If the new order of things inspires him
only with horror, he has not therefore learned to esteem
the cause he defends!
only with horror, he has not therefore learned to esteem
the cause he defends!
Krasinski - The Undivine Comedy
But where is now
the talent, however wretched, to be found, which will re-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
55
noiince one iota of its own claim to glare, to celebrity, if
even but for a day; where is the name which will refuse
to be bruited abroad, however ephemeral the worthless
echo? Yet here is a man of the most incontestable
genius, whose precepts have modeled the soul of a nation ;
a writer applauded by a whole people, and yet who
through life steadfastly declined to receive the homage so
sincerely offered ; who never suffered the confession of
that which was his glory to be torn from him even by his
most intimate friends, and who preserved until death
sealed his eloquent lips his position of renunciation and
abnegation. In times so full of personal infatuation, so
eager for success, so intoxicated with the incense of vanity,
is not this renunciation of self calculated to excite our
astonishment? But astonishment turns to sympathetic
emotion, when we learn that this act of absolute self-
abnegation was at the same time an act of painful expia-
tion ; that by this silence constantly kept with regard to
himself, the author in a manner implored silence with re-
gard to another ; — that it was a son who thus magnani-
mously immolated his own memory to win the boon of
forgetfulness for that of a gvc\\^y father !
Reserve is a duty toward him who, during his whole
life, tried to hide himself from all public notice. Let us,
however, endeavor to reanimate this noble figure by some
of those general and almost impersonal traits of which he
himself made use in portraying more than one of the
heroes of his dramas. He assigned them no dates, he
gave them no family names, they were rather symbols
than persons. To present him thus to our readers will
be to give them a type rather than a person. Let us im-
agine, then, a man of large fortune, of ancient family,
allied even with some of the reigning sovereigns; a man
who numbered among his ancestors leaders in a national
war held in perpetual veneration, and who was brought
up to reverence his own father, then dear to the country,
and illustrious in many famous battles. A day came when
that idolized father, so intrepid in the fire of combat, gave
proof of pusillanimity in civil life,* and deviated from the
* Vincent Krasinski, the father of the Anonymous Poet, replaced Prince
Poniatowski in the command of the PoUsh army at the end of the Em-
56 POLISH POETRY IN '
path of patriotic duty, at least as the Nation then under-
stood it. It was neither treachery nor treason, still less
could the act be attributed to motives of personal inter-
est ; it was but the infirmity of a weak character, whose
vanity had yielded to the subtle seductions of the ruler
of Poland. But the public indignation was not lessened
by such considerations, and it fell upon the^on, then but
seventeen ; an insult was at that time inflicted upon him
for which nothing could console the man of honor, the
high-spirited gentleman. This was, however, but the
commencement of trials far more severe ; three years
later, the unfortunate son was to find in his father a per-
jured traitor, overwhelmed alike by the curses of his
country and the honors pouring upon him from the tri-
umphant oppressor, the blood-stained conqueror of an
outraged jjeople.
A haughty soul would have found in such circumstances
the pretext for an extreme decision ; it would perhaps
have sought in the unmerited insult and persecution an
excuse for the acceptance of a situation which it had no't'
created for itself, and toward which the animadversions
of the conquered, and the splendid temptations of the
conqueror, equally urged it. On the other hand, an
unscrupulous spirit, yielding to the weakness of an age
which proclaims the sovereignty of the end, and places our
duties to a public cause above all family ties, would have
seized this occasion to gain a popularity as easily won as
pire, and afterwards took part in the government of the kingdom of
Poland after the Restoration. He was a descendant of one of the leaders
of the Confederation of Bar. General Krasinski unfortunately e. \cited
the national sentiment agamst himself by his vote in the Senate'in a trial
for conspiracy in 1828, and the young Sigismund in consequence received
a deadly insult upon the public square from his fellow-students ; this
filled him with anguish, and, at the request of his father, he left Poland.
When the Revolution of November 29, 1830, broke out, he started im-
mediately for his native land, but was forced to stop at Berlin. His
father had been taken at Warsaw by the insurgents ; he saved himself by
a promise of devoting himself to the national cause, — but soon after set
out for St. Petersburg. This treachery filled Sigismund with despair, his
health failed, he could no longer dwell in the land he loved, but lived al-
most entirely abroad, devoting himself to poetry, publishing successively
his poems without ever confessing himself to be their author. Through
him Polish patriotism found a new expression, a mode of thought as yet
unknown in the actual world. — From Charles dc Mazade. Tr.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
57
brilliant, and would at once have sought and published
a rupture, which would have been everywhere welcomed
with applause. But this unhappy son was neither a Co-
riolanus nor a Brutus; he was only a Christian! He
received in utter simplicity the simple command of God :
" Honor thy father and mother. " He never believed
he had the right to deny him who had given him life, nor
even to sit in judgment upon his actions ; but at the same
time he felt himself as strongly the son of the nation, — he
shared in all hecagonies, and in all the hopes of his op-
pressed and murdered country. Thus placed by God be-
tween his flither and his country, with sublime resignation
he accepted the unceasing struggle without any possible
issue, which two sentiments equally sacred were to wage
forever in his soul. He lived almost always abroad, thus
avoiding a contact more bitter than dangerous ; without,
however, ever being able to withdraw himself from the
pitiless arms which forever weighed upon him and his.
He once said to us: " My footsteps have almost always
'pressed a foreign soil. I have only heard from afar the
groans of the victims; but I /^^/ every where the hand of
the executioner. " Thus it was upon a foreign soil that he
became a poet, but he only accepted this celestial gift from
Heaven as a means of penitence on earth ; and in giving
such master-works to his suffering country, he forever re-
nounced the reward so dear to poets — glory. He believed
it to be his duty to expiate a fault not his own, by immo-
lating the most legitimate and purest personal fame, and
always pleaded for another by this persistent sacrifice of
silence, or at most, by these brief and timid words, heart-
breaking in their patiios for those who understand them :
•' O my Country, my mother thrice murdered 1 They who
merit most thy tears, are perhaps they who merit not thy
pardon ! " Thus he knew all the torments of creative
genius without ever tasting its raptures! Erostratus re-
versed, he passed his whole life in erecting a temple, that
a 7iame might be forever forgotten !
Certainly such a life has that in it which must touch the
soul, and in a time when poets so often shock us by facti-
tious griefs, and a parade of wounds upon which they en-
large at pleasure, one is consoled — we were about to say,
6
58 POLISH POETRY IN
happy — to see a great and noble grief supported with such
true and quiet dignity. And that which seems to us to
merit still higher esteem is the great moral vigor which
the Anonymous Poet displays in his work of expiation, the
unflinching integrity, the firm tread of a conscience ever
bearing so heavy a burden. It is the peculiarity, as well
as the dangerous shoal of all efforts at rehabilitation, to
exceed due measure, to fall into excess; and to whom
would the world have more readily pardoned the adop-
tion of extreme passions and sublimated ideas, of ultra
and excited patriotism, than to this son, the labor of
whose life it was to cause his father's name to be forgot-
ten, and who, to effect that end, had taken up the arms
of poetry, — that is to say, even the weapons of passion and
exaltation? He was, however, strong enough to resist
this dangerous temptation, and he who bore in his heart
such a touching necessity to win tlie favor of the public,
has almost constantly braved it in its inclinations and
caprices ! He was, without doubt, faithful to the national
sentiment, but refused to submit to its entrancements of
the hour; on the contrary, he boldly stemmed the cur-
rent of whatsoever he believed wrong or injudicious, even
at the risk of drawing upon himself an unpopularity which
would have been to him doubly grievous. Ah ! let us for
one moment consider the grandeur, virtue, and merit of
such courage in the painful position he occupied. His
first literary effort was distinguished by a defiance boldly
thrown at the humanitarian and socialistic systems, then
so much in vogue in his own country ; and at a later date,
he armed himself with all his poetic lightning to combat
a democratic propaganda, of which he clearly saw the
fatal consequences, but which had at that time subjugated
almost all minds. Not only did he wound his nation in
its transitory j)olitiral predilections; he was not afraid to
strike it in its sentiments the most profound, the most
deeply rooted in its heart. As an example of this, he
preached the utter powerlessness of vengeance, of hate,
to a subjugated people, chafing under oppression, gnawed
by despair, proclaimed dead, and who saw in this ever-
vivid vengeance, this persistent hate, the ever-living proof
of its own vitality. He sung to them the majesty of a
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 59
wholly moral resistance, the glory of a quiet martyrdom
without combat: ideas not calculated to be agreeable to
the masses, especially to a people warlike by instinct, and
gifted by nature with a temperament of fire. He preached
to the cruelly wronged, a theory of sublime mysticism
filled with such divine forgiveness that it exposed itself to
criticism and suspicion, as it seemed to border upon an
enervating submission, and could easily be confounded
with it. Indeed, a long time after the death of the poet,
on the eve of the late events in Warsaw, a maddened de-
mocracy was not ashamed to rail at the "lyric cowardice
of the great anonymous poet. "* He, however, was
neither discouraged by raillery nor by bitter and cruel
invective. His faith was deep in the truths he pro-
claimed, and for all further results he trusted to time, to
justice, and — why should we not say it? — to his inspired
words, of which he knew the irresistible power among his
people.
It is, indeed, ah exceedingly difficult thing for any
foreigner to estimate aright the immense and sovereign
power which Poetry exercises upon that unfortunate na-
tion. This arises from the fact that a very false and in-
complete idea is generally held of the position of the
country, and of the kind of foreign domination which has
tortured it, especially in Russian Poland, and under the
rule of Nicholas. We do not now speak of the scattered
persecutions always arising upon the discovery of con-
spiracies as little dangerous as cruelly punished; we speak
of the ordinary state of things, the every-day life in Poland.
Religious faith constantly annoyed and suspected as a
symptom of ill will toward the government ; no univer-
sities nor institutions of science ; all schools given entirely
up to a foreign tongue, and regulated by officers or sub-
officers from the heart of Russia ; a censorship ignorant,
susceptible, and timid sitting in judgment upon every
thought diud every word; the administration, government,
and courts of justice directed by foreigners speaking a
language rarely understood, and universally detested ; the
manners, customs, and habits of the country violently up-
* Mieroslawski : Insurrection of Poscn. Second edition, i860.
6o POLISH POETRY I. V
rooted ; every glori(;us memorial of the past destroyed or
severely ])iinished ; a police of spies forever upon the
watch to entraj) the unwary ; menace and the most fearful
punishments suspended over every Polish head ; in a word,
repose nowhere, and death everywhere ! In such a state
of affairs, the moral life, which is, whatever may be said,
the national life, finds its only refuge in Religion and in
Poetry.
This is not the time to appreciate aright the part held
by religion in this whirl of torment ; but it may be said
without exaggeration that Poetry divides the influence
over souls with religion, if with some natures it does not
even monopolize it. Works of imagination do not con-
stitute in Poland, as in more happy lands, the mere de-
li^ht of the intellect ; they are not read in saloons, nor
discussed in freedom and with eager play of thought.
Imported secretly by the Jews, they are bought literally
at their weight in gold ; and such poems are devoured in
mystery, often at midnight, in the miflst of friends long
and fully tried, and who are all sworn to keep the secret.
The doors are bolted, the shutters barred, and one of the
Faithful is always placed in the street to give the alarm
should the enemy approach ; for the discovery would be
Siberia or death ! After such readings have been again
and again repeated, feverish and palpitating as they 5re
rendered by the attendant precautions and risks, the
pages of the poem are given to the flames, but the verses
remain indelibly graven upon the excited memory.
Under such circumstances do our unfortunate youths
hear the burning words of our poets, which alone speak
to them of country, liberty, hope, virtue, and combat.
It is often only through the "Sir Thaddeus" and "The
Ancestors" of Mickiewicz that the greater part of our
young men and maidens may learn anything of the his-
tory of their own times. A Polish writer once made the
profoundly true remark, that history could only point to
two nations which had received an education exclusively
poetic: Greece in ancient times, and the Poland of the
nineteenth century. Is such an education harmless, irre-
proachable? Is it devoid of the greatest dangers both
for the man and the citizen? We are far from pretend-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 6 1
ing it is so, but beyond doubt it is the only practical —
alas ! the only possible — course ; and it alone explains the
strange sovereignty exercised by poetic genius in that
country.
