1 Dr Kleiner gives an
interpretation
of the poem as referring to the
history of humanity in general.
history of humanity in general.
Poland - 1919 - Krasinski - Anonymous Poet of Poland
''Descend into my hell and light my subter-
ranean darkness, even as an angel, with one ray of thine
eyes. Be my protection, be my hope and my salvation. "
Again I bid farewell to thee (Naples, 1840). "God
only," the poet sings in an early poem, "can count the
thorns in the garland of thy brow. I count them not,
1 op. tit.
2 Except that Krasinski enclosed two or three of the less intimate ones
in his letters to Gaszynski.
3 "I never had a sister, but I think there is no more beautiful relationship
on earth than that between brother and sister. " Letters to Adam Potocki.
Biblioteka Warszawska, May, 1905. And to Delphina: "Call me your
brother, for I feel myself to be the brother of your soul. " Tygodnik Illus-
trowany, 1898.
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? Before the Dawn
195
I only feel them, for I have taken all to the depths of
my soul, as though they were my own. " Scarce have
I known thee (Naples, 1839). He had bowed his head,
as he once told her, before the multitude of her suffer-
ings1: and again in one of his letters, when his love
for her was creating difficulties between herself and her
family, he tells her how his hope had been that in his
soul she would have found tranquility, in his love the
dream that all her pain had passed away, in his love the
land of the ideal where alone she could forget reality2.
Exaltation, tinged with the dignity of his and her long
sorrow, has also its place in the song inspired by his love.
One of the finest of these poems casts a challenge to
a/igels and spirits. They are in a happy eternity, but
he is better off than they. For they do not know, as he
knows, resurrection after the bitterness of death. They
do not know, as he knows, the high betrothal of two
hearts, threatened with the pain of separation. They
do not know, as he knows, what is sorrow shared.
The flower of the white thorn on this sad earth lasts against
rains and storms and hurricanes. From pain it grows, from
sadness fructified. Spirits and angels! Such a flower you do
not know within your skies of blue, for it blooms only in a fount
of tears, for in the depths it grows and never on the heights.
To the Spirits (1840).
On the other hand a little song which Krasinski wrote
to Delphina on the eve of a journey to join his father
shows a grace and lightness of touch that are entirely
uncharacteristic of the Anonymous Poet.
I am stifled with my tears. My whole soul I gave to thee,
and to-day I must depart. And I loved thee so. Ah, parting
is as death. Yea, as death is parting. >>
1 Letters to Delphina Pbtocka. Rome, 1839. Tygodnik Illustrowany,
1898.
2 Ibid, (undated). Tygodnik Illustrowany, 1899.
13--2
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? 196 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Yesterday was still so joyous. Lo! To-day may not be borne.
Ever greater grows my sorrow. And I loved thee so. Ah,
parting is as death. Yea, as death is parting.
Where I go is dark and desert, for thou wilt not be with me,
thou my angel, watching o'er me. And I loved thee so. Ah,
parting is as death. Yea, as death is parting.
But, by God! I shall return. Days of grief my will shall
shorten. I will sing joy's song again, new inspired to ecstasy.
Parting is not death. Not as death is parting.
While Krasinski was thus pouring out his heart to
his love, he sent Sottan a short poem, dated August 9,
1840, which he described as "a sudden explosion of the
soul1. " After his death it was published, with some
changes and omissions that the author had made, from
a later MS. under the title To the Muscovites. It is
remarkable as being perhaps the only one of Krasinski's
poems that speaks the language of a boundless hatred,
and is the strongest comment upon the moral victory
of his Psalms of the Future. Its power, its superb
disdain of moral abasement before the enemy, causes
one of Krasinski's Polish biographers to rank it with
the greatest utterances of its kind in persecuted
Poland3.
I know--for me the hangman's halter, the prison chain3 are
ready, if before you I do not bow my brow, if humbly crieth
not my stubborn soul: "It is not God Who is my lord, but you. "
Leave me in peace. I can find anywhere six feet of earth.
There is my home, narrow, but full of freedom, and better than the
castles where you dwell. There shall I be without you for the
first time in this world. I choose the darkness of the coffin rather
than the sun shared with you. If I could strangle you in one
embrace, thrust you all down into one pit, I would fain remain
in your hell-given conquest, and live on earth--for my dear
Lady's sake.
1 Letters to Sottan. Karlsbad, Aug. 9, 1840.
2 St. Tarnowski, Zygntunt Krasinski.
3 In the Soitan MS. it is first Siberia and then the halter. I follow the
text of the later MS. as given in the Jubilee edition.
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? Before the Dawn
197
Then, his tone suddenly changing, he speaks with
a tenderness that in itself explains the passion and
bitterness of the preceding lines. He speaks of his Lady,
his dying and afflicted country.
And I count the minutes before my beloved shall die, and
I with her will go to seek somewhere God. For in life I loved
her with such passion, loved her infinitely, loved her ever, every-
where, that my spirit bears her stamp for ever, and where she
is there I must also be. . . Whither goes she there I go with her,
where she halteth there I will with her remain. If overthrown
beneath the stone of death she may not rise again, then may
I neither rise!
So think of me no more, mine enemies! Vain is your labour,
for I desire not shame, and fear I do not know. If you would
tempt me you must seek temptation--in my grave. And when
ye are able to tempt the bodies that are dead, and to degrade
hearts that lie beneath the graveyard cross, then, and then only,
in my subterranean hovel will ye see degradation on my
corpse's face. So I await you, yea, when my heart is broken,
not before; for I sucked in with my mother's milk that to hate
you is beautiful and holy: and in that hatred lieth all my weal.
