No More Learning

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POLAND
In the forlorn figure of the youth, desolate and
alone in the Siberian night, and painted with an
almost terrible power, there is much of SlowacH
himself. The tale of his own sad and lonely soul
is told here.
As he gazes at the angel Eloe, who sits watch-
ing the graves' of those who have died in Siberia,
Anhelli falls like a dead man. When recalled to
life by the Shaman, bidding him arise, for the
time of his rest has not yet come, Anhelli confesses
that the face of the angel reminds him of one whom
he had loved in his own country.
"' Therefore am I flooded with my tears when
I think of her and of my youth. To-day that is all
a dream. Yet the sapphire sky and the pale stars
look down on me: are those stars in truth the
same as those that saw me young and happy?
Why does not a gust of wind arise to tear me from
the earth, and to carry me into the land of peace?
Why do I live? There is not one hair on my head
of those that there were of old, even the bones
within me are renewed--and yet I still ever re-
member. And there is not one bird in the sky who
cannot sleep, if but one night of its life, in a quiet
nest. But God has forgotten me. I would fain die. '"
Thus he complains, wandering among the graves
of those who died far from their country, and whose
names are already forgotten. In the poet's first
conception, Eloe was to represent fame; not
mere renown, but rather the spiritualized memory
of the dead. But towards the end of Anhelli,
Slowacki's idea modified her into a more human
shape. *
* A. Malecki, *p. cit.
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? MTSTIC PILGRIMAGE IN SIBERIA 189
The Shaman and Anhelli then leave the
graveyard.
"And, when they came to the house of the
exiles, they heard a great tumult and laughter
and clamour, and the rattling of cups and foul
songs: and the Shaman stood at the windows and
listened, ere he entered that pit of misery. And,
when he appeared amidst the band, they were
silent, because they knew that man who was
mighty in God, and they dared not defy him. And
lifting his flashing eyes, the Shaman spoke, on fire
for grief: 'What have ye done without me? I
have seen your Golgotha. Woe unto you! The
stormy winds scatter the seeds of the oak and
strew them over the earth; but cursed shall be
the wind that carries your speech and your counsel
to your country. You shall die. The great day* is
drawing nigh, and none of you shall live to behold
the eve of that day. The Siberian day and the sun
of destruction draw nigh. Why have you not
hearkened to my counsels, and lived peacefully
in harmony and brotherly love, as befits those
who have no country ? '"
Where, in Anhelli, Slowacki describes, as he does
more than once, the evils reigning among the
exiles, it is his note of warning, for all its some-
what fantastic setting, against those moral dangers
threatening a nation suffering and living in
abnormal ways, f
In answer to his reproaches, the exiles set upon
the Shaman and slay him. As he lies dying, he
calls Anhelli and gives him his last charge.
"' Take my reindeer and go to the north. Thou
* The day of Poland's resurrection. t Op. cit.
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? 190 POLAND
wilt find a dwelling and peace in the snow. And
thou shalt live on the milk of the reindeer. Be not
sorrowful unto death for the destruction of thy
country: but weep at the thought that thou
shalt see her no more. All is a sorrowful dream. '"
He further tells Anhelli to take with him
Ellenai, a woman once a sinner, who had minis-
tered to the wizard's last moments, and to live
with her as with a sister.
"As he spoke thus, Anhelli heard a trampling
on the snow, and said : ' Some one approaches;
or is it death that walks heavily? ' But it was a
reindeer that stood above his dying master, and
whose wondering eyes filled with great tears;
and the Shaman turned away from him, weep-
He dies: and Anhelli leads Ellenai away:
"Both turned to the north, and behind them
went the Shaman's reindeer, knowing that they
were following new masters. But Anhelli was
silent, for his heart was full of tears and of grief.
So they went, Anhelli with the woman and with
the Shaman's reindeer to the far northern desert;
and, finding an empty hut hewn out in the ice,
they dwelt in it. " And the heart of the woman
"from continual prayer was full of tears, sadness,
and heavenly hopes. "
"Then the Siberian day came on, and the sun
did not set, but ran through the sky like a horse
at the race with a fiery mane and a white brow.
The terrible light never ceased, and the noise of
the ice was like unto the voice of God speaking
on the heights to the sorrowful and forsaken
people.