Such sovereignty, like all others, has its cares, nay,
even its agonies and remorse ; and Mickiewicz has ad-
mirably symbolized the glory and the misery of the poetic
mission in Poland in the famous Banquet Scene in "Wal-
lenrod. " Our readers will doubtless recollect the sub-
ject of this celebrated tale. Wallenrod, while still an
infant, had been torn from his own country, and brought
up in the midst of its enemies ; he had held the highest po-
sitions, and would perhaps have forgotten his origin, had
he not been accompanied by an old blind man, a poor
Bard, a " VVaidelote," to remind him always of his birth,
and reanimate his hate. This Bard enters in the midst
of a banquet, and in the very presence of the con-
querors, in a language which they cannot understand,
pours into the ears of the young Wallenrod his sonorous
chant, the memories of his childhood, his plighted faith,
his oaths, and the duties still to be accomplished. And
such has indeed been the glorious role of the Polish Poet
in recent times ; but how cruel and terrible this role
often is, is also indicated at the close of this pathetic
scene, when Wallenrod, subdued and fascinated by the
words of the poet, renews his oaths, but at the same
time makes him responsible for the calamities certain to
ensue. He says to the Bard :
" You desire struggle? You urge me on to combat? Amen! But
let the blood which must flow be upon your own head ! Oh ! I know, I
know you! Every hymn of the Bard is a presage of misfortune, like
the howling of hounds at midnight ! Death and devastation are your
favorite chants ; to us you leave the j^lory and the piuiishnieiit ! From
the very cradle your perfidious songs twine their serpent rings round the
bosom of the infimt, breathing into his soul deadly and subtle poison, — a
stupid passion for glory , and a wild love of country I and these songs
forever haunt a young man like the ghost of a dead enemy, appearing in
the midst of every festival to mingle blood with the full cups of wine I
Aye, I have heard them, these songs ; I have hearkened too much to them !
The die is cast, and you have won the throw ! // -cuill be the death of the
disciple, the triumph of the poet t''
This will serve to give us a conception of the sombre
and appalling nature of the power exercised in that
6*
62 roi. rsn poktry in
country by the inspired words of the poet, who has not
only the moral responsiijility for the ideas ])ropagated
which every writer must incur, but who must also assume
that of the material fact of publication, with the conse-
quences it entails upon all concerned in such publica-
tion, endangering the safety of publishers, readers, and
])ossessors ! Let the reader strive to conceive the tor-
ments endured by a poet of loyal soul and upright de-
sires, urged on the one side by genius, perhaps more
strongly still by conscience, to keep up the sacred fire in
human hearts by the propagation of original and impas-
sioned ideas ; yet who, on the other side, shudders at the
thought that the pages written when ^^ was safe from per-
secution may, in other hands, become proofs of a crime
always severely punished, give cause for protracted tor-
tures, and expose the innocent to death ! As an ex-
ample : Young Levitoux, on a certain day, was seized
and confined in the citadel at Warsaw, because a copy of
"The Ancestors," by Mickiewicz, had been found in his
possession. Wrung and exasperated by torture, and above
all fearing that he should become delirious under its in-
fliction, and betray the names of his companions in the
crime, a confession of which was sought to be torn from
him, the prisoner drew the night lamp closer with his
manacled hands, placed it under his bed, and actually
burned himself to death !
Accustomed as the country was to such scenes of
horror, the terrible torture endured by this brave boy of
seventeen excited profound emotion ; but he who suf-
fered most was the poet, Mickiewicz ; the idea of having
been, however involuntarily, the cause of such a death,
everywhere pursued him, and many years after the occur-
rence he could not think of it without a shudder. Nor
vvas the Anonymous Poet spared the anguish of such
literary successes/ He published in Paris a little tale
called "The Temptation," at the close of which is found
the sole cry from his sout which he ever allowed his lips
to utter upon his own situation, and in which it was gen-
erally believed is figured, under poetic types, a recital of
a real eveui, — a meeting between the poet and the Em-
pe^Qr P^icholas. The students of J^ithuanja resolved tQ
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 63
reprint the tale, wliich had indeed ay^peared in the
columns of a journal of that country, stamped with the
imprimatur oi the censor, who had understood notiiing
of the manuscript. But information soon came from St.
Petersburg, ari inquiry was ordered, and several hundred
young men were thereupon forced to make the journey to
Siberia ! They were the flower of young manhood, and
the grief of the bereaved families was heart-rending.
The distress of the Anonymous Poet must have been
great, and the relative security which he enjoyed at such
a moment must have oppressed his soul, especially when
he considered to what high protection he was indebted for
his own immunity.
Under conditions so full of difficulty, so appalling for
a scrupulous and delicate conscience, the Anonymous
Poet found a kind of solace in relinquishing fame, — in
being able to bear witness to himself that he never wrote
with any view to glory, that he never sacrificed to frivo-
lous tastes, or to the higher fantasy of art for the sake of
art. The author of "Iridion" and the " Psalms" never
sang but of his country, addressing himself only to the
moral, political, national, and religious thought of his
audience, — to the " Polish soul," as they say in that land.
He also sought other means to lighten the burden of
responsibility which almost stifled him, and, fantastic as
they may seem, they will yet be readily understood by
those who can trace the subtle and ingenious refinements
of a generous and anguished spirit. Yielding in a man-
ner to an imperious internal voice, he indttd pnb/ished
his poems, but he never took any steps to dissemiftate
them, to extend the circle of their influence, to augment
or multiply their editions. He was, on the contrary, in-
genious in his methods of decreasing their number, of
paralyzing their circulation. Thus he offered the contra-
dictory spectacle of an author desirous of influencing
public opinion, and at the same time striving to diminish
the means of such action ! He had adopted a belief
nearly fatalistic on this subject, which he suffered to
come to light under rather curious circumstances. His
short poem, " Resurrecturis," first appeared in the i'? ^-
vie7ii of Posen, an important and estimable publication
64 POLISH POETRY //V
without doubt, but wliich its gravity, its locality, and
above all its exceedingly conservative tendencies, pre-
cluded from any wide circulation. A friend of the poet
extracted this poem from the Review, and published an
edition of it in Paris of some thousands of copies. It
was no young, enthusiastic, and reckless student of
Lithuania who had conceived the idea of this republica-
tion ; it was a man of mature mind, an old general of
tried wisdom, and accustomed to weigh well his actions.
The complaints of the poet, however, were not the less
full of bitterness. " But the salutary truths contained in
the ' Resurrecturis,' " it was said to him, "would have
been almost lost for the nation in a review so difficult to
obtain. " "No," was the characteristic reply; '■'■the
soul which had need of those words would have found
them there, as well as elsejvhere ; the poem would have
been offered to them by destiny, by fatality ; why should we
pass from lip to lip a cup of bitterness ? ''
And this poetry, to speak only of it, — to say nothing
of the immense correspondence held by our author on all
sides, of which only extracts have as yet appeared, and
which for a long time yet to come may not see the light
of day, — this poetry, what is it? Polish poetry gener-
ally, that of the author of " Iridion" especially, has been
accused of being too obscure and symbolic, of speaking
in enigmas and allegories; in a word, of wanting that
serenity and transparency which are the true conditions
of all pure art. But art, in order to be true and living,
must always bear the marks of the moral surroundings in
which it has been developed, and, to judge impartially of
Polish poetry, the moral state of Poland itself must never
be lost sight of. In a country so long overwhelmed by
misery, all works of the imagination will necessarily be
cloudy and sombre. Also, where long-continued oppres-
sion has taught men to understand one another by a half-
word, a glance, the language of poetic inspiration must
content itself with occult signs. This becomes a custom,
almost an aesthetic necessity. We must again call the
attention of the reader to the fact that works of imagina-
tion cannot be read in Poland as with us; that they are
perused in secret, with guarded caution, and in the midst
THE NINETEEXTII CENTURY. 65
of dangers very real ; that tliey are committed to, and
graven \ipon the memory, and thus constitute for months,
for entire years, the nourishment of the soul. Such Po-
etry must hide in its bosom depths that thought may
slowly explore. The messenger received in mystery,
must speak of mysterious things, of mystical ideas, and
the least that can be demanded of books held at the risk
of life, and arriving like leaves of the Sibyl, is, that they
should speak the language of Oracles. This language is
never complained of there; they learn rapidly to under-
stand it; they grow accustomed to it, as one grows accus-
tomed to see in darkness. Besides, of all the works of
the Anonymous Poet, the " Undivine Comedy" is the only
one really of an enigmatic character. All the rest were
seized by the national intelligence from the first moment
of their appearance. Marvelous Poetry, born from the
situation forced upon Poland by her sufferings and mis-
fortunes, and which, next to that of Goethe, has, in our
times, devoted the most profound scrutiny to the mys-
teries of life, the emotions of the soul !
II.
"The Undivine Comedy" appeared in 1S35, being the
first work which attracted general attention to the Anon-
ymous Poet ; nor is its date one of the least original sides
of this vigorous creation. In fact, the jioem seemed like
a defiance thrown to the general tendencies of the time ;
a solemn protest against the contemporary aspirations.
Let us for a moment recall the character of that epoch, a
period of general effervescence in ideas, beliefs, and pas-
sions. The revolution of July had just given the world
an impetus which nothing had as yet arrested. Young
manhood almost universally dreamed of Republics; spirits
religiously inclined aj^pealed to the Gospel itself in sup-
port of Democracy ; new and mystic sects, supporting the
cause of those disinherited by fortune, accused the vicious
organization of the Social Status as the cause of wide-
spread miserv, and claimed for all human beings a riglit of
which they had hitherto been ignorant, and which was full
66 rOLISIl POETRY IN
of temptation : the right of happiness ! The novus rerum
ordooi Virgil was adopted as the creed of the millions; and
is it at all astonishing that this cry should be especially
heard and re-echoed by misery and poetry ; that is to say,
by the two things in the world the least inclined to be
content with that which really exists? Poland was then
suffering under immense evils, unmitigated woes, and
perhaps it needed nothing less than the conviction of an
approaching and universal upheaval, of an entire renova-
tion of society, to inspire its i^oets again with words of
faith and hope. Even the Muse of Mickiewicz, so dis-
couraged and hopeless once, as shown in his widely cele-
brated "Song of the Polish Mother," which appeared on
the eve of the combat of 1830, now acquired a serenity of
foresight, a haughty attractiveness, in the strangest con-
trast with the gloom of the deceptive reality, but which
gathered force and charm from the previsions of a new
era. These same previsions inspired another poet of ar-
dent and feverish genius, of vivid imagination, and still
more vivid passions, Slowaq:ki. None escaped the en-
trancement of this prophetic spirit ; even the sweet and
melodious singer of waves and plains, Bohdan Zaleski,
was borne into the universal current. The presentiment,
nay, the certainty, of a political, social, and religious trans-
formation, broke forth in all the inspired works which the
Polish poets then sent from the bosom of exile to their
desolate country as the harbingers of good news.
But in the midst of this unanimous concert in honor of
the regeneration of humanity, all at once tolls a knell of
doom : an anonymous author takes up the theme then so
popular, — the trial of the Past and of the Future, the final
struggle of the Old World and the New, — and in his drama
a Count Henry (the last defender of a state of things
which has reached its final term) is seen to fall, if not
without eclat, without appeal, before Pancras, the ener-
getic representative and avenger of the oppressed and
disiniierited of our times. The theme was indeed well
known, but the picture was combined and painted in
such a manner, that it was not necessary to be endowed
with the soul of Cato, it was sufficient to be simply hu-
man, to become interested in the conquered cause, lo
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 67
be forced to withdraw a moment from the heavy conflict,
and to fear the triumph. But of triumph, properly speak-
ing, the Drama proclaims none, for the adversary, tri-
umphant only for a moment, suddenly sinks, confessing
himself conquered in his turn ; the combat only ends for
want of combatants, and it is precisely this end, which is
no solution, which adds so wondrously to the horror of
the picture. In this Infernal Comedy nothing remains
standing upon the upheaved soil ; the horizon is closed
around us at every point. At the final catastrophe, the
Cross alone appears, flaming and bloody, rather as sign of
condemnation than redemption ; it seems only to descend
upon the earth as the funereal seal upon a grave immense
as the universe !
