POLAND
By tht tame Aulktr
MAIN CURRENTS IN
NINETEENTH CENTURY
LITERATURE
By GEORGE BRANDES
I. THE EMIGELA.NT LITERATURE
II. THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN
GERMANY
III. THE REACTION IN FRANCE
IV. NATURALISM IN ENGLAND
V. THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN
FRANCE
VL YOUNG GERMANY
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. A Critical
Study. By George Brandes. Demy 8vo,
buckram uncut, los. net.
HENRIK IBSEN. BJORNSTJERNE
BJORNSON. Critical Studies. By Gkorgk
Brandks. With Introduction by William
Archer. Demy Svo, Roxburgh, gilt top, or
buckram, uncut. lof. net.
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
a I Bedford Street, W.C.
POLAND
A STUDY OF THE LAND
PEOPLE AND LITERATURE
BY
,^ ^^EOR
GE BRANDES
10' '
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1903
All righU rturved
This Edition enjoys copyright in all
countries signatory to the Berne
Treaty, and is not to be imported
into the United States of America
CONTENTS
PART I
OBSERVATIONS AND APPRECIATIONS
FIRST IMPRESSION (1885)
PACK
I. Journey from Vienna to Warsaw— The Frontier-
Custom-house Inspection 3
II. Warsaw— Physiognomy of the City— Condition of
the Language and of the Theatre— Russianisa-
tion— Banishments n
III. The Antecedents and Characteristics of the
Poles 22
IV. The Poles and the French — Instability, Dilet-
tantism—Feverish Character of the Pleasures
OF Life — Strength and Susceptibility of the
National Feeling 31
V. Consolidation of Everything Polish — Religious
Beliefs and Parties— Poland a Symbol . .41
SECOND IMPRESSION (1886)
THE EXPULSION OF THE POLES BY PRUSSIA
I. The Polish Women 53
II. The Men— Polish Ideals, Virtues, and Vices . . 58
vi CONTENTS
rACE
III. Education AND Instruction— Democrats, Socialists,
Free-thinkers — Compulsory Choice of the
Cultured 66
IV. Polish Life and the Russian System — Public
Festivities and Masquerades, Social Life in
Different Circles — The same Oppressive Atmos-
phere everywhere 78
V. The Censorship— Difficulties in obtaining Per-
mission to deliver Lectures 85
VI. How ONE Writes and Speaks under a Censorship. 93
VII. Mental Effects of the Situation on the Young . 96
VIII. Is Poland as an Object worth the Sacrifices
made for it ? 103
THIRD IMPRESSION (1894)
A POLISH MANOR-HOUSE
I. Neighbourhood — Landscape — Increased Severity
OF Russian Rule 109
II. Cholera — Censorship — Arrests 115
III. Monotony and Stillness — Summer-night Senti-
ments — Political Divergence of the Older and
Younger Gener-iTions 121
IV. Poland and France— Poland and Germany . .129
V. A Church Festival— Popular Beliefs . . .136
VI. The Memorial Procession of 1894 — Painters and
Writers 142
VII. A Common Domestic Occurrence, Significant of
the State of the Country 150
VIII. National Characteristics and Patriotism — Con-
clusion 156
FOURTH IMPRESSION (1899)
I.-VIII. Lemberg .165
CONTENTS vu
THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE OF POLAND
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
(1886)
POINTS OF CONTACT IN POLISH AND DANISH
LITERATURE
PACK
I. Tendencies Common to all European Literatures
— Peculiar Features — Retrospect — Kocha-
nowski—Skarga— Jesuitism— French Philosophy
—Rationalism 192
J II. Polish Romanticism Determined by the Character
of the People, by European Romanticism and
the Political Situation — Special Points of
View for the Antithesis of Classic and Ro-
mantic — Worship of Napoleon and Byron-
Relation TO Shakespeare and Dante — Influ-
ence OF Emigrant Life on the Sentiment of
Writers 199
III. BRODZINSKI, THE PlONEER OF ROMANTICISM— POPULAR
Ballads — The Ukrainian Poets: Malczewski,
Zaleski, Goszcynski 215
IV. MiCKIEWICZ AND GOETHE— FARIS AND THE ODE TO
Youth— Youth of Mickiewicz — Mickiewicz and
Pushkin 224
. V. The Political Situation Determines the Manner
of Treating all Subjects, the Point of View
FOR Love and Hate, Maternal and Filial Emo-
tions, the Relation between the Individual and
THE People, between Genius and the Surround-
ing World, between Emotion and Reason, Rela-
tion to Religion and Philosophy .... 239
viii CONTENTS
PACK
^Vl. The Two Principal Themes of the Leading Poets
MiCKiEWicz, Slowacki, and Krasinski : The First
Two THE Poets of Vengeance, Krasinski the
Poet of Love 253
VIL The Character of Hamlet in Poland— The Type of
Hamlet Conceived on Radical Lines by Slowacki,
and on Conservative Lines by Krasinski . . 269
VIIL "Pan Tadeusz," the only Epopee of the Century
— MiCKIEWICZ AND RZEWUSKI — IMPORTANCE OF
MICKIEWICZ 282
IX. Division Among the Poets— Disorganisation of
Romanticism— Polish Literature of To-Day—
Critical Summary 295
^ X. Conclusion 308
PART I
Iti-OBSERVAriONS & APPRECIATIONS
FIRST IMPRESSION
1885
4 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
how beautiful is the vicinity, how full of character is the
peasants' costume here in the region which we are going
through, the long white cloaks with red borders, and how
well they know how to wear their clothes in comparison
with the North German peasants in their stiff, ugly
costume 1
Austria is a rich land in a comparatively peaceful state
of dissolution, where there are many kinds of men, but no
Austrians. It is true we must except the imperial family and
one or two antiquities of the old Constitutionalists. Besides
these there are only Germans in Vienna, as outside Vienna
there are only Hungarians, Czechs, &c.
The train rushes on. A little Polish servant, accom-
panying a traveller, calls my attention to a young Russian,
who now and then spoke French to him. " He knows
very well that I understand Russian, but still he speaks
French to me ; that is the way with them all ; they are at
heart ashamed of being Russians," — an extremely naive but
very significant expression of Polish national hatred.
To profit by the daylight while it lasts, I read Sienkie-
wicz's " Bartek Vainqueur " in the Nouvelle Revue. . . .
The train stopped at Granica, the frontier station. Pass-
ports have to be inspected and baggage examined. A blond
Russian police soldier, in his becoming uniform, a long
grey coat, a cap without a vizor, a sabre at his side, entered,
demanded the passports and carried them away.
Then we received permission and orders to alight. When
a traveller suggested that we could leave our rugs, overcoats,
and articles of that kind in the carriage, since we were to
return to the same train in an hour, the little Pole informed
him of his mistake : " Everything must be taken out ; even
an umbrella left behind excites suspicion, and if a coat is
left, the lining is examined."
The first things found in my travelling-bag were the two
numbers of the Nouvelle Revue, which I had been reading in
the carriage.
" What is this ? " asked the chief of the uniformed
custom-house officers in German.
" What is it ? " I answered. "It is the Nouvelle Revue."
CUSTOM-HOUSE OFFICIALS 5
'* Yes, but what is that ? " — " A French periodical." —
" What does it contain ?" — " Do you understand French ?"
I asked. — " No." — " Is there any one here who understands
French ? " — " No." — " There are all sorts of things in it ;
there are two numbers and there are ten articles in each
number. It is impossible to tell in a word what they con-
tain."— "Then we shall take it and send it to the censor in
Warsaw." — " Is this periodical forbidden ? " — " Everything
is forbidden that I do not know, and I do not know this
book." He then began to flutter among the leaves, forwards
and backwards, and seemed to look for papers concealed in
the sheets that had not been cut. I was reminded of the
old lithograph which represents a monkey rifling the hand-
bag of a traveller and fumbling in his books.
" Have you any more of this sort ? " — " Yes, my trunk
is half-full of books." They were going to open it, when I
heard from another officer the expression, revolver, which I
understood, as the word is cosmopolitan. They had found a
pistol in my hand-bag. It circulated among them and was
examined. " Was it loaded ? " — " Yes, with six balls." —
" Would I be kind enough to take them out ? " I declined
decidedly to be kind enough. "Then we must." They
extracted the balls and afterwards found in the bottom of
my trunk a little box of balls, which was put with the pistol.
Then began the examination proper. Every book, every
pamphlet was dug out and laid aside ; every newspaper, even
the newspapers in which my shoes were wrapped, were taken
out, smoothed, and laid in a pile. They asked in what
language the books were and what was in them. As my
explanation was not found fully satisfactory, they took the
whole from me, giving me a receipt for 15 pounds of
literature. At the same time they demanded three rubles for
the transportation of this same literature to Warsaw. I
should have attempted bribery, if Poles had not previously
told me that above all things, bribery must not be tried in
the wrong place. I should run the risk of their taking the
attempt as a proof of evil intentions. It was in vain that I
urged that I needed the books which they took from me for
my work in Warsaw. It was in vain that I called their
6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
attention to the fact that they might safely leave me the
Danish books and newspapers, since no harm could be done
with them in Poland, where no one understands Danish.
" In the censor's office they understand all languages," was
the answer. — " Grant that that is true, although 1 have my
doubts ; but the government censor, who is Russian, I
cannot corrupt, and the other people do not understand
Danish, do they ? " — " That is true from your point of view,"
was the answer, and, acting from their point of view, they
kept the books. There was a Danish-French dictionary
in the heap ; I showed them that it was a dictionary, that
the words were arranged in columns. They racked their
brains over it. At last, after mature reflection they gave
me the first part, A — L, but with very serious looks replaced
part M — Z among the literature which the censor was to
examine.
" When and how can I get all this again ? " — " So far
as the books are concerned you can ask for them at the
censor's office ; you have a receipt for them. You will get
no receipt for the pistol. But you may address a petition
— on a whole sheet of paper — to the Governor-General for
permission to carry it, then, if he thinks fit, he can give
an order to the custom-house officer in Warsaw to deliver
it to you on your application there." ^
Thus on the very frontier itself we got the feeling that
from this point we were outside the precincts of real
European civilisation.
In such a trifling matter as the custom-house examina-
tion the two distinguishing marks of the bulk of Russian
prudential regulations can be traced : the oppressive and
' During my stay in Warsaw, in spite of my request, he did not give the order.
When one of my friends, after my return to Copenhagen, applied on my behalf to the
Governor- General for the delivery or return of this weapon which was guiltless of
shedding human blood, he received the following answer: He must (i) obtain
from me a power of attorney certified by the Russian Consul in Copenhagen ; (2)
make application to the Governor-General for permission to take the said revolver
over the frontier ; (3) after having received permission, apply to the custom-house at
Granica to send the pistol to the headquarters of the custom-house in Warsaw ; (4)
send the same by mail to Copenhagen and give proof to the office of the Governor-
General that the revolver bad actually been sent.
ANOMALIES OF THE CENSORSHIP 7
the inconsequent. If I had known of the prohibition against
having a pistol in my travelling bag, all 1 needed to do
was to put it into my pocket ; for the pockets are not
searched. If I had known that it was forbidden to carry
foreign books, I might have sent them from Vienna to a
bookseller in Warsaw, and I should have received them
without any delay.
The government regulations are not strict enough, and
yet so strict that, for fear of dismissal, the subordinate
officials are compelled to carry out their duty brutally as
well as injudiciously. The absurdities which met me on
the frontier, continually meet the foreigner and sometimes
the native born. A few years ago, on the Prusso-Russian
frontier, one of my friends, who had prepared himself for
the medical examination in Warsaw at the time when the
University was still Polish, but who was compelled to submit
to the examination after it had become Russian, had a
Russian grammar, written in Russian, taken from him be-
cause the custom-house official did not know the book.
The Russian rule is not like the Prussian, prudent and
uniform ; it is incoherent, absurd, and often entrusted to
clumsy hands. The pressure upon Russian Poland is so
great that it could not be borne for a month if many of
the regulations were not chaotic and meaningless, others
too trivial to be executed, others easily avoided by bribery,
others entrusted to instruments of so little keenness that
their effect is destroyed, and others again to such intelligent
and cultivated men that they are not put into practice.
I had accepted an invitation to deliver three lectures in
French in the town-hall of Warsaw. In regard to these
lectures I had many difficulties beforehand. I was com-
pelled to prepare them in time to send the manuscript
to Warsaw a month before my arrival, as they were to
be submitted to a double censorship, the usual one, and
a special one for public lectures. Since it was certain that
if they were sent by the ordinary post they would be
detained for an indefinite period at the frontier, it was
necessary to find a more convenient means of transit.
Ambassadorial courtesy enabled me to send them by a
8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
special hand to St. Petersburg. Thus they reached their
destination without any other delay than that caused by the
round-about journey. Two copies were prepared and sent
to the different censors, but after they had twice been read
through in French, a day or two before my arrival in
Warsaw a new difficulty arose. The well-known curator
of the education department, Apuchtin — the same person
who had his ears boxed by a student a year ago, which
created a commotion and tumult in the whole city — at
the last moment required that all three lectures should be
sent in again in a Russian translation. This and the further
examination naturally took time. Nevertheless, to the
astonishment of many, not a line was struck out, although
the lectures contained not a little which, as it appeared,
excited emotion in the listeners. I was told also that the
strictness of the censorship was sometimes neutralised by the
carelessness or chivalrousness of the examiner ; it seems
as if the censor stationed in the hall did not always note
very exactly if what is said is really identical with what
the lecturer has handed in in his manuscript.
It appears here, as in innumerable other cases in Russia,
that an order or prohibition in order to be absolutely
effective requires a whole system of additional regulations.
This is especially so when the prohibition against printing
anything has a practical object. In January the celebrated
old poet Odyniec died in Warsaw. He was the faithful
friend and youthful travelling companion of Mickiewicz,
politically a neutral, almost a conservative ; but as his
name was so intimately associated with memories of the
revolt of 1830 and of the period of literary splendour,
as, moreover, he had been so close a friend of Mickie-
wicz, the most celebrated enemy of the Russian authority,
they endeavoured by means of the censor to prevent demon-
strations at his funeral. Consequently it w^as forbidden to
give any public notice of the time of his interment, not
only in the newspapers, but by the placards which are
commonly posted in the streets and before the churches.
The prohibition was enforced, but in spite of it a pro-
cession of 50,000 persons followed Odyniec to his grave.
THE PASSPORT SYSTEM 9
It is thus that prohibition and censorship only succeed
in acquiring a character for ineffectual spite. This is not-
ably the case with the Polish press. It continually happens
that an article is forbidden by the censor on a particular
day, but a day or two later the author is allowed to make
free use of it. The result of this is only that the suspected
newspapers are behind their rivals in the discussion of the sub-
jects of the day. It continually happens also that an article
is forbidden by the censor in one newspaper and allowed
in another.
The passport system has the same character of annoy-
ance without profit as this form of censorship. Without a
passport, vis6d by the Russian consul in your place of
residence, generally speaking, you cannot cross the frontier
into Russia. It is called for, as already stated, in the
railway carriage, it is examined in a separate room during
the time while the baggage is being searched, and they
are so concerned to prevent the traveller from handing
it over to some offender or the other, that he does not
get his passport back till after he has taken his seat in
the train, immediately before the last ringing of the
bell ; a police soldier brings the passports in a case pre-
pared for the purpose with alphabetical letterings. You
hardly reach your place of destination before the passport
is again called for ; it is taken to the police office and kept
there during the whole stay of the traveller in the city, and
the information there given is supplemented by inquiries of
the servants in the house where you reside as to the full
names of your parents, whether you are married or un-
married— the unmarried are regarded as the more dangerous
— as to several matters. And this passport, which is only
given back on the day of departure, is examined again for an
hour at the station on the frontier through which you pass
on your return journey.
Nevertheless this vigilance also has a gap by which its
results are almost wholly destroyed. There is hardly
any attempt to ascertain whether the person named in
the passport is the same who has presented it. They
evidently have no means of knowing whether the name is
10 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
right, but as the passports are examined en bloc in a sepa-
rate room from that in which the travellers are collected,
they do not attempt to find out if the description cor-
responds with the person. As nothing is easier than to
procure a passport in Germany, Austria, England or
France, and then remain at home and let a friend travel
with it, the result is wholly out of proportion to the
trouble and annoyance — to say nothing of the fact that
hundreds who have no passports are daily guided over
the frontier on foot by men who are pointed out to every
one who needs them.
I had abundant opportunity of thinking over this subject,
as during the tiresome delay I walked up and down among
the tea- and grog-drinking idlers in the dirty waiting-room
at Granica, annoyed by intruders anxious to change my
Austrian money into rubles, consoled by others who ex-
plained to me that the officials were quite within their rights
in their treatment of me ; that the fact of my books being
in Danish was no security ; who could vouch for it, that
they did not contain accounts of the socialist congress in
Copenhagen 1
At last I got back what was left in my trunk for my
own disposal, and without anything contraband except what
I had in my head, I arrived the next morning in Warsaw.
II
WARSAW— PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE CITY— CONDITION
OF THE LANGUAGE AND OF THE THEATRE—
RUSSIANISATION— BANISHMENTS
Warsaw (Warszawa) is a city of more than 400,000 in-
habitants. As is well known, it is situated on the river
Vistula (Wisla), a broad river, over which of late years a
great iron bridge has been built from the square where
the castle is situated to the suburb Praga, so tragically
celebrated in the history of Poland. I don't know if it was in
consequence of Hauch's beautiful song that the stream in its
winter dress, full of grey floating ice, appeared so melancholy.
