He did not, however, despair of
conquering
this rebellious element.
Krasinski - The Undivine Comedy
He spares his enemy, and only strikes those
who had loved him, or who had done him no harm, and
pronounces judgment on himself in those melancholy
lines which bear witness at the same time to his desire
that the right should prevail and his want of power to
accomplish it, —
" The time is out of joint ; O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right ! "
The hero of " The Undivine Comedy" reminds us by
more than one trait of the Prince of Denmark : he has
the same imagination and the same sensibility ; he loves
to make soliloquies and compose for himself dramas ; he
joins to highly elevated and generous aspirations weak-
ness and impotence ; and his conscience, refined to ex-
cess, at last grows hard and sinks to cruel actions. There
is more than one element common to the two works ;
among others, the poetic justice which punishes Count
Henry's determinate exaltation by the madness of his wife,
is very like that which punishes the counterfeit madness
of Hamlet, by the too real insanity of Ophelia, But let
us not be deceived by this resemblance ; if the character
of the catastrophe is the same, the j////^? //W/ is aggravated,
and the denouement becomes more saddening. The hero
of the Polish poet not only recalls the type created by
Shakespeare, he continues it, — continues it under entirely
new conditions, created by contemporary and still more
heart-rending disasters. It is certainly very sad to will
and see the Good, and yet feel utterly powerless before
the Evil ; the Prince of Denmark fully felt this terrible
anguish ; — but it was reserved for the man of our times to
endure a torment far more horrible, — that of aspiring to
the Good, and to be not only forced to tolerate the Evil,
but even to defend it — through fear ofxvorse, — through dread
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 83
of utter destruction and the abyss of nothingness f Hamlet
defending the reign of fools and rogues, of the Poloniuses
and Osrics ; Hamlet making his breast and heart a ram-
part for the throne of the crowned murderer, Clodius, —
and all this to escape the spicy logic of the ''grave-dig-
gers," who found the greatest nobility should belong to the
tanners and undertakers : — certainly the irony would be
bitter — satanic ! This is, however, precisely the role which
devolved upon Count Henry ; the kind of combat to
which a liberal man of the nineteenth century is some-
times called ! The contest is sad and deceptive in a very
different manner from what it was in times not far re-
moved from our own, for in the present struggle we sur-
prise ourselves not only in wanting faith, but in failing to
act in good faith ; — and the drama becomes so much the
more poignant that, in being tragic and infernal, it does
not the less resemble a comedy !
III.
There is one thing very remarkable in considering the
collective works of the Anonymous Poet : that is, — if I
may so term it, — the descending movement of his mind
from universal questions embracing all humanity to na-
tional or psychologic subjects. The phenomenon is sur-
prising, because it is not the common movement of poetic
genius. Take Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe, you will
find them gradually rising from the special to the general,
from the finite to the infinite, from the Vita Nuova to the
Song of Paradise ; from the historic and national drama,
and from Rotneo, to the vast and deep conceptions of
Macbeth and Hamlet ; from Werther and Goetz von Ber-
lichingen to the second part of Faust, and Wilhelm Meister.
But without leaving the regions of Polish poetry, the
career of Mickiewicz offers a most striking example of a
development always ascending. He begins by ballads and
romances based upon traditions and popular legends ; that
is to say, by that which is the most inherent in the natal
soil, the most closely shut in by the domestic horizon.
He rises afterwards to the tale of Grazyna, in which the
84 POLISH POETRY IN
memoiies of a feudal past are depicted ; to IVa/leiirod,
where he presents to us the present of the nation with all
its feverish preoccupations; we hear already in it the tocsin
of 1830. He afterwards, in his Sir Thaddeus, repre-
sents to us the national life collectively in its customs and
memories, and in the most minute analysis of its internal
being, — and only then, for the first time, does the poet
enter upon the problems of the Future. It is exactly the
reverse with the Anonymous Poet. At the very beginning
of his career, at the age of twenty-three, he wings his first
flight into the highest regions of speculation, pierces with
a single look the whole structure of Society and Morals,
but this sphere once flown over, or rather, passed through,
he never returns to it ; he folds designedly his wings,
tracing circles ever more and more narrow; and the choice
of the forms successively adopted by the poet is like an
image of his own internal development. P'or his first
works, he preferred the Allegoric Drama, the widest and
freest form which can be found; then he limited himself
to the Tale, to the imaginative, or rather, visionary tale,
it is true, but a species of composition far more closely
united and regular than the dramatic allegory; and he
finally ended by restricting himself to the most individual
and concentrated expression possible, — to a severe and
measured lyricism.
We might perhaps try to explain this phenomenon of a
development so different from that of Mickiewicz by
purely external circumstances; by stating that Mickie-
wicz had lived for a long time in his own country, and
had only gradually attained a position which might be
termed cosmopolitan, while the Anonymous Poet had
been early and violently thrown into other lands, among
the ideas and prepossessions of the West, and only
through the force of will and reflection returned to the
feelings and wants of his own people. But there are far
more inherent, far deeper causes for the fact. A moral
question here leads the historic or literary inquiry, and
the concentric development of the genius of the poet is
in exact correspondence with the leading ideas which he
had formed upon the duties of the present, upon the
mission of man and of nations in the critical epoch we
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 85
are now traversing. " The Undivine Comedy" was rather
a farewell than a salutation ; it was an energetic protest
against a fatal delusion of the age, in which it was
thought possible to regenerate humanity without having
first regenerated man; to establish universal rights, with-
out having first strengthened the individual in his duties.
The noble precept, that " in order to salute the sun, we
must look at our horizon," the poet was resolved to put
into practice. He did look at his own horizon; he
labored more and more to understand the ground given
to him to cultivate, — the field left to his action and good
will ; he tried to formulate more and more exactly his
individual mission with the means accorded him, and
under the circumstances in which he found himself
placed, and thus, in successively narrowing his circles, he
arrived at a point, — the human soul ; according to the
national expression, "the Polish soul," — "at that im-
perceptible point which nevertheless has an infinite
periphery, since it contains God. "
At the first glance, however, the work which so closely
followed "The Undivine Comedy" (1836) resembles it
in many respects. First, as to form, it also is a dramatic
allegory, with varied scenes boldly sketched, and inter-
woven with lyric digressions. Secondly, as to subject, it
also represents the fall of a world, the crumbling away of
a society. But that which from the first distinguishes
"Iridion" from "The Undivine Comedy" is, that the
scenes are no longer to be played in the future; they
occur in a well-known and determinate past. With the
rare intelligence of sublime conceptions, the poet places
himself on the very knot of these three elements, viz. ,
the classic element, the barbaric element, and the Chris-
tian element : the tissue of which three, providentially
combined, interwoven, and developed by the centuries,
has formed our modern civilization.
The triple name borne by the hero of this poem —
Iridion, Sigurd, Hieronymus — immediately indicates the
point of intersection in the history of humanity in which
the drama is set. Is it due to the possession of an his-
toric base that the second work has over the first the ad-
vantage of a firmer, yet more plastic, design ? Or should
8*
86 POLISH POETRY IN
it not rather be attributed to the special place chosen by
the poet, — to the antique world whose genius, even in
decline, seems to have had the gift of giving lucidity and
transparency to all with which it came in contact? At
all events, it is certain that this second composition is in
bolder relief, and more harmoniously ordered, than " The
Undivine Comedy;" the figures are no longer mere sym-
bols; they have marked traits, sculptured by a skillful
graver; they are stamped with distinct individuality, and
the characters are largely developed. However, that
which most distinguishes it from "The Undivine Com-
edy" is, that in place of a cosmopolitan and humanita-
rian tendency, it has a patriotic bearing; it aims at the
special situation forced upon Poland since her dismem-
berment, which must not be forgotten as we read.
Without doubt, history is familiar with more than one
country which has gnawed its chains of foreign domina-
tion in despair; it knows even nations which, like
Greece, after ages of oppression, awake to the full en-
ergy of patriotic feeling ; but, with the exception of
Spain under the yoke of the Moors, it offers no nation
which has struggled as constantly as Poland against its
subjection. A century has elapsed since the division of
Poland ; and how many insurrections does she not count
in her sad. annals? how many efforts always conquered
yet always springing forth anew? And what untold bit-
terness must have accumulated in hearts always crushed
yet always obstinate to combat ! Above all, let us not
forget that, for the most part, the generations born after
the division have never known, in its living reality, the
country for which they have fought without cessation ;
the fatherland has only been for them a mournful mem-
ory, — the recollection of a great grief, of a great crime
remaining unpunished, and forever calling upon them for
vengeance. Let us likewise note that to a material dis-
memberment a spiritual dismemberment had also cor-
responded ; that a current of emigration was renewed
after every catastrophe, the chief cause of which lay in
an undying feeling of protestation against the cruel work
of the invaders. A strange situation has grown up from
these facts, — one beyond the limits of all ordinary rules ;
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. g-j
a situation of constant excitement, feverish and delete-
rious, calculated to mine the morality of the nation, and
threatening to pervert the delicate sense of the just, of
the upright. Foreign domination is not only odious in
what she permits herself to inflict upon the oppressed ; she
is more horrible through that which the oppressed deem jus-
tifiable to inflict in turn upon her !
The state of being forced upon Poland by the triple
yoke, recommenced in her interior in the necessity of
simulating and dissimulating, in raising cunning to the
height of a civic duty, while the art of deceiving the op-
pressors becomes almost a virtue ; and for her children
thrown into exile, it created externally the mission of
struggling against the enemy upon every battle-field, and
through every available means. The example of Bem
alone would be sufficient to make evident the danger in-
curred in the possible distortion of the most sacred feel-
ings of a nation by this constant and violent struggle
without quarter. That the glorious soldier of Ostro-
lenka and Transylvania should have embraced the faith
of Mahomet, only in the hope of still making war upon
the Russians, is sufficient to prove how the moral sense
may sometimes be eclipsed even in the most heroic soul ;
but that the illustrious renegade should have lost none of
his prestige with a nation so fervent in its faith, and
whose whole past history had been an unceasing combat
against Islamism ; that the pious peasant of Posen should
have still continued to hear and salute in the sound of
the bells of his church the magical and still venerated
name of "Bem," — this becomes a grave matter, and
shows with what feelings the country is animated for
those who love it ! And what can be said of the ideas of
a vengeful Fanslavism, which were already beginning to
germ and delude souls, at the time when the Anony-
mous Poet was composing his work ? How are we to
speak of this strange and satanic doctrine which preaches
suicide, that death may be given to others? which
recommends voluntary slavery, the reconciliation with
the most cruel but also the strongest of the adversaries,
that thus vengeance may be wreaked on the less guilty?
that pleases itself in the hope of preparing a new Attila
88 * POLISH POETRY IN
for a world which remained an impassive spectator during
the agonies of the crucifixion of a people ? . . .