As strange, as contradictory to the aspirations and
hopes of the epoch as this work appeared, it did not the
less take hold of all intellects by a sort of provoking fas-
cination. In one very fine scene of the drama, the leader
of the incarnate democracy, irresistibly attracted to his
great adversary, curious to know him, having eagerly
sought the interview that he might penetrate his thoughts
and motives, is introduced. The "aristocratic" poem
seemed to exercise the same kind of mysterious attraction
upon a public then in a measure imbued with the ideas of
Pancras; the readers returned again and again to the
startling figure of Count Henry, with a shivering eager-
ness partaking at the same time of repulsion and sympathy.
Tlie true problem, the enigma of the drama, was indeed
the adversary of Pancras, the champion of the Past, the
defender of a dying society. It was truly difficult to un-
derstand this enemy of the democracy, who yet seemed
attached to it by more than one secret and unconquerable
affinity ; this friend of the rich, of the nobles, who yet
esteemed them so little; who even overwhelmed them
with his contempt ; this martyr without enthusiasm, this
confessor without faith ! The experience taught by a
revolution, the painful trials of 1848, were necessary to
enable even the critics to understand the mysterious hero
of the Anonymous Poet ; and it may well be said that it
was only by the light of the flames that kindled all Eu-
rope that for the first time, in all its palpable and salient
6S POLISH POETRY IN
truth, this idea of a skeptical defender of a dying world
was seen and comprehended.
Let us here endeavor to retrace the meaning of this
figure, to unite its principal and characteristic traits.
'I'hey may be found in "The Undivine Comedy," as in the
"Fragment," in which the author handles the same sub-
ject under different treatment, which "Fragment," how-
ever, remains but a sketch, published after the death of
the atitlior. They are strangely mistaken who receive to
the letter the position forced upon the adversary of demo-
cracy by the fatality of the passions and times, and who
can only see in Count Henry the Aristocrat with narrow
j)rejudices and timid foresight. He himself tells us " that
he had had his nights of stars, in which his soul had
believed it possessed sufficient strength to float through all
the worlds suspended in the infinite azure, and to reach
the threshold even of God without losing breath. " In a
sublime episode of the " Fragment" entitled "A Dream,"
all the evils, all the miseries of our century appear before
the eyes of the hero: armies drilled in the art of fighting
against the indejjendence of the nations, and stifling the
liberties of the citizens; the Police suspending over all
its vigilant eye, like the immense and movable vault over
a prison, picking up everything, even to a pin, for a pin
might grow and become a formidable weapon in the
hands of the oppressed ; the workers famished, emaciated,
crowded into subterranean and deadly caverns, strange
Cycloi)S with lamps fastened upon their foreheads, drilling
without rest the heads of needles, with fingers soft aiul
weak as wax, and sighing in vain for the sunshine ; nations
buried alive, strike their chains forever against the walls
of their sepulchre, while men of religion, crushed into
slavery, advise them to die in silence, so that they may
neither break the repose nor trouble the enjoyment of
the "Powerful upon earth! " . . . In another grand
episode of the same " Fragment," the centuries past are
made to defile before us in the most ingenious symbolism,
and in that magical order which the philosophy of history
so delights in developing. Liberty appears slowly disen-
gaging herself from epoch to epoch, ever increasing with
every people, antl with every new elevation of humanity:
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 69
surely the meaning of these two pictures is evident. Count
Henry has shared in all the virtuous indignation, as well
as in all the generous aspiration of his century. We hear
him break forth into imprecations against the robbers who
wear crowns; against the priests who counsel men "to
die in slavery;" against the bankers and merchants, " who
would bargain for the nails with which the feet of Christ
were fiistened to the Cross, and who will scarcely admit
that God could have created the world without capital^
We see him affiliating himself to secret societies: "to
those who aspire and conspire; who labor in darkness on
the work of the Future! " " The increasing insolence of
vice had seemed to him the most certain sign of approach-
ing downfall, the moment had once appeared to him not
very distant when Justice should reign upon the earth,
when all nations should conquer their independence, when
man would regain his dignity, and even woman rise from
the state of degradation in which laws without either jus-
tice or love had thrown her. "
It is, however, the same man who is soon after to appear
as the determined adversary of the cause of the people ;
as the obstinate advocate of an order of things which he
had so often cursed ! When his own invocations to liberty
and humanity are repeated to him by immense and palpi-
tating choirs of the people, the inspired prophet of the
Future becomes at once the resolute soldier of the Past,
acknowledging nothing but his vocation, and repulsing
all compromise. He now calls to his aid all the vigor
he had once devoted to earth's agonies, and has recourse
to arms and the principles of other days. Formerly he
esteemed but lightly the advantages of birth and the priv-
ileges of assured position ; but now he draws himself to
his full height in his pride of being a gentleman ; he ap-
peals to the lessons of history consecrated by past centu-
ries. Formerly he only spoke of God in the humanitarian
and vague language so dear to our speculative pantheism,
or, still further astray, he only addressed his j)rayers to
^'Mother Nature ;" but now he assumes as his war-cry the
names of "Jesus'' and of "Mary,'' and chooses for his
last bulwark a crumbling feudal tower, which bears the
name of " The Holy Trinity. " With a convulsive grasp
7
7°
POLISH POETRY IN
he clings to the ruins of a dying generation, and bursts
into demoniac laughter at the word once of such power :
"Progress! " "Progress! " he replies to the chief of the
democratic party, "happiness of the human race! I
too once believed it possible ! Here, take my head, if it
may be. . . . The first man in the desert died, and we
may ne'er re-enter Paradise ! . . . It might have been
perhaps, . . . but it is no longer possible. . . . Nothing
but murder now will satisfy, — unceasing war and ceaseless
mutual slaughter! " . . . It is not, however, tliat he has
a single hope left in the happy issue of the struggle, nor
even that he has any faith in the absolute justice of his
espoused cause.
If the new order of things inspires him
only with horror, he has not therefore learned to esteem
the cause he defends! '■'■Your side I hate : the other I
despise,^'' is the confession which escapes him even in
the presence of the chief of the inimical party. What
an avowal ! what a position ! and above all, what a
startling change !
Nevertheless, it is not so strange as it may appear at
first sight, and the only thing which should really astonish
us in this exciting creation is, that it should in iSj^
have so fully divined the situation which zvould be forced
upon us in 1848 / In truth, does not this poem resemble
and recount in the fnost singular manner recent realities ?
Does it not contain the itiner history of nearly all men
among us ? Have we not all of us also been rocked for
our hour in these enchanting dreams of infinite progress?
have we not all been associated in hopes or in act with
those who "aspired and conspired,''^ or who "worked in
the darkness at the edifice of the Future" ? There was a
time in which all new doctrines found eager acceptance
among us ; every Utopia was met with a benevolent smile.
The infallibility of majorities had become for us a dogma,
the organization of labor pleased us for the moment, even
socialism might ])rove effective, and a man truly liberal
was close on the admission of the "frte woman P^ Then
came the day in which the spirits so long evoked and
flattered suddenly rose, imperious and menacing, sum-
moning us to keep our promises, to fulfill the dreoms we
had excited, or the people in their collected strength
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
71
would hurl themselves upon us, and seize with their own
hands the happiness of which we were defrauding them ;
— and we all recoiled in terror ! Then in order to save
society menaced to its base, we too made our ap])eal to a
personal, helpful, and incarnate God, — truly hitherto a
little too much forgotten by us, — we seized arms which
had been rusting for ages, and escaped for shelter be-
hind the remains of the thrones and altars still left stand-
ing upon the earth ; " to the fortress of the holy Trinity ! "
To the socialism of the future, we opposed the society of
the past ; we were seized with a sudden veneration for
the memories, the institutions, and even the abuses of
feudalism ; we smiled contemptuously on all who spoke
of progress. ''Progress! " we exclaimed with Count
Henry. "We too once believed it possible, — but it is
no longer of that the masses speak, — it is of a return to
the state of the savage 1" " Unceasing war and ceaseless
mutual slaughter 1"
Alas ! in this just and holy struggle we found ourselves
associated with strange auxiliaries and marching some-
times under still stranger flags, and we confounded more
than one righteous claim from civilized Peoples with the
iniquitous nnd bloodthirsty pretensions of the barbarous
masses. Every revolt against oppression then seemed
odious in our eyes ; every cry of liberty filled us with
terror; and we might well have made the confession so
comically tragic of Falstaff, that "we had become cowards
through conscience f" No humiliation had been spared to
our pride, no recantation to our ancient faith, no trouble
nor remorse to our innermost feelings. Truly we have
had personal experience enough to enable us now perfectly
to understand Count Henry, — to pity him also, — it is so
sweet to compassionate ourselves I
We must not, however, compassionate him too deeply ;
let us rather preserve the strict impartiality of the author
toward him. The fall was not undeserved, and the poet
acknowledges it in an apostrophe to his hero, of which
every word has its meaning. He says :
" Stars are around thy head — under thy feet surges the sea — a rainbow
forever floats upon the waves before thee and disperses the clouds ! Wliat-
72
POLISH rOETRY IN
soever thou lookest upon is thine, -^thc shore? ;, the cities, the men belong
to thee, — the heavens are thine, — and nothing seems to equal thy glory :
"To listening ears thou chantest airs of rapture inconceivable, — thou
twinest hearts and then unwreatliest them, like a garland, at the caprice
of thy skilled fingers ! Thou forcest tears, then driest them by a smile. —
and then thou frightenest the smile away for a moment — an hour — too
often forever . . . . ! But what dost thou feel ? What creates! thou ?
Of what dost think? The stream of beauty flows through thee, but
thou art not beauty ! Woe to thee ! woe 1 The child weeping upon its
mother's breast, the field flower ignorant of its gift of perfume, have
more merit than thou before the Lord !
" Whence comest thou, ephemeral shadow, bearing witness to the light
which vet thou knowest not, hast never seen, and never art to see? In
anger or in mockery wert thou made ? Who gave to thee this life so
wretched and delusive, that thou canst play the angel till the moment of
thy f. ill, when thou wilt creep a reptile to be stifled in thine own corrup-
tion? Thou and the woman have one origin !
"And yet thou sufferest, although thy agony brings naught to birth,
and serves for nothing ! The groans of the lowest beggar are counted
in heaven, compensated amid the music of the angels' haqis ; but thy
despair and sighs fall to the bottomless abyss, and Satan gathers them
and adds them with joy to his delusions, lies ! "
The meaning of this apostrophe is easily understood.
Count Henry certainly aspireti to the ideal, and had
borne bitter grief; but he had never tried to reproduce
the ideal within his own soul; he had only drawn vanity
and severity from his afflictions. His enthusiasm was not
only false, but for the false. He had rather sought emo-
tions than experienced true feelings. "He and the
woman have one origin. " He had had neither simplicity
nor spontaneity. Pride had taken possession of his soul,
and, while he believed that he loved and adored human-
ity, he only loved and adored himself and his own
thoughts. " Peace to men of good will ! " the Guardian
Angel cries at the commencement of the Drama; but it
is rather a warning than a benediction. Let us notice in
passing these words of "good tvi/I. '" They are the first
words, as they will be the last, of the magnanimous
poetry of the anonymous author ! These words are at
the commencement of his "Infernal Comedy," as they
will form, at a later date, the title of the last of his
"P. salms. " This '' good will '' the existence of which
the poet does not acknowledge in his Count Henry, the
himianitarian dreamer, or defender of established order,
he understands as comprising good faith, sincerity, uj)-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
73
right and pure intentions : " that tranquil and loving
force against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. "
From the cold and troubled source of false exaltation he
makes all the misfortunes of his hero flow ; the misery of
the man, the embarrassment of the citizen, the distrac-
tions of his public and private life.
The drama commences with a wedding scene. After
having lived long alone with his thoughts and his dreams.