The city is of great extent, but with its decayed grandeur
and the horrible memories it calls up at every turn, it
makes a mournful impression. In the last century, next
to Paris, it was the most brilliant city in Europe ; now
it is a Russian provincial town. It then had the character
of prodigal splendour ; now it is a forlorn, neglected place,
which declines more and more every day, not the least thing
being done by the authorities for its appearance and im-
provement. It cuts one to the heart to see the wretchedly
paved streets, or the terrible old sandstone figures in the
Saxon garden, on coming from a luxurious city like Vienna,
or one which has blossomed out with such rapidity as Berlin.
For whereas the capitals of countries elsewhere are
generally the object of the rulers' care, almost of their
tenderness, and cities elsewhere from mere self-love take
heed of beauty and convenience, and strive to provide as
great attractions for country folks and for foreigners as
possible, Warsaw is the capital of a country whose existence
the government does not recognise, and is a city whose pride
12 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
the government wishes to humble in every way. We must
remember that Warsaw has no "home rule," no civic council,
and nothing at all like it. Russian Poland is altogether a
country where nothing is elected. As there is no parliament,
so also there is no municipal government. Only a part of
the taxes collected in the city is used for the city itself, the
remainder goes to St. Petersburg. Russian self-esteem
makes all the arrangements, and Russian covetousness carries
them out. The condition of the roads in the vicinity of
the city is only to be understood by one who knows the
Russian idea in Poland, the rule that when 80,000 rubles
are appropriated to a highway, 40,000 must go into the
pockets of the officials. No illusion has been left to the '
inhabitants of the city. As long ago as the i6th of
October, 1835, when the Tzar Nicholas visited Warsaw
for the first time after the great rising of the people in
1830-31, he said plainly to the deputation which came
to greet him, that the castle, which he had caused to be
constructed, was built not for the protection of the city, but ^
against it ; he threatened the Poles with the misfortunes
which awaited them if they did not give up their " dream of
a separate nationality, an independent Poland, and all such
chimeras," and he concluded with the words : " I have caused
this castle to be built, and I declare to you that at the least
attempt at insurrection I will have the city blown to pieces,
and I will then have it razed to the ground, and depend
upon it, it shall not be rebuilt during my reign."
Since the unfortunate revolution of 1863, nothing at
all has been undertaken for the cleanliness or well-being of
the place, though by reason of a lack of waterworks and
sewerage the beautiful city is one of the least healthy in
Europe. The bed of the streets is so soft that the paving
stones fall away from each other in ridges and holes, but
nothing has been done since 1863 to repair them ; nay, in all
these years, with the exception of the town-hall, which was
burned at that date, not a public building has been erected.
The whole of the civil and military administration is carried
on in confiscated private and public buildings. Time
destroys whatever it will without any one seeking to repair
MONUMENTS IN WARSAW 13
the damage. Thorwaldsen's Copernicus, which is so popular
in Warsaw that the common people call a statue a Coper-
nicus, is covered with dirt, but is never cleaned. The
pedestal is crumbling away under it, but no one restores it.
The Copernicus is one of the oldest statues of the city. It
was completed and unveiled May 11, 1830, after the dis-
tinguished author Stanislaw Staszic (i 755-1 826), the first
great orator of the Polish democracy, who gave all that he
possessed to objects for the public good, had made a contri-
bution of 70,000 Polish florins to the national subscription
for the erection of the memorial. On the other hand, the
monument to Prince Joseph Poniatowski which Thor-
waldsen had undertaken during his stay in Warsaw, Sep-
tember-October, 1820, and which in 1829 arrived in the
city to be cast in bronze, was indeed unveiled the same
day as the Copernicus, but was removed, as soon as the
revolt of 1 83 1 was quenched in blood. It is now to be
found rebaptized as a St. George, and inaccessible, in the
grounds of a Russian private citizen, the Prince of Warsaw,
not far from the city.
The only public memorials in good condition are : the
colossal monument to Paskiewicz in the middle of the
main street of the Cracow Suburb {Krakowskie Przed-
miescie), erected in gratitude because he, " trusty and active
as the knout in the hands of the executioner " (Mickiewicz)
in September, 1831, when the last heroic defenders had
blown themselves up into the air, conquered the redoubts
before Warsaw and entered the city — and the great iron
obelisk, commemorating the names of the Poles, who, in
1 83 1, informed against their countrymen, and were hanged
or shot on that account as traitors or spies. On the
sumptuous granite pedestal rest four metal lions. About
the base of the obelisk are horrible-looking heraldic eagles
with two heads of supernatural size. The inscription in
Russian and Polish over the names reads thus : " The Poles
who fell for fidelity to their Sovereign." This obelisk very
possibly misses its mark in Warsaw !
The street traffic is by no means inconsiderable ; in the
markets there is the same life as everywhere else where
14 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
buying and selling take place in the open air. But it strikes
the stranger that in those places where the people are to be
seen in large numbers, as on their Sunday promenades in
the principal streets, they never have the contented and
well-to-do Sunday look common in other large cities, but a
melancholy or brooding expression. A merry scene is
never witnessed in the street, and a joke is never overheard.
The physiognomy of the city does not, however, lack
character. The Circassian regiments (that is to say, in
reality Cossacks and Armenians in Circassian costume) with
their fur caps, their sabres at their sides, their yataghans in
their belts, have a picturesque oriental appearance. Every
moment also you meet among the less characteristic Polish
carriages a Russian equipage, in which a Russian officer
is driven by a coachman in the long black national costume
with the blue scarf round the waist.
One of the most noticeable things, so far as externals are
concerned, in the streets of Warsaw is, that without exception
all the names (even of the streets), all the signs, all the
notices are in two languages or two kinds of characters ; on
the left side the inscriptions are in Polish, on the right in
Russian, or above in Russian and below in Polish. It is
a little element in the contest which the government keeps
up to force the foreign language on the Polish nationality.
Recently the government has even begun to try to
introduce the Russian language into the Roman Catholic
Church. On account of a refusal to carry out an order of
this kind, the Bishop of Wilna, Hryniewiecki, was exiled to
Yaraslaw, and some weeks later his substitute, Harasimowicz,
to Wologda.
The only place where it is allowed to speak the Polish
language publicly is on the stage. As yet it is not forbidden
to give Polish theatrical representations, and this circumstance
has given to the theatre a preponderance in Polish intel-
lectual life, which is intelligible, but unfortunate, and so much
the more harmful and unnatural as the dramatic litera-
ture of the country is rather poor. There is something
depressing in seeing this seriously constituted and highly
endowed people attributing an importance to the theatre
THE POLISH STAGE 15
which it by no means deserves in a nation without pro-
nounced dramatic qualities. If many of the best literary
men have devoted themselves to theatrical criticism, it is
because in the guise of examination and analysis of the ideas
put forward in the plays, they can say and suggest much
which it would be impossible to advance without this oppor-
tunity or veil.
The theatre in Warsaw is on the decline at the present
moment. It is directed by a courtier who is bitterly hated,
and who rules it in a military fashion, without the least
artistic insight. It has indeed one important comic actor,
but otherwise no men of talent of the very first rank, and
no contemporary school of dramatic authors who could
place peculiarly national aims before the younger men who
frequent it. The greater part of the repertoire consists of
French plays, and the style of acting is essentially French.
However, in Helen Marcello, the theatre in Warsaw has an
actress who fascinates by her beauty and her glow of passion,
and only a few years since it had two admirable actresses
who would shine on any stage.
One, Madam Popiel-Svienska, whom I saw play at a
performance for a charity in Pailleron's " L'Etincelle,"
was a roguish and delicately emotional ingenue ; a chubby
little figure, youthful in her movements, with a delicate
face, which shone with goodness of heart, its shadows
dimples and its sunbeams smiles. When this lady married
an elderly man of high rank, he demanded (like the egoist
in Musset's Bettine) that she should retire from the stage,
and she complied with his humour, although the public in
Warsaw even now constantly embraces every opportunity
to protest against this determination. At the passage in
" L'Etincelle " where she says something to this effect :
" I must play comedy again," by a previous agreement
among the spectators hundreds upon hundreds of bouquets
were thrown upon the stage, so that the play was interrupted
for several minutes.
The second and far greater actress Poland has pro-
duced, who now enjoys a world-wide reputation, since of
late years she has played chiefly in English, in London
i6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
and North America, and only for six weeks in each year
appears at the theatre in Warsaw, is generally known by
her first husband's name, as Mme. Modrzejewska. The Poles
are justly proud of her ; she is one of the wonders of the
nation. When in 1879 a national greeting was to be given
to Kraszewski on his fiftieth anniversary as an author, Helena
Modrzejewska was asked to come to Cracow and take part in
the play at the festival in honour of the prolific author. Her
appearance, like her art, is of the grand style. She has a
brilliant beauty, is now (1888) over forty years old, but her
figure is still slender and elegant without meagreness, and
her face, with its regular features, large dark eyes, pure
strong lines of the mouth, and the Asiatic grace of her
smile can never lose its beauty. I have seen her in " Dalila,"
by Feuillet, in Sardou's " Odette," and in " L'Etincelle," and
I have never in my life seen better art than hers, when
as Odette during a visit to her daughter she has to suppress
the maternal feelings which overpower her. One of Mme.
Modrzejewska's best roles is Nora in Ibsen's " Doll's House " ;
I had a great wish to see her in it, and she was almost
equally eager to play it for a countryman of the author ;
but we did not count on the despotism of the director of
the theatre, who withdrew his consent at the last moment,
from pure spite.
Mme. Modrzejewska prefers to play Shakespere, and her
English repertoire consists almost wholly of Shakesperian
roles. She is indebted to her present husband, an ex-
tremely artistic man of the world, Karol Chlapowski, for her
taste for English poetry, as well as for her higher develop-
ment as an artist generally. Naturally enough, she felt
the need of a broader sphere for her talents than that offered
by the Polish language. But there is great danger that the
life of travel as a star, which she has led of late years, will
compel her to restrict her art to its coarser effects.
While the stage, as I have just said, is still Polish, the
Polish language is absolutely forbidden in the University.
All lectures, no matter whether they are delivered by men of
Russian or Polish birth, must be in Russian. Not even the
history of Polish literature may be taught in the language
REGULATIONS AGAINST SPEAKING POLISH 17
of the country. Nay, even in the corridors of the University
the students are forbidden to speak Polish with each other.
Even more dangerous to Polish nationality is that pro-
vision of the law which requires that all instruction in the
schools shall be in Russian. Even the scanty instruction
in the Polish language is given in Russian. And so strict
is the prohibition against speaking Polish in playtime, or
generally in the school-grounds, that a boy of twelve
years old was recently shut up for twenty-four hours in the
dark because coming out of school, he said to a comrade
in Polish : " Let us go home together." But the regime
to which the schools are subjected with regard to the
suppression of the national peculiarities is not confined to
the domain of language. In a family which I was invited
to visit the following incident happened. The son of the
family, a boy of sixteen, the only son of a widow, one
evening in the theatre had thrown a wreath to Helena
Modrzejewska on behalf of his comrades. A few days after, in
obedience to an order from the Minister of Education, the
principal of the school called him up, and told him
that he must not only leave the school, but that all future
admission to any other school whatever was forbidden him ;
it was the punishment for having been guilty of a Polish
demonstration. The boy went home and put a bullet through
his head.
We may perhaps wonder that provisions which in
certain circumstances drive a half-grown lad to suicide
are maintained, or that so innocent a thing as the throwing
of a wreath is forbidden. But the answer is, that as a
rule everything which betrays a love for the language is
forbidden in Warsaw.
For instance, strange as it may appear, it is forbidden
to give instruction to the common people, because instruc-
tion can only be given in Russian, which the common
people do not understand. Their ignorance is very great ;
only one-fifth of the population can read and write. This
strikes even the stranger who only remains for a few
weeks in Warsaw ; a coachman there is never seen reading
his newspaper as in other cities ; nay, the coachmen, as
B
1 8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
a rule, do not even know the numbers. You tell them
the name of the street, say, as soon as you come into it, " to
the left " or " to the right," and signal them when to stop. In
the country the ignorance of everything to be learned from
books must be extraordinary. Nevertheless, it recently hap-
pened that a young lady, who on her own estate was privately
teaching four or five peasant children, received an injunc-
tion from the highest judicial officer of the district to
desist immediately, since he, who had known her parents,
was very unwilling to be the cause of her being sent far away,
which would inevitably be the result if she, by continuing
her efforts, compelled him to make a report thereon.
Whenever prosperous and patriotic people have asked
permission to establish Polish country schools they have
been refused. When at last several rich Poles, in their
despair at the low level of civilisation of their people, gave
way, and with the idea that Russian teaching was better
than none at all, began to open Russian schools, no one
attended ; the peasants preferred ignorance to instruction
in a foreign tongue.
Now and again the government stretches the bow so
tightly that it breaks. For instance, about ten years ago an
ukase provided that all domestic letters should be directed
in Russian characters. When as a result of this, the number
of letters was so greatly reduced that a considerable falling
off in the postal receipts was perceptible, they were com-
pelled to allow the decree to lapse.
The arrangements which tend to bring the ownership
of the soil into Russian hands correspond to the endeavours
of the government to Russianise the language. When the
last great revolt was suppressed, an ukase was issued (Dec. lo,
1865) which prohibited the Poles from acquiring any land
in the old Polish provinces of Lithuania, Podolia, Wolhynia,
and Ukrainia, nay, which prohibited their bequeathing
their real estate in these provinces to any other persons than
their lineal descendants. Yet according to law, since the
revolt there have been no Poles ; they are all Russians.
Even the Kingdom of Poland is called officially Vistulaland.
It was thought, therefore, that by Poles the government
REGULATIONS AFFECTING TENURE OF LAND 19
meant the adherents of the Roman Catholic creed in old
Poland, and that the prohibition would not be extended to
others. But on inquiry as to who the Poles were, the
answer was : " The Governor-General decides the nation-
ality," an answer which left no hope.
No blow could have struck the Polish national cause
more severely than this ukase ; for no country lies nearer
to the hearts of the Poles than Lithuania, which since the
days of Jagiello and Jadwiga (since 1386) has been united
with Poland, and in spite of the difference of language,
has felt itself to be a Polish land. Many of the leading
men of Poland — natives of the region — have echoed the
celebrated words of Mickiewicz : —
Lithuania, like health art thou my fatherland !
He who has never felt the want of thee has never known thy worth.
It was natural that when possible they evaded the law
by occupying and cultivating as tenants the land they
did not dare to possess as owners, a course which was
facilitated by the fact that the principal Russians, who
had government donations of Lithuanian estates, soon
felt themselves so isolated and so much out of place
in the country, that they were content to abandon their
new possessions, or at least to leave the care and cultivation
of them to others. The danger that after a while the
Russians would buy up all the land and soil of Lithuania
thus seemed to be warded off. But a short time ago a
new ukase of December 27, 1884, which set Warsaw in
a blaze, ordered that no Pole — and the Governor-General
determines the nationality — should be allowed to lease, act
as steward for, or manage the estates in any of the parts
of the country specified in the previous order, and — which
seems still more rigorous to Western Europeans — this ukase
has a retrospective force, so that all the earlier contracts
of lease or stewardship were declared by it to be null.
Efifective power cannot be denied to a decree of this kind.
And of similar import are several of the regulations
which have been made of late to strike at those who have
some intellectual object in view.
20 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Besides the ineffective censorship already spoken of there
is one which is effective. The weekly newspaper, Prawda
{Truth), the most progressive newspaper in Poland, the organ
of the Positivists, has 3400 lines. It has happened that for
a single number 7000 lines have been erased before the
paper was published. The censor seems to be so capricious
that it is impossible to foresee what will be allowed. The
editor, the celebrated author, Alexander Svientochovvski,
writes as if there were no censor, and as an editor he cannot
send his articles to any other paper.
The supervision of everything written would seem at
least to ensure that the writers would escape punishment ;
for since nothing can be printed unless it has been read
and approved, it would seem impossible to do wrong as an
author. Nevertheless, young authors are to be met with
who have repeatedly suffered a punishment of from three
to five months' imprisonment in the interior of Russia ;
they were punished for their intentions, for what was struck
out, or rather, they do not certainly know what they were
punished for, since they are struck at not by a law, but by
a police regulation.
The fact is the government does not need a law to attain
its end ; it has at its command what is better, the adminis-
trative way, and this administrative way means, as a rule,
Siberia.
I have named the word which is in the air in Warsaw,
the spectre which broods over the city like a nightmare, the
threat which lurks about every man's door, the memory of
which is to be read in the faces of so many men and women.
The first lady I took in to dinner on the first day of
my stay in Warsaw — a beautiful, elegant woman with a
Mona-Lisa smile, and something proud in her bearing —
spent three years in the mines of Siberia. She had carried
a letter during the revolt.
The next evening in a not very large room, more than
two hundred years of Siberia were collected. There were
not a few men who had spent from 1863-83 there, if we
reckon the time it took for them to go on foot ; this takes
more or less time according to the situation of the place
DEPLETION OF POLAND 21
of exile in Siberia, but always a very long time, and the
journey on foot is one of the most painful portions of the
period of punishment. From Kief to Tobolsk it takes a
year ; to the Nertschink mines in the department of Irkutsk
more than two years. One evening at a party a young man
asked me to talk a little with his father who was sitting in
a corner. " He is," he said, " the old man with one leg you
see there." He had lost a foot in the revolt, was exiled, and
had been obliged to walk the whole distance on his wooden
leg ; it took him two winters and one summer.
Of course those who return from exile are taken care
of in Warsaw as they are always penniless, since confiscation
of real and personal property is part of the punishment.
Of the several surviving members of the national govern-
ment of 1863, one keeps a book-shop, another has a private
situation, and so on.
