No More Learning

Oh, angel woman, thou art still with me. Thou hast not
yet departed.
She cannot be by his side in the hour when he will
fight and die for Poland, but till its advent:
Thou art my salvation, the only rainbow in the darkened
skies, the last song of my love art thou! Oh, let me hear thy
voice and touch thy hand! 2 That hand perchance shall me
1 Despite Krasinski's eulogy of the friend who had been his protector
when his other young fellow-Poles had turned against him, Danielewicz's
influence over Krasinski had not, according to Kozmian, been salutary.
Danielewicz was strongly affected by pantheism and German philosophy,
and had been driven by his troubles into a profound pessimism and loss
of faith. At the instance, however, of a Pole, Cezary Plater, then in Munich,
Zygmunt summoned a priest to the deathbed of his friend: and it was after
having seen the latter die with the last sacraments of his Church that
Krasinski returned to the practice of his religion. Kozmian, op. cit.
2 Krasinski found spiritual and national inspiration in Delphina's
beautiful voice. He once wrote to her that from the moment he heard
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The Anonymous Poet of Poland
from ruin defend. Thy voice perchance can, with a poet's
breath, people and ring within this lonely heart. Come, weep
with me above the stones of graves, and from our tears shall
grow sad and great roses, dark, like blood congealed from sad-
ness. One of their garlands shall we cast on Poland's grave,
the second shall our offering be to him. From heaven he
then will send us strength that we shall live and die in faith,
oh, sister mine, in faith that she, that Holy One who sleeps in
bonds, shall in the end cast off her chains.
That faith Krasinski had by now gained. This
year--1842--was to him one of bitter bereavement and
of dreary forebodings at the prospect of his marriage.
But private sorrow affected not at all his hope for Poland
and for the human race in the light of which he was
now walking always more surely. The two strands of
personal pessimism and national optimism run side by
1 side in Krasinski's life. In this July of 1842 when he
was with his father at Kissingen, yearning for his lost
friend and too ill to be able to write more than a few
words:
In spite of continual physical sufferings, a succession of
new and unaccustomed thoughts continually stands before the
eyes of my soul. . . Everything is unfolding itself before me
always more broadly and more clearly, at the same time
logically and beautiful and holy. . . When I look into the future
I feel faith, love and hope, not as I did of old, because of old
grief for the past hid and darkened everything to me. To-day
the sun has now risen in my spirit, but many days will still
pass before that same sun is shed on the world. As an indi-
vidual I suffer and shall suffer, but as a link of the great chain
I see a splendour of light in the further course of succeeding
links, and I bless the Lord1.
And in October when to the same friend he confides
her sing a certain song there was scarcely a minute in which he did not
hear within his soul her high, pure notes ringing to heaven. And again
he tells her, when in Rome, that his craving to hear her sing again was
almost madness. Unknown Letters from Zygmunt Krasinski to Delphitia
Potocka. Tygodnik Illustrowany, 1899.
1 Letters to Sottan. Kissingen, July 14, 1842.
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223
1
that since the death of Danielewicz "a thousand troubles
and anxieties have come upon me, and the future is
also amaritudinis plena"--an allusion to his approach-
ing marriage--he adds in the same breath:
"The resurrection is near, at least by the spirit and
in the spirit1. " Writing to Cieszkowski--in November,
1842--that he was tempted to suicide between "grief
for the past and detestation of the future," he makes
haste to add that he is speaking of the individual past
and future, not of the universal2.
Out of all these new-born hopes Krasinski was now
writing Dawn. After he left his father he stayed a
couple of weeks at Nice in the company of Delphina
Potocka, Gaszynski and Matachowski. Krasinski had
been drawn to this latter faithful friend, not by any
intellectual gifts on the other's side, but by the sterling
qualities of soul that attracted the esteem and trust of
all his fellow-Poles, and by their mutual love of their
country3. When Krasinski went to Nice Dawn was
in great part written. Other stanzas were composed
there as, always intensely sensitive to music, Krasinski
listened to the exquisite voice of the woman who had
inspired the poem; and others again came to him as he
rode along the shores of the Mediterranean. From
Nice, accompanied by the devoted Matachowski who
chose to give him the support of his presence in those
difficult moments of his life, Krasinski went on to Rome
for the winter that preceded his marriage. Gaszynski
consented to put his name to Dawn in order to avert
all suspicion of the authorship, for being in exile he
1 Letters to Sottan. Genoa, Oct. 3, 1842.
2 Letters to Cieszkowski. Nov. 25, 1842.
3 See Preface, Letters 0/ Zygmunt Krasinski to Stanistaw Mata-
chowski.
