No More Learning

Henry Reeve, the future editor of The Edinburgh,
Review, the political leader writer during many years
for The Times, was in 1829 living with his mother in
Geneva, finishing his education. In those days he was
romantic, poetical, enthusiastic even as Krasinski him-
self. The two became inseparable. To Henry Reeve
not only the student of Krasinski, but the whole Polish
nation, must ever owe a debt of gratitude. The dis-
covery in 1892 of the correspondence between Krasinski
and Reeve, consisting of a hundred and sixty-three
letters, mainly Krasinski's, which range from the early
summer of 1830 to the spring of 1838, has thrown in-
valuable light upon a period of the poet's life that is of
the highest psychological importance, and of which much
1 Op. cit.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? The First Exile
23
hitherto had been left to conjecture. After the first
affectionate relations of their youth, Krasinski and
Reeve dropped entirely out of each other's lives1. But
more than forty years after Krasinski had left this earth
a Polish youth, a stranger--thus Dr Kallenbach de-
scribes the scene2--found his way to the country home
of Henry Reeve, then in extreme old age. Reeve saw
before him a young Pole whose face seemed vaguely
familiar. It was the grandson of the gifted boy, with
the strangely tragic history, whom Reeve had loved
when himself young. The old man handed over to
Count Adam Krasinski a bulky packet, containing not
only his and Krasinski's letters, but also some then un-
known literary fragments of Krasinski's French prose
that the poet had sent him directly*Mey were written*.
All these were edited and published with an illuminating
introduction by Dr Kallenbach in 1902.
From these letters it is apparent that during the
years in Geneva Krasinski and Reeve were like
brothers. They boated and rode and walked together;
shared every confidence; discussed literature, philo-
sophy, and politics; read and criticized each other's
literary productions; and sighed in company over the
respective ladies of their affections.
For Krasinski fell in love with an English girl, a
certain Henrietta Willan. Krasinski, the only son and
1 But that Krasinski spoke often and with strong affection of Reeve we
know from a letter that the poet's wife wrote after his death to Reeve, in
reply to the words of condolence that the latter had addressed on his loss
to Count Ladislas Zamojski, one of Krasinski's greatest admirers. John
Knox Laughton, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve,
London, 1898.
2 See his Preface to Correspondance de Sigismond Krasinski et de
Henry Reeve, Paris, 1902.
3 /did.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? 24 ? The Anonymous Poet of Poland
heir of a great Polish magnate, could never hope to
obtain his father's consent to marriage with a young
Englishwoman of no standing. Both he and Henrietta
knew this well, but they promised each other endless
attachment. Under the inspiration of his love Krasinski
poured out French compositions, written for Henrietta,
given to Reeve, and only known to Poland after they
had lain seventy years in English keeping.
These semi-autobiographical pieces, a fragment of
a journal, Krasinski calls them, or a fragment of a
dream, are impregnated with the exaltation of a boy
in love. They contain certain characteristics that
strongly illustrate the psychology of Krasinski. It was
but natural that the imagination of a highly-strung boy
who had been born after a great political crime had
been inflicted on his country, and who had been brought
up with the results of that crime as a part of his daily
life, should occupy itself with lurid scenes of cataclysm
and bloodshed. These figure largely in the passages
he wrote for Henrietta, and to this nightmare style he
returns much later in his Polish prose poems: The
Dream of Cesara and A Legend. In these early pro-
ductions the vision of Henrietta is always there, but
it is never far away from the thought of his country.
So, in after life, is the image of the woman for whom
Krasinski wrote his love poems, intimately, inseparably,
united to a patriot's passion. Then, too, Krasinski's
sentiment for the English girl was ethereal and un-
practical, the germ of that idealization of human love
that gave Dawn to the Polish nation.
"I did not love her lips but her smile," writes the young
lover, "not her body but her immortal soul. I neither saw her
body nor mine," he continues, speaking of their reunion after
death, "but I felt that she was near me. We understood each
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? The First Exile
25
other better than on earth. All our beautiful thoughts, all our
sublime feelings, formed one chain that bound us together and
kept us near each other. Our memories stood to us in the
place of hope, for we were in a perfect beatitude. Her soul
mingled with mine. " {Fragment d'un Journal. March 24,1830. )
The Willan family left for England in the spring of
1830. Krasinski remained behind in a youthful lover's
despair. He relieved his feelings by the exchange of
letters with Henrietta and by literary composition.