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? MTSTIC PILGRIMAGE IN SIBERIA 191
"And her long sadness and yearning led the
exiled woman to her death, and she laid her down
on a bed of leaves among her reindeer to die. And
it was at the setting of the sun, because for some -\
time past nights had begun in the land of Siberia,
and the sun remained ever longer beneath the
horizon. Turning her sapphire eyes filled with
tears on Anhelli, Ellenai said: 'I loved thee, my
brother, and I leave thee. I loved thee, but the
grave ends all. Forget me not, for who will re-
member me after death save one reindeer which
I milked? '
"Then the dying woman began to recite
litanies to the Mother of God and, even as she
uttered the words Rose of gold, she died. And a
fresh rose fell on the white bosom of the dead
woman and lay there, and the strong fragrance
of the rose filled the hut. But Anhelli sat at the
side of the couch and wept. And lo, at midnight
came a great rustling, and Anhelli thought that
the reindeer made this rustling, drawing out
moss to eat from under the bed of death: but a , 'fc-
cloud, as of the spirits of darkness, poised over the sy
hut with loud laughter, and dark faces appeared
through the clefts of the ice roof and cried: 'She V
is ours. ' But that wondrous rose put on the wings
of a dove and flew on high, and looked upon them
with the eyes of a pure angel. So those dark spirits
and the cloud of them arose from the roof, crying
sad curses into the dark sky; and again there was
silence as befits the place where a dead body
rests.
"And three hours after midnight Anhelli heard
a knocking at the door, which was of ice, and,
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POLAND
putting aside the block of ice, he went out under
the moon. And he saw the angel who had recalled
to him his love for a woman and his first love on
the earth. And Eloe said to him: 'Give me thy
dead sister: I will take her and bury her pitifully.
She is mine. ' And Eloe, kneeling over the sleeping
figure, laid under her the ends of her swan wings,
and, soaring to the moon, departed. Anhelli,
therefore, returned to the empty hut, and mourned
because she was there no more.
"Then about the time when the earth begins
to turn from the sun and sleeps in darkness,
Jehovah called two of the eternal Cherubim before
His throne, and said: 'Go ye to the plains of
Siberia. ' And they went down into the misty
land, hiding their brightness within them. And
they came to the place where the shed of the exiles
had been, but they found no trace of it, for the
storms had brought it to the ground. And of
those thousand men there remained but ten, pale
and terrible to behold. "
Starving in the snow, they had eaten human
flesh, the bodies of their comrades. The leader of
the survivors, with the blood of his countrymen on
his lips, cries: "' Has God remembered us? Has
He granted us to die in our land and on the earth
where we were born? '
"' Return,' [reply the angels], 'and pray to
God, for we will show you the sign of His wrath
which was once the sign of pardon. ' And, stretch-
ing out their hands, the angels pointed to a mighty
rainbow which ran across half of the clouded skies.
And a terrible fear took possession of the man-
eaters at the sight of this beautiful and flashing
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? MTSTIC PILGRIMAGE IN SIBERIA 193
thing. And, marvelling, they pronounced the
name of Christ, and fell dead.
"That same day, before the setting of the sun,
Anhelli sat on a block of ice in a desert place, and
he saw two youths drawing nigh. Because of the
light wind that came forth from them, he felt
that they were from God, and he awaited what
they would announce to him, expecting that it
was death. And when they had greeted him like
unto mortal men, he said: 'I know you. You
are angels. Do you come hither to console me?
Or to quarrel with my sadness which I have learned
in the solitude of silence? '
"And the youths said to him: 'Behold, we
have come to announce to thee that the sun of
to-day will rise again, but to-morrow's shall show
itself no more over the earth. We have come to
announce to thee the winter darkness and a greater
horror than any men have ever known, solitude
in darkness. We have come to announce to thee
that thy brothers are dead, having eaten of human
corpses and being maddened with human blood:
and thou art the last. And we are the same who
ages ago came to the hut of the wheelwright,*
and sat at his table in the shade of the sweet
smelling lime-trees. Your nation was then as a
man who waketh and saith to himself: Lo, a
fair thing awaits me at midday, and in the evening
I shall rejoice. We announced hope unto you,
and now we have come to announce the end and
sorrow* and God hath not bidden us reveal the
future. '
"And Anhelli, answering, said to them: 'Are
* Piast, the. founder of the first Ppljsh dynasty,
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? i94
POLAND
you not making mockery of me, speaking of Piast
and the beginning now when I look for death, and
have seen only misery in my life? Have ye come
to terrify me, crying: Darkness is coming? Why
would you terrify one who suffers? Is not the
terror of the grave enough? Depart! and tell
God that if the sacrifice of my soul is accepted I
will give it, and will agree that she shall die. My
heart is so sorrowful that the angelic lights of the
future world are abhorrent to me, and I am
indifferent as to Eternity, and I would fain
sleep. '
"And the angels interrupted him, saying:
'Thou dost ruin thyself. The desire of a man is
his judgment upon him. And knowest thou not
that perchance some life, yea, perchance the life
and the fate of millions may depend on thy calm? '
And Anhelli humbled himself and said: 'Angels,
forgive me! I will suffer as of old. My native
language and human speech shall be silent within
me as a harp with torn strings. To whom shall I
speak? Darkness shall be my companion and my
country. But the horrors of the earth are nought,
my anguish for my country is a greater horror.