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The Anonymous Poet of Poland
was beyond reach of the Russian penalties: and in
1843 the poem was published that marks the term of
the Anonymous Poet's seven years' spiritual wandering.
To that most noble paean of victory over suffering
and evil which lives as Dawn Krasinski places as
mottoes two prophecies of Christ's reign on earth
before which darkness was to flee--the lines "from
the fourth eclogue of Virgil referring to the prophecy
of the Cumaean Sibyl: Ultima Cumaei venit jam
carminis aetas: magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur
ordo; and the adaptation of a verse from Exodus that
the Catholic Church sings in her office for Christmas
Eve: Hodie scietis quia veniet Dominus et salvabit nos
et mane videbitis gloriam ejus.
The poem is preceded by a prose introduction
justifying Krasinski's convictions by the logic of his-
torical fact. Krasinski was a poet, a mystic, and he
may even be called a dreamer: but every theory of his,
every vision, must be confirmed by logical consequence
before he would accept it or hand it on to others. His
heart refused to take to itself the conclusions for which
it yearned unless his mind were first satisfied by proof.
So now the obscurity of his former works is to be found
no more. Dawn is mystical: but even in its highest
1 flights it is clear as crystal.
In marked contrast even to the pages of its immediate
predecessor The Treatise of the Trinity is the tone of
tranquil certainty that runs through the preface of the
poem.
In the days of Caesar, preceding the great day of Christ,
the ancient world had reached the final consequences of its
history. . . Wherever you might look there was in the world of
the spirit ruin, licence, disruption--and from those signs it
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225
was easy to recognize that this world was nigh to the day of
judgment and to its metamorphosis.
And not only does that mental condition without faith and
of vain longings and grief bear witness to this. Another sign
steps forth. In the material field all grows and centralizes.
Rome ever conquers. Then arose Julius Caesar.
And the Jews thought of him that he was their Messias,
and for a moment the world thought he was its God. But you
know that he was only the precursor of its God. In the field
of historical deed he was as the angel to whom it was ordained
to move the impediments from before the feet of the ap-
proaching God. He led the world to material unity without
which no word of life could be dispersed abroad. He changed
the known world of that time into one great, broad highway.
And a few years later who began to tread that highroad,
to announce that the new life was already sent down from on
high, and that the dead shall not die, and that the God, un-
known in Athens, had shown Himself in Jerusalem? Was it not
Peter? Was it not St John? . . . The material unity of government
. . . was the condition, the necessary medium, of progress for
Christianity. . .
Discite historiam exemplo moniti! Two thousand years have
passed, and those same signs are spread abroad upon the
waves of time. The last throes of the Roman Republic were
reflected in the terrible, epileptic convulsions of the French
Revolution. Finally, the days of Caesar were remoulded into
the days of Napoleon.
Krasinski, fondled as an infant by the soldiers
fighting for Bonaparte, had been brought up by his
father in a passionate admiration for Napoleon which,
not uncommon even in this country in a generation
nearer his age than ours, with the Poles reached
something like a religious veneration. To Mickiewicz
Napoleon stood for a superhuman figure, imbued with
the spirit of Christ, called to the task of redeeming the
political world till he forfeited it by personal failing.
In Krasinski's case Napoleonism dispelled the shadows
that lay before his vision, and led him to the rising of
his orient.
G.