It is difficult, nay, it is almost impossible, for the
happy upon earth, for those who enjoy a free and inde-
pendent country, to comprehend the surging hell of
temptations, of torments, which are massed in the single
word, Slavery, for a subjugated people ! But the Anon-
ymous Poet understood this Hell, and shuddered at the
sight! Diving into the tortured depths of the "Polish
soul," he suddenly encountered this current of sombre
and ferocious ideas, — " they chilled his soul ! " He was
appalled at the force of that national feeling feeding
itself upon hate of the oppressors ; he was frightened at
that love of country stronger far than death, but which
began to think of giving death to others ! He wished
to give a warning to his people, and thus he wrote
"Iridion. "
The Anonymous Poet depicts the patriotic grief caused
by foreign oppression in its most legitimate, as well as in
its most vivid aspects. What could be more touching,
more attractive to our imagination, than the memories of
Hellas, the classical home of art, of poetry, and of that
love of country which brought forth so many heroes and
originated so many illustrious actions? What could be
more justifiable than the resentment of a descendant' of
Themistocles and Miltiades "against the people born of
a wolf;" against the Roman who came to Corinth as a
liberator, friend, and then became the proud and cruel
master of Greece, nay, of the entire world? " Iridion"
gives us the genius of Hellas meditating a great stroke of
vengeance after ages of subjection and oppression. The
scene is placed at the epoch of Caracalla and Heliogaba-
lus, in the time of the deepest abasement of the empire,,
when the grandeur of Rome was naught but monstrosity,
seeming ready to fall before any bold attack. Thus
heightened by the splendor of a glorious past, justified by
causes of well-founded complaint, favored by the most
propitious circumstances, the attempt of " Iridion" offers
still another element of success: it is not the siulilen
growth and bloom of a single will, a single age; it was
prepared afar off by a generation which gave itself up in
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 89
advance to the task of sowing, without the hope of har-
vesting, even of living, save in its successors ! This is
the deep thought developed in the Prologue, in which
two persons are boldly sketched who are doomed to die
before the real Drama actually begins, but who give birth
to the future hero, to the '■'■Son of Vengeance. ^^
Amphilochus, a Greek of illustrious race, counting even
Philopoemen among his ancestors, had deeply felt all
the woes of his subjugated people: "a slave because a
Greek, he was by nature an avenger. " With the clear-
sightedness of hate, we had almost said the hate of the
exile, he had seen on the still clear horizon the dark speck
from which the tempest would one day break forth, and
had divined in the barbaric race of the Northmen the future
destroyers of the Eternal City. He went to the Cimbric
Chersonesus, to the land of " Silver- Torrents," among
the Scandinavians, not to induce them to move against
the common enemy, Rome, but to find a wife ; an oracle
having predicted to him that great misfortunes to the im-
perial city would be the fruit of such an alliance. The
contrast between the Greek genius, refined almost to sub-
tlety, and the uncultivated but heroic character of the
Scandinavian, briefly indicated as it is, is yet portrayed
with the highest skill. The Greek fixes his choice upon
the purest of virgins, upon Crimhild, the High-Priestess
of Odin, the daughter of King Sigurd : a civilized Othello
fascinating a barbaric Desdemona ! She says to him : " I
know not thy country ; I have not even seen it in my
dreams ; nor do I know thine enemies ; and yet, O mis-
erable virgin, dishonored Priestess, struck by the curse of
Odin, I will follow thee! " The scene in which Crim-
hild appears for the last time to take her place upon the
stone of sacrifice, to sing her last hymn in the holy forest
of the God of the North, surrounded by the chiefs of the
hordes, by the lords of the plains, by the kings of the sea,
is stamped with massive grandeur. Filled with mystic
inspiration, her eyes gazing into infinite space, she fore-
sees the ages yet to come, hears the hammer of Thor
breaking the helmets and bucklers, the breasts and skulls
of men into dust ; she sees her brothers, her people,
leaving the land of Silver-Torrents, precipitate themselves
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POLISH POETRY IN
upon an immense city, a city on seven hills, of which she
vainly tries to find the name, — this name suffocates and
escapes her — she writhes to find it — but no utterance re-
lieves her tortured breast — she falls to the earth. The
Greek then advances from the ranks of the breathless
crowd; amidst the universal stupefaction and indigna-
tion, he enters the dread and sacred circle, and, bending
over the priestess, says to her: "In the name of Rotne,
name of thy enemy and mine, I call thee back to life !
Crimhild, rise! " Then turning to the crowd, he thrice
cries: Rome! Rome! Rome! The virgin rises, repeats
after him the mysterious name, and then follows the
stranger "as the wife, the husband ! "
From this union so strangely assorted by destiny, from
this pair settled in an island of the Ionian Sea, where
everything recalls the past, two children, pledges of love,
are born, whom Amphilochus, on his return from his
expeditions in the neighboring archipelagoes, blesses in
their sleep with the words : " Remember to hate Rome !
When you shall be grown up, let each of you pursue it
with curses ; Iridion, with fire and sword; and Elsinoe
with all the genius and subtleties of woman ! " The Pro-
logue ends with the touching picture of the death of
Crimhild.
Many years pass, and we are transported to Rome,
whither Amphilochus had taken the ashes of his wife, his
household gods, and his hate. He too is dead, but has
left his designs to his son, beautiful as a demigod, " but
pale, because of all the Roman blood yet wanting to his
cheeks! " Amphilochus has also left his son, as coun-
selor, guardian, and friend, Masinissa, an old man whom
he had first met in the land of the Getulians when he
had lost his way upon a tiger-hunt : he is the wa'ide-
lote of the classic Wallenrod. The work of the Greek has
ripened, and Iridion has now immense forces at his com-
mand, destined to be employed against the accursed city.
Through his father he belongs to Hellas and the part
of Asia so thoroughly hellenized ; through his mother he
is affiliated with the Germans, who begin to throng into
Italy, filling the ranks of the cohorts and legions. He
has with him the ancient world and the modern, even the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
91
Romans are on his side, — not the abject freedmen whom
the conqueror of Numantia had already repudiated with
scorn, and who then formed the senattis populusque, but
the true Romans, the legitimate descendants of the old
patricians. There is a fine scene in which a wretch named
Sporus, by the command of a jester of Heliogabalus comes
to assassinate Iridion ; but, " he was hungry, and in the
Palace of Amphilochus they had given him food ; he was
thirsty, and they gave him wine ; he had heard his
brother gladiators bless the name of the Greek," and he
gives his secret and himself to Iridion. Iridion is struck
by the language of the slave ; he discerns the traces of
past greatness upon his brow, shining like a lamp in a
tomb. . . . "Thy name? " — "Sporus, but formerly
Scipio. " . . . "I can bring thee a Verres, a Capius, a
Sylla, all gladiators like myself. " . . . And the son of
Amphilochus is filled with joy. But all this is not yet
enough ; he must have a vengeance more refined, and
above all he must secure himself against the Fatum of the
Eternal City. What if he could gain the Emperor himself
to side against the empire ! If he could but make the
successor of Augustus the instrument of his vengeance,
and force the last of the Caesars to destroy with his own
hands the last of the Romans ! . . . And why should that
be impossible ? Had not Nero already tried to burn the
city? and the present occupant of the throne, the foolish
son of the mad Caracalla, was he not more insensate than
Nero, and even more of an artist than he who loved to
see the flames flash high ? Besides, the grasp of the
Greek was already upon Caesar ! Heliogabalus had be-
come deeply enamored of Elsinoe, whom Amphilochus
had consecrated from her infancy to pursue his work " by
all the genius, all the perfidy of woman ! "
The drama opens precisely at this point, when Iridion
is saying farewell to his sister, who is about to be taken to
the palace of Caesar. Our poet possesses in the highest
degree the difficult art of creating female characters, and
his works contain a gallery of feminine figures full of
pathos and originality. The daughter of Amphilochus
has been brought up from infancy in the idea that she is
to be the victim to expiate the shame of her fathers and
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POLISH POETRY IN
the sufferings of many nations ; she has been taught by
Masiiiissa; and the decrees of her brother have hitherto
been her law. But Avhen the fatal moment arrives for the
accomplishment of her destiny, her soul revolts, and, like
Antigone, she bursts into lamentations upon her doom,
upon her youth condemned to pain, her beauty to pro-
fanation. Iridion remains inexorable, and refuses all
temptation to pity. He leads Elsinoe to the statue of their
father.
" Formerly" — he says to her — " the sacrifice of the life
of a man sufficed for nations; now even honor must be
offered up ! . . . Maiden, listen to me as to the dying, as
if never again to hear my voice on earth ! Thou art to
enter the Palace of the Accursed, to live with the damned ;
to yield thy body to the son of shame: — see to it that
thy soul remains high, pure, and free ! Let Caesar never
sleep upon thy breast ! Alarm him constantly with cries
that the Praetorians call to arms, that the patricians con-
spire, and that the people storm his palace gates ! and
slowly, day by day, and hour by hour, madden him with
rage and fear ; drink all the life-blood of his heart ! Now
rise and bow thy head ! Conceived in the desire of ven-
geance, grown up in hope of this revenge, destined to
shame and to perdition, I consecrate thee to the infernal
gods — and to the manes of Amphilochus the Greek. "
It has sometimes been given to poetry to render history
probable, thus, for example, the Richard III. of the Chro-
nicles first becomes possible for our intellect, or acceptable
for our imagination, in the tragedy of Sliakespeare. The
Anonymous Poet has, in the same manner, succeeded in
making us believe in the existence, the reality, of one of
those Roman Csesars, who, in spite of Suetonius and
Tacitus, have always seemed to us inexplicable enigniiis.
Through an ingenious and ])rofound art our author has
succeeded in unraveling all the elements constituting that
remarkable and fantastic being called Heliogabalus. Born
under the burning sky of Asia, the son of Caracalla became
High-Priest at Emesus at fourteen years of age, and was
familiar with all the sanguinary voluptuousness of the
worship of Mithras. At seventeen, he was Cnesar, master
of the world ; and placed upon this giddy height, the
TIJE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 53
young man rapidly exhausted all feelings, all sensations.
He was a child, with the instincts of a decrepit old man ;
his passions were worn out; his soul was only lighted by
the flickering gleams of lubricity. Worlds couM not fill
the ennui of his heart; it was the incarnate void ! In
spite of his power, his eye could rest but upon one thing,
the abyss into which so many of his predecessors had
fallen ; the thought of death everywhere pursued him,
and what he most feared in it was the idea of giving up
his tender limbs, white as snow, to the rage of the pojni-
lace, for in his own manner he was an artist, he was in
love with his own divine form, and if he must die, he in-
tended that " his blood should flow over diamonds before
descending to Erebus. " He had had a jeweled court pre-
pared, into which he might precipitate himself in case of
sudden danger.
We may now understand the plans founded by Iridion
on such a character when it should be shaken and tortured
by an arm vigorous as the hammer of Thor, supple as a
serpent, white as a lily ; — and Elsinoe knew well her part !
Slie became the strong virgin borne in the bosom of Crim-
hild, the Scandinavian Valkyria, with proud looks and
haughty scorn when in the presence of the enfeebled son
of Asia. Why did he speak to her, this weak Caesar, of
his divinities of light, of his Genii of the night, and of
his sacrificial powers, so adored by the highest pontiffs of
the East ? The daughter of ice and snow despised the
effeminate gods who float in clouds of incense, rocked by
the sound of flutes, and bathed in the blood of trembling
roes or infants newly born ! Ah ! he was very different,
her mother's god and hers, strong Odin, made of oak and
steel, who, calm amid rains, snows, and tempests, held a
cup of foaming blood of heroes in his stalwart hands, and
saw the Northern seas break at his feet ! Why did he
speak to her of sharing all his splendor, greatness, and
infinite power? She knew too well the end of all the
Caesars; the first chance centurion might plunge his knife
into the swan-like throat, and throw the divine majesty of
Caracalla's son to the dogs to tear ! Does not Severus
plot against him even in his own palace? are not the
cohorts in revolt even at the gates of his own capital ?
9
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POLISH POETRY IN
Before pretending to make the chaste body of a virgin of
Odin seek shelter in his arms, he must learn not to tremble
himself before his eunuchs and Praetorians; she has no
dream of bliss for him who has no morrow! Heliogabalus
foams with baffled desire, with spite, with rage, with fear,
— beyond all, \\\\. \\ fear ! Yes, it is too true; he is sur-
rounded with plots and snares, he must be crushed, and
no one can possibly save him ! . . . Yes, replies the
Valkyria ; in her pity for this wretched master of the
world she has prayed for him to her strong gods, and these
gods have revealed to her the name of one who could
secure the throne of Cresar ; — but she will not give this
word. Why should she? The Emperor would not have
sufficient courage to appeal to this hero of fate, — he who
shivers at his own slaves ! At last, however, she suffers this
name to be torn from her lips, — it is the son of Amphi-
lochus, her brother ! Heliogabalus then sends for Iridion.
