By what mark sliall we
recognize
it?
Krasinski - The Undivine Comedy
'
"And the son of Greece looks on, and claps his hands
in joy. "
As striking as may be this final picture, as closely as it
may seem to respond to the preoccui)ations and passions
of the times we are traversing, we would be mistaken if
we should think to see in it the innermost thought of the
drama; above all, we would be wrong not to observe
closely the change which has occurred in Iridion himself;
for if Rome is no longer to be recognized, the son of
Amphilochus has also been transformed during his sleep
of ages. He no longer hates the Cross ; its fate appears
rilE NINETEENril CENTURY.
107
as sad to him as did in other days that of his Hellas;
" under the rays of the moon, he has felt that the sign of
redemption is holy for ever and ever; he clasps his arms
round it, — and Masinissa leaves him step by step y . . .
Here, in truth, lies the bearing of the poem ; it flashes
clearly upon us in the voice from Heaven which sends
Iridion to Poland, to be subjected there to another and
more glorious proof.
"Go," cries the voice to him, — "go toward the North
in the name of Christ ! Go, and stop not until thou
standest in the land of graves and crosses ! Thou wilt
know it by the silence of the warriors, the wails of the
women, and the sadness of the children ; thou wilt know
it by the burning cottages of the poor and the desolated
palaces of the exiled ; thou wilt know it by the moans of
my angels who pass there by night ! Go, and dwell among
the new brothers I give to thee. There shall thy second
trial be ! There thou shalt again see the object of thy love
in agony ; again transpierced ; and thou wilt not be able
to die, and the anguish of thousands of souls will be in-
carnated in thee ! Go, and have faith in my name !
Think not of thine own glory, but of the welfare of those
I intrust to thee. Becalm before the pride, oppression,
and the scorn of the unjust ! They will pass away, but
my Thought and Thou, ye shall endure forever!
"And after a long martyrdom I will kindle my dawn
around thee ; I will give thee what my angels have enjoyed
for ages, — bliss ! And tliat which I promised men from
the beginning, from the summit of Golgotha, — Liberty !
Go and act ! Act, even though thy heart be withering
in thy breast; act even when thou doubtest thine own
brethren, when thou despairest of my aid ! Act ! Act
without cessation or repose ! And thou shalt outlive the
vain, the happy, the illustrious ; thou shalt arise again,
not from a sterile sleep, but from the work of the centu-
ries, and shalt become one of the free sons of the skies! "
Such is the dramatic poem of Iridion in its original and
powerful unity. That such a poem should have been
hitherto almost unknown in Western Europe, — so eager to
know and enjoy the literary productions of all nations as
almost to realize that " universal literature" (Welt litter-
lo8 POLISH POETRY IN
atur) whicli was the dream of Goethe, — proves how, heavily
the forgetfuhiess of the world still weighs upon the unfor-
tunate country of the Anonymous Poet ; it also proves
how much the easy enjoyment of light productions, void
of all sublime ideas, has deteriorated our tastes, causing
us to turn away from all serious, even if eloquent, works.
At any rate, they who pretend to penetrate the meaning
of Faust and Manfred, can find no difficulty in the com-
prehension of Iridion. It is at least certain that Poland
immediately caught the dominant idea of the drama, and
easily unraveled the profound signification of its allegory.
This poem told them that patriotic suffering effects no-
thing when it is based on negation and hatred. It further
told them that an enemy might find new strength, life,
and rejuvenation in the very means by which an imscru-
pulous vengeance sought to overthrow him or sharpen
mortal arms against him ; as Rome found a second era of
greatness in Christianity, which Iridion intended should
become the instrument of his hatred ; as the Teutonic
order encountered the like in the Reformation ; or as
Russia shall perhaps yet meet in the material civilization
of our century. That which Poland above all understood,
was the mysterious voice which ordered Iridion toward
the North, to be there subject to a second proof, that com-
mand which sent this ideal of Hellenic patriotism " to the
land of graves and crosses," but which at the same time
sent it transformed, purified from all pagan feelings of
hate, illumined by the Christian faith, and holding in its
arms the cross. The national ideal of Wallenrod thus
received a complete and moral transfiguration in Iridion,
after having passed through its transition in the admirable
and significant character of Robak, in the Sir Thaddeus.
And let us dwell for a moment upon the fact that this suc-
cessive purification of the patriotic sentiment in ourpoetry
was not accomplished at a time even relatively mild and
peaceful; it coincided with a period of the most bitter
suffering ; with the epoch of the direst and most impla-
cable punishments and persecutions, with the reign of the
cruel Emperor Nicholas. The very year in which Iridion
appeared saw an auction opened assuredly, at least, en-
tirely new in the annals of the world ; at Warsaw, and in
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
109
the principal cities of the country, the transportation of
thousands of Polish children into the steppes and among the
Oural Mountains was offered at public sale to the highest
bidder. Certainly if the feeling of national hate were
ever to be permitted to poets, it would be to those fired
by the manifold torments inflicted upon the most unfor-
tunate of nations; — and it stamps the character of origi-
nal greatness upon the Anonymous Poet to have raised,
precisely at such a dark epoch, a protest so energetic
against all ideas of vengeance, to have placed Eternal
Love, not only as did Dante at the gates of the city of
Eternal Grief, but in the very deepest of the Circles of
Hell!
IV.
Hate is impotent, vengeance creates nothing; to en-
able us to triumph over an enemy, it is not sufficient
to have just causes of complaint, we must also surpass
him by moral superiority ! Such was the lesson the Anon-
ymous Poet gave to his subjugated nation. But how to
attain this superiority? How to maintain it? By devo-
tion, immolation, self-sacrifice, replies the Poet. To
expect deliverance, not from the evil which may be called
down on or inflicted upon the oppressor, but from the
good ^\vic\\ maybe developed in the stormful bosom of
the avenger ; to look to God alone for decisive justice,
and to renounce all measures of dissimulation and con-
spiracy, which only tarnish the national character and ob-
scure the purity of the Polish soul ; to persevere in faith,
in spite of all possible trials; to defy heaven itself by the
absolute trust we repose in it ; and on great occasions to
give witness of true life by receiving death without giving
it, going to execution even as the early Christians, the
cross in hand, and prayer and confession on the lips; —
it was thus that this inspired patriot understood the duties
of the enslaved Poles ; duties which he summed up in the
word sacrifice. Round this word will henceforth revolve
the works of the author of Iridion ; it will illumine them
all with its rays, it will be their very soul. He passed his
whole life in developing this doctrine under the must
10*
no
POLISH POETRY IN
varied ft)rms and in the most diverse creations; it may
be found in "The Temptation," as in "The Dream of
Cesara;" in the " Christmas Night," as in "The Present
Day;" in the "Last," as in "The Dawn," "The Psalms
of the Future," and the " Resurrecturis. "
Abstraction made of the genius which flashes through
these various works, there is assuredly something very im-
posing in this perseverance in upholding an idea so com-
pletely out of keeping with the general modes of thought
in the times in which we live. It required the greatest
courage, and a faith no less great, to attempt to convert
one of the most ardent, most impulsive, high-mettled,
and fiery people on the face of the earth to such a doc-
trine. But what exquisite art, what passion did he not
employ to persuade the nation to adopt the truths with
which he was himself so fully penetrated ! Let Poland be
but once confirmed in this belief in pure and fruitful mar-
tyrdom, and the Poet will fear for her neither the reverses
of fortune nor the temptations of despair ; he accepts
even with joy all that separates her from the living world,
and all that renders her a stranger to the happy of the
earth ! What matters it to Poland that others declare
her "as obstinate as she is powerless"? — that they cry
out importunately to her to " fold the shroud around her
dying limbs as rapidly as possible ; to die at once, and
not disturb the world by the protracted agony of her
death-rattle"? What matters it? The time will come
when both the refined and the cruel will beg her to arise
and walk ! Whilst waiting this, she must submit with
tranquillity to the outrages always heaped on the unfortu-
nate ; look trustingly on high, "as only an orphan has
the right to look ;" and, to insulting pride, oppose a
silent dignity. He says: "The angel of pride, before
his fall, had a sister in the sky, who remained there, —
and she is called Dignity f
Our author did not limit himself to the preaching of
this doctrine of sacrifice for the Present and Future ; he
extends it and applies it to the whole Past of his People,
presenting it as the soul of their entire secular existence.
With lofty art and perfect sincerity, he labors to prove
that Poland has always realized the ideal of a Christian
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. m
nation ; has always been disinterested for herself, and
ever interested for humanity, and he finds the proof of
this in the very character of the calamities which have
finally overwhelmed her. Here lies the sole debatable
ground of his magnanimous doctrines. It cannot be de-
nied that the seal of chivalric generosity and self-sacrifice
has been set upon the history of Poland. Her people
have always defended Christianity against its most dan-
gerous enemies, never asking anything from Europe in
exchange for the service rendered ; demanding no pay-
ments for troops ; showing neither astonishment nor re-
sentment at the subsequent ingratitude. Suffer us also to
remark that Poland has never known aught of the cruel-
ties, the regicides, the revolutions of the palace, the
religious wars, which have dyed in blood the annals of
so many other countries ; that she has always given a
generous asylum to all the victims of persecution ; that
it was in her bosom the Jews found refuge, as well as the
emigrants of the wars of the Hussites, of the Reforma-
tion, and of the Thirty Years' War; that they not only
found in her the widest tolerance, but even the unwonted
power of governing themselves by their own laws. We
must, however, confess that more than one of these merits
arose from a defect as much as from a virtue ; that this
policy was more the result of an impulsive generosity
than the growth of a firm and logical will ! It was de-
cidedly virtue, but virtue singularly favored by the im-
providence and recklessness of the national spirit. If the
thinker can scarcely accept, without protest, this high
claim for the whole past of a nation, will he not exclaim
against the extension of this idea, even through the times
of the fall of Poland, and protest against the bold image
of the "Christ of nations," to which the patriot poet
has given so strange a development in " The Dawn" and
the "Psalms"? Poland, in accordance with the views
of the Anonymous Poet, has not only been crucified
as Christ was, to rise as he did to higher life, but per-
ished voluntarily to redeem the sins of other nations, and
died pure of all reproach! Is this historically true?
May it not contain a latent poison even for those whose
faith it was intended to revive in the depths of despair ?
112 POLISH POETRY IN
Alas ! though not so deeply burdened as other nations,
Poland cannot pretend to expiate their faults, — she has
too many of her own ! She has no right to proclaim
herself innocent of all her calamities ; she has herself
contributed to them ; she went to sleep upon a volcano ;
she was guilty of a marvelous inertia, of a frivolous im-
providence, of an incomprehensible torpidity. (Gen-
erous to others, ay; provident for herself, nay! ) Bat
these internal faults in nowise justify or excuse the assas-
sination committed against her, and this assassination is
so much the more odious in that it was consummated at
the very moment in which Poland began to rise, — to
waken from her anarchic torpor ; at the moment in
which she originated for herself the Constitution of the
3d of May, 1 791 ; a constitution which will be her eter-
nal defense against all the slanders of her enemies. But
even this noble and generous effort, as well as all her
magnanimous attempts for more than half a century,
prove that Poland had much to amend, to learn, and to
forget. It is not by blinding herself to her old caprices,
but rather by enlightening herself with regard to her past
mistakes, that she will be able to save herself from future
disasters, and conciliate the sympathies of all honest
minds. As Poland and her poets are so fond of quoting
the Bible and of speaking of the People of God, it
might perhaps be useful to remind them that it is pre-
cisely the ])eople of Israel who have, in the Book of
books, left us the example of three great prophets, whose
reunion forms a complete circle of the poetry inspired by
an ardent patriotism. First comes Isaiah, who scathes
the fiiults of the nation, and predicts its chastisement ;
then Jeremiah, who, when the yoke grew heavy upon the
people, weeps over the ruins of the city once so power-
ful ; finally, it is Ezekiel who, in the captivity of Baby-
lon, falls into sublime ecstasies, and sees the temple and
the city rebuilt. Certainly Poland has had her Jere-
miahs and her Ezekiels, but she needs an Isaiah with a
tongue of fire, a pitiless and courageous Dante, to sing
boldly in her ears some painful truths, to probe her many
wounds in i)lace of caressing them.