15
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The Anonymous Poet of Poland
And the Christian Caesar, higher by a whole past epoch
than his predecessor, filled with the knowledge of himself, and
with the aim for the sake of which the Spirit of God that
directs history had sent him here below, said, as he died on the
rock of exile, "The beginning of the new era will be reckoned
from me. " In that word is contained the truth both of his and
of the whole past. But before that truth is developed and
fulfilled, before the world shall pass from the Napoleonic
standpoint to another, to a more entire and more sanctified
transformation, it must first be worn out as the ancient world
was worn out. . . From the time of the Gracchi the pagan world
did not rest till it heard the promise of Christ: from the time
of Luther the new world has had no rest. . . and shall not rest
till it reaches, not now the hearing, but the understanding and
the fulfilment of the promise of Christ.
There is decadence of religion everywhere, goes on
Krasinski; an anarchy of thought. All forms of belief
have passed over the human race, all crying for the
spark of life that shall renew their youth.
That anarchy is so fearful that it necessarily tends to
crisis--that desire so great, and up to now vain, that it neces-
sarily calls for the help of the Father Who is in heaven.
When was that help ever refused? When did God ever forsake
history when history raised its hands to Him, and in the
language of all the peoples of the earth cried out: " Lord, show
Thyself to us"?
Endless desire brings with it eternal yearning and endless
grief. As the individual, so the human race sinks into melan-
choly. From collective man shall also often flow the bloody
sweat of agony on the Mount of Olives of history. Were it
otherwise there would be no spirit of humanity training itself
by its own will. Where would the merit be with which it
merits in this time? What is that merit if not its life in history,
if not that course of labour divided into the moments of death
and of the resurrection of the dead from death? And how
can it die if it does not doubt? And how can it rise again
if it does not believe? Not to die you must be God. To
die you must be man. When the spirit of God unites itself
with the nature of man, the divine life breaks asunder the
human grave--Christ died and rose again from the dead.
And to the epoch, begun in His word, the same must be-
fall before it can by deed be adequate to the whole purport
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of that word. Our fathers stood on that declivity which leads
to the grave. Fate carried us further, and laid us deeper--
we are in the grave. I err, we are already beyond the grave.
You all know, my brothers, that we were born in the womb
of death: and from the cradle your eyes have been used to
look on the livid stains of death, widespread on the body of
the European world. Hence the eternal grief that gnaws your
hearts: hence the incertitude that has become your life. . . But
every end contains in itself the successive beginning. The day
of death only precedes the hour of awakening. Therefore con-
sider attentively, and the signs of death shall of a sudden be
transformed for you into the signs of resurrection. . .
Christ showed to men the idea of humanity. Before Him
save for the Hebrews there were no nations, for the aim was
unknown to which the nations are advancing, to which they
gravitate like the planets to the sun. He promised that some
day there shall be in the world one only fold and one shepherd.
He bade those praying to the Father repeat each day these
words: "Thy Kingdom come ": and with tha^ sigh for two
thousand years we are all imploring God for the sight of the
ideal of humanity on earth.
Somewhat on the lines of what he had already said
in The Treatise of the Trinity Krasinski speaks of the
deed, the merit, by which we "become what we shall
remain in the sight of God," and by which we work
out our personality. It is only given to us on this earth
and amidst humanity.
The humanity in the midst of which we gain our eternal
future life must itself be a great and holy harmony in the
Divine thought. . . Humanity on this earth and the immortality
of each individual beyond the grave are two equal circles,
serving each other reciprocally, not to be parted either in
heart or understanding. Each is the collateral of the other, its
condition, its fulfilment, and both blend into a third and higher,
the power of the very God.
Humanity "is the entirety and the unity of all the
powers of the spirit of man, expressed visibly on this
earth by the concord and love of its members, that is,
of ' nationalities. '" As the members of the human body I
are the outward parts of the personality that rules \
iS--a
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? 228 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
them, so are the nations the members of one universal
humanity.
The realization of Christ's word beyond religious
spheres could not be effected before Christianity had
prepared the ground by penetrating each individual
soul. But now that the individual has accepted this
word it is time that its realization shall reach further
and, acting upon collective humanity, idealize and
Christianize the governments of the world.
The world is near, not to a great change, for nothing can
be changed of Christ's words, but to the great transfiguration
of them, the deeper understanding of them, the higher ad-
miration of them. Already in these expressions: "Render to
God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's," is com-
prised the whole future movement of mankind. For because
all is "God's," the state of that momentary division between
what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God must
ever lessen, and what was yesterday considered as owing to
Caesar, to-day must be counted as belonging to God until the
government of Caesar shall be nought and God's kingdom all.