The palace of the Csesars opens to the descendant of
Philopoemen, nor does he enter it as "Grceculus,^' as had
so many of his countrymen, as simple poet, ranting rhe-
torician, or amusing epigrammist. No, he comes as master,
who dictates his commands, and looks scornfully upon the
debased throng encumbering the Court. It is an easy
thing for him to augment the terror of Heliogabalus, to
represent to him his situation as utterly desperate, treason
everywhere hatching, and a convulsion ready to break
forth, but, after having raised the fears of the crowned
child to their utmost height, he suddenly changes his
tone, tells him to take courage, y^r in this eternal war be-
tween the EjHperor and the city, shall the victory never be
with the Emperor? He then unfolds to him a complete,
strange, and demoniacal philosophy of history ; he shows
him Rome in perpetual struggle with its Emperors, ren-
dering all government impossible ; Rome, always dream-
ing of a republic, and revenging itself upon its rulers by
stoical opposition, by well-devised treason, or by bribing
the Praetorians ! Rome has unceasingly conspired against
and massacred its Csesars; then let Ceesar in his turn play
conspirator ! let him give the death-wound to his mortal
enemy ! The question now is not of Alexander Severus,
of such a cohort, of such a senator; it is of his great and
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
95
implacable Persecutor ; it is of this Rome, always enraged
against the successors of Augustus ; — of the Eternal City,
— not, however, more eternal than Babylon or Jerusalem —
both in ruins ! Let but the son of Caracalla bear himself
with a strong will ; let him become that which but few
heroes have ever dared to be, a Destroyer ; let liim leave
this accursed place, always in rebellion, to scorpions and
serpents ! The source of the eternal evil thus destroyed,
he can return to the country of his birth, "Where men
speak freely with the stars," and under the bright and
sunny sky of Asia he will found a new empire. Freed
from his sleepless nights, High-Priest and at the same time
Caesar, like an Egyptian demigod surrounded by the odor-
ous incense of myrrh and aloes, he will pass his happy
days, the great names of the past will perish in his brighter
fame, and there will no longer be senators nor jurists to
dream of republics, nor daring to sneer at Mithras, or the
long hanging sleeves of the Oriental costume loved by the
Emperor. . . . The perspective shown is full of sublime
horror, and well calculated to fire the brain of the son of
Caracalla, but the most striking point in this fantastic
scene is that it has its ;ra/side ; that it unseals a pregnant
thought, to germ in future time and become an historic
reality. For the hour will come when the Cresars, step
by step, will actually withdraw from the city of the Tiber ;
when they will sacrifice Rome to save the empire ; when
Constantine shall at last transport the capital of the world
into the East; — and it is curious to observe how skillfully
the presentiment of the work of future ages is wrought into
the texture of this extraordinary scene of vengeance and
of folly. As to the execution of this plan of destruction,
let him confidently trust in the son of Amphilochus. He
will introduce into the city the revolted troops who are
about to proclaim Alexander Severus ; he will advance
against them with the Prastorians who are as yet faithful,
and while the two armies are slaughtering each other, he
will let loose upon them the slaves, the gladiators, the
barbarians, and the Nazarenes. The onslaught would be
truly grand, the devastation general, Rome would be
ruined, and the peace of the successors of Augustus for-
ever secured ! Heliogabalus is fascinated by this poetry
96
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of desolation ; Iridion seems to him a new Prometheus
with the stolen heaven-fire. He names him Prefect of
the Praetorians, and confides to him the fortune of the
Csesars.
The only grave care now of the Greek is with respect
to the Christians, the confessors of the Prophet of Naza-
reth, whose name we now for the first time hear, although
they have for a long time been a subject of anxiety to
the Son of Vengeance, for Masinissa had predicted to
him that the only danger of the resurrection of Rome
would arise from these despised sectaries. Aside from
this dark prophecy, the Christians would necessarily enter
into the plans of one about to unite all the heterogeneous
elements of the empire, in order to unchain them against
the empire itself. Obscure, despised, and persecuted,
breathing freely only in the Catacombs, the new commu-
nity had not the less attracted to itself much that was
really great and living, both from among the Romans
and barbarians; it had grown rapidly, and had be-
come an imposing force. Alexander Severus had already
counted upon it, and Avas a Christian. The son of Am-
philochus had also joined these worshipers of a crucified
God ; he had been baptized. Iridion for the Greeks,
Sigurd for the Germans, for the Christians he was called
Hieronymus. But it was only an external sign and name
he had received from them. He did not understand
their mystic dogmas; their doctrines of resignation and
pardon only irritated him; but he intuitively saw that
the most dangerous resistance to his plans would spring
from them.
He did not, however, despair of conquering this rebellious element. He based his hopes upon the
fact that he had seen secret and involuntary curses
against their butchers germing in the souls of the young,
even in the midst of words of charity and forgiveness.
From the Forum and Palace of Rome we are taken into
the Catacombs. Poetry and history have alike delighted
in placing the empire of Christ in opposition to that of the
Caesars ; in contrasting the purity of the primitive Chris-
tians with the abject corruption of expiring paganism ;
from which has been drawn a glorification for the true
God, which, however brilliant, is not just in its method.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
97
The comparison would only be equitable, if, in opposi-
tion to this new world, in all the fullness of its vigorous
youth and purity of origin, should be placed tlie old
world, with all it possessed of good and true, and in the
beauty of its maturity. Every living being would easily
triumph if brought near a corpse ! The advantage would
not the less surely be with the new law ; it would in fact
\>Q far greater, for the proportions would not have been
falsified at the pleasure of the writer. The Anonymous
Poet took good care to fall into no such injustice. The
conception of the symbolic type, Iridion, the ideal of
both ancient and modern Hellas, has enabled the poet to
bring epochs widely distant in time near to each other,
and place the classic genius, in its most perfect mani-
festation, in direct opposition with Christianity, in all its
pristine vigor. From paganism in its age of decay, the
poet has taken the only grand thing of the era which re-
lieved the vices of the Cjesars : I mean the great spirit of
legislation which, under the most vicious of reigns, col-
lected the statutes of the future code, of the Roman law,
for which so glorious a future was reserved. With rare
skill he has managed to make the celebrated jurist, Domi-
tian, a vigorous representative of the antique Roman
virtue, as well as a decided antagonist of the Nazarenes.
The soul of Cato dwells in the breast of this confidant of
Alexander, for whose accession he schemes like a true
son of daring antiquity. Imbued with the philosophy of
the Stoics, bearing in his heart the image of Rome once
so glorious and free, Domitian still does not think the re-
turn to a republic possible ; it was too late for that even
in the days of Cassius ; he only prays the gods to give
Rome a master capable of rejuve;"iating the decrepit em-
pire, even if, instead of the olive branch, he be forced to
bear the axe of the lictor ! But let them never speak to
him of a crucified God ; let them never seek new vigor
there ! The glory of the Eternal City can never be re-
stored but by the aid of the principles which had first
raised it from the dust : "the mystic rites of the ances-
tors, and their inflexible courage. "
This is not, however, the supreme denial of the doc-
trines of the Saviour. Their utter negation has been in-
9*
98
POLISH POETRY IN
carnated by the poet in the person of Masinissa, who is
perhaps the most profound and original conception of
the whole drama. The counselor of Iridion is not
simply a ^^ wa'idelote,^^ he is the Spirit of Evil, Satan
himself, — but Satan ingloriously reduced to antique pro-
portions, such as a mythology always seeking beauty and
serenity, even in the darkest and saddest creations, would
have pictured him. Masinissa has neither the bitter and
desolating irony of Mephistopheles, nor the tempestuous
rage of Milton's fallen angel ; he is a grave and majestic
old man. Seek not in him that "eternal and infinite ne-
gation" which Goethe has given to Evil; his hatred
is, on the contrary, very determinate and very plastic.
Christianity repels him by that which must have deeply
wounded all minds truly and classically antique, — by its
apparent absence of virile energy, its want of sensuous
beauty. The doctrines of submission and resignation,
always preached by the confessors of the Cross, appeared
to him unworthy of a manly spirit, of a free man ; he
called them cowardice ; and there was nothing in Chris-
tianity, even to its rehabilitation of woman, — one of
the immense benefits of the Gospel, — which was not re-
volting to all his instincts. " They adore a maid," he
says, " a creature whose infancy is eternal, whose old age
precocious ; they build a strange, mysterious worship
upon the ruins of their carnal lusts, and they prostrate
themselves before a woman, — before the slave of the hus-
band. " . . . Thus, as he saw it, but little fit to inspire
vigorous acts, the Christian ideal seemed also to him
essentially ugly. " They are full of admiration for this
crucified body, for the features they imagine so exquisite
in the hour they call the triumph of love. They have not
known him ; they did not see him when he agonized, a pi'ey
to all the hideousness of suffering, faint with torture, cov-
ered with blood, and with his hair disordered by the
winds which whistled round his head. " . . . Here is in-
deed the beauty-seeking naturalism of the ancient world
protesting against modern spirituality, which exalts the
soul, even at the exi)ense of the body. Let the reader
examine for a moment the figures of the antique group
which our poet has placed in contrast with the spirit of
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
99
Christianity, that he may obtain a due conception of the
grand sense of justice and poetry which presides over the
whole of this remarkable composition.
Thus impartial in his pictures of the classic world, our
author is no less just in his sketches of the early societies
of the Christians. He has taken care not to give them
that beatified placidity, that detachment from all the pas-
sions of humanity, so willingly attributed to them by mer-
cenary and conventional art. In the primitive church, as
represented in our drama, the Holy Spirit alone is great
and infallible ; man is weak as he ever is, subject to
temptation and sudden falls. Not that the association of
Christians does not contain characters of sublime abne-
gation and sanctity, of invincible resolution, and of
angelic purity, such as Bishop Victor, the true servant of
God, the admirable head of a Christian community; but
together with those who realize the Christian ideal in all
its purity, we also meet with Christians less resigned, em-
bittered by grief, and aspiring to sunshine, joy, and life.
They are men, and as men they suffer, hope ; they want
a terrestrial base for their actions ; they wish to tear the
cross from the bowels of the earth, and plant it on the
Roman Forum. Remark attentively Simeon of Corinth,
only an episodic sketch, but drawn with a bold, free
hand, as is the wont of the Anonymous Poet. ' Simeon
had once loved ; a single day separated him from wedded
bliss, when a centurion tore the plighted maiden from his
arms to throw her to the Flavian amphitheatre. A skull
was all left to him by the tiger's teeth ! Then he em-
braced the cross with fervor, a burning asceticism puri-
fied his soul from all dreams of vengeance, he meditated
profoundly on the passion of the Lord, and was touched
with boundless love by memories of Golgotha. . . .
"And if God himself, to save the world, has taken a
body, why should not His Bride, the Church, to save the
world, also put on a body? Until now, she has been
only spirit; where are her temples, sanctuaries, powers? "
He exclaims in one of his solitary ecstasies, " To possess
the world, — not that which glitters in gold or groans in
iron ; but the infinite world, — the world of souls, — and
there in Thy name to reign, O God ! " Here we may
UNIVERSITY
fERfelTY \
lOO POLISH POETRY IN
already see the Spiritual contemplating the reign over the
Temporal. With spirits of this stamp Iridion succeeds,
and is listened to when, in place of the victory promised
them by Victor, "before the face of the Lord," he in-
cites them " to a combat and triumph which are of this
world, near them, and not at an infinite distance. "
Above all, however, it behooved the son of Amphilochus
to gain to his side Cornelia Metella, the saintly virgin
whom the Christians loved. The poet has surrounded
this noble victim with every grace, and the Son of
Vengeance is himself moved by the divine charm she
exhales around her, but Masinissa has designated her
as the principal and indispensable instrument of his un-
dertaking. To associate Christianity with his work of
destruction, to incarnate in human passions a force which
is not of this world, a woman is a necessity ! These Naza-
renes adore a virgin ! Then let Iridion choose the purest
and fairest of their maidens, inflame her with his own
ideas, and like a burning brand throw her in their midst.
With Satanic perspicacity the terrible old man has per-
ceived the danger incurred by the female heart in the
depths of Christian mysticism, the tendency of all ec-
static love to materialize itself even through the excess of
its own refinement, and he has traced for Iridion his line
of conduct : " Praise her God, adore his wounds, speak
tenderly of the nails which pierced his limbs, . . . and
then attract her thoughts from the crucified, and fix them
on yourself. . . . He is so far, He has been on the
earth, but will never return to it : but you live, breathe,
and are beside her. . . . You will become her God !