It is above all in his poem of *' The Dawn" (^1843)
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. n^
that our author has exposed his views with regard to the
Past and Future of his nation, in all the exaltation of his
generous errors. It possesses also the additional interest
of standing as a monument of a feeling of the heart. It
is the only work in which the author has given utterance
to his personal sentiments ; effusions in nowise com-
monplace, but of a highly poetic and elevated form. As
Dante made of Beatrice the symbol of his faith, the type
of theology, the Anonymous Poet regards his Beloved
as the type and ideal of his patriotic aspirations. He
expressly says, like Dante, he has passed through Hell,
and like him has had for guide a lady of grace and pity,
. . . *' a Beatrice as beautiful as the first, but far more
Christian, for she has not chosen the sky as her abode to
shelter herself from sufferings below; she has remained
with her brother upon earth. " Sad and gloomy, they
have met in highest spheres, " like two dark clouds
which, meeting in the air, pour forth torrents of tears,
but from which flash the lightnings which pierce the
vault of heaven, and for a moment show the glittering
Home of God," It is this Beatrice who is the confidante
of all his thoughts upon his country; it is to her he re-
lates all his emotions, all his presentiments; his nation
and his beloved melt into each other in the successive
stanzaf of "The Dawn. " The poem begins with a de-
scription of one of those lovely nights in Italy which
have before awakened so many deep emotions. Lost in
a sweet ecstasy, the two lovers of their fatherland breathe
the fragrant freshness of the air, and gaze into the im-
mensity of the starry vault. What holy calm ! What
divine peace ! The universe is an immense Lyre. , . .
A sublime chant is heard, — a chant of concord, — the
harmony of the spheres. . . . But in this concord is
there not one tone wanting? In this sheaf of light, has
not one ray been broken ? " O my sister, utter the tone
wanting in the lyre of life; point out the star eclipsed
but not extinct ; pronounce, pronounce the name : Po-
land ! — our Poland ! At such an hour ])erhaps God
hearkens to us ; will gather from thy lips the long-lost
tone, and will again restore it in His glorious Hymn !
. . . Ah ! thy lips tremble, and thy breast oppressed can
114
POLISH POETRY IN
only breathe a sigh. . . . My sister, God will under-
stand thee well ; He knows a sigh is now the only name
of thy sad country. " Thus begins a series of stanzas
in which the Poet paints with high poetic power the mis-
ery of the Present, the glories of the Past, and the hopes
of the Future. We are born orphans, — he says to his
Ladye when speaking of the actual generations, — posthu-
mous children ; our only cradle has been the grave of
our mother; "the sweet maternal gaze has ne'er illu-
mined our innocent play; and our young heads have
never reposed upon a warm and palpitating breast, but
on the cold stones of the cemeteries. "
One of the most beautiful stanzas of the poem is that in
which the Poet invokes the ancient senators, the heroes,
the illustrious captains and glorious kings of Poland, from
their graves. Covered with their armor of steel, and
wearing their rusty helmets, they march in endless train ;
and before this sublime Diet of Shadows, the Poet, at first
discouraged, accusing the ancestors of having destroyed
in advance the inheritance of their children, is reanimated
to new hope by the words of one of the shades, Stephen
Czarniecki, one of the purest heroes of the country. The
poet here introduces his idea of the " Christ of nations. "
It is not only Poland that he sees, he embraces humanity
entire. He compares our epoch to that which preceded
the Christian era, and many analogies are not wanting.
Then, as now, social wars had upturned the soil and de-
stroyed the old institutions; then, as now, a Caesar ap-
peared (Napoleon), who arrested society upon the brink
of the abyss, re-established a ma/eria/ order, and inaugu-
rated an epoch of great expansion for a civilization
thoroughly materialistic. Then, as now, discontent was
general; humanity suffered in its soul, and divined the
(oming of a great moral change. A Man at last came to
teach men the unknown law of love, to abolish slavery, to
preach fraternity. He was crucified, but He rose from the
dead, and His law reigned upon earth. This law still
reigns, but unhappily, though tlie divine doctrines of the
Saviour have changed and ameliorated the relations be-
tween individuals, they have not yet penetrated the rela-
tions among nations ; these are still regulated by the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
115
ancient rights, the pagan laws, those of conquest and op-
pression. A single Peoj)le has not followed this example,
her history has remained jnire from all international in-
justice ; it has always fulfilled the law in the affairs of this
world ; it has never enslaved nor subjugated any of its
neighbors, it has only used its power to protect the fee-
ble, it has sacrificed itself for the safety of others, — and
this people has been crucified as was the Saviour. The
last stanzas of "The Dawn" celebrate the resurrection of
this martyr, and with her a new reign of love among all
nations, the fraternity of all the Peoples crowning and re-
alizing the fraternity of men taught by Christ. In pro-
found emotion, wealth of imagery, purity of form, the
poet has never written anything which surpasses "The
Dawn," and enraptured by the vision of a near and
glorious future, he bids an eternal farewell to Poetry, ex-
claiming in the final strophe, which so many hearts have
repeated with enthusiastic fervor: "Our whole soul, O
my sister, we have expressed in this hymn ; let us now say
farewell to the lyre, farewell to all words ! Let children
delight forever to warble their songs ; far other ways are
open before us ; let my songs perish, let ftiy actions live ! ''
Illusion of the Poet, and yet partaken by a great part
of the nation, which was soon to be followed by a most
bitter awakening ! But this cry was not the less an ex-
pression of a true presentiment 1 New paths really soon
opened before the Poet ; we are now touching uj^on the
last i)eriod of his poetic activity, the very saddest of all,
and yet the most inextricably interwoven with the events
of the day, bound up as it was with a terrible catastrophe,
with a great national misfortune.
Moved and charmed by the accents of the Anonymous
Poet, Poland was still very far from following him into
the high, pure regions of moral life which he pointed out
to her. With regard to her aspirations, she still lingered
with Count Henry in the delusions of his youth, and even
Pancras loomed upon her horizon without affrighting her.
The revolution of 1831 had thrown thousands of Poles
into France, then deeply moved with revolutionary pas-
sions. The tortured exiles drank deeply at this boiling and
troubled spring, and a democratic propaganda, which has
Il6 POLISH POETRY IN
indeed produced its heroes, even its loyal martyrs, but
more than all, its blinded adepts, imbued with true revolu-
tionary doctrines, soon acquired an immense influence over
the country. That this movement had its origin in the
most generous feelings, in an impetuous desire to deliver
the wretched nation, in a vivid, though not enlightened
interest in the cause of the peasants, we are very far from
wishing to deny ; but it is not the less beyond doubt that
inflated declamation, and the infantile desire of imitating
the radicalism of the West, had also their share in hasten-
ing the insurrection. For example, the Polish democrats
imitated their French brethren in their hatred of Catho-
licity ; and tried to sap the religious faith of the nation at
the very moment when the Emperor Nicholas, more cir-
cumspect than these visionary patriots, renewed the most
vigorous persecutions against the Polish Church I The
" strong-minded," the leaders of the propaganda, did not
hesitate to adopt the dogmas of materialism, to proclaim
a cynic skepticism. "They desired the Resurrection of
a People," said upon this subject, at a later date, the
Anonymous Poet, "and they did not themselves believe
even in the immortality of the soul ! " But it was above
all in preaching hate against the nobility, which it stigma-
tized as "a decaying and corrupt class, inimical to the
people, and an eternal foe to progress," that the Polish
democracy manifested how far the spirit of imitation had
stifled not only all sense of justice, but even the most
evident perception of reality, for if there is anything
clear and manifest in this world, it is that the Polish no-
bility resembles absolutely in nothing the nobility of any
country of Western Europe. It is, in the first place, utterly
different in numbers ; it is not a class, but an entire popu-
lation. It was the only element which in the past had
been able to develop fully in itself the consciousness of its
own nationality; and at present it is the class of the pro-
prietors, the land-owners (of which the Polish nobility
consists), which bears in its breast the historic traditions
as well as the vivid prevision of the Future of Poland. It
constitutes the moral antl intellectual force of the country;
it issimjily its " tiers-elat," — for Poland has had no other:
and instead of being opposed to modern progress and
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
117
principles, it leans too fnuch for safety to modern ideas !
To propose the destruction of such a nobility was — as the
Anonymous Poet justly asserted — " to commit self-mur-
der, in order, after our suicide, to act and conquer. " It
was, nevertheless, recommended by the democratic propa-
ganda, which called upon the people to rise as one man
to deliver the country, to make way with every suspected
proprietor at the commencement of the insurrection, to
divide the lands of the nobles, who had no right to na-
tional life at all except in so far as tliey made part of the
people. And what was most tragically fantastic in this
melancholy attempt was, that its apostles, as well as its
disciples, were themselves of the nobility, for the demo-
cratic propaganda had no influence whatever among the
peasants, neither by its publications nor its emissaries; it
addressed itself to the proprietors, to the gentlemen of the
country ; it was by them it was so eagerly received, and
through them organized into a vast conspiracy, ready to
break out at a given signal. That the Polish nobility
should have so magnanimously and almost so universally
accepted the word of command from Paris, which sounded
for themselves the knell of spoliation and death, while it
certainly argues a great want of political intelligence, also
incontestabiy proves into what deep and hopeless despair
the country had been driven by foreign domination : it
must prove also above all else how cruel and unjust were
the declamations then made — as indeed they still are —
against the selfish and aristocratic spirit of this poor Polish
nobility, generous enough to accept even communism,
sufficiently devoted to what it believed to be the interest
of the country to subscribe to its ozan suicide ; which sfjirit
the Powers of the North at the time of the dismember-
ment, as also Nicholas in 1831, denounced as confirmed
Jacobinism.
It is difficult to imagine the rapidity and extent of the
democratic movement which then seized upon Poland,
the result of which, for any clear-sighted mind, could
only be a powerless insurrection, aggravated by social
rupture and distraction. How heart-rending the situa-
tion of the Anonymous Poet in such events ! It can-
not be denied that some of his poems, magnanimous and
II
Ii8 POLISH POETRY IN
sublime as they are, — especially those which appeared
after " Iridion," — have erred through an excess of spir-
itual optimism ; that his poetry forgot too much the con-
ditions of this world ; that it evangelized and ange/ized
men with too little regard to their situation and duty as
citizens ; and that the influence of these works is still,
in more than one respect, enervating for young souls.
Alas ! the Poet was soon to be cruelly recalled from these
ethereal and cloudy spheres by the most bitter reality;
a period of two years only intervened between the en-
trancing visions of " The Dawn" and the heart-rending
lamentations of ''The Psalms of the Future" (1845).
This " Christ of Nations," proclaimed so near its Resur-
rection, with its mission of new life to enslaved Nations,
must now be preserved from suicide ! Our Poet did not
shrink from this painful duty, and, if we consider his
personal position and the general state of the public
mind, it was in him a great act of civic courage. He
brought to the fulfillment of this task all the fire, elo-
quence, logic, and passion of his heart. The first two
Hymns are still kept in the realms of the Future ; he
again represents to the Nation the ideal which God cre-
ated her to realize; but in the third Psalm he enters
upon the fiery questions of the moment ; exposes the
elements of the propaganda, resolution by resolution ;
boldly pronounces the words, " Massacre of the nobles,"
which might be found in the logic of the new doctrines,
or in the progress of events. To the " conventioners"
of the Convention, who were always calling for vigorous
acts, he declared that murders were no actions ; that de-
struction was not regeneration; that there was but one
true law of public safety for the nation: "the Polish
nobles with the Polish people. '^ After having recalled the
eternal principles of justice and humanity, he undertakes
the defense of the Polish nobility, then so loudly decried
by a blinded radicalism. Was it not the nobility whose
breast forever bloomed into scars and gashes? Was it
not always ready to offer up itself in holocaust upon the
altar of the country? Had it not even consented to sui-
cide? In the great Diet of 1791, who ojiened to the
people the golden doors of the Future ? Was it not this
THE NINE TEE. y Til CENTURY.