After the revolt about fifty thousand Poles in all were
carried out of the country. They were either sentenced to
hard labour in the salt works and mines or in the forts, or
(for the most part) to domicile in some country village
from which it would be impossible for them to escape,
yet with narrowly restricted choice of occupations. Others
again would be allowed to move freely within certain
limits ; yet even they were strictly forbidden certain occupa-
tions, as, for instance, all kinds of teaching. They were taken
to their places of destination in bands of about three
hundred persons, guarded by Cossacks and watch-dogs,
passing the nights in large sheds, where there were pallets
for the women and children, while the others slept as
they could. It is estimated that there are about one
thousand Poles in Siberia, but of the so-called IVodworency
— that is, wandering peasants or petty nobles of Lithuania
— several thousand.
Intellectually few countries would have been able to
survive such a depletion as Poland has endured for the last
twenty years. Only think what one-tenth of the loss of five
thousand or one-hundredth of the loss of five hundred of its
most advanced sons and daughters by an exile of many years
would mean for Denmark !
Ill
THE ANTECEDENTS AND CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE POLES
At the commencement of the century what was the condi-
tion of this people on which this pressure of foreign rule
rests, which, sundered into three parts, with an imperial
eagle over each part of its divided body, still lives and seeks
to convince indifferent Europe of its power and vitality ?
It was a people which at the brightest time of its re-
generation fell a victim to the breach of faith and covetous-
ness of a foreign power.
From the close of the fourteenth to the close of the
sixteenth century Poland had been the important power of
Eastern Europe, and had extended from the Baltic to the
Black Sea, from the Elbe and the Oder to the Dnieper, over
a territory of more than 20,000 square miles. Poland was
a great republic, with an elective king, or more exactly, a great
democracy of nobles ; for the nobility was so numerous, so
accessible, so zealous to maintain the political equality of
every single noble with greater peers, that the constitution,
though it conferred rights only on the nobility, had a demo-
cratic stamp. The organisation of the diet carried out the
idea of almost unlimited freedom for the individual.
The weak point in the state organisation was that the
nobility {Szlachta) was only a class of from 800,000 to
1,000,000 men in a population of from 8,000,000 to
13,000,000, and that the ruling class, after having realised
its ideal of freedom and vitality, stood still in a dead con-
servatism. Until the middle of the eighteenth century
society was immovable, because the nobility regarded every
reform as an attack upon their freedom, and enthusiastically
upheld not only the free choice of a king, which had
THE CONSTITUTION OF 1791 23
degenerated into an actual auction of the crown to the
highest bidder, but also the liberum veto — that is, the right
of every single member of the diet to prevent any enactment
by his protest.
Ideas of reform — mostly from France — made way slowly
in the last half of the eighteenth century, when it was too
late. They did not become predominant till after the first
partition of Poland in 1772. From that time forth Polish
politicians subjected the existing arrangements to a persistent
criticism, the political results of which were shown in the
celebrated four years' diet,, which met a year before the
breaking out of the FrencilT Revolution. In this diet the
strong national party, in constant conflict with the obdurate
aristocrats, who were not very numerous, and the venal
traitors who were partisans of the Tzarina Catherine, worked
incessantly, secretly, and harmoniously at the reform of the
constitution. Finally, May 3, 1791, an epoch-making date
in Polish intellectual life, the constitution which had been
prepared (an excellent work for those days, which, among
other things, made the royal power hereditary, established a
responsible ministry and abolished the liberum veto) was
discussed, adopted, and sworn to by the king and the
members of the diet in common in a nine hours' session.
A fact like the adoption of this constitution is strong
evidence against the alleged unfitness of Poland for self-
government.
If the people themselves had dared to decide their fate,
they would easily have got the better of that little group of
reactionary nobles who, as early as 1792, met in Targowice,
at the instance of Russia, to invoke Russia for the protection
of their old liberties ; but the weak Stanislaus Augustus, as
is well known, submitted to the pressure from St. Petersburg,
broke his oath, and joined the confederation at Targowice.
Thus when the Prussian army, under the pretence of fighting
against Jacobinism, but in reality to divide the booty with the
Tzarina, invaded the land in 1793, the second partition of
Poland was carried out.
Then followed the first great Polish rebellion, under
Kosciusko as Dictator. After a three days' fight the Russians
24 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
were driven out of Warsaw and in a short time Wilna, the
capital of Lithuania, was also liberated. With varying suc-
cess the contest was continued amidst victory, defeat, and
treachery, until Kosciusko — on the sudden arrival of Suvorow
on the battlefield — lost the battle almost won at Maciejo-
wice, and, severely wounded, fell into the hands of the
Russians.^ Suvorow carried Praga by assault, and after
causing 20,000 men to be cut down on the 8th of Novem-
ber, entered Warsaw. In 1795 came the third and last
partition. There was no longer any kingdom of Poland.
But there was still a Polish people — a people who had
heroic, chivalrous, brilliant, useless qualities enough, but
very few of the useful, civic virtues. It was an enthusiastic
and unpractical people, noble-minded and untrustworthy,
pomp-loving and volatile, vivacious and thoughtless, a people
who despised severe and fatiguing labour, and loved all
intense and delicate, sensuous and intellectual enjoyments,
but, above all, who worshipped independence to the point
of insanity, freedom to the extent of the liberum veto, and
who even now, when they had lost independence and free-
dom, had remained faithful to their old love.
It was a credulous and confiding martial people, always
ready to risk their lives upon a promise, which no one
thought of keeping.
Consider the relation of this people to Napoleon, on
whom, after the last partition of the country, they naturally
fixed their hopes. Only two years after the partition,
General Dombrowski agreed with Bonaparte that the Polish
legions (in national uniform, but under French leaders)
should fight in Italy with the soldiers of the republic. The
Poles received many a blow for the French in Lombardy
in 1797 and in the Italian campaign of 1798-99. The
first legion was almost annihilated under Dombrowski in
the battles of Trebbia and Novi ; the second under Wiel-
horski entered Mantua, which the Austrians were besieging ;
when the French were compelled to capitulate they bound
themselves to surrender these deserters — that is, the Poles —
to their masters. Nevertheless the Poles raised new legions,
^ His famous exclamation, "Finis Polonuz !" is a legend of later invention.
POLISH LEGIONS UNDER NAPOLEON 25
and took part during the Consulate in the battles on the
Danube and in Italy. But neither the treaty of peace at
Luneville in 1801 nor that of Campo Formio in 1797,
contained any article in which the name of Poland was
mentioned.
Nevertheless the Poles, deceived by lying promises, hoped
at every new campaign that by alliance with the French
troops they should succeed in restoring Poland. The cele-
brated song which the soldiers of the legion had composed
far from their native land, " The Dombrowski March " — " It
is not yet all over with Poland, not so long as we live " —
contains this thought.
But after the peace of Luneville, Bonaparte, who aspired
to imperial dignity, merely wished to keep the Poles as a
bodyguard for himself, and when General Kniaziewicz
answered him by demanding his dismissal, he determined
to get rid of them. They were first sent to Italy, and there
it was announced to them that they were to go to St.
Domingo to put down an insurrection of negroes who were
fighting for freedom. Their protests availed nothing. Threat-
ened on all sides with artillery, they were embarked at
Genoa and Leghorn, and in the unhealthy climate and in
the terrible war nearly all perished.
And yet the Polish legions again fought by the side of
the French at Jena. At the peace of Tilsit Russia was
treated leniently, while out of what was then Prussian
Poland the little Grand-Duchy of Warsaw was created. But
this was enough to arouse anew the confidence of the Poles
and win their whole trust. When preparations were made
for the campaign against Russia, it was in vain that Kosciusko
resisted Napoleon's hypocritical advances and flatteries, and
demanded positive and publicly given promises. When
Fouch6 was unable to induce Poland's dictator to give his
name by threats, they imitated his signature, and by a
shameless forgery issued a proclamation signed by Kosci-
usko to the Polish people, which earnestly entreated the
Poles to unite their forces with those of the French. It
might have been supposed that they were cured of the
worship of Napoleon. But in spite of everything which had
26 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND ,
happened, when, in 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen, by
simply calling his Russian campaign the second Polish war,
he induced 80,000 Poles under Josef Poniato^ski to accom-
pany him. The following year only 8000 of them came
back.
The Poles are as vivacious as Southerners, but they are
not a politically prudent people, educated in the school of
Machiavelli, like the Italians, who understood how to make
the French pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them.
They are a people whose legions Napoleon induced to shed
their blood on a hundred battlefields merely by holding the
white eagle before them, and a people whose battalions
Steinmetz, in 1870, induced to storm the terrible heights at
Spicheren, by allowing the Prussian bands to play the
melody of the national song, Jeszcze Polska nie zginela, which
is prohibited in Posen in time of peace.
Such a youthful or childish enthusiasm is certainly not a
sustaining element in the great struggle for life of the nations
in industrial and militarian ages. It does not flourish in
conjunction with thrift, industry, discipline, moderation, and
civil prudence, qualities which ensure the continuance of the
individual and of the state.
In old descriptions of the Poles it is commonly said
that their chivalry and personal bravery can be counted on
under all circumstances, but that there is something of vanity
in their magnanimity, something volatile in their generosity,
that they are obstinate, combative and quarrelsome, recog-
nising no higher law than their own will, and incapable of
keeping this will long on the same point. They are com-
monly represented as poor economists, very easily involved
in pecuniary embarrassments, however large their incomes,
as turning over thousands of books, but not studying any,
as being exceedingly erratic, and wasting their time and
talents. It has been charged against them that at the very
time they were raving over ideas of freedom, they were
playing the autocrat towards their peasants, and that though
they are the most tender husbands, they have two or three
mistresses as well as the adored wife. In brief, a combina-
tion of eastern and western peculiarities is ascribed to them.
POLISH CHARACTERISTICS 27
Probably there was a great deal of justice and truth in
this older view. It is therefore interesting to inquire which
of these characteristics the foreign rule has developed and
which it has obliterated.
Love of external splendour is necessarily repressed. It
is evidently not killed. Love for all that is symbolised so
profoundly by the father's plume in Cherbuliez's Ladislaiis
Bolskiy lies deep in the Polish nature. The father's red and
white plume, which Ladislaus always carries with him in
a case, is the glittering principle of grandeur. And it is
extremely significant that in one of the leading poets of
Poland this definition of God is found : —
" I see that he is not the God of the worms or of creep-
ing things. He loves the flight of gigantic birds and gives
the rein to the rushing horse. He is the fiery plume on the
proud helmet." — (Beniowski, 5th Canto.)
Compare the prophet Habakkuk's grand description
of God. But the whole spirit of Poland is in these
lines. No other race could see divinity in the waving
plume.
Nevertheless the love of the tinsel and spangles of
glory is necessarily repressed now by a deeper feeling of
honour.
When I went to a ball in the town hall on my first
evening in Warsaw, where a thousand people, the flower of
good society in Warsaw, were assembled in the large saloon,
the fact struck me that, with the exception of three
Russian officers, there was not a man in the hall who wore
a decoration. From his birth almost every Pole renounces
decorations as well as uniforms. There is a tale told in
Warsaw of a poor school-teacher who had distinguished
himself, and received the order of Stanislaus. He kept
it hidden in a case, and only used it to punish his
children with. When the youngest was naughty, he said,
" If you cry again, you shall wear the order of Stanislaus
about your neck at dinner." That was enough.
The essentially aristocratic character of the nation
still exists, though greatly modified. The Pole has no
inborn inclination to the civic virtues ; his ideal is, and
28 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
continues to be, that of a grand seigneur. The aversion to
counting and saving, to reckoning and computing and keep-
ing accounts, is universal. In all places where Germans
and Poles compete in the domain of trade and industry,
the Poles get the worst of it. The great manufacturers
in Russian Poland, who, thanks to the enormous pro-
tective duty, enrich themselves at the expense of the
purchasers, are almost without exception immigrant Aus-
trians or Prussians. Nay, in this century, a whole manu-
facturing town (Lodz) has sprung up and grown with
American speed ; a town, which, lying in the middle of
Poland, was founded and is inhabited by Germans only.
The Poles are, and continue to be, an aristocratic race ;
the middle class, which has been gradually wedged in be-
tween the nobles and the peasants, is yet comparatively
small, and, for a long time to come, for the educated
Pole of distinction, the life of the burgess will mean a life
passed in eating and drinking, or, as the Count says in
Krasinsky's Godless Comedy, in "sleeping the sleep of the
German Philistine with his German wife."
But we must not forget that the Szlachta in its con-
stitution was something very different from the nobility in
most of the countries of Europe. It was never a separate
caste. After the victorious defence of Vienna John Sobieski
ennobled all his cavalry. Even in our century whole
regiments of infantry have been ennobled. There are
thus at this moment in the different parts of Poland
not less than 120,000 noble families. The nobility thus
corresponds here most nearly to what elsewhere in Europe
is the upper middle class. It must also be noted that
the titles, prince, marquis, &c., are not originally Polish, but
were first conferred upon the most important families by
the foreign conquerors, for which reason they are not much
used in the country. In Warsaw in speaking French they
address a countess as madame and not as comtesse. Even
on making introductions I never heard any titles given
among the aristocracy — an agreeable thing when one comes
from Germany.
At the same time the relations between people of rank
POLISH CHARACTERISTICS 29
and their inferiors have certainly something Asiatic. No
small degree of extravagance is usual in the employment
of servants. In every house owned by a person of ample
means, for instance, there is a doorkeeper who sits the whole
day on a chair at the entrance to open the open hall
door. A Dane could never be induced to sit so long on
a chair. I was also much struck by the inclination or
custom of the servants to wait up for the master at night,
even when they were allowed to go to bed. Finally,
according to northern ideas, their humility was amazing.
A Polish servant does not kiss his master's hand but his
sleeve, and so deeply rooted is this custom of expressing
gratitude or affection that I have repeatedly seen young
Polish students carry to their lips the arm of a man to
whom they wished to show respect.
The Poles have not become much more economical
under foreign rule than before. If any change had taken
place in this respect it would have been in Posen, where
the German example has made itself felt. They are
prodigal of their time.
As there is no freedom of meeting, as no kind of associa-
tion is allowed — the only club in Warsaw was closed,
when a few years since it tried to prevent riots against
the Jews in a suburb in which the police did not interfere
— as, generally speaking, all public life is forbidden, so that
fifty men cannot assemble in a hall without the permission
and surveillance of the police, private society, which has to
supply everything that is lacking in this direction, consumes
an enormous amount of time.
The hospitality is very great and very tasteful. An
exceptional quality which is inborn in the race, is tact.
In this connection I must be allowed to note with
gratitude the delicacy with which hospitality was shown
to me on my arrival at Warsaw. I was taken to large,
luxuriously furnished apartments, adorned with fine pictures,
and supplied with books ; my name was on the door ; on the
writing-table were visiting cards with my Warsaw address ;
and two servants who could speak foreign languages were
told off to wait upon me.
30 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Hospitality is a deep-seated instinct among the Poles.
It is certainly exercised towards foreigners more lavishly
now that foreigners seldom visit Poland, but the chief
reason of its culmination among the native born of to-day
is evidently that social intercourse has so completely to
supply the place of public life.
IV
THE POLES AND THE FRENCH — INSTABILITY,
DILETTANTISM— FEVERISH CHARACTER OF THE
PLEASURES OF LIFE— STRENGTH AND SUSCEPTI-
BILITY OF THE NATIONAL FEELING
In many ways Warsaw affects the foreigner almost as if it
were a French city. French is the auxiliary language of the
Poles, the language which among the higher classes all know
perfectly — although I met several who had half forgotten it
during a twenty years' exile in Siberia — the language which
is spoken as fluently as the mother-tongue and even better
than the Russians speak it. In aristocratic circles Poles fre-
quently converse with one another in French, a state of things
which from the beginning of the century was promoted not
only by the continual intellectual intercourse with France,
and the emigration thereto, but by the need of being able
to meet the Russians on neutral territory so far as language
is concerned. As the Poles in addition are now frequently
called the Frenchmen of the North or East, and as they
themselves believe that they are closely related to the French
through their defects, which they themselves characterise as
inconstancy and instability, the foreigner is constantly asked
if he does not see a great and lamentable similarity between
the Poles and the French.
This great similarity is purely imaginary.
The trifling similarity which does exist consists in a cog-
nate capacity for swift enthusiasms and violent revulsions of
feeling, a craving for adventures and emotions, and a love
of fame and show.
But these points of similarity do not exclude a funda-
mental difference. The rationalistic, argumentative basis of
32 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
the French character is entirely absent in the Pole. The
algebraic, arithmetical basis of the French manner of thought
is wholly wanting in the Pole. The Frenchman is a greatl
writer of prose, the Pole is a poet. On this account the
stronghold of the French world of letters is prose, that of
the Polish, poetry — verse. In addition nothing can well be
less French than the continual and perfect use of a foreign
language, the remarkable knowledge of foreign authors,
which meet one everywhere in Poland. Young girls of
twenty who speak six languages perfectly and without
accent are met in Poland, certainly not in France. Almost
every young man or woman of the higher classes knows the
most important capitals of Europe, and knows the most
important literatures to a great extent. The passionate
fondness for travel and the versatility of culture resulting
therefrom are in the highest degree un-French. The Pole
widens his purview and diminishes his brain power by
learning four or five foreign languages ; the Frenchman as
a rule is either ignorant or a specialist.
But the most striking difference assuredly lies in the
relations between the sexes. The fundamental trait of the
Polish national character is a certain combination of mild-
ness and energy. But what gives Polish character, and
especially Polish patriotism in this century, its special stamp,
is the preponderance of the feminine elements over the
masculine.
