No More Learning

In the October of 1830 it seemed probable that
war between Russia and France would follow on the
Revolution of July. Krasinski's father was anxious to
remove his only son from the vicinity of a belligerent
country, and sent him into Italy, deaf to Zygmunt's
entreaty that the England of his Henrietta might be
his destination. On the third of November Krasinski
and Jakubowski set out over the Simplon. Reeve and
the Pole, Zamojski, went with Krasinski as far as the first
mile out of Geneva, and then the boys bade each other
a regretful farewell. Krasinski, giving himself up to the
pain of parting with those who had been his favourite
companions for a year past, cared nothing for what
he saw before his eyes during his journey, and his
chief emotion on arriving at Florence was that he
had reached a crisis with Henrietta Willan. He wrote
to her from Florence in reply to some apparently rather
hysterical letters that he found waiting for him there,
telling her clearly that though he would love her for
ever he could never marry her, and could only write
to her as her lover till she married, from which time he
would be her faithful friend, and that alone.
"O my dear Henry" he cries in English, but passing im-
mediately into French, "if I wrote all that to her it is because
duty forced me to do it, for I love her more violently than
ever, and it would have been so sweet not to break this illusion
yet, to begin again the beautiful days of that love which made
me so happy. "
After some warm expressions of affection for Reeve, he
ends: "I am an enemy to tirades of friendship, but I will only
say these few words: I am your friend for life and till death1. "
He tells his friend how in the midst of his agitations
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Florence, Nov. 18, 1830.
3--2
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? 2,6 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
his only calm moments were when he betook himself
to the contemplation of the Medici Venus:
For she is perfect beauty; and beauty, whether it be of
marble or flesh and blood, is always an anodyne in hours of
anguish, and, at the same time, a stimulus in hours of apathy.
He entered Rome with indifference as he relates in
the same letter: "because strong emotions age the
soul, as strong shocks age the body. " But the con-
clusion of the letter changes to the more natural note
of the young Pole looking for the first time on the
grandeur of the Eternal City. With Mickiewicz, then
in Rome, he visited St Peter's, which moved him
religiously not at all. His great moment came to him
in the Coliseum. At the sight of the ruined amphi-
theatre, in Krasinski's day a scene of the most poetical
desolation, which to the Pole was the enduring testi-
mony of the triumph of an oppressed cause against an
empire's power, inspiration flooded the youth's soul.
Polish art has represented the Anonymous Poet dream-
ing within the walls of the Coliseum: for it was in its
moonlit arches that Krasinski conceived the idea of
Iridion, and there that he places what is not merely the
crisis of his mystical drama, but the great spiritual key-
note of the theory of salvation that he built up for his
people.
"On a beautiful moonlight night," thus the letter to Reeve,
"I entered under those arcades which have seen so many
generations, and have not crumbled away under the weight
of either men or time. "
He heard in fancy the discordant cries of the. Circus, the
"soft and tremulous" hymn of the Christian martyrs.
At this moment the moon appeared on the walls of the
Coliseum, as though she rose from a tangle of ivy which fell in
festoons from the summit of the building. Columns, arcades,
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? The First Exile 37
porticoes, the seats of the Caesars, of the senators, of the
populace, stood out, pallid and in ruins. The arena was laid
bare. In the centre rose a cross of black wood. To me that
cross is worth the Cathedral of Milan and the church of St
Peter's. That cross was persecuted in this spot, many centuries
ago, when the Coliseum represented all the might of those
who had built it. And that cross. . . to-day stands erect where
it was trampled underfoot, and the superb Coliseum which
proudly beheld its humiliation is now being consumed to dust
around it. But it has no aspect of pride in its triumph. In
silence it stretches its black arms to the two sides of the
building, and seems to cast a shadow of peace and benediction
on the earth where persecutors and persecuted sleep.
Let him who does not believe in Christ go to the Coliseum
on a fine night; and if he does not fall on his knees before
the symbol of faith that man, I say beforehand, has neither
soul nor heart1.