I would only sell it for the Polish crown, and for nought else,
not even for the veil that hides the image of the unknown
God.
About the time that Krasinski first met Delphina
Potocka he renewed his friendship with a Pole with
whom he had played as a child in the nursery under
the same French governess---the famous philosopher,
August Cieszkowski. Cieszkowski's work, and especially
his treatise on the Our Father, published in part in 1848
and subsequently after his death, has had an immense
vogue among students of philosophy, and largely in-
fluenced Polish thought. His conception of the develop-
ment of the spirit of humanity and of the three epochs
of history was so instrumental in shaping the theories
in which Krasinski found life that the poet could write
to him:
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? 198 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Twice you appeared to me in my life. Once when I was
childish wax you impressed yourself upon me: and the second
time when I was melted and boiling gold you again impressed
yourself upon me and for ever1.
In 1839, and for three years longer, Krasinski had
not yet found his soul. He was still in doubt and
transition, though walking towards the light. In this
state of mind he wrote in 1839 the Three Thougkts of
Henryk Ligenza, that were published the following year.
Under this collective name are comprised the poem
called The Son of Darkness and two allegories in poeti-
cal prose, The Dream of Cesara and A Legend. The
theme of the first is the human soul, that of the second
the destiny of the Polish nation, and the third deals
with the future of the Church. These matters--the
history of individual and collective man--were so
closely connected with each other in the Krasinskian
scheme that the continuous thread may be discerned
in the three dissimilar works2. They are preceded by
a short sketch in prose. The imaginary writer and his
wife are travelling in Sicily: and the little incidents of
their Italian experiences are told with a lightness and
humour such as we find in no other of Krasinski's
writings.
The travellers stumble across the traces of a Pole,
dead of consumption in the island. There is a touch
of true pathos when the Polish visitors search for the
forgotten grave of a lonely compatriot, and raise a
tombstone to tell the passer-by that a Pole lies there.
To papers purporting to have been left by this Pole
Krasinski gives the title: Three Thoughts of Henryk
Ligenza.
1 Letters to August Cieszkowski. Munich, Feb. 25, 1842.
2 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? Before the Dawn 199
Pantheism, Hegelianism, metempsychosis have all -
influenced the difficult poem, The Son of Darkness.
Polish critics differ considerably as to its literary merits:
we will therefore leave that side of it alone. Upon
the value of its matter opinions are also at variance1.
The theme is highly complicated and obscure, so that
as the present study is not a philosophical work perhaps
the writer may be excused for dealing with it some-
what cursorily.
The poem sets forth the origin of the human spirit
and its journey back to its last end. Some "unknown
power" cast it forth from darkness to the earth. "Half
slumbering," it wanders and gropes to the dimly dis-
cerned light, struggling with Titanic tortures, till it
clothes itself "in the garments of humanity," and,
becoming man, recognizes its own consciousness. In
its beginning it knows God only as the " lord of wrath. "
It endures suffering, yearning after God, by which it
advances to a higher life. Its throes are crowned by
the union of the Word with flesh, of God with man,
by the victory over evil and the "clay of the heart,"
which is the triumph of love2. Again returns a period
of longing, doubt and torment: but "the evil is only a
transition, only the highway's dust"; and the son of
darkness ascends, the son of light, to the stars.
Step ever further then, oh, son of light! Step to the
boundaries of the undiscovered worlds! . . . What thou didst
grasp with thought thou shalt with thy hand attain. What
thou didst feel by inspiration with thine eyes shalt thou behold.
There is no death. Before the spirit stretches cycle
1 Compare St. Tarnowski, op. cit. , with J. Kleiner, History of the
Thought of Zygmunt Krasinski, and Prof. Zdziechowski's Vision oj
Krasinski. Cracow, 1912 (Polish).
2 M. Zdziechowski, op. cit. J. Kleiner, op. cit.
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? 200 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
after cycle of life: and it passes through successive
transmigrations till at last more or less pantheistically
it is fused in the All Spirit of the Divinity, and hence-
forth through eternity must "think, love, create a
heaven in heaven1. "
The Dream of Cesara is once more national,
though the distinction between what we call Krasinski's
national writings and those in which he occupies him-
self with universal spiritual problems is more apparent
than real. Krasinski was led to the great interests of
humanity by the desire that they might throw light on
, the problem of his country. One enigma was the
complement of the other.
Neither The Dream of Cesara nor the Legend is
comparable to Krasinski's greater works. They are
written in his most highly decorated manner. Related
in the style of apocalyptic vision, they convey to the
reader's mind a strange sense of things seen in the
confusion of a dream. And, in fact, we have the testi-
mony of Mickiewicz who knew it from a friend of
Krasinski--Gaszynski, Dr Kleiner conjectures2--that
The Dream and the Legend were the poet's actual
dreams3.
A voice [Delphina's] called me by my name, "Cesara!
Cesara! " And I went forth I know not where, but that voice
will I follow, if needs be even to the end of the world.
1 Dr Kleiner gives an interpretation of the poem as referring to the
history of humanity in general. The allusion to the spirit's conception of
God as the "lord of wrath" is explainable by the Judaism that preceded
the Incarnation of Christ. The fresh sufferings that befall the spirit of
humanity after the time of Christ depict Krasinski's own epoch which he
hoped was to be merely the transition to the third and last epoch of
humanity. The spirit in the poem ascends to the other world: and here i
ends the earthly development of the human race. J. Kleiner, op. cit.