Governments are a human creation. . . Only nationalities
are the Divine creation.
Hence we see these governments, neither animated by
nationality, nor comprehending its sanctity, proceeding
to such violations of the moral law as the partition of
Poland. That injury deliberately committed against an
: unoffending nation was, says Krasinski, more than a
political crime. It was an outrage upon the Christ-
idea that, till it is righted, stands in the way of the
grand ideal of the Christianization of policy and earthly
government.
In that nationality, in whose wronging the greatest
violence was done against humanity, there must break forth
most strongly, there must shine forth most clearly, the idea of
humanity.
Our death was necessary, necessary shall be our resurrec-
tion, so that the word of the Son of man, the eternal word of
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229
life, shall flow through the social circumference of the world.
By the very fact of our nationality, martyred on the cross of
history, will be manifested to the conscience of the human
spirit that the sphere of policy must be transformed into the
sphere of religion. . . The Lord shall be present in the whole
political sphere where hitherto He was not. . . and the instrument
of His providence to this end shall be none other than the Polish
nation.
One of the two--either the sanctified future of humanity
shall be forfeited, or the life of Poland shall be the condition
of its fulfilment. The only word, the word of Christ, shall
either give forth no further fruits, or the violence committed
against that sacred word shall last no longer. Such is the
truth, but no more a truth of a worldly order, only of God.
Therefore I call it a religion.
Let the conscience of each Pole be convinced of this truth.
Let him grasp with his mind what hitherto he has only felt
with his heart.
These are the principles that led Krasinski to his
song of triumph. They explain the rapturous idealiza-
tion of his nation that we find in Dawn and in all the
work that followed it. What language on the lips of
the poet-mystic could be too exalted to sing of her
whose sufferings and death were to prepare the way
for the spiritual re-birth of the world, whose resurrec-
tion, by being the first step towards the universal victory
over political wrong, shall bring humanity to its trans-
formation? Henceforth, "holy Poland," "my holy
one," are the tender and devout titles by which
Krasinski will call the mystic mistress of his heart, the
adored country who is the symbol of his faith.
But Dawn is not only a great national outpouring.
It is one of the most exquisite love poems in literature.
It is dedicated to Delphina Potocka, whose name like-
wise stands above the second pianoforte concerto and
one of the best known valses of the greatest of Polish
musicians. Etherealized as Krasinski's Beatrice, linked
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? 230 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
with him in one common grief for their nation, she is
in the poem no mere beloved woman, but well-nigh a
mystic part of his nationalism.
And yet again no heart could have conceived such
an apotheosis of pain and hope, of victory over the
powers of darkness, that had not itself first passed
through the sorrows of death. We know, if only from
its opening stanzas, that Dawn commemorates Kra-
sinski's spiritual fall and resurrection: and throughout
the poem we might be reading, even in those passages
that apparently speak only to Poland, the language of
impassioned guidance to a tempest-tossed soul. Much
as the mysticism of Sion in the Hebrew prophecies
applies to a personal need, a personal experience, so,
not only Dawn, but the Psalms of the Future and
Resurrecturis, appeal with extraordinary appositeness to
every heart. We have seen that the Anonymous Poet
directed his principles of political morality entirely by
those of individual morality. In the same manner the
national spirituality and the spirituality of the unit is
with him identical.
In the beautiful lines of his soul's autobiography
that open Dawn, Krasinski tells us how he was driven
by his enemies from his country to wander on alien
soil, hearing from afar the satanic cries of those who
had forged the chains of Poland.
At first I trusted that the God of pitying love, proud to the
proud, to the faithful full of faith; at first I trusted after days
but few He would send avenging angels from above, and burst
that grave which stands before the world. But the days passed
by, and passed away the years. In vain dawn struggled with
the blinded strength of night. No sun arose above the sainted
tomb, and ever more abased did this earth of ours become.
Then sank my soul into that chaos of doubt where all light is
changed into eternal night, where the highest works of courage
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231
like mouldering corpses rot, where the victories of ages in
heaped up ruins lie. And from all the cycle of those lived out
days one inscription standeth: There is no hope here.