119
maligned race of nobles — a race which had never con-
sented to a truce with the oppressor — which had offered
itself as autumn grain to be harvested on every battle-
field, and which had actually peopled Siberia ?
"Everywhere, everywhere upon this globe, I see the
footprints of my brothers, and your words will never be
able to efface them. It is they whom the world has per-
secuted ', it is they whom the hangmen have tortured ; it
is they who forever wander in the polar snows, and who
crowd the dungeons of the citadels T
"Upon the arid peaks of the Alps, upon the billowy
azure of the Mediterranean, upon the Italian Apennines,
upon the summits of the Sierras of Spain, upon the wide
plains of Germany, upon the snows and ices of the Mos-
covites, upon the fields of friendly France, upon every
land, on every sea, they have scattered the seed of our
future country ; a seed divine, the blood of martyrs —
and you are the sons of their agonies ! "
The Anonymous Poet regards persecution as a small
ill ; the obscuration of truth is the real and terrible evil ;
the changes forced upon the true life of the national soul
by constant oppression, the reign of morbid and funereal
ideas, is the great misfortune. He says : "Alas ! slavery
distills a poison which decomposes the soul ! Siberia is
nothing; the knout is nothing; nothing the racks and
tortures which rend the body ; but alas for the spirit of
the nation when it is poisoned ! This is the most bitter
of all woes! " The poet conjures his country to repel
all evil counsels, all inspirations of despair, "Let the
demagogues howl on, the sophists whisper that a high
and mysterious aim may justify infamous means ; that the
happiness of ail h worth the death of t\\efe-aj; that love
may spring from a work of hate. . . . No ! no ! IVe
can build nothing of mire ; and the highest Wisdom is
Virtue J"
Thus, invoking the most glorious memories of the Past
for the salvation of the Present, passing from flashes of
anger to accents of soul-subduing pity, and placing all
his luxuriant imagination in the service of common sense,
did the inspired patriot continue to write. But it was a
voice in the desert ; it was lost without echo in the pros-
120 rOLISH POETRY hV
tration of the clear-sighted, and the disdainful silence of
the party of action. As too often happens in moments
of public excitement, our author was not jia/ged, he was
classed ; he was placed among the enemies of progress, —
and then all was over ! One man, however, broke the
silence to rejily to the singer of the " Psalms," to defend
the honor of the denounced propaganda, to avenge "the
outraged people," and this man was also a Bard, and for-
merly a friend of the Anonymous Poet. Of an ardent
and wayward temperament, consumed by a sombre mysti-
cism as well as by a haughty pride, exceedingly jealous,
uniting to a splendid imagination a power of language
never equaled, even by Mickiewicz, Julius Slowa^ki sud-
denly entered the lists, and gave to the propaganda what
had hitherto been wanting to it — the support of his
marvelous genius. Raillery, anger, disguised allusions,
stormy passions, true sufferings, and fictitious com-
plaints, all the flashing and sometimes poisoned weapons
of his brilliant armory, were made use of in his "Reply
to the Author of the Psalms. "
Let us cast a brief glance on this " Reply," as it is an
important element in this characteristic and almost na-
tional debate. Slowa(;ki therein calls back the author of
the "Psalms" to his visions in his " Dawn," to the final
cry in which he invokes "his actions," at the same time
cruelly satirizing the "seraphic doctrines of the noble
dreamer. ^' The double-bladed sword glitters from the
very commencement. "To believe thee, my ^<^(;v///c7//<7//,
it would be a virtue in us to endure slavery patiently !
Thou changest our sad existence in this valley of tears
into a life of pure and shadowy spirits in the silver
moon ; with the voice of an infant thou criest : 'Action !
action ! action ! ' And the nation prepares for it, and
thou instantly beginnest to tremble when the face of the
people appears, and when the voice of God resounds
from the burning bush ! " Slowa^ki continues : " Once,
the Elect of noble Poetry were the first to proclaim new
truths, and to excite the masses to the combat of freedom.
But now behold ! a great Lord, a grand singer, shows
himself as a ' proj^het of the people,' but in the mode of
the Ifcau mondc, as a highly fashionable Prophet ! He
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 121
places Christ in his poetic car as Ovid did his Phaeton,
and with light, rose-colored steeds, he traverses the aerial
depths of a harmless ideal ! When the universe is per-
ishing in agony, when the tide of action rises high, be-
hold I he places himself as barrier across it, forbids the
century itself to move, and from his breast, shivering
with fear, we only hear the hoarse, shrill cry, in the name
of the red God, wliomsoever thou mayst be : ' Kill not
the nobility! ' The nobility? But where may it be
found?
By what mark sliall we recognize it? " In a
celebrated stanza, Slowa^ki, who more than once recalls
his own noble origin, denies that the Polish nobility is
still in existence, making only one injurious exception
for Prince Czartoryski, in attributing to him dynastic
ambition, — an accusation frequently brought against a
tried patriot by the ungrateful companions of his exile.
"Yes, you were once numerous; formerly there were
hundreds of thousands of your nobles ; nobles by heart
and bearing ! But in our days I have known but one
noble; the whole country has never seen another. He
alone, by the misery of his heart, by his intentions if
not by his success ;. by a silent, proud, and grand sad-
ness ; by a hand always full of gifts, by an antique, quiet
glory, was a noble, and had the right so to call himself.
And now he, the sole and only noble, has abandoned
your ranks ; he has himself resigned his dignity; he has
gone down to rot atnong the kings / He is no longer, and
you are no more ! "
It has always been the tactics of revolutionists to pre-
sent their programmes as utterly harmless ; and Slowagki
did not fail to follow this course. He boldly asks our
poet : Where he had ever heard massacre spoken of ; who
had threatened with the dagger? Mere visions of a
troubled brain were all such idle thoughts, hallucinations
of a frightened fancy. A plaintive tone had perhaps
reached him through the air; a (^///■w/1'^* celebrating the
ancient combats of the Zaparogues ; and you ivere afraid,
son of the noble ! or perhajjs some brilliant morning a ray
of sunshine pierced into the room of the Psalmist, made
* . \ Dirge from the Ukraine.
II*
122 POLISH POETRY IN
its way through the scarlet curtains of his sumptuous bed ;
and the lord-poet, suddenly awaked, thought he saw red,
— and y OK were a/raid, son of the noble! This ironic
refrain returns frequently through the poem, and has its
climax in the words whose envenomed cruelty will be
readily understood : "You owe respect to your parents ;
now the Polish People is your father, you have no other !
Fear it r^ Nevertheless Slowa^ki, while defending the
democracy from nourishing any thought of vengeance,
takes care not to tranquillize us too completely; on the
contrary, he calls upon all the powers of his vast and
fiery imagination to depict the abyss of misery and pain
in which society groans ; the debasement of character,
the profound eclipse of justice, the horrors of tyranny,
the arrogance of the rich, the anguish of the poor. To
bring back the moral world which has swung from its
orbit, to tear humanity from this abyss of shame and in-
famy, "who knows what the Spirit may deem necessary,"
— "the Spirit, the eternal Revolutionist who tortures
bodies and delivers souls? " "The sun always rises in its
clouds of purple, and all Dawns are bloody ! "
The "Reply" of Slowa(;ki had scarcely had time to
be known by the public when appalling events arose,
bearing to the author of the " Psalms" a far more serious
response. The insurrection so long in preparation by the
propaganda at last broke out ; it proved as powerless
against the enemy as murderous for the nation. It was
principally, however, in Galicia that the disastrous out-
break showed in its full force, manifesting itself under
entirely new forms. The bureaucracy established there,
as violent as it was perfidious, had been very careful to
take no measures to prevent the explosion ; it had, on the
contrary, fed the subterranean fire, and had taken the time
to complete the tuition of the peasants, so happily com-
menced by the propaganda. Since the proprietors were
so decidedly, and even by their own confession, such
ferocious enemies of the people, would it not be best to
put an immediate end to them by a terrible justice,
especially when the government was so ready to help
them, even paying a good sum of florins for every head
of a noble, and facilitating the undertaking still more by
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
123
a suspoision of the laws of God for fifteen days ? That the
Court of Vienna should have thus repaid the services
formerly rendered her by the country of Sobieski, is one
of those flagrant ingratitudes which, even after the aston-
ishment has worn off, still leave an undying memory.
And who can wonder that the Poles should see in the ca-
lamities which have successively overwhelmed the House
of Hapsburg since the date of the wrongs of 1846 the
just punishment of one of the greatest crimes ever regis-
tered in history? The effect of the massacres of Tarnow
and Rzeszow was immense in Poland, and the discourage-
ment greater than had ever been known there before,
even after the greatest disasters. And let us say it with-
out prevarication, Poland to this very hour still bleeds
from the wounds of Tarnow and Rzeszow ; the massa-
cres of Galicia still weigh upon her as a memory and an
apprehension ; they have rendered her motionless during
the last fifteen years ; and even at this moment have not
ceased to paralyze her action.
The jacquerie of 1846 was followed by a prostration
of spirit which was manifested in the world of thought
by a mournful silence, which lasted long, and was only
broken for a moment by the characteristic phenomenon
of the " Letter from a Polish gentleman to Prince Met-
ternich," in which the Marquis Wielopolski — since be-
come famous — for the first time proposed without dis-
guise, and with the concentration of despair, the question
of voluntary self-destruction in the bosom of a vengeful
panslavism. It is difficult to imagine with what a stifling
weight the sad events of 1846 pressed upon the soul of
the Anonymous Poet. It was two years before he was
able to write again. He then commenced a new series
of Psalms, in which he tried to pour balm into the wounds
still bleeding, and to light hope anew in hearts crushed to
earth. Aresponse was still due to Slowacjki, and he made
it with moderation, yet with force, but also with great
sadness. The reproach of cowardice made by Slowa^ki
weighed heavily upon the descendant of the Knights of
Bar. "Thou hast said it was fear that spoke in my soul
when I foresaw that we were moving toward the darkness,
and not toward the light ; and that the people might, in
124 POLISH POETRY IN
this path, bring disgrace upon themselves. Thou hast
spoken the truth ; there is a certain kind of courage of
which I cannot be proud. It is true, I do tremble at
the death of my fellow-men ; I love not to push them into
the abyss. At the sight of shame, it is true, a divine
terror seizes my heart ; assassins will never be to me as
brothers; I love the sword, but shudder at the knife! "
Our Author then begins the debate, discusses all the
destructive theories of Slowacjki, especially that of the
"Spirit eternally revolutionist" and "torturing bodies
to deliver souls. " He calls for a regeneration by a con-
tinuous development through love. He says, ingeniously:
"It is also a great sin, O Poet, to speak only ever of
the ^■p'wii, forgetting that He proceeds from the Father and
the Son; to abstract all the past generations, and to re-
nounce the painful work of the ages ! "
The solution of continuity between the epochs which
preceded the revolution and those which succeeded it, the
rupture of all traditions, the absence of all roots in the
heart of history, which caused the tree of the new life so
soon to wither and die, though we ceased not to water it
with our tears and blood, — all this has been noticed and
commented upon more than once in our time ; especially
after the catastrophe of February led us to scrutinize more
closely the problem of modern existence, and to seek
more deeply into the internal causes of the moral discon-
tent and dissatisfaction with which we are struggling.
Such truths were not generally perceived until our Poet
brought them to the light in his "Psalms," and in all cases
he has known how to give them ingenious and touching
forms in a manner peculiar to himself. He saw, in ad-
dition, the gulf constantly widening between the upper
and intelligent classes and the lower ranks ; the first
forced to draw back in order to preserve themselves, the
second having no hope save in forever pressing forward
toward the unknown ; he foresaw the possible, nay, im-
minent conflict between the two great European factions:
but he found even in this very conflict a cause for liope,
— and he continued to hope for his country. He believed
Poland was destined to counterbalance, by the character
of her instincts and the influence of her actions, "the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 125
atrocious cowardice of the retrograde party, as well as
the frightful passions of the radicals. " Thus after a long
detour, and even through the bloody gulf of Tarnow, did
the author of the " Psalms" return to the radiant visions
of the " Dawn," exclaiming after, as before, the massa-
cre: **0 my country! watch and hope: love without
bounds is life without end P' . . . We may judge these
hopes of the Poet as we will, but we are forced to bow
reverently before the faith and charity which, after such
trials, were able to inspire such words !