And when her head shall rest upon your breast, then will
the soul forget itself in the passion of the body, — then,
O my Son, my spirit will be with you, and you will find
adherents in the Catacombs. " The struggle which oc-
curs between Iridion and Metella, between the ideal of
classic beauty and the ascetic spirituality of the Christian
heart, is full of pathos and passion. The son of Amphilo-
chus breaks forth before the sainted maid in all the vio-
lence of his love, his hate; he kindles her soul with his
burning breath, he explains to her the odious past of
Rome, he entreats her to love, to live, and to revetige the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. loi
Saviour. The Christian resists, but is fascinated ; for the
first time she fears tlie dead who lie around her ; she makes
an effort to fly to Christ, to escape the Greek, who ap-
pears to her as Prophet or Archangel. At last the de-
cisive moment comes. Before the tombs of the martyrs,
and appealing to their bones to bear him witness, the
Greek tears off the veil of the maiden while lost in prayer,
and sullies her brow with a kiss, while she believes him
now to be a messenger from heaven.
Master of Metella, Iridion hastily repairs to Ehitn,
the most holy s])Ot within the Catacombs, where the faith-
ful are assembled. Clad in armor, and sword in hand, he
declares to the just that the time of resignation is past, the
measure full ; that this is the decisive moment : division
distracts the city, the son of shame totters on his throne,
the Prtetorians have turned away their hearts from him,
the people, like a troubled sea, know not to what wind to
yield. The legions throughout Asia are in insurrection ;
the Germans on the Rhine revolt ; Cssar and Alexander
arm for their last combat ; but what matters it to the
Christians who shall be the conqueror? Whoever it may
be, will he not murder them, and blaspheme Christ?
The signs perdicted are upon them, let them be recog-
nized ; let them K'/7//V_/fr;;//)'— and they are /r^<? . /" . . .
But who has commissioned him to lead the people of God ?
ask those who hesitate. Who will assure them that the
Lord has ordered them to rise? Simeon of Corinth
answers that he will bear witness to the mission of Iridion.
He begs the brethren not to suffer the propitious hour to
escape. From this moment, which will never return, let
them strike the spark of life, for in it, and in it alone,
sleeps the germ of future ages. Metella, maddened, in-
spired, and panting with haste, rushes in at this moment,
crying: "To arms ! to arms ! " This testimony from the
consecrated virgin determines the doubters. The bap-
tized barbarians are glad to find the messenger of the
Messiah in the grandson of Sigurd ; the young, the strong,
they who live and feel, swear to be exact at the hour and
place of meeting: the old, the pure, the saints, resist and
pray. The confusion is at its height, the eartli yawns
and trembles, the community disperses on all sides,
I02 POLISH POETRY IN
some applauding the avenger, others crying Anathema,
and mercy ! The holy place is finally empty, and Masi-
nissa appears in Eloim, thus deserted by the Christians,
surrounded by the infernal spirits who chant their victory.
Here, and in this scene alone, the Spirit of Evil steps
beyond the frame so ingeniously wrought for him by the
poet. For this time only he assumes the vast proportions
of the Christian Satan, and betrays the boundless hate of
Lucifer ; indeed, the spectacle he had just witnessed was
well fitted to swell his pride. He has seen the first rup-
ture in the Christian community founded upon peace,
unity, and love ; he regards it as the forerunner of all the
schisms yet to be, of the persecutions in the name of faith,
and of the terrible religious wars which through ages yet
to come shall rend and distract that humanity which
Christ had died to redeem. His soul dilates with this
hope, and he hurls defiance at Christ, his enemy.
"Great Enemy! Thou knowest that the souls of men
have gone astray from the beginning of the world ! From
this time forth no day will ever pass in which, disputing
on thy nature and thy substance, they will not excite
sterile, but bloody contests !
" In Thy name will they rise, revolt, destroy, burn, mas-
sacre ; in Thy name will they lose human life in dreamy
ecstasies, renounce the gift of speech, and die !
"And without ceasing, will they crucify Thee; as in
their wisdom so in their ignorance ; their reason as their
folly ; in their prayers of base humility, as in the haughty
blasphemy of their pride !
"On Thy far Heaven heights, empty the cup of gall they
hold to Thy wrung lips, until in Thy turn, Thou tooshalt
curse them !
" And even on the summit of Thy sky, with all Thy
glory and omnipotence, Thou shalt at last feel agony,
and learn to know what our hell truly is ! "
The denouement approaches, and Iridion redoubles his
activity. Sent by Caesar to treat with tiie revolted troops
marching upon the city, and whom Severus has joined,
he intentionally irritates them, and renders all accommo-
dation impossible. When returned to Rome, he prepares
the Praetorians to attack the invaders, and at the same
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
103
time marshals the slaves, gladiators, and barbarians to
fall on either party, to massacre and burn the city as soon
as they shall see him appear at the head of the Christians.
He again visits Heliogabalus to tear from him the last
symbol of power, the imperial ring ox\. which the Genius
of Rome is graven. Possessor of this talisman, he no
longer thinks of the son of Caracalla, but another has
thought of this crowned child :
^' £Isinoe. Brother, what will become of him?
*' I}-idion. It matters not. I care not for his life, nor
for his death. That which he was, now glitters on my
hand (showing the ring) ; that which he is, is scarcely
worth a thought.
" Elsinoe. If that be so, come near, come nearer still !
Canst hear my lightest whisper now?
'' Iridion. What is the matter, sister? Wherefore
tremble so? (He takes her in his arms. ) Thy small
hand burns in mine, — I feel thy heart throb wild against
my breast-plate !
" E/sinoe. The eyes whose fires withered my soul, must
die ! The arms which clasped my neck, must fall like
mangled adders ! The lips which first touched mine,
must crumble into dust !
*' Iridion. Yes. He shall perish. "
At last the hour for the execution of the plot arrives.
All have kept faith except the Christians, who do not
come. What can detain them ? Simeon swore to lead
them forward at the appointed time ; all hope for the
avenger lies in them. Iridion's anguish is extreme, the
anguish of Prometheus, when but a cloud divides him from
the heaven flame he means to seize ! " Why are you silent ?
Masinissa, speak! Cry: Long live Hellas! " — "I am
silent" — replies the old man — "because the hour ap-
pointed has already passed ! • Each feather in its wings
as it flies on rustles with long-drawn sneers. " — Iridion feels
that the work of his whole life is escaping his grasp ; he
hastes from his palace to unearth the Christians, his un-
sheathed sword in his hand, his head bare: "To con-
quer, his sword suffices; to die, he needs no helmet! "
His fears were well founded with regard to the Catacombs.
Bishop Victor had arrested, on the threshold of Eloim,
I04
POLISH POETRY IN
all the armed men who were marching upon the city.
When Iridion enters the sanctuary, most of the men had
already deserted him. Simeon persists in the revolt, and
is excommunicated. Metella, too, ceases not to acknowl-
edge the envoy of heaven in Iridion, or to cry : " To
arms! " and around this deluded, wandering soul Victor
and Iridion hold their last combat. Exorcised by the
Bishop, touched by the cross, she grows weak and faint,
and dies, renouncing the Spirit of Evil. Iridion casts a
last curse at the cowards, placing their whole trust in the
words of a woman, and departs to fight without a hope of
conquest. Indeed, victory is no longer possible ; the de-
fection of the Christians has ruined all ; the Praetorians
have not resisted the troops of Severus ; the gladiators,
slaves, and barbarians have fallen in the streets without
plan or direction, and have been everywhere repulsed.
The son of Amphilochus will sell dearly his defeat ; he
reunites all those still devoted to him, fights fiercely, and
repels with disdain the pardon sent him by the new Em-
peror through Domitian. In the long and admirable
scene between Domitian and himself, the combat between
Hellas and Rome is renewed and brilliantly discussed, —
the contest between the beautiful genius of Ancient Lib-
erty and the harsh and cruel domination of the Romans
is eloquently argued. All negotiations are broken, and
the struggle is renewed ; the issue is no longer doubt-
ful. Heliogabalus has been murdered, Elsinoe has taken
her own life, Rome still stands, and Alexander Severus
is proclaimed Emperor. The triumph of Severus, who
neither in Christian graces nor antique virtues ever soars
above mediocrity, is one of the deepest lessons contained
in the Drama; it is therefore intentionally that the poet
has given to the son of Mammea a character deprived of
all the stronger traits. For in the sublime struggle of
two titanic princij)les, the victory too often remains with
dull mediocrity ! Happy indeed if it should prove honest,
— as Alexander really was.
At last Iridion, without forces, deserted even by the most
faithful, his friends dead, gorged with bitterness, mounts
the funeral pyre to end his days. At this moment Masi-
nissa appears, of whom nothing had been seen after the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
105
defection of the Christians. He takes Iridion in his
arms, carries him away, and places him upon a mountain
near the sea, whence he can see Rome still standing entire,
"still showing its marbles to the sun like the white teeth
of a tiger. " Then the first doubt of the legitimacy of
his work rushes upon the son of Amphilochus ; then for
the first time he asks " if the God of Metella be not per-
chance the greatest of the gods, and if the Nazarenes do
not possess the only truth in the world? " "The Naza-
renes? " replies Masinissa, sneeringly, to him, — "truly
you owe them much in the past ; will owe them more in
the future ! . . . Not falsely did your mother Crimhild
speak ; her predictions will be all accomplished ! The
peoi)le of the North will yet ravage Italy, covering it with
blood and ashes ; but do you know who will tear the
accursed city from the hands of your barbarian brothers ?
The Nazarene ! In him the perfidy of the senate and the
cruelty of the Roman people will still live, as an eternal
heritage ; his heart will be as merciless as that of the first
Cato, although his words will often be sweet and effemi-
nate. And the warriors of the North will be as little
children at his feet, and for the second time he will
make Rome godlike, above all the nations of the earth ! "
— "What! " cries the Greek in the accents of despair,
"After Rome, will there be still another Rome? The
city accursed is then to be eternal? And this is the an-
nouncement which the friend of Amphilochus reserves for
Crimhild's son to bless his dying hour? " . . . Masi-
nissa replies: "Do not despair! The time is coming
wlien the shadow of the cross will oppress the nations
like a tropic heat ; when it too will stretch out its arms
in vain to press again to its heart those who forsake it !
One after another they will arise and say : ' We will no
longer serve thee ! ' Then will be heard at all the city
gates complaints and sobs, and the Roman Genius will
veil his face, his tears will never end, his humiliation will
be as great as has ever been his pride. " — The heart of
Iridion again begins to beat, his eyes regain their lustre.
— "O that I might see that day of chastisement and
vengeance ! " — " Then be it so ! " replies Masinissa. He
bears away his pupil from the life of earth, rocks him to
Io6 POLISH POETRY IN
sleep upon oblivion's heart, from which he will not wake
for many centuries, until the appointed hour comes:
" When on the Forum only dust shall be, — the Am[)hi-
theatre hold only skeletons, — the Capitol be crumbled
into infamy. " The antique drama is now finished, and
the epilogue transports us into modern times, into the
Rome of our own days. Through centuries, Iridion has
slept the sleep of Epimenides; neither the terrible days
of Alaric nor of Attila, nor the renovation of the em-
pire by Charlemagne nor the struggle of Rienzi, have
been able to arouse him from his sleep; the holy masters
of the Vatican have, one by one, like shadows glided by
this shade : " but in our times he awakes. " Masinissa has
kept his word, and he again places his pupil before Rome,
o'errun with creeping vines, through which a creeping
people move. The Son of the Centuries now crosses the
deserted Forum, and gazes round the desolate city, and
"every ruin is to him a recompense. "
" Two hoary-headed old men stand in the vestibule of
a Basilica, robed in purple mantles ; and monks salute
them with the names of Fathers, Princes of the Church ;
and poverty of spirit is graven on their faces. They en-
ter a chariot drawn by two dark, meagre horses, behind
them is a servant holding a dim lantern, such as a poor
widow hangs above a child who dies of hunger ; on the
panels of this chariot are seen what once was gilding.