That the relations between man and woman are very
different in Poland and in France is quickly perceived
in daily conversation. While the tone among French-
men, whenever conversation turns on women, is always
extremely free, sometimes to a foreigner repulsive, and
generally lascivious, the Poles as a rule in discussing
women manifest warmth, often tenderness or indulgence,
but, so far as I could judge, seldom frivolity.
I have found a remark in an Italian author which possibly
goes to the root of this. He thinks that while as a rule
among the Germanic races the man is more gifted than the
woman, and while among the Latin races man and
woman on an average stand on the same level as to
POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF POLISH WOMEN 33
intellectual qualities, among the Poles, the most character-
istic Slav race, woman is decidedly superior to man. If
we set aside the power of invention or production, we must
be struck with the truth of these words. The men in
Poland are certainly not wanting in passion, in courage and
in energy, in wit, in love of freedom, but it seems as if the
women have more of these qualities. In Poland's great up-
risings they have been known to enter into conspiracies, to do
military duty, and frequently enough of their own free will to
accompany their loved ones to Siberia. Mickiewicz's Gracynoj
who led an army on horseback, has had successors in this
century. Celebrated above all others is Emilia Plater, a
young lady of one of the first families of Poland, who in
1830 induced a whole district to rise in rebellion, took part
in several battles, and at last, having joined the detachments
under Dembinski which refused to take refuge on Prussian
soil, attempted to cut her way with her corps through the
hostile army, but in December, 1831, died of want and over-
exertion at the age of 26, in the hut of a forester. Mickie-
wicz's, beautiful poem, The Colonel's Death, celebrated her
memory. During the rebellion of 1830-31 there was not
a battalion nor a squadron of the Polish army in which
there were not female combatants ; after a battle or a march
the soldiers always arranged a bivouac for the women, just
as they took care that no word was spoken which could
offend their ears.^
The time for such achievements is now past, but still
the women are ever the most earnest patriots, because they
feel the most warmly and criticise the least keenly. Never-
theless, the influence of woman has somewhat fallen off in the
last twenty years. Once the women laboured as the chief
supporters of the Catholic faith ; but faith is vanishing where
it has not vanished. Once the woman laboured in the same
way as the priest, but the union between the women and
^ In his book on Poland General Roman Solyk says : " When Warsaw was
attacked, I noticed in the midst of the fire a soldier of the fifth light regiment who
continually leaned against the breastworks, did not trouble himself in the least about
the bombs and cannon-balls, but cheered his comrades on with vigorous gestures and
cries. Though he stood in the front rank I could not at first see his face ; but when
he turned I discovered him to be a beautiful girl of 1 8."
C
34 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
the clergy is dissolving, just as culture and the Church are
drifting apart. And in addition to this, as all public life
is forbidden, and there are neither assemblies nor unions
of any kind, the men seek each other almost exclusively
in social life. Since the reception-room does duty as a
place of political and literary assemblies, the men think
less of winning women to their interests there. The latter
feel themselves set aside, overlooked and abandoned, as
in South Germany, where the man passes all his evenings
in the ale-house, only the desertion has other causes.
The pressure from above has evidently greatly aided in
separating the sexes and diminishing the social influence of
woman. It may at the present time be weaker in Poland
than in France. The education of the young girls, more-
over, is conducted in much the same way as there — they
are never left a moment unprotected — and marriages are
made in the same manner as in France ; the contracting
parties seldom know much of each other before the wedding,
and generally see each other for the first time a few weeks
before.
So far as the Polish instability is concerned, it also has
no similarity to the French. The instability of the French
shows itself more particularly in public life, especially where
they are collected in masses, as in public meetings or mobs.
It depends on the sudden change of mood, for which no
single person feels himself responsible. The instability of
the Poles is personal, depends partly on the propensity to
change, and partly on an instinctive inclination to universality.
In France the ruling principle is a prudent and some-
times subtle egoism which runs in the family and is in-
herited by the children, which is impressed upon them
from the beginning, and which as a rule directs their lives.
Parents do not, as in England and America, first strive to
develop the youth into a capable man, able to help himself,
but they try to smoothe his path in life, procure for him
favours, connections, patronage, assure his future or his
advancement. And if the path is smoothed, the young
man will not willingly abandon his career before the highest
rung of the ladder of honour is reached.
DESULTORY CAREERS OF YOUNG POLES 35
The situation is entirely different in Poland, where the
young man in private life far oftener allows himself to be
led by fleeting instinct than by prudent egoism, and where
a single public interest (the lost fatherland, the lost inde-
pendence, the mother-tongue, the national literature and art),
stands immutable and imperishable.
Undoubtedly the foreign rule has tended to obliterate
Polish inconstancy in this highest domain ; on the other
hand, it has necessarily increased the national instability
within the circle of private life.
For what can an educated young man do in Russian
Poland ? For instance, he studies law ; he can never become
a judge, generally not even an official, without separating
himself from all intercourse with his countrymen. He
studies medicine ; he can never obtain a post at a university,
never be at the head of a hospital, never conduct a public
clinic, therefore can never attain the first rank in his science.
The result is that if he has means — and there is still great
wealth in Poland, since to be rich is almost the only thing
which is permitted to every one — he goes from one study to
another, obtains a smattering of different branches of science,
surprises the foreigner by the versatility of his knowledge
and information, but has no real mastery of anything.
The following instances were given me in my own
circle : A very able young man began as a jurist, passed on
to medicine and became a physician, then gave that up and
bought an estate, studied agriculture, mechanics, &c., for four
years, introduced many improvements on his estate, shortly
after sold it, and at the present time is the best theatrical
critic in Warsaw. Another young man began life as a
farmer, had given up agriculture for music, qualified as a
virtuoso, abandoned the career, established a manufactory
of instruments, made violoncellos for several years, lost
interest in that, and is now working at the Academy of Art
in Munich as a genre-painter.
They have too many talents and too little inducement
to persevere.
The women complain bitterly of this. Like good wives
they endeavour to share their husbands' interests, to identify
36 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
themselves with their occupations, and are in despair that
eve^y second or third year they have to mterest tiienise v s
in something quite different. They med.tate wth anxiety
on what the next year may brmg.
One evening/when Feuillefs DalUa was acted at the
theaire, and whtn the actor who took the part of Carmo .
was not especially happy, I could not suppress an out-
bu St of wonder that the actor could be in want of a type
of the genial dikUanU who educates the young composer
in a city like Warsaw, where there are so many men of
Carnioirs stamp. The most admirable type stood by my
side behind the scenes. And the same evenmg when m
atge circle 1 was asked how as a critic 1 would chara;'e"se
Polish society, I answered: "You are a socety ol Meltantu
I beheve that the definition is correct, taking the word .n
its broad sense, and bearing in mind how the Poles have
come to be what they are.
We must picture to ourselves a naturally very energetic
peopTe? against whose energy a barrier not to be broken
down has been erected, a warlike people, who only reluc-
fanTly enter the army, in which practically no young man
vduntarily chooses the post of officer ; an extremely am-
bitious people, to whom all high positions and offices are
closed, a'nd to whom all distinctions and demonstrations o
honour are forbidden, in so far as tliey are not bought
w^S, sacrifice of conviction or denial of solidarity with their
Tount^ymen ; a people naturally hostile to Ph.lishne ideaU
■but who needed to acquire the civic virtues, and «ho e
c^cumstances now give them constant en-°"-g«-«"* *"
unsteadiness ; a pleasure-loving people in whose capita not
a single public place of entertainment is found ; a people
ti h a lively irresistible inclination to polit.cs, for whom all
political education has been made impossible, because they
are allowed neither to elect representatives nor to d scuss
affairs of state, and whose political press is silenced in all
Seal matter's ; to speak of political newspapers m Poland
•s like speaking of nautical journals in Swi^erUnd Le
us imagine to ourselves this people, constituted for/.'^^ge
free life in the broad daylight of publicity, imprisoned in the
FEVERISH SOCIAL LIFE OF THE POLES 37
chiaroscuro of private life ; let us conceive a people who, from
the time of Arild, had the most extravagant conceptions of
the rights of the individual in regard to the power of the
state, living their life without any sort of public security
against encroachments on the part of an accidental superior
official, thinking of Siberia, as we think of a disease, which
may come when least expected.
Conceiving all this, we shall understand that under the
pressure, which has been exerted simultaneously from so
many sides, there necessarily sprang up an extraordinary con-
centrated activity, a boiling intensity of life, in the narrow
circle which remained to them.
As the actual people were shut out, as all education of
them, all approach to knowledge was made impossible, the
higher classes, which could not adequately recruit themselves,
came to lead a kind of island life of the highest and most
refined culture, a life, which is indeed national in every heart-
beat, but cosmopolitan in every form of expression, a hot-
house life, where flowers of all the civilisations of Europe
have come to development and exhale fragrance, an eddy-
ing, seething maelstrom life of ideas, endeavours, amusements
and fdtes. The best society scarcely ever goes to bed before
four o'clock in the morning in the month of February. In
carnival time the day in Warsaw has twenty hours, and
so long as the season lasts they are prodigal of time and
strength.
" Life in Warsaw is a neurosis," said one of the most in-
telligent men of the city to me ; " no one can keep it up
long."
This people, who discovered the dance of the planets
around the sun, also, as is well known, invented the polonaise
with its proud solemnity, and the mazurka, with its contrast
of masculine force and feminine gentleness, and the people
are perhaps almost as proud of the mazurka as of Coperni-
cus. In Poland the mazurka is not the dance we call by
that name, but a long, difficult, and impassioned national
dance, in which the gentlemen and ladies, though they dance
hand in hand, constantly make different steps in the same
time. It is a genuine sorrow to the Poles that the
38 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
consistent Russian government has forbidden the dancing of
this dance in the national costume ; and the fourth or fifth
question the foreigner is asked in Warsaw is this : " Have
you seen our national dance?" In every other country it
would at least be the thirtieth or fortieth.
They dance all through the carnival time as people dance
in no other place. Probably nowhere else are so many charity
balls given. They dance for everything — for " the poor
sewing girls," for " the poor students," &c. I do not deny
that many times, when I stood watching the dances — some-
times I was invited to two balls on the same night — I could not
help remembering the old hard adage : slavus saltans ! But
as a young girl said in allusion to a moralising article in
Prawda : " What would be the advantage if we left off dancing
in Warsaw ? "
Yet the gaiety with which they whirl is not the common
joy of life ; it reminds us rather of that which the prisoners
of the Revolution displayed in their ignorance as to what
the next day would bring forth. This levity is not common
levity, but a lightness often found in those who daily defy
suffering and death.
For like reasons at times they are more serious than
people on similar occasions in other countries. At a very
sedate entertainment which the representatives of literature
and art gave me, when there were a series of speeches
in French and Latin, the ancient festival tongue of the
Poles, it happened, when one of the speakers said some
words which especially excited those assembled, that tears
at once stood in their eyes, and that old men, who had
passed a whole period of their lives in Siberia, and hundreds
of times had seen death staring them in the face, sprang
up, and while the tears rolled down their cheeks, embraced
the speaker. It seems, then, as if the foreign rule had
equally increased the susceptibility to social enjoyment and
the susceptibility to serious emotion. The power of feeling
pleasure and pain, the disposition to tears and laughter, seem
to be as strong as in the sick.
Besides, passionately as the Poles are a people of the
moment, just as thoroughly are they a people of memories.
PATRIOTISM IN ART AND LETTERS 39
Nowhere else can be found such a religion of remembrance,
such a clinging to national recollections. They cling to
everything that can recall the Poland of the past. It is
true that all the works of art of the city and all the
treasures of the nation have been carried away to St. Peters-
burg ; the city has even been robbed of the great Zaluski
library of 300,000 volumes, but the more stubbornly do the
people hold on to national recollections. They have
been assisted in this endeavour in the most forcible manner
by the fact that all the Polish poetry and historical
writings of this century, as well as Polish painting, have
been pressed into the service of the national idea. Artists
like Mateiko and Brandt — both admirable colourists who
fall short in simplicity and perspicuity of composition —
almost constantly treat national historical subjects ; their
poets have treated Poland and Poland's fate, even when, like
Krasinski in Irydion, they place the action in old Rome, or like
Slowacki in Anheli, transfer the scene to a fantastic Siberia.
Poetry in the Polish home has the same importance as
religion. The best works are, or have been, strictly forbidden
reading. Their acquisition as well as their possession was
perilous. Generally the books, when they had been carefully
read till the thoughts were remembered, even if the words
were forgotten, were burned — with the same pain with which
a woman who is not free burns a letter from the man
she loves. But they have not forgotten in Poland, how,
when the young Levitoux was put into the citadel in Warsaw
because a copy of Mickiewicz's Dziady had been found in
his house, in his despair after the torture he had suffered,
and in his anxiety lest in his ravings he should name his
comrades, he with his manacled hands pulled his night-lamp
under his bed of rushes, and burned himself to death ; nor
have they forgotten that several hundred Lithuanian students
were sent to Siberia for having published the Temptation of
Krasinski in book form after the poem, which the censor had
not understood, had seen the light in the feuilleton of a little
paper.
The national authors are found to-day in every house,
and even if the Poles have been obliged to establish their
40 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
national museum at Rapperswyl, Switzerland, for safety, still
there is to be found in almost every home in Warsaw an
album with reproductions of Arthur Grottger's remarkable
paintings at Cracow, representing the history of the sufferings
of Poland, a (prohibited) lithograph of the same artist's
March of the Exiles to Siberia, and some pictures of the defence
of Warsaw in 1831, representing the last Polish regiment,
which blew itself up with Ordon's redoubt. The Poles regard
with tenderness and emotion not only the faces, but the
antique, semi-comical chasseur uniform of the soldiers, with
the swallow-tail coats. This was, it is true, the last Polish
military uniform.
It is in accordance with this national feeling, made vigilant
by oppression, that they cherish a hatred for all foreign
authors who occasionally or systematically depreciate the
Poles. Not that they took Heine's celebrated lampoon
(Zwei Ritter) about the two valiant noblemen, Krapiilinski and
Waschlapski much to heart. They have laughed at its wit
and know it by heart, and they know very well how
warmly he expressed himself in many places about Poland.
But they are familiar with Freytag's Soil und Haben ; they
attach great importance to a casual remark of the younger
Dumas about the Poles from everywherey who took part in
the insurrection of the Commune, and in February they
were in an uproar over the word ausrotten (exterminate), in
reference to the Poles in Prussia, used by Eduard von Hart-
mann in an article in a review, an expression which they
took too much au serieux. The Poles pay altogether too
much attention to what is written about them in Europe.
Anxiety as to what is said about one is a general accompani-
ment of weakness.
CONSOLIDATION OF EVERYTHING POLISH — RELI-
GIOUS BELIEFS AND PARTIES — POLAND A
SYMBOL
A WEIGHTY, and for Poland a decidedly happy, result of
the foreign rule has been the welding and uniting of every-
thing Polish. All provincial differences have vanished in
this unity ; the different parts of Poland, Austrian, Russian,
and Prussian Poles feel that they are without exception one
people. In these later days, Austrian Poland has become
the centre about which the others cluster, since the Poles
in Galicia have a parliament, where their language may be
spoken, besides two national universities, and whole towns
where many things may be printed, which the Russian censor
would forbid.
And like the provinces, so all the religious sects are
merged in the national unity.
Poland was once an exclusively Roman Catholic land.
Now mixed marriages are of frequent occurrence in Warsaw.
In the two homes with which I was most familiar, in one the
husband was a Protestant and the wife a Catholic ; in the
other the husband was a Catholic and the wife a Protestant.
It must be added that in neither of these homes did the
religious faith play an important part.
As to the Jews, who are so numerous in Poland, because
the kingdom of Poland offered them an asylum during their
long persecution, that form of hatred of the Jews, which has
been decorated with the affected name of Antisemitism, and
which certain sections of Danish society with their inclina-
tions to cultivate German reaction and German rudeness
have imported, has not struck root at all in Russian Poland.
Of course the far-reaching mutual aversion of Jews and
42 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Russians, dating from a thousand years back, persists even
here. The peasants have no dealings with the Jews, and it is
only recently that the Jews have been placed on the same
footing as the other citizens. Nevertheless, even in 1794,
when despair armed Warsaw against Russia, they took part
in the national defence ; a regiment of Jewish volunteers
fought under Kosciusko's banners, led by the Jewish Colonel
Berko, who in 1809 fell fighting against the Austrians. In
1830 the same prejudiced and irresolute national govern-
ment, which rejected the aid of the peasants, and would have
nothing to do with the revolt in the old Polish provinces,
rejected the applications of the Jews to be allowed to enter
the army instead of paying for exemption as formerly.
When the rebellion was suppressed, Nicholas punished them
for this application by incorporating them with his own
army, and that was not enough. Since the Jews had also
asked the national government for permission to share in the
higher and lower general instruction of the people, the Tzar
declared that for the future he would take care of their
education. He caused 36,000 Jewish families to be taken
across the frontier, " in order to remove the temptation to
smuggle," as it was said, and ordered them to settle on the
steppes of Southern Russia and cultivate the soil there. The
Cossacks came with the order of expulsion. All furniture
was thrown out into the street, old men, women, small
children, exhausted and famished, were obliged to drag them-
selves away to the place of destination. If a woman sank
down fainting by the way, the husband had to go on
notwithstanding. And at the new place of abode the exiles
were crushed by the most severe of punishments : child-con-
scription. In the great raids of 1842 all the small boys
of six years and upwards were seized and sent under Cossack
guards to Archangel to be brought up as sailors. Of course
they died like flies on the way.
Common misfortune has united the Polish Jews to their
Christian fellow-countrymen. For the other Poles have
also been compelled to endure the loss of their children.