News travelled slowly in those days, and when Kra-
sinski penned these words he was ignorant of what had
happened in his country. Before his next letter, written
a week later, all Europe rang with the news that the
Polish nation had risen to arms. That gallant struggle,
with its tale of heroism, of failure and of martyrdom,
broke out in Warsaw on the night of November 29,
1830.
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Dec. 9, 1830.
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? /
CHAPTER III
THE SACRIFICE
(1830-1831)
For the next ten months Poland was the battle-field of a
nation fighting unaided for her life. The Rising of 1830
cannot correctly be called an insurrection. It was a war
for rights that had been guaranteed by a European
treaty, which all the powers of Europe had signed. It
was waged by a small but national army, swelled by
the rally to its banners of men and women of every class
and condition, who fought side by side with a passion
of patriotic abnegation. Brilliant victories marked the
first months of the war. For a time it seemed as though
Poland were about to secure her freedom.
The news of the November night was as the call
of the trumpet to the youth of Poland. In intense
agitation, Krasinski wrote off to Reeve. By way of
safeguard in case his letter should be opened by others
he wrote in English1. His father who, it must be re-
membered, held a high command in the Polish army,
was in the thick of events, of which Krasinski, far from
the scene, could gain no accurate information.
"The day-break is peeping. . . but at present we do not know
I whether it is the dawn of new life, or the glimpse which
appears when a nation is about to be destroyed. I am in great
anguish. The newspapers are full of obscure words. A thou-
sand thanks to God! I have been assured that my father
1 I always give Krasinski's English entirely as it stands, only correcting
what are obvious slips of the pen.
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? The Sacrifice
39
escaped the dangers of the 29th of November "--when the first
fighting began--"and that he sent his resignation to the
Emperor; but what will happen further? . . . No human strength
or aid can help us in this desperate cause, but the same God
who has said: 'Let there be light,' and light appeared, may
now say: ' Let Poland be,' and Poland will grow gigantic and
free. Write to me instantly what Zamojski thinks of doing.
I am in the greatest incertitude. Write to me very soon, for
every day may change my position and throw me forward to
fields of blood and death. "
He then alludes to an English friend of his own
and of Reeve in Rome to whom Krasinski says he will
give his last remembrances for Henrietta before he sets
out for the war. He assures Reeve that:
As often as I shall be able to give you news of me, I shall.
You, however, can still address me at Rome ; for I must remain
here until I receive certain instructions from my father. Par-
don me, I write in such a miserable manner in English, but I
am now troubled and agitated with fever in brain and body. . .
I must tell you that I am in a strange and difficult position.
The cause is too long to be explained in this letter, but if you
remember our talk on the subject you will understand fully
the devilish position in which I am. It always seems to me
that a fatal destiny hangs over my head as the sword of
Damocles. Heaven grant that it may be removed or that it
may fall soon; oh! soon, for to live amid tortures is to begin
hell on earth.
It is evident that Krasinski was already racked with
the misgiving that was to become a certainty. Even if he
did not--and he probably did--strongly suspect that
Wincenty Krasinski was not preparing to throw in his
lot with the national cause, his apprehensions that his
father would prevent his going to the war gave him no
rest. He adds several despairing pages, "mad and
troubled," as he says himself, feeling that he " was born
to defend my country, for I love it with the impassioned
love of the patriot, and my breast burns when I hear
its name," equally convinced that to his eternal shame
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? 40 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
in the eyes of his fellow-Poles, he was to remain
inactive1.
A month passed. The son waited in vain for his
father's summons to the field of action. Young Zamoj-
ski, whom Krasinski had wished to join in Geneva and
thence accompany to Poland, hurried to his country.
The boys who had sat with Krasinski in the school and
University benches joined the national ranks. He alone
was left behind, eating his heart out in rage, suspense,
despair. By this time, he probably knew that there
could be only one reason--when Polish mothers willing-
ly gave up their only sons to face death for their nation
--why his father withheld the permission to his son to
follow the traditions of his patriotic and famous house.
