No More Learning

There remains, then, the child, the strange, mourn-
ful child who sees visions and talks to his dead
mother. ! He is said to be the reminiscence of
Krasinski's own shadowed childhood. His blind-
ness is described with the psychology of intimacy,
for while Krasinski wrote the play he was nearly
blind himself. The son's hallucinations are the
embodiment before his father's eyes of the lattef's
punishment, of the spirit of poetry in its destruc-
tive form. The child is the type of a soul that is
too weak to cope with a difficult world, whose only
refuge is in dreams, and whose death is as unneces-
. Whatever Henryk's egoism, Krasinski was too'
great an artist to paint him without affection for
an only son. f His knowledge of human nature
rather chose to represent the decadent husband,
. who wearied of an uninteresting and domestic
wife, as a selfish but not indifferent father of a son
* J. Klaczko, op. cit, + J. Kleiner, op, cit.
sary as his life had been futile. *
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POLAND
who was, after all, part of himself. The child is
doomed by the physician to incurable blindness.
"Thy son is a poet," calls the unknown voice.
"What more couldst thou desire? " But for
once Henryk's grief rings true. There is no pose
in his cry: "Is there no, no hope? "
He wanders in the mountains. What is left to
him? His family happiness, through his doing, is
shattered. His only child, the inheritor of his
house, is blind, and more or less mad. He has
tried philosophy, and all in vain. The society in
which he has been brought up is dissolving. He
has known every feeling " by name, and there is
no faith, hope or love left in me. " He has, indeed,
loved his son, but with the love of self that could'
not save him. Then the demon again appears to
him, this time under the form of an eagle repre-
senting ambition; and henceforth Henryk is
dominated by the lust of power.
Now begins the second part of the Undivine
Comedy. The revolution is let loose upon the
world. The remnants of the aristocracy, wretched,
boneless specimens, are making their last stand in
the fortress of the Trinity. Once, in the long past,
as we know from a poem of Krasinski's which,1
written after the Undivine Comedy, was intended
to be its introduction, and which remains un-
finished, Henryk had had his dreams of a people's
liberties. Now, not from conviction, for he is not
convinced, not from enthusiasm to a cause, for
his heart is too worn out to harbour enthusiasm,
but from the desire to play the part of a leader of
men and to go out with all eyes upon him, he is
the champion and the commander of the nobles.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI ". ; 121
Opposed to him is Pancracy, the head of the
revolutionaries. No softening element has ever
entered Pancracy's life. ,Nj|meless, he has grown
'up in jnisery, Jiunger, _toil. He will stop short of
nothing. His camp is a shambles, given up to
orgies of bloodshed and _licence, described in
scenes that_ are in p^rt-ikmnded,jwi-th? _e^esses
. of the French revolution, and in part on certain
[of the tenets of Saint-Simonism. That Krasinski
I had no want of sympathy with the oppressed
classes is obvious, from the pathos which he put
into the complaints of the men and women whose
whole existence had been a XQ-und 01 treadmill'
labour, unsweetened by any joy. But he saw no
hope for the future either in the effete ruling
class, or in a revolution where violence was" the
mistress. /Where love 1? not and where the heart'
is absent there can be no victory, according to
Krasinski. So he presents both aristocrat and
democrat with a like cold severity. So he figures
Pancracy as having his moments of wavering,
even as Henryk has. He caiyconvince others, but
not himself. Should he be able to win~Henryk
over TuiTconfidence will be assured, and the one
impediment to his triumph will be removed.
And so the two meet secretly in Henryk's
castle.
In this scene, Henryk's self-dramatization comes
out with startling clearness. His family escutcheons
hang on the walls about him. He summons now
the shades of his ancestors, now the God of his
fathers, to assist him in the interview. Pious
sentiments flow, from his lips. He has assumed
the attitude of the defender of Christianity.
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POLAND
Religion is his aristocratic heritage--and it counts
for nothing else_in his life^^
Pancracy enters.
"I greet Count Henryk. That word 'Count'
sticks in my throat. If I am not mistaken, these
red and blue badges are called coats of arms in
the language of the dead. There are ever fewer
of such little dots on the face of the earth. "
Henryk: "With the help of God you will soon
see thousands of them. "
Pancracy: "There is my old nobility. Always
sure of themselves. Haughty, obstinate, flourish-
ing with hope, and without a farthing, without a
weapon, without soldiers, believing, or pretending
they believe, in God ; for it would be difficult to
believe in themselves! "
Henryk: "Atheism is an ancient formula, and
I expected something new from you. "
Pancracy: "I have a stronger, a mightier faith
than yours. The groans torn by despair and pain
from thousands of thousands, the hunger of
workmen, the misery of peasants, the shame of
their wives and daughters. That is my faith and
my God for to-day. "
Henryk: "I have placed my strength in the
God Who gave the government to my fathers. "
Pancracy: "And all your life you have been
the plaything of the devil. As for the rest, I
leave this discussion to theologians, if some pedant
of the trade still exists in the country. To business!