At the date of the appearance of these new Psalms, the
revolution of February broke out, and soon had its counter-
stroke as far as in the capital of Austria. The Anonymous
Poet followed the progress of events closely, without mis-
understanding their importance, but without making the
least allusion to them. Faithful to his system, he re-
garded the present epoch as the painful birth of the second
Christian era; as preparing, to use the words of M. de
Maistre, "a new eruption of Christianity;" he saw even
in the events of 1848 the annunciation of the judgment
of God upon the two thousand years of Christianity, and of
a palingenesis according to the Gospel ; but in the imme-
diate future he could see nothing but misfortunes. The
nations appeared to him no wiser than their governments.
"There is no privilege before thee, O God ! Peoples as
well as kings, as soon as they become unfaithful to Thee,
are equally doomed to fall, — since even Thy Angels by
myriads fell I"
In the first days of the revolution of 1848, he pre-
dicted the horrors of June in an eloquent prophecy. His
presentiments went still further, and he believed he could
announce the hour in which the West of Europe, sapped
in its foundations and shaken in its faith in liberty, would
at last come to believe in the "truth of him who alone
remained firm and unshaken upon the rock of St. Peters-
burg. " Then would be, affirmed the Poet, the last, yet the
most cruel, trial of crucified Poland ; and he conjured his
country to keep her religion intact through those moments
of her supreme agony; to preserve in all its purity the
Polish soul, which would be tempted by two opposing but
equally brutal forces : the Panslavism of the Czars, and
126 POLISH POETRY IM
the radicalism of Euro])e ! There is sometliing strangely-
pathetic even in the first lines of his famous Psalm of
"Good Will," in which the son of a nation still bleeding
after a massacre and counted among the dead, robbed of
all that is prized ujion this earth, still cries to his Creator :
"Thoji hasi given us everything, O Lord: all that Thou
couldst grant us of the eternal treasures of Thy grace !
Even after we had descended into the grave, Thou hast
maintained us living in all the great struggles of the
world. We no longer existed, and yet we were always
present in every glorious action, upon every field of battle,
with our Eagle of silver and our blade of steel; Thou
hast taken from us the earth, but hast lowered to us the
heavens; Thine infinite heart hath everywhere shielded
us; corpses in appearance, we were in reality spirits ! "
For Poland, to which the Lord has already granted all,
the Poet only asks the final gift : a will which knows no
recourse save to holy acts when extreme temptations come.
. . . " To-day, O Lord, when Thy judgment begins upon
the two thousand years through which Christianity has
already existed, grant us, O Lord, to resuscitate ourselves
only through the power given by Thee to holy acts! "
This prayer returns, through varied intervals, in this sub-
lime Psalm, through which the rhythm flows majestically
slow as some vast organ's chords ; it falls upon the ear
at most unexpected moments, and is yet always admirably
prepared, brought back rather by the musical enchainment
of the thought than by its logical development; recalling
the contexture of a fugue of Bach, and ])roducing the
same magical effect. Tiie hymn is closed by a marvelous
picture of Catholic sentiment. The veneration in which
the Mother of Christ has always been held by Poland is well
known to the world. Our Poet represents the heavenly
Mother pleading to the Son for His faithful servants;
offering before Him a chalice in either hand, one contain-
ing the blood of the Saviour of men, the other that of the
martyred nation.
Lord, look upon Thy Mother! Look, O Lord!
Surrounded by Thy ninsomod souls she mounts
To 'I'licc, tluDugh the immensities of space;
And as she passes, all tiie stars bow down,
The whirlinj; forces of the universe
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 127
Are charmed into a sudden tenderness.
Borne upward by the pale and misty Shades
Of our own martyrs, now she cleaves the Blue,
Crosses the Milky-Ways, and leaves the suns behind;
Higher and higher still she ever mounts,
And whiter, more resplendent still she grows.
Look on her, Lord ! See her as low she kneels
Before Thy throne, midst all Thy Seraphim.
Upon her forehead burns the Polish crown,
Herazure mantle sweeps the depths of space.
Tissued of rays of light. The spheres are still,
And wait Thy word ! With gentle voice she prays ;
Behind her weep the spirits of our sires;
In either hand she holds a chalice up. . . .
O Lord, 'tis Thine own blood she here presents
In the cup which she holds high in her right hand !
And lower — in the left, — O. lower far, —
Thou knowest. Lord, — the blood of those who loved thee, —
Of Thine own faithful subjects, crucified
Upon a thousand crosses I The blood which flows
Unceasingly beneath a triple sword.
Upon three realms which yet are but one country / . . .
In the name of the Holy Cup which overflows
With Thine own love, she prays I'hy mercy for
The chalice which is lower— lower far, —
She prays for us, — Father, and Spirit, Son !
She prays for us, and we all pray with her.
That Tliou wouldst grant the grace of every grace !
It is not Hope that we implore from Thee :
It falls upon us like a rain of flowers. —
Nor is it Death on our oppressors' heads :
Their doom is written on to-morrow's clouds. —
Nor is it power to rise from our red graves :
The stone unrolled, we have already risen. —
Nor is it arms to meet our enemies :
The tempests bear them to us on the winds. —
Nor is it aid ; the field of action opes
Before us now, and we must aid ourselves. —
But as to-day Thy judgment has commenced
On the two thousand years already lived
By Christianity, O grant us. Lord,
A holy will!
O Father, Son, and Spirit, a good will !
The hymn of the "Good Will" was the last of the
Psalms of the Poet ; we might even say it was the last of
his songs. He raised his voice only once more in his
"Resurrecturis," in which he seemed to endeavor to gather
together, as in a final chortl, all his ideas upon sacrifice,
to recomnieml them to the nation, — after wliich he was
128 POLISH POETRY IN
silent. The Nation was silent with him ; she ruminated
long upon the thoughts evolved in "Iridion," "The
Dawn," and the "Psalms" ; she tlioroughly impregnated
herself with them; she entered upon a career of painful
and obscure labors for which she may perhaps be some
day compensated, but Avhich for the time only thickened
around her the shroud of forgetfulness in which she was
wrapped. The greatest events passed without in the least
changing her lot ; even the Crimean war did not call her
upon the scene of action, and in the midst of so many Peo-
ples making their names resound, or recovering them, she
rested long mute and ignored. She became, like her Poet,
^'anonymous ! '''' During this time, the author of the
" Psalms" died in a foreign land, and there was nothing,
even to this untimely end, Avhich did not bear the seal of
the tragic destiny which, with its weight of lead, })ressed
to the very earth the whole of this mournful and pained
existence. An old man, an old and brave soldier, had
just expired in the midst of the indifference of his com-
patriots, — an indifference which was indeed only gener-
osity ; and if the nation deigned to give a single thought
to the event, it was of the respite which this death might
give to the tortured life of a son who had been ever faith-
ful to his country. But the fatal tie uniting these two
lives was not to be broken even by death ; a violent ill-
ness seized the Poet, and he perished but three months
after he had lost his father. He died in Paris, the 24th
of February, 1859, — and Silence only came to seat herself
upon his grave ! To borrow the picturesque expression
of a celebrated Polish writer : " A great genius went to
heaven, and in his flight he did not brush the earth,
even with his shadow ! "
A like silence reigned over another tomb, wider and
deeper far, which was called Poland ; but on a day more
than a year ago the three monarchs of the North agreed
upon the "interview of Warsaw," which, rigluly or
wrongly, the liberal opinion of ICurope regarded as the
point of departure of a new holy alliance ; it was said this
interview was especially directed against Italy, and the gen-
eral tendencies of the West. At this news Poland trembled.
The Nation, so long buried in its own grief, in its internal
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
129
toil, shook off its shroud, and sprang from its inaction.
And is it known what was the signal of this sudden Polish
life? It was a funeral mass celebrated upon the same day
in all the churches of the country for the repose of the
souls of three poets : Mickiewicz ; the author of the
"Psalms"; and Slowa<;ki.
A pious thought of love and concord thus strove to re-
unite before God, and in the general mourning of their
fellow-men, the two great adversaries who had been for a
long time friends, placing above them both the great
master, — "the immortal IVa'ide/ote. "
Soon after came the day in which the people of Warsaw
rose ; rose without arms, bearing only the cross and Polish
flag in their hands: "They gave no death, but they
received it;" and when the Ruler, frightened at an at-
titude so new, demanded what they wanted, they replied :
" Our Country. "
Then must the great spirit of the singer of "Resurrec-
turis" have leaped for joy. The Ideal he had dreamed
was now Ideality ; aird the Poetry which had remained so
long anonymous was now signed by the name of an entire
People.
THE "FRAGMENT,"
OR
UNFINISHED POEM.
INTRODUCTION.
Mountains in the neighborhood of Venice. Sunrise. Ali-
GHiERi and the Young Man, both in hunting costume,
are seated upon a rock.
The Young Man. Look, friend, in what glowing purple
the god of day ascends ! Ah ! if man were thus born,
and could thus extend his dominion over earth ! Look !
How that last dim star is dying out ! It is said to be the
fate of the heart thus to die, consumed in the flames of
genius ! Rise ! Rise, O Sun ! Shine down into these
depths still tenanted by darkness ; throw thy glittering
bridges of rainbows from bank to bank across the white
torrents ! How fresh is the air ! I feel so strong, I see
so far, my sight is so clear and piercing, I know I shall
not miss a single shot to-day. The poor chamois brows-
ing there upon that dizzy cliff will not live till noon !
Dost thou not hear? The shrill horns of our hunters re-
echo through the pines of the mountain. Come ! let us go !
Alighieri. I will remain here.
Young Man. Alighieri, what is the matter with thee
to-day ? Thou hast scarcely spoken to me since sunset.
When we began to climb these rocks at midnight, in
silence didst thou skirt the precipices, using thy hand
only to point out to me their dangers ; and now when the
chase is about to begin, when the trees shiver with the
bayings of our dogs, when the earth, the rocks, and my
131
132
THE ^'FRAGMENT:'
spirit tremble with eagerness, thou hesitatest and hast no
desire to accompany us!
Alighicri. Knowest thou not this is the hour in which
I am accustomed to pray to God ?
Young Man. Then I will wait for thee.
Alighieri. Knowest thou not that I am wont to pray
to the Lord only in solitude?
Young Man. Then tell me at what time I shall return
for thee.
Alighieri. Thou wilt find me this evening in the same
place.
Young Man. I wish to Heaven thou wouldst accom-
pany me ! Come ! 1 cannot fire aright without thee.
We will mount that naked peak where crystals form and
chamois bound. The hunters say the whole world can
be seen from that point : come !
Alighieri. The whole world may be seen from here
also !
Young Man. How ?
Alighieri. By closing our eyes, and humbling our
spirits before the Lord !
Young Man. Hark ! again they wind the horn. Adieu !
Now on, on ! over these abysses, and up those heights, —
up — up, among the clouds ! I am sorry from my heart,
Alighieri, that thou wilt not come with me.
Alighieri. Bend not thus over the precipice, — hold by
the branches ! I can still see, — I see thee, — turn not to-
wards me, — take care there on the edge of the waterfall !
He hears me no longer. He flies like a bird, scarcely
touching earth. In the dawn of existence, the child, agile,
light and careless, sports like the spirits whom Death will
approach no more. But they know the mysteries of being,
and he has scarcely wakened to the consciousness of life !
As the ether which fills the infinite may condense into
dark masses, form brilliant suns, or float as light vapor on
through s])ace, — so may he become all or nothing ; the
Elect of Heaven, or the prey of Hell !
{He raises his hands in prayer. )
Merciful Father ! Thy ways on earth have in our days
grown obscure ! Thy face is veiled in clouds ! ! Men
INTRODUCTION. 133
seek thee anew, and cannot find Thee ! But even now
Thou risest upon the horizon ; Thou increasest ! Why-
do they gaze forever into the heights of Heaven ? Ah,
if they would but look toward their own horizons !