"Two days after her departure ": "Five days after her
departure, at ten, eleven, twelve at night" : so he heads
the writings in which he deplores his solitude without
her. He dreams of fighting for freedom in the Polish
ranks, with her face before his eyes, or he chooses an
eternity of woe rather than be divided from her beyond
the grave. He sat in his room, overlooking the magni-
ficent panorama of the Lake of Geneva, covering reams
of paper by the light of two candles till far into the
night1. He wrote chiefly in French--sketches, me-
mories, reflections--but also short pieces in his native
language which were printed in the Polish paper of
which Gaszynski was sub-editor. It is a striking fact
that prophecies of woe and struggle, strangely prescient
of the Rising that the Polish nation was to see before
the year was out, repeat themselves again and again in
Krasinski's writings at this time. There is also the
sense not only of impending disaster, but of personal
frustration. No doubt we can find one reason in the
ever rankling wound of the blow that had befallen
Krasinski before he left his country. Furthermore, he
must have lived, if scarcely consciously to himself, under
a weight of oppression in those days when it was obvious
that the tension between the Kingdom of Poland and
1 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? 26 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
Nicholas I was bound to end in some sort of explosion.
But it must also be taken into account that now, like
every youth of the epoch, Krasinski was becoming
strongly affected by Byron.
It is a curious anomaly in Krasinski's history that
he who was to be one of the greatest of his nation's
poets, who read poetry with passion, was so far with-
out the instinct for self-expression in verse native to
every poetical boy or girl. While in Geneva he fell
under the spell of the English romantic poets. He was
fascinated by Southey, Campbell, Moore--whose name
he invariably spells wrongly--and Keats. With enthu-
siasm he read Shakspeare under Reeve's auspices. "If
it were not for poetry," he tells his father, "I don't
know what a man would do in this world, and how he
could live, surrounded only by cold reality1. " Yet, for
all the hours that, consumed by literary ambition, he
spent composing, he seems hardly to have even at-
tempted to write poetry, and when he did he failed.
Romantic, too, as were the tendencies of Krasinski's
mind, he possessed even when a boy--he kept it through
life--a curiously clear vision and accurate power of
observation.
His sarcastic descriptions of the Geneva salons are,
as Dr Kallenbach notes, borne out in every detail by
the accounts of other frequenters of the same society.
For all his dreams, Krasinski never lived with his head
in the clouds. If we may be permitted the expression,
he was always "all there. " His interest in politics,
inevitable in a Pole ever awaiting the turn of events
that would affect his country, was already strong. All
manner of subjects attracted his attention: and among
1 Given by Dr Kallenbach, op. cit.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? The First Exile
27
his French essays written in his first summer at Geneva
is an argument for and against the advisability of a
state clergy.
In the summer of 1830 Reeve and his mother left
Geneva for the vacation. Krasinski devoted his even-
ings to solitary rambles, ending in a garden near the
house in which Henrietta Willan had lived. In this spot,
gazing on the lake at his feet and at the snowy peaks
reddening to the setting sun, he wrote down the poetic
fancies with which his head was filled. His reflections
were faithfully handed on to Reeve: and now began
the eight years' correspondence between the two friends.
Had Krasinski left no line of poetry behind him, he
would still have lived in the literature of Poland by the
depth of thought, the beauty of expression, in the
several hundred of his letters that have as yet been
published. As regards literary power, his letters to
Reeve naturally cannot be compared with those to
Gaszynski, Sottan and his other Polish correspondents.