Count Henry ^^ descends to terrestrial vows," and con-
tracts a marriage. ' For a moment we are induced to be-
lieve that the visionary dreamer at last understands the
true vocation of life, and the sweetness it still holds in
reserve for him ; that he will taste the happiness of a pure
and lasting love; that he will found a family; but a few
words, eloquent in their brevity, soon dispel such illu-
sions. With the straightforward sense of a loving soul,
the young bride says to the husband : "I will be to thee
a faithful wife, as my mother has taught me, as my own
heart dictates to me. " To which he replies: "Thou
shalt be my song for eternity. " The wife speaks the
language of society; he responds with the accents of
poetry ! She is fatigued with the noisy ball, forming so
painful a contrast with the soft emotions of her heart,
and feels faint ; but the Count finds her so lovely in her
exhaustion and pallor, that he begs her to return to the
dance. "I will remain here and gaze upon thee, as I
have often watched the floating angels in my dreams. "
She still complains of weariness, but he insists, implores,
and is obeyed ! By such traits as these the poet reveals
his character from the very commencement. Thus one is
not astonished in so soon finding Count Henry wander-
ing about the mountains, in dark and stormy nights, in
pursuit of his old phantoms. "Since my marriage, I
have slept the sleep of the benumbed, eating and drink-
ing and sleeping like a German artisan! " His wife is
"born for home and hearth," but "not for him;" she
is not what he dreamed. He certainly does not fail in
finding words for the expression of a grand sorrow, nor
lacks he powerful images ; but how much deeper and
even more poetic is the sentiment of the young wife in
these simple words; "Yesterday I went to confession ; I
7*
74
POLISH POETRY IN
examined into all my sins; but I could find nothing
which ought to offend thee ! "
A son is born of this union; but the father is not
present at the ceremony of baptism, at the moment
when his infant receives a name and enters into the
human city. The mother comes forward tottering, her
eyes haggard and wandering in delirium, and cries, to
the amazement of the assistants: " I bless thee, George !
I bless thee, O my child ! Become a Poet, that thy
father may love thee ; that he may not one day deny
thee! Thou wilt merit well of thy father thus; thou
wilt please him, and then he will pardon thy mother.
. . . I curse thee, George, if thou becomest not a
Poet ! " . . . She becomes mad, and is taken to an
asylum for the insane. At this frightful news the soul of
the husband is torn ; he breaks into sobs of remorse.
"I promised her fidelity and happiness, and I have
thrown her, living still, into the hell of those already
damned ! I blast all upon whom I breathe, and am
doomed to destroy myself. Hell has thrown me here,
that I might be to men its image upon earth ! Upon
what pillow of horror lays she now her head ! With
what harmonies have I surrounded her? The howls of
madmen ! " He would perhaps have pursued this mono-
logue for a longer time, if a mysterious and sardonic
voice had not suddenly cried to him : " Thou cJuxfitest a
Drama r'
This madness of the wife is a masterly invention ; it is
indeed with an art akin to the genius of Shakespeare that
])oetic justice is here administered to the hero of the
Drama. He had found his wife too practical, — tran-
quilly sleeping at regular hours, and never soaring above
the earth. Well ! She will quit the earth ; she will sleep
no more, save with the tossing restlessness of the de-
ranged ! The sense of reality will altogether escape her,
and she will lose her earthly reason ! He was a dreamer;
she will become a lunatic; she will in good faith practice
the exaltation of which he has only dreamed, and to his
poetic inspirations she will reply in delirium. "Thou
wilt no longer despise me, Henry ! " she says to him
when they meet in the mad-house. " I am full of inspira-
THE XLXETEENTIl CENTURY. 75
tion now ; my soul has left my heart and mounted into my
brain ! Look at me ! Am I not thine equal now ? I
can comprehend all now, — express it, sing it; I chant
the sea, the stars, the clouds, battles, — no, I have never
seen a battle. You must take me there ! I must see and
describe a corpse, a shroud, blood, air, the dew, a coffin.
. . . I am so happy ! "
These incoherent speeches — in which, however, each
word has its own tale to tell — are interrupted at intervals
by cries still more incoherent breaking from all sides.
They are the cries of the insane who are confined in
other cells in the house. But let us take good care not
to imagine all this to be only a puerile effort to produce
a tragic scene ! Alas I these voices have a profound sig-
nificance in themselves; this symphony of madness has
its dominant key ; the mad poetry of the wife is de-
signedly interrupted by these wild cries, which are the
precursory signs of the approaching delirium of society
entire; and through the domestic anguish is already seen
the misery of the world.
^^A voice from above. You have chained up God !
One is already dead upon the Cross. I am the second
God, and you have given me also up to the execu-
tioners !
"•^A voice from beloiv. To the scaffold with the heads
of kings and nobles ! Through me will begin the liberty
of the people.
"^ voice from the left. The comet tracks its way in
fire across the sky; the awful Day of Judgment draweth
near.
"y4 voice from below. I have killed three kings with
my own hands ; ten still remain and a hundred priests
who still sing mass. "
"Are not these people terribly deranged? " asks the
wife, in listening to these infernal cries. "They do not
know what they are saying," she continues; "but lean tell
you what would happen if God Himself should go mad ! "
If God should go 7nad ! The thought is of a ferocity, but
also of an energy almost unequaled, nor does it lessen in its
wild development. " But I can tell you what would happen
if God should go mad. " (She seizes him by the hand. )
76
POLISH POETRY IN
"All the worlds would fly about in space, mount up on
high, or roll in the abyss : and every creature, every worm,
would cry, / am God ! and they would all die one after
another, and all the comets and suns would go out in
the sky : and Jesus Christ would save us no longer !
Tearing his hands from the nails, with both hands he
would hurl his cross into the abyss ! Listen ! how this
cross, the hope of millions, falls from star to star! It
breaks at last, and covers with its ruins the universe en-
tire ! The Holy Virgin alone continues to pray, and the
stars, her servants, are still faithful to her, — but she too
will plunge where all created things are plunging down
— for God is mad ! " . . .
Between these scenes of domestic life so vigorously
sketched, and those of public life soon so stormily to
unroll, is placed a melancholy idyl : a series of episodes
between the father and child, the widower and orphan.
And rarely has the imagination of a poet created a form
so exquisitely graceful, or of a symbolism so deep, as the
little George of the drama. His mother's prayers have
been but too well answered ; her son, like the Count, is
also a poet, indeed, a poet in a higher sense, for he does
not seek emotions, they rise spontaneously in his heart ; his
soul vibrates like a harp, and multiform images, even
against his will, ferment in his brain and "give him pain
in his head. " He recites sweet and harmonious songs,
he says he hears his mother sing them, whom he has never
known ; he declares that he hears celestial voices, but in
spite of high nervous energy he is weak and sickly. At
the age of ten years the child withers away, becomes
blind, and finds life only within his own soul. It is easily
divined that the poet meant to personify in George those
pure and contemplative natures which are often met even
in the midst of the most agitated society and in the most
stormy times ; na'ive and delicate souls with high thoughts
and refined perceptions, but timid and shut up in them-
selves ; blind to all the things of this earth, and under-
standing nothing of the commonplace facts of the workl,
which are, however, its stern necessities. Little George
has strong religious instincts ; he wants to j^ray always, he
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
77
refers everything to God. But let us not be deceived ; it
is not really faith, it is rather the necessity of belief, the
eager desire of certainty. The piety of the child pro-
ceeds too much from the poetry of the father; this the
author indicates in the most ingenious manner. The
Count takes his son to the cemetery ; George kneels before
the tomb of his mother, and recites the "Ave" : " Hail
Mary, full of grace ! Mary, Queen of heaven. Lady of all
that blooms on earth, that scents the fields, that paints
the fringes of the streams. " . . . The father silences
and reproaches him. He recommences: "Hail Mary,
full of grace ! The Lord is with thee ! The angels bless
thee, and as thou glidest softly through them each plucks
a rainbow from his wings to cast beneath thy feet. " . . .
Who does not know this tendency to endeavor to increase
faith by poetry, to adorn the words of the gospel, to beau-
tify Golgotha itself? But is this really religion ? It is
indeed a religion able to produce internal delights and
mystic raptures, but it can give neither dogmas to the
intellect nor rules to the conscience, nor can a society
tottering to its base find any support therein. In the
social war so soon to burst forth, little George dies from
a wandering ball.
Behold us instantaneously launched in the midst of the
horrors of a social revolution ! The transition is abrupt
and violent ; it is a surprise in the Drama, as it also was
in our history. The Count, undeceived by time and
grief, cured of his chimeras upon the progress of the
human race, has now taken in hand the defense of society
menaced at all points, — and further commentary is un-
necessary ! Let us, however, remark that in this new
transformation our hero no less retains the original vice
of his nature, the capital sin of which consists in seeking
impressions, emotions, rather than searching for truth; in
burrowing into his imagination rather than scrutinizing
his conscience. He regards this civil war only as a fatal
and bitter task ; and yet he sometimes surprises himself by
his keen relish for its savage poetry, representing in ad-
vance to himself its fields of battle, its torrents of blood.
It is the '^sublime horror of the cannon,'^ admired from
the opposite point of view ! His pride, hitherto latent,
78 POLISH POETRY IN
flashes into ominous light. He delights in playing his
rcMe as a Titan ; and we are often tempted to ask if, at
his pleasure, he does not exaggerate the perversity of
human nature, as he had before exaggerated its indefinite
perfectibility. The dangers which threaten civilization
are, nevertheless, great and real; and the dissolution of
society is painted with the direst and most frightful hues.
Let the reader turn to the new " Walpurgis Night" in "The
Undivine Comedy," at which Count Henry, unknown,
assists ; let him look into the wild Saturnalia of the fam-
ished masses eager for pillage and murder, in the midst
of which our hero recognizes some of his old acquaint-
ances, his ancient associates in the '■'■Great work of the
Future I' ^ Let the reader survey these scenes of misery
and carnage, in the midst of which stands out one of
masterly power, — the interview between Count Henry
and the chief of the revolutionists.
In vain may the plebeians hate and curse all social
superiority ; it will not the less exercise upon them a
disturbing and mysterious attraction ! Li the ingenious
picture of Paul Delaroche, it is evident that the beheaded
Stuart still awes Cromwell from the folds of his shroud ;
he imposes upon him even to his wliite hand, so long and
taper, so skillfully brought in close contact with the rough
and bony fist of the Puritan chief. It is not, then, aston-
ishing that Pancras should feel an irresistible desire to see
his aristocratic adversary, to speak to him, that he should
even desire to save him ; but why should the Count, on
his side, feel an equal attraction, and consent to an inter-
view of which he must so well have known the futility?
Alas ! that which forced it upon him was the attraction
which sometimes induces us to open a grave that we may
contemplate a face, now deformed and revolting — once
idolized ! In this broken mirror, the Count wished to
gaze upon his own image, wildly altered and distorted.
Strange, and well calculated to excite despair, is the fact
that in this contest between Count Henry and Pancras,
nothing determinative is brought to light ; only their own
individual sources of complaint are justly put, and well
founded ; no brilliant fusing si)ark of universal truth
flashes from the contact of these negative poles. Pancras
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
79
says: "You who are old, rotten, satiated with food and
drink, worm-eaten and crumbling into dust, give place to
those who are young, vigorous, hungry and robust ! " —
"Ah! I know you too," replies the Count; "I have
visited your camp at night, and have seen the bloody
dance of fools and barbarians; their floor was the decapi-
tated heads of those who differed in opinion from them !
I recognized all the vices of the Old World peering from
the new garments ; they sang a new song, but it ended
ever in the old refrain : Bread, meat, gold, and blood ! "
" Your ancestors were robbers! " cries Pancras. "And
yours were slaves I" replies the Count.