Heavenly Father !
"And the son of Greece looks on, and claps his hands
in joy. "
As striking as may be this final picture, as closely as it
may seem to respond to the preoccui)ations and passions
of the times we are traversing, we would be mistaken if
we should think to see in it the innermost thought of the
drama; above all, we would be wrong not to observe
closely the change which has occurred in Iridion himself;
for if Rome is no longer to be recognized, the son of
Amphilochus has also been transformed during his sleep
of ages. He no longer hates the Cross ; its fate appears
rilE NINETEENril CENTURY.
107
as sad to him as did in other days that of his Hellas;
" under the rays of the moon, he has felt that the sign of
redemption is holy for ever and ever; he clasps his arms
round it, — and Masinissa leaves him step by step y . . .
Here, in truth, lies the bearing of the poem ; it flashes
clearly upon us in the voice from Heaven which sends
Iridion to Poland, to be subjected there to another and
more glorious proof.
"Go," cries the voice to him, — "go toward the North
in the name of Christ ! Go, and stop not until thou
standest in the land of graves and crosses ! Thou wilt
know it by the silence of the warriors, the wails of the
women, and the sadness of the children ; thou wilt know
it by the burning cottages of the poor and the desolated
palaces of the exiled ; thou wilt know it by the moans of
my angels who pass there by night ! Go, and dwell among
the new brothers I give to thee. There shall thy second
trial be ! There thou shalt again see the object of thy love
in agony ; again transpierced ; and thou wilt not be able
to die, and the anguish of thousands of souls will be in-
carnated in thee ! Go, and have faith in my name !
Think not of thine own glory, but of the welfare of those
I intrust to thee. Becalm before the pride, oppression,
and the scorn of the unjust ! They will pass away, but
my Thought and Thou, ye shall endure forever!
"And after a long martyrdom I will kindle my dawn
around thee ; I will give thee what my angels have enjoyed
for ages, — bliss ! And tliat which I promised men from
the beginning, from the summit of Golgotha, — Liberty !
Go and act ! Act, even though thy heart be withering
in thy breast; act even when thou doubtest thine own
brethren, when thou despairest of my aid ! Act ! Act
without cessation or repose ! And thou shalt outlive the
vain, the happy, the illustrious ; thou shalt arise again,
not from a sterile sleep, but from the work of the centu-
ries, and shalt become one of the free sons of the skies! "
Such is the dramatic poem of Iridion in its original and
powerful unity. That such a poem should have been
hitherto almost unknown in Western Europe, — so eager to
know and enjoy the literary productions of all nations as
almost to realize that " universal literature" (Welt litter-
lo8 POLISH POETRY IN
atur) whicli was the dream of Goethe, — proves how, heavily
the forgetfuhiess of the world still weighs upon the unfor-
tunate country of the Anonymous Poet ; it also proves
how much the easy enjoyment of light productions, void
of all sublime ideas, has deteriorated our tastes, causing
us to turn away from all serious, even if eloquent, works.
At any rate, they who pretend to penetrate the meaning
of Faust and Manfred, can find no difficulty in the com-
prehension of Iridion. It is at least certain that Poland
immediately caught the dominant idea of the drama, and
easily unraveled the profound signification of its allegory.
This poem told them that patriotic suffering effects no-
thing when it is based on negation and hatred. It further
told them that an enemy might find new strength, life,
and rejuvenation in the very means by which an imscru-
pulous vengeance sought to overthrow him or sharpen
mortal arms against him ; as Rome found a second era of
greatness in Christianity, which Iridion intended should
become the instrument of his hatred ; as the Teutonic
order encountered the like in the Reformation ; or as
Russia shall perhaps yet meet in the material civilization
of our century. That which Poland above all understood,
was the mysterious voice which ordered Iridion toward
the North, to be there subject to a second proof, that com-
mand which sent this ideal of Hellenic patriotism " to the
land of graves and crosses," but which at the same time
sent it transformed, purified from all pagan feelings of
hate, illumined by the Christian faith, and holding in its
arms the cross. The national ideal of Wallenrod thus
received a complete and moral transfiguration in Iridion,
after having passed through its transition in the admirable
and significant character of Robak, in the Sir Thaddeus.
And let us dwell for a moment upon the fact that this suc-
cessive purification of the patriotic sentiment in ourpoetry
was not accomplished at a time even relatively mild and
peaceful; it coincided with a period of the most bitter
suffering ; with the epoch of the direst and most impla-
cable punishments and persecutions, with the reign of the
cruel Emperor Nicholas. The very year in which Iridion
appeared saw an auction opened assuredly, at least, en-
tirely new in the annals of the world ; at Warsaw, and in
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
109
the principal cities of the country, the transportation of
thousands of Polish children into the steppes and among the
Oural Mountains was offered at public sale to the highest
bidder. Certainly if the feeling of national hate were
ever to be permitted to poets, it would be to those fired
by the manifold torments inflicted upon the most unfor-
tunate of nations; — and it stamps the character of origi-
nal greatness upon the Anonymous Poet to have raised,
precisely at such a dark epoch, a protest so energetic
against all ideas of vengeance, to have placed Eternal
Love, not only as did Dante at the gates of the city of
Eternal Grief, but in the very deepest of the Circles of
Hell!
IV.
Hate is impotent, vengeance creates nothing; to en-
able us to triumph over an enemy, it is not sufficient
to have just causes of complaint, we must also surpass
him by moral superiority ! Such was the lesson the Anon-
ymous Poet gave to his subjugated nation. But how to
attain this superiority? How to maintain it? By devo-
tion, immolation, self-sacrifice, replies the Poet. To
expect deliverance, not from the evil which may be called
down on or inflicted upon the oppressor, but from the
good ^\vic\\ maybe developed in the stormful bosom of
the avenger ; to look to God alone for decisive justice,
and to renounce all measures of dissimulation and con-
spiracy, which only tarnish the national character and ob-
scure the purity of the Polish soul ; to persevere in faith,
in spite of all possible trials; to defy heaven itself by the
absolute trust we repose in it ; and on great occasions to
give witness of true life by receiving death without giving
it, going to execution even as the early Christians, the
cross in hand, and prayer and confession on the lips; —
it was thus that this inspired patriot understood the duties
of the enslaved Poles ; duties which he summed up in the
word sacrifice. Round this word will henceforth revolve
the works of the author of Iridion ; it will illumine them
all with its rays, it will be their very soul. He passed his
whole life in developing this doctrine under the must
10*
no
POLISH POETRY IN
varied ft)rms and in the most diverse creations; it may
be found in "The Temptation," as in "The Dream of
Cesara;" in the " Christmas Night," as in "The Present
Day;" in the "Last," as in "The Dawn," "The Psalms
of the Future," and the " Resurrecturis. "
Abstraction made of the genius which flashes through
these various works, there is assuredly something very im-
posing in this perseverance in upholding an idea so com-
pletely out of keeping with the general modes of thought
in the times in which we live. It required the greatest
courage, and a faith no less great, to attempt to convert
one of the most ardent, most impulsive, high-mettled,
and fiery people on the face of the earth to such a doc-
trine. But what exquisite art, what passion did he not
employ to persuade the nation to adopt the truths with
which he was himself so fully penetrated ! Let Poland be
but once confirmed in this belief in pure and fruitful mar-
tyrdom, and the Poet will fear for her neither the reverses
of fortune nor the temptations of despair ; he accepts
even with joy all that separates her from the living world,
and all that renders her a stranger to the happy of the
earth ! What matters it to Poland that others declare
her "as obstinate as she is powerless"? — that they cry
out importunately to her to " fold the shroud around her
dying limbs as rapidly as possible ; to die at once, and
not disturb the world by the protracted agony of her
death-rattle"? What matters it? The time will come
when both the refined and the cruel will beg her to arise
and walk ! Whilst waiting this, she must submit with
tranquillity to the outrages always heaped on the unfortu-
nate ; look trustingly on high, "as only an orphan has
the right to look ;" and, to insulting pride, oppose a
silent dignity. He says: "The angel of pride, before
his fall, had a sister in the sky, who remained there, —
and she is called Dignity f
Our author did not limit himself to the preaching of
this doctrine of sacrifice for the Present and Future ; he
extends it and applies it to the whole Past of his People,
presenting it as the soul of their entire secular existence.
With lofty art and perfect sincerity, he labors to prove
that Poland has always realized the ideal of a Christian
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. m
nation ; has always been disinterested for herself, and
ever interested for humanity, and he finds the proof of
this in the very character of the calamities which have
finally overwhelmed her. Here lies the sole debatable
ground of his magnanimous doctrines. It cannot be de-
nied that the seal of chivalric generosity and self-sacrifice
has been set upon the history of Poland. Her people
have always defended Christianity against its most dan-
gerous enemies, never asking anything from Europe in
exchange for the service rendered ; demanding no pay-
ments for troops ; showing neither astonishment nor re-
sentment at the subsequent ingratitude. Suffer us also to
remark that Poland has never known aught of the cruel-
ties, the regicides, the revolutions of the palace, the
religious wars, which have dyed in blood the annals of
so many other countries ; that she has always given a
generous asylum to all the victims of persecution ; that
it was in her bosom the Jews found refuge, as well as the
emigrants of the wars of the Hussites, of the Reforma-
tion, and of the Thirty Years' War; that they not only
found in her the widest tolerance, but even the unwonted
power of governing themselves by their own laws. We
must, however, confess that more than one of these merits
arose from a defect as much as from a virtue ; that this
policy was more the result of an impulsive generosity
than the growth of a firm and logical will ! It was de-
cidedly virtue, but virtue singularly favored by the im-
providence and recklessness of the national spirit. If the
thinker can scarcely accept, without protest, this high
claim for the whole past of a nation, will he not exclaim
against the extension of this idea, even through the times
of the fall of Poland, and protest against the bold image
of the "Christ of nations," to which the patriot poet
has given so strange a development in " The Dawn" and
the "Psalms"? Poland, in accordance with the views
of the Anonymous Poet, has not only been crucified
as Christ was, to rise as he did to higher life, but per-
ished voluntarily to redeem the sins of other nations, and
died pure of all reproach! Is this historically true?
May it not contain a latent poison even for those whose
faith it was intended to revive in the depths of despair ?
112 POLISH POETRY IN
Alas ! though not so deeply burdened as other nations,
Poland cannot pretend to expiate their faults, — she has
too many of her own ! She has no right to proclaim
herself innocent of all her calamities ; she has herself
contributed to them ; she went to sleep upon a volcano ;
she was guilty of a marvelous inertia, of a frivolous im-
providence, of an incomprehensible torpidity. (Gen-
erous to others, ay; provident for herself, nay! ) Bat
these internal faults in nowise justify or excuse the assas-
sination committed against her, and this assassination is
so much the more odious in that it was consummated at
the very moment in which Poland began to rise, — to
waken from her anarchic torpor ; at the moment in
which she originated for herself the Constitution of the
3d of May, 1 791 ; a constitution which will be her eter-
nal defense against all the slanders of her enemies. But
even this noble and generous effort, as well as all her
magnanimous attempts for more than half a century,
prove that Poland had much to amend, to learn, and to
forget. It is not by blinding herself to her old caprices,
but rather by enlightening herself with regard to her past
mistakes, that she will be able to save herself from future
disasters, and conciliate the sympathies of all honest
minds. As Poland and her poets are so fond of quoting
the Bible and of speaking of the People of God, it
might perhaps be useful to remind them that it is pre-
cisely the ])eople of Israel who have, in the Book of
books, left us the example of three great prophets, whose
reunion forms a complete circle of the poetry inspired by
an ardent patriotism. First comes Isaiah, who scathes
the fiiults of the nation, and predicts its chastisement ;
then Jeremiah, who, when the yoke grew heavy upon the
people, weeps over the ruins of the city once so power-
ful ; finally, it is Ezekiel who, in the captivity of Baby-
lon, falls into sublime ecstasies, and sees the temple and
the city rebuilt. Certainly Poland has had her Jere-
miahs and her Ezekiels, but she needs an Isaiah with a
tongue of fire, a pitiless and courageous Dante, to sing
boldly in her ears some painful truths, to probe her many
wounds in i)lace of caressing them.