In the former Krasinski is writing in a foreign language,
admirably as he manipulated it. The greater part of
them were penned in early youth before he had reached
either the maturity of his genius or the full development
of his leading idea. But as an index to his character--
that strangely complicated, contradictory and most
appealing character--as the illustration of a poet and
philosopher's mental evolution, the letters to Reeve are
a priceless asset to the Krasinski student. They are
written in French with, at times, an excursion into an
English so peculiar that we can only describe it as the
reverse of conversational. This interchange of ideas
between two clever and enthusiastic boys is of course
largely coloured with the romanticism of the early
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? 28
The Anonymous Poet of Poland
thirties when Byron, Shelley and Keats were the idols
of the hour. It shows a certain amount of youthful
exaggeration, here and there boyish folly, a distinct
tinge of the posing that was then the fashion. But, as
Dr Kallenbach bids us notice, side by side with the
often callow sentiments of the earlier portion of the
correspondence, may be found those deep reflections
that were to make of Krasinski one of the most pro-
found and truest thinkers of his nation1. The first
letters were written before tragedy and shame had
changed a boy's heart, while he still played with emotion
and, to a certain extent, caressed a Byronic grief. After
the Rising of 1830 had broken out, bringing upon the
young Pole its double weight of national and private
anguish, the tone of the letters changes. They are no
longer those of a morbid and romantic boy who had
been reading a good deal of Byron, but of one whose
youth was immersed in an abyss of suffering where he
found his manhood. Studying these self-revelations of
an over sensitive and highly pitched nature, we see the
young Krasinski penetrating at the outset of life with
an almost startling acuteness into the mysteries of pain
and the spiritual psychology of conflict. That insight
is of itself a greater proof of the deep waters through
which his soul passed than even those many passages
in which he directly confides the details of his grief into
the ears of those he loved.
The letters to Reeve open, as we should expect,
with lamentations for Henrietta Willan's absence.
Krasinski complains that the peaceful scenery of the
Swiss lakes ill accords with the mood of two lovers:
1 J. Kallenbach, Preface. Correspondance de Sigismond Krasinski et
de Henry Reeve.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? The First Exile
29
for Reeve was more or less enamoured of a Swiss
girl, Constance Sautter.
"I must tell you that the day before yesterday I was in
such a state of distress, of disgust"--Krasinski underlines his
English words--" boredom, melancholy, that life weighed on
me more than ever and, for the first time, the degrading idea
came to me of finishing with this world which has brought me
but few joys, taken from me as soon as I felt them. It was the
first time in my life that I have had the idea of suicide, so I
marked it down in my pocket-book. But I soon repulsed with
disdain that thought which can sometimes rise in a delirious
brain, but which can never be carried out except by a cowardly
heart that lacks nobility. .
"The night before last, being unable to close my eyes, I
read the work of M. Boissier, ' Shall we find them in a better
world? ' and I found there consolation, life and hope, though
the style is dry and dusty--and not one grain of poetry. When
I have finished the romance that is occupying me at present,
I shall write a work like it in Polish, but adding to it all the
charms of imagination and poetry that my weak mind can put
together--and I shall dedicate it to Her who inspired me with
it. You can well understand that it will be without name.
People can take it for a work of my imagination, and it will
rather be that of my heart1. "
Krasinski then gives Reeve a sketch of an essay
he had just been showing to their French teacher, and
asks for his opinion. It contains so strange a fore-
boding of what he suffered during the Rising that we
cannot altogether pass it by. Beginning with the words:
"I have known a really unhappy man," it goes on to
describe a youth at heart a poet, but who cannot express
himself. He loves, and his love, too, ends in failure, his
beloved casting him off by reason of his seeming
ineptitude. He becomes "dumb and stupefied " by his
misfortune. "It was given to the voice of an oppressed
country to wake him from this fearful lethargy. The
1 Correspondence de Sigisntond Krasinski et de Henry Reeve. Letter
to Reeve. Geneva, June 26, 1830.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? 3<3 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
love of his native soil gave him back his moral strength.
Like the others, he was fain to march with a rapid step
to glory. " He goes to battle, but, worn out with grief, is
physically too weak to fight.
He was forced to exchange the field of honour for a bed
of suffering, while each of his brothers gave his blood for
liberty. Thus could he never express himself either in action
or in word. Despised, his heart torn by the cries of victory in
which he could not share, he died, leaving no name, exciting
no enthusiasm and moving no pity. (Fragment. June 24, 1830. )
Both Krasinski and Reeve were devoured with the
passion of the pen. Krasinski carefully keeps Reeve
informed upon everything that he writes and plans.
These include a pleasing story of the Polish legions,
animated with patriotic feeling and with the verve of a
soldier's son who had been brought up on the tradi-
tions of the legions, which came out in a Swiss magazine,
besides The Confession of Napoleon that stayed un-
known in Reeve's possession for more than half a
century. The last-named is very typical of the almost
religious veneration for Bonaparte that was to stand
for so much in the Anonymous Poet's philosophy.
