No More Learning

In November Krasinski left Poland and travelled
with his father through Italy. His faith in Poland
wavered together with his religious faith, both of which
were always inseparable in Krasinski's heart. He was
at the cross roads, perturbed, restless, unhappy, swept
from his spiritual bearings, still seeking endlessly where-
soever he discerned a glimmer of light. When he
mentions his nation in his correspondence it is generally
in a widely different key from that of his early letters to
Reeve, his later letters to his Polish friends. There is
a tone of profound discouragement. No hint is given of
the calling of a chosen country that remains to succeed-
ing generations as the trumpet call of the Anonymous
Poet to his people. At moments he could see nothing
1 Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski to Adam Potocki. Opinog6ra, Oct.
5, 1838. Biblioteka Warszawska, May, 1905 (Polish).
2 Ibid. Warsaw, Oct. 20, 1838.
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? 180 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
but the faults of his nation: utter blankness and desola-
tion for her future. Death in these days seemed to him
the only outlet for the Pole from miserable existence.
"Who cannot struggle against the stream," he once said,
"and who will not degrade himself with the slime of its turbid
waters ought to leave the scene. To live in order to eat and
drink of shame, to grow fat on shame. . . is not worth while1. "
The moral stress that sapped at the roots of his life
reacted upon the artistic worth of Krasinski's work, no
less than upon the evolution of his national theory.
A Summer Night and The Temptation, both written in
1837, but published a few years later, fall far short of
Iridion or The Undivine Comedy. Indeed A Summer
Night seems a distinct return to the immaturity, we
might even say the tediousness, of Agay Han. It
appears at first reading a not very intelligible Byronic
sketch in poetic prose of a girl, forced by her father to
marry a prince of an alien race. Her lover watches the
ceremony in the church; makes his way into the newly
wedded wife's apartment and, with all the accompani-
ments of a romanticism, banal to the present day reader,
but affected by the contemporaries of Krasinski's youth,
he slays his beloved and himself, while the aged father
dies for grief at having sacrificed his daughter's happi-
ness.
This is the literal aspect of A Summer Night: but
there is something deeper behind it. In whatever
straits of pain Krasinski was immersed, his thoughts
and fears could not leave his nation. The vagueness
and confusion of the style of A Summer Night, the
scenic effects that bewilder the reader and go far to blot
out the main point, are in part attributable to the in-
1 Letters to Saltan. Prague, Aug. 5, 1836.
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? The Deviation
181
fluence of Jean Paul: but still more are they Krasinski's
shield of defence by which he protected both his father
and himself from discovery. With the increasing severity
of the Russian censors, Krasinski was driven to redouble
his precautions. Sottan was bidden to look for the
manuscript of Iridion among Krasinski's papers in
Rome and to destroy it: and so no autograph of the
play exists. Gaszynski, if he mentions Iridion in his
letters to Krasinski, must write merely a capital I. To
his father, probably warned by the latter to do so, the
poet wrote, denying the absurd rumour that he was the
author of Iridion \ A Summer Night is the history of
the marriage of a Polish girl, a lady of the Radziwift
family and a cousin of Krasinski's own, with a Russian
prince. When a boy of sixteen in 1828 Krasinski had
been present at this wedding: and even before the
events of 1830 had placed a great chasm between the
Pole and Russian, such an alliance, entailing, moreover,
the passing into Russian hands of the heiress's immense
estates, was one that every patriotic Pole would regard
with abhorrence. Under the squandering of decorative
devices, we had almost said upholstery, the hand of
the author of A Summer Nightvizjs, trembling, not only
with indignation against the ambitious parents who
compelled their daughters to such a lot, but with pro-
found compassion for the victims.
"She": "The Father," or "The Old Man": "The
Bridegroom," or "The Youth": "He," meaning the
lover: are the designations of the chief movers in the
drama. They are shades, not men and women of
flesh and blood; symbols who, as often is the case with
Krasinski, represent ideas.