It is above all in his poem of *' The Dawn" (^1843)
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. n^
that our author has exposed his views with regard to the
Past and Future of his nation, in all the exaltation of his
generous errors. It possesses also the additional interest
of standing as a monument of a feeling of the heart. It
is the only work in which the author has given utterance
to his personal sentiments ; effusions in nowise com-
monplace, but of a highly poetic and elevated form. As
Dante made of Beatrice the symbol of his faith, the type
of theology, the Anonymous Poet regards his Beloved
as the type and ideal of his patriotic aspirations. He
expressly says, like Dante, he has passed through Hell,
and like him has had for guide a lady of grace and pity,
. . . *' a Beatrice as beautiful as the first, but far more
Christian, for she has not chosen the sky as her abode to
shelter herself from sufferings below; she has remained
with her brother upon earth. " Sad and gloomy, they
have met in highest spheres, " like two dark clouds
which, meeting in the air, pour forth torrents of tears,
but from which flash the lightnings which pierce the
vault of heaven, and for a moment show the glittering
Home of God," It is this Beatrice who is the confidante
of all his thoughts upon his country; it is to her he re-
lates all his emotions, all his presentiments; his nation
and his beloved melt into each other in the successive
stanzaf of "The Dawn. " The poem begins with a de-
scription of one of those lovely nights in Italy which
have before awakened so many deep emotions. Lost in
a sweet ecstasy, the two lovers of their fatherland breathe
the fragrant freshness of the air, and gaze into the im-
mensity of the starry vault. What holy calm ! What
divine peace ! The universe is an immense Lyre. , . .
A sublime chant is heard, — a chant of concord, — the
harmony of the spheres. . . . But in this concord is
there not one tone wanting? In this sheaf of light, has
not one ray been broken ? " O my sister, utter the tone
wanting in the lyre of life; point out the star eclipsed
but not extinct ; pronounce, pronounce the name : Po-
land ! — our Poland ! At such an hour ])erhaps God
hearkens to us ; will gather from thy lips the long-lost
tone, and will again restore it in His glorious Hymn !
. . . Ah ! thy lips tremble, and thy breast oppressed can
114
POLISH POETRY IN
only breathe a sigh. . . . My sister, God will under-
stand thee well ; He knows a sigh is now the only name
of thy sad country. " Thus begins a series of stanzas
in which the Poet paints with high poetic power the mis-
ery of the Present, the glories of the Past, and the hopes
of the Future. We are born orphans, — he says to his
Ladye when speaking of the actual generations, — posthu-
mous children ; our only cradle has been the grave of
our mother; "the sweet maternal gaze has ne'er illu-
mined our innocent play; and our young heads have
never reposed upon a warm and palpitating breast, but
on the cold stones of the cemeteries. "
One of the most beautiful stanzas of the poem is that in
which the Poet invokes the ancient senators, the heroes,
the illustrious captains and glorious kings of Poland, from
their graves. Covered with their armor of steel, and
wearing their rusty helmets, they march in endless train ;
and before this sublime Diet of Shadows, the Poet, at first
discouraged, accusing the ancestors of having destroyed
in advance the inheritance of their children, is reanimated
to new hope by the words of one of the shades, Stephen
Czarniecki, one of the purest heroes of the country. The
poet here introduces his idea of the " Christ of nations. "
It is not only Poland that he sees, he embraces humanity
entire. He compares our epoch to that which preceded
the Christian era, and many analogies are not wanting.
Then, as now, social wars had upturned the soil and de-
stroyed the old institutions; then, as now, a Caesar ap-
peared (Napoleon), who arrested society upon the brink
of the abyss, re-established a ma/eria/ order, and inaugu-
rated an epoch of great expansion for a civilization
thoroughly materialistic. Then, as now, discontent was
general; humanity suffered in its soul, and divined the
(oming of a great moral change. A Man at last came to
teach men the unknown law of love, to abolish slavery, to
preach fraternity. He was crucified, but He rose from the
dead, and His law reigned upon earth. This law still
reigns, but unhappily, though tlie divine doctrines of the
Saviour have changed and ameliorated the relations be-
tween individuals, they have not yet penetrated the rela-
tions among nations ; these are still regulated by the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
115
ancient rights, the pagan laws, those of conquest and op-
pression. A single Peoj)le has not followed this example,
her history has remained jnire from all international in-
justice ; it has always fulfilled the law in the affairs of this
world ; it has never enslaved nor subjugated any of its
neighbors, it has only used its power to protect the fee-
ble, it has sacrificed itself for the safety of others, — and
this people has been crucified as was the Saviour. The
last stanzas of "The Dawn" celebrate the resurrection of
this martyr, and with her a new reign of love among all
nations, the fraternity of all the Peoples crowning and re-
alizing the fraternity of men taught by Christ. In pro-
found emotion, wealth of imagery, purity of form, the
poet has never written anything which surpasses "The
Dawn," and enraptured by the vision of a near and
glorious future, he bids an eternal farewell to Poetry, ex-
claiming in the final strophe, which so many hearts have
repeated with enthusiastic fervor: "Our whole soul, O
my sister, we have expressed in this hymn ; let us now say
farewell to the lyre, farewell to all words ! Let children
delight forever to warble their songs ; far other ways are
open before us ; let my songs perish, let ftiy actions live ! ''
Illusion of the Poet, and yet partaken by a great part
of the nation, which was soon to be followed by a most
bitter awakening ! But this cry was not the less an ex-
pression of a true presentiment 1 New paths really soon
opened before the Poet ; we are now touching uj^on the
last i)eriod of his poetic activity, the very saddest of all,
and yet the most inextricably interwoven with the events
of the day, bound up as it was with a terrible catastrophe,
with a great national misfortune.
Moved and charmed by the accents of the Anonymous
Poet, Poland was still very far from following him into
the high, pure regions of moral life which he pointed out
to her. With regard to her aspirations, she still lingered
with Count Henry in the delusions of his youth, and even
Pancras loomed upon her horizon without affrighting her.
The revolution of 1831 had thrown thousands of Poles
into France, then deeply moved with revolutionary pas-
sions. The tortured exiles drank deeply at this boiling and
troubled spring, and a democratic propaganda, which has
Il6 POLISH POETRY IN
indeed produced its heroes, even its loyal martyrs, but
more than all, its blinded adepts, imbued with true revolu-
tionary doctrines, soon acquired an immense influence over
the country. That this movement had its origin in the
most generous feelings, in an impetuous desire to deliver
the wretched nation, in a vivid, though not enlightened
interest in the cause of the peasants, we are very far from
wishing to deny ; but it is not the less beyond doubt that
inflated declamation, and the infantile desire of imitating
the radicalism of the West, had also their share in hasten-
ing the insurrection. For example, the Polish democrats
imitated their French brethren in their hatred of Catho-
licity ; and tried to sap the religious faith of the nation at
the very moment when the Emperor Nicholas, more cir-
cumspect than these visionary patriots, renewed the most
vigorous persecutions against the Polish Church I The
" strong-minded," the leaders of the propaganda, did not
hesitate to adopt the dogmas of materialism, to proclaim
a cynic skepticism. "They desired the Resurrection of
a People," said upon this subject, at a later date, the
Anonymous Poet, "and they did not themselves believe
even in the immortality of the soul ! " But it was above
all in preaching hate against the nobility, which it stigma-
tized as "a decaying and corrupt class, inimical to the
people, and an eternal foe to progress," that the Polish
democracy manifested how far the spirit of imitation had
stifled not only all sense of justice, but even the most
evident perception of reality, for if there is anything
clear and manifest in this world, it is that the Polish no-
bility resembles absolutely in nothing the nobility of any
country of Western Europe. It is, in the first place, utterly
different in numbers ; it is not a class, but an entire popu-
lation. It was the only element which in the past had
been able to develop fully in itself the consciousness of its
own nationality; and at present it is the class of the pro-
prietors, the land-owners (of which the Polish nobility
consists), which bears in its breast the historic traditions
as well as the vivid prevision of the Future of Poland. It
constitutes the moral antl intellectual force of the country;
it issimjily its " tiers-elat," — for Poland has had no other:
and instead of being opposed to modern progress and
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
117
principles, it leans too fnuch for safety to modern ideas !
To propose the destruction of such a nobility was — as the
Anonymous Poet justly asserted — " to commit self-mur-
der, in order, after our suicide, to act and conquer. " It
was, nevertheless, recommended by the democratic propa-
ganda, which called upon the people to rise as one man
to deliver the country, to make way with every suspected
proprietor at the commencement of the insurrection, to
divide the lands of the nobles, who had no right to na-
tional life at all except in so far as tliey made part of the
people. And what was most tragically fantastic in this
melancholy attempt was, that its apostles, as well as its
disciples, were themselves of the nobility, for the demo-
cratic propaganda had no influence whatever among the
peasants, neither by its publications nor its emissaries; it
addressed itself to the proprietors, to the gentlemen of the
country ; it was by them it was so eagerly received, and
through them organized into a vast conspiracy, ready to
break out at a given signal. That the Polish nobility
should have so magnanimously and almost so universally
accepted the word of command from Paris, which sounded
for themselves the knell of spoliation and death, while it
certainly argues a great want of political intelligence, also
incontestabiy proves into what deep and hopeless despair
the country had been driven by foreign domination : it
must prove also above all else how cruel and unjust were
the declamations then made — as indeed they still are —
against the selfish and aristocratic spirit of this poor Polish
nobility, generous enough to accept even communism,
sufficiently devoted to what it believed to be the interest
of the country to subscribe to its ozan suicide ; which sfjirit
the Powers of the North at the time of the dismember-
ment, as also Nicholas in 1831, denounced as confirmed
Jacobinism.
It is difficult to imagine the rapidity and extent of the
democratic movement which then seized upon Poland,
the result of which, for any clear-sighted mind, could
only be a powerless insurrection, aggravated by social
rupture and distraction. How heart-rending the situa-
tion of the Anonymous Poet in such events ! It can-
not be denied that some of his poems, magnanimous and
II
Ii8 POLISH POETRY IN
sublime as they are, — especially those which appeared
after " Iridion," — have erred through an excess of spir-
itual optimism ; that his poetry forgot too much the con-
ditions of this world ; that it evangelized and ange/ized
men with too little regard to their situation and duty as
citizens ; and that the influence of these works is still,
in more than one respect, enervating for young souls.
Alas ! the Poet was soon to be cruelly recalled from these
ethereal and cloudy spheres by the most bitter reality;
a period of two years only intervened between the en-
trancing visions of " The Dawn" and the heart-rending
lamentations of ''The Psalms of the Future" (1845).
This " Christ of Nations," proclaimed so near its Resur-
rection, with its mission of new life to enslaved Nations,
must now be preserved from suicide ! Our Poet did not
shrink from this painful duty, and, if we consider his
personal position and the general state of the public
mind, it was in him a great act of civic courage. He
brought to the fulfillment of this task all the fire, elo-
quence, logic, and passion of his heart. The first two
Hymns are still kept in the realms of the Future ; he
again represents to the Nation the ideal which God cre-
ated her to realize; but in the third Psalm he enters
upon the fiery questions of the moment ; exposes the
elements of the propaganda, resolution by resolution ;
boldly pronounces the words, " Massacre of the nobles,"
which might be found in the logic of the new doctrines,
or in the progress of events. To the " conventioners"
of the Convention, who were always calling for vigorous
acts, he declared that murders were no actions ; that de-
struction was not regeneration; that there was but one
true law of public safety for the nation: "the Polish
nobles with the Polish people. '^ After having recalled the
eternal principles of justice and humanity, he undertakes
the defense of the Polish nobility, then so loudly decried
by a blinded radicalism. Was it not the nobility whose
breast forever bloomed into scars and gashes? Was it
not always ready to offer up itself in holocaust upon the
altar of the country? Had it not even consented to sui-
cide? In the great Diet of 1791, who ojiened to the
people the golden doors of the Future ? Was it not this
THE NINE TEE. y Til CENTURY.
