No More Learning

The Unfinished then returns to its dramatic form.
Having learnt the sorrows of humanity and of his
nation and beheld their remedy, Henryk is plunged
into the Venetian carnival. His cicerone is a prince-
banker, the type of the man of money, whose incapacity
to understand any dream or aspiration is in glaring
contrast to the character of the young man beside him.
"I felt like that when I was eighteen," is his would-be
sympathetic answer to the youth whom he means to
please. Henryk is too true a lover of beauty for the
Italian sky not to claim his gaze rather than the
masqueraders; too much of a patriot not to wonder
how men can play the harlequin in their streets that are
trodden by the soldiers of foreign rulers. He and the
banker pass by an unmasked woman, the Princess
Rahoga, leaning on her husband's arm. She is a Pole,
married to a man unworthy of her. Captivated by her
misfortunes and her beauty, dimly conscious that he
has seen her before--in his dream--Henryk falls
desperately in love. This is a chapter of Krasinski's
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? The Unfinished Poem , 297
autobiography. The woman is Delphina Potocka, the
victim of a miserable marriage, and Venice was the scene
of Krasinski's first love where as a youth he spent
hours with Mme Bobrowa. Aligier warns Henryk
against this infatuation. His soul, says the mentor, will
grow old before its time under its influence. He will
squander life, when the treasure of the Pole is "in pain,
sacrifice, service, memories, hopes, immortal desires,"
and his place in the "great and dark forest. " The youth
answers that the woman's pain draws him to her: "Pain,
whether here or whether there, whether in a brother,
or in one of these my sisters, always sadness and pain
call me, lure me. " Here we know from similar ex-
pressions in Krasinski's letters that he is speaking of
himself. Aligier reproaches Henryk for having already
forgotten that the guide has promised to lead him "to
the gathering of secret yearners where the spirit of the
future is labouring to come forth. " There Henryk,
beholding all earthly history, will no longer find it
worthy to dream of one fellow-countrywoman. How far
Krasinski meant to work out Henryk's love-story and
to link it to that of the indifferent husband in The
Undivine Comedy we shall, as Count Tarnowski
observes1, never know. It ends here: and now he is
conducted, still by Aligier, into the vaults of a Venetian
palace where scene after scene is displayed to him
representing the development of the Divine Thought
through all the ages of history.
They are greeted by a choir:
Ye who would create the present and discover the future
take first into the depths of your souls all the dead days of the
past. For albeit history changeth there is one eternal thought
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 298 The A nonymous Poet of Poland
and one only truth. Each thought, conceived in God, sent
from eternity into space and time, as part of the truth, must
suffer as the Son of God suffered in His flesh. It shall be
manifested among men, and suffer and bear its cross, and have
its grave. But each one has risen again in the one which
followed it. Each has risen from the grave in another higher
body.
The first to give their witness from the past are the
Chaldeans. "Ormuzd and Ahriman war eternally. We
craved to be delivered, to be purified, to flow on
flame to thee, oh, unmoved light. "
Their power died to give place to others. The
Egyptian priests next rise before Henryk.
The mystery of mysteries was preserved among us. We
first knew Thee Whose name is: "He was and is and ever shall
be. " Wherefore, oh, Thou Infinite, dost Thou elude us? We
were fain to teach a corrupted race the eternal truth. From
the mighty pyramids, from the labyrinths, Thou didst depart
from us to the setting of the sun.
Strains of aerial voices singing of roses and myrtles
and the sea foam whence rose Aphrodite fall upon
Henryk's ears, and the priests of Eleusis appear to-
gether with Plato. The Hellenic part in the world's
advance is typified by the summons of this choir to
love "the ideal beyond measure. "
"Love," adds Plato, "with unequalled love, and flame in
that love. Know thyself, and, knowing, raise thy butterfly-like
wings. They shall carry thee to thy home, and thy home, thy
native home, is the bosom of God. "
They pass away with their eternal yearning for the
"Desired of ages": and hence it is an easy transition first
to the solitaries of Mount Carmel, expecting the advent
of Christ, then to the Jewish sect of the Essenes
living lives of austerity that preached the victory of the
soul over the body, as they too awaited the Messiah.