2 J. Kleiner, op. cit. 3 Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
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? Before the Dawn
201
The voice leads him to a mighty cathedral. Its
elaborate description is modelled on Krasinski's remem-
brances of Freiburg cathedral where he had wandered,
surrounded, it seemed to him, by invisible spirits of
those who had died for their faith, and asking himself
if they would rise again1. Against a mysterious back-
ground of moonlight and music Cesara sees the hosts
of the nations, and among them the last Poles left on
earth, advancing in chains and mourning garb to the
tomb.
And grief encompassed my heart, and tears flowed to my
eyes. And the voice cried to me as the wind: "Cesara, Cesara,
behold the people who are going from the earth, and will return
no more. ". . . I heard the voices of multitudes crying: "Live and
be our slaves. "
The Poles prefer death. The floor of the cathe-
dral yawns before them and, accompanied by the
figure of Christ, they go down to their grave amidst
sorrowful music. Over their tomb lies a great stone
marked by the inscription written in blood: The Nation.
No trace of them remains: but a beautiful mourning
woman rises before the poet's eyes, the sister, says the
voice, of those who have fallen. "Like a dream though
ever visible," she, who Count Tarnowski hazards may
be the memory of his country, or the love of her or
hope for her, floats before him through nights and days,
through the mists of his vision, whither he knows not:
but whither she goes I go, and where she pauses there will I
halt, and where she disappears there will I disappear with her.
As they pass on they reach a spirit in the guise of
an old man seated on a rock above the mists, playing
a harp on which there is only one string left. In this
1 Letters to Sattan. Freiburg, Sept. 20, 1839.
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? 202 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
obscure allegory where, according to Dr Kleiner, it is
not clearness that is aimed at, but the mystery of a
vision, we can only conjecture for whom the different
symbols stand. Count Tarnowski suggests that the
harpist may represent Time or Satan or Brute Force1.
Whoever he may be, he conjures the poet to "forsake
her who will never live again. "
And the figure halted and turned her face upon me. All
the unfulfilled dreams, all the slain hopes of her race, all their
life, all their pride and their death and now their slumber in
the grave, together at one moment were reflected on that face. . .
And again the spirit sang: "Return and live among the living
peoples. And I will remain here with her and will sing to her
my song without hope on this last string. For the others have
played their music away and are shattered. All together were
once called faith, courage, love. This only one left to-day is
called Nothingness. "
He calls to the poet: "Choose. " The voice of the
woman calls: "Cesara! "
And I followed her who will never return, to the cemetery
of death. She whom I loved has vanished in whirlwinds of
snow. And I felt all the pains of parting, all the emptiness of
void. I thought that the figure of" Christ had deceived them,
descending with them into the grave, for they shall wake no
more, and that she whom I defended had deceived me likewise,
for she had left me among those who were dead for ever.
And I sat on the shores of that sea and besought my soul to
leave me.
"What now? " is the mocking reiteration of the
harper: and it must be remembered that the temptation
to despair of Poland's resurrection was to the mind of
Krasinski and the great Polish patriot mystics as the
direct assault of the Evil One. And again, "either in
the depths of my heart or beyond the clouds," the voice
that had led Cesara calls.
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? Before the Dawn
203
And I started up and cried: "Save me, for I die: and I
die because thou didst deceive me. "
She answers:
"Cesara, Cesara, wherefore dost thou grieve, because thou hast
sacrificed thy life for her who is dead? Knowest thou not that
there is a resurrection? She who took away thy life shall give
it back to thee, for her death was only an illusion. "
I beheld the figure, rising as a new-born star from the
bounds of the horizon. . . and around me were men being raised
up from the dust, and the vision of Christ flashed white above
them in the sky. I closed my eyes, and fell with my face to
the earth among those who were rising from the dead.
This is the pith of The Dream of Cesara, taken
from a crowd of details, some of which appear wholly
extraneous to the matter. Although its general impres-
sion is that of a bewildered despair, yet it ends on the
note of resurrection, and contains Krasinski's favourite
moral of the "test of the grave. "
The Legend opens in the Roman Campagna, in the
twilight of the last Christmas Eve that is ever to be.
A boat comes across the sea, and lands "the last left
of the Polish knighthood," bound for the midnight Mass
in St Peter's. The dreamer leads them across the
Campagna and through the streets of Rome. The
description of the crowds of pilgrims, carrying flaring
torches, hastening to St Peter's, where the last Mass
on earth is to be sung, the clashing of all the bells of
Rome, lights flaming on towers and gates, have the
feverish effect of a nightmare and lend credence to the
story that Krasinski was writing down what he had
dreamed. With the sorrow of death imprinted on their
countenances, the Polish knights pass. The citizens
of Rome try to withhold them from entering the basilica
that seems on fire with light. A cardinal clad in purple
appears on the balcony, and bids the Romans "let enter
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? 204 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
those who erst redeemed a strange nation from death1,
and later for that same faith died themselves. Let the
dead enter. "
They enter, and kneel at the tomb of St Peter,
swords in hand. The eye' and ear are wearied by the
ornate vision of the interior of the church, filled with
countless throngs: how it is dim with "silver smoke"
from the thuribles, how the marble columns flash as
brilliant snows, how the Pope in golden vestments comes
in, surrounded by a glittering retinue, and for the last
time in the history of the world celebrates Mass. The
Cardinal summons all to "pray, for the time is short,
and to-day prayers are needed on earth and in heaven. "
There is throughout the premonition of a terrible
approaching cataclysm. At the moment of the Elevation
the form of Christ with bleeding Hands and Feet is
seen raised in the air. The chalice trembles in the
Pontiff's fingers. The Cardinal cries out, "The time
is fulfilled," and, stretching out his hands to St Peter's
tomb, conjures the apostle to "arise and speak. " The
figure of Peter half emerges, and as his voice peals
forth: "Woe! " to all it seems as though the piers of
the dome rocked.