On his side, Reeve sent Krasinski his verses for
inspection. Krasinski's friendships were always of a
markedly robust nature. He idealized every man and
woman he loved: but he never hesitated, as we see
from his correspondence with his friends, to remonstrate
fearlessly when he disapproved in any way of their
conduct or opinions. In his letters to Reeve, he
candidly criticizes the latter's literary attempts; yet the
generosity of a man who, in his own career as a writer
never envied or detracted another's fame, is already
patent. He thinks Reeve immeasurably superior to
himself, and although he takes exception to some of his
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? The First Exile
31
friend's expressions he is always eager to seize upon
anything that he can praise. In this case it must be
confessed that Krasinski's heart triumphed over his
head, for it is obvious that he genuinely admired the
shocking doggerel that Reeve turned out.
"I have received," writes he, italicizing as usual his English
phrases, "your piece about Polish Freedom.
'Here a nation lies'
is exceedingly good and beautiful. But, my dear fellow, I will
tell you my opinion frankly. The verses are written rather
hastily and carelessly; but as for the rest it is a beautiful piece,
the more beautiful for me because it reminds me both of a
native country and of a friend who wrote it.
"You are, my dear Reeve," he goes on, reverting to their
love affairs, "admirably cold blooded for a man in love. You
write me these words: 'whom perhaps I shall never see again':
without a fault in spelling, and without so far as I can see your
pen having trembled in your hand. My dear fellow, I envy
you that energy, that strength, that want of feeling, or rather
that calm, that resignation. I could not be capable of them1. "
"'Those whom the gods love die young,'" writes, on an-
other occasion, the poet who was never to see old age. "It
is the truest saying I have ever read or heard. And what shall
we do, my dear Henry, when life will be only vegetation? The
rose we once loved and adored as an emblem and a symbol,
we shall be dissecting then to find out how many petals it
has and how many lines lengthwise its calyx has. Where we
saw soul and life we shall only see matter and weight. A pair
of compasses and circle are what await us. Love and poetry
are what we shall leave behind us. But perhaps God will not
let us thus change; perhaps our grave is not far off, and the
flowers are about to grow above us2.
"If we might only be consumed away with great thoughts
and a slow agony in the arms of those we adore! This is my
wish as a poet, but as a man, as a Pole, can it be the same?
No. I must think of other things; and while for you the heart
may be your world, for me love is only a song piped in the
intervals of the acts of life; and yet I would give all for love
to be my life. My dear Henry, do not think that my affairs
are going so badly. No. She loves me still. . . . And even if that
1 Op. cit. To Reeve. July 8, 1830.
2 The italics in the text are always Krasinski's own which he employs
when he writes in English.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? 32 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
were not the case She has loved me. That is enough. The
thoughts that have turned towards me can no more be lost.
Thought is immortal, and her love will be immortal as her
thought is. In the same manner if C. has loved you each of
her great and sublime thoughts has departed from her heart
like a ray of the sun, and mounted to heaven. You have a
great, an enormous advantage over me. Your kingdom can
be not of this world, if you will. Mine is in part chained to
the earth by my country. I am like Vulcan falling from
heaven, and unable either to return to heaven or reach the
earth. I am suspended in space by a chain of steel that
penetrates my heart, that gnaws it and will perhaps break it1. "
Here, with Reeve's return to Geneva, the corre-
spondence ceased for some months. In August the
friends took a trip into the mountains. Among the
beautiful scenes through which they passed Krasinski
dreamed constantly of Henrietta. He beguiled away
a tedious journey on muleback by writing a poem to
her: apparently a very bad one, for he and the Polish
poet, Jijdward OdyriieCj to whom he showed it, laughed
over it together.
Odyniec, who had been a frequent guest at the
Krasinski palace, was now in Switzerland, travelling
with Mickiewicz. When he had last seen Krasinski in
his father's house he had thought him nothing more
than a lively and clever boy. He found now, he says
himself, a youth full of fire and genius, "if not yet a
thinker, at least a dreamer-poet; though he does not
know how to write poetry and only tries his powers in
prose .
- In common with all Polish youths Krasinski wor-
shipped Mickiewicz and had devoured his poems: but,
brought face to face with him, the enthusiastic boy's
first impressions were those of disappointment. The
1 Op. cit. To Reeve. Geneva, July 14, 1830.
2 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunt Krasinski.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? The First Exile
33
three--Mickiewicz, Odyniec and Krasinski--started on
a tour through Switzerland. They had not been to-
gether long before Krasinski was carried away with
admiration for the great poet whose devotion to the
moral welfare of the youth of Poland had sent him in-
to prison and exile.