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? The Unfinished Poem
299
They kneel, and the youth sinks on his knees also with
Aligier: for they see the form of Christ in the skies,
risen from the dead. An invisible choir sings that Sion,
Greece, and Rome shall no more hold back the human
race. The Son of God has died and risen. "Hence-
forth no people that has become a nation dieth on the
earth. Henceforth no man who has become a" spirit
shall die in the grave. "
The panorama of the "second part of history," with
its "other trials of humanity," now unrolls itself. The
various trends of human thought with their evil and
their strain of good are depicted: the Albigenses,
prophesying the arrival of a Paraclete; the Templars, in
the dying words of their Grand Master, looking for the
world to become one fold; the wanderings of magic
and alchemy always seeking a perpetual elixir they
cannot find; Freemasons in whom Krasinski saw the
inheritors of the Templars, overthrowing kings and
governments. In all these deviations of the human
mind Krasinski beholds a spark of the Divine idea,
which results in nothing because they did not embrace
the entire truth, but only dimly saw one portion of it1.
Revolution and war and bloodshed are everywhere,
and: "as God was slain in man so is humanity slain in
a nation. " The youth now gazes on funeral obsequies,
where three stand by a catafalque, holding sceptres
surmounted not by a cross but a bayonet, and in whose
crowns are shining the jewels of human blood and
tears. In the coffin she sleeps, at the very thought of
whose name the youth cries that he must kiss if but
the earth. "She is my father and my mother, she is my
all. " She breathes still; but her executioners proclaim
1 J. Kleiner, History of the Thought of Zygmunt Krasinski.
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? 300 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
that there will be no peace till she is dead for ever.
While young Henryk is rapt into patriotic passion, the
choir chants: "From the day of the death of the just
the European world shall not rest till itself becomes
just. The nations live, and yet live not, because they
cannot live according to the Thought of God1. "
Since that sin against humanity the world is ruled
by hatred. Choirs swear around Henryk to spread
universal ruin. The guillotine is erected. The French
Revolution shakes the world. Then there rises over
its tempests the figure of Napoleon, beloved by the
Polish mystics.
And now the Lord will say to his soul: "Go forward! " and
nothing and no one shall stay it, and it shall pass on and find
the further way in the darkness.
The choir takes up the panegyric:
Who is equal to him of those who have gone by till now?
All human fates shall flow into that one man--all toils and
triumphs, powers and defeats, joys and woes. As the world
was created straight from God's hand out of nought, so he shall
appear from nought among men and be raised from nought
He shall be heroic like unto the Greek Alexander, an emperor
like the Caesar of Rome, a martyr as the saint of the first
spring of Christ. And he shall die like unto Moses, alone in
the sight of God, foretelling the will of God for the future days
of the race of man.
But the light of him from whose uprising it at first
seemed that "neither kings nor people were to wield
power, but nations and the human race, and in the
name of God," goes out. The three executioners of
1 Here we may point out the striking analogy between what Krasinski
said more than sixty years ago and the language of leading politicians
and thinkers of our day, who have ascribed the great European war to
the original crime of the partition of Poland, at the same time basing
their hopes for the future of Europe on the restoration of Poland.
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? The Unfinished Poem 301
Poland, defeated by Napoleon, return after his fall. The
so-called Holy Alliance is formed. "Diplomacy, police,
gendarmerie," mutter subterranean voices, in answer
to voices crying against them on high.
"Oh, Aligier, is this the solution of so many ages? "
cries Henryk in despair. Have their visions only ended
in this? Aligier would have him wait and hope.
"This is only the ending of the past. Beyond this
threshold begins the present. " Voices hail them in
ecstatic accents, calling them to come and gaze upon
the promised hour. "All that is past and that pained,
passing away shall return, shall live again, be higher
raised, but shall pain no more. " The doors are flung
wide, and the last stage in the pilgrimage is reached.
The action is still in the vaults, and takes the shape
of the initiation of a neophyte into secret rites. The
president in a white toga is on the throne, and against
the walls are ranged choirs of the different nations,
each garbed in national colours, Italian, Irish, German,
French, Slavonic, and Polish. At the head of the
latter stands Pankracy. Henryk is to be received into
1 this brotherhood whose purpose is to work for the
hastening of Christ's kingdom on earth. Kneeling at
the feet of the president he is commanded by the latter
to give an account of what he has seen, and to utter a
protestation of faith in the Trinity of which the history
of man, says the president, is the reflection. Let the
neophyte declare which of the past eighteen centuries
since Christ has honoured Christ. He answers, None.