1 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 182 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
"I saw her," the prose-poem begins abruptly, "when they
led her in. She walked in terror in white robes with a wreath
on her head. "
Reading between the lines, and grasping those few
clues that penetrate through the mystery in which Kra-
sinski purposely shrouded them, there appears little doubt
that his thoughts were painfully reverting to another,
if not wholly dissimilar, story than that of a Polish girl,
sacrificed to her father's self-seeking: to the tragedy of
his own life.
"I grew beneath the shadow of his hand," cries the lover.
"It was he who first taught my lips the name of my country,
he who first made me know the desire for war. "
What other language is this than that of Krasinski's
reminiscences of his childhood with his father? When
the bride justifies to her lover the marriage she had
made, we might be reading one of those confidences to
Henry Reeve during the terrible struggle that Krasinski
underwent in the year of the Rising.
"Ah, my father came and entreated and implored. Thou
knowest how he can command with a harsh voice: but for
me he summoned not his orders from the bosom of a judge.
He veiled the thunder of his curse with tears, and sighed and
complained of his only child that she would thrust him down
into his grave. "
The autobiographical allusions, or rather hints, in
Krasinski's writings are too valuable to pass over in
silence. Another personal thread that runs through this
allegory refers to his separation from Joanna Bobrowa,
typified by the marriage which divides the lover from the
bride of the Russian prince. Twice does Krasinski, as
Dr Kleiner notices, emphatically repeat: "What the
priest shall bind, man will not unloose1. " There are
1 J. Kleiner, History of the Thought of Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? The Deviation
183
other expressions that are clearly explainable by this
unfortunate love affair. And a touch purely personal,
and yet impregnated with the patriotism that is never
far to seek in what Krasinski wrote, is to be found in
the lover. The youth is a soldier, leading his followers
to some great battle--which is of course, in the hidden
language that Krasinski was forced to use, war for
Poland. With the warlike tradition of his house in his
veins, Krasinski had a craving for the battlefield from
which his physical weakness alone was enough to de-
bar him; the heroes of his works are always soldiers.
In addition, his regret at not having fought for his
country when she rose in 1830 was an ever living one.
"He fought at Ostrotenka1": are the words by which
he would have Stowacki understand the depths of his
grief when he saw his dearest friend Danielewicz die2.
Further, it is worthy of notice that Krasinski places
the lover, as he gives his farewell charge to his men
before he himself seeks the bride in the castle, among
those "three gentle slopes" which had been the poet's
country home. He alludes proudly to the inheritance
of freedom which was the possession of all who gathered
on that soil, till the "southern king" came, bringing
bondage with him. The youth promises his people
deliverance, but only after long labour on their part.
They must "beware of the tempters "; and this is Kra-
sinski's guarded message to the Polish emigration, for
even now, when the Anonymous Poet was not at his
moral best, desire for his nation's highest good never
ceased to devour his soul. "Lift your eyes. Space
1 One of the famous battles of the Rising.
2 Letters of' Zygmunt Krasinski. Vol. 111. Lw6w, 1887. To Stowacki,
Munich, March 26, 1842 (Polish).
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? 184 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
enough for your souls hath remained in that blue
sky. "
The Temptation, although it also is a far cry from
the great dramas that went before it and the lyrics that
were to follow, is more interesting and more poetical
than A Summer Night. It too shows the influence of
Jean Paul and has also a suggestion of Scriptural style.
Krasinski wrote it for the young Adam Potocki, who
was bound to Petersburg, as a warning from his own
experience against the temptations that awaited the
Pole at the Russian court. The point of the work
was too dangerous to be told openly. It is therefore
clothed in another confused allegory, and covered with
the same mannerisms as those of A Summer Night.
Whatever their faults, both these works are the stifled
cry of a Polish heart. They are the words of one striving
to make his voice heard to those who could understand
what lay behind half uttered hints, scarcely articulate
murmurs. Yet even so the moral of The Temptation
was too obvious: and hundreds of young Poles went
to a Russian prison for having disseminated the poem.