The adversaries separate ; the struggle recommences
more furiously and implacably than before, and in the final
moment, when the last bastion crumbles, the Count kills
himself by leaping from the top of the precipice. He
had already heard the doom of Heaven, which condemned
him because "he had esteemed nothing, loved nothing
but himself and his own thoughts;" — and it was his own
son who must explain to him the meaning of those voices
from the sky ! The death of Pancras is still more sudden ;
it is unforeseen, unprepared, and therefore deeply signifi-
cant.
the talent, however wretched, to be found, which will re-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
55
noiince one iota of its own claim to glare, to celebrity, if
even but for a day; where is the name which will refuse
to be bruited abroad, however ephemeral the worthless
echo? Yet here is a man of the most incontestable
genius, whose precepts have modeled the soul of a nation ;
a writer applauded by a whole people, and yet who
through life steadfastly declined to receive the homage so
sincerely offered ; who never suffered the confession of
that which was his glory to be torn from him even by his
most intimate friends, and who preserved until death
sealed his eloquent lips his position of renunciation and
abnegation. In times so full of personal infatuation, so
eager for success, so intoxicated with the incense of vanity,
is not this renunciation of self calculated to excite our
astonishment? But astonishment turns to sympathetic
emotion, when we learn that this act of absolute self-
abnegation was at the same time an act of painful expia-
tion ; that by this silence constantly kept with regard to
himself, the author in a manner implored silence with re-
gard to another ; — that it was a son who thus magnani-
mously immolated his own memory to win the boon of
forgetfulness for that of a gvc\\^y father !
Reserve is a duty toward him who, during his whole
life, tried to hide himself from all public notice. Let us,
however, endeavor to reanimate this noble figure by some
of those general and almost impersonal traits of which he
himself made use in portraying more than one of the
heroes of his dramas. He assigned them no dates, he
gave them no family names, they were rather symbols
than persons. To present him thus to our readers will
be to give them a type rather than a person. Let us im-
agine, then, a man of large fortune, of ancient family,
allied even with some of the reigning sovereigns; a man
who numbered among his ancestors leaders in a national
war held in perpetual veneration, and who was brought
up to reverence his own father, then dear to the country,
and illustrious in many famous battles. A day came when
that idolized father, so intrepid in the fire of combat, gave
proof of pusillanimity in civil life,* and deviated from the
* Vincent Krasinski, the father of the Anonymous Poet, replaced Prince
Poniatowski in the command of the PoUsh army at the end of the Em-
56 POLISH POETRY IN '
path of patriotic duty, at least as the Nation then under-
stood it. It was neither treachery nor treason, still less
could the act be attributed to motives of personal inter-
est ; it was but the infirmity of a weak character, whose
vanity had yielded to the subtle seductions of the ruler
of Poland. But the public indignation was not lessened
by such considerations, and it fell upon the^on, then but
seventeen ; an insult was at that time inflicted upon him
for which nothing could console the man of honor, the
high-spirited gentleman. This was, however, but the
commencement of trials far more severe ; three years
later, the unfortunate son was to find in his father a per-
jured traitor, overwhelmed alike by the curses of his
country and the honors pouring upon him from the tri-
umphant oppressor, the blood-stained conqueror of an
outraged jjeople.
A haughty soul would have found in such circumstances
the pretext for an extreme decision ; it would perhaps
have sought in the unmerited insult and persecution an
excuse for the acceptance of a situation which it had no't'
created for itself, and toward which the animadversions
of the conquered, and the splendid temptations of the
conqueror, equally urged it. On the other hand, an
unscrupulous spirit, yielding to the weakness of an age
which proclaims the sovereignty of the end, and places our
duties to a public cause above all family ties, would have
seized this occasion to gain a popularity as easily won as
pire, and afterwards took part in the government of the kingdom of
Poland after the Restoration. He was a descendant of one of the leaders
of the Confederation of Bar. General Krasinski unfortunately e. \cited
the national sentiment agamst himself by his vote in the Senate'in a trial
for conspiracy in 1828, and the young Sigismund in consequence received
a deadly insult upon the public square from his fellow-students ; this
filled him with anguish, and, at the request of his father, he left Poland.
When the Revolution of November 29, 1830, broke out, he started im-
mediately for his native land, but was forced to stop at Berlin. His
father had been taken at Warsaw by the insurgents ; he saved himself by
a promise of devoting himself to the national cause, — but soon after set
out for St. Petersburg. This treachery filled Sigismund with despair, his
health failed, he could no longer dwell in the land he loved, but lived al-
most entirely abroad, devoting himself to poetry, publishing successively
his poems without ever confessing himself to be their author. Through
him Polish patriotism found a new expression, a mode of thought as yet
unknown in the actual world. — From Charles dc Mazade. Tr.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
57
brilliant, and would at once have sought and published
a rupture, which would have been everywhere welcomed
with applause. But this unhappy son was neither a Co-
riolanus nor a Brutus; he was only a Christian! He
received in utter simplicity the simple command of God :
" Honor thy father and mother. " He never believed
he had the right to deny him who had given him life, nor
even to sit in judgment upon his actions ; but at the same
time he felt himself as strongly the son of the nation, — he
shared in all hecagonies, and in all the hopes of his op-
pressed and murdered country. Thus placed by God be-
tween his flither and his country, with sublime resignation
he accepted the unceasing struggle without any possible
issue, which two sentiments equally sacred were to wage
forever in his soul. He lived almost always abroad, thus
avoiding a contact more bitter than dangerous ; without,
however, ever being able to withdraw himself from the
pitiless arms which forever weighed upon him and his.
He once said to us: " My footsteps have almost always
'pressed a foreign soil. I have only heard from afar the
groans of the victims; but I /^^/ every where the hand of
the executioner. " Thus it was upon a foreign soil that he
became a poet, but he only accepted this celestial gift from
Heaven as a means of penitence on earth ; and in giving
such master-works to his suffering country, he forever re-
nounced the reward so dear to poets — glory. He believed
it to be his duty to expiate a fault not his own, by immo-
lating the most legitimate and purest personal fame, and
always pleaded for another by this persistent sacrifice of
silence, or at most, by these brief and timid words, heart-
breaking in their patiios for those who understand them :
•' O my Country, my mother thrice murdered 1 They who
merit most thy tears, are perhaps they who merit not thy
pardon ! " Thus he knew all the torments of creative
genius without ever tasting its raptures! Erostratus re-
versed, he passed his whole life in erecting a temple, that
a 7iame might be forever forgotten !
Certainly such a life has that in it which must touch the
soul, and in a time when poets so often shock us by facti-
tious griefs, and a parade of wounds upon which they en-
large at pleasure, one is consoled — we were about to say,
6
58 POLISH POETRY IN
happy — to see a great and noble grief supported with such
true and quiet dignity. And that which seems to us to
merit still higher esteem is the great moral vigor which
the Anonymous Poet displays in his work of expiation, the
unflinching integrity, the firm tread of a conscience ever
bearing so heavy a burden. It is the peculiarity, as well
as the dangerous shoal of all efforts at rehabilitation, to
exceed due measure, to fall into excess; and to whom
would the world have more readily pardoned the adop-
tion of extreme passions and sublimated ideas, of ultra
and excited patriotism, than to this son, the labor of
whose life it was to cause his father's name to be forgot-
ten, and who, to effect that end, had taken up the arms
of poetry, — that is to say, even the weapons of passion and
exaltation? He was, however, strong enough to resist
this dangerous temptation, and he who bore in his heart
such a touching necessity to win tlie favor of the public,
has almost constantly braved it in its inclinations and
caprices ! He was, without doubt, faithful to the national
sentiment, but refused to submit to its entrancements of
the hour; on the contrary, he boldly stemmed the cur-
rent of whatsoever he believed wrong or injudicious, even
at the risk of drawing upon himself an unpopularity which
would have been to him doubly grievous. Ah ! let us for
one moment consider the grandeur, virtue, and merit of
such courage in the painful position he occupied. His
first literary effort was distinguished by a defiance boldly
thrown at the humanitarian and socialistic systems, then
so much in vogue in his own country ; and at a later date,
he armed himself with all his poetic lightning to combat
a democratic propaganda, of which he clearly saw the
fatal consequences, but which had at that time subjugated
almost all minds. Not only did he wound his nation in
its transitory j)olitiral predilections; he was not afraid to
strike it in its sentiments the most profound, the most
deeply rooted in its heart. As an example of this, he
preached the utter powerlessness of vengeance, of hate,
to a subjugated people, chafing under oppression, gnawed
by despair, proclaimed dead, and who saw in this ever-
vivid vengeance, this persistent hate, the ever-living proof
of its own vitality. He sung to them the majesty of a
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 59
wholly moral resistance, the glory of a quiet martyrdom
without combat: ideas not calculated to be agreeable to
the masses, especially to a people warlike by instinct, and
gifted by nature with a temperament of fire. He preached
to the cruelly wronged, a theory of sublime mysticism
filled with such divine forgiveness that it exposed itself to
criticism and suspicion, as it seemed to border upon an
enervating submission, and could easily be confounded
with it. Indeed, a long time after the death of the poet,
on the eve of the late events in Warsaw, a maddened de-
mocracy was not ashamed to rail at the "lyric cowardice
of the great anonymous poet. "* He, however, was
neither discouraged by raillery nor by bitter and cruel
invective. His faith was deep in the truths he pro-
claimed, and for all further results he trusted to time, to
justice, and — why should we not say it? — to his inspired
words, of which he knew the irresistible power among his
people.
It is, indeed, ah exceedingly difficult thing for any
foreigner to estimate aright the immense and sovereign
power which Poetry exercises upon that unfortunate na-
tion. This arises from the fact that a very false and in-
complete idea is generally held of the position of the
country, and of the kind of foreign domination which has
tortured it, especially in Russian Poland, and under the
rule of Nicholas. We do not now speak of the scattered
persecutions always arising upon the discovery of con-
spiracies as little dangerous as cruelly punished; we speak
of the ordinary state of things, the every-day life in Poland.
Religious faith constantly annoyed and suspected as a
symptom of ill will toward the government ; no univer-
sities nor institutions of science ; all schools given entirely
up to a foreign tongue, and regulated by officers or sub-
officers from the heart of Russia ; a censorship ignorant,
susceptible, and timid sitting in judgment upon every
thought diud every word; the administration, government,
and courts of justice directed by foreigners speaking a
language rarely understood, and universally detested ; the
manners, customs, and habits of the country violently up-
* Mieroslawski : Insurrection of Poscn. Second edition, i860.
6o POLISH POETRY I. V
rooted ; every glori(;us memorial of the past destroyed or
severely ])iinished ; a police of spies forever upon the
watch to entraj) the unwary ; menace and the most fearful
punishments suspended over every Polish head ; in a word,
repose nowhere, and death everywhere ! In such a state
of affairs, the moral life, which is, whatever may be said,
the national life, finds its only refuge in Religion and in
Poetry.
This is not the time to appreciate aright the part held
by religion in this whirl of torment ; but it may be said
without exaggeration that Poetry divides the influence
over souls with religion, if with some natures it does not
even monopolize it. Works of imagination do not con-
stitute in Poland, as in more happy lands, the mere de-
li^ht of the intellect ; they are not read in saloons, nor
discussed in freedom and with eager play of thought.
Imported secretly by the Jews, they are bought literally
at their weight in gold ; and such poems are devoured in
mystery, often at midnight, in the miflst of friends long
and fully tried, and who are all sworn to keep the secret.
The doors are bolted, the shutters barred, and one of the
Faithful is always placed in the street to give the alarm
should the enemy approach ; for the discovery would be
Siberia or death ! After such readings have been again
and again repeated, feverish and palpitating as they 5re
rendered by the attendant precautions and risks, the
pages of the poem are given to the flames, but the verses
remain indelibly graven upon the excited memory.
Under such circumstances do our unfortunate youths
hear the burning words of our poets, which alone speak
to them of country, liberty, hope, virtue, and combat.
It is often only through the "Sir Thaddeus" and "The
Ancestors" of Mickiewicz that the greater part of our
young men and maidens may learn anything of the his-
tory of their own times. A Polish writer once made the
profoundly true remark, that history could only point to
two nations which had received an education exclusively
poetic: Greece in ancient times, and the Poland of the
nineteenth century. Is such an education harmless, irre-
proachable? Is it devoid of the greatest dangers both
for the man and the citizen? We are far from pretend-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 6 1
ing it is so, but beyond doubt it is the only practical —
alas ! the only possible — course ; and it alone explains the
strange sovereignty exercised by poetic genius in that
country.