I came here because I wanted to know you, and,
in the second place, to save you. "
He attempts to move Henryk. The latter en-
trenches himself behind his sworn oath.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 123
"Knightly honour has come upon the scene,"
sneers Pancracy. "That is a faded rag on the
banner of humanity. Oh, I know you. You ally
yourself with the dying because you want to
deceive yourself, because you want to believe still
in caste, in the bones of your great-grandmothers,
in the word my country; but in the bottom of
your heart you know that the punishment is
owing to your brethren, and, after the punish-
ment, oblivion. "
Henryk: "And what else is there for you and
yours? "
Pancracy: "Victory and life. I only recognize
one law. That law is your destruction, and through
my lips it cries: 'Decrepit worms, full of food
and drink, yield to the young, the hungry and the
strong. '"
Then Pancracy paints the golden age which the
revolution will bring about. He speaks alike to the
nobler dreams that had been Henryk's in his
youth and to the poseur's weakest side:
"If you know how to reach immortality, if you
love truth and have sought it sincerely, if you are
a man in the pattern of humanity and not of
nursery rhymes, do not throw away this moment
of salvation. If you are what you once seemed to
be, rise up and follow me. "
For the moment, Henryk wavers. Pancracy's
words sound to his ear as the murmuring of the
"dead sea-shell " of his lost days. Even his spent
heart experiences a stab at the recollection of the
ideals that had gone from him. Meanwhile Pancracy
looks'on with the sarcastic comment--a sufficient
index that his appeal to Henryk was not that of a
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POLAND
deeply felt truth: "I have touched the nerve of
poetry. "
But neither can win over the other. The Un-
(divine Comedy is the drama of negation. No con-
version to an opposing side can enter within its
scope. *
Driven by hunger and panic, Henryk's adher-
ents, feeble to the end, drop away from his side.
The avenging, innocent witness, against whom the
husband and father can have no redress, leads
Henrylc mto the vaults of the castle, and recounts
to him the vision he sees of his father's damnation.
Voices of invisible spirits wail; "Because thou
hast loved n&ight save thyself, because thou hast
worshippeoVnought save thyself, thou art damned
. --damned for all eternity. " All hope is gone. The
enemies are at the gate. The son is slain by a
chance shot at his father's feet; but Henryk can
still exult that his own life will go down in a blaze
of glory. The fortress is captured. Henryk stands
poised for a moment in the sight of his foes on
the ramparts above the precipice. "Poetry, be
. thou cursed by me, as I shall be cursed for all
eternity," is his last cry; and, with hands out-
stretched as a swimmer about to plunge, he leaps
down into the darkness. .
The victory, then, is with Pancracy. One by
one, he sweeps off the miserable survivors of the-
t>ld order to the death, which they face with the
same want of fortitude that characterized their
lives. He stands, as Henryk stood, on the ramparts.
Wherever his gaze rests he beholds the new world
he has created. Then, on a sudden, he cries aloud
* St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI
to his companion. For, above the cloud on fire
with the light of the setting sun, appears to him,
and him alone, a sign of terror. He sees One Who
rises:
"As a pillar of snow-white brilliance above
the precipices. Both hands lean on the cross as the
avenger's on his sword. Of wreathed thunderbolts
is the crown of thorns. From the lightning of
that glance he must die who lives. Put thy hands
on my eyes. Smother my eyeballs with your fists'
Part me from that look that shatters me to dust.
Thy hands are transparent as water, transparent
as glass, transparent as air. I see still! Give me if
only a crumb of darkness! Darkness--darkness!
Galihee, vicisti! "
He falls dead, and the Undivine Comedy ends.