119
maligned race of nobles — a race which had never con-
sented to a truce with the oppressor — which had offered
itself as autumn grain to be harvested on every battle-
field, and which had actually peopled Siberia ?
"Everywhere, everywhere upon this globe, I see the
footprints of my brothers, and your words will never be
able to efface them. It is they whom the world has per-
secuted ', it is they whom the hangmen have tortured ; it
is they who forever wander in the polar snows, and who
crowd the dungeons of the citadels T
"Upon the arid peaks of the Alps, upon the billowy
azure of the Mediterranean, upon the Italian Apennines,
upon the summits of the Sierras of Spain, upon the wide
plains of Germany, upon the snows and ices of the Mos-
covites, upon the fields of friendly France, upon every
land, on every sea, they have scattered the seed of our
future country ; a seed divine, the blood of martyrs —
and you are the sons of their agonies ! "
The Anonymous Poet regards persecution as a small
ill ; the obscuration of truth is the real and terrible evil ;
the changes forced upon the true life of the national soul
by constant oppression, the reign of morbid and funereal
ideas, is the great misfortune. He says : "Alas ! slavery
distills a poison which decomposes the soul ! Siberia is
nothing; the knout is nothing; nothing the racks and
tortures which rend the body ; but alas for the spirit of
the nation when it is poisoned ! This is the most bitter
of all woes! " The poet conjures his country to repel
all evil counsels, all inspirations of despair, "Let the
demagogues howl on, the sophists whisper that a high
and mysterious aim may justify infamous means ; that the
happiness of ail h worth the death of t\\efe-aj; that love
may spring from a work of hate. . . . No ! no ! IVe
can build nothing of mire ; and the highest Wisdom is
Virtue J"
Thus, invoking the most glorious memories of the Past
for the salvation of the Present, passing from flashes of
anger to accents of soul-subduing pity, and placing all
his luxuriant imagination in the service of common sense,
did the inspired patriot continue to write. But it was a
voice in the desert ; it was lost without echo in the pros-
120 rOLISH POETRY hV
tration of the clear-sighted, and the disdainful silence of
the party of action. As too often happens in moments
of public excitement, our author was not jia/ged, he was
classed ; he was placed among the enemies of progress, —
and then all was over ! One man, however, broke the
silence to rejily to the singer of the " Psalms," to defend
the honor of the denounced propaganda, to avenge "the
outraged people," and this man was also a Bard, and for-
merly a friend of the Anonymous Poet. Of an ardent
and wayward temperament, consumed by a sombre mysti-
cism as well as by a haughty pride, exceedingly jealous,
uniting to a splendid imagination a power of language
never equaled, even by Mickiewicz, Julius Slowa^ki sud-
denly entered the lists, and gave to the propaganda what
had hitherto been wanting to it — the support of his
marvelous genius. Raillery, anger, disguised allusions,
stormy passions, true sufferings, and fictitious com-
plaints, all the flashing and sometimes poisoned weapons
of his brilliant armory, were made use of in his "Reply
to the Author of the Psalms. "
Let us cast a brief glance on this " Reply," as it is an
important element in this characteristic and almost na-
tional debate. Slowa(;ki therein calls back the author of
the "Psalms" to his visions in his " Dawn," to the final
cry in which he invokes "his actions," at the same time
cruelly satirizing the "seraphic doctrines of the noble
dreamer. ^' The double-bladed sword glitters from the
very commencement. "To believe thee, my ^<^(;v///c7//<7//,
it would be a virtue in us to endure slavery patiently !
Thou changest our sad existence in this valley of tears
into a life of pure and shadowy spirits in the silver
moon ; with the voice of an infant thou criest : 'Action !
action ! action ! ' And the nation prepares for it, and
thou instantly beginnest to tremble when the face of the
people appears, and when the voice of God resounds
from the burning bush ! " Slowa^ki continues : " Once,
the Elect of noble Poetry were the first to proclaim new
truths, and to excite the masses to the combat of freedom.
But now behold ! a great Lord, a grand singer, shows
himself as a ' proj^het of the people,' but in the mode of
the Ifcau mondc, as a highly fashionable Prophet ! He
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 121
places Christ in his poetic car as Ovid did his Phaeton,
and with light, rose-colored steeds, he traverses the aerial
depths of a harmless ideal ! When the universe is per-
ishing in agony, when the tide of action rises high, be-
hold I he places himself as barrier across it, forbids the
century itself to move, and from his breast, shivering
with fear, we only hear the hoarse, shrill cry, in the name
of the red God, wliomsoever thou mayst be : ' Kill not
the nobility! ' The nobility? But where may it be
found?
By what mark sliall we recognize it? " In a
celebrated stanza, Slowa^ki, who more than once recalls
his own noble origin, denies that the Polish nobility is
still in existence, making only one injurious exception
for Prince Czartoryski, in attributing to him dynastic
ambition, — an accusation frequently brought against a
tried patriot by the ungrateful companions of his exile.
"Yes, you were once numerous; formerly there were
hundreds of thousands of your nobles ; nobles by heart
and bearing ! But in our days I have known but one
noble; the whole country has never seen another. He
alone, by the misery of his heart, by his intentions if
not by his success ;. by a silent, proud, and grand sad-
ness ; by a hand always full of gifts, by an antique, quiet
glory, was a noble, and had the right so to call himself.
And now he, the sole and only noble, has abandoned
your ranks ; he has himself resigned his dignity; he has
gone down to rot atnong the kings / He is no longer, and
you are no more ! "
It has always been the tactics of revolutionists to pre-
sent their programmes as utterly harmless ; and Slowagki
did not fail to follow this course. He boldly asks our
poet : Where he had ever heard massacre spoken of ; who
had threatened with the dagger? Mere visions of a
troubled brain were all such idle thoughts, hallucinations
of a frightened fancy. A plaintive tone had perhaps
reached him through the air; a (^///■w/1'^* celebrating the
ancient combats of the Zaparogues ; and you ivere afraid,
son of the noble ! or perhajjs some brilliant morning a ray
of sunshine pierced into the room of the Psalmist, made
* . \ Dirge from the Ukraine.
II*
122 POLISH POETRY IN
its way through the scarlet curtains of his sumptuous bed ;
and the lord-poet, suddenly awaked, thought he saw red,
— and y OK were a/raid, son of the noble! This ironic
refrain returns frequently through the poem, and has its
climax in the words whose envenomed cruelty will be
readily understood : "You owe respect to your parents ;
now the Polish People is your father, you have no other !
Fear it r^ Nevertheless Slowa^ki, while defending the
democracy from nourishing any thought of vengeance,
takes care not to tranquillize us too completely; on the
contrary, he calls upon all the powers of his vast and
fiery imagination to depict the abyss of misery and pain
in which society groans ; the debasement of character,
the profound eclipse of justice, the horrors of tyranny,
the arrogance of the rich, the anguish of the poor. To
bring back the moral world which has swung from its
orbit, to tear humanity from this abyss of shame and in-
famy, "who knows what the Spirit may deem necessary,"
— "the Spirit, the eternal Revolutionist who tortures
bodies and delivers souls? " "The sun always rises in its
clouds of purple, and all Dawns are bloody ! "
The "Reply" of Slowa(;ki had scarcely had time to
be known by the public when appalling events arose,
bearing to the author of the " Psalms" a far more serious
response. The insurrection so long in preparation by the
propaganda at last broke out ; it proved as powerless
against the enemy as murderous for the nation. It was
principally, however, in Galicia that the disastrous out-
break showed in its full force, manifesting itself under
entirely new forms. The bureaucracy established there,
as violent as it was perfidious, had been very careful to
take no measures to prevent the explosion ; it had, on the
contrary, fed the subterranean fire, and had taken the time
to complete the tuition of the peasants, so happily com-
menced by the propaganda. Since the proprietors were
so decidedly, and even by their own confession, such
ferocious enemies of the people, would it not be best to
put an immediate end to them by a terrible justice,
especially when the government was so ready to help
them, even paying a good sum of florins for every head
of a noble, and facilitating the undertaking still more by
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
123
a suspoision of the laws of God for fifteen days ? That the
Court of Vienna should have thus repaid the services
formerly rendered her by the country of Sobieski, is one
of those flagrant ingratitudes which, even after the aston-
ishment has worn off, still leave an undying memory.
And who can wonder that the Poles should see in the ca-
lamities which have successively overwhelmed the House
of Hapsburg since the date of the wrongs of 1846 the
just punishment of one of the greatest crimes ever regis-
tered in history? The effect of the massacres of Tarnow
and Rzeszow was immense in Poland, and the discourage-
ment greater than had ever been known there before,
even after the greatest disasters. And let us say it with-
out prevarication, Poland to this very hour still bleeds
from the wounds of Tarnow and Rzeszow ; the massa-
cres of Galicia still weigh upon her as a memory and an
apprehension ; they have rendered her motionless during
the last fifteen years ; and even at this moment have not
ceased to paralyze her action.
The jacquerie of 1846 was followed by a prostration
of spirit which was manifested in the world of thought
by a mournful silence, which lasted long, and was only
broken for a moment by the characteristic phenomenon
of the " Letter from a Polish gentleman to Prince Met-
ternich," in which the Marquis Wielopolski — since be-
come famous — for the first time proposed without dis-
guise, and with the concentration of despair, the question
of voluntary self-destruction in the bosom of a vengeful
panslavism. It is difficult to imagine with what a stifling
weight the sad events of 1846 pressed upon the soul of
the Anonymous Poet. It was two years before he was
able to write again. He then commenced a new series
of Psalms, in which he tried to pour balm into the wounds
still bleeding, and to light hope anew in hearts crushed to
earth. Aresponse was still due to Slowacjki, and he made
it with moderation, yet with force, but also with great
sadness. The reproach of cowardice made by Slowa^ki
weighed heavily upon the descendant of the Knights of
Bar. "Thou hast said it was fear that spoke in my soul
when I foresaw that we were moving toward the darkness,
and not toward the light ; and that the people might, in
124 POLISH POETRY IN
this path, bring disgrace upon themselves. Thou hast
spoken the truth ; there is a certain kind of courage of
which I cannot be proud. It is true, I do tremble at
the death of my fellow-men ; I love not to push them into
the abyss. At the sight of shame, it is true, a divine
terror seizes my heart ; assassins will never be to me as
brothers; I love the sword, but shudder at the knife! "
Our Author then begins the debate, discusses all the
destructive theories of Slowacjki, especially that of the
"Spirit eternally revolutionist" and "torturing bodies
to deliver souls. " He calls for a regeneration by a con-
tinuous development through love. He says, ingeniously:
"It is also a great sin, O Poet, to speak only ever of
the ^■p'wii, forgetting that He proceeds from the Father and
the Son; to abstract all the past generations, and to re-
nounce the painful work of the ages ! "
The solution of continuity between the epochs which
preceded the revolution and those which succeeded it, the
rupture of all traditions, the absence of all roots in the
heart of history, which caused the tree of the new life so
soon to wither and die, though we ceased not to water it
with our tears and blood, — all this has been noticed and
commented upon more than once in our time ; especially
after the catastrophe of February led us to scrutinize more
closely the problem of modern existence, and to seek
more deeply into the internal causes of the moral discon-
tent and dissatisfaction with which we are struggling.
Such truths were not generally perceived until our Poet
brought them to the light in his "Psalms," and in all cases
he has known how to give them ingenious and touching
forms in a manner peculiar to himself. He saw, in ad-
dition, the gulf constantly widening between the upper
and intelligent classes and the lower ranks ; the first
forced to draw back in order to preserve themselves, the
second having no hope save in forever pressing forward
toward the unknown ; he foresaw the possible, nay, im-
minent conflict between the two great European factions:
but he found even in this very conflict a cause for liope,
— and he continued to hope for his country. He believed
Poland was destined to counterbalance, by the character
of her instincts and the influence of her actions, "the
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 125
atrocious cowardice of the retrograde party, as well as
the frightful passions of the radicals. " Thus after a long
detour, and even through the bloody gulf of Tarnow, did
the author of the " Psalms" return to the radiant visions
of the " Dawn," exclaiming after, as before, the massa-
cre: **0 my country! watch and hope: love without
bounds is life without end P' . . . We may judge these
hopes of the Poet as we will, but we are forced to bow
reverently before the faith and charity which, after such
trials, were able to inspire such words !