"Mother slain six times," begins the poet in a transport
of love and grief. "Unhappy mother, with but one of thy
meads of green, with but one of thy fields of wheat, thou
bindest memory, and henceforth thy sons must suffer, wander,
love thee. "
Krasinski then recounts, as a vision, a day in the
life of a Polish youth whose nationality is of course only
indicated. He is mounting a fiery horse: one foot on
the stirrup, the other still on "the sweet grass of his
home," he is about to set out for the court of the "lord
of life and death," otherwise Nicholas I. His old mentor,
who will appear at his side from time to time, prays
that he may serve "only the Mother slain six times,"
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? The Deviation
185
and that he may be spared not pain, for all must
suffer, but "the blush of shame and the ignominy of
weakness. "
For the descriptions in his poem Krasinski drew freely
on his memories of Petersburg. The Temptation is the
only record that he has left of his sufferings during those
long sad months in the Russian capital. Under an over
elaboration of style and hyperbolical detail the founda-
tion of the work is truth, and a truth known from a
harrowing personal experience. We may regret that
Krasinski overlaid his recollections with a fanciful
colouring instead of telling them with a directness that
would have added tenfold to their power: but he could
do nothing different. This tragic figure in Polish litera-
ture must hide his heart's agony under flowers and
fantastic shapes.
"They spoke there in the palace"--Krasinski had done
the same--" with a stifled voice, as if they feared the ear of
their enemies behind the walls. The old man took the youth
by the hand, and led him to the window. Hence could be seen
all the city, and the crowds that swarmed past. Mighty city,
strangely uniform and white ":
wrote Krasinski, remembering the snow-shrouded town
at which he had gazed during the tedious winter.
As the youth, disregarding the warning of the older
man, looks admiringly at the women who pass by:
amidst the sombrely clad people, men began to ride, before
whom the people bowed low. A long thin weapon was at their
sides. Great plumes were on their heads. Crying out with a
rough voice they went by in their might, and struck the children
who had remained in the road. . . till one on horseback rode up,
and all fell with their faces to the earth. That one was the lord
of life and death.
The adulation with which the Russian Tsars were
surrounded, especially during the reign of Nicholas I,
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? 186 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
was an attitude so foreign to the nature of the high-
spirited and freedom-loving Poles, who called their
fellow-citizens brothers and who were the equals of their
kings, that it could not fail to arouse a Pole's biting
sarcasm. Whenever Krasinski introduces the Tsar, his
contempt of the Asiatic servility of the Russian court
that he had seen with his own eyes finds free vent.
And again the boy gazes, fascinated, heedless of the
words of his companion:
and only when the latter repeated them a second time did he
cover his eyes with his hand and utter the name of his murdered
Mother, as a remembrance of his childhood.
"Now alone, he is alone in the great city ": and
here enters Krasinski's recollection of another boy,
weighed down with the grief he could not tell among
his country's enemies.
He concealed his unheard-of suffering under the aspect of
a tranquil face. On all sides is danger, on all sides torture.
There is none in whom he can confide. He must lie even to
women and children. He learns lying as a masterpiece of art,
and he became the master of artificial looks and of his tears
and of his movements till the light, like the rays of day,
vanished from his eyes. Oh! God, and his very garments
became a lie. He threw off his old garments in which he had
galloped over the steppes. He placed upon his head the plumes
and girded the thin weapon to his side. The crowd began to
make way before him, and his own horse knew him not.
Then in his vision the poet sees him enter a church,
once more with the old man. The latter:
looked on his friend with a gaze filled with grief. The youth
at first could utter no word, for he had forgotten how to show
the depths of his soul with words. Once only he cried aloud.
In that cry rang all the truth: the slow destruction of a soul
that did not wish to fall.
"Follow me! " says the other, "so that thou
mayest recall thy Mother's face. " He is led past
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? The Deviation
187
cemetery after cemetery till to the echo of national song,
with banners fluttering and swords flashing under the
stars, and mournful voices of spirits above them--a
sort of setting in which Krasinski delights--they reach
the spot where she who was "slain six times" lies on
her bier: and the youth falls on his face weeping, and
curses life.