"Peter, dost thou know me? " [asks the Cardinal, to which
Peter answers]: "Thy head at the last supper rested on the
Lord's bosom, and thou didst never die upon this earth. "
And the Cardinal answered: "And now it is bidden me
to dwell among men and shelter the world in my bosom, as
the Lord sheltered my head in His at the last supper. "
Then the mighty building begins to sway to its fall.
The terrified crowds flee. Only the Pope remains. The
Polish knights, commanded by the Cardinal to follow
1 The Lithuanians who were won to Christianity by the self-sacrifice
of Jadwiga, Queen of Poland.
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? Before the Dawn
205
him outside, refuse to leave the Pope to perish alone.
Baring their swords, they surround him where he kneels
at the high altar. The dome crashes in, and the basilica,
the Vatican and the square are a heap of dust. ,
It is the dawn. The Cardinal, otherwise St John,
seats himself on the ruins as on a throne. His purple
garments fall from him, and he is transformed into a
white figure, sparkling with soft light, while his face
breathes love and peace.
I approached him, and at the very moment that the sun
rose I said: "Lord, is it true that yesterday for the last time
Christ was born in that Church which to-day is no more? "
And he, "Henceforth Christ is no more born nor dies on
earth, for henceforth for the ages of the ages He is and will
be on earth. "
And I, hearing this, cast off all fear, and asked: "Lord, and
they, whom I led here yesterday, will they lie for ever beneath
these ruins, all dead around the old dead man? "
And that white holy one answered me: "Fear not for them.
Because they rendered him that last service the Lord will
reward them--for, in their setting even as in their rising, dead,
even as they lived, they are of the Lord. Yea, verily, it will
be better for them and for the sons of their sons. "
And when I had understood I was glad, and my spirit
woke.
We are thus left with the death of Poland and with
nothing more beyond a vague promise that is too in-
definite to convey any certitude of her resurrection.
Count Tarnowski looks upon this work as Krasinski's
greatest swerving from his patriotic and religious faith.
But the allegory that Tarnowski considers as well nigh a
blasphemy against Krasinski's national convictions and
openly hostile to his Church, Dr Kleiner is inclined to
regard as illustrative of the doctrines of development
that at this time began to take hold upon the poet.
The old Poland dies with the old Church. Both will
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? 2o6 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
rise again, but in a completely different form in the
new epoch, which is to be the epoch of love1. We
shall see how Krasinski modified this theory, which in
the Legend is almost too vague to be called a theory,
and, bringing it into far more orthodox lines, worked it
out in Dawn. The contradictions to be found in the
Legend are, Count Tarnowski suggests, not to be in-
vestigated too narrowly. After all the Legend is not a
treatise. It is a dream with the inconsistencies of a
dream2.
As regards the three epochs of the Church or of
humanity, we do not know whether Krasinski had
learnt them directly from the writings of Joachim of
Flora, which is improbable, or through Schelling and
Swedenborg, who both refer to them, or through the
medium of Cieszkowski, or again whether he evolved
them out of his own brain3.
"After the Resurrection," he wrote to Delphina Potocka
who was the constant recipient of his highest philosophical
theories side by side with the outpourings of his love, "Christ
takes not Peter, but John. But Peter is the Roman Church,
the practical militant governing Church, and John, who begins
the gospel from the 'Logos,' signifies the epoch of thought
and of the highest love. This has greatly struck me4. "
This language, as Dr Kleiner remarks, indicates
that the Anonymous Poet reached his point by a
process of his own, and probably only discovered later
that it was several centuries old5.
Krasinski was now rapidly advancing in the forma-
tion of his idea. In 1840 he wrote to the friend
1 St. Tarnowski, op. cit. J. Kleiner, History of'the Thought of' Zygmunt
Krasinski.
2 St. Tarnowski, op. cit. 3 J. Kleiner, op. cit
4 Letters to Delphina Potocka. Rome, Dec. 20, 1839. Tygodnik
Illustrowany, 1899. 6 J. Kleiner, op. cit.
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? Before the Dawn
207
whose life was darkened by the acutest griefs of a
father:
There are certain sufferings of yours about which I never
write to you: both because I do not wish to aggravate them,
and because it is better not to set on paper what has taken
up its abode in the very depths of the heart. But do not
therefore think that I do not think of them and that I do not
feel them together with you.
Assuring his friend how the latter's afflictions rend
his heart, he goes on:
Oh, Adam, only, only faith in a higher ordering of the world,
faith that all the happenings and bitternesses of the earth are
discords let loose in the Divine accord, in the accord that as
yet has not reached our hearing but must some time reach it,
can save us. Therefore we believe that we know only one
half of life. I speak incorrectly, we know the whole of life by
thought, but we know by our own experience the half of that
all-life, and because it is only the half it is evil for us. But we are
spirits, not perishable stones. The spirit has its resurrection
from pain; happiness and divine peace are our destiny, for
they are our nature. Thence we came, and there shall we
return. Let this thought be my wish for you in the year that
is now to begin1.
This conception of the half of life being ours, and i
not the perfect whole, was one of the foundations upon
which Krasinski was now raising the solution of un-
explained suffering that gave him the clue to the
mystery of Poland's tragic history.