The creaking wheels have passed, and with them disap-
pear two snowy, bent, and weary heads.
who had loved him, or who had done him no harm, and
pronounces judgment on himself in those melancholy
lines which bear witness at the same time to his desire
that the right should prevail and his want of power to
accomplish it, —
" The time is out of joint ; O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right ! "
The hero of " The Undivine Comedy" reminds us by
more than one trait of the Prince of Denmark : he has
the same imagination and the same sensibility ; he loves
to make soliloquies and compose for himself dramas ; he
joins to highly elevated and generous aspirations weak-
ness and impotence ; and his conscience, refined to ex-
cess, at last grows hard and sinks to cruel actions. There
is more than one element common to the two works ;
among others, the poetic justice which punishes Count
Henry's determinate exaltation by the madness of his wife,
is very like that which punishes the counterfeit madness
of Hamlet, by the too real insanity of Ophelia, But let
us not be deceived by this resemblance ; if the character
of the catastrophe is the same, the j////^? //W/ is aggravated,
and the denouement becomes more saddening. The hero
of the Polish poet not only recalls the type created by
Shakespeare, he continues it, — continues it under entirely
new conditions, created by contemporary and still more
heart-rending disasters. It is certainly very sad to will
and see the Good, and yet feel utterly powerless before
the Evil ; the Prince of Denmark fully felt this terrible
anguish ; — but it was reserved for the man of our times to
endure a torment far more horrible, — that of aspiring to
the Good, and to be not only forced to tolerate the Evil,
but even to defend it — through fear ofxvorse, — through dread
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 83
of utter destruction and the abyss of nothingness f Hamlet
defending the reign of fools and rogues, of the Poloniuses
and Osrics ; Hamlet making his breast and heart a ram-
part for the throne of the crowned murderer, Clodius, —
and all this to escape the spicy logic of the ''grave-dig-
gers," who found the greatest nobility should belong to the
tanners and undertakers : — certainly the irony would be
bitter — satanic ! This is, however, precisely the role which
devolved upon Count Henry ; the kind of combat to
which a liberal man of the nineteenth century is some-
times called ! The contest is sad and deceptive in a very
different manner from what it was in times not far re-
moved from our own, for in the present struggle we sur-
prise ourselves not only in wanting faith, but in failing to
act in good faith ; — and the drama becomes so much the
more poignant that, in being tragic and infernal, it does
not the less resemble a comedy !
III.
There is one thing very remarkable in considering the
collective works of the Anonymous Poet : that is, — if I
may so term it, — the descending movement of his mind
from universal questions embracing all humanity to na-
tional or psychologic subjects. The phenomenon is sur-
prising, because it is not the common movement of poetic
genius. Take Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe, you will
find them gradually rising from the special to the general,
from the finite to the infinite, from the Vita Nuova to the
Song of Paradise ; from the historic and national drama,
and from Rotneo, to the vast and deep conceptions of
Macbeth and Hamlet ; from Werther and Goetz von Ber-
lichingen to the second part of Faust, and Wilhelm Meister.
But without leaving the regions of Polish poetry, the
career of Mickiewicz offers a most striking example of a
development always ascending. He begins by ballads and
romances based upon traditions and popular legends ; that
is to say, by that which is the most inherent in the natal
soil, the most closely shut in by the domestic horizon.
He rises afterwards to the tale of Grazyna, in which the
84 POLISH POETRY IN
memoiies of a feudal past are depicted ; to IVa/leiirod,
where he presents to us the present of the nation with all
its feverish preoccupations; we hear already in it the tocsin
of 1830. He afterwards, in his Sir Thaddeus, repre-
sents to us the national life collectively in its customs and
memories, and in the most minute analysis of its internal
being, — and only then, for the first time, does the poet
enter upon the problems of the Future. It is exactly the
reverse with the Anonymous Poet. At the very beginning
of his career, at the age of twenty-three, he wings his first
flight into the highest regions of speculation, pierces with
a single look the whole structure of Society and Morals,
but this sphere once flown over, or rather, passed through,
he never returns to it ; he folds designedly his wings,
tracing circles ever more and more narrow; and the choice
of the forms successively adopted by the poet is like an
image of his own internal development. P'or his first
works, he preferred the Allegoric Drama, the widest and
freest form which can be found; then he limited himself
to the Tale, to the imaginative, or rather, visionary tale,
it is true, but a species of composition far more closely
united and regular than the dramatic allegory; and he
finally ended by restricting himself to the most individual
and concentrated expression possible, — to a severe and
measured lyricism.
We might perhaps try to explain this phenomenon of a
development so different from that of Mickiewicz by
purely external circumstances; by stating that Mickie-
wicz had lived for a long time in his own country, and
had only gradually attained a position which might be
termed cosmopolitan, while the Anonymous Poet had
been early and violently thrown into other lands, among
the ideas and prepossessions of the West, and only
through the force of will and reflection returned to the
feelings and wants of his own people. But there are far
more inherent, far deeper causes for the fact. A moral
question here leads the historic or literary inquiry, and
the concentric development of the genius of the poet is
in exact correspondence with the leading ideas which he
had formed upon the duties of the present, upon the
mission of man and of nations in the critical epoch we
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 85
are now traversing. " The Undivine Comedy" was rather
a farewell than a salutation ; it was an energetic protest
against a fatal delusion of the age, in which it was
thought possible to regenerate humanity without having
first regenerated man; to establish universal rights, with-
out having first strengthened the individual in his duties.
The noble precept, that " in order to salute the sun, we
must look at our horizon," the poet was resolved to put
into practice. He did look at his own horizon; he
labored more and more to understand the ground given
to him to cultivate, — the field left to his action and good
will ; he tried to formulate more and more exactly his
individual mission with the means accorded him, and
under the circumstances in which he found himself
placed, and thus, in successively narrowing his circles, he
arrived at a point, — the human soul ; according to the
national expression, "the Polish soul," — "at that im-
perceptible point which nevertheless has an infinite
periphery, since it contains God. "
At the first glance, however, the work which so closely
followed "The Undivine Comedy" (1836) resembles it
in many respects. First, as to form, it also is a dramatic
allegory, with varied scenes boldly sketched, and inter-
woven with lyric digressions. Secondly, as to subject, it
also represents the fall of a world, the crumbling away of
a society. But that which from the first distinguishes
"Iridion" from "The Undivine Comedy" is, that the
scenes are no longer to be played in the future; they
occur in a well-known and determinate past. With the
rare intelligence of sublime conceptions, the poet places
himself on the very knot of these three elements, viz. ,
the classic element, the barbaric element, and the Chris-
tian element : the tissue of which three, providentially
combined, interwoven, and developed by the centuries,
has formed our modern civilization.
The triple name borne by the hero of this poem —
Iridion, Sigurd, Hieronymus — immediately indicates the
point of intersection in the history of humanity in which
the drama is set. Is it due to the possession of an his-
toric base that the second work has over the first the ad-
vantage of a firmer, yet more plastic, design ? Or should
8*
86 POLISH POETRY IN
it not rather be attributed to the special place chosen by
the poet, — to the antique world whose genius, even in
decline, seems to have had the gift of giving lucidity and
transparency to all with which it came in contact? At
all events, it is certain that this second composition is in
bolder relief, and more harmoniously ordered, than " The
Undivine Comedy;" the figures are no longer mere sym-
bols; they have marked traits, sculptured by a skillful
graver; they are stamped with distinct individuality, and
the characters are largely developed. However, that
which most distinguishes it from "The Undivine Com-
edy" is, that in place of a cosmopolitan and humanita-
rian tendency, it has a patriotic bearing; it aims at the
special situation forced upon Poland since her dismem-
berment, which must not be forgotten as we read.
Without doubt, history is familiar with more than one
country which has gnawed its chains of foreign domina-
tion in despair; it knows even nations which, like
Greece, after ages of oppression, awake to the full en-
ergy of patriotic feeling ; but, with the exception of
Spain under the yoke of the Moors, it offers no nation
which has struggled as constantly as Poland against its
subjection. A century has elapsed since the division of
Poland ; and how many insurrections does she not count
in her sad. annals? how many efforts always conquered
yet always springing forth anew? And what untold bit-
terness must have accumulated in hearts always crushed
yet always obstinate to combat ! Above all, let us not
forget that, for the most part, the generations born after
the division have never known, in its living reality, the
country for which they have fought without cessation ;
the fatherland has only been for them a mournful mem-
ory, — the recollection of a great grief, of a great crime
remaining unpunished, and forever calling upon them for
vengeance. Let us likewise note that to a material dis-
memberment a spiritual dismemberment had also cor-
responded ; that a current of emigration was renewed
after every catastrophe, the chief cause of which lay in
an undying feeling of protestation against the cruel work
of the invaders. A strange situation has grown up from
these facts, — one beyond the limits of all ordinary rules ;
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. g-j
a situation of constant excitement, feverish and delete-
rious, calculated to mine the morality of the nation, and
threatening to pervert the delicate sense of the just, of
the upright. Foreign domination is not only odious in
what she permits herself to inflict upon the oppressed ; she
is more horrible through that which the oppressed deem jus-
tifiable to inflict in turn upon her !
The state of being forced upon Poland by the triple
yoke, recommenced in her interior in the necessity of
simulating and dissimulating, in raising cunning to the
height of a civic duty, while the art of deceiving the op-
pressors becomes almost a virtue ; and for her children
thrown into exile, it created externally the mission of
struggling against the enemy upon every battle-field, and
through every available means. The example of Bem
alone would be sufficient to make evident the danger in-
curred in the possible distortion of the most sacred feel-
ings of a nation by this constant and violent struggle
without quarter. That the glorious soldier of Ostro-
lenka and Transylvania should have embraced the faith
of Mahomet, only in the hope of still making war upon
the Russians, is sufficient to prove how the moral sense
may sometimes be eclipsed even in the most heroic soul ;
but that the illustrious renegade should have lost none of
his prestige with a nation so fervent in its faith, and
whose whole past history had been an unceasing combat
against Islamism ; that the pious peasant of Posen should
have still continued to hear and salute in the sound of
the bells of his church the magical and still venerated
name of "Bem," — this becomes a grave matter, and
shows with what feelings the country is animated for
those who love it ! And what can be said of the ideas of
a vengeful Fanslavism, which were already beginning to
germ and delude souls, at the time when the Anony-
mous Poet was composing his work ? How are we to
speak of this strange and satanic doctrine which preaches
suicide, that death may be given to others? which
recommends voluntary slavery, the reconciliation with
the most cruel but also the strongest of the adversaries,
that thus vengeance may be wreaked on the less guilty?
that pleases itself in the hope of preparing a new Attila
88 * POLISH POETRY IN
for a world which remained an impassive spectator during
the agonies of the crucifixion of a people ? . . .