This symbolism of Poland's grave and her resur-
rection will remain with Krasinski to the end. Though
he was far as yet from the clear formulation of his great
national mysticism, its germs are here. The spirits
complain that God has betrayed them; "because our
holy one is dead. " The youth's guide bids them
"blaspheme not, for your holy one still breathes. She
shall rise again. " To Krasinski, and to every one of the
great patriot-prophets of Poland, the doubt of their
country's resurrection was in truth a blasphemy, because
it left the action of heaven unjustified, and the destruc-
tion of Poland an unredeemed crime.
Krasinski then brings the youth to the crisis, into
the gay and splendid show of the imperial court. In
the midst of the crowd of servitors, the play of the
women's silks of every hue, the violins and incense, he
is led to the feet of "the lord of life and death. " And
that audience, where the Tsar seeks to load the young
Pole with his favours, in Krasinski's case in vain, is,
allowing for its poetical and purposely disguised phras-
ing, the actual incident in Krasinski's life when he stood
before Nicholas I.
The lord of the castle descended from his throne, and walked
slowly, like a god, amidst the people falling to the ground.
He went straight to the seat of the youth. . . marvellously hand-
some and strong. The youth rose, and boldly looked in his
eyes. The lord of life and death spoke with beguiling tones:
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? 188 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
"Come, we will go together, and I will show thee the wonders
of my castle. " And when the youth arose, as one riveted, he
dropped a kiss on his brow.
With the bier of his Mother floating before his eyes, the
youth went, and his hand shook with the throbbing of his
boiling blood on the hard arm of the sovereign, who spoke
with his stern voice sounding as thunder to those making way
before him, but to his companion strangely sweetly and nobly.
He reminded him of the past. He even pronounced the name
of the slain Mother without trembling, as though her death
weighed not upon his conscience. He appeared not to doubt
for a moment that she had now perished from the earth for
ever, and he showed the youth another future, great, engraved
in the books of destiny. He lured his young desires towards
it. He spared not his promises. . . From his comely face, like
the face of Antichrist, the unhappy youth turned his eyes to
the earth. Each word of the tempter fell upon his heart like
a drop of poison.
He is led through the imperial treasuries: and the
thought of Krasinski turns to the riches bought for the
Russian crown by the blood and sweat of his fellow-
countrymen, toiling in the mines.
And to the youth it appeared that he stood on the brink
of mines, stretching out without end. . . He heard the hissing of
subterranean fires. . . Sometimes too there rang as though a cry
of the dying, as though a rattle of chains from the pit: and
human figures crept through those streams of light, like black
spots on the moon. The figures lifted their hands and, dragging
their chains, cried long for one drop of water, for one moment
of rest. . . It seemed to the youth that he had seen certain of their
faces somewhere of old on the surface of the earth: but the
lightnings veiled their faces, the roar of the melting metals
stifled their wails.
Then the beautiful women of the conqueror's race
surround him, tempting him by their charms.
For two long hours of that night I saw how, entangled,
bewildered, struggling, he ever and anon besought the heavenly
Father for strength and virtue, then again in despair rushed
through the festal halls and sought a weapon to drive into his
breast: but found it nowhere.
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? The Deviation
Gradually he yields. He consents to betroth himself
to a "maiden of the alien race. " He sits by her side at
the banquet. Only when he sees through the glitter of
the feast the urn containing the ashes of his "slain
Mother" all grows dark before him, and his hand,
holding the goblet, trembles.
Ever more terribly wrestled his wandering soul, struggling
to return to its old faiths and hopes: but all that surrounded
him darkened his understanding with a heavy veil.
"The lord of life and death smiled graciously," and
bade him swear service to him and renounce his old
name. He flings him a handful of diamond crosses.
Word byword, the youth, "not hearing his own voice,"
repeats after the herald his abjuration of his country.
Crying "Shame" upon his own head, he rises and
escapes, mocked by all, cursing himself, and falls sense-
less in the courtyard.
This episode is no mere fancy. Krasinski wrote it
as a direct admonition to young Poles. The Pole who
accepted honours and decorations from the Tsar's hand
could only do so at the price of his nationality. Through
the apparently artificial passage throbs the grief of
a Pole who had seen his own father decorated by the
conqueror of his country.
The wretched boy comes to himself and to a speech-
less despair. Beside him is his mentor, who tells him
that:
"in another time and another place thou mightest have shone
a hero: but under a heavy test thou knewest not how to remain
virtuous. The seen reality overpowered for thee the invisible
but eternal truth. Thou art lost. "
Krasinski further developed the scheme implied in
these words, and those that follow. The nation that had
defended Europe by constant war against the Turk and
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? 190 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Tartar was now called to a sterner conflict: that of
a conquered people battling for moral life.
"The time for outward war has not yet come," is
the mentor's reply to the youth's passionate entreaty for
his horse and old weapon, with which he will avenge the
wrongs of his country and his own shame.
"Long must last the days of silent sacrifice. Hearest thou?
The enemies are pursuing thee. If they capture thee, for the
rest of thy life thou wilt be the slave of their will, the partici-
pator in their crimes. . . One only, one only means of salvation
hath remained for thee": and he drew forth his dagger.
"Strike! " cried the youth. "I die in the name of my Mother,
slain six times. "
And the old man kills him.
It will be seen that both A Summer Night and The
Temptation end in an immoral situation. In A Summer
Night it is the murder of the wife in her bridal chamber
at the hand of the lover in whose embrace she dies.
This may in part be put down as a piece of the Byronism
of the day: but the fact remains. It is more apparent
in The Temptation, where the murderer thanks God for
the crime he has committed, and prays that the blood
he has shed may flow before the heavenly throne with
that of the martyrs. Count Tarnowski sees in such false
positions a proof of the spiritual confusion into which
Krasinski had drifted when he wrote these words1. At
this time the Anonymous Poet, the future apostle of
hope, met despair face to face. In both poems death is
the only end to the intolerable national conditions2.
Krasinski's father had done what the youth of the
poem had done, and what Krasinski himself had not
done. This incurable wound that Krasinski carried in
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? The Deviation
191
his heart all his days gives its peculiar point to the whole
tale of the temptation and the fall. His anguish for
once--and for this once only--breaks the bounds of his
self-imposed silence: and the epilogue of The Tempta-
tion is the son's heart-broken lamentation for his father.
Oh, Mother, slain six times,when thou shalt arise from sleep,
when once more thou shalt seat thyself upon the fields of corn,
amidst green woods from sea to sea, and in the moment of the
renewal of thy youth shalt remember the long nightmare of
death, the fearful spectres of thy martyrdom, weep not for those
who died in thy name on the battlefields of their country or
beyond seas. Though vultures and wolves have torn asunder
their remains, happy are they. Nor weep for those who died
among executioners in deep dungeons. Though a prison torch
was their only star, though the harsh word of oppression was
their last farewell on earth, happy are they. But cast a tear of
. pity for the lot of those whose minds thy murderers duped with
the glitter of falsehood, because they could not by the command
of violence tear their hearts from thee. They, Mother, they
suffered more than thy other sons. Their deluded hopes pierced
like daggers their bosoms. In the secret of their souls were
waged a thousand unknown wars, bloodier than the battles that
thunder in the face of the sun to the ring of steel and the roar
of cannon. The glittering eyes of thy foes led them over the
icy slopes to the depths of the eternal cold: and on each mound
they halted and wept for thee--till their hearts were withered
for yearning, till their feet and handswasted away in the bondage
of invisible chains: and they became as living corpses, alone
amidst a hated people, alone in their own homes, they only
alone on the wide earth. My Mother, over their fate, over a
sorrow of sorrows, do thou, do thou, utter a soft word of memory.
1
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? CHAPTER IX
BEFORE THE DAWN:
THE THREE THOUGHTS AND
THE TREATISE OF THE TRINITY
(1839-1842)
In the early part of 1839 Krasinski was in Naples.