"I have learnt from him," wrote Krasinski to his father,
"to look at the things of this world more coolly, in a finer way,
more impartially. I have got rid of many prejudices and false
ideas1. "
The journey at close quarters with one of the
greatest poets in Europe filled Krasinski with inspi-
ration. Its first result was that in a French journal of
the expedition which he wrote as he went along, nomi-
nally for Henrietta, he had already corrected some of
the affectations in his style3. The descriptions of
scenery given in this diary are so true to life that Dr
Kallenbach speaks of its pages as "impregnated with
the breath of Switzerland. " But, poetical as are Kra-
sinski's pictures of nature, they always lack the wonder-
ful charm of Mickiewicz's magnificent word-paintings.
Krasinski loved nature: but the moments where she
plays any part in his poetry--exquisite and ethereal
moments, it is true--are rare, and are invariably only
there as the necessary accompaniment to a deeper
passion behind.
In the dungeon of Chillon Mickiewicz, looking
round at a scene that reminded him of the prison
where he and his dearest friends had once languished,
spoke to his companions of human tyranny and its in-
capacity to touch the soul. Zygmunt, hearing for the
first time Mickiewicz discoursing in his own particular
1 J. Kallenbach, Zygmunl Krasinski. 2 Op. at.
3
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? 34 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
and enthralling manner, hung on his words so that, even
in the spot immortalized by Byron, he forgot the Eng-
lish poet to whom his heart had hitherto gone out.
This episode in the castle of Chillon was to give Polish
literature one of Krasinski's most tragic poems: The
Last.
It was after a conversation with Mickiewicz that
Krasinski wrote the essay on the meeting of souls in
the next world, of which he had spoken to Reeve. It
was published the same year--1830--in Warsaw under
the title: Fragment from an old Slavonic manuscript.
Tender and poetical, philosophical rather than religious,
it bases the certainty that there shall not be endless
parting on the power of the will to compass its desire,
on the innate love planted by the Creator in the soul
for no transitory purpose, and on the fact of that love
being stronger than death. It presents a decided
spiritual link with the Treatise of the Trinity, written
years later. The mystical bent of Krasinski's mind
shows itself already in the tendency of his youthful
writings to deal with semi-spiritual topics, which from
an orthodox point of view he handles rather vaguely.
The French papers that streamed from Krasinski's
pen, in the autumn months of 1830 before he left
Geneva, range for the most part on melancholy themes.
Death is the subject of many of them. Ecrit la Nuit,
"with emotion and fear," he adds in Polish, where his
soul goes out with questioning and yearning to the
spirits of the dead, is the anticipation of his Three
Thoughts1. Le fournal dun Mourant, La Vie, the
latter a morbidly gloomy description of man's life,
1 J. Kallenbach, Prdface. Correspottdance de Sigismond Krasinski et
de Henry Reeve.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? The First Exile
35
and other fragments of the kind, close Krasinski's first
and singularly strenuous year in Switzerland. .
In the October of 1830 it seemed probable that
war between Russia and France would follow on the
Revolution of July. Krasinski's father was anxious to
remove his only son from the vicinity of a belligerent
country, and sent him into Italy, deaf to Zygmunt's
entreaty that the England of his Henrietta might be
his destination. On the third of November Krasinski
and Jakubowski set out over the Simplon. Reeve and
the Pole, Zamojski, went with Krasinski as far as the first
mile out of Geneva, and then the boys bade each other
a regretful farewell. Krasinski, giving himself up to the
pain of parting with those who had been his favourite
companions for a year past, cared nothing for what
he saw before his eyes during his journey, and his
chief emotion on arriving at Florence was that he
had reached a crisis with Henrietta Willan. He wrote
to her from Florence in reply to some apparently rather
hysterical letters that he found waiting for him there,
telling her clearly that though he would love her for
ever he could never marry her, and could only write
to her as her lover till she married, from which time he
would be her faithful friend, and that alone.
"O my dear Henry" he cries in English, but passing im-
mediately into French, "if I wrote all that to her it is because
duty forced me to do it, for I love her more violently than
ever, and it would have been so sweet not to break this illusion
yet, to begin again the beautiful days of that love which made
me so happy. "
After some warm expressions of affection for Reeve, he
ends: "I am an enemy to tirades of friendship, but I will only
say these few words: I am your friend for life and till death1. "
He tells his friend how in the midst of his agitations
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Florence, Nov. 18, 1830.