At the date of the appearance of these new Psalms, the
revolution of February broke out, and soon had its counter-
stroke as far as in the capital of Austria. The Anonymous
Poet followed the progress of events closely, without mis-
understanding their importance, but without making the
least allusion to them. Faithful to his system, he re-
garded the present epoch as the painful birth of the second
Christian era; as preparing, to use the words of M. de
Maistre, "a new eruption of Christianity;" he saw even
in the events of 1848 the annunciation of the judgment
of God upon the two thousand years of Christianity, and of
a palingenesis according to the Gospel ; but in the imme-
diate future he could see nothing but misfortunes. The
nations appeared to him no wiser than their governments.
"There is no privilege before thee, O God ! Peoples as
well as kings, as soon as they become unfaithful to Thee,
are equally doomed to fall, — since even Thy Angels by
myriads fell I"
In the first days of the revolution of 1848, he pre-
dicted the horrors of June in an eloquent prophecy. His
presentiments went still further, and he believed he could
announce the hour in which the West of Europe, sapped
in its foundations and shaken in its faith in liberty, would
at last come to believe in the "truth of him who alone
remained firm and unshaken upon the rock of St. Peters-
burg. " Then would be, affirmed the Poet, the last, yet the
most cruel, trial of crucified Poland ; and he conjured his
country to keep her religion intact through those moments
of her supreme agony; to preserve in all its purity the
Polish soul, which would be tempted by two opposing but
equally brutal forces : the Panslavism of the Czars, and
126 POLISH POETRY IM
the radicalism of Euro])e ! There is sometliing strangely-
pathetic even in the first lines of his famous Psalm of
"Good Will," in which the son of a nation still bleeding
after a massacre and counted among the dead, robbed of
all that is prized ujion this earth, still cries to his Creator :
"Thoji hasi given us everything, O Lord: all that Thou
couldst grant us of the eternal treasures of Thy grace !
Even after we had descended into the grave, Thou hast
maintained us living in all the great struggles of the
world. We no longer existed, and yet we were always
present in every glorious action, upon every field of battle,
with our Eagle of silver and our blade of steel; Thou
hast taken from us the earth, but hast lowered to us the
heavens; Thine infinite heart hath everywhere shielded
us; corpses in appearance, we were in reality spirits ! "
For Poland, to which the Lord has already granted all,
the Poet only asks the final gift : a will which knows no
recourse save to holy acts when extreme temptations come.
. . . " To-day, O Lord, when Thy judgment begins upon
the two thousand years through which Christianity has
already existed, grant us, O Lord, to resuscitate ourselves
only through the power given by Thee to holy acts! "
This prayer returns, through varied intervals, in this sub-
lime Psalm, through which the rhythm flows majestically
slow as some vast organ's chords ; it falls upon the ear
at most unexpected moments, and is yet always admirably
prepared, brought back rather by the musical enchainment
of the thought than by its logical development; recalling
the contexture of a fugue of Bach, and ])roducing the
same magical effect. Tiie hymn is closed by a marvelous
picture of Catholic sentiment. The veneration in which
the Mother of Christ has always been held by Poland is well
known to the world. Our Poet represents the heavenly
Mother pleading to the Son for His faithful servants;
offering before Him a chalice in either hand, one contain-
ing the blood of the Saviour of men, the other that of the
martyred nation.
Lord, look upon Thy Mother! Look, O Lord!
Surrounded by Thy ninsomod souls she mounts
To 'I'licc, tluDugh the immensities of space;
And as she passes, all tiie stars bow down,
The whirlinj; forces of the universe
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 127
Are charmed into a sudden tenderness.
Borne upward by the pale and misty Shades
Of our own martyrs, now she cleaves the Blue,
Crosses the Milky-Ways, and leaves the suns behind;
Higher and higher still she ever mounts,
And whiter, more resplendent still she grows.
Look on her, Lord ! See her as low she kneels
Before Thy throne, midst all Thy Seraphim.
Upon her forehead burns the Polish crown,
Herazure mantle sweeps the depths of space.
Tissued of rays of light. The spheres are still,
And wait Thy word ! With gentle voice she prays ;
Behind her weep the spirits of our sires;
In either hand she holds a chalice up. . . .
O Lord, 'tis Thine own blood she here presents
In the cup which she holds high in her right hand !
And lower — in the left, — O. lower far, —
Thou knowest. Lord, — the blood of those who loved thee, —
Of Thine own faithful subjects, crucified
Upon a thousand crosses I The blood which flows
Unceasingly beneath a triple sword.
Upon three realms which yet are but one country / . . .
In the name of the Holy Cup which overflows
With Thine own love, she prays I'hy mercy for
The chalice which is lower— lower far, —
She prays for us, — Father, and Spirit, Son !
She prays for us, and we all pray with her.
That Tliou wouldst grant the grace of every grace !
It is not Hope that we implore from Thee :
It falls upon us like a rain of flowers. —
Nor is it Death on our oppressors' heads :
Their doom is written on to-morrow's clouds. —
Nor is it power to rise from our red graves :
The stone unrolled, we have already risen. —
Nor is it arms to meet our enemies :
The tempests bear them to us on the winds. —
Nor is it aid ; the field of action opes
Before us now, and we must aid ourselves. —
But as to-day Thy judgment has commenced
On the two thousand years already lived
By Christianity, O grant us. Lord,
A holy will!
O Father, Son, and Spirit, a good will !
The hymn of the "Good Will" was the last of the
Psalms of the Poet ; we might even say it was the last of
his songs. He raised his voice only once more in his
"Resurrecturis," in which he seemed to endeavor to gather
together, as in a final chortl, all his ideas upon sacrifice,
to recomnieml them to the nation, — after wliich he was
128 POLISH POETRY IN
silent. The Nation was silent with him ; she ruminated
long upon the thoughts evolved in "Iridion," "The
Dawn," and the "Psalms" ; she tlioroughly impregnated
herself with them; she entered upon a career of painful
and obscure labors for which she may perhaps be some
day compensated, but Avhich for the time only thickened
around her the shroud of forgetfulness in which she was
wrapped. The greatest events passed without in the least
changing her lot ; even the Crimean war did not call her
upon the scene of action, and in the midst of so many Peo-
ples making their names resound, or recovering them, she
rested long mute and ignored. She became, like her Poet,
^'anonymous ! '''' During this time, the author of the
" Psalms" died in a foreign land, and there was nothing,
even to this untimely end, Avhich did not bear the seal of
the tragic destiny which, with its weight of lead, })ressed
to the very earth the whole of this mournful and pained
existence. An old man, an old and brave soldier, had
just expired in the midst of the indifference of his com-
patriots, — an indifference which was indeed only gener-
osity ; and if the nation deigned to give a single thought
to the event, it was of the respite which this death might
give to the tortured life of a son who had been ever faith-
ful to his country. But the fatal tie uniting these two
lives was not to be broken even by death ; a violent ill-
ness seized the Poet, and he perished but three months
after he had lost his father. He died in Paris, the 24th
of February, 1859, — and Silence only came to seat herself
upon his grave ! To borrow the picturesque expression
of a celebrated Polish writer : " A great genius went to
heaven, and in his flight he did not brush the earth,
even with his shadow ! "
A like silence reigned over another tomb, wider and
deeper far, which was called Poland ; but on a day more
than a year ago the three monarchs of the North agreed
upon the "interview of Warsaw," which, rigluly or
wrongly, the liberal opinion of ICurope regarded as the
point of departure of a new holy alliance ; it was said this
interview was especially directed against Italy, and the gen-
eral tendencies of the West. At this news Poland trembled.
The Nation, so long buried in its own grief, in its internal
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
129
toil, shook off its shroud, and sprang from its inaction.
And is it known what was the signal of this sudden Polish
life? It was a funeral mass celebrated upon the same day
in all the churches of the country for the repose of the
souls of three poets : Mickiewicz ; the author of the
"Psalms"; and Slowa<;ki.
A pious thought of love and concord thus strove to re-
unite before God, and in the general mourning of their
fellow-men, the two great adversaries who had been for a
long time friends, placing above them both the great
master, — "the immortal IVa'ide/ote. "
Soon after came the day in which the people of Warsaw
rose ; rose without arms, bearing only the cross and Polish
flag in their hands: "They gave no death, but they
received it;" and when the Ruler, frightened at an at-
titude so new, demanded what they wanted, they replied :
" Our Country. "
Then must the great spirit of the singer of "Resurrec-
turis" have leaped for joy. The Ideal he had dreamed
was now Ideality ; aird the Poetry which had remained so
long anonymous was now signed by the name of an entire
People.
THE "FRAGMENT,"
OR
UNFINISHED POEM.
INTRODUCTION.
Mountains in the neighborhood of Venice. Sunrise. Ali-
GHiERi and the Young Man, both in hunting costume,
are seated upon a rock.
The Young Man. Look, friend, in what glowing purple
the god of day ascends ! Ah ! if man were thus born,
and could thus extend his dominion over earth ! Look !
How that last dim star is dying out ! It is said to be the
fate of the heart thus to die, consumed in the flames of
genius ! Rise ! Rise, O Sun ! Shine down into these
depths still tenanted by darkness ; throw thy glittering
bridges of rainbows from bank to bank across the white
torrents ! How fresh is the air ! I feel so strong, I see
so far, my sight is so clear and piercing, I know I shall
not miss a single shot to-day. The poor chamois brows-
ing there upon that dizzy cliff will not live till noon !
Dost thou not hear? The shrill horns of our hunters re-
echo through the pines of the mountain. Come ! let us go !
Alighieri. I will remain here.
Young Man. Alighieri, what is the matter with thee
to-day ? Thou hast scarcely spoken to me since sunset.
When we began to climb these rocks at midnight, in
silence didst thou skirt the precipices, using thy hand
only to point out to me their dangers ; and now when the
chase is about to begin, when the trees shiver with the
bayings of our dogs, when the earth, the rocks, and my
131
132
THE ^'FRAGMENT:'
spirit tremble with eagerness, thou hesitatest and hast no
desire to accompany us!
Alighicri. Knowest thou not this is the hour in which
I am accustomed to pray to God ?
Young Man. Then I will wait for thee.
Alighieri. Knowest thou not that I am wont to pray
to the Lord only in solitude?
Young Man. Then tell me at what time I shall return
for thee.
Alighieri. Thou wilt find me this evening in the same
place.
Young Man. I wish to Heaven thou wouldst accom-
pany me ! Come ! 1 cannot fire aright without thee.
We will mount that naked peak where crystals form and
chamois bound. The hunters say the whole world can
be seen from that point : come !
Alighieri. The whole world may be seen from here
also !
Young Man. How ?
Alighieri. By closing our eyes, and humbling our
spirits before the Lord !
Young Man. Hark ! again they wind the horn. Adieu !
Now on, on ! over these abysses, and up those heights, —
up — up, among the clouds ! I am sorry from my heart,
Alighieri, that thou wilt not come with me.
Alighieri. Bend not thus over the precipice, — hold by
the branches ! I can still see, — I see thee, — turn not to-
wards me, — take care there on the edge of the waterfall !
He hears me no longer. He flies like a bird, scarcely
touching earth. In the dawn of existence, the child, agile,
light and careless, sports like the spirits whom Death will
approach no more. But they know the mysteries of being,
and he has scarcely wakened to the consciousness of life !
As the ether which fills the infinite may condense into
dark masses, form brilliant suns, or float as light vapor on
through s])ace, — so may he become all or nothing ; the
Elect of Heaven, or the prey of Hell !
{He raises his hands in prayer. )
Merciful Father ! Thy ways on earth have in our days
grown obscure ! Thy face is veiled in clouds ! ! Men
INTRODUCTION. 133
seek thee anew, and cannot find Thee ! But even now
Thou risest upon the horizon ; Thou increasest ! Why-
do they gaze forever into the heights of Heaven ? Ah,
if they would but look toward their own horizons !
Heavenly Father !