Each evening he was the guest of a Polish family.
In letters to Sottan he describes at length one of
the daughters, Delphina Potocka. She was separated
from a husband who had made her miserable, and
who had been the cause of the death of her five
young children. Beautiful, possessed of high mental
gifts, an exquisite singer, she had turned the heads of
Flahaut and of an Orleans prince. Chopin worshipped
her; and it was her voice that soothed his dying bed.
The first impression that she made upon Krasinski
was that of an "unbearable coquette1. "
"When," he wrote to Soitan, "I see human beings who
need no comforting it seems to me that they have no need of me.
Nothing attracts me to them. But it is exactly the reverse when
I see on anyone's brow the trace of mourning, stamped by the
vicissitudes of life. Then it is my dream that my words or my
friendship or a pressure of my hand may perchance wake new
life in that bosom. . . At first we quarrelled terribly, because
I would not bow my head before her externalyizjtow [the word
is in English]. We even quarrelled so much that she said
strangely disagreeable things to me and I to her. But when
1 Letters to Sottan. Naples, Jan. 1, 1839.
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? Before the Dawn 193
she changed her Parisian tone and began to speak sincerely,
I changed my tone too, and every evening sadly and mourn-
fully she describes her moral life to me, and I listen and some-
times cheer her1. "
Such was the opening passage of Krasinski's love
for the woman whom he has immortalized as his Beatrice.
Whether hers was in reality the nobility with which
Krasinski, who always idealized those he loved, invested
her is a question difficult to resolve where evidences
differ, and seems to us to matter little. The point re-
mains that under the influence either of what she really
was, or what Krasinski believed her to be, the Anony-
mous Poet reached the heights of poetical and national
inspiration of which Dawn was the first fruit. His love
for Delphina was of a far higher and more idealistic
nature than had been his for Mme Bobrowa. To the
latter he had never given his whole heart. He had, as
Count Tarnowski says, been in love rather with the
sentiment of love than with the woman herself2. But
for years, until after his marriage, he as he expressed it
lived in and for Delphina. With her he came to associate
his hopes for his country, his own resurrection from
death and despair.
"May God guard thee, love thee, bless thee," he wrote to
her from Rome in the end of the year when he had first learnt
to love her. "The power of prayer has again awakened in me for
thy sake. Each evening with my whole heart, my whole spirit,
I pray for thee8. "
"In your heart," he wrote the following day, "in your
intellect I felt myself once more, I gained life again; in the
desire to give you new strength, or to pour new thoughts into
your soul, I awoke a threefold power within myself. Through
1 Op. tit.
2 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
3 Unknown Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski to Delphina Potocka,
published by R. S. Kaminski. Tygodnik lllustrowany. 1899 (Polish).
? ? 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
? 194 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
you I became filled with strength and understanding. To-day
I am stupid and worth nothing. But love me for the reason
that a benefactress loves those on whom she bestows benefits,
that an angel guardian loves those he guards1. "
The series of Krasinski's love poems to Delphina
Potocka now begins. How different was the character
of his new love and his old may be gauged if merely from
the fact that it was only after Delphina's death, and long
after his own, that any eye but his and hers saw them2.
These exquisite lyrics are among the most beautiful of
Polish love songs. They carry the impress of two human
hearts that had suffered deeply in life. They crown a
human woman with the aureole of a patriot's devotion for
his country and with the light upon Poland's fate that
Krasinski always associated with Delphina Potocka.
Their note is that of a high idealism. Delphina is the
angel who shines upon the sadness of the poet's soul.
Through her he knows the lost spring once more. Through
her he learns again what happiness may be. She is the
sister, as Krasinski, who had yearned for a sister in his
lonely life, repeatedly calls her3; the sister saving a lost
brother. ''Descend into my hell and light my subter-
ranean darkness, even as an angel, with one ray of thine
eyes. Be my protection, be my hope and my salvation. "
Again I bid farewell to thee (Naples, 1840). "God
only," the poet sings in an early poem, "can count the
thorns in the garland of thy brow. I count them not,
1 op.