"Where there is pain," he wrote to Stowacki on a
Roman Easter Eve, "there is life, there is resurrection. "
Death was no more death in his eyes.
ranean darkness, even as an angel, with one ray of thine
eyes. Be my protection, be my hope and my salvation. "
Again I bid farewell to thee (Naples, 1840). "God
only," the poet sings in an early poem, "can count the
thorns in the garland of thy brow. I count them not,
1 op. tit.
2 Except that Krasinski enclosed two or three of the less intimate ones
in his letters to Gaszynski.
3 "I never had a sister, but I think there is no more beautiful relationship
on earth than that between brother and sister. " Letters to Adam Potocki.
Biblioteka Warszawska, May, 1905. And to Delphina: "Call me your
brother, for I feel myself to be the brother of your soul. " Tygodnik Illus-
trowany, 1898.
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? Before the Dawn
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I only feel them, for I have taken all to the depths of
my soul, as though they were my own. " Scarce have
I known thee (Naples, 1839). He had bowed his head,
as he once told her, before the multitude of her suffer-
ings1: and again in one of his letters, when his love
for her was creating difficulties between herself and her
family, he tells her how his hope had been that in his
soul she would have found tranquility, in his love the
dream that all her pain had passed away, in his love the
land of the ideal where alone she could forget reality2.
Exaltation, tinged with the dignity of his and her long
sorrow, has also its place in the song inspired by his love.
One of the finest of these poems casts a challenge to
a/igels and spirits. They are in a happy eternity, but
he is better off than they. For they do not know, as he
knows, resurrection after the bitterness of death. They
do not know, as he knows, the high betrothal of two
hearts, threatened with the pain of separation. They
do not know, as he knows, what is sorrow shared.
The flower of the white thorn on this sad earth lasts against
rains and storms and hurricanes. From pain it grows, from
sadness fructified. Spirits and angels! Such a flower you do
not know within your skies of blue, for it blooms only in a fount
of tears, for in the depths it grows and never on the heights.
To the Spirits (1840).
On the other hand a little song which Krasinski wrote
to Delphina on the eve of a journey to join his father
shows a grace and lightness of touch that are entirely
uncharacteristic of the Anonymous Poet.
I am stifled with my tears. My whole soul I gave to thee,
and to-day I must depart. And I loved thee so. Ah, parting
is as death. Yea, as death is parting. >>
1 Letters to Delphina Pbtocka. Rome, 1839. Tygodnik Illustrowany,
1898.
2 Ibid, (undated). Tygodnik Illustrowany, 1899.
13--2
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? 196 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Yesterday was still so joyous. Lo! To-day may not be borne.
Ever greater grows my sorrow. And I loved thee so. Ah,
parting is as death. Yea, as death is parting.
Where I go is dark and desert, for thou wilt not be with me,
thou my angel, watching o'er me. And I loved thee so. Ah,
parting is as death. Yea, as death is parting.
But, by God! I shall return. Days of grief my will shall
shorten. I will sing joy's song again, new inspired to ecstasy.
Parting is not death. Not as death is parting.
While Krasinski was thus pouring out his heart to
his love, he sent Sottan a short poem, dated August 9,
1840, which he described as "a sudden explosion of the
soul1. " After his death it was published, with some
changes and omissions that the author had made, from
a later MS. under the title To the Muscovites. It is
remarkable as being perhaps the only one of Krasinski's
poems that speaks the language of a boundless hatred,
and is the strongest comment upon the moral victory
of his Psalms of the Future. Its power, its superb
disdain of moral abasement before the enemy, causes
one of Krasinski's Polish biographers to rank it with
the greatest utterances of its kind in persecuted
Poland3.
I know--for me the hangman's halter, the prison chain3 are
ready, if before you I do not bow my brow, if humbly crieth
not my stubborn soul: "It is not God Who is my lord, but you. "
Leave me in peace. I can find anywhere six feet of earth.
There is my home, narrow, but full of freedom, and better than the
castles where you dwell. There shall I be without you for the
first time in this world. I choose the darkness of the coffin rather
than the sun shared with you. If I could strangle you in one
embrace, thrust you all down into one pit, I would fain remain
in your hell-given conquest, and live on earth--for my dear
Lady's sake.
1 Letters to Sottan. Karlsbad, Aug. 9, 1840.
2 St. Tarnowski, Zygntunt Krasinski.
3 In the Soitan MS. it is first Siberia and then the halter. I follow the
text of the later MS. as given in the Jubilee edition.
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? Before the Dawn
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Then, his tone suddenly changing, he speaks with
a tenderness that in itself explains the passion and
bitterness of the preceding lines. He speaks of his Lady,
his dying and afflicted country.
And I count the minutes before my beloved shall die, and
I with her will go to seek somewhere God. For in life I loved
her with such passion, loved her infinitely, loved her ever, every-
where, that my spirit bears her stamp for ever, and where she
is there I must also be. . . Whither goes she there I go with her,
where she halteth there I will with her remain. If overthrown
beneath the stone of death she may not rise again, then may
I neither rise!
So think of me no more, mine enemies! Vain is your labour,
for I desire not shame, and fear I do not know. If you would
tempt me you must seek temptation--in my grave. And when
ye are able to tempt the bodies that are dead, and to degrade
hearts that lie beneath the graveyard cross, then, and then only,
in my subterranean hovel will ye see degradation on my
corpse's face. So I await you, yea, when my heart is broken,
not before; for I sucked in with my mother's milk that to hate
you is beautiful and holy: and in that hatred lieth all my weal.