Ah, I dwelt, dwelt long in that abyss, driven by wild rage
and despair that knew no shore. And death to me would then
have been but my second death. Like Dante, during life, I
passed through hell. But to aid me also a lady hastened down,
at whose very look the evil spirits fear. Me too an angel from
the precipice redeemed; and I too had a Beatrice of my own.
Oh, beautiful as she, from this world of gloom thou didst
not wing thy way, leaving me alone, and ascend to heaven to
dwell there, heavenly, without pain. Oh, beautiful as she, thou
wert more Christian far! For there where sorrow groweth,
there where tears are birth, there thou with thy brother
remainedst on this earth. Together walked we wearing one
self-same crown of thorns. Blood from my hands with blood
empurpled thine. And the same empoisoned draught of one
hellish spring we did drink together, oh, Beatrice of mine!
And yet, and yet my groaning and thy sighs, mingled,
flowing in each other, they passed away to song. From two
sorrows linked in bridal of the soul, one only voice was raised
--and oh, that voice was joy. Ah, joyousness of faith, ah,
mighty strength of hope, that into my heart returned from thy
look! Thus when clouds of darkness in the heavens, filled
with tears, gather to each other for aerial obsequies, from
their weeping by a roll of thunder sudden light is riven:
and the mist becomes the golden house of God.
And so this song, oh, sister, I open with thy name. Oh,
be linked with me for ever by the ring of one memory and
one love. Here we shall die, but the song that dieth not shall
return some day, true to me and thee, like an angel guardian
to watch us sleeping in our graves. And perchance the
moment cometh when, in the time of all the souls, we shall
rise, but no more in fleshly prison, rise once more united by
the chain of its harmony, and in the memory of human hearts
shall live, as a soul redeemed with a soul redeemed, pure and
shining forth and sanctified.
The scene of the series of lyrics that make up
Dawn is the lake of Como, on whose shores Krasinski
had spent some time in 1840, and where he had
probably begun his poem.
Albeit Krasinski often rises to heights of impersonal
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? 232 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
rapture he seldom speaks the language of pure joy. He
had indeed small reason in his life to do so. But in the
first lyric of Dawn high hopes for his country, love for
a woman, the beauty that surrounded him, all make up
one harmony of rejoicing in God, nature, man. He
and his Beatrice are in a boat upon the lake. The
snow-tipped mountains rise, peak upon peak, into the
Italian skies. Vines and roses cling about their slopes.
"There is one beauty, there is one God," is the
poet's cry. A few stars tremble in the skies. The
moon is rising over the Alps. On the boat stands
Beatrice, her hands on her harp. Her face, inspired,
shines as an angel's. Against the translucency of the
waves and the blue background of the sky, her figure,
silver in a web of moonlight, seems rapt to heaven.
Thou with me and we alone.
On the path with light all laden
Ever onward floats my boat.
Oh, the angels cannot feel
What I feel now in this hour.
Sister mine, to me it seemeth
That our holy one ariseth
At this moment from the coffin.
Ever further we are guided
By the moon across the waters.
Let us float, float thus unending
To peace--to light--to blue--to distance.
Waves are mirrors, mountains phantoms.
Heaven and earth are but one land.
What is real is slowly changing
To the world of the ideal,
To a dream of silver, crystal.
Let me dream, oh, let me dream.
But the shadow of sorrow soon steals back into
Krasinski's song. A son's bereavement of his mother
again breaks forth. He bids Beatrice be steadfast, for:
We raise our eyes on high, and when we see this nature,
1
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? Dawn
233
m it, beyond it we feel--God. In the changing sufferings of
this life, clasping each other by,the hand, in that suffering and
beyond it we feel--God.
We are the children of a mother slain,
We who never have beheld
How the light in mother's eyes
Shines as an angel's on her child.
Pray with me, oh, sister mine,
Pray, kneel in humility.
Gaze on high with piercing boldness
As the orphaned child may gaze.
Look upon that harp unending,
Where the moon, the stars, the suns,
Cling as keys all motionless.