3--2
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? 2,6 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
his only calm moments were when he betook himself
to the contemplation of the Medici Venus:
For she is perfect beauty; and beauty, whether it be of
marble or flesh and blood, is always an anodyne in hours of
anguish, and, at the same time, a stimulus in hours of apathy.
He entered Rome with indifference as he relates in
the same letter: "because strong emotions age the
soul, as strong shocks age the body. " But the con-
clusion of the letter changes to the more natural note
of the young Pole looking for the first time on the
grandeur of the Eternal City. With Mickiewicz, then
in Rome, he visited St Peter's, which moved him
religiously not at all. His great moment came to him
in the Coliseum. At the sight of the ruined amphi-
theatre, in Krasinski's day a scene of the most poetical
desolation, which to the Pole was the enduring testi-
mony of the triumph of an oppressed cause against an
empire's power, inspiration flooded the youth's soul.
Polish art has represented the Anonymous Poet dream-
ing within the walls of the Coliseum: for it was in its
moonlit arches that Krasinski conceived the idea of
Iridion, and there that he places what is not merely the
crisis of his mystical drama, but the great spiritual key-
note of the theory of salvation that he built up for his
people.
"On a beautiful moonlight night," thus the letter to Reeve,
"I entered under those arcades which have seen so many
generations, and have not crumbled away under the weight
of either men or time. "
He heard in fancy the discordant cries of the. Circus, the
"soft and tremulous" hymn of the Christian martyrs.
At this moment the moon appeared on the walls of the
Coliseum, as though she rose from a tangle of ivy which fell in
festoons from the summit of the building. Columns, arcades,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? The First Exile 37
porticoes, the seats of the Caesars, of the senators, of the
populace, stood out, pallid and in ruins. The arena was laid
bare. In the centre rose a cross of black wood. To me that
cross is worth the Cathedral of Milan and the church of St
Peter's. That cross was persecuted in this spot, many centuries
ago, when the Coliseum represented all the might of those
who had built it. And that cross. . . to-day stands erect where
it was trampled underfoot, and the superb Coliseum which
proudly beheld its humiliation is now being consumed to dust
around it. But it has no aspect of pride in its triumph. In
silence it stretches its black arms to the two sides of the
building, and seems to cast a shadow of peace and benediction
on the earth where persecutors and persecuted sleep.
Let him who does not believe in Christ go to the Coliseum
on a fine night; and if he does not fall on his knees before
the symbol of faith that man, I say beforehand, has neither
soul nor heart1.
News travelled slowly in those days, and when Kra-
sinski penned these words he was ignorant of what had
happened in his country. Before his next letter, written
a week later, all Europe rang with the news that the
Polish nation had risen to arms. That gallant struggle,
with its tale of heroism, of failure and of martyrdom,
broke out in Warsaw on the night of November 29,
1830.
1 Correspondance. Krasinski to Reeve. Rome, Dec. 9, 1830.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:08 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
? /
CHAPTER III
THE SACRIFICE
(1830-1831)
For the next ten months Poland was the battle-field of a
nation fighting unaided for her life. The Rising of 1830
cannot correctly be called an insurrection. It was a war
for rights that had been guaranteed by a European
treaty, which all the powers of Europe had signed. It
was waged by a small but national army, swelled by
the rally to its banners of men and women of every class
and condition, who fought side by side with a passion
of patriotic abnegation. Brilliant victories marked the
first months of the war. For a time it seemed as though
Poland were about to secure her freedom.
The news of the November night was as the call
of the trumpet to the youth of Poland. In intense
agitation, Krasinski wrote off to Reeve. By way of
safeguard in case his letter should be opened by others
he wrote in English1. His father who, it must be re-
membered, held a high command in the Polish army,
was in the thick of events, of which Krasinski, far from
the scene, could gain no accurate information.
"The day-break is peeping. . . but at present we do not know
I whether it is the dawn of new life, or the glimpse which
appears when a nation is about to be destroyed. I am in great
anguish. The newspapers are full of obscure words. A thou-
sand thanks to God! I have been assured that my father
1 I always give Krasinski's English entirely as it stands, only correcting
what are obvious slips of the pen.
?