Apart from the outrage to his patriotism, the proud and
too sensitive boy, the descendant as he was of one of
the noblest families of Poland, was stung to the quick
by the disgrace of his position. Some adverse criticism
of both himself and his father appeared in Galignani.
Whether this was written by an enemy, perhaps -Lu-
bienski5, or whether it was the work of a well-wisher
of Krasinski, who, aware of his difficulties, intended
by this means to give him the advice he could not offer
in person, Zygmunt could not tell3. Half frenzied, after
Reeve had sent him the paper he wrote to his friend
a wild letter, which afterwards he begged Reeve to
burn and forget, or to keep it if he wished to see "what
extremities can drive a mind to, when tortured by pain":
the words are in English. Besides that letter several
others that passed between Reeve and Krasinski in these
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Dec. 18-22, 1830.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
3 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Jan. 22, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
41
days are missing. Probably both boys burnt communi-
cations that at this time of Krasinski's life were too
painful and too intimate to risk their being seen by
other eyes. But those that remain show us how Kra-
sinski was able to reveal to Reeve's sympathizing ears
the tortures of his soul which, even if he had not been
entirely cut off from them by the Rising, he could not
for his father's sake have confided to Polish friends.
"I am nailed to Rome until the moment when my
father writes to me to come," he tells Reeve in the
midst of his abandonment of anguish at sitting still
while others were dying for Poland, and at the thought
of how those who loved him, "and Henrietta herself,"
would be upbraiding him.
"The minister has refused me my passports; I have no
money: materially it is impossible for me to move. . . I pray,
for it is my only resource. My father will soon write to me to
join him. He is as good a Pole as any in Poland, and braver
than any of them. Yes," protests the son, refusing to look his
forebodings in the face, "he will send me the order to come,
and then I shall start. "
He breaks out again into English after that single
paragraph in French which, referring directly to his
father, is obviously written in a strain quite foreign to
the rest of the letter in case it should be opened in the
post by some other than Reeve.
"But it is impossible for another to suffer what I
do. I never leave my room except to visit Leach "--
the English friend referred to above:
I read, or rather I endeavour to read, in my lonely room. My
eyes, either filled with tears or dry with rage, cannot follow the
black letters upon the white paper. Oh! my dear Henry,
when rowing with you on blue Leman, when talking of love,
of hope, of future happiness, I never thought there would arrive
an hour in which I would see my fame stained and my honour
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? 42
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
gone, without being able to make the least endeavour to re-
cover them. Never, when I was happy in my love, when I
had many presentiments of future glory, did I think that I
would be obliged to dream while others are awake, to write
while others fight, to drink wine while others drink blood, and
to linger in a dungeon while others arise to freedom and light.
Then, clinging to his forlorn hope, he tells Reeve
that even yet a few weeks may see him riding in the
charge, and he speaks enthusiastically of Zamojski, the
friend by whose side he had longed to fight, and whose
exploits in the war he always followed with generous
admiration1.
Reeve wrote his answer, full of sympathy and of
somewhat tranquil advice ; seeking to reassure Zygmunt
with the fact that, from private letters, "I know that an
European war is inevitable," and "if so, Poland is
saved" : urging Krasinski to control his "unbridled en-
thusiasm "; and hinting broadly that against every
obstacle he had better make for Poland2.
In the early months of 1831, Rome was in a state
of panic, revolution having broken out in Italy. Orders
came from the Russian ambassador, bidding all Poles
who were natives of the Kingdom of Poland to quit
the Eternal City. Krasinski therefore went to Florence.
"I do not know what I shall do," he told Reeve,
writing in bad English, as he sat at his window, looking
down on the Arno. "I have no news neither from my
father nor from my friends in Poland. "
It appears from what follows, and from a passage
in the above letter from Reeve which crossed one of
Krasinski's, and in which Reeve begged him not to
heed what he--Reeve--had written, that in some letter
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Jan. 22, 1831.
2 Op- cit. Reeve to Krasinski. Geneva, Feb. 5, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
43
which Krasinski must have destroyed Reeve had used
expressions that had deeply wounded Krasinski, while
Krasinski in his turn had offended Reeve.
Krasinski
declares passionately that Reeve is mistaken, that when
Zygmunt wrote to him whatever he did write he was
in mental delirium, broken-hearted. The strength of
the friendship that demanded perfect frankness was
proof against such misunderstandings on either side,
for which Krasinski's condition of mental overstrain,
apparent in the whole tenor of his reply to Reeve, was
probably responsible.
"Your last letter," says he," proves to me that I have gone
down in the estimation of my friend. Thank you for your
frankness. But you have never been in the position in which
I am, and you cannot allow for the influence on me of the
events, the cares of every day, of the want of hope and the
violence with which my soul is agitated within me. When a
man feels that he has just begun his career of misfortune, he
must resign himself to everything, arm himself with active
courage to hurl himself against obstacles, and with passive
courage to endure every torment, to expect the jeers of men,
the reproaches of his friends, the insults of mankind which so
much delights in insulting. . .
"I still write sometimes; but when I do I nearly always
play on the theme of some old legend concerning the fight of
man with the old enemy of the human race. I have begun to
read the Bible in English. Sublime! Manfred has also become
my favourite. " To a certain extent it influenced his Undivine
Comedy. "When the world casts us off, we must seek some-
thing above, and I have always loved the world of spirits.
Perhaps one day, when you hear it said: 'He is dead,' you
will no longer think what you thought of me when you wrote
your last letter. That letter pierced my heart. . . You let your-
self go in all the bitterness of mocking at a man who is your
best friend. I do not love you less, my dear Henry; but you
know I never hide what I feel1. "
Shortly after Krasinski wrote thus, he returned to
Geneva. For a little while he and Reeve were once
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Florence, Feb. 20, 1831.
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? 44 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
more together: but Reeve was soon on his way to
England.
Wincenty Krasinski had by now taken the line
which sundered him from his countrymen, and covered
his name with ignominy. He had no sympathy with the
Rising. He had no belief in its efficacy, in which opinion,
it is only fair to add, he was not entirely alone. But his
conduct in 1828 had never been forgiven or forgotten
by his fellow-Poles: and on the night that the Rising
broke out the crowds in the Warsaw streets pursued
him with threats and execrations. His life was only
saved by two of the Polish leaders standing in front of
him to protect him from the populace. He resigned
his command, and informed the national government
that so long as the war lasted he would live in retire-
ment on his country estate. Then Nicholas I summoned
him to Petersburg. Convinced as the General was of the
ultimate failure of the Rising, his wounded vanity and
thirst after success seized the chance of advancement
in the good graces of the Tsar1. He betook himself,
while his country ran red with the blood her sons were
shedding for her, to the capital of Russia, and accepted
favours from the sworn enemy of Poland. Bitter regrets,
fruitless grief for the country that he never ceased to
love, henceforth ravaged his life.
And, while his father was already in Petersburg,
Zygmunt was still waiting in Geneva. The news rang
in his ears of victories on the Polish battle-fields. Tears
of rage filled his eyes when, instead of the Polish trum-
pets, he was reduced to hearing the Swiss soldiers
exercising on the Geneva squares2. At last, on the
1 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Geneva, April 4, 1831.
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? The Sacrifice
45
fourteenth of May, after six months of harrowing sus-
pense, his father's answer came. He was forbidden to
fight for Poland. He was to remain where he was.
Then began the terrible, protracted struggle of the
son with the father whom he passionately loved, and
whose conduct he could only despise and condemn.
"Dearest father," he wrote on the same day that
he received the General's letter and, with it, the death-
blow to his hopes. Through what conflict with himself
he passed as he framed that most difficult of answers
only his own heart knew. We must bear in mind as we
follow him here that he was still only a boy, under age,
entirely dependent on his father, living, moreover, in
days when parental claims were much more insistent
and far more respected than they are in ours.
"On the fourteenth of May I received my dear father's letter,
and I watered it with my tears. Up to now I have been waiting
every day in suspense for news of you and, my hopes dis-
appointed, every day I grew more sad.
"Thank God, I am out of that state of suspense. You ask
me, dearest father, what I have been doing since the sixteenth
of December. I have spent the time in a ceaseless fever, in
ceaseless waiting, in ceaseless sufferings of every kind. . . I was
thinking always," he tells the General, after mentioning the
Italian cities he saw with his heart far away from them, "of
dear Poland and my dear father. "
Then, describing how he waited on and on at
Geneva for the letter that still delayed:
"Nowwhen that letter has come,when I have read there your
explicit will, I beg you for a hearing, for attention, for forbear-
ance with your son, for your mercy, love and blessing.
"You cannot doubt, dearest father, that I love you more
than any other, that I am ready to sacrifice all ties for you. . .
but certainly my father also cannot doubt that I am his son,
the descendant of Bishop Adam"--Adam Krasinski, one of the
leaders of the Confederation of Bar that rose in the defence of
Polish nationality in 1768--"and a Pole. I wrote in my letter
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? 46 The A nonymous Poet of Poland
to you. . . that I hate the people who rose against you in War-
saw, but I wrote at the same time that I love Poland and
that when her national affair came on nothing could keep me
back.
"The same thing I repeat to-day.
"Our age is the age of consecration and penance.
"It is a sacred duty, commanded by God, to make the sacri-
fice of oneself. All the delusions of youth have fallen from my
eyes--the hopes of bright days of earthly happiness. I have
never felt happy from the time I was conscious of life. I was
not happy in love. . . I know equally well that fame, besought
for by men, terminates in a few acclamations, and afterwards
in nothing. I used to dream about it, now I promise it to my-
self no more; but it is borne to the depths of my soul that I
am bound to fulfil a sacred duty from which no one on earth
can free me. There are certain duties in the world, which only
lie between the creature and the Creator, which allow of no
third person between them. The serving of one's country is
one of those duties.
"You write to me, dear father, to travel, to study, to cultivate
my mind, and to go out into society. It would be difficult for
me to do so in the state in which I am. Suffering has eaten
deep into my heart; I am in an unbroken fever; I sometimes
feel as if my brain would turn ; I would wish no one such days
and nights as are mine. I can neither read nor write; I can
hardly finish the conversation that I begin.
"And then to travel, to stroll among foreigners, when at the
other end of Europe my father is overwhelmed with misfor-
tunes, my grandmother dragging out her last years in sadness,
and my countrymen fighting to die or conquer, is a thing not
only impossible for me to do, but which would bring a blush
of shame every moment to my cheek.
"And who would even wish to speak to me? to press my
hand? to know me? when they find out that I am a Pole,
travelling for amusement and education at a time when Poles
are dying every day for Poland? I cannot endure such a state.
I am dying bit by bit. By God! It would be better to die at
once, and not suffer like this.
"But these are more or less egotistic reasons--for it is possi-
ble to make an oblation of oneself and to bear disgrace as a
sacrifice. I am ready to undertake such an oblation, though I
know what would be its result after a few months: death or
madness. But that is not the point. I now go back to what I
said above, to the sacred duty which stands above all others,
and which calls me to Poland, to join the ranks of my brothers.
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? The Sacrifice
47
"I have now reached the solemn moment. I am forced to
tell the father whom I love and have always loved above all
things, that I shall go against his will, that I shall try to re-
turn to Poland, that from to-day this has become the only aim
of my thoughts and actions.
"Dear father! May God judge me, and do not you refuse
me your blessing.
"Mr Jakubowski, to whom I have said this, has told me that
he will try by every means to keep me here. I respect him the
more because he is doing his duty. So I must be at war with
the man who for two years has given me daily proofs of his
affection. My lot is full of bitterness, but I trust in God.
"Within the next days I will try to get to Paris, and from
there as quickly as I can to Warsaw. I will write to you from
every place I can.
"It is done! I still feel on my face your tears when you
said good-bye to me at Bionie. My heart is torn on all sides.
Wherever I look I see the future dark.
"How am I to finish this letter ? What am I to say further?
"On my knees I beseech you, remembering the picture of
my mother, the anniversary of whose death I kept for the
tenth time a month ago in Geneva, I beseech my father for
his forgiveness and blessing. The sufferings which I shall still
cause you are imaged in my soul--I already bear their load
upon my conscience. . . When I think of you I shudder all over
and recoil before my resolution.
"But when Poland rises to my mind strength returns to me
again, I remind myself again that when a Child I often vowed
before my dear father that I would always, always love her.
"I will keep that vow. I entreat you for your forgiveness
and your blessing. God in His infinite mercy will permit me
some day to receive that blessing at your feet.
"Dear father! Do not turn your face away from your son.
I firmly believe that I am doing what I ought to do. Forgive
me. He Who died on the cross forgave His murderers in the
hour of death. I beg you for your forgiveness and your
blessing1. "
But there was little to hope from the father who
understood his son so imperfectly that he could expect
him to travel and seek amusement while Poland was
battling for her right to exist. Something of the indig-
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 48 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
nation, lurking behind the unhappy boy's enforced out-
ward respect for an unworthy father, flashes out when in
answer to the trite question, "What had he been doing
with himself since December? " he hints at the misery
that had been his history during those long months.
To thisletter Krasinski added a postscript a few days
later to the effect that the tutor, Jakubowski, had closed
all the doors of escape for him1.
Krasinski was now face to face with the dilemma
from which there was no way out, that was the tragedy
of his life--the choice between his love for his father
and his love for his nation, his duty to his father and
his duty to his nation. He had now to make his choice
whether he would be at open war with the father who
had nothing left except his son, or whether he would
turn his back upon the country that was dearer to him
than life, in the hour when she called upon all her
children to save her.
The months that followed this appeal to his father
hurried a boy of nineteen by sheer agony of mind into
a premature, darkened manhood. The tears he shed,
as he wept in despair and grief, injured his eyes for life
and brought him again and again as the years went on
to the verge of blindness. Dr Kallenbach does not
hesitate to declare that it was Krasinski's mental suffer-
ing during that spring and summer that sent him, worn
out in body and soul, to his grave before his time2.
Devotion to his country had been instilled into
Zygmunt Krasinski's soul from his earliest childhood.
It was the tradition of his h&use, his strong inheritance
through generations of ancestors. With the Pole, pa-
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 J. Kallenbach, op. cit.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89102083045 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? The Sacrifice
49
triotism is no vague abstraction that, till some great call
stirs it to active being, scarcely enters under normal cir-
cumstances into the working day of a man or woman.
In Krasinski's time, as in our own, the Pole's exis-
tence was a hand to hand and unceasing conflict to pre-
serve faith, language, nationality against an oppression
endeavouring to crush out every vestige of Polish race
possession. The ideals of nationalism are those that most
deeply affect the Pole's life: the love of Poland was
Krasinski's master-passion. With the exception of his
love poems, and even these are constantly interwoven
with the thought of Poland, Krasinski has written
scarcely one line that does not palpitate with his
passion for his country, that is not given to her sorrows,
that is not sung for her sake. In those heart to heart
outpourings, which make up his letters to his friends, it
is the sufferings of Poland, it is his hopes for Poland,
that tear words of fire from his lips. And that this de-
votion was not merely the ripe growth of his manhood,
although naturally it deepened and mellowed with the
course of events, but was the inmost fibre of his soul
when yet a boy, we see clearly enough from his youthful
letters to Reeve, even before that desolation had over-
taken Poland which caused her sons to mourn for her
as for a bereaved mother.
And on the other side, Krasinski's father stood for
all that was home. His mother was dead. He had
neither brother nor sister.