callow sentiments of the earlier portion of the
correspondence, may be found those deep reflections
that were to make of Krasinski one of the most pro-
found and truest thinkers of his nation1. The first
letters were written before tragedy and shame had
changed a boy's heart, while he still played with emotion
and, to a certain extent, caressed a Byronic grief. After
the Rising of 1830 had broken out, bringing upon the
young Pole its double weight of national and private
anguish, the tone of the letters changes. They are no
longer those of a morbid and romantic boy who had
been reading a good deal of Byron, but of one whose
youth was immersed in an abyss of suffering where he
found his manhood. Studying these self-revelations of
an over sensitive and highly pitched nature, we see the
young Krasinski penetrating at the outset of life with
an almost startling acuteness into the mysteries of pain
and the spiritual psychology of conflict. That insight
is of itself a greater proof of the deep waters through
which his soul passed than even those many passages
in which he directly confides the details of his grief into
the ears of those he loved.
The letters to Reeve open, as we should expect,
with lamentations for Henrietta Willan's absence.
Krasinski complains that the peaceful scenery of the
Swiss lakes ill accords with the mood of two lovers:
1 J. Kallenbach, Preface. Correspondance de Sigismond Krasinski et
de Henry Reeve.
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? The First Exile
29
for Reeve was more or less enamoured of a Swiss
girl, Constance Sautter.
"I must tell you that the day before yesterday I was in
such a state of distress, of disgust"--Krasinski underlines his
English words--" boredom, melancholy, that life weighed on
me more than ever and, for the first time, the degrading idea
came to me of finishing with this world which has brought me
but few joys, taken from me as soon as I felt them. It was the
first time in my life that I have had the idea of suicide, so I
marked it down in my pocket-book. But I soon repulsed with
disdain that thought which can sometimes rise in a delirious
brain, but which can never be carried out except by a cowardly
heart that lacks nobility. .
"The night before last, being unable to close my eyes, I
read the work of M. Boissier, ' Shall we find them in a better
world? ' and I found there consolation, life and hope, though
the style is dry and dusty--and not one grain of poetry. When
I have finished the romance that is occupying me at present,
I shall write a work like it in Polish, but adding to it all the
charms of imagination and poetry that my weak mind can put
together--and I shall dedicate it to Her who inspired me with
it.