It is difficult, nay, it is almost impossible, for the
happy upon earth, for those who enjoy a free and inde-
pendent country, to comprehend the surging hell of
temptations, of torments, which are massed in the single
word, Slavery, for a subjugated people ! But the Anon-
ymous Poet understood this Hell, and shuddered at the
sight! Diving into the tortured depths of the "Polish
soul," he suddenly encountered this current of sombre
and ferocious ideas, — " they chilled his soul ! " He was
appalled at the force of that national feeling feeding
itself upon hate of the oppressors ; he was frightened at
that love of country stronger far than death, but which
began to think of giving death to others ! He wished
to give a warning to his people, and thus he wrote
"Iridion. "
The Anonymous Poet depicts the patriotic grief caused
by foreign oppression in its most legitimate, as well as in
its most vivid aspects. What could be more touching,
more attractive to our imagination, than the memories of
Hellas, the classical home of art, of poetry, and of that
love of country which brought forth so many heroes and
originated so many illustrious actions? What could be
more justifiable than the resentment of a descendant' of
Themistocles and Miltiades "against the people born of
a wolf;" against the Roman who came to Corinth as a
liberator, friend, and then became the proud and cruel
master of Greece, nay, of the entire world? " Iridion"
gives us the genius of Hellas meditating a great stroke of
vengeance after ages of subjection and oppression. The
scene is placed at the epoch of Caracalla and Heliogaba-
lus, in the time of the deepest abasement of the empire,,
when the grandeur of Rome was naught but monstrosity,
seeming ready to fall before any bold attack. Thus
heightened by the splendor of a glorious past, justified by
causes of well-founded complaint, favored by the most
propitious circumstances, the attempt of " Iridion" offers
still another element of success: it is not the siulilen
growth and bloom of a single will, a single age; it was
prepared afar off by a generation which gave itself up in
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 89
advance to the task of sowing, without the hope of har-
vesting, even of living, save in its successors ! This is
the deep thought developed in the Prologue, in which
two persons are boldly sketched who are doomed to die
before the real Drama actually begins, but who give birth
to the future hero, to the '■'■Son of Vengeance. ^^
Amphilochus, a Greek of illustrious race, counting even
Philopoemen among his ancestors, had deeply felt all
the woes of his subjugated people: "a slave because a
Greek, he was by nature an avenger. " With the clear-
sightedness of hate, we had almost said the hate of the
exile, he had seen on the still clear horizon the dark speck
from which the tempest would one day break forth, and
had divined in the barbaric race of the Northmen the future
destroyers of the Eternal City. He went to the Cimbric
Chersonesus, to the land of " Silver- Torrents," among
the Scandinavians, not to induce them to move against
the common enemy, Rome, but to find a wife ; an oracle
having predicted to him that great misfortunes to the im-
perial city would be the fruit of such an alliance. The
contrast between the Greek genius, refined almost to sub-
tlety, and the uncultivated but heroic character of the
Scandinavian, briefly indicated as it is, is yet portrayed
with the highest skill. The Greek fixes his choice upon
the purest of virgins, upon Crimhild, the High-Priestess
of Odin, the daughter of King Sigurd : a civilized Othello
fascinating a barbaric Desdemona ! She says to him : " I
know not thy country ; I have not even seen it in my
dreams ; nor do I know thine enemies ; and yet, O mis-
erable virgin, dishonored Priestess, struck by the curse of
Odin, I will follow thee! " The scene in which Crim-
hild appears for the last time to take her place upon the
stone of sacrifice, to sing her last hymn in the holy forest
of the God of the North, surrounded by the chiefs of the
hordes, by the lords of the plains, by the kings of the sea,
is stamped with massive grandeur. Filled with mystic
inspiration, her eyes gazing into infinite space, she fore-
sees the ages yet to come, hears the hammer of Thor
breaking the helmets and bucklers, the breasts and skulls
of men into dust ; she sees her brothers, her people,
leaving the land of Silver-Torrents, precipitate themselves
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POLISH POETRY IN
upon an immense city, a city on seven hills, of which she
vainly tries to find the name, — this name suffocates and
escapes her — she writhes to find it — but no utterance re-
lieves her tortured breast — she falls to the earth. The
Greek then advances from the ranks of the breathless
crowd; amidst the universal stupefaction and indigna-
tion, he enters the dread and sacred circle, and, bending
over the priestess, says to her: "In the name of Rotne,
name of thy enemy and mine, I call thee back to life !
Crimhild, rise! " Then turning to the crowd, he thrice
cries: Rome! Rome! Rome! The virgin rises, repeats
after him the mysterious name, and then follows the
stranger "as the wife, the husband ! "
From this union so strangely assorted by destiny, from
this pair settled in an island of the Ionian Sea, where
everything recalls the past, two children, pledges of love,
are born, whom Amphilochus, on his return from his
expeditions in the neighboring archipelagoes, blesses in
their sleep with the words : " Remember to hate Rome !
When you shall be grown up, let each of you pursue it
with curses ; Iridion, with fire and sword; and Elsinoe
with all the genius and subtleties of woman ! " The Pro-
logue ends with the touching picture of the death of
Crimhild.
Many years pass, and we are transported to Rome,
whither Amphilochus had taken the ashes of his wife, his
household gods, and his hate. He too is dead, but has
left his designs to his son, beautiful as a demigod, " but
pale, because of all the Roman blood yet wanting to his
cheeks! " Amphilochus has also left his son, as coun-
selor, guardian, and friend, Masinissa, an old man whom
he had first met in the land of the Getulians when he
had lost his way upon a tiger-hunt : he is the wa'ide-
lote of the classic Wallenrod. The work of the Greek has
ripened, and Iridion has now immense forces at his com-
mand, destined to be employed against the accursed city.
Through his father he belongs to Hellas and the part
of Asia so thoroughly hellenized ; through his mother he
is affiliated with the Germans, who begin to throng into
Italy, filling the ranks of the cohorts and legions. He
has with him the ancient world and the modern, even the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
91
Romans are on his side, — not the abject freedmen whom
the conqueror of Numantia had already repudiated with
scorn, and who then formed the senattis populusque, but
the true Romans, the legitimate descendants of the old
patricians. There is a fine scene in which a wretch named
Sporus, by the command of a jester of Heliogabalus comes
to assassinate Iridion ; but, " he was hungry, and in the
Palace of Amphilochus they had given him food ; he was
thirsty, and they gave him wine ; he had heard his
brother gladiators bless the name of the Greek," and he
gives his secret and himself to Iridion. Iridion is struck
by the language of the slave ; he discerns the traces of
past greatness upon his brow, shining like a lamp in a
tomb. . . . "Thy name? " — "Sporus, but formerly
Scipio. " . . . "I can bring thee a Verres, a Capius, a
Sylla, all gladiators like myself. " . . . And the son of
Amphilochus is filled with joy. But all this is not yet
enough ; he must have a vengeance more refined, and
above all he must secure himself against the Fatum of the
Eternal City. What if he could gain the Emperor himself
to side against the empire ! If he could but make the
successor of Augustus the instrument of his vengeance,
and force the last of the Caesars to destroy with his own
hands the last of the Romans ! . . . And why should that
be impossible ? Had not Nero already tried to burn the
city? and the present occupant of the throne, the foolish
son of the mad Caracalla, was he not more insensate than
Nero, and even more of an artist than he who loved to
see the flames flash high ? Besides, the grasp of the
Greek was already upon Caesar ! Heliogabalus had be-
come deeply enamored of Elsinoe, whom Amphilochus
had consecrated from her infancy to pursue his work " by
all the genius, all the perfidy of woman ! "
The drama opens precisely at this point, when Iridion
is saying farewell to his sister, who is about to be taken to
the palace of Caesar. Our poet possesses in the highest
degree the difficult art of creating female characters, and
his works contain a gallery of feminine figures full of
pathos and originality. The daughter of Amphilochus
has been brought up from infancy in the idea that she is
to be the victim to expiate the shame of her fathers and
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POLISH POETRY IN
the sufferings of many nations ; she has been taught by
Masiiiissa; and the decrees of her brother have hitherto
been her law. But Avhen the fatal moment arrives for the
accomplishment of her destiny, her soul revolts, and, like
Antigone, she bursts into lamentations upon her doom,
upon her youth condemned to pain, her beauty to pro-
fanation. Iridion remains inexorable, and refuses all
temptation to pity. He leads Elsinoe to the statue of their
father.
" Formerly" — he says to her — " the sacrifice of the life
of a man sufficed for nations; now even honor must be
offered up ! . . . Maiden, listen to me as to the dying, as
if never again to hear my voice on earth ! Thou art to
enter the Palace of the Accursed, to live with the damned ;
to yield thy body to the son of shame: — see to it that
thy soul remains high, pure, and free ! Let Caesar never
sleep upon thy breast ! Alarm him constantly with cries
that the Praetorians call to arms, that the patricians con-
spire, and that the people storm his palace gates ! and
slowly, day by day, and hour by hour, madden him with
rage and fear ; drink all the life-blood of his heart ! Now
rise and bow thy head ! Conceived in the desire of ven-
geance, grown up in hope of this revenge, destined to
shame and to perdition, I consecrate thee to the infernal
gods — and to the manes of Amphilochus the Greek. "
It has sometimes been given to poetry to render history
probable, thus, for example, the Richard III. of the Chro-
nicles first becomes possible for our intellect, or acceptable
for our imagination, in the tragedy of Sliakespeare. The
Anonymous Poet has, in the same manner, succeeded in
making us believe in the existence, the reality, of one of
those Roman Csesars, who, in spite of Suetonius and
Tacitus, have always seemed to us inexplicable enigniiis.
Through an ingenious and ])rofound art our author has
succeeded in unraveling all the elements constituting that
remarkable and fantastic being called Heliogabalus. Born
under the burning sky of Asia, the son of Caracalla became
High-Priest at Emesus at fourteen years of age, and was
familiar with all the sanguinary voluptuousness of the
worship of Mithras. At seventeen, he was Cnesar, master
of the world ; and placed upon this giddy height, the
TIJE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 53
young man rapidly exhausted all feelings, all sensations.
He was a child, with the instincts of a decrepit old man ;
his passions were worn out; his soul was only lighted by
the flickering gleams of lubricity. Worlds couM not fill
the ennui of his heart; it was the incarnate void ! In
spite of his power, his eye could rest but upon one thing,
the abyss into which so many of his predecessors had
fallen ; the thought of death everywhere pursued him,
and what he most feared in it was the idea of giving up
his tender limbs, white as snow, to the rage of the pojni-
lace, for in his own manner he was an artist, he was in
love with his own divine form, and if he must die, he in-
tended that " his blood should flow over diamonds before
descending to Erebus. " He had had a jeweled court pre-
pared, into which he might precipitate himself in case of
sudden danger.
We may now understand the plans founded by Iridion
on such a character when it should be shaken and tortured
by an arm vigorous as the hammer of Thor, supple as a
serpent, white as a lily ; — and Elsinoe knew well her part !
Slie became the strong virgin borne in the bosom of Crim-
hild, the Scandinavian Valkyria, with proud looks and
haughty scorn when in the presence of the enfeebled son
of Asia. Why did he speak to her, this weak Caesar, of
his divinities of light, of his Genii of the night, and of
his sacrificial powers, so adored by the highest pontiffs of
the East ? The daughter of ice and snow despised the
effeminate gods who float in clouds of incense, rocked by
the sound of flutes, and bathed in the blood of trembling
roes or infants newly born ! Ah ! he was very different,
her mother's god and hers, strong Odin, made of oak and
steel, who, calm amid rains, snows, and tempests, held a
cup of foaming blood of heroes in his stalwart hands, and
saw the Northern seas break at his feet ! Why did he
speak to her of sharing all his splendor, greatness, and
infinite power? She knew too well the end of all the
Caesars; the first chance centurion might plunge his knife
into the swan-like throat, and throw the divine majesty of
Caracalla's son to the dogs to tear ! Does not Severus
plot against him even in his own palace? are not the
cohorts in revolt even at the gates of his own capital ?
9
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Before pretending to make the chaste body of a virgin of
Odin seek shelter in his arms, he must learn not to tremble
himself before his eunuchs and Praetorians; she has no
dream of bliss for him who has no morrow! Heliogabalus
foams with baffled desire, with spite, with rage, with fear,
— beyond all, \\\\. \\ fear ! Yes, it is too true; he is sur-
rounded with plots and snares, he must be crushed, and
no one can possibly save him ! . . . Yes, replies the
Valkyria ; in her pity for this wretched master of the
world she has prayed for him to her strong gods, and these
gods have revealed to her the name of one who could
secure the throne of Cresar ; — but she will not give this
word. Why should she? The Emperor would not have
sufficient courage to appeal to this hero of fate, — he who
shivers at his own slaves ! At last, however, she suffers this
name to be torn from her lips, — it is the son of Amphi-
lochus, her brother ! Heliogabalus then sends for Iridion.
The palace of the Csesars opens to the descendant of
Philopoemen, nor does he enter it as "Grceculus,^' as had
so many of his countrymen, as simple poet, ranting rhe-
torician, or amusing epigrammist. No, he comes as master,
who dictates his commands, and looks scornfully upon the
debased throng encumbering the Court. It is an easy
thing for him to augment the terror of Heliogabalus, to
represent to him his situation as utterly desperate, treason
everywhere hatching, and a convulsion ready to break
forth, but, after having raised the fears of the crowned
child to their utmost height, he suddenly changes his
tone, tells him to take courage, y^r in this eternal war be-
tween the EjHperor and the city, shall the victory never be
with the Emperor? He then unfolds to him a complete,
strange, and demoniacal philosophy of history ; he shows
him Rome in perpetual struggle with its Emperors, ren-
dering all government impossible ; Rome, always dream-
ing of a republic, and revenging itself upon its rulers by
stoical opposition, by well-devised treason, or by bribing
the Praetorians ! Rome has unceasingly conspired against
and massacred its Csesars; then let Ceesar in his turn play
conspirator ! let him give the death-wound to his mortal
enemy ! The question now is not of Alexander Severus,
of such a cohort, of such a senator; it is of his great and
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
95
implacable Persecutor ; it is of this Rome, always enraged
against the successors of Augustus ; — of the Eternal City,
— not, however, more eternal than Babylon or Jerusalem —
both in ruins ! Let but the son of Caracalla bear himself
with a strong will ; let him become that which but few
heroes have ever dared to be, a Destroyer ; let liim leave
this accursed place, always in rebellion, to scorpions and
serpents ! The source of the eternal evil thus destroyed,
he can return to the country of his birth, "Where men
speak freely with the stars," and under the bright and
sunny sky of Asia he will found a new empire. Freed
from his sleepless nights, High-Priest and at the same time
Caesar, like an Egyptian demigod surrounded by the odor-
ous incense of myrrh and aloes, he will pass his happy
days, the great names of the past will perish in his brighter
fame, and there will no longer be senators nor jurists to
dream of republics, nor daring to sneer at Mithras, or the
long hanging sleeves of the Oriental costume loved by the
Emperor. . . . The perspective shown is full of sublime
horror, and well calculated to fire the brain of the son of
Caracalla, but the most striking point in this fantastic
scene is that it has its ;ra/side ; that it unseals a pregnant
thought, to germ in future time and become an historic
reality. For the hour will come when the Cresars, step
by step, will actually withdraw from the city of the Tiber ;
when they will sacrifice Rome to save the empire ; when
Constantine shall at last transport the capital of the world
into the East; — and it is curious to observe how skillfully
the presentiment of the work of future ages is wrought into
the texture of this extraordinary scene of vengeance and
of folly. As to the execution of this plan of destruction,
let him confidently trust in the son of Amphilochus. He
will introduce into the city the revolted troops who are
about to proclaim Alexander Severus ; he will advance
against them with the Prastorians who are as yet faithful,
and while the two armies are slaughtering each other, he
will let loose upon them the slaves, the gladiators, the
barbarians, and the Nazarenes. The onslaught would be
truly grand, the devastation general, Rome would be
ruined, and the peace of the successors of Augustus for-
ever secured ! Heliogabalus is fascinated by this poetry
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POLISH POETRY IN
of desolation ; Iridion seems to him a new Prometheus
with the stolen heaven-fire. He names him Prefect of
the Praetorians, and confides to him the fortune of the
Csesars.
The only grave care now of the Greek is with respect
to the Christians, the confessors of the Prophet of Naza-
reth, whose name we now for the first time hear, although
they have for a long time been a subject of anxiety to
the Son of Vengeance, for Masinissa had predicted to
him that the only danger of the resurrection of Rome
would arise from these despised sectaries. Aside from
this dark prophecy, the Christians would necessarily enter
into the plans of one about to unite all the heterogeneous
elements of the empire, in order to unchain them against
the empire itself. Obscure, despised, and persecuted,
breathing freely only in the Catacombs, the new commu-
nity had not the less attracted to itself much that was
really great and living, both from among the Romans
and barbarians; it had grown rapidly, and had be-
come an imposing force. Alexander Severus had already
counted upon it, and Avas a Christian. The son of Am-
philochus had also joined these worshipers of a crucified
God ; he had been baptized. Iridion for the Greeks,
Sigurd for the Germans, for the Christians he was called
Hieronymus. But it was only an external sign and name
he had received from them. He did not understand
their mystic dogmas; their doctrines of resignation and
pardon only irritated him; but he intuitively saw that
the most dangerous resistance to his plans would spring
from them.
He did not, however, despair of conquering this rebellious element. He based his hopes upon the
fact that he had seen secret and involuntary curses
against their butchers germing in the souls of the young,
even in the midst of words of charity and forgiveness.
From the Forum and Palace of Rome we are taken into
the Catacombs. Poetry and history have alike delighted
in placing the empire of Christ in opposition to that of the
Caesars ; in contrasting the purity of the primitive Chris-
tians with the abject corruption of expiring paganism ;
from which has been drawn a glorification for the true
God, which, however brilliant, is not just in its method.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
97
The comparison would only be equitable, if, in opposi-
tion to this new world, in all the fullness of its vigorous
youth and purity of origin, should be placed tlie old
world, with all it possessed of good and true, and in the
beauty of its maturity. Every living being would easily
triumph if brought near a corpse ! The advantage would
not the less surely be with the new law ; it would in fact
\>Q far greater, for the proportions would not have been
falsified at the pleasure of the writer. The Anonymous
Poet took good care to fall into no such injustice. The
conception of the symbolic type, Iridion, the ideal of
both ancient and modern Hellas, has enabled the poet to
bring epochs widely distant in time near to each other,
and place the classic genius, in its most perfect mani-
festation, in direct opposition with Christianity, in all its
pristine vigor. From paganism in its age of decay, the
poet has taken the only grand thing of the era which re-
lieved the vices of the Cjesars : I mean the great spirit of
legislation which, under the most vicious of reigns, col-
lected the statutes of the future code, of the Roman law,
for which so glorious a future was reserved. With rare
skill he has managed to make the celebrated jurist, Domi-
tian, a vigorous representative of the antique Roman
virtue, as well as a decided antagonist of the Nazarenes.
The soul of Cato dwells in the breast of this confidant of
Alexander, for whose accession he schemes like a true
son of daring antiquity. Imbued with the philosophy of
the Stoics, bearing in his heart the image of Rome once
so glorious and free, Domitian still does not think the re-
turn to a republic possible ; it was too late for that even
in the days of Cassius ; he only prays the gods to give
Rome a master capable of rejuve;"iating the decrepit em-
pire, even if, instead of the olive branch, he be forced to
bear the axe of the lictor ! But let them never speak to
him of a crucified God ; let them never seek new vigor
there ! The glory of the Eternal City can never be re-
stored but by the aid of the principles which had first
raised it from the dust : "the mystic rites of the ances-
tors, and their inflexible courage. "
This is not, however, the supreme denial of the doc-
trines of the Saviour. Their utter negation has been in-
9*
98
POLISH POETRY IN
carnated by the poet in the person of Masinissa, who is
perhaps the most profound and original conception of
the whole drama. The counselor of Iridion is not
simply a ^^ wa'idelote,^^ he is the Spirit of Evil, Satan
himself, — but Satan ingloriously reduced to antique pro-
portions, such as a mythology always seeking beauty and
serenity, even in the darkest and saddest creations, would
have pictured him. Masinissa has neither the bitter and
desolating irony of Mephistopheles, nor the tempestuous
rage of Milton's fallen angel ; he is a grave and majestic
old man. Seek not in him that "eternal and infinite ne-
gation" which Goethe has given to Evil; his hatred
is, on the contrary, very determinate and very plastic.
Christianity repels him by that which must have deeply
wounded all minds truly and classically antique, — by its
apparent absence of virile energy, its want of sensuous
beauty. The doctrines of submission and resignation,
always preached by the confessors of the Cross, appeared
to him unworthy of a manly spirit, of a free man ; he
called them cowardice ; and there was nothing in Chris-
tianity, even to its rehabilitation of woman, — one of
the immense benefits of the Gospel, — which was not re-
volting to all his instincts. " They adore a maid," he
says, " a creature whose infancy is eternal, whose old age
precocious ; they build a strange, mysterious worship
upon the ruins of their carnal lusts, and they prostrate
themselves before a woman, — before the slave of the hus-
band. " . . . Thus, as he saw it, but little fit to inspire
vigorous acts, the Christian ideal seemed also to him
essentially ugly. " They are full of admiration for this
crucified body, for the features they imagine so exquisite
in the hour they call the triumph of love. They have not
known him ; they did not see him when he agonized, a pi'ey
to all the hideousness of suffering, faint with torture, cov-
ered with blood, and with his hair disordered by the
winds which whistled round his head. " . . . Here is in-
deed the beauty-seeking naturalism of the ancient world
protesting against modern spirituality, which exalts the
soul, even at the exi)ense of the body. Let the reader
examine for a moment the figures of the antique group
which our poet has placed in contrast with the spirit of
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
99
Christianity, that he may obtain a due conception of the
grand sense of justice and poetry which presides over the
whole of this remarkable composition.
Thus impartial in his pictures of the classic world, our
author is no less just in his sketches of the early societies
of the Christians. He has taken care not to give them
that beatified placidity, that detachment from all the pas-
sions of humanity, so willingly attributed to them by mer-
cenary and conventional art. In the primitive church, as
represented in our drama, the Holy Spirit alone is great
and infallible ; man is weak as he ever is, subject to
temptation and sudden falls. Not that the association of
Christians does not contain characters of sublime abne-
gation and sanctity, of invincible resolution, and of
angelic purity, such as Bishop Victor, the true servant of
God, the admirable head of a Christian community; but
together with those who realize the Christian ideal in all
its purity, we also meet with Christians less resigned, em-
bittered by grief, and aspiring to sunshine, joy, and life.
They are men, and as men they suffer, hope ; they want
a terrestrial base for their actions ; they wish to tear the
cross from the bowels of the earth, and plant it on the
Roman Forum. Remark attentively Simeon of Corinth,
only an episodic sketch, but drawn with a bold, free
hand, as is the wont of the Anonymous Poet. ' Simeon
had once loved ; a single day separated him from wedded
bliss, when a centurion tore the plighted maiden from his
arms to throw her to the Flavian amphitheatre. A skull
was all left to him by the tiger's teeth ! Then he em-
braced the cross with fervor, a burning asceticism puri-
fied his soul from all dreams of vengeance, he meditated
profoundly on the passion of the Lord, and was touched
with boundless love by memories of Golgotha. . . .
"And if God himself, to save the world, has taken a
body, why should not His Bride, the Church, to save the
world, also put on a body? Until now, she has been
only spirit; where are her temples, sanctuaries, powers? "
He exclaims in one of his solitary ecstasies, " To possess
the world, — not that which glitters in gold or groans in
iron ; but the infinite world, — the world of souls, — and
there in Thy name to reign, O God ! " Here we may
UNIVERSITY
fERfelTY \
lOO POLISH POETRY IN
already see the Spiritual contemplating the reign over the
Temporal. With spirits of this stamp Iridion succeeds,
and is listened to when, in place of the victory promised
them by Victor, "before the face of the Lord," he in-
cites them " to a combat and triumph which are of this
world, near them, and not at an infinite distance. "
Above all, however, it behooved the son of Amphilochus
to gain to his side Cornelia Metella, the saintly virgin
whom the Christians loved. The poet has surrounded
this noble victim with every grace, and the Son of
Vengeance is himself moved by the divine charm she
exhales around her, but Masinissa has designated her
as the principal and indispensable instrument of his un-
dertaking. To associate Christianity with his work of
destruction, to incarnate in human passions a force which
is not of this world, a woman is a necessity ! These Naza-
renes adore a virgin ! Then let Iridion choose the purest
and fairest of their maidens, inflame her with his own
ideas, and like a burning brand throw her in their midst.
With Satanic perspicacity the terrible old man has per-
ceived the danger incurred by the female heart in the
depths of Christian mysticism, the tendency of all ec-
static love to materialize itself even through the excess of
its own refinement, and he has traced for Iridion his line
of conduct : " Praise her God, adore his wounds, speak
tenderly of the nails which pierced his limbs, . . . and
then attract her thoughts from the crucified, and fix them
on yourself. . . . He is so far, He has been on the
earth, but will never return to it : but you live, breathe,
and are beside her. . . . You will become her God !