"That one," takes up the president, "will only honour
Him who will make visible and tangible in all actuality His
precept. Its accomplishment shall be the descent of the spirit,
the deed the very Paraclete. Where is that deed? Dost thou
behold it? Look in thyself. It is there. In thine as in every
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? 302 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
other heart. Neither in the individual nor in nations nor in
humanity shall the eternal grace effect aught till their hands
shall be raised towards it: for the will of the created is the
half of the creation. Even if what is appointed to pass has
passed, even if the times are fulfilled, even if the promised
Spirit already bloweth over the vale of earth, if we ourselves
do not gain Him by our service, by our yearning, by our deeds,
if we do not make of ourselves an altar unto Him, He will not
shine upon us, and we shall remain uncomforted. Are God's
altars only under the arches of cathedrals? They are every-
where: in the parliament chambers, and in the tribunals, and
in the metropolis and the market places, and in the factory
and in the stock exchange, and in every art and in every science
the Lord must be seen, known, honoured and His law fulfilled
--it must be and it shall be. Each toil shall be changed into
a vocation, each office into priesthood. Dost thou feel in the
depths of thy being that thou expectest such a future, that
thou believest in it and dost love it? "
Henryk. Since I have drawn breath I have desired with
each beat of my heart beauty, liberty, happiness--and I live
amidst hideous sorrows. I have never felt young, and thou
dost promise me the renewed youth of the world.
The president then further enunciates the precepts
which are already familiar to the reader of Krasinski
/ that "only he has reached liberty who has made of his
f spirit such a masterpiece that it no longer wars with
itself or with others": that love alone can create.
A dissentient voice is heard from Pankracy. This
reign of justice may be in the future, but it must be
reached by seas of blood. Pankracy, says Dr Kleiner,
is not here the leader of men as in The Undivine
Comedy, whose will sways the universe. With his
entrance into the Unfinished Krasinski's idea of any
connection with The Undivine Comedy wavered.
He is merely an agitator placed there by the poet of
the Bsalm of Grief as a protest against the spirit of
anarchic revolution1. A long dispute ensues between
1 J. Kleiner, op. cit.
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? The Unfinished Poem 303
Aligier, the apostle of love and the antagonist of such
a revolution, and Pankracy, who is assisted by Blauman,
the man who rebels through ignorance and stupidity,
and by a Julinicz in whom Krasinski caricatures Juliusz
Stowacki, parodying the words his brother-poet had
written in his attack upon the Psalm of Love. Con-
sidering the nature of the case Krasinski's treatment
of his antagonist is not of a particularly scathing order.
The contest between Pankracy and Aligier is on the
lines of the Psalms, without their power or beauty. It
ends in the president cursing Pankracy in the name of
the Holy Spirit and of humanity: "for whoso is against
the eternal love he, although he may conquer, shall
perish. " With Pankracy's expulsion from the brother-
hood, in which he is unworthy to represent his nation,
ends all that remains of the Unfinished Poem.
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? CHAPTER XIV
RESURRECTURIS: THE LAST WORDS
OF THE ANONYMOUS POET
(1851-1859)
With the short poem Resurrecturis the Anonymous Poet
brought his work for his nation to its completed end.
He had struggled against the demons of despair. His
life had been beset by the most cruel of exterior circum-
stances. His years were cut short by the anguish that
he had endured for his country. And yet the last word
that put its seal to his life and labour was one of which
the title speaks for itself: to those who are to rise again.
Nothing may be found in Resurrecturis from which a
mind, unattuned to Polish mysticism, might turn away as
from things unsympathetic or uncomprehended. What
soul, tormented by perplexity and grief, has not asked
herself the everlasting question of the first lines of Resur-
recturis? To each the Polish poet gives his answer.
This world is a cemetery of tears, of blood, of mire. This
world to each is his eternal Golgotha. Vainly the spirit writhes
against its pain. There is no halting place in the storm of life.