Such sovereignty, like all others, has its cares, nay,
even its agonies and remorse ; and Mickiewicz has ad-
mirably symbolized the glory and the misery of the poetic
mission in Poland in the famous Banquet Scene in "Wal-
lenrod. " Our readers will doubtless recollect the sub-
ject of this celebrated tale. Wallenrod, while still an
infant, had been torn from his own country, and brought
up in the midst of its enemies ; he had held the highest po-
sitions, and would perhaps have forgotten his origin, had
he not been accompanied by an old blind man, a poor
Bard, a " VVaidelote," to remind him always of his birth,
and reanimate his hate. This Bard enters in the midst
of a banquet, and in the very presence of the con-
querors, in a language which they cannot understand,
pours into the ears of the young Wallenrod his sonorous
chant, the memories of his childhood, his plighted faith,
his oaths, and the duties still to be accomplished. And
such has indeed been the glorious role of the Polish Poet
in recent times ; but how cruel and terrible this role
often is, is also indicated at the close of this pathetic
scene, when Wallenrod, subdued and fascinated by the
words of the poet, renews his oaths, but at the same
time makes him responsible for the calamities certain to
ensue. He says to the Bard :
" You desire struggle? You urge me on to combat? Amen! But
let the blood which must flow be upon your own head ! Oh ! I know, I
know you! Every hymn of the Bard is a presage of misfortune, like
the howling of hounds at midnight ! Death and devastation are your
favorite chants ; to us you leave the j^lory and the piuiishnieiit ! From
the very cradle your perfidious songs twine their serpent rings round the
bosom of the infimt, breathing into his soul deadly and subtle poison, — a
stupid passion for glory , and a wild love of country I and these songs
forever haunt a young man like the ghost of a dead enemy, appearing in
the midst of every festival to mingle blood with the full cups of wine I
Aye, I have heard them, these songs ; I have hearkened too much to them !
The die is cast, and you have won the throw ! // -cuill be the death of the
disciple, the triumph of the poet t''
This will serve to give us a conception of the sombre
and appalling nature of the power exercised in that
6*
62 roi. rsn poktry in
country by the inspired words of the poet, who has not
only the moral responsiijility for the ideas ])ropagated
which every writer must incur, but who must also assume
that of the material fact of publication, with the conse-
quences it entails upon all concerned in such publica-
tion, endangering the safety of publishers, readers, and
])ossessors ! Let the reader strive to conceive the tor-
ments endured by a poet of loyal soul and upright de-
sires, urged on the one side by genius, perhaps more
strongly still by conscience, to keep up the sacred fire in
human hearts by the propagation of original and impas-
sioned ideas ; yet who, on the other side, shudders at the
thought that the pages written when ^^ was safe from per-
secution may, in other hands, become proofs of a crime
always severely punished, give cause for protracted tor-
tures, and expose the innocent to death ! As an ex-
ample : Young Levitoux, on a certain day, was seized
and confined in the citadel at Warsaw, because a copy of
"The Ancestors," by Mickiewicz, had been found in his
possession. Wrung and exasperated by torture, and above
all fearing that he should become delirious under its in-
fliction, and betray the names of his companions in the
crime, a confession of which was sought to be torn from
him, the prisoner drew the night lamp closer with his
manacled hands, placed it under his bed, and actually
burned himself to death !
Accustomed as the country was to such scenes of
horror, the terrible torture endured by this brave boy of
seventeen excited profound emotion ; but he who suf-
fered most was the poet, Mickiewicz ; the idea of having
been, however involuntarily, the cause of such a death,
everywhere pursued him, and many years after the occur-
rence he could not think of it without a shudder. Nor
vvas the Anonymous Poet spared the anguish of such
literary successes/ He published in Paris a little tale
called "The Temptation," at the close of which is found
the sole cry from his sout which he ever allowed his lips
to utter upon his own situation, and in which it was gen-
erally believed is figured, under poetic types, a recital of
a real eveui, — a meeting between the poet and the Em-
pe^Qr P^icholas. The students of J^ithuanja resolved tQ
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 63
reprint the tale, wliich had indeed ay^peared in the
columns of a journal of that country, stamped with the
imprimatur oi the censor, who had understood notiiing
of the manuscript. But information soon came from St.
Petersburg, ari inquiry was ordered, and several hundred
young men were thereupon forced to make the journey to
Siberia ! They were the flower of young manhood, and
the grief of the bereaved families was heart-rending.
The distress of the Anonymous Poet must have been
great, and the relative security which he enjoyed at such
a moment must have oppressed his soul, especially when
he considered to what high protection he was indebted for
his own immunity.
Under conditions so full of difficulty, so appalling for
a scrupulous and delicate conscience, the Anonymous
Poet found a kind of solace in relinquishing fame, — in
being able to bear witness to himself that he never wrote
with any view to glory, that he never sacrificed to frivo-
lous tastes, or to the higher fantasy of art for the sake of
art. The author of "Iridion" and the " Psalms" never
sang but of his country, addressing himself only to the
moral, political, national, and religious thought of his
audience, — to the " Polish soul," as they say in that land.
He also sought other means to lighten the burden of
responsibility which almost stifled him, and, fantastic as
they may seem, they will yet be readily understood by
those who can trace the subtle and ingenious refinements
of a generous and anguished spirit. Yielding in a man-
ner to an imperious internal voice, he indttd pnb/ished
his poems, but he never took any steps to dissemiftate
them, to extend the circle of their influence, to augment
or multiply their editions. He was, on the contrary, in-
genious in his methods of decreasing their number, of
paralyzing their circulation. Thus he offered the contra-
dictory spectacle of an author desirous of influencing
public opinion, and at the same time striving to diminish
the means of such action ! He had adopted a belief
nearly fatalistic on this subject, which he suffered to
come to light under rather curious circumstances. His
short poem, " Resurrecturis," first appeared in the i'? ^-
vie7ii of Posen, an important and estimable publication
64 POLISH POETRY //V
without doubt, but wliich its gravity, its locality, and
above all its exceedingly conservative tendencies, pre-
cluded from any wide circulation. A friend of the poet
extracted this poem from the Review, and published an
edition of it in Paris of some thousands of copies. It
was no young, enthusiastic, and reckless student of
Lithuania who had conceived the idea of this republica-
tion ; it was a man of mature mind, an old general of
tried wisdom, and accustomed to weigh well his actions.
The complaints of the poet, however, were not the less
full of bitterness. " But the salutary truths contained in
the ' Resurrecturis,' " it was said to him, "would have
been almost lost for the nation in a review so difficult to
obtain. " "No," was the characteristic reply; '■'■the
soul which had need of those words would have found
them there, as well as elsejvhere ; the poem would have
been offered to them by destiny, by fatality ; why should we
pass from lip to lip a cup of bitterness ? ''
And this poetry, to speak only of it, — to say nothing
of the immense correspondence held by our author on all
sides, of which only extracts have as yet appeared, and
which for a long time yet to come may not see the light
of day, — this poetry, what is it? Polish poetry gener-
ally, that of the author of " Iridion" especially, has been
accused of being too obscure and symbolic, of speaking
in enigmas and allegories; in a word, of wanting that
serenity and transparency which are the true conditions
of all pure art. But art, in order to be true and living,
must always bear the marks of the moral surroundings in
which it has been developed, and, to judge impartially of
Polish poetry, the moral state of Poland itself must never
be lost sight of. In a country so long overwhelmed by
misery, all works of the imagination will necessarily be
cloudy and sombre. Also, where long-continued oppres-
sion has taught men to understand one another by a half-
word, a glance, the language of poetic inspiration must
content itself with occult signs. This becomes a custom,
almost an aesthetic necessity. We must again call the
attention of the reader to the fact that works of imagina-
tion cannot be read in Poland as with us; that they are
perused in secret, with guarded caution, and in the midst
THE NINETEEXTII CENTURY. 65
of dangers very real ; that tliey are committed to, and
graven \ipon the memory, and thus constitute for months,
for entire years, the nourishment of the soul. Such Po-
etry must hide in its bosom depths that thought may
slowly explore. The messenger received in mystery,
must speak of mysterious things, of mystical ideas, and
the least that can be demanded of books held at the risk
of life, and arriving like leaves of the Sibyl, is, that they
should speak the language of Oracles. This language is
never complained of there; they learn rapidly to under-
stand it; they grow accustomed to it, as one grows accus-
tomed to see in darkness. Besides, of all the works of
the Anonymous Poet, the " Undivine Comedy" is the only
one really of an enigmatic character. All the rest were
seized by the national intelligence from the first moment
of their appearance. Marvelous Poetry, born from the
situation forced upon Poland by her sufferings and mis-
fortunes, and which, next to that of Goethe, has, in our
times, devoted the most profound scrutiny to the mys-
teries of life, the emotions of the soul !
II.
"The Undivine Comedy" appeared in 1S35, being the
first work which attracted general attention to the Anon-
ymous Poet ; nor is its date one of the least original sides
of this vigorous creation. In fact, the jioem seemed like
a defiance thrown to the general tendencies of the time ;
a solemn protest against the contemporary aspirations.
Let us for a moment recall the character of that epoch, a
period of general effervescence in ideas, beliefs, and pas-
sions. The revolution of July had just given the world
an impetus which nothing had as yet arrested. Young
manhood almost universally dreamed of Republics; spirits
religiously inclined aj^pealed to the Gospel itself in sup-
port of Democracy ; new and mystic sects, supporting the
cause of those disinherited by fortune, accused the vicious
organization of the Social Status as the cause of wide-
spread miserv, and claimed for all human beings a riglit of
which they had hitherto been ignorant, and which was full
66 rOLISIl POETRY IN
of temptation : the right of happiness ! The novus rerum
ordooi Virgil was adopted as the creed of the millions; and
is it at all astonishing that this cry should be especially
heard and re-echoed by misery and poetry ; that is to say,
by the two things in the world the least inclined to be
content with that which really exists? Poland was then
suffering under immense evils, unmitigated woes, and
perhaps it needed nothing less than the conviction of an
approaching and universal upheaval, of an entire renova-
tion of society, to inspire its i^oets again with words of
faith and hope. Even the Muse of Mickiewicz, so dis-
couraged and hopeless once, as shown in his widely cele-
brated "Song of the Polish Mother," which appeared on
the eve of the combat of 1830, now acquired a serenity of
foresight, a haughty attractiveness, in the strangest con-
trast with the gloom of the deceptive reality, but which
gathered force and charm from the previsions of a new
era. These same previsions inspired another poet of ar-
dent and feverish genius, of vivid imagination, and still
more vivid passions, Slowaq:ki. None escaped the en-
trancement of this prophetic spirit ; even the sweet and
melodious singer of waves and plains, Bohdan Zaleski,
was borne into the universal current. The presentiment,
nay, the certainty, of a political, social, and religious trans-
formation, broke forth in all the inspired works which the
Polish poets then sent from the bosom of exile to their
desolate country as the harbingers of good news.
But in the midst of this unanimous concert in honor of
the regeneration of humanity, all at once tolls a knell of
doom : an anonymous author takes up the theme then so
popular, — the trial of the Past and of the Future, the final
struggle of the Old World and the New, — and in his drama
a Count Henry (the last defender of a state of things
which has reached its final term) is seen to fall, if not
without eclat, without appeal, before Pancras, the ener-
getic representative and avenger of the oppressed and
disiniierited of our times. The theme was indeed well
known, but the picture was combined and painted in
such a manner, that it was not necessary to be endowed
with the soul of Cato, it was sufficient to be simply hu-
man, to become interested in the conquered cause, lo
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 67
be forced to withdraw a moment from the heavy conflict,
and to fear the triumph. But of triumph, properly speak-
ing, the Drama proclaims none, for the adversary, tri-
umphant only for a moment, suddenly sinks, confessing
himself conquered in his turn ; the combat only ends for
want of combatants, and it is precisely this end, which is
no solution, which adds so wondrously to the horror of
the picture. In this Infernal Comedy nothing remains
standing upon the upheaved soil ; the horizon is closed
around us at every point. At the final catastrophe, the
Cross alone appears, flaming and bloody, rather as sign of
condemnation than redemption ; it seems only to descend
upon the earth as the funereal seal upon a grave immense
as the universe !
As strange, as contradictory to the aspirations and
hopes of the epoch as this work appeared, it did not the
less take hold of all intellects by a sort of provoking fas-
cination. In one very fine scene of the drama, the leader
of the incarnate democracy, irresistibly attracted to his
great adversary, curious to know him, having eagerly
sought the interview that he might penetrate his thoughts
and motives, is introduced. The "aristocratic" poem
seemed to exercise the same kind of mysterious attraction
upon a public then in a measure imbued with the ideas of
Pancras; the readers returned again and again to the
startling figure of Count Henry, with a shivering eager-
ness partaking at the same time of repulsion and sympathy.
Tlie true problem, the enigma of the drama, was indeed
the adversary of Pancras, the champion of the Past, the
defender of a dying society. It was truly difficult to un-
derstand this enemy of the democracy, who yet seemed
attached to it by more than one secret and unconquerable
affinity ; this friend of the rich, of the nobles, who yet
esteemed them so little; who even overwhelmed them
with his contempt ; this martyr without enthusiasm, this
confessor without faith ! The experience taught by a
revolution, the painful trials of 1848, were necessary to
enable even the critics to understand the mysterious hero
of the Anonymous Poet ; and it may well be said that it
was only by the light of the flames that kindled all Eu-
rope that for the first time, in all its palpable and salient
6S POLISH POETRY IN
truth, this idea of a skeptical defender of a dying world
was seen and comprehended.
Let us here endeavor to retrace the meaning of this
figure, to unite its principal and characteristic traits.
'I'hey may be found in "The Undivine Comedy," as in the
"Fragment," in which the author handles the same sub-
ject under different treatment, which "Fragment," how-
ever, remains but a sketch, published after the death of
the atitlior. They are strangely mistaken who receive to
the letter the position forced upon the adversary of demo-
cracy by the fatality of the passions and times, and who
can only see in Count Henry the Aristocrat with narrow
j)rejudices and timid foresight. He himself tells us " that
he had had his nights of stars, in which his soul had
believed it possessed sufficient strength to float through all
the worlds suspended in the infinite azure, and to reach
the threshold even of God without losing breath. " In a
sublime episode of the " Fragment" entitled "A Dream,"
all the evils, all the miseries of our century appear before
the eyes of the hero: armies drilled in the art of fighting
against the indejjendence of the nations, and stifling the
liberties of the citizens; the Police suspending over all
its vigilant eye, like the immense and movable vault over
a prison, picking up everything, even to a pin, for a pin
might grow and become a formidable weapon in the
hands of the oppressed ; the workers famished, emaciated,
crowded into subterranean and deadly caverns, strange
Cycloi)S with lamps fastened upon their foreheads, drilling
without rest the heads of needles, with fingers soft aiul
weak as wax, and sighing in vain for the sunshine ; nations
buried alive, strike their chains forever against the walls
of their sepulchre, while men of religion, crushed into
slavery, advise them to die in silence, so that they may
neither break the repose nor trouble the enjoyment of
the "Powerful upon earth! " . . . In another grand
episode of the same " Fragment," the centuries past are
made to defile before us in the most ingenious symbolism,
and in that magical order which the philosophy of history
so delights in developing. Liberty appears slowly disen-
gaging herself from epoch to epoch, ever increasing with
every people, antl with every new elevation of humanity:
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 69
surely the meaning of these two pictures is evident. Count
Henry has shared in all the virtuous indignation, as well
as in all the generous aspiration of his century. We hear
him break forth into imprecations against the robbers who
wear crowns; against the priests who counsel men "to
die in slavery;" against the bankers and merchants, " who
would bargain for the nails with which the feet of Christ
were fiistened to the Cross, and who will scarcely admit
that God could have created the world without capital^
We see him affiliating himself to secret societies: "to
those who aspire and conspire; who labor in darkness on
the work of the Future! " " The increasing insolence of
vice had seemed to him the most certain sign of approach-
ing downfall, the moment had once appeared to him not
very distant when Justice should reign upon the earth,
when all nations should conquer their independence, when
man would regain his dignity, and even woman rise from
the state of degradation in which laws without either jus-
tice or love had thrown her. "
It is, however, the same man who is soon after to appear
as the determined adversary of the cause of the people ;
as the obstinate advocate of an order of things which he
had so often cursed ! When his own invocations to liberty
and humanity are repeated to him by immense and palpi-
tating choirs of the people, the inspired prophet of the
Future becomes at once the resolute soldier of the Past,
acknowledging nothing but his vocation, and repulsing
all compromise. He now calls to his aid all the vigor
he had once devoted to earth's agonies, and has recourse
to arms and the principles of other days. Formerly he
esteemed but lightly the advantages of birth and the priv-
ileges of assured position ; but now he draws himself to
his full height in his pride of being a gentleman ; he ap-
peals to the lessons of history consecrated by past centu-
ries. Formerly he only spoke of God in the humanitarian
and vague language so dear to our speculative pantheism,
or, still further astray, he only addressed his j)rayers to
^'Mother Nature ;" but now he assumes as his war-cry the
names of "Jesus'' and of "Mary,'' and chooses for his
last bulwark a crumbling feudal tower, which bears the
name of " The Holy Trinity. " With a convulsive grasp
7
7°
POLISH POETRY IN
he clings to the ruins of a dying generation, and bursts
into demoniac laughter at the word once of such power :
"Progress! " "Progress! " he replies to the chief of the
democratic party, "happiness of the human race! I
too once believed it possible ! Here, take my head, if it
may be. . . . The first man in the desert died, and we
may ne'er re-enter Paradise ! . . . It might have been
perhaps, . . . but it is no longer possible. . . . Nothing
but murder now will satisfy, — unceasing war and ceaseless
mutual slaughter! " . . . It is not, however, tliat he has
a single hope left in the happy issue of the struggle, nor
even that he has any faith in the absolute justice of his
espoused cause.
If the new order of things inspires him
only with horror, he has not therefore learned to esteem
the cause he defends! '■'■Your side I hate : the other I
despise,^'' is the confession which escapes him even in
the presence of the chief of the inimical party. What
an avowal ! what a position ! and above all, what a
startling change !
Nevertheless, it is not so strange as it may appear at
first sight, and the only thing which should really astonish
us in this exciting creation is, that it should in iSj^
have so fully divined the situation which zvould be forced
upon us in 1848 / In truth, does not this poem resemble
and recount in the fnost singular manner recent realities ?
Does it not contain the itiner history of nearly all men
among us ? Have we not all of us also been rocked for
our hour in these enchanting dreams of infinite progress?
have we not all been associated in hopes or in act with
those who "aspired and conspired,''^ or who "worked in
the darkness at the edifice of the Future" ? There was a
time in which all new doctrines found eager acceptance
among us ; every Utopia was met with a benevolent smile.
The infallibility of majorities had become for us a dogma,
the organization of labor pleased us for the moment, even
socialism might ])rove effective, and a man truly liberal
was close on the admission of the "frte woman P^ Then
came the day in which the spirits so long evoked and
flattered suddenly rose, imperious and menacing, sum-
moning us to keep our promises, to fulfill the dreoms we
had excited, or the people in their collected strength
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
71
would hurl themselves upon us, and seize with their own
hands the happiness of which we were defrauding them ;
— and we all recoiled in terror ! Then in order to save
society menaced to its base, we too made our ap])eal to a
personal, helpful, and incarnate God, — truly hitherto a
little too much forgotten by us, — we seized arms which
had been rusting for ages, and escaped for shelter be-
hind the remains of the thrones and altars still left stand-
ing upon the earth ; " to the fortress of the holy Trinity ! "
To the socialism of the future, we opposed the society of
the past ; we were seized with a sudden veneration for
the memories, the institutions, and even the abuses of
feudalism ; we smiled contemptuously on all who spoke
of progress. ''Progress! " we exclaimed with Count
Henry. "We too once believed it possible, — but it is
no longer of that the masses speak, — it is of a return to
the state of the savage 1" " Unceasing war and ceaseless
mutual slaughter 1"
Alas ! in this just and holy struggle we found ourselves
associated with strange auxiliaries and marching some-
times under still stranger flags, and we confounded more
than one righteous claim from civilized Peoples with the
iniquitous nnd bloodthirsty pretensions of the barbarous
masses. Every revolt against oppression then seemed
odious in our eyes ; every cry of liberty filled us with
terror; and we might well have made the confession so
comically tragic of Falstaff, that "we had become cowards
through conscience f" No humiliation had been spared to
our pride, no recantation to our ancient faith, no trouble
nor remorse to our innermost feelings. Truly we have
had personal experience enough to enable us now perfectly
to understand Count Henry, — to pity him also, — it is so
sweet to compassionate ourselves I
We must not, however, compassionate him too deeply ;
let us rather preserve the strict impartiality of the author
toward him. The fall was not undeserved, and the poet
acknowledges it in an apostrophe to his hero, of which
every word has its meaning. He says :
" Stars are around thy head — under thy feet surges the sea — a rainbow
forever floats upon the waves before thee and disperses the clouds ! Wliat-
72
POLISH rOETRY IN
soever thou lookest upon is thine, -^thc shore? ;, the cities, the men belong
to thee, — the heavens are thine, — and nothing seems to equal thy glory :
"To listening ears thou chantest airs of rapture inconceivable, — thou
twinest hearts and then unwreatliest them, like a garland, at the caprice
of thy skilled fingers ! Thou forcest tears, then driest them by a smile. —
and then thou frightenest the smile away for a moment — an hour — too
often forever . . . . ! But what dost thou feel ? What creates! thou ?
Of what dost think? The stream of beauty flows through thee, but
thou art not beauty ! Woe to thee ! woe 1 The child weeping upon its
mother's breast, the field flower ignorant of its gift of perfume, have
more merit than thou before the Lord !
" Whence comest thou, ephemeral shadow, bearing witness to the light
which vet thou knowest not, hast never seen, and never art to see? In
anger or in mockery wert thou made ? Who gave to thee this life so
wretched and delusive, that thou canst play the angel till the moment of
thy f. ill, when thou wilt creep a reptile to be stifled in thine own corrup-
tion? Thou and the woman have one origin !
"And yet thou sufferest, although thy agony brings naught to birth,
and serves for nothing ! The groans of the lowest beggar are counted
in heaven, compensated amid the music of the angels' haqis ; but thy
despair and sighs fall to the bottomless abyss, and Satan gathers them
and adds them with joy to his delusions, lies ! "
The meaning of this apostrophe is easily understood.
Count Henry certainly aspireti to the ideal, and had
borne bitter grief; but he had never tried to reproduce
the ideal within his own soul; he had only drawn vanity
and severity from his afflictions. His enthusiasm was not
only false, but for the false. He had rather sought emo-
tions than experienced true feelings. "He and the
woman have one origin. " He had had neither simplicity
nor spontaneity. Pride had taken possession of his soul,
and, while he believed that he loved and adored human-
ity, he only loved and adored himself and his own
thoughts. " Peace to men of good will ! " the Guardian
Angel cries at the commencement of the Drama; but it
is rather a warning than a benediction. Let us notice in
passing these words of "good tvi/I. '" They are the first
words, as they will be the last, of the magnanimous
poetry of the anonymous author ! These words are at
the commencement of his "Infernal Comedy," as they
will form, at a later date, the title of the last of his
"P. salms. " This '' good will '' the existence of which
the poet does not acknowledge in his Count Henry, the
himianitarian dreamer, or defender of established order,
he understands as comprising good faith, sincerity, uj)-
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
73
right and pure intentions : " that tranquil and loving
force against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. "
From the cold and troubled source of false exaltation he
makes all the misfortunes of his hero flow ; the misery of
the man, the embarrassment of the citizen, the distrac-
tions of his public and private life.
The drama commences with a wedding scene. After
having lived long alone with his thoughts and his dreams.
Count Henry ^^ descends to terrestrial vows," and con-
tracts a marriage. ' For a moment we are induced to be-
lieve that the visionary dreamer at last understands the
true vocation of life, and the sweetness it still holds in
reserve for him ; that he will taste the happiness of a pure
and lasting love; that he will found a family; but a few
words, eloquent in their brevity, soon dispel such illu-
sions. With the straightforward sense of a loving soul,
the young bride says to the husband : "I will be to thee
a faithful wife, as my mother has taught me, as my own
heart dictates to me. " To which he replies: "Thou
shalt be my song for eternity. " The wife speaks the
language of society; he responds with the accents of
poetry ! She is fatigued with the noisy ball, forming so
painful a contrast with the soft emotions of her heart,
and feels faint ; but the Count finds her so lovely in her
exhaustion and pallor, that he begs her to return to the
dance. "I will remain here and gaze upon thee, as I
have often watched the floating angels in my dreams. "
She still complains of weariness, but he insists, implores,
and is obeyed ! By such traits as these the poet reveals
his character from the very commencement. Thus one is
not astonished in so soon finding Count Henry wander-
ing about the mountains, in dark and stormy nights, in
pursuit of his old phantoms. "Since my marriage, I
have slept the sleep of the benumbed, eating and drink-
ing and sleeping like a German artisan! " His wife is
"born for home and hearth," but "not for him;" she
is not what he dreamed. He certainly does not fail in
finding words for the expression of a grand sorrow, nor
lacks he powerful images ; but how much deeper and
even more poetic is the sentiment of the young wife in
these simple words; "Yesterday I went to confession ; I
7*
74
POLISH POETRY IN
examined into all my sins; but I could find nothing
which ought to offend thee ! "
A son is born of this union; but the father is not
present at the ceremony of baptism, at the moment
when his infant receives a name and enters into the
human city. The mother comes forward tottering, her
eyes haggard and wandering in delirium, and cries, to
the amazement of the assistants: " I bless thee, George !
I bless thee, O my child ! Become a Poet, that thy
father may love thee ; that he may not one day deny
thee! Thou wilt merit well of thy father thus; thou
wilt please him, and then he will pardon thy mother.
. . . I curse thee, George, if thou becomest not a
Poet ! " . . . She becomes mad, and is taken to an
asylum for the insane. At this frightful news the soul of
the husband is torn ; he breaks into sobs of remorse.
"I promised her fidelity and happiness, and I have
thrown her, living still, into the hell of those already
damned ! I blast all upon whom I breathe, and am
doomed to destroy myself. Hell has thrown me here,
that I might be to men its image upon earth ! Upon
what pillow of horror lays she now her head ! With
what harmonies have I surrounded her? The howls of
madmen ! " He would perhaps have pursued this mono-
logue for a longer time, if a mysterious and sardonic
voice had not suddenly cried to him : " Thou cJuxfitest a
Drama r'
This madness of the wife is a masterly invention ; it is
indeed with an art akin to the genius of Shakespeare that
])oetic justice is here administered to the hero of the
Drama. He had found his wife too practical, — tran-
quilly sleeping at regular hours, and never soaring above
the earth. Well ! She will quit the earth ; she will sleep
no more, save with the tossing restlessness of the de-
ranged ! The sense of reality will altogether escape her,
and she will lose her earthly reason ! He was a dreamer;
she will become a lunatic; she will in good faith practice
the exaltation of which he has only dreamed, and to his
poetic inspirations she will reply in delirium. "Thou
wilt no longer despise me, Henry ! " she says to him
when they meet in the mad-house. " I am full of inspira-
THE XLXETEENTIl CENTURY. 75
tion now ; my soul has left my heart and mounted into my
brain ! Look at me ! Am I not thine equal now ? I
can comprehend all now, — express it, sing it; I chant
the sea, the stars, the clouds, battles, — no, I have never
seen a battle. You must take me there ! I must see and
describe a corpse, a shroud, blood, air, the dew, a coffin.
. . . I am so happy ! "
These incoherent speeches — in which, however, each
word has its own tale to tell — are interrupted at intervals
by cries still more incoherent breaking from all sides.
They are the cries of the insane who are confined in
other cells in the house. But let us take good care not
to imagine all this to be only a puerile effort to produce
a tragic scene ! Alas I these voices have a profound sig-
nificance in themselves; this symphony of madness has
its dominant key ; the mad poetry of the wife is de-
signedly interrupted by these wild cries, which are the
precursory signs of the approaching delirium of society
entire; and through the domestic anguish is already seen
the misery of the world.
^^A voice from above. You have chained up God !
One is already dead upon the Cross. I am the second
God, and you have given me also up to the execu-
tioners !
"•^A voice from beloiv. To the scaffold with the heads
of kings and nobles ! Through me will begin the liberty
of the people.
"^ voice from the left. The comet tracks its way in
fire across the sky; the awful Day of Judgment draweth
near.
"y4 voice from below. I have killed three kings with
my own hands ; ten still remain and a hundred priests
who still sing mass. "
"Are not these people terribly deranged? " asks the
wife, in listening to these infernal cries. "They do not
know what they are saying," she continues; "but lean tell
you what would happen if God Himself should go mad ! "
If God should go 7nad ! The thought is of a ferocity, but
also of an energy almost unequaled, nor does it lessen in its
wild development. " But I can tell you what would happen
if God should go mad. " (She seizes him by the hand. )
76
POLISH POETRY IN
"All the worlds would fly about in space, mount up on
high, or roll in the abyss : and every creature, every worm,
would cry, / am God ! and they would all die one after
another, and all the comets and suns would go out in
the sky : and Jesus Christ would save us no longer !
Tearing his hands from the nails, with both hands he
would hurl his cross into the abyss ! Listen ! how this
cross, the hope of millions, falls from star to star! It
breaks at last, and covers with its ruins the universe en-
tire ! The Holy Virgin alone continues to pray, and the
stars, her servants, are still faithful to her, — but she too
will plunge where all created things are plunging down
— for God is mad ! " . . .
Between these scenes of domestic life so vigorously
sketched, and those of public life soon so stormily to
unroll, is placed a melancholy idyl : a series of episodes
between the father and child, the widower and orphan.
And rarely has the imagination of a poet created a form
so exquisitely graceful, or of a symbolism so deep, as the
little George of the drama. His mother's prayers have
been but too well answered ; her son, like the Count, is
also a poet, indeed, a poet in a higher sense, for he does
not seek emotions, they rise spontaneously in his heart ; his
soul vibrates like a harp, and multiform images, even
against his will, ferment in his brain and "give him pain
in his head. " He recites sweet and harmonious songs,
he says he hears his mother sing them, whom he has never
known ; he declares that he hears celestial voices, but in
spite of high nervous energy he is weak and sickly. At
the age of ten years the child withers away, becomes
blind, and finds life only within his own soul. It is easily
divined that the poet meant to personify in George those
pure and contemplative natures which are often met even
in the midst of the most agitated society and in the most
stormy times ; na'ive and delicate souls with high thoughts
and refined perceptions, but timid and shut up in them-
selves ; blind to all the things of this earth, and under-
standing nothing of the commonplace facts of the workl,
which are, however, its stern necessities. Little George
has strong religious instincts ; he wants to j^ray always, he
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
77
refers everything to God. But let us not be deceived ; it
is not really faith, it is rather the necessity of belief, the
eager desire of certainty. The piety of the child pro-
ceeds too much from the poetry of the father; this the
author indicates in the most ingenious manner. The
Count takes his son to the cemetery ; George kneels before
the tomb of his mother, and recites the "Ave" : " Hail
Mary, full of grace ! Mary, Queen of heaven. Lady of all
that blooms on earth, that scents the fields, that paints
the fringes of the streams. " . . . The father silences
and reproaches him. He recommences: "Hail Mary,
full of grace ! The Lord is with thee ! The angels bless
thee, and as thou glidest softly through them each plucks
a rainbow from his wings to cast beneath thy feet. " . . .
Who does not know this tendency to endeavor to increase
faith by poetry, to adorn the words of the gospel, to beau-
tify Golgotha itself? But is this really religion ? It is
indeed a religion able to produce internal delights and
mystic raptures, but it can give neither dogmas to the
intellect nor rules to the conscience, nor can a society
tottering to its base find any support therein. In the
social war so soon to burst forth, little George dies from
a wandering ball.
Behold us instantaneously launched in the midst of the
horrors of a social revolution ! The transition is abrupt
and violent ; it is a surprise in the Drama, as it also was
in our history. The Count, undeceived by time and
grief, cured of his chimeras upon the progress of the
human race, has now taken in hand the defense of society
menaced at all points, — and further commentary is un-
necessary ! Let us, however, remark that in this new
transformation our hero no less retains the original vice
of his nature, the capital sin of which consists in seeking
impressions, emotions, rather than searching for truth; in
burrowing into his imagination rather than scrutinizing
his conscience. He regards this civil war only as a fatal
and bitter task ; and yet he sometimes surprises himself by
his keen relish for its savage poetry, representing in ad-
vance to himself its fields of battle, its torrents of blood.
It is the '^sublime horror of the cannon,'^ admired from
the opposite point of view ! His pride, hitherto latent,
78 POLISH POETRY IN
flashes into ominous light. He delights in playing his
rcMe as a Titan ; and we are often tempted to ask if, at
his pleasure, he does not exaggerate the perversity of
human nature, as he had before exaggerated its indefinite
perfectibility. The dangers which threaten civilization
are, nevertheless, great and real; and the dissolution of
society is painted with the direst and most frightful hues.
Let the reader turn to the new " Walpurgis Night" in "The
Undivine Comedy," at which Count Henry, unknown,
assists ; let him look into the wild Saturnalia of the fam-
ished masses eager for pillage and murder, in the midst
of which our hero recognizes some of his old acquaint-
ances, his ancient associates in the '■'■Great work of the
Future I' ^ Let the reader survey these scenes of misery
and carnage, in the midst of which stands out one of
masterly power, — the interview between Count Henry
and the chief of the revolutionists.
In vain may the plebeians hate and curse all social
superiority ; it will not the less exercise upon them a
disturbing and mysterious attraction ! Li the ingenious
picture of Paul Delaroche, it is evident that the beheaded
Stuart still awes Cromwell from the folds of his shroud ;
he imposes upon him even to his wliite hand, so long and
taper, so skillfully brought in close contact with the rough
and bony fist of the Puritan chief. It is not, then, aston-
ishing that Pancras should feel an irresistible desire to see
his aristocratic adversary, to speak to him, that he should
even desire to save him ; but why should the Count, on
his side, feel an equal attraction, and consent to an inter-
view of which he must so well have known the futility?
Alas ! that which forced it upon him was the attraction
which sometimes induces us to open a grave that we may
contemplate a face, now deformed and revolting — once
idolized ! In this broken mirror, the Count wished to
gaze upon his own image, wildly altered and distorted.
Strange, and well calculated to excite despair, is the fact
that in this contest between Count Henry and Pancras,
nothing determinative is brought to light ; only their own
individual sources of complaint are justly put, and well
founded ; no brilliant fusing si)ark of universal truth
flashes from the contact of these negative poles. Pancras
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
79
says: "You who are old, rotten, satiated with food and
drink, worm-eaten and crumbling into dust, give place to
those who are young, vigorous, hungry and robust ! " —
"Ah! I know you too," replies the Count; "I have
visited your camp at night, and have seen the bloody
dance of fools and barbarians; their floor was the decapi-
tated heads of those who differed in opinion from them !
I recognized all the vices of the Old World peering from
the new garments ; they sang a new song, but it ended
ever in the old refrain : Bread, meat, gold, and blood ! "
" Your ancestors were robbers! " cries Pancras. "And
yours were slaves I" replies the Count.
The adversaries separate ; the struggle recommences
more furiously and implacably than before, and in the final
moment, when the last bastion crumbles, the Count kills
himself by leaping from the top of the precipice. He
had already heard the doom of Heaven, which condemned
him because "he had esteemed nothing, loved nothing
but himself and his own thoughts;" — and it was his own
son who must explain to him the meaning of those voices
from the sky ! The death of Pancras is still more sudden ;
it is unforeseen, unprepared, and therefore deeply signifi-
cant.