I would only sell it for the Polish crown, and for nought else,
not even for the veil that hides the image of the unknown
God.
About the time that Krasinski first met Delphina
Potocka he renewed his friendship with a Pole with
whom he had played as a child in the nursery under
the same French governess---the famous philosopher,
August Cieszkowski. Cieszkowski's work, and especially
his treatise on the Our Father, published in part in 1848
and subsequently after his death, has had an immense
vogue among students of philosophy, and largely in-
fluenced Polish thought. His conception of the develop-
ment of the spirit of humanity and of the three epochs
of history was so instrumental in shaping the theories
in which Krasinski found life that the poet could write
to him:
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? 198 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Twice you appeared to me in my life. Once when I was
childish wax you impressed yourself upon me: and the second
time when I was melted and boiling gold you again impressed
yourself upon me and for ever1.
In 1839, and for three years longer, Krasinski had
not yet found his soul. He was still in doubt and
transition, though walking towards the light. In this
state of mind he wrote in 1839 the Three Thougkts of
Henryk Ligenza, that were published the following year.
Under this collective name are comprised the poem
called The Son of Darkness and two allegories in poeti-
cal prose, The Dream of Cesara and A Legend. The
theme of the first is the human soul, that of the second
the destiny of the Polish nation, and the third deals
with the future of the Church. These matters--the
history of individual and collective man--were so
closely connected with each other in the Krasinskian
scheme that the continuous thread may be discerned
in the three dissimilar works2. They are preceded by
a short sketch in prose. The imaginary writer and his
wife are travelling in Sicily: and the little incidents of
their Italian experiences are told with a lightness and
humour such as we find in no other of Krasinski's
writings.
The travellers stumble across the traces of a Pole,
dead of consumption in the island. There is a touch
of true pathos when the Polish visitors search for the
forgotten grave of a lonely compatriot, and raise a
tombstone to tell the passer-by that a Pole lies there.
To papers purporting to have been left by this Pole
Krasinski gives the title: Three Thoughts of Henryk
Ligenza.
1 Letters to August Cieszkowski. Munich, Feb. 25, 1842.
2 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? Before the Dawn 199
Pantheism, Hegelianism, metempsychosis have all -
influenced the difficult poem, The Son of Darkness.
Polish critics differ considerably as to its literary merits:
we will therefore leave that side of it alone. Upon
the value of its matter opinions are also at variance1.
The theme is highly complicated and obscure, so that
as the present study is not a philosophical work perhaps
the writer may be excused for dealing with it some-
what cursorily.
The poem sets forth the origin of the human spirit
and its journey back to its last end. Some "unknown
power" cast it forth from darkness to the earth. "Half
slumbering," it wanders and gropes to the dimly dis-
cerned light, struggling with Titanic tortures, till it
clothes itself "in the garments of humanity," and,
becoming man, recognizes its own consciousness. In
its beginning it knows God only as the " lord of wrath. "
It endures suffering, yearning after God, by which it
advances to a higher life. Its throes are crowned by
the union of the Word with flesh, of God with man,
by the victory over evil and the "clay of the heart,"
which is the triumph of love2. Again returns a period
of longing, doubt and torment: but "the evil is only a
transition, only the highway's dust"; and the son of
darkness ascends, the son of light, to the stars.
Step ever further then, oh, son of light! Step to the
boundaries of the undiscovered worlds! . . . What thou didst
grasp with thought thou shalt with thy hand attain. What
thou didst feel by inspiration with thine eyes shalt thou behold.
There is no death. Before the spirit stretches cycle
1 Compare St. Tarnowski, op. cit. , with J. Kleiner, History of the
Thought of Zygmunt Krasinski, and Prof. Zdziechowski's Vision oj
Krasinski. Cracow, 1912 (Polish).
2 M. Zdziechowski, op. cit. J. Kleiner, op. cit.
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? 200 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
after cycle of life: and it passes through successive
transmigrations till at last more or less pantheistically
it is fused in the All Spirit of the Divinity, and hence-
forth through eternity must "think, love, create a
heaven in heaven1. "
The Dream of Cesara is once more national,
though the distinction between what we call Krasinski's
national writings and those in which he occupies him-
self with universal spiritual problems is more apparent
than real. Krasinski was led to the great interests of
humanity by the desire that they might throw light on
, the problem of his country. One enigma was the
complement of the other.
Neither The Dream of Cesara nor the Legend is
comparable to Krasinski's greater works. They are
written in his most highly decorated manner. Related
in the style of apocalyptic vision, they convey to the
reader's mind a strange sense of things seen in the
confusion of a dream. And, in fact, we have the testi-
mony of Mickiewicz who knew it from a friend of
Krasinski--Gaszynski, Dr Kleiner conjectures2--that
The Dream and the Legend were the poet's actual
dreams3.
A voice [Delphina's] called me by my name, "Cesara!
Cesara! " And I went forth I know not where, but that voice
will I follow, if needs be even to the end of the world.
1 Dr Kleiner gives an interpretation of the poem as referring to the
history of humanity in general. The allusion to the spirit's conception of
God as the "lord of wrath" is explainable by the Judaism that preceded
the Incarnation of Christ. The fresh sufferings that befall the spirit of
humanity after the time of Christ depict Krasinski's own epoch which he
hoped was to be merely the transition to the third and last epoch of
humanity. The spirit in the poem ascends to the other world: and here i
ends the earthly development of the human race. J. Kleiner, op. cit.
2 J. Kleiner, op. cit. 3 Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
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? Before the Dawn
201
The voice leads him to a mighty cathedral. Its
elaborate description is modelled on Krasinski's remem-
brances of Freiburg cathedral where he had wandered,
surrounded, it seemed to him, by invisible spirits of
those who had died for their faith, and asking himself
if they would rise again1. Against a mysterious back-
ground of moonlight and music Cesara sees the hosts
of the nations, and among them the last Poles left on
earth, advancing in chains and mourning garb to the
tomb.
And grief encompassed my heart, and tears flowed to my
eyes. And the voice cried to me as the wind: "Cesara, Cesara,
behold the people who are going from the earth, and will return
no more. ". . . I heard the voices of multitudes crying: "Live and
be our slaves. "
The Poles prefer death. The floor of the cathe-
dral yawns before them and, accompanied by the
figure of Christ, they go down to their grave amidst
sorrowful music. Over their tomb lies a great stone
marked by the inscription written in blood: The Nation.
No trace of them remains: but a beautiful mourning
woman rises before the poet's eyes, the sister, says the
voice, of those who have fallen. "Like a dream though
ever visible," she, who Count Tarnowski hazards may
be the memory of his country, or the love of her or
hope for her, floats before him through nights and days,
through the mists of his vision, whither he knows not:
but whither she goes I go, and where she pauses there will I
halt, and where she disappears there will I disappear with her.
As they pass on they reach a spirit in the guise of
an old man seated on a rock above the mists, playing
a harp on which there is only one string left. In this
1 Letters to Sattan. Freiburg, Sept. 20, 1839.
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? 202 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
obscure allegory where, according to Dr Kleiner, it is
not clearness that is aimed at, but the mystery of a
vision, we can only conjecture for whom the different
symbols stand. Count Tarnowski suggests that the
harpist may represent Time or Satan or Brute Force1.
Whoever he may be, he conjures the poet to "forsake
her who will never live again. "
And the figure halted and turned her face upon me. All
the unfulfilled dreams, all the slain hopes of her race, all their
life, all their pride and their death and now their slumber in
the grave, together at one moment were reflected on that face. . .
And again the spirit sang: "Return and live among the living
peoples. And I will remain here with her and will sing to her
my song without hope on this last string. For the others have
played their music away and are shattered. All together were
once called faith, courage, love. This only one left to-day is
called Nothingness. "
He calls to the poet: "Choose. " The voice of the
woman calls: "Cesara! "
And I followed her who will never return, to the cemetery
of death. She whom I loved has vanished in whirlwinds of
snow. And I felt all the pains of parting, all the emptiness of
void. I thought that the figure of" Christ had deceived them,
descending with them into the grave, for they shall wake no
more, and that she whom I defended had deceived me likewise,
for she had left me among those who were dead for ever.
And I sat on the shores of that sea and besought my soul to
leave me.
"What now? " is the mocking reiteration of the
harper: and it must be remembered that the temptation
to despair of Poland's resurrection was to the mind of
Krasinski and the great Polish patriot mystics as the
direct assault of the Evil One. And again, "either in
the depths of my heart or beyond the clouds," the voice
that had led Cesara calls.
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? Before the Dawn
203
And I started up and cried: "Save me, for I die: and I
die because thou didst deceive me. "
She answers:
"Cesara, Cesara, wherefore dost thou grieve, because thou hast
sacrificed thy life for her who is dead? Knowest thou not that
there is a resurrection? She who took away thy life shall give
it back to thee, for her death was only an illusion. "
I beheld the figure, rising as a new-born star from the
bounds of the horizon. . . and around me were men being raised
up from the dust, and the vision of Christ flashed white above
them in the sky. I closed my eyes, and fell with my face to
the earth among those who were rising from the dead.
This is the pith of The Dream of Cesara, taken
from a crowd of details, some of which appear wholly
extraneous to the matter. Although its general impres-
sion is that of a bewildered despair, yet it ends on the
note of resurrection, and contains Krasinski's favourite
moral of the "test of the grave. "
The Legend opens in the Roman Campagna, in the
twilight of the last Christmas Eve that is ever to be.
A boat comes across the sea, and lands "the last left
of the Polish knighthood," bound for the midnight Mass
in St Peter's. The dreamer leads them across the
Campagna and through the streets of Rome. The
description of the crowds of pilgrims, carrying flaring
torches, hastening to St Peter's, where the last Mass
on earth is to be sung, the clashing of all the bells of
Rome, lights flaming on towers and gates, have the
feverish effect of a nightmare and lend credence to the
story that Krasinski was writing down what he had
dreamed. With the sorrow of death imprinted on their
countenances, the Polish knights pass. The citizens
of Rome try to withhold them from entering the basilica
that seems on fire with light. A cardinal clad in purple
appears on the balcony, and bids the Romans "let enter
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? 204 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
those who erst redeemed a strange nation from death1,
and later for that same faith died themselves. Let the
dead enter. "
They enter, and kneel at the tomb of St Peter,
swords in hand. The eye' and ear are wearied by the
ornate vision of the interior of the church, filled with
countless throngs: how it is dim with "silver smoke"
from the thuribles, how the marble columns flash as
brilliant snows, how the Pope in golden vestments comes
in, surrounded by a glittering retinue, and for the last
time in the history of the world celebrates Mass. The
Cardinal summons all to "pray, for the time is short,
and to-day prayers are needed on earth and in heaven. "
There is throughout the premonition of a terrible
approaching cataclysm. At the moment of the Elevation
the form of Christ with bleeding Hands and Feet is
seen raised in the air. The chalice trembles in the
Pontiff's fingers. The Cardinal cries out, "The time
is fulfilled," and, stretching out his hands to St Peter's
tomb, conjures the apostle to "arise and speak. " The
figure of Peter half emerges, and as his voice peals
forth: "Woe! " to all it seems as though the piers of
the dome rocked.
"Peter, dost thou know me? " [asks the Cardinal, to which
Peter answers]: "Thy head at the last supper rested on the
Lord's bosom, and thou didst never die upon this earth. "
And the Cardinal answered: "And now it is bidden me
to dwell among men and shelter the world in my bosom, as
the Lord sheltered my head in His at the last supper. "
Then the mighty building begins to sway to its fall.
The terrified crowds flee. Only the Pope remains. The
Polish knights, commanded by the Cardinal to follow
1 The Lithuanians who were won to Christianity by the self-sacrifice
of Jadwiga, Queen of Poland.
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? Before the Dawn
205
him outside, refuse to leave the Pope to perish alone.
Baring their swords, they surround him where he kneels
at the high altar. The dome crashes in, and the basilica,
the Vatican and the square are a heap of dust. ,
It is the dawn. The Cardinal, otherwise St John,
seats himself on the ruins as on a throne. His purple
garments fall from him, and he is transformed into a
white figure, sparkling with soft light, while his face
breathes love and peace.
I approached him, and at the very moment that the sun
rose I said: "Lord, is it true that yesterday for the last time
Christ was born in that Church which to-day is no more? "
And he, "Henceforth Christ is no more born nor dies on
earth, for henceforth for the ages of the ages He is and will
be on earth. "
And I, hearing this, cast off all fear, and asked: "Lord, and
they, whom I led here yesterday, will they lie for ever beneath
these ruins, all dead around the old dead man? "
And that white holy one answered me: "Fear not for them.
Because they rendered him that last service the Lord will
reward them--for, in their setting even as in their rising, dead,
even as they lived, they are of the Lord. Yea, verily, it will
be better for them and for the sons of their sons. "
And when I had understood I was glad, and my spirit
woke.
We are thus left with the death of Poland and with
nothing more beyond a vague promise that is too in-
definite to convey any certitude of her resurrection.
Count Tarnowski looks upon this work as Krasinski's
greatest swerving from his patriotic and religious faith.
But the allegory that Tarnowski considers as well nigh a
blasphemy against Krasinski's national convictions and
openly hostile to his Church, Dr Kleiner is inclined to
regard as illustrative of the doctrines of development
that at this time began to take hold upon the poet.
The old Poland dies with the old Church. Both will
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? 2o6 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
rise again, but in a completely different form in the
new epoch, which is to be the epoch of love1. We
shall see how Krasinski modified this theory, which in
the Legend is almost too vague to be called a theory,
and, bringing it into far more orthodox lines, worked it
out in Dawn. The contradictions to be found in the
Legend are, Count Tarnowski suggests, not to be in-
vestigated too narrowly. After all the Legend is not a
treatise. It is a dream with the inconsistencies of a
dream2.
As regards the three epochs of the Church or of
humanity, we do not know whether Krasinski had
learnt them directly from the writings of Joachim of
Flora, which is improbable, or through Schelling and
Swedenborg, who both refer to them, or through the
medium of Cieszkowski, or again whether he evolved
them out of his own brain3.
"After the Resurrection," he wrote to Delphina Potocka
who was the constant recipient of his highest philosophical
theories side by side with the outpourings of his love, "Christ
takes not Peter, but John. But Peter is the Roman Church,
the practical militant governing Church, and John, who begins
the gospel from the 'Logos,' signifies the epoch of thought
and of the highest love. This has greatly struck me4. "
This language, as Dr Kleiner remarks, indicates
that the Anonymous Poet reached his point by a
process of his own, and probably only discovered later
that it was several centuries old5.
Krasinski was now rapidly advancing in the forma-
tion of his idea. In 1840 he wrote to the friend
1 St. Tarnowski, op. cit. J. Kleiner, History of'the Thought of' Zygmunt
Krasinski.
2 St. Tarnowski, op. cit. 3 J. Kleiner, op. cit
4 Letters to Delphina Potocka. Rome, Dec. 20, 1839. Tygodnik
Illustrowany, 1899. 6 J. Kleiner, op. cit.
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? Before the Dawn
207
whose life was darkened by the acutest griefs of a
father:
There are certain sufferings of yours about which I never
write to you: both because I do not wish to aggravate them,
and because it is better not to set on paper what has taken
up its abode in the very depths of the heart. But do not
therefore think that I do not think of them and that I do not
feel them together with you.
Assuring his friend how the latter's afflictions rend
his heart, he goes on:
Oh, Adam, only, only faith in a higher ordering of the world,
faith that all the happenings and bitternesses of the earth are
discords let loose in the Divine accord, in the accord that as
yet has not reached our hearing but must some time reach it,
can save us. Therefore we believe that we know only one
half of life. I speak incorrectly, we know the whole of life by
thought, but we know by our own experience the half of that
all-life, and because it is only the half it is evil for us. But we are
spirits, not perishable stones. The spirit has its resurrection
from pain; happiness and divine peace are our destiny, for
they are our nature. Thence we came, and there shall we
return. Let this thought be my wish for you in the year that
is now to begin1.
This conception of the half of life being ours, and i
not the perfect whole, was one of the foundations upon
which Krasinski was now raising the solution of un-
explained suffering that gave him the clue to the
mystery of Poland's tragic history.
"Where there is pain," he wrote to Stowacki on a
Roman Easter Eve, "there is life, there is resurrection. "
Death was no more death in his eyes.