From its depths and highest summits
Strings of light and strings of azure
Quiver, stretched to space unmeasured.
O'er those strings the spirit wanders,
On those strings the spirit playeth,
In that song alone it resteth:
That song--earth's harmony and peace.
One name is missing from this great harmony of
the universe, one ray absent from the symphony of
light. Beatrice must pray that God shall restore that j
lost name of Poland.
As God is in heaven so will He necessarily give us our
second body. For we have fulfilled the test of the grave. Our
right is resurrection. To-day or to-morrow Thou wilt give it,
Lord! Oh, Thou wilt give it for Thy justice' sake; not because
Thou owest it to us, but to Thyself.
When I spoke thus thou wert kneeling,
Wailing with thy harp's stringed wailing;
For thou leanedst thy snow-white forehead
On the strings the moon made shiver
All around in streams of gold.
And thus kneeling thou wert sighing.
Pray, oh, sister, with thy sighing.
God knows well that in this day
Sighing is thy country's name.
The poet then proceeds to his favourite theory, the
only one by which he could explain his nation's fate,
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? 234 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
that Poland is the victim for the world's political
redemption, and that love and self-sacrifice are the
condition of life.
Think you then that she who loveth,
And that dieth she Shall perish?
To your eyes, to eyes dust laden,
Not to self, nor to all life.
Who dies in sacrificing self,
Floweth into lives of others,
Dwells in human hearts in secret:
With each day, each little moment,
Groweth living in that grave,
Even as God Who is in heaven,
Gives to all and gives herself,
Xet her strength is not diminished1.
Long invisible remaining,
Ever heard in depths of hearts,
She with fire must burn their stains,
Melt with tears the soul's hard boulders:
By the grave's toils, by its sorrows,
By the harmonious song of death,
She, although herself dismembered,
Shall join all peoples in one love.
Ah, in vain you dream your dream,
Mortals who would take away
Life from that which is immortal.
You have wounded but the body.
Know you not that love and death
In the spirit world are one?
He on earth is everlasting
i Who with death gives birth to life:
He who with his life gives death
When he dies shall rise no more.
Krasinski inherited the strong idealism of the Polish
race. He had no more mercy for the materialist and
the Pharisee than he had for the tyrant and executioner.
To these the above passage is addressed: and now he
1 This idea Krasinski had developed fully in The Treatise of the Trinity,
arguing from the fact that as God in giving out of Himself in His creation
of the finite detracts nothing from His all Being, so in our far off way what
we give of ourselves we rather gain than lose.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:09 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89102083045 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? Dawn 235
v
pours upon them, standing as they do in the way of
humanity's moral progress, all the invectives of a
generous wrath. Again he turns to Beatrice. He bids
her no longer weep. Before the moon sets he will show
her a miracle that is "above oppression, above pain. "
And so begin the three visions of Dawn.
"Knowest thou"--he speaks to Beatrice--"the love which
eternally lures the soul to the land of memory? Does the cry
of the angel of home call thee by night, and bid thine eyes
gaze on the living faces of those long since dead?
"Knowest thou that dumb, winter steppe where in their
graves the spirits of our fathers sleep? "
It is lit by no stars, only by the ghost-like face of
the moon. There is nothing but the white, desolate
steppe, with the graves that alone stand out black from
the snow. They seem to wander--the poet and Beatrice
--in the endless night of a dream.
'Neath the steppe is mournful murmuring.
All the graveyard trembles, living.
From the graves blow prayers and wailings.
Somewhere swords are rattling hollow.
Clash of armour stern I hear,
As if our fathers, to this moment
Life remembering, craving glory,
Now within their tombs are turning,
On their sides, for they are dreaming
In death's sleep of Poland's sorrow.
Lo, each grave is opened widely,
Giving thee the dead again.
Pallid army of our fathers,
Kings of old, and lords of council,
Warriors and soldiers' leaders,
Gather closely all around thee.
The cemetery of ice and gravestones
To Diet, army, Poland changeth.
The "spark of the spirit," the old splendour of the
Polish senator, the courage and contempt of slavery of
an ancient race, still shine on those dead faces through
the corruption of the grave.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:09 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu.