SOLDIERS OF THE PEN

a single noble symphony. His best work is un-
doubtedly Iridion, a dramatic poem, in which he
shows that all the self-sacrificing struggles are in
vain if they are impelled by hatred, for there is
no salvation without love. Krasinski's Infernal
Comedy, which he wrote at the age of twenty-one,
in the year 1833, is remarkable for the fact that
it deals with the class struggle! However, although
the concept was first born in a Polish brain, the
Polish people were never susceptible to such
teachings and always remained incurably bour-
geois, and nationalist, even during the twenty years
of the Republic, when the Polish working class
was exposed to so much incitement from Soviet
Russia. This bourgeois and nationalist mentality
saved the Republic from violent clashes and up-
heavals during its brief existence, though many a
Polish Socialist was sent to a concentration camp.

In his Before Dusk which Krasinski wrote on
the shore of Lake Como, he describes the ecstasy
of moonlit nights beside his beloved, but sees in
his own unspeakable happiness a mystic assurance
of the Messianic mission and resurrection of
Poland. In his introduction to this work we read
the following passage:

c States are the handiwork of man> agglomer-
ations of particles brought together. Nations,
however, are made by God. That is why a
State without a nation cannot and only a
nation welded into a State can be Christian
and belong to the universal human order.*

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