Why have I struggled and suffered torment for a
thing that was madness? Why did I not live at
rest? I cast myself into a river of woe, and its
waves have carried me far, and now I shall return
no more. '
"And again the angels interrupted him, saying:
'Thou didst blaspheme against thine own soul,
and now thou blasphemest against the will which
was in thee when thou didst consecrate thyself
to thy country. Therefore we warn thee from the
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? MTSTIC PILGRIMAGE IN SIBERIA 195
Will of God that within a few hours thou shalt
die: so be of more tranquil heart. '
"Hearing this, Anhelli bowed his head, and
submitted to the Divine Will. And the angels
departed. And when he remained alone, Anhelli
cried out with a sorrowful voice: 'This, then, is
already the end ! What have I done on earth?
Was it a dream? '
"And while Anhelli pondered upon the hidden
things of the future, the sky reddened and the
glorious sun burst forth; and, halting on the
horizon, it arose no further, crimson as fire. Then
the birds of the air and the white mews, which
God had bidden flee before the darkness, availed
them of the short day, and flew in great crowds,
wailing. Then Anhelli looked on them, and said:
'Whither do you fly ? ' And it seemed to him that
in the plaint of the birds he heard a voice answer-
ing him: 'We are flying to thy native land. Dost
thou bid us greet anyone there? Or, as we sit on
some roof dear to thee, shall we sing in the night
the song of sorrow, so that thy mother shall wake,
or one of thy kin, and weep in the darkness for
fear, thinking of the son whom the land of the
grave hath swallowed, and the brother whom
sorrow hath consumed? '
"Such was the voice of the birds; and Anhelli's
heart broke within him, and he fell. And the sun
sank under the earth, and there were only the
birds flying ever higher, shining on the sapphire
sky like wreaths of white roses, flying to the south.
"Anhelli was dead.
"In the darkness that then befell, there shone
a great dawn from the south, and a fire of clouds.
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POLAND
And the tired moon sank into the flame of the
skies, like a white dove falling at eventide on a hut
red with the setting of the sun.
"Eloe sat by the body of the dead Anhelli.
And lo!
on a sudden a knight on a horse, all in
Srmour, came forth from the fiery dawn, and he
ed with a terrible rattle of hoofs. The snow ran
before him and before the breast of the horse, like
the foam of the waves before a boat. And in the
hand of the knight was a banner, and on it burned
three letters of fire. * And the knight reached in
his flight Anhelli's dead body, and he cried out
with a voice of thunder: 'Here is one who was a
soldier. Let him rise! Let him mount on my
horse, and I will carry him swifter than the storm.
Lo, the nations are rising from the dead ! Lo, the
streets of cities are paved with dead bodies! He
who hath a soul let him arise, let him live, for it
is the hour for strong men to live. '
"Thus spoke the knight; and Eloe, rising from
the dead body, said: 'Knight, wake him not, for
he sleeps. He was predestined to sacrifice, even
the sacrifice of his heart. Knight, ride on, wake
him not. This body belongs to me, and this heart
was mine. Knight, thy horse stamps on his hoofs.
Ride on! '
"And the fiery knight fled away with the sound
of a mighty storm; and Eloe sat near Anhelli's
dead body. And she was glad that his heart did
not wake at the voice of the knight, and that he
still slept. "
So ends this strange and painful poem on that
? L U D, the Polish for Nation, People.
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? MTSTIC PILGRIMAGE IN SIBERIA 197
lieved setting of the whole work. He who has
been the chosen victim for his nation may not
even arise to behold her resurrection. In this
figure of Anhelli, Krasinski sees the "generation
which is languishing away in tears, in sorrow, in
vain desires; and which will die on the day pre-
ceding the day in which those desires of theirs
* Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski. Vol. I. To Coostantine
Gaszyniki, Nov. 18th, 1838.
same deep note
are to be fulfilled. "*
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? CHAPTER VI
THE SPIRIT OF THE STEPPE
THE patriotic mysticism of Bohdan Zaleski,
whom Mickiewicz termed the nightingale
of Polish literature, takes a different tone
to that of Messianism.
He was born in the Ukraine; the land whose
immense, flower-strewn plains, sighing to the
winds, inspire those who visit her as strangers
with an intense melancholy, but those to whom she
gives birth with an eternal nostalgia when parted
from her. Zaleski, brought up in the steppes as a
child, drew in the Ukrainian poetry and legends
with the air he breathed. The Rising of 1830, in
which he took part, drove him like so many
others from his country: and he lived out half
a century of exile in that incessant yearning for
his native Ukraine that gives its wild and mournful
music to his verse. He survived by thirty years
his beloved friend, Adam Mickiewicz. Unlike the
great trio of Polish poets who all died in their
prime, he reached the extremity of bereaved and
infirm old age. It was only in 1886 that he closed
a singularly devout and pure life. *
Polish literature offers nothing quite similar
to that one poem of Bohdan Zaleski's that stands
distinct from all the rest of his work: the Spirit
of the Steppe (1836). Obscure as it is, its beauty is
* S. Zdziarski, Bohdan Zaleski. Lw6w (Polish)~ *
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? THE SPIRIT OF THE STEPPE 199
mystical, ethereal,-elusive. It is imbued with the
magic and mystery of the steppes. The Ukraine
lures her nursling back, as flesh of her flesh, after
he has lost her for ever, to gaze on the successive
pageants, sweeping over her plains and skies, of
nations chosen by God and faithless to their
calling. Then he beholds his own country, Poland,
not in the triumph foretold to her by Messianism,
but rather as one who has sinned, entering at
last the everlasting gates.
A bald English rendering can but feebly reflect
the exquisite opening of the poem. I only
venture to offer it to the reader to whom the
Polish language is not accessible by way of giving
him some idea of its general drift.
"And my mother, mother Ukraine,
And the mother, me, her son,
Cradled singing at her bosom.
Oh, the enchantress! in the aerial
Dawn, she saw the winged life
For her son, and, pitying, cried:
'Nurse this child of mine, oh, Naiad!
With songs' milk and flowers' marrow
Nourish for flight this tender body.
Give him pictures in his dreams,
The centuries of my fair glory.
Let the folksongs of my people,
In hues of gold and hues of azure,
In a rainbow, flower about him. '
"Sweet she was to me, oh, sweet!
No one, ever, anywhere,
Tenderer mother has caressed.
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POLAND
Those short years and days unknown,
Wrapped in miracle and secret,
Lie within my soul ensealed.
There my memory ever turneth,
Ever are my senses seeking
What has passed, a distant dream.
"Oh, the naiads of my mother,
With their kiss that rang in song,
Fired my blood for evermore.
To-day amid my country's torments,
Sad my heart and soul to death,
Still that blood forbids me sleep.
"And the mother, mother Ukraine,
When the star from heaven signalled,
Me, her son, her winged son,
Took she from the naiad's hand:
Stripped she off my down and feathers,
Bade my wings rise from the nest,
Tender omens and entreaties
Wailed she on her nestling's trail.
"' I the handmaid of the Lord,
Day by day my dearest children,
By the will of the earth's Father,
Send I as the snowdrift's plaything.
Now again my loved one flieth,
Knowing not as yet his cross.
Free his thought, and swift as wind,
To marvels clings and thirsts for song.
May he his life dream in the steppes,
The steppes, the world's destroyers' road.
There the wrath of God passed by. '"
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? THE SPIRIT OF THE STEPPE 201
She is seen no more, and only the enchant-
ment of her memory remains to her son. "The
moment eternally great and holy sweetens, with a
breath of Paradise," his tears and sufferings
under the cross. "Blessed be he who remembereth,
somewhere in the years gone by, the sweet,
strange, pure, and winged life, his first beginning.
He who, in the torment of fleshly fetters, lifts his
hands to heaven daily, yearneth to his ghostly
memories. "
These "ghostly memories" of the "winged
life" on the steppes veil the whole poem with
an atmosphere of mystery that enhances at once
its romance and its charm. The mother of
the poet's fancy has gone. But, ere he descends
to the turmoil of life, he is caught up on his
wings to the skies, "God's tent of molten gold. "
He is among the choirs who sing Hosanna before
the throne. The angels are praying for him whose
trial on earth is about to begin. He spreads his
wings for the flight to the highest things; but,
for the first time, his thought knows bewilderment,
and he returns " sad, to the abyss " of earth.
Then succeeds the poetical description of
Bohdan's orphan boyhood and of his youth till the
cry resounds from afar: "Poland, thy country! "
With tears, he, who " with each breath draws in
the music of the steppe," says farewell to his
family and to those same steppes. He is swept by
the Rising into exile and into the tempest of the
world. Poverty, temptation, sadness surround
him. Toiling for his daily bread, he finds himself
following in the secret of his thoughts the flight
of the crane, living the life of the birds in the
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? 202 POLAND
free, untrammelled steppes. Ghosts of ages pass
dimly before him. He feels called to praise God
in a new song. An angelic voice summons him, as
with a blast of thunder, from on high : " Return,
oh, exile, to thy country. " He wakes, weeping.
To which country, that on earth or the one in
heaven? He returns to the land he loves; but
not in the flesh, only in a vision.
Once more, then, his is the " winged life. "
"Breath of God, eternal breathing,
Wind of steppes, blowing light and dry,
Spreadeth as a couch beneath me,
Blows the down about my shoulders,
Swaddles me in its warm bosom. "
It rocks him above the graves of those fallen in
the Ukraine, which was for centuries the scene of
border warfare in Polish history. He sees the
Black Sea, glittering as a counterfeit of the splen-
dours of dawn. " I see marvels, I hear marvels. "
In a burst of light and music, the wizard-singer,
Bojan, the patriarchal poet of the Slav peoples,
sings to his golden- stringed zither his country's
welcome. Its sounds ring high and low over the
steppes, and the buried ages wake, till the fire and
the song alike fade into mist.
Floating on the wind, the poet then has a series
of visions, unrolling themselves over the steppes,
of the nations that have risen and fallen since the
beginning of the world. He begins with Eden and
the fall of man, reaches the Crucifixion, the
mission of the apostles, the ruin of Israel.
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? THE SPIRIT OF THE STEPPE 203
"Slept my spirit. I dreamed sweetly
In a light, blest spirit dream.
Shoreless time and time in space
Shineth by the word of God,
Singeth out the mighty epic.
Million lights and million shadows,
Worlds in flowers--the world's history--
Blow in incense to the Lord. "
He thus prefaces each stage of the chronicle
of the world that he passes in review. Hoofs
thunder in the steppes across which the hordes
sweep to the destruction of Rome. The wind
whispers mysterious messages to the forefathers
of his race. Rome falls, and the Rome of the
Papacy rises in her stead. The poet gives a rapid
summary of the centuries that follow, coloured
by his deep religious sense. Men sin repeatedly,
and the penalty ever descends afresh upon human-
ity. Then his spirit sleeps, and in his dream struggles
to escape as though to home. The voice of an
angel sighs in his ear: "The time of thy trial is
fulfilled. Behold this country, thine own land";
and with the eyes, not of the body:
"I see, I see a lovely land,
Spaces stretching of broad meads,
Mountains, forests, and two seas;
And a loved and mighty race,
Sad and yearning, gaze through tears. "
"Their great mother is in mourning. The
Poland of the Piasts, of the Jagiellos, once mistress
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? 204
POLAND
of Lithuania, Ruthenia, Silesia, has now no corner
of her soil free. "
"Silent everywhere our language,
Language in our hearts beloved.
As the instrument of angels,
? Even so fair its melodies.
Must it then be whispered only?
Hear, oh, Lord, our little children
Wailing from a hiding place.
Saddest fate! they learn to fear
Their foe before they fear their God.
1 And our women, weak and fainting,
For long years weep in the dust.
Their sons, their brothers, lie in graves,
Or wander at the world's far ends. "
And the prophet-poets cry aloud with all their
strength the Polish songs: their voices are as
the wailing of the orphaned.
The singer is carried again on the wings of the
wind of the steppe, and swept to the Tatry--the
Carpathians--into the vision up to which the
whole poem has been leading. He sees on the summit
C i of the Polish mountains his mother Poland, but
| I a figure far removed from that under which
Mickiewicz and Krasinski delighted to symbolize
her. Here she is the beautiful repentant sinner.
"She has loved and she has wandered. She has
knelt for years in ashes. " Her hair streams in
grief and penitence, dishevelled, to the wind.
Her cheek has faded for mourning. Beside her sit
her sisters who have shared her fate: Lithuania,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:09 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015005782621 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? THE SPIRIT OF THE STEPPE 205
taking refuge in her bosom, the Ukraine, "beauti-
ful, incarnate song," who weeps, and through her
tears looks upon "me, her son. " The procession
of Poland's dead heroes gathers about her: and
her sisters, kneeling, cry to heaven the word so
beloved by Zaleski:
"Great her sins, but surely, Lord,
Greater still Thy mercy is. "
Rainbows flash from heaven, and ever louder
is the song of the angels and of the apostles of
Slavonia: "Honour and glory to the Magdalen.
We carry the absolution of the Lord. Raise the
penitent's head. The Lord is arming the arch-
angel.