And when her head shall rest upon your breast, then will
the soul forget itself in the passion of the body, — then,
O my Son, my spirit will be with you, and you will find
adherents in the Catacombs. " The struggle which oc-
curs between Iridion and Metella, between the ideal of
classic beauty and the ascetic spirituality of the Christian
heart, is full of pathos and passion. The son of Amphilo-
chus breaks forth before the sainted maid in all the vio-
lence of his love, his hate; he kindles her soul with his
burning breath, he explains to her the odious past of
Rome, he entreats her to love, to live, and to revetige the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. loi
Saviour. The Christian resists, but is fascinated ; for the
first time she fears tlie dead who lie around her ; she makes
an effort to fly to Christ, to escape the Greek, who ap-
pears to her as Prophet or Archangel. At last the de-
cisive moment comes. Before the tombs of the martyrs,
and appealing to their bones to bear him witness, the
Greek tears off the veil of the maiden while lost in prayer,
and sullies her brow with a kiss, while she believes him
now to be a messenger from heaven.
Master of Metella, Iridion hastily repairs to Ehitn,
the most holy s])Ot within the Catacombs, where the faith-
ful are assembled. Clad in armor, and sword in hand, he
declares to the just that the time of resignation is past, the
measure full ; that this is the decisive moment : division
distracts the city, the son of shame totters on his throne,
the Prtetorians have turned away their hearts from him,
the people, like a troubled sea, know not to what wind to
yield. The legions throughout Asia are in insurrection ;
the Germans on the Rhine revolt ; Cssar and Alexander
arm for their last combat ; but what matters it to the
Christians who shall be the conqueror? Whoever it may
be, will he not murder them, and blaspheme Christ?
The signs perdicted are upon them, let them be recog-
nized ; let them K'/7//V_/fr;;//)'— and they are /r^<? . /" . . .
But who has commissioned him to lead the people of God ?
ask those who hesitate. Who will assure them that the
Lord has ordered them to rise? Simeon of Corinth
answers that he will bear witness to the mission of Iridion.
He begs the brethren not to suffer the propitious hour to
escape. From this moment, which will never return, let
them strike the spark of life, for in it, and in it alone,
sleeps the germ of future ages. Metella, maddened, in-
spired, and panting with haste, rushes in at this moment,
crying: "To arms ! to arms ! " This testimony from the
consecrated virgin determines the doubters. The bap-
tized barbarians are glad to find the messenger of the
Messiah in the grandson of Sigurd ; the young, the strong,
they who live and feel, swear to be exact at the hour and
place of meeting: the old, the pure, the saints, resist and
pray. The confusion is at its height, the eartli yawns
and trembles, the community disperses on all sides,
I02 POLISH POETRY IN
some applauding the avenger, others crying Anathema,
and mercy ! The holy place is finally empty, and Masi-
nissa appears in Eloim, thus deserted by the Christians,
surrounded by the infernal spirits who chant their victory.
Here, and in this scene alone, the Spirit of Evil steps
beyond the frame so ingeniously wrought for him by the
poet. For this time only he assumes the vast proportions
of the Christian Satan, and betrays the boundless hate of
Lucifer ; indeed, the spectacle he had just witnessed was
well fitted to swell his pride. He has seen the first rup-
ture in the Christian community founded upon peace,
unity, and love ; he regards it as the forerunner of all the
schisms yet to be, of the persecutions in the name of faith,
and of the terrible religious wars which through ages yet
to come shall rend and distract that humanity which
Christ had died to redeem. His soul dilates with this
hope, and he hurls defiance at Christ, his enemy.
"Great Enemy! Thou knowest that the souls of men
have gone astray from the beginning of the world ! From
this time forth no day will ever pass in which, disputing
on thy nature and thy substance, they will not excite
sterile, but bloody contests !
" In Thy name will they rise, revolt, destroy, burn, mas-
sacre ; in Thy name will they lose human life in dreamy
ecstasies, renounce the gift of speech, and die !
"And without ceasing, will they crucify Thee; as in
their wisdom so in their ignorance ; their reason as their
folly ; in their prayers of base humility, as in the haughty
blasphemy of their pride !
"On Thy far Heaven heights, empty the cup of gall they
hold to Thy wrung lips, until in Thy turn, Thou tooshalt
curse them !
" And even on the summit of Thy sky, with all Thy
glory and omnipotence, Thou shalt at last feel agony,
and learn to know what our hell truly is ! "
The denouement approaches, and Iridion redoubles his
activity. Sent by Caesar to treat with tiie revolted troops
marching upon the city, and whom Severus has joined,
he intentionally irritates them, and renders all accommo-
dation impossible. When returned to Rome, he prepares
the Praetorians to attack the invaders, and at the same
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
103
time marshals the slaves, gladiators, and barbarians to
fall on either party, to massacre and burn the city as soon
as they shall see him appear at the head of the Christians.
He again visits Heliogabalus to tear from him the last
symbol of power, the imperial ring ox\. which the Genius
of Rome is graven. Possessor of this talisman, he no
longer thinks of the son of Caracalla, but another has
thought of this crowned child :
^' £Isinoe. Brother, what will become of him?
*' I}-idion. It matters not. I care not for his life, nor
for his death. That which he was, now glitters on my
hand (showing the ring) ; that which he is, is scarcely
worth a thought.
" Elsinoe. If that be so, come near, come nearer still !
Canst hear my lightest whisper now?
'' Iridion. What is the matter, sister? Wherefore
tremble so? (He takes her in his arms. ) Thy small
hand burns in mine, — I feel thy heart throb wild against
my breast-plate !
" E/sinoe. The eyes whose fires withered my soul, must
die ! The arms which clasped my neck, must fall like
mangled adders ! The lips which first touched mine,
must crumble into dust !
*' Iridion. Yes. He shall perish. "
At last the hour for the execution of the plot arrives.
All have kept faith except the Christians, who do not
come. What can detain them ? Simeon swore to lead
them forward at the appointed time ; all hope for the
avenger lies in them. Iridion's anguish is extreme, the
anguish of Prometheus, when but a cloud divides him from
the heaven flame he means to seize ! " Why are you silent ?
Masinissa, speak! Cry: Long live Hellas! " — "I am
silent" — replies the old man — "because the hour ap-
pointed has already passed ! • Each feather in its wings
as it flies on rustles with long-drawn sneers. " — Iridion feels
that the work of his whole life is escaping his grasp ; he
hastes from his palace to unearth the Christians, his un-
sheathed sword in his hand, his head bare: "To con-
quer, his sword suffices; to die, he needs no helmet! "
His fears were well founded with regard to the Catacombs.
Bishop Victor had arrested, on the threshold of Eloim,
I04
POLISH POETRY IN
all the armed men who were marching upon the city.
When Iridion enters the sanctuary, most of the men had
already deserted him. Simeon persists in the revolt, and
is excommunicated. Metella, too, ceases not to acknowl-
edge the envoy of heaven in Iridion, or to cry : " To
arms! " and around this deluded, wandering soul Victor
and Iridion hold their last combat. Exorcised by the
Bishop, touched by the cross, she grows weak and faint,
and dies, renouncing the Spirit of Evil. Iridion casts a
last curse at the cowards, placing their whole trust in the
words of a woman, and departs to fight without a hope of
conquest. Indeed, victory is no longer possible ; the de-
fection of the Christians has ruined all ; the Praetorians
have not resisted the troops of Severus ; the gladiators,
slaves, and barbarians have fallen in the streets without
plan or direction, and have been everywhere repulsed.
The son of Amphilochus will sell dearly his defeat ; he
reunites all those still devoted to him, fights fiercely, and
repels with disdain the pardon sent him by the new Em-
peror through Domitian. In the long and admirable
scene between Domitian and himself, the combat between
Hellas and Rome is renewed and brilliantly discussed, —
the contest between the beautiful genius of Ancient Lib-
erty and the harsh and cruel domination of the Romans
is eloquently argued. All negotiations are broken, and
the struggle is renewed ; the issue is no longer doubt-
ful. Heliogabalus has been murdered, Elsinoe has taken
her own life, Rome still stands, and Alexander Severus
is proclaimed Emperor. The triumph of Severus, who
neither in Christian graces nor antique virtues ever soars
above mediocrity, is one of the deepest lessons contained
in the Drama; it is therefore intentionally that the poet
has given to the son of Mammea a character deprived of
all the stronger traits. For in the sublime struggle of
two titanic princij)les, the victory too often remains with
dull mediocrity ! Happy indeed if it should prove honest,
— as Alexander really was.
At last Iridion, without forces, deserted even by the most
faithful, his friends dead, gorged with bitterness, mounts
the funeral pyre to end his days. At this moment Masi-
nissa appears, of whom nothing had been seen after the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
105
defection of the Christians. He takes Iridion in his
arms, carries him away, and places him upon a mountain
near the sea, whence he can see Rome still standing entire,
"still showing its marbles to the sun like the white teeth
of a tiger. " Then the first doubt of the legitimacy of
his work rushes upon the son of Amphilochus ; then for
the first time he asks " if the God of Metella be not per-
chance the greatest of the gods, and if the Nazarenes do
not possess the only truth in the world? " "The Naza-
renes? " replies Masinissa, sneeringly, to him, — "truly
you owe them much in the past ; will owe them more in
the future ! . . . Not falsely did your mother Crimhild
speak ; her predictions will be all accomplished ! The
peoi)le of the North will yet ravage Italy, covering it with
blood and ashes ; but do you know who will tear the
accursed city from the hands of your barbarian brothers ?
The Nazarene ! In him the perfidy of the senate and the
cruelty of the Roman people will still live, as an eternal
heritage ; his heart will be as merciless as that of the first
Cato, although his words will often be sweet and effemi-
nate. And the warriors of the North will be as little
children at his feet, and for the second time he will
make Rome godlike, above all the nations of the earth ! "
— "What! " cries the Greek in the accents of despair,
"After Rome, will there be still another Rome? The
city accursed is then to be eternal? And this is the an-
nouncement which the friend of Amphilochus reserves for
Crimhild's son to bless his dying hour? " . . . Masi-
nissa replies: "Do not despair! The time is coming
wlien the shadow of the cross will oppress the nations
like a tropic heat ; when it too will stretch out its arms
in vain to press again to its heart those who forsake it !
One after another they will arise and say : ' We will no
longer serve thee ! ' Then will be heard at all the city
gates complaints and sobs, and the Roman Genius will
veil his face, his tears will never end, his humiliation will
be as great as has ever been his pride. " — The heart of
Iridion again begins to beat, his eyes regain their lustre.
— "O that I might see that day of chastisement and
vengeance ! " — " Then be it so ! " replies Masinissa. He
bears away his pupil from the life of earth, rocks him to
Io6 POLISH POETRY IN
sleep upon oblivion's heart, from which he will not wake
for many centuries, until the appointed hour comes:
" When on the Forum only dust shall be, — the Am[)hi-
theatre hold only skeletons, — the Capitol be crumbled
into infamy. " The antique drama is now finished, and
the epilogue transports us into modern times, into the
Rome of our own days. Through centuries, Iridion has
slept the sleep of Epimenides; neither the terrible days
of Alaric nor of Attila, nor the renovation of the em-
pire by Charlemagne nor the struggle of Rienzi, have
been able to arouse him from his sleep; the holy masters
of the Vatican have, one by one, like shadows glided by
this shade : " but in our times he awakes. " Masinissa has
kept his word, and he again places his pupil before Rome,
o'errun with creeping vines, through which a creeping
people move. The Son of the Centuries now crosses the
deserted Forum, and gazes round the desolate city, and
"every ruin is to him a recompense. "
" Two hoary-headed old men stand in the vestibule of
a Basilica, robed in purple mantles ; and monks salute
them with the names of Fathers, Princes of the Church ;
and poverty of spirit is graven on their faces. They en-
ter a chariot drawn by two dark, meagre horses, behind
them is a servant holding a dim lantern, such as a poor
widow hangs above a child who dies of hunger ; on the
panels of this chariot are seen what once was gilding.
The creaking wheels have passed, and with them disap-
pear two snowy, bent, and weary heads.