Fate mocks us every moment. They who are holy die, the
worthy die: the hated live.
All is confusion never to be solved.
Death is nigh; and only far away, somewhere on the later
wave of ages--resurrection.
Then must we torpid grow and petrified, be without heart,
become murderers among murderers, felons among felons? Lie,
hate, slay, and mock: so will we give the world back what it
gives to us. Let us eat and drink. Let us stand for the comfort
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? Resurrecturis
305
of the body, the worthlessness of mind. So shall we be counted
among the stupid and the happy.
Oh, let it not be so! My soul, draw back, oh, stay! Not
with that weapon at the head of all humanity shall the van-
quishers of evil pursue evil without mercy. One only power
in the world, the quiet might of sacrifice, shall crush the
crushing fate. This is the lion of the history of the world.
Pride or abasement are but chaff which each breath of history
casts into the pit.
Oh, know thyself for what thou art. Crave not for the
mastery which is His Who is in heaven, nor choose to be as
the brute beast fattening on the fields of pasture. On this
side the grave, before the resurrection dawns, be thou in man
the suffering which is of heaven, be thou the masterpiece of
unbent will, be patience, mistress of misfortune that slowly
buildeth up her edifice from nought. Be thou defeat, of
distant aim, but which at last shall conquer for all ages.
Be peace amidst the raving of the storm, order in chaos,
harmony in discord. Be thou eternal beauty in the eternal
war of life. Only for vile men and for Pharisees be menace,
wrath, or silence sanctified; and with dissimulation have no
league. But for all others be an angel's breath. Be thou the
sustenance that giveth life to hearts. Be as a sister's tears to
those that mourn, the voice of manhood when their courage
faints. Be home to those who are driven forth from home,
hope to those who have lost their hope, and to those sleeping
in a death-like sleep be thou the awakening thunderblast.
In the struggle with this hell of earth be ever, everywhere the
strength that against death prevails by the stronger strength
of love. Be thou the hell of love1.
In the unceasing form of word and pattern give thine own
self forth freely to thy brothers. Multiply thy one self by
living deeds, and thousands from thy one self shall rise. Be
even in chains unwearied toil. Let every pain, albeit it be
pain, not pain thee. Be thou thy whole nation in thy one
heart. Be thou the miracle uniting heaven to earth--be
sanctity in bondage.
Hasten not to death till, seed in the soil, thy thought
is sown in hearts, and brings forth fruit. So long as thy
own martyrdom assures not victory, thy martyrdom will be
to thy good only, not to humanity's. Shun martyrdom! The
1 Meaning the colossal power of love. Against the objection of the
critics to the term Krasinski stated that it was not his but St Theresa's.
See Letters to St. Kozmian.
G.
20
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? 306 The A nonymous Poet of Poland
garlands of vain glory are grasped by madmen, into the gulf
of danger heroes leap, but the soul's higher strength heedeth
not these illusions.
Only then, when the bell of events, wailing, summoneth
thee to sacrifice thyself for their redemption, and thou, hearing
the earth's call, fallest with thy soul in humble penitence at the
dividing threshold of two worlds, and in thy soul sent thither
by God flows in the silence God's inspiring voice, then rise:
and as the champion who has reached the lists shake from thy
feet the dust from off this earth. Rise, and from the love which,
when it loveth dies, lift to the heavens thy upsoaring hands.
Rise, and to the executioners, hastening on thee, hasten thou
first; and calmly, sweetly, peacefully welcome those guests,
unmourning, with the pitying gaze of thy immortal soul. Then
end with thy rich witness in the future. Be by thy death the
highest bloom of life. What the world called dream and
mirage make thou awake and living, make of it faith, make
of it law, make of it what is certain, tangible, a holy thing
that as a poniard penetrates to hearts to pierce there with-
out end, moving them albeit only by the breath of sighs: until
the world, thy murderer, shall kneel, confessing that God and
country are the conscience of the nations.
When thy thought takes the crimson of thy body's flowing
blood, thy thought shall be the stream of life flashing on high,
God's judgment on the godless multitudes below. Nor man
nor cannon shall keep it back, nor falsehood nor deception,
genius or glory, kings or peoples. And in the third span, on
thy suffering's grave, out of the deluge of events, over the
abyss of sorrows the unborn shall be born--and justice rise1.
Resurrecturis was Krasinski's favourite among his
poems. From the time it appeared, overpowered by
physical sufferings, he could speak no more to his
nation. Yet during these last years he occasionally
wrote lyrics, intimate and sacred, but not for the public
gaze. They are his poems to his wife. It has been
pointed out that the character of Krasinski's love
poems is their passion and virility, which never degene-
1 This last stanza has another reading in Krasinski's original MS. of
1846: "When thy thought shall take flesh from thy body's flowing blood,
thy thought shall be a sacrament, and in the third span they shall not find
thee in thy grave. God now is with thee, God now is in thee. "
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? Resurrecturis
307
rate into sentimentality1. We have already drawn
attention to another peculiarity that distinguishes them;
they are the love poems of a patriot. The poet had
uttered into the ears of his Beatrice his grief for Poland,
illumined by the hope that had risen upon him from
her look. As he neared his end it was his wife who
was the recipient of the deepest and noblest love of his
manhood and of the same high ardour of patriotism, but
one that had been tried and proved victorious in the
furnace of life2. During the winter of 1851-52, which
Krasinski and his family passed in Rome, the poet was
not only in fast declining health, but the victim of
profound melancholy. Yet the Eternal City that had
inspired his Iridion still had even in the midst of his
sadness its message for him and Poland: and in the
spring he wrote that most beautiful of poems, known
in the earlier editions as Roma, but which Krasinski
himself simply calls in his manuscript: To Elisa.
Oh, my loved, lovely one, blessed be thou, because tempted
by the infernal foes thou hast trodden their false allurements
unceasingly beneath thy feet. Oh, my loved, lovely one,
blessed be thou, because upon thy brow thou bearest not the
crown of pride, but the thorn of Polish woes and thoughts of
Christ. Oh, Polish wife of mine, blessed be thou because, while
the world is perishing and our country dies, thou hast among
the whirlwinds of our time believed in hope, even against hope
itself. Oh, Polish wife of mine, blessed be thou, because when
the veil of time is rent asunder that hitherto conceals God's
thought in space, they shall not be defeated who are conquered
now, they shall not sorrow who shed tears to-day.
See, what around thee in the Roman plains is left of pride.
Amidst a desert the turbid Tiber flows through ruins. And
here in gold and purple the unjust trod. To-day the marbles
of their temples sleep in the mire above their dust. And here
they said: "We shall blot out the nations. Only Rome shall
1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski.
2 Op. cit.
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? 308 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
live. " See in their circuses flocks feed and ivy crawls. Read
from the ruins of the Campagna which was Rome's that Poland
shall not die. Power without love is like to smoke: not we,
but it, shall pass. As from yon catacombs that lie beneath the
earth the cross victorious rose, so we shall from the grave go
with victorious steps, immortalized by pain. Oh! let my
witness be the nation's Forum, changed to a desert vale; let
my witness be these sundered heads of the Corinthian pillars,
these statues of the gods shattered to fragments, these Thermae,
arches, aqueducts, transformed to wild and shapeless rocks.
Let my witness be tombs without end from hill to hill. Let
my witness be all that is here both far and near, on height or
plain, the light of heaven and the human ruins, that Poland
shall not die--that there is an avenging spirit that at God's
decree pierces the deep heart of the history of mankind, that
falsehood, perfidy, and treachery die, but Poland does not die;
that the oppressor's destiny is ruin, that Roman triumphs and
Rome's glory die, but Poland does not die; that at the judg-
ment hour the thunderbolt of victory shall hurl the executioners
to earth, that sinning centuries and sinning worlds shall die--
but Poland does not die.
Again on Elisa Krasinska's name-day in 1856, the
poet tells her that "in the flowerless winter of the
world":
Flowers in my soul do ever grow to thee amidst pain's
winters, because thou art my spring, because thou art the last
sun of my life. All has deceived me ere my days shall end.
Thou only on this earth hast not deceived me. Thy form lies
not to those who gaze on thee, when thine eyes' light, the
radiance of thy brow, proclaim the angel in thy soul. All I
have seen was but a dream, a breath, a vapour. Thou only art
no mirage; yet in thee the beauty of the ideal is. Then let
me fall upon my knees before thee, and let my painstricken
lips sigh forth, seeking in all humility thy garment's hem:
"Thou beauty art. " St Elizabeth's Day (Nov. 19th, 1856).
And on the same occasion of her feast-day two
years before his death, the last lines with one exception
that Krasinski ever wrote were again to " My Elisa":
a cry of repentance and reparation.
Once did I dream that I was on the heights of bliss. I
thought I was in the heaven of an inspiration without end: and
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? Resurrecturis
309
yet I squandered all my life to nought, only because I did
not love thee.
Oh! woe unto those hearts to whom it seemeth that the
fires of sin are but the flame of youth: because their skies and
paradise shall turn to ashes for them, eternal bitterness shall
be their life.
Oh! woe unto those hearts by passion riddled. Even
should an angel to their life descend, their future poisoned is
with their past guilt, and an angelic happiness itself shall only
pain them.
Oh! woe unto my heart because it lived on bitter bread,
watered with tears of rage. Tell me, thou who to-day art my
soul's only strength, why in the past did I not love thee?
Purest of peace on thy white brow, high o'er the billows of
the turmoils of the earth; sweetest of mournfulness within thine
eyes. Why in the past did I not love thee?
Oh, be to me henceforth the guide of my existence! Oh,
be to me henceforth the ideal of all beauty! The poison of this
life I have drunk unto its dregs; only because I did not love
thee.
The treasure of my powers has fallen into nought. My
mind has been divorced from inspired flame. My light went
out, I have withered from boundless grief, only because I did
not love thee.
And I gaze often with despairing eyes upon my past, lying
a dead windfall, where are no immortal deeds of mine; only
because I did not love thee.
Oh! look on me! Thou art on high, and I below. Let
death not be for ever my only part. Take from my forehead
with thy hand the pains of life; because now for ever I have
loved thee. To My Elisa (Baden-Baden, St Elizabeth's Day.
Nov. 19th, 1857).
The outer events of Krasinski's declining years were
the Crimean war with, first the hopes, then the bitter
disillusion that it brought to Polish hearts; the death of
Adam Mickiewicz in Turkey while arming a Polish
legion to fight in the war on the side of France and
England;--Krasinski admired him with enthusiasm
as the great poet and leader of his nation, although
he was not in entire agreement with certain of his
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? 310 The Anonymous Poet of Poland
views1; the grievous loss of his youngest child in her
fourth year. In his letters to his friends, often not
written with his own hand but dictated in a condition
bordering on blindness, the poet's deep and increasing
religious faith is very noticeable. In his Roman Easter
of 1852 he writes to Cieszkowski:
I found your letter this morning on my return from
receiving the most Blessed Sacrament. Believe me, there is
something above nature in Confession and Communion. . . All
pain (and whose life is not pain! ) must in the end have recourse
for relief to them. This earth is the pain of pains ; if God did
not frequently come down to it and give Himself to lips
hungering for Him, it would be hell3.
In a later letter, after expressing his trust in Divine
Providence, he adds:
My dear, dear August, the further we go into the forest of
life, the more are there of thorny trees, the fewer flowers and
shrubs and kindlier verdure. But the teaching of life is that
God guides all, that He is at the helm, and men only row, and
that submission to that Most Holy Will is man's only strength3.
Such is the tenor of Krasinski's confidences to his
friends. And still, despite every loss and disappointment
and suffering, his faith in the resurrection of his country
that he knew he would not live to see never failed him
as he sank into his grave. To quote in detail what he
wrote upon this subject to his confidants in the end span
of his life would involve too much repetition of what
has been already said : but among his last letters to his
tried and beloved friends, Ko2mian and Sottan, there
1 "Adam has gone from among us. At that news my heart broke. He
was one of the pillars upholding the edifice, composed not of stones but
of so many living and bleeding hearts. The greatest poet, not only of
the nation but of all the Slavonic races, is no more. " Letters to Sottan.
Baden, Dec. 5, 1855. For further details on Krasinski's relations with
Mickiewicz, see my Adam Mickienvicz.
2 Letters to Cieszkowski. April 12, 1852, Easter Monday.
3 Ibid. Heidelberg, Feb. 6, 1855.
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