An order from Prince Paskiewicz of March 24, 1832, which
was executed, began thus : " It has pleased his Majesty the
COHESION OF JEWS AND POLES 43
Tzar to command, that all strolling, orphan, or poor boys
in Poland shall be admitted into the militia battalions,
and subsequently be sent away in a body to Minsk,
when decision will be made about them according to the
regulations of his Majesty's general staff." And the execu-
tion of this order is not any exceptional incident. Six
years later — April 13, 1838 — the following communica-
tion from the council of the government appeared in the
Warsaw newspapers : " On the 8th of this month, in the
Town Hall, there will be a public offer of contracts for the
transport to St. Petersburg and Ural of some thousands of
the sons of Polish noblemen." From this time forth Jewish
and Christian Poles have felt, not indeed as a community, but
as a nation. The fraternising of the people with the Jews in
Warsaw in i86o solved the question as the equality of the
latter, and when in February 1861, in the square before the
castle, and in another larger square, shots were fired upon
the kneeling crowd, who with the mouths of the Russian
cannon before their eyes, gave utterance to a national hymn,
and besought God to send to the Poles freedom and a father-
land, the Jews felt impelled to manifest their national dis-
position by an unmistakable demonstration. In great
numbers they accompanied their Rabbis into the Catholic
churches, just as the Christians in great numbers went into
the synagogues to sing the same hymn.
But the feeling of unity was already strong in Poland's
greatest poet, Mickiewicz ; his work. Pan Tadeusz (of 1834),
which has become the Polish national epic, ends with the
playing of Poland's celebrated national song for Dom-
browski and his soldiers by a Jew. "The great Master,"
as the poem calls him, by his cymbal music alone, in great
enthusiasm, evokes the whole history of Poland from 1791
for his audience. The impetuous polonaise of May 3rd
is the starting point, then follows the false chord, the
sound of the traitor-note, which calls to mind Targovice,
then march, attack, battle, storming and shot, groans of
the children, wailings of the mothers ; the blood-bath
of Praga rises before the eyes dim with tears. Then
the key changes to the wailing melody of the old popular
44 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
ballads, to the story of the exiled warrior, who wanders
through woods and many a time is ready to perish in agony
and starvation, until at last he sinks down at the feet of his
faithful little horse, which digs his grave with its hoof.
Closely gathered about the master, the soldiers listen to the
well-known melody and recall the better days when they
sang this ballad at the grave of their fatherland.
" They raised their heads, for how entirely different,
how much lighter it sounded now — louder, in another
time, carrying another message. And again the master let
his glance glide over the strings, folding his hands together,
and struck a blow with both staves, so fully, so powerfully,
that the strings resounded like a brazen trumpet, and this
renowned melody born of the holiest hope, this triumphal
march flew towards heaven : ' It is not yet all over with
Poland ! not so long as we live 1 Up, Dombrowski I To
Poland ! ' and all clapped their hands, and ' Up, Dombrowski ! '
pealed through the hall. And as if he himself were startled
at the effect, the master trembled. . . ."
And covering his face, while a torrent of tears burst
out through his fingers, he says to Dombrowski : " Yes,
General, thou art he, whom the singer's mouth has heralded,"
and the poet adds: "Thus he spoke, the brave Jew, he
loved his native country as a Pole."
Yet though there is now no religious division in Russian
Poland, of late years a party division of another kind has
arisen — namely, that between the youth with positive ten-
dencies, who are disposed to make the liberation of the
intellect the highest aim, and the Catholic patriots, or those
working with them.
The Catholic religion has long seemed to be indissolubly
bound up in the national cause. Without the influence of
the Catholic clergy it would have been impossible to keep
the larger part of the population, which is excluded from
the higher culture, firmly united as a nationality. Now this
difficulty has arisen, that those possessing the highest culture
no longer believe in the Catholic faith, and that the leaders
of youth believe the only possibility for intellectual advance
to lie in opposing modern views of life to the tradition of
CULTURE IN ITS RELATION TO CATHOLICISM 45
the past. They have asked themselves with anxiety if
Polish culture, by maintaining its relations with Catholicism,
as, for instance, do the great poets of the romantic school,
Mickiewicz and Krasinski, will not come to be antiquated and
outstripped in the general work of Europe, and some eminent
men, among them first and foremost Svientochovski, have
felt obliged to express themselves on the religious question
in a manner which has wounded some, and caused anxiety
to more. Recently so distinguished an author as Sienkiewicz,
who commenced his career as a radical, and whose opinions
were long radical, has been seen from prudential reasons to
ally himself with the conservative party. It is much to be
regretted, however, that by receiving a considerable annual
sum for holding a sinecure as nominal editor of a clerical
newspaper, he has complicated his situation and lost a great
part of his prestige.
There is a dilemma here, which troubles the Polish intelli-
gence more than anything else. Many of the best people
dare not say what they think, lest they should injure the
cause, which is to them the holiest, or rather the only holy
cause : the cause of Poland. Other eminent men are led to
the reflection, which under common conditions would be
unquestionable, but which in this case does not suffice, that
there are ideas which have greater weight and importance
than the idea of nationality. The question becomes practically
a question of expedience, toleration, and tact.
My purely personal relation to the question was this :
those on the progressive side in Warsaw were inclined to
appropriate me, while isolated men, who although entirely
liberal, desired for political reasons to avoid a breach between
the patriots and the " Young Poland " party, earnestly desired
my presence in Warsaw, because they thought it possible
that a foreigner, who had friends in both camps, might effect
a reconciliation. They sought, therefore, to make use of my
stay in Warsaw to bring this about, and it was said to me on
a certain occasion that, that evening for the first time in fifteen
years, representatives of the different parties were assembled in
the same room. What I personally saw in Warsaw could but
give me a lofty idea of the harmony of the Poles as a people ;
46 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
the attitude of the conservative party especially surprised
me. More than one Catholic priest received me heartily,
and the greatest festivity to which I was invited during my
visit in Warsaw was given by the leader of the conservative
party, the owner of the newspaper Slovo {The Word), Count
Przezdziecki. (He is the son of the man who published
the complete works of the Polish historian, Johanes Dlugosz,
in fourteen large quarto volumes, at great personal expense,
and a near relative of the Countess Przezdziecka, who is
Merimee's " Second Unknown " {^Autre Inconnue).)
Although, according to my idea, Polish culture at present
must thus be limited to an extremely prudent and wary
evolution, it is evident that the year 1863 marks an epoch
in the intellectual life of Poland. The follies and horrors of
this year, the frantic chaotic rebellion, with its tragic result,
has made the nation sober. Too sober, it may seem to
some, for while before 1863 it was the wont of the Poles
to see all merits united in their own people, since that time it
has become the fashion to speak sorrowfully and depreciat-
ingly of Poland. But it is a great gain in any event to have
cast off the sickly self-worship which prevailed in the thirties,
at the time when the two great opponents, Mickiewicz and
Slowacki, simultaneously adopted the visionary dreams of the
mystic Towianski, who regarded the Poles as the Messianic
race, suffering for the sins of mankind, and by suffering,
working out the salvation of humanity. They have learned
to look the stern reality in the face, and the hopes they
cherish — and though certainly not sanguine, they are by no
means without hope for the future — are not founded on
dreams and fantasies.
Finally, the drastic foreign rule since 1863 has produced
an intellectual condition which, however unhappy it may be,
may in certain ways be called the finest and best possible
to a nation, a condition which calls to mind that of primitive
Christendom under the oppression of Rome, a conception of
the world, pessimistic in many points, but not on that account
less true.
Perhaps after all there is no condition more elevating for
a race than one in which no distinguished man ever has any
TENACITY OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 47
external distinction, title, or decoration, and where the official
tinsel of honour is regarded as a disgrace, while on the other
hand the official garb of disgrace, the political prison blouse,
is regarded as honourable.
Every child who daily goes past Paskiewicz's monument,
who sees the names of traitors encircled by garlands on the
obelisk, is from a tender age familiar with the thought that
those whom the authorities honour are not as a rule the
best men, and that those whom they persecute are not as a
rule the worst.
That which is the pith, the true pith of Christian teach-
ing, a right estimate of the honours of this world, the
ignominy of this world, and the justice of this world, of real
greatness and real baseness — this estimate, every one here,
even the least gifted, has accepted. What a school for
life ! Poland is the only country, I believe, where primitive
Christianity still exists as a power in society, and that equally
for those who are Christians and for those who are not.
The name of Poland is not found on the map of Europe.
The people of Poland are not reckoned among the peoples
of Europe. The freedom and welfare of its sons and i
daughters are in the power of foreign rulers. Its language
is persecuted and suppressed.
This people has not a single friend among the mighty of
the earth ; on the other hand it has active, extremely active
and effectual enemies, and its misfortune is that its enemies
are the most absolutely powerful men in the w^orld.
On the other hand Poland has, I believe, among all the
nations of the world the best and the most humane of their '
sons for her friends.
Poland presents the spectacle of a nation which is not
only condemned to death, but which, as Cherbuliez has said,
has been buried alive, and yet which continually raises the »
lid of its coffin, and shows that its vital power is still far
from exhausted.
We meet here a people in whom every nerve is strained,
because day in and day out they fight for their existence,
instead of enjoying it like other races. We see here a people
who are entirely absorbed in their national cause, and yet
48 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
this national cause is nothing but the universal cause, the
cause of humanity.
We love Poland, therefore, not as we love Germany or
France or England, but as we love freedom. For what
is it to love Poland but to love freedom, to have a deep
sympathy with misfortune, and to admire courage and
enthusiasm ?
Poland is a symbol — a symbol of all which the best
of the human race have loved, and for which they have
fought. In Poland everything is concentrated, all that is
most hateful and despicable, all that is most lovable and
most brilliant ; here the contrasts of human life are found in
bold relief ; here the cosmos is concentrated as in an essence.
Everywhere in Europe where there has been any fighting
for freedom in this century, the Poles have taken part in it,
on all battlefields, on all the barricades. They have some-
times been mistaken in their views of the enterprises to which
they lent their arms ; but they believed that they were fight-
ing for the good of humanity ; they regarded themselves
as the bodyguard of freedom, and still look on every one
who fights for freedom as a brother.
But conversely, it may also be said that everywhere in
Europe where there is any fighting for freedom, there is
fighting for Poland. The future fate of Polaind is wholly
dependent on that of Europe ; for if the idea of the right
of the people to independence, and the right of every nation
to full political freedom continually gains ground in the
world, then the hour is drawing near when the resurrection
of Poland shall be something more than a hope.
SECOND IMPRESSION
1886
D
THE EXPULSION OF THE POLES
BY PRUSSIA
The two greatest military powers of the world, Germany and
Russia, which are on bad terms with each other, but neither of
which represents political freedom, the right of the nation and
of the individual to self-government, have at present one task
and object in common ; with all the means at their command
they wage a war of extermination against a nationality of
from 14,000,000 to 16,000,000 people, which is tied and
bound, oppressed and gagged as no other nationality in
Europe is, but which nevertheless is treated by its rulers as
if it overflowed or crushed out the elements which govern it,
and we see it incessantly described as a danger or a threat.
The partition of the Polish kingdom is nearly a hundred
years old. But it will not allow the three powers that
accomplished it to be at peace. Even now it demands
great efforts to establish it as just and right. It is not enough
that they have caused the history of the world to be written
as if all the blame were on the side oi this old Poland.
It is not enough that what among other people is counted
as virtue or duty — love of one's country, its memories
and language, hatred for its enemies and detractors — is
branded and punished when professed by a Pole. It is not
enough that no Polish deputy in the German or Galician
parliament can escape swearing and protesting his faithful
allegiance to the foreign power that shared in the partition, or
that the youth of Poland are registered as soldiers in the
German, Austrian, and Russian armies, are put into regiments
where only a foreign language is spoken, and have to fight
for foreign interests ; more recently Russia and Germany
52 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
have simultaneously initiated a persecution of the Polish
nationality, which comes very near to abuse.
At the beginning of this year, after a few days' warning.
Prince Bismarck drove out of Prussia fifty thousand Poles,
men, women, and children, helpless creatures who had to
seek a shelter or perish. His political motive seems to be
twofold. He is afraid of the Polonicising of the German-
speaking parts of the country ; for it appears that the Polish
language, in spite of everything that is done to root it out,
continually gains ground. And he would like to secure the
best possible conditions in a forthcoming war, and have as
few hostile elements in the country as he can. He is
not only driving out of Prussia all foreign Poles, even if they
have long been settled there — and this so rigorously, that on
the ist of February a woman ninety-one years old arrived in
Warsaw, who was exiled from Posen as dangerous to the
State — but he is also proposing measures that will make the
ownership of the soil as burdensome as possible to the
Prussian Poles who reside in Posen and possess land there.
He wishes to buy out the Poles from their old land, and
has asked for 300,000,000 marks towards colonisation, just
as if some region either uninhabited or inhabited by savages
were in question. And it is not even to be permitted to
every German to buy Polish land unconditionally ; no one
who has married a Polish woman can get permission ; for
experience teaches, says Bismarck, that such a wife makes
her husband a Polish patriot in the twinkling of an eye. In
future no Prussian Pole is to be allowed to settle in Posen,
unless he has married a German wife ; for only in this event
can there be any hope of Germanising him and his children.
I
THE POLISH WOMEN
It thus appears that Bismarck regards the Polish women
as even more dangerous to the unity and safety of the
German empire than the men. He has unintentionally borne
testimony to their pride and worth. And they deserve it, for
in all that relates to the contest for the preservation of the
national spirit, they are the marrow of the land.
The women here referred to belong to the aristocracy.
Among the common people there is only a religious national
consciousness, and there is no middle class as in the Germanic
and Latin countries.
Broadly speaking, we may say of these women of the
higher and lower aristocracy that their qualities, virtues, and
vices have nothing bourgeois about them. They are not
domesticated, they are not small-minded. The best of them
have a pride, whjch exalted and exceptional as it is, springs
from their feeling of the strength and purity of the spiritual
life. They are women who are born to rule, and who even
in narrow and straitened circumstances preserve the grand
self-esteem which runs in their blood. In women of this
type the emotional life is wholly absorbed in the national
cause. Several among them, indeed, are zealous children of
the Catholic Church, but for the larger number and the more
intelligent, Catholicism is precious only as the palladium of
the nationality. Cherbuliez's characterisation of the Polish
women as <' Punch mixed with holy water " is now a trifle
antiquated.
The Polish women are renowned for beauty, and deserve
their reputation. It is a kind of dogma in Poland that
the real Polish woman is blonde ; it is considered most
elegant to be so ; still, although some women are to be found
54 IMPRESSIONS OV POLAND
who not only approach the Swedes and Norwegians in the
golden yellow of their hair, but who surpass any Northerner
in the glistening whiteness of their skins, the dogma does
not hold true. Brunettes are everywhere more numerous,
and the colour of the hair of the larger number is a dark
brown.
The perfect form of the hands and the smallness of the
feet are remarkable in the Polish women. They even place
the beauty of the hands above all other perfections. " I
regard my hands, but not my face," said one, and one of
them who otherwise thinks little about her appearance and is
too cultivated to be vain, when her hands were frost-bitten in
Paris, caused the most celebrated physician in the city to be
sent for. Polish ladies maintain that when they visit the
shoemakers' shops in Vienna and show their small feet with
high insteps, the shoemakers exclaim : " Das kennen wir, das
sind polnische Fiisse ! " (We know that those are Polish
feet.) It is also said in Warsaw that in the Vienna shoe-shops
they have a separate case of boots and shoes for these feet,
and that its contents are widely different from that of the
case designed for English ladies.
The prevailing view here, as in all other nationalities
known to me, is, that the typical national woman lives for her
home and children — perhaps more for the children than the
husband, and that she rarely leads a life of love. Matrimony
is not so paraded as in Germany, and is not so often the
occasion of catastrophes as in France. The Polish women
have hot heads, but their senses are under control.
Now and then a great irregularity happens : a lady leaves
her husband and lives with her lover ; a young girl marries
her father's valet, and the like. They are the rare exceptions.
When you meet an accomplished coquette in society, she is
almost always of foreign descent. On the other hand, great
examples of maternal sacrifice are by no means rare.
Countess Rosa K., called ihe first lady in Poland on account
of her family connections and fortune, has for years lived
entirely alone in an unimportant mountain town in the
Carpathian mountains, for the health of her feeble little
son.
THE FEMININE PROPAGANDA 55
There are still found in Poland remnants of that abstract
worship of women, which, as long as the kingdom of Poland
endured, found expression in the following description of the
Madonna : Virgo Maria Regina Polonice. Although or perhaps
because the economic emancipation of women has not been
even mooted so far, gallantry towards the female sex is de
rigueur. Men always rise in a tramway to give a lady a seat.
And in any public place whatever, even at the most elegant
receptions or balls, a chair is taken away from under one with
the words, *' For a lady."
In the upper ranks of society the life of the women at
first sight seems to be purely idle. But in summer in the
country, where patriarchal relations to a great extent still pre-
vail, the mistiess of the estate has much to do, and in Warsaw
it is only apparently that she lives a life of mere amusement.
The lady of position rises between eleven and twelve
o'clock in the forenoon, and goes to bed at four o'clock in
the morning ; she drives from one visit to another and from
one party to another. But in reality she labours every day
for public and national interests. Everything, the most in-
nocent enterprises, the founding of a library, a hospital, a
sewing school, no matter what it is, is made to strengthen
the Polish cause. Four ladies do not meet on a charity
committee without promoting the national cause under its
cover.
It is forbidden to teach girls Polish in a school, but it is
allowed to teach them to sew. They draw corsets on the
slate in case the gendarmes should come ; they have sewing
materials on the table, and books under it.
Several ladies, eminent for their talents, have attempted
to do more ; thus the renowned authoress, Elise Orzeszkowa,
even established a printing press to be carried on with a view
to the education of the people. This enterprise came to an
end when the government prohibited it, closed the printing
office, and confined Madam Orzeszkowa for several years at
Grodno. Her romances, which have attracted much atten-
tion— Meir Ezofowicz is especially worth reading — disclose
a talent which is akin to that of George Sand ; they are
written with a melancholy patriotism inspired by an en-
56 IMPRESSIONS OV POLAND
thusiastic faith in freedom ; her minor novels have a
keener stamp of realism, and more decided artistic form,
but the same patriotic, didactic tendency. A younger
poetess, who has attained a very high rank in lyric poetry —
Marja Konopnicka — while contending with the most difficult
and oppressive conditions of life, has developed into the
poetic representative of a life of freedom of thought and
emotion which is still exceptional in Poland. The chord of
the love of country also vibrates strongly in her poetry, as,
for instance, in her ode to Matejko on the painting, The Battle
at Grtinwald.
The opposition between Poland and Russia is never out
of the mind of the women. This is constantly noticeable
in daily life. A young girl was deserted by her lover. It
was always cited as a detail which made the perfidy and
cruelty more bitter, that it was for the sake of a Russian
dancer he left her. A young girl, not twenty years old,
rebuked a group of half-grown Polish schoolboys in the
Saxon Park because they were speaking Russian to each
other. Such little traits teach every one who resides for any
time in Russian Poland that it is the women who keep the
national passion at white heat.
In other respects, like the women of other countries,
of course they are of all sorts ; gentle and quiet, or sus-
piciously sharp-sighted, virginal and combative, or with erotic
tendencies, or vain, theatrical dispositions. There are some
who, genuine Slavs, are wholly absorbed in intellectual
enthusiasms, and there are individual commanding natures,
typically Polish, with the determination and firmness of an
exceptional man. There was one, whom her father, a general
of artillery, who wished to cure his child of fear, had compelled
from the time she was ten years old to stand at the side
of the cannon when they were fired, and who now, at the
age of twenty, was characterised as a woman who could
stand fire.
Often common patriotic interests unite them to the men ;
sometimes they choose a man instinctively for the reason
that he falls less short than others of their patriotic ideal.
On the whole it may be said that they think rather lightly
REPRESENTATIVE POLISH WOMEN 57
of men, and know their faults thoroughly. Courage in a
man is not enough for them. " If they could not even
fight, they ought to be buried," was the retort made — in
answer to a speech which exalted this virtue in men —
by a young girl of much character. As a rule it may
be said of these women, that they demand much and give
much in return.
II
THE MEN— POLISH IDEALS, VIRTUES AND VICES
The men are well-grown, often thin ; most frequently with
clear-cut faces and long, thick, pendant moustaches. This
type may be traced from peasant to aristocrat. A fre-
quent variation is the heavy, childishly frank country noble,
who greets his friends at meeting and parting with a
kiss, and has his heart on his lips, but who, nevertheless,
has a manly bearing and much natural dignity ; this is the
type which Mickiewicz has immortalised in several instances
in Pan Tadeusz.
Political qualities are universally wanting. While the
German generally feels as if he had found his destiny
when he is harnessed to the chariot of state, even if he
, thereby loses some of the best of his nature, the Pole is
without any talent as a politician. The economic as well
as the political sense is but slightly developed in Russian
Poland.
Therefore there was in the old kingdom of Poland
(just as in Greece) a high civilisation without the material
foundation which could secure its continuance, and on that
account a development of personal freedom took place here
(as in Judaea) at the expense of the power of the kingdom
in its relation to foreign countries.
^ There are two Polish national songs, which together give
I a complete picture of the national character of the Poles : one
I is Wibicki's Jeszcze Polska of 1797, a poem famous through-
out the world as '< Poland is not yet lost ; " the other is
/ Ujejski's Zdynten Pozarow of 1846, written after the Galician
massacres. The Metternich Government, which got the idea
of using the peasants against their masters from Archduke
Ferdinand, persuaded the peasantry in Galicia that the em-
58
POLISH NATIONAL SONGS . 59
peror had granted them freedom from military service and
had given them the soil for partition, but that the nobility
prevented the carrying out of this imperial regulation. When
the young nobles then sought to win over the peasants to a
national revolt, the fury of the latter turned against the
Polish nobility ; in three days two thousand men, women,
and children of noble rank were exterminated, some being
burned alive, others flogged to death, and others cut to
pieces.
Ujejski's song is the expression of the despair of the
younger race at seeing the hopes of Poland thus brought to
naught by the Poles themselves, as Wibicki's song is the
expression of the bright hopes of the old race, even after the
blow of the third partition had fallen. The first is a hymn
which resembles a psalm, the second a march which ap-
proaches a mazurka.
The two sides of the character of the people, the whole
Polish spirit, are reflected herein. In Ujejski's hymn there
is the lofty, burning earnestness, the love of country as a
religion : " Our lamentation mounts up to Thee, O Lord,
with the smoke of fire and the steam of our brother's blood!"
Jeszcze Polska, which is generally believed to be pathetic,
because it has played the same part in the national life of
Poland as the Marseillaise in that of France, is an extremely
careless, merry song, the ballad of heroic thoughtlessness.
Its argument is : No fear. Poland endures still. March,
march, Dombrowski ! It is joy to live, to sing, to fight.
The virtue which has gradually made its way in Europe
in modern times as the chief civic virtue is that of working,
and loving work for its own sake. The conception on which
it is based is very rare in Poland. Its children have culti-
vated the earth and cultivated their minds for centuries, but
they have at the same time obstinately regarded work merely
for money as a low, degrading thing. They have nourished
the inherited aristocratic contempt for the merchant and the
manufacturer, to say nothing of the shopkeeper and the
mechanic. They have collected great fortunes, but they
have spent them. Money was a means ; very seldom an end :
work a semi-disgraceful resource ; never its own reward.
6o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
They wished to enjoy life, not earn bread, and above all,
to live lavishly and carelessly.
In this country the useful has always been given the
second place, often the third.
Not that their highest interest lay in an ideal reproduction
of life, as did that of Italy during the Renaissance, when it
was absorbed by its eternal art. No ; the end here was to
make life itself a festival which a great lord, a really grand
seigneur, gave to other gentlemen, great and small, and their
ladies.
Hospitality is a more essential feature in Polish life than
in that of any other country. Elsewhere people are hospitable
only when they are bored : here they are hospitable without
being bored ; to shrink from showing hospitality here is
accounted snobbery ; to shrink from accepting hospitality,
even on a grand scale, is also snobbery, for it shows that you
value it in money.
In ancient Poland even war was festive. In war the
Polish knights wore large wings on their cuirasses, real ostrich
wings on their saddles, and, as a matter of course, plumes
in rich variety.
And how beautiful and rich was the Polish costume in
peace ! It can scarcely be maintained that their mode of
dress was ever practical, but what glittering luxury it dis-
played ! What wonderful splendour in sashes, with their
gold and silver embroidery, which were wound many
times about the waist ! What a delicate and superior sense
of beauty in their silk embroideries ! The man who wore
such a sash about his waist had a constant impression of
happiness, fulness of life, prosperity. This was not tinsel,
like so much of the French finery of those days, but solid
and enduring splendour.
The individual mighty man of this people did not live for
himself alone, was not reserved, and the whole race was like
him. We have only to consider two such incidents as these :
that Poland opened its doors to the Jews in the Middle Ages,
and that John Sobieski liberated Vienna from the Turks ; two
rare incidents in the history of Europe of religious liberality
and political chivalry.
THE ARISTOCRATIC IDEAL 6i
But ideals, disinterested ideals, are a luxury, which bring
their own punishment on a people almost as national vices
do. The nations which attain to new religious ideals in the
emotional life, or in their contemplative life raise themselves
to new heights, or which follow aristocratic ideals in their
conduct, are always weak as makers of states ; frequently they
have been compelled to pay for more exalted qualities by the
loss of their political existence, but a race like the Poles is
placed in a more difficult position than ever in a period so
uniformly civic and martial as our own.
Especially does the old-time aristocratic contempt for
work prove fatal. No one works who does not need to,
and many who should, do not. Society in Warsaw is per-
haps more exclusive than anywhere else. The prejudice
against work is impressed upon the young by the old. A
distinguished old lady made this significant remark : " What
company they invited me to meet ! It was made up of
workmen, advocates whom we pay, manufacturers who sell
goods, doctors, into whose hands three rubles are slipped
for a visit 1 " The wife of Don Ranudo would not speak
otherwise.
But how does a whole class get money in our time with-
out work ? some one will ask. That is exactly the crux ;
the money of the Polish aristocracy is coming to an end ;
those who still have land are frequently obliged to live wholly
on their estates.
But we must not believe that any one troubles himself
much about this. A Polish proverb runs: "I suppose it J
will settle itself," a saying characteristic of the land of dis-
order. A poor paymaster, or one who lives on credit, is
judged less severely here than anywhere. About families who
are in debt to everybody it is said indulgently : " They were
forced to run into debt." They are not despised on that
account, hardly even when extravagance has amounted to
folly, as when the head of a family gambles and loses a fortune
in play. But just in such cases the bright and the shady
sides of the Polish character are seen in close proximity.
Of two brothers, one lost 200,000 rubles in play and
fled from the country. The other brother assumed the debt,
62 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
betook himself into the country, lived on his estate like
the humblest workman, toiled like the poorest peasant, and
during his whole life was paying off his brother's debt.
Exaggerated, heroic self-sacrifice flourishes alongside of crazy,
criminal recklessness.
The propensity to vain love of display, to extravagance,
generates in low and bad natures that disorder in all money
affairs and that lust for wealth which determine the peculiar
Polish form of rascality, that which makes swindlers in
private life and traitors in political life. Probably in every
well-marked nationality rascality in money matters has its
peculiar, favourite form. The two following incidents show
it in its Polish extravagance.
A young man of good family ran in debt to the amount
of 80,000 rubles, borrowed of all his relatives, impoverished
them at last, and carried it so far that he borrowed of every
one he met, of strange ladies, of ladies of his own country
whom he met abroad in a hotel ; he did not despise
even a loan of five or ten rubles. Finally, when he had
not a copeck left, he entered a monastery in Paris as a
novice. There was general edification in his family. A
short time after, he writes home to a pious old aunt, ex-
plains to her that each of the other brothers has given
the monastery a sum of money, and begs her urgently to
advance him a small sum, only 6000 rubles, so that the
other monks should not despise him. As soon as he receives
the money, he leaves the monastery, travels at full speed to
America, spends the sum to the last penny, returns to
France, becomes a monk again, and is to-day one of the
most popular father-confessors in Paris.
The following incident from real life shows a variation on
the same type, and illustrates at the same time peculiarities of
Polish character of an entirely different kind.
A rich lady of the Polish aristocracy, very austere and
demure in her whole conduct, peacefully and, as it is called,
happily, married, who had a worthy husband, a beautiful
home, and who had never been in love before, seemed to
fall under a spell when she became acquainted with a certain
elegant young nobleman. She abandoned husband and
POLISH DISINTERESTEDNESS 63
children, house and home, and allowed herself to be carried
off to Paris under a forged passport. The young man
was kind to her for about a week, then gradually sold all
her articles of value and ornaments, locked her up when
he went out to amuse himself with the money, and soon
left her so completely in the lurch that, stripped of every-
thing, she was compelled to write to her mother for aid.
Her mother brought her home, and her husband declared
that he was willing to take her back again on the condition
that she first kneeled down at the threshold of the house
and asked pardon of all, even of the servants, for the bad
example she had given. She submitted, and he has never
since said a reproachful word to her, or recalled the past
by any allusion.
Just as the rascality in money matters which here mani-
fests itself among the depraved Poles is extreme, so is the
horror there is of any intermingling of monetary value in
an expression of gratitude to superiors or equals among the
better class.
An exiled Pole, who took part in the rebellion of 1863,
and who has since earned his bread as a photographer in
Christiania, sent back to Charles XV. an expensive pin which
the latter had sent him in remembrance of an interview, and
of a service he had rendered. Another little incident that
occurred in Warsaw last year is even more significant and
instructive. A young landed proprietor, Mankowski, won the
prize offered for a comedy by a Polish private citizen. He
sent a diamond ring as a thank-offering to a popular actor,
who had given him great assistance with the stage effects,
and had spent a good deal of time upon this. The actor
refused to accept the ring. When this was told me, and
I suggested : " Can he give his time without compensation ? "
I received the answer : " He does not need much, you see :
he does not take that kind of pay ; but also he himself does
not pay. People know that he has not much, and there-
fore regard it as mean to dun him. For instance, he has
now occupied a fine apartment for ten years. During this
time he has never paid his rent ; but when rent day
comes, he pays a visit to the landlord in the morning ; the
64 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
latter offers him a cup of chocolate, the young actor makes
an excuse for his negligence with regard to the rent, laments
his want of money, and there is no more said about the
matter." — " And his tailor, his shoemaker, does he not pay
them either ? " — " No ; they hope that he will some day make
a rich match. On the other hand, he does not receive an
invitation to dinner without reciprocating, and when he gives
a dinner at the Hotel d'Europe to Kronenberg (the richest
banker in Poland), it is not less magnificent than Kronen-
berg's own dinners — and then he pays."
According to this way of looking at it, it is only necessary
to pay for the unnecessary, the superfluous. Nowhere else
indeed does the superfluous stand in so great honour. The
young men of the highest class in Poland are products of
luxury, extremely engaging, gently affectionate like women,
delicate as late off-shoots of old noble stocks. As a rule
they do not work ; and when by exception they do, without
necessity, devote themselves to a study, prepare themselves
for a professorship, or something of that sort, they awake
general amazement and wonder. They applaud a young man
not for working, but because he does the superfluous.
Thus to do the superfluous has always been the char-
acteristic of Polish heroism. The men of the great days
of Poland have taken part in the most varied European
wars whenever the contest was about an object which had
their sympathy. They fought in 1848, and later in the
Crimea, in Italy, in Turkey. Thus it was with the old Ordon,
sung by Mickiewicz, the hero of 1831, who blew up his
redoubt before Warsaw when the Russians entered it, and
who was himself saved by a miracle. He had been every-
where where a blow was struck for freedom or against
Russia. Until last year this true hero, in whom all that is
lofty and rare in the Polish character was combined, lived a
quiet life in Florence. Proud and poor as he was and ad-
vanced in age, unable to work, in his fear of becoming a
burden to others, he put an end to his life by a pistol shot.
His courage was that of a knight-errant. And this kind of
martial courage is found in spirits of the second rank, as,
for instance, the lately deceased Tripplin, who in his accounts
INCIDENT OB' 1863 65
of his travels has given a sympathetic, idealised description of
Denmark. He also took part in the most varied wars for
freedom, and was everywhere where there was any fighting
against Russia.
The following incident of the last rebellion well illus-
trates the Polish disposition to show a courage which has
no regard to the useful. When in 1863 all hope for the
cause of Poland was lost, at the last meeting of the national
Government its chief announced that he should remain in
Warsaw ; that he would not run away ; the other members
of the Government could still save themselves, and he handed
them the passports which had been prepared. Then they
also determined to remain, and to expose themselves to all
the dangers of being taken as leaders of the rebellion, rather
than fly before the enemy against whom they had risen.
With such virtues and the vices which have been touched
upon, people do not get on in the world in the nineteenth
century. They are not even honoured and respected, much
less strong and great. The grace of magnanimity and reck-
lessness is badly placed in our time between German
prudence and Russian might.
Ill
EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION — DEMOCRATS, SO-
CIALISTS, FREE-THINKERS— COMPULSORY CHOICE
OF THE CULTURED
Oppression has now reached its greatest height in Russian
Poland since the partition of the kingdom. So complete is
the gagging of the press that the refutation of the arguments
in Bismarck's speeches, or any attack upon them, was strictly
forbidden. No one even dared to show that the Polish
agitation with which, according to the prince, it was necessary
to contend, for very good reasons only consisted in an
unbroken determination to maintain the nationality and
language against the foreign conqueror, who, on his side,
sets the whole machinery of state in operation, and uses all
its powers.
The aim of the government in Russian Poland, as already
mentioned, is especially directed to two objects : the Russian-
ising of the ownership of the soil, and the eradication of the
Polish language.
The ukase of 1865, which has been spoken of, forbade
the Poles in the old Polish provinces to devise their land
to any others than their children. In March 1886, however,
the Russian Courts hit upon a decision of even broader
import, since a will in which a Lithuanian proprietor had
left his estate to his son was declared invalid, and the land
was sold by auction.
In the Kingdom of Poland it is still permitted to speak
Polish in the open street, and to write a notice in Polish,
provided that above it the same is written in Russian ; but
anywhere outside of the so-called kingdom — in the whole
of Lithuania towards the north, and in the south as far as
Odessa — everywhere, where culture and language in the
66
PROHIBITION OF THE POLISH LANGUAGE 67
cultivated^classes are still Polish, in and on all public build-
ings a notice is posted with the words : " The speaking of
Polish is forbidden." The violation of the prohibition is
punished severely, and every functionary, even to the low-
liest, who is reported to have said a few words in Polish,
even as an answer to a question in Polish, even to persons
who do not understand any other language, is punished with
heavy fines or dismissal. A tramcar conductor was recently
fined twenty-five rubles — more than his month's pay — for
having answered a Polish question in the same language.
Just imagine a trial in Russian Poland. The magistrate,
who is generally a Pole by birth, and speaks Russian with
difficulty and with a bad accent, questions in his Russian the
accused, a Polish peasant, who does not understand a word
of the judge's speech. The questions are therefore trans-
lated by an interpreter. He answers in Polish. New trans-
lation by the interpreter, unnecessary as it is, and thus
questions and answers continue, because neither magistrate
nor accused is permitted to speak his native language.
And at the public trial the prosecuting counsel speaks against
the accused in a language which the latter understands no
more than what his counsel says in his behalf.
The Kingdom of Poland, where the language is still
allowed, and where the Code Napoleon is still in force, seems
to the inhabitants of the other provinces comparatively a
paradise of freedom. They go from Wilna to Warsaw for
a few weeks every year to breathe freely.
He who has experienced the state of things in this
paradise of freedom can draw his own conclusions as to
what it is in the provinces.
So far as education is concerned, the parents keep
their little boy or girl at home and out of school as long as
possible, teach them themselves, or have them taught, in order
to give the first elements of knowledge in Polish and in the
Polish spirit. The child sucks in with his mother's milk
contempt for the Russians, and passionate hatred for them.
Everything which the child hears in the first years of
his life strengthens this hatred and contempt. He learns
so much that is great and good about the superior culture
68 IMPRESSIONS OP^ POLAND
and exalted courage of his countrymen that he attributes
everything great to Poland and the Poles. " Is it possible that
Columbus was not a Pole ? " asked a little boy of his mother
in my presence. On the other hand, as a rule everything
which the child learns or experiences with regard to the
Russians is unfavourable, or it receives an unfavourable
interpretation. The Russian officers are unobtrusive in
their bearing in public places ; they are generally seen alone,
seldom two and two. It is not the custom as it is in other
armies for them to greet each other when they meet. Their
behaviour is not in the least arrogant ; they rather seem
oppressed by their situation as the detested representatives
of the ruling race. But the uniform is unpopular ; the
Poles do not give the officers credit for their modesty, they
take it rather as proof of consciousness of intellectual
inferiority. And a single little incident like this, that the
carriage of the Russian general, on leaving a public ball,
breaks the established row of carriages and goes ahead,
arouses the bitter feeling of living in a land conquered by
an enemy.
There is, of course, a Russian colony in Warsaw, but
there is no real Russian society on account of the great
disparities in rank among the Russians who live there.
They cannot accept each other as equals. And here, as
elsewhere, the Russian officials do not bear the highest
characters. In addition to which, the better-class Russians
think themselves too good to accept posts in Poland. They
shrink from the odium attached to the calling.
A few years ago a Russian was appointed Professor of
Zoology at the Warsaw University. He arrived, and was
shown over the museum of stuffed animals. He noticed
that the names on the labels were in Latin and Russian
only. " Why not in Polish ? " he asked. The Rector of the
University explained to him that he had been sent to
Warsaw not primarily to give instruction in zoology — it
was comparatively unimportant whether the students learned
much or little of the subject — but to carry on the Russian
propaganda. The new Professor then inquired when the
next train left for St. Petersburg, and departed incontinently.
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 69
In the same way the leading Russian actress declined to go
to Warsaw with the imperial troupe, and declared she would
not act there until she might do so in Polish. But such
cases are exceptional.
On the other hand, there are incidents of the very oppo-
site description, which a Polish child daily witnesses and
hears discussed in his home. Hatred of the Muscovite
{Moskal) becomes a part of his nature.
He is finally sent to school, that is, he has to be given
up to the Russian state, to Russian teachers. In his own
home his mother has always dressed him in the Polish
national costume, which is not allowed in the street. He
has lived with picture-books and paintings which have shown
him scenes of the past history of Poland, of the revolutions
of this century, of the march of the exiles to Siberia ; he
knows the career of Poland minutely. In school the boy
is dressed in Russian uniform, is addressed only in Russian,
is never allowed to speak a single word that is not Russian,
never hears anything about Poland or Polish literature, or
if it is mentioned at all, it is spoken of as something pro-
hibited, evil. He learns here that he is Russian, and
nothing else than Russian. What confusion in the child's
soul ! The boy is compelled to be a hypocrite, to tell lies.
The seeds of defiance and self-restraint, or of falsehood and
flattery, are planted in his soul. Desperate questions as to
whether resistance is of any use, whether justice exists,
necessarily arise.
The schools are bad. The circumstance that the whole
instruction is given in a foreign language, and that an
inordinate stress is laid upon the acquirement of it ; the
dislike and constraint, which are the result thereof ; lastly,
the habit of looking on the teacher as a foreigner and an
enemy have a great effect in diminishing the result. There
is a minority of the students who understand French, and
speak it well ; a certain number understand and speak the
language of the frontier — German ; but the majority are
barely able to read foreign books, and many do not under-
stand a simple question in French or German. Those who
are well-to-do go to foreign lands to study; if they cannot
70 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
obtain permission for this they prefer to go to St. Petersburg,
where they find less restraint and better professors, rather
than remain in Warsaw, where the university instruction as
a rule is bad.
When the University was suddenly transformed from
Polish to Russian, those professors who did not know
Russian asked leave to retire. Several of them remained,
however, chiefly from patriotic reasons. But by degrees
the University was purged, and the Polish professors were
replaced by Russians, or by those who were favourable to
Russia. The regulation has been made that after twenty-
five years' service a professor can be dismissed, unless the
faculty specially desire to retain him. They never desire to
retain an eminent Polish professor. Thus, last year, Bara-
nowski, the first medical professor of the University, received
his dismissal as coming within the limit, although, since he
was very young when he was appointed, he was just fifty
years old and in full possession of his powers. As Professor
of Esthetics and the History of Literature, passing by the de-
serving and sound historian of literature, Piotr Chmielowski,
they have appointed a certain Struwe, the only man who
could be found who would speak Russian. Sometimes he
succeeds in obtaining three auditors.
The halls are so small that none of them hold over a
hundred, and not one of them is ever full.
The students have to wear a uniform like the pupils of
schools, and they are under strict supervision. It is naturally
forbidden to them to form any union whatsoever. They are
not allowed to stand in a knot on the street, and if they
even assemble at all in private to the number of six or
seven, they are sure to be reported and punished ; for
everything is known. No one goes in or out of a house
unseen. Latch-keys are unknown — and there is no northern
institution one can speak of which astonishes an inhabitant
of Russian Poland more than the latch-key. " Does the
government allow such things ? " they ask, with amazement.
Every one, even the master of the house, must ring at
his door, and the porter {Siroz), who corresponds to the
Russian Dvornick, and whose duty it is to be responsible for
THE DEMOCRATIC GROUP 71
the safety of the inmates, invariably serves also as an instru-
ment of the police.
Thus the students are driven to study alone, but this
is also made difficult. A great many of the most cele-
barated foreign works, as well as the most important of the
literature of their own land, are forbidden, and must be got
over the frontier as smuggled goods, which on the one hand
increases the cost and on the other is dangerous. Therefore
it cannot be wondered at that among the more intelligent
of these young men there are found many with far-reaching
anti-governmental views.
There are no Nihilists among them : neither the name
nor the thing is known in Poland. The most advanced
among them fall into two groups. Some call themselves
democrats and some socialists. The democrats hold the
views which are supported in Prawda. Still, their chief
mterest is not social or political, but purely intellectual.
They constitute the first free-thinking group of this cen-
tury in Poland. But as Catholicism and the power
of the clergy from remote times have had their support
in the Polish aristocracy, which represents the national
tradition, and as the press of the aristocracy, especially the
newspaper Slowo, is the organ of Catholicism, free-thinking
allies itself with democratic inclinations and aims.
The young men who hold democratic views would like
to introduce into Poland modern thoughts, views, theories
and books. They would like to translate even the trivial
protests of Max Nordau, if they were not afraid of the censor.
Their strongest speaker, Swientochowski, is about forty years
old, handsome, clear-eyed, stubborn, with a head like that
of a provincial Christ, a poet and a fine writer, and, above
all, a character. He has great qualities as a controversialist
and as a didactic author, but his dogmatism causes him to be
easily involved in squabbles, and he lacks grace and tact.
His chief task is a war against the Catholic clergy. But an
attack upon the clergy in Poland, even more than elsewhere,
is an unpopular thing, because the nationality of the country
has been for so long a time bound up with the Romish
religion, and because the religious difference even now —
72 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
since the educational standard of the people is so low —
makes the strongest bulwark of the nation.
Then it also appears — albeit it is denied and the adherents
of Prawda do not like to hear it — that the censor is more
indulgent to this paper than to any other. It has permission
to say things which would be forbidden to any other journal.
For everything which tends towards cosmopolitanism and
which undermines the Catholic church is far less dangerous
to Russia than the nationalistic religious tendency. The in-
fluence of the Roman Church still appears to Russia its chief
enemy and chief danger.
There is only one power in Poland which Russia per-
secutes and fears to the same degree, perhaps even more,
and that is — singularly enough — Socialism.
I have said that there is a group among the studious youth
■who call themselves Socialists ; a large number of the woi k-
ing people are of the same mind through the influence of the
socialistic thought of Germany. I believe that these so-called
Socialists among the students are of the highest class, the best
informed, the most enthusiastic and devoted ; they are mostly
young doctors who have acquired modern science, and who
by reading at first or at second hand have become disciples
of Karl Marx. They feel keenly the existing injustice of the
conditions of society. They realise that, even if Poland per
impossibile should become free, little or nothing would be
gained if the aristocracy or the clergy should continue to
exercise the ruling influence, and capital should continue to
exploit those who own no property. They have nothing
against the Russians as Russians, and dream vaguely of
allying themselves with the revolutionary elements in Russia,
of which indeed they know nothing. They pay dearly for
the perilous and wholly Platonic sympathy for Socialism
which they cherish. For every student who is accused or
suspected of socialist propagandism is sent relentlessly to the
castle, even if he has not been guilty of the smallest illegality.
It is the danger threatening from Russian socialism which
makes the government so anxious about that of Poland.
The five political criminals who were hanged in the prison
of Warsaw at the end of January were Russians. The case,
THE BARDOWSKI CONSPIRACY 73
which came to an end here, turned upon a conspiracy
organised by an inferior magistrate by the name of Bardowski,
a political plot wholly without a prospect of success. The
conspirators had drawn up socialist proclamations, which
were to be given to the working people of Warsaw ; they
had stabbed a cigar dealer, in whose shop one of them, an
engineer by the name of Kunicki, had been stupid enough
to forget the protocol with the names of all the conspirators,
and who in his anxiety had taken the book to a police
station.
Very little appeared against the accused, so little that the
Governor-General of Poland — the celebrated General Guiko,
who is of Polish descent, and whose name properly pro-
nounced is the Polish Hurko — after the sentence of death was
pronounced, twice sent the papers to St. Petersburg with the
declaration that he could not see how they could condemn
these men to death. Since the death sentence was neverthe-
less confirmed, the governor, who is humane without on
that account being known as soft-hearted, acted as follows.
He caused the condemned persons to be awakened early
one morning, and they were then told that they were
sentenced to banishment, and must therefore take leave of
their relatives, and if they desired it, see a priest to prepare
them for their long journey. They all declared that they
did not desire to communicate with any minister of religion.
One of them wished to say good-bye to his father, who was
sent for. They were then taken to a closed room, where
the execution was to take place. The sentence was pro-
nounced there, and at the same moment the executioners
seized them and hanged them in the room.
It is most significant that two Russian officers who were
condemned to death, but who at the last moment had their
sentence commuted to hard labour in the mines for life —
which is virtually the death punishment^ since no one can
endure it for more than four or five years — were not guilty
of anything whatever except that they had received some
pamphlets and proclamations from Bardowski, which they
had not shown to any one, so far as could be proved, much
less sought to distribute, but which were found in their houses.
74 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
So dangerous is it to have socialistic writings in one's
custody.
However, no Pole ought to hazard freedom and life for
the sake of socialistic ideas. For in general it may be said,
though young men with socialist sympathies in Warsaw are,
strangely enough, surprised to hear one maintain it, that there
is no sense in a Pole being a Socialist. For what does
Socialism mean, shortly expressed ? What else than directly
or indirectly, the expropriation of private rich men, capitalists
and landed proprietors, for the advantage of the State ? But
translate this into Polish, and it becomes under the con-
ditions that prevail now, and have long prevailed, absolutely
nothing else than the expropriation of Polish rich men for the
advantage of the Russian State. But whatever the Russian
State has once annexed may be called a thing of the past.
It would require a strong faith to think that it would ultimately
profit the Polish common people, when one lives in a city
like Warsaw, where there is no municipal government, and
where the revenues of the municipality go straight to St.
Petersburg and only an extremely small portion thereof is
used for the city's own advantage.
The only thing the Polish Socialist actually can do is
therefore to excite the workmen against their employers,
arouse their discontent, and lead them on to strikes which
almost always end in defeat. Since election does not exist,
so to speak, and a real party can never be formed, all socialist
action on a larger scale is impossible, wholly apart from its
ruinous effect upon the individuality of the Polish people.
A similar consideration to that which ought to prevent a
thoughtful and prudent Pole from placing himself on the side
of the Polish Socialists, even if he is otherwise inclined to
socialistic theories, should prevent him from giving his full
support to the free-thinking group in Poland.
One can be as good an European as any one, one may
despise all the chauvinism, which as national conceit merely
stupefies a people, and still regard the forcible annihilation
of a rich and valuable national individuality as a misfortune
for the whole of Europe.
It seems to me as if all other questions in Poland must
THE DILEMMA OF THE DEMOCRATS 75
be subordinate to this first and most important : the pre-
servation of the nationahty. But at a time like this, when
it is absolutely forbidden to establish Polish schools, or to give
peasants or the lower classes national instruction of any kind,
a comprehensive free-thinking agitation, which would paralyse
the Catholic faith, would also paralyse Polish national feeling.
Unquestionably there are Protestant Poles in Posen and
scattered in Russian Poland numerous united churches,
which (in spite of the fact that their priests are married and
their relations with Rome looser than those of the Roman
Catholics) feel themselves to be very good Poles ; but this is
the consequence of the power of a tradition.
A rupture with the religious tradition at this period, if it
could be brought about among the masses, would always
be a victory for the Russian principle.
To be called a democrat has no sound meaning either,
unless the word expresses the opinion that the masses of the
people ought to rule. It is rather fruitless to cherish this
opinion so long as nobility and peasantry are in an equal
degree under the whip of the foreigner. All that the
democrats are able to accomplish is to oppose the influence
of the large landed proprietors, by election of the parish
council in the country, and of the managers in private under-
takings, a good and useful thing, in so far as it arouses a
feeling of independence among the people, a cause of less
undoubted profit, in so far as it lightens for the Russians tlie
labour of breaking the power of resistance of the higher classes.
A dreadful dilemma presents itself to the Polish in- P
telligence ; it seems condemned either to choose progress,
with the danger of playing into the hands of its own worst \
enemy, and the worst enemy of all progress, or to choose
stagnation, with the danger that the nationality which is
thereby preserved, and of which its sons were and are so
proud, should drop behind in the culture of Europe, becoming
antiquated and outstripped.
There is something really tragic in this situation. More
than one man, who represents the Polish intelligence in its
highest development, sees himself — like the proud Count
Henrik in Krasinski's tragedy — condemned to defend the
76 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
citadel of the Holy Trinity. These men are modern men,
and they are silent on the subject. They are free-thinkers,
and if as landed proprietors in Posen they have seats
in the German Parliament and the Prussian Herrenhaus,
they vote invariably with the centre. There are those
among them who would very gladly dine with a socialist
leader like Viereck, and yet officially follow Windhorst's flag.
They know Heinrich Heine by heart and belong to the
Catholic party. They are free-thinkers, and as Poles feel
themselves compelled to support Rome — an intellectual
torment which is not known anywhere else.
And in all domains it is manifest how patriotic or sup-
posed patriotic struggles repress modern intellectual life :
in the plastic arts, where patriotic allegories and symbols
have too long usurped the place of pictures of real life,
and in literature, where the historical romance still blossoms,
a late aftermath of Walter Scott. The writer of greatest
narrative talent among the living authors of Poland, Henryk
Sienkiewickz, made his d^but with excellent modern novels ;
gradually associating himself with the Catholic party, he has
taken up the line of great patriotic historical romances in the
style of The Three Musketeers, with endless sequels. He re-
gards it as his task in view of the depressing present to
show the people the image of a past, when it still existed
as a nation, and he prefers to describe the most unhappy
period of the old history of Poland, in order to strengthen
the people's faith in the surmountableness of the existing
wretched condition by pictures of the terrible crises of
bygone days. Nevertheless, in spite of all his talent, the
result is that when from times which he knows he goes
back to times which he does not know, and works with an
aim entirely different from that of art before his eyes, he
generally falls so far short as an author that he loses his
best readers, and his novels are only successful as a means
of amusement, or as stimulants to patriotic feeling.
Just as socialist and democratic or free-thinking ten-
dencies do not mean the same in Poland as elsewhere, so
also Catholic and conservative leanings have a special
character here.
CATHOLICISM A PATRIOTIC FORCE 77
In German literature, for instance, the Catholic tendency
of Romanticism in this century is sharply opposed to the
Protestant form of the earlier literature and the purely pagan
bias of contemporary literature ; but in Poland, CathoHcism
in this century has always been in opposition, in con-
stant, restless conflict with the power of the State, frequently
blended with that love for the truth which emancipates, and
with that enthusiasm which exposes to martyrdom. In
Protestant countries the clergy are as a rule servile ; in
Poland they never are and never can be degraded into
tools of temporal power.
There are Catholic priests whom their superiors permit to
write in newspapers, to visit the theatres and participate in
social life, because it is known that they are wholly absorbed
in the double object of exercising charity and of keeping the
language of Poland alive in the most remote provinces.
People close their eyes to infringements of the Catholic
ritual among them, nay, even at a probable disbelief in
certain dogmas, because they know them to be zealous
supporters of Catholicism as the intellectual Polish national
power. The stamp of comparatively innocent hypocrisy,
which unquestionably adheres to them, injures them only
among the few. General opinion regards them favourably.
As may be seen, according to my opinion, the point of
view for the appraisement of the different parties and
intellectual powers, which the foreigner feels himself com-
pelled to adopt, is this : how far do they offer a greater or
lesser power of resistance to the principle which aims by all
means at breaking down the individuality of the people, the
new and fearful principle of Asiatic absolute monarchy ?
It will be only when the danger which is threatened herefrom
is removed that Poland can afford the luxury of measuring
the different aims of the times by a new and sounder standard.
But so long as this principle triumphs, so long will this dis-
membered and tortured Poland be the unquestioned repre-
sentative of humanity as opposed to it, the advance post of
civilisation, even in domains where its form is not modern, and
so long will the tattered flag with the white eagle of ancient
Poland remain the old unique, adorable banner of freedom.
IV
POLISH LIFE AND THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM— PUBLIC
FESTIVITIES AND MASQUERADES, SOCIAL LIFE
IN DIFFERENT CIRCLES— THE SAME OPPRESSIVE
ATMOSPHERE EVERYWHERE
Opposed to the Polish life, impulsive, pulsating, now weaker,
now stronger, stands the Russian system, the heavy Russian
force system, working like a machine, the mechanism of
eradication and extermination.
It strives not only to cut down all free shoots of
nationality and of the culture of the language, but to strike
at its growth in its roots, to sap its germs, to blast its seed.
And even this is not enough. The system fears all the
germs which are floating in the air, which drift with the wind,
swim in the streams. It is afraid of everything which fills
the air in the guise of song or laughter or tears, of every-
thing which rises to the lips in words, of everything which
captivates the eye as a beloved colour.
Against everything, even things the most airy and spiritual,
the system has a prohibition. For the national dress it has
given a uniform ; for song, silence ; for laughter, silence ;
for wailing, silence ; for speech, silence ; and for everything
which is published at home or abroad, the censor. It has
built a wall about this land, and striven to make it so high
that no bird can fly over it, and so dense that no breeze can
pass through it.
The national dress is forbidden even as a carnival
costume, even in historical dramas in the theatre. Poland's
colours, Poland's arms are strictly prohibited, must not
even remain on the front of an old house, or on the
frame of an old painting. The national songs are so strictly
forbidden that people are shy of playing them even in a
private house, if there is a large company.
78
SOCIAL MELANCHOLY 79
Laughter indeed is not forbidden, but it forbids itself.
It is so rare that a foreigner who late at night in the society
of his acquaintances laughs aloud at some conceit, sees the
police and gendarmes assemble with signs of astonishment.
I never heard any laughter in the streets of Warsaw but
my own.
Silence and seriousness are the two traits which above all
are characteristic of Poland. It is a land where no one
publicly expresses mirth.
Go into the great student cafd which is situated opposite
the University. No one says a word aloud. Go out in the
street. There is never a shout. No one likes to attract
attention to himself. Or take as example a large public ball,
under the patronage of the best society. The orchestra
thunders, the mazurka is danced through all its figures for
three-quarters of an hour at the stretch. But in a corner
of the hall stands in a circle of young officers the strict
old General Kriidener, who was defeated at Plevna after
having been compelled to make a hopeless attack, much
against his will. In another corner stands Colonel Brock,
only some thirty years old, who has risen to be chief of
the gendarmerie, the political police, who are rather disliked
by the other corps of the army, and with whose officers
the officers of the army do not like to have anything to do,
but whose commander nevertheless is the most important
man in the city, more important even than the Governor-
General ; for a command of his is final ; there is no appeal
from his orders. The thought of the qualities which he
must have displayed in order to have attained such a post
at his age, presents itself involuntarily to the mind. His
glance flies uninterruptedly about the hall and puts a certain
damper on the gaiety. Where it falls, falls silence.
Or take a great rout in a public hall. It is a beautiful
sight, but a quiet festival. It is allowed because the object
is charitable ; an asylum or a foundling hospital receives the
profits.
Against the pillars of the hall sit the distinguished ladies
who preside over the festival and distribute the prizes
of the lotteries. The hall is full of young ladies in the
8o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
most beaufiful toilettes, present to see and be seen. They
can talk freely there with the men they care to meet,
while the mothers and aunts keep their seats. But all
conversations are subdued. It was necessary to invite the
Governor-General of Poland, the strict and very much
dreaded General Gurko and his wife, a lady whose exterior
and bearing are less distinguished than her position. It
is the popular impression that Madam Gurko, plainly enough
the least popular person in Poland, who with womanly
fanaticism has appropriated to herself the task of serving the
Russian cause by all means, is the prime mover of all the
measures which have struck a blow at Polish hopes and
interests of late years.
The old aristocrat, Louis Gorski, called Poland's pope,
the most strong-willed representative of the Catholic party, is
the giver of the festival, and as such has to offer his arm to
Madam Gurko to take her round the room. No one greets
her ; all speak in an undertone or turn their backs. Behind
them come the Governor-General and Madam Gorska. Both
couples exchange ceremonious phrases only in French.
Gurko, who carries himself very gallantly, is a man of
medium height, of strong frame, with thin hair, a large fan-
shaped beard sprinkled with grey, a slightly reddish nose ;
the expression of his countenance does not evince the bold-
ness and celerity which have been his characteristics as a
general. He looks more fitted to command officers than
to rule a people.
Or take a soiree at the house of one of the leaders of
the aristocratic party. The names of the most renowned
families of Poland are represented. Here sits a Countess
Plater, niece of the celebrated Emilia ; here a Countess
Krasinska, married to a relative of the poet, both liberal
and patriotic to excess ; here a Countess Ostrowska who
is considered the most beautiful woman in Poland. We
might believe that the Poles would feel themselves here
within closed doors as free as possible ; but if a foreigner
says too bold a word, one of the young men of the family
touches him on the shoulder and whispers, " Not so loud !
On the chair which is back to back with yours sits Count
THE "TOMBOLA" 8i
Tolstoi, the minister of police, whom my uncle has been
obliged to invite."
Or take a public masquerade. The largest, which is
given in carnival time, has the whole of the theatre at its
disposal. It is combined with a lottery, the profits of which
go to the theatre for a pension fund, and its name,
" Tombola," is derived therefrom. It opens at midnight ;
all the ladies are wrapped up tightly in dominoes and
impenetrably masked, and the masks are not taken off,
while the gentlemen are not allowed to wear either masks
or costumes, but come in evening dress.
This form of masquerade is very old here. E. A. T.
Hoffmann, more than eighty years ago, described it as a
jubilant and brilliant festival in the pleasure-loving Warsaw
of his time.
The piquancy of the arrangement is that the ladies can
say what they will to the gentlemen ; can attack them, show
themselves conversant with their secrets, without letting
themselves be known. The chief pleasure it affords is the
facility it offers to lovers of meeting one another and dis-
appearing together. If a man is very well known, he is
accosted and taken to task by scores of ladies in the hall
without being able to retort. A lady comes, takes his arm,
and walks off with him till another comes and takes him
from her.
There are two or three thousand people present and the
crowd is great ; but there is not the least trace of joviality.
There is neither music nor song nor laughter nor loud con-
versation. If this is a love-masque, it bears a striking likeness
to a funeral, or, more exactly, several funerals, different
funeral processions which move silently past each other in
the spacious rooms.
Wherever you are the oppression is felt.
I recall a grand breakfast at the house of one of the
recognised leaders of democratic youth. There were demo-
crats and free-thinkers present, men who had the tradi-
tions of 1863 far behind them. The most characteristic
thing about them is, that they are men who hardly have
an ideal which they expect to be realised before many
F
82 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
hundred years. Otherwise they are heterogeneous enough,
controversialists, dissatisfied, independent thinkers, or mere
admirers and echoes, yet almost all of good courage
in so far as they are persuaded that the world can be re-
formed, that it is only necessary to set about it the right
way. Among them we may note some aristocrat, erstwhile
in debt, then richly married, who in his quiet way is
as radical as any of them, some gaunt figure with dis-
orderly beard and hair hanging down over the eyes, just
returned for the fifth time from a Russian fortress in the
Ural mountains, where he usually does penance for his
socialist sympathies for several months at a time. Here,
as everywhere in this quiet land, a general conversation
is an unknown thing ; conversation is carried on with
subdued voices in small groups. And in whatever direction
the conversation drifts, you always stumble as if against
a wall upon innumerable obstacles and hindrances, which
every kind of attempt to achieve some human object invariably
encounters in this land. " Naturally you are right," says
the host to the foreigner. " We really have neither democratic
nor any other politics whatsoever in this country, but we
have reflections of what are so called in Europe " — a remark as
exact as it was hopeless.
The same thing strikes one under a slightly different
aspect in the peculiarly intelligent Bohemia, which does not
trouble itself about politics, but lives wholly in studies and
art. Here we are (intellectually speaking) in the land of the
extreme left. I hardly met a more interesting circle in Poland
than that which I found collected in the house of the art
critic, Antoni Sygietinski, who, with the highly gifted artist
Witkiewicz, unfortunately a great invalid, represents artistic
socialism in Poland.
Sygietinski is a slender, handsome young man, with a long
red beard and bright, enthusiastic eyes. Common art sym-
pathies have brought him and his Polish and foreign
colleagues together. In Swientochowski's circle one day a
foreigner stood alone in his unfavourable judgment on the
Polish art of painting of the present day. The conversation
was somewhat as follows : " Your art is wholly on the wrong
POLISH ARTISTS 83
road. It loses sight of life. You paint allegories or knightly
spectacles. Every other picture at your exhibitions is the
closing tableau of a five-act play just before the curtain falls.
Your great deceased idealist, Grottger, was a poet,not a painter.
Your great living master, Matejko, is a near-sighted psycho-
logist, not a painter. The picture which took the prize at
the exhibition this year, a Catholic allegory with angels at
the bedside of a sick person, is a horror." Some one asked,
" Is there then in your opinion absolutely nothing which is
good for anything ? " The foreigner answered, " Horowitz's
portraits and Witkiewicz's paintings ; but the best thing I have
seen is certainly an album with drawings by the brothers
Gierymski. The best of these well over with talent ; one sees
a study of Nature in them and the perception of an artist.
They have been seen and felt, a praise one can rarely give to
modern Polish art." A tall man behind him clapped his
hands ; it was the man who had published the album and
written the text for it, Sygietinski.
So little has the art of the brothers Gierymski been
understood in their native land that the publisher, an
enthusiast in modern art, lost 8000 rubles on this album.
At last he publicly offered to give it for nothing to the sub-
scribers to the weekly paper Wedrowiec, but the majority
of them did not even care to fetch it.
The circle which has formed about the journal just
named, unfortunately a publication hardly destined to long
life, has, as its leading power, the energetic artist Witkiewicz,
who comprehends characterisation as few do. It consists
further of young doctors, engineers, literary historians, novelists
like Prus, gifted mechanics (a smith, perhaps the most subtle
student of literature in Poland), a number of painters,
musicians, amateurs — representatives of refined radicalism.
Swientochowski's group is antiquated in its views of art,
in spite of its lofty culture. The men who belong to it have
admirable collections of books, but pictures on their walls
which a Parisian concierge would despise. Swientochowski
even writes old-fashioned didactic dramas like Elvia or
Antea. The younger men who write for Wedrowiec or design
for it, live in rooms without furniture, but with magnificent
84 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
drawings and paintings on the wall. They are modern not
only in their mode of thought, but in sight and sense.
They are wild birds, and since birds of a feather flock
together, significantly enough, the one among them who
wields the most spirited pen is married to a remarkably
beautiful wild Indian girl from South America. She is
adapted to Poland in so far as it has been found impossible
to teach her any idea of money or its value.
In this circle Bohemian freedom rules, a puff of real
intellectual freedom which fills the lungs ; but it fills them
in complete silence, making as little noise as possible. Here
also an invisible pressure descends from above. Here also
an everlasting damper is laid upon the spirit — a damper of
seriousness, of melancholy, a quiet despair of ever being
able to accomplish any good in life. Art and ideas are used
as a means of forgetfulness. And all these young men, what-
ever they are — writers, journalists, draughtsmen, physicians,
engineers, &c. — must, wholly apart from the contest for bread,
daily fight a double battle, receiving ideas from the surround-
ing world of Europe and imparting those ideas to their own
world.
THE CENSORSHIP—DIFFICULTIES IN OBTAINING
PERMISSION TO DELIVER LECTURES
Going from the Theatre Square in Warsaw along the Miodowa
Street, at No. 7 on the left there is a house, over the door of
which in Russian letters appear the words, "Censorship Com-
mittee." Across the yard to the right you enter through a
narrow street door, and as in a post-office you see immense
piles of newspapers and books in wrappers lying in heaps.
It is the day's mail.
Every single newspaper which comes is taken out of its
wrapper and examined ; everything displeasing to the
authorities is blackened over. Every book is opened and
the leaves examined. Consequently there is no regular
time for the arrival of this kind of mail. Sometimes three
or four newspapers are received at once, and then for four
or five days not one.
In another room the native newspapers are examined.
On account of the conditions of censorship they are almost
all evening papers. None the less are they unable to make
use of the foreign mail of the day, which arrives from Berlin
in the afternoon. They are generally poor. With one
exception they are all assisted by private contributions.
Their subscription list seldom rises to more than fifteen
hundred. The professional journalists are compelled to
write for four or five different papers on the same subject
in order to live by their pens.
At eleven o'clock all the proof sheets go to the censor.
The censors correct them according to their pleasure and
caprice, their severity or indulgence depending very much on
whether they have personal animosity towards the writer or
not, whether they hope to obtain concessions from him,
and whether they have been bribed or not.
8s
86 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Almost all articles in which anything is really said
are therefore not intended to be understood at the first
reading. The language is abstract, vague, of doubtful
meaning. The whole public is taught to read between the
lines. Almost all the feuilletons are allegories ; they say one
thing and express another. Since words such as " freedom "
or " fatherland " are always prohibited, it is natural that cir-
cumlocutions should be used.
At four o'clock the proofs are returned to the offices of
the newspapers. The matter erased has to be replaced
by articles in reserve, which have been through the censor-
ship in season and are lying ready for use to fill the
gaps.
In another place again all foreign books are examined to
see whether they ought to be offered for sale in the book-
shops or not. They allow a variety of natural science —
Darwin, Haeckel — even in translations ; on the other hand,
little history. The extremely conservative Polish historian,
Szujski, is wholly forbidden, even in German, because he
writes on Polish topics.
Of course all books published in the country itself
are scrutinised with the greatest strictness. Even the classics
of antiquity are examined. It has happened that the Roman
verse nee timeo censores futuros has been struck out because it
was translated : I do not fear the censors of the future (the
meaning is, the judgment of the future). In a play dealing
with the past of Poland they struck out before Jagiello the
word King of Poland, and substituted Duke, although thei~e
never have been dukes of Poland. Nay, even the cookery
books are subjected to the censorship, and are corrected with
such puerility that lately the words " to be boiled over a free
fire " were erased because the word free was used.
Manuscripts for public lectures, the texts-, for recitations,
the songs for concerts, are examined in another place. Even
if a song belongs to a collection of poems, which has passed
the censor ten times in different editions, it cannot be sung
at an evening entertainment without having been examined
anew.
It happened this winter that an actress, who, recalled
DIFFICULTIES OF A LECTURER 87
on such an occasion, recited a little harmless poem about
a mother and her child, which was not on the programme,
was fined no less than a hundred rubles.
This winter I had occasion to study the censor very
closely. In return for the kindness which had been shown
to me the year before in Warsaw, I had promised to return,
and to speak on the Polish literature of this century, which
is treated almost exclusively as philology by the critics of
the country.
The task was extremely difficult for many reasons.
There was in the first place the intrinsic difficulty of telling
the Polish people something new about a literature which
they knew better than I. Then there were the external
difficulties. At the University of Warsaw it is absolutely
forbidden to speak of the history or literature of Poland
after the year 1500. Not even in Russian, not even in
the Russian spirit must the subject be dealt with. And in
addition to this, the good literature of the whole of this
century is patriotic in the extreme, thoroughly hostile to
the Russian rule, and forbidden on that account. How
should I manage to discuss Mickiewicz's Dziady, in which
political prison life in Wilna is described, or Slowacki's
Kordjan, which treats of an attempt to assassinate the Tzar
Nicholas, or Krasinski's whole works, not to speak of the
lyrics of war and rebellion ; how, on the other hand, could I
omit to speak of all these ?
First and foremost it was necessary to get permission to
speak at all on this subject. There was only one thing
to depend on — the dislike of the persons in authority to be
regarded as barbarians by Europe.
In the middle of January I sought permission from
Count Tolstoi, the head of the police, to deliver lectures
for a charitable object. The answer came in the middle
of February. I was permitted to lecture three times in
Russian February (the 1st of which answers to our 13th).
I then drove immediately to the President of the Censors
and presented my request, basing it on the invitation which
had been given me the year before in Warsaw: "Come
again and speak about our own literature." — The President :
88 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
" Ah ! you wish to treat of Russian literature." — " Not this
time, your Excellency ; you know that the people here
generally speak Polish, and are most interested in what is
written in that language." — " In what language will you
speak?" — "In French." — "That is well; you can say a
great deal thus. You address yourself to good society.
It would be another affair if you wished to speak in
German ; there are so many uncultured, hot-headed persons
who understand German." His Excellency promised me
speedy permission, and kept his word.
It was only then that I could begin my composition, and
it progressed extremely slowly.
There were days when in spite of all my diligence I
wrote almost nothing, days