? What remains? Nothing except a ruined world,
where every living thing has gone down in^lhe
pwaters of destruction and desolation. Klaczko has
said that the Undivine Comedy is "a^fareweH'
|rather than a greeting addressed by the poetTto
I humanitarian inspirations, a strong protest against
the ^ataT Illusion of the age which believes it can
regenerate humanity without having first regen-
erated the man, and establish universal right
without having first strengthened the individual
Tin his duties. "* It is this moral, deep down, be-
'neath the surface, and the dramatic conclusion,
told in a few scathing sentences, that redeem the
Undivine Comedy from being an expression' of
unrelieved pessimism, and that give the link without
~ which Krasinski's subsequent work might seem
a far cry from the play of his ,yduth. He saw
* J. Klaczko, op. cit. s'
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? 126
POLAND
a world where two opposing forces disputed for
its mastery. He saw, albeit he does not speak in
the Undivine Comedy with that certainty of his
maturer years which suffering taught him, still
he saw that final triumph lay with neither, but
beyond. *
The Undivine Comedy resembles nothing that
Krasinski ever wrote again. Not only does its
curious terseness give it a place apart in the pro-
duction of a poet, whose literary sin is a tendency
to over ornamentation and elaboration; but its''
unbroken dreariness, its pessimism, are not charac-
teristic of Krasinski as a writer. Devoured by
sadness all his life, never expecting and never
finding personal happiness, he yet looked with
confidence to the resurrection of his nation; and,
deep as are the accents of sorrow that breathe
through his poetry, the keynote of that poetry is
hope. f
II
The idea of Irydion came to Krasinski before
that of the Undivine Comedy; but the latter was
finished first. During the years that the poet was
writing Irydion his life was racked with passion,
and he could not complete it till 1836.
In 1830, in the days preceding the Rising, he
wandered about the Coliseum, then the most
* Adam Mickiewicz, Les Slaves.
t Lord Lytton's Orval is a sort of paraphrase of Krasinski's
Undivine Comedy. Taken from a French rendering1, it is in no
sense a translation, but rather a version of Krasinski's story with
scarcely any resemblance to the. Polish original.
I may add that I am preparing a translation of the Undivint
Comedy direct from the Polish.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 127
poetical of ruins, dreaming by moonlight. His
dreams slowly took shape in the form of the Greek
who plotted in Rome for the overthrow of the
empire that had enslaved his country, and who
was given his sentence at the foot of the cross in
the Flavian amphitheatre. The first time that
Krasinski returned to Poland, after he had left it
as a boy, was in 1832. He stayed a few weeks in
his home; and was then obliged by his father to
spend the winter with him in Petersburg. That
winter was one of Krasinski's dreariest remem-
brances. He was overcome with grief at the fate
of Poland, lonely and desolate of soul in the
capital of Russia, parted from all his friends with
whom--Polish exiles as they were--he might not
correspond. To Reeve alone could he write, albeit
with strict reserve, because the letters were read
by the censor, and also because the condition of
his eyes frequently compelled him to dictate his
correspondence. More or less blind, he could do
nothing but remain all the winter shut up in one
room, with no occupation or distraction except
his father's visits and his own meditations, and
that one painful and perilous audience with
Nicholas I. , which he has told under an allegorical
form in his Temptation. Under these circumstances,
he evolved the conception of Irydion, his Thought,
as he always called it. The Pole in Petersburg put
his feelings into the son of Hellas who trod the
streets of Rome with rage in his heart. Yet the
teaching of Irydion is that hatred for the oppressor
will compass the destruction of the nation that
employs it, and that iove, and only love, is the
constructive force of a downtrodden people.
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? 128
i
POLAND
Unable for his father's sake to speak openly,'
unable for his own sake to do so in days when
frank language was liable to send writer, as well
as reader, to Siberia, Krasinski couched his mean-
1 ing under a symbolism where he who ran might
read.
The morals that Krasinski urges upon his
countrymen are invariably forgiveness ajjd love;
but his confidences to his intimate friends lay
bare the nature of the battle that he fought against
himself. His heart, as a young man, was swept by
a storm of hatred for those who had brought
misery upon his nation. He wrote--in 1831--to
Henry Reeve:
"You, a free man, a man born free, you cannot
understand the feelings of a man whose ancestors
were as free as you, but who is himself an oppressed
slave. You have never seen a young and beautiful
woman weeping hot tears for the loss of her
honour, torn from her by the brutality of a con-
queror. You have never heard the chains quiver-
ing around the arms of your compatriots. In the
night, the sounds of lamentations have not made
you start from your sleep, you have not risen on
your pillow, you have not listened half asleep to
the wheels jolting on the pavement, the wheels
of the cart that carried your relation, your friend,
to the snows of Siberia. You have not been forced
to hear a hard, rough language thrust on a people
who did not understand it. You have not caught
a glimpse of the haggard faces of your brothers
through the grating of a prison. Round the winter
hearth, you have never been told how such a one
disappeared, how another was condemned, how
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 129
this village was burnt, that town sacked, and all
Praga drowned in the blood of its inhabitants,
children flung palpitating on the frozen, stiff
breasts of their mothers. . . You have not followed
on the map the desolation of your country, till
it was at last overwhelmed under the weight of
the oppressors. To you everything has spoken of
peace, happiness, forgetfulness. That is why
hatred appears so hideous to you. -Hatred was the
companion of my childhood. I hateawith all the
strength of my little heart before I loved either'
a woman or friend. It is an element which has
mingled with my nature and which has become
a part of my being. "'*V I
To a Polish friend, better able than the pros-
perous young Englishman to understand the
strength of the temptation, Krasinski confided
that his sympathies were with Irydion, the hater
and the avenger, and that only logic and necessity
led him to the conclusion of love triumphant
that makes the moral grandeur of the play.
"What is, is," he added. " It is not our caprices
'that rule the world, but the mind of God. "t
Irydion represents the victory of Krasinski's
higher self, a life-giving truth spoken from the
anguish of one Pole to the anguish of thousands
. of Poles.
The length of the drama, the elaboration of.
the style, the wealth of detail that, indeed, at times
somewhat overlays the main purpose, are in
? Correspondance de Sigismond Krasinski et de Henry Steve,
Paris, 1902. Letter of Krasinski to Reeve, Nov. 18, 1831.
t Letters of Zygmunt Krasinski. Vol, I. fo Constantine Ga>>z-
ynski, June 6, 1837,
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? 130 POLAND
'strong contrast with the Undivine Comedy. Irydion
glows with the colour and pageantry of Imperial
Rome. It was Krasinski's mental refuge to picture
the blue skies of the south, as he thought out
Irydion during the long winter in a snow-bound
city, where all that his half-blind eyes could see
from his window were white roofs and a gray pall
of clouds. *
Irydion is the son of Amphilochus the Greek
and of a Scandinavian priestess. The touch of
northern blood is required in order to give Kras-
inski's " Thought 'f its mystic link with the north,
and also as foretelling the direction from which
Rome's fall was to come upon her. The scene is
laid in the reign of Heliogabalus. Both of Irydion's
parents are dead when the drama, which is written
in prose, begins. He and his sister, Elsinoe, are
alone, under the tutelage of a majestic and mys-
terious old man; called Masinissa, in reality,
Mephistopheles. Nursed in hatred of Rome,
Irydion has been brought up with the one idea of
compassing, not his nation's resurrection, but the
ruin of her conqueror. To that end he is stealthily
proceeding. Every weapon, however ignoble,
suits his purpose if only it can bring about the
desired result. On all sides he sows treachery,
destruction, disgrace--for the sake of finally
destroying Rome.
His master move is to sacrifice his sister's honour
to Heliogabalus, and, through her, to play on the
fears and caprices of the half-childish emperor,
till the latter becomes a tool in the Greek's hands.
The farewell of Irydion and Elsinoe on the evening
* J. Kallenbach, op. cit.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSKI 131
when the imperial slaves are coming to fetch her
away is the first scene of the drama. Here, as in ^ >>.
the madhouse episode in the Undivine Comedy] *
Krasinski handles a terrible sifuation with artistic
'power and restraint. The beautiful child, for she
is little more, throws herself weeping \>n the
mercy of her brother.
"Thou knowest," is his reply, "that thou art
no more my sister, thou art not the golden-
haired Elsinoe, the hope of thy father's house,
the darling of my heart. Thou art the victim
appointed for the suffering of many and for the
shame of thy fathers,"
Elsinoe: "Yea. You all have taught me this
from childhood, and I am ready. But still not to-
day, not to-morrow--a little later, when I have
gathered strength, when I have heard more of
Masinissa's teaching and thy commands, when I
have drunk to the bottom of the chalice of your
poison. "
Irydion: "Thou art chosen. We needs must
hasten on the road we tread. "
Elsinoe: "Remember when we played on the
grass-plots of Chiara, I loved thee so. Oh, have
-mercy on me! "
Irydion: "Woman, thou temptest me to pity
in vain, in vain. "
Elsinoe: "Why so many prayers and tears?
It was possible in times of old to save oneself by
death from men and gods. See, thy dagger flashes
there, Irydion. Let us hasten annihilation for
ourselves, Irydion. "
Irydion: "Thou blasphemest against thy
father's thought. Of old the life of one man
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? 132
POLAND
sufficed for the salvation of nations. To-day the
times are otherwise. To-day the sacrifice must be
of honour. " He clasps her in his arms. "To-day
thou shalt be wreathed with roses, decked with
smiles^Oh, unhappy child, lay here thy doomed
head. For the last time in thy father's house thy
brother presses thee to his bosom. Take thy fare-
well of me in all the beauty of thy maiden fresh-
ness. Neyer again shall I behold thee young--
never, never again. " 1
Then he, too, fails at the thought of what he is
doing. He cries to Masinissa for support. His
hesitation, Elsinoe's prayers'and tears, all alike die
at the entrance of the old man. Adorned as a
bride, weeping and swooning, the girl h carried
off by the slaves of Heliogabalus; but irydion's
end is gained. He, and Elsinoe acting under his
-orders, assume entire dominion over the young
'emperor, the mad, childish degenerate whose
personality stands out in vivid colours in Krasin-
. ski's drama. Irydion soon convinces him that he,
the" Greek, is his only friend, and that no safety
. will be his till he abandons the city and retires to
^uild up another in the east. In the meanwhile,
the traitor tampers with the Praetorians, and
lures the barbarians and gladiators to his side.
They only wait Irydion's signal to fall upon Rome;
but Irydion is not ready yet. He believes that
Rome cannot be destroyed unless he wins the
adhesion of the Christians, and they, he knows,
will not consent to fight against their persecutors
whom their Founder bade them forgive. Masinissa
persuades him to go down into the catacombs, to
feign the profession of Christianity and receive.
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? ZTGMUNT KRASINSK1 133
baptism and then, seemingly as a fervent neophyte,
By all the craft in his power to sow dissension among
'the Christians, and convince the more restless and
impetuous that it is their duty to' take up
arms. Irydion is baptized by the name of Hieron-
imus. /He attempts to work his will with the
Christians. But the task is a difficult one. Masi-
nissa counsels him to dupe some Christian virgin,
and to play upon her religious exaltation till it
turns into love for him. Then, when she is his,
victory will follow. . For once, Jrydiqn shrinks.
He has in his mind ^Cornelia, the pure ind
beautiful maiden, Vowed to Christ, who has
talked to him of his soul,
"Must all that is holy and dear to others be
ever a sacrilege for me? Who made me miserable
and vile? She, who is the murderess of all my
moments, whose name is Rome. "
"There is another Rome," answers Masinissa,
"that cannot perish. Not on seven hills, but on
millions of stars have her feet rested. " Against
that Rome Irydion must swear eternal enmity. t
And Irydion,' calling on "unhappy Hellas," con-1
sents for love of her to destroy another's joy, "to
tear hope away from one who hoped. "
Masinissa is Satan. Krasinski's conception of a'
Mephistopheles is unusual. He is grand, majestic,
and, save in certain moments when he speaks or acts
openly as the minister of hatred, passionless. His
attitude with Irydion is less that of a tempter
than of a conspirator on equal terms. He incites or
encourages Irydion to vile deeds, such as the
sacrifice of the two women in the play; but it is
in the name of a sacred cause that he does so, for
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POLAND
the love of Hellas. He will ruin souls by his appeal,
not to their baser, but to their higher, desires. *
Krasinski's idea in the presentment of this Mephis-
topheles is that he is the satan of the world's
policy; the evil spirit of humanity that thrusts
governments and peoples back from the road of
spiritual progress, that would warp a nation's
love to destroy her by that love itself. f
Irydion has already brought disunion and con-
fusion where before all was brotherly charity and
steadfast purpose. He has set the young men
among the Christians on fire for battle in the
name of God. The old men, headed by the Pope,
Victor, seek to hold them back, appalled at the
thought of taking the blood of their persecutors.
If only Cornelia, who is venerated as a saint by
her fellow-believers, will persuade them to listen
to Irydion, his cause is won. He, therefore, sets
himself to deceive her by every wile of diabolical
craft that his cunning can suggest, into which <
against his will the touch of human passion on his
side now and again steals. They stand together
alone in the bowels of the earth, among the cor-
ridors of the dead stretching as far as eye can
reach. The maiden, in whose portrayal there is
the tenderness of touch, the strange, elusive charm
peculiar to Krasinski's women, trembles for
lrydion's soul. The Greek, dark and gloomy,
watches her as with the eyes of a snake on the bird
he is ensnaring. She entreats him to desist from his
thirst for bloodshed that she can only look upon
as sin.
* J. Kleiner, History of the Thought of Zygmunt Krasinski.
t St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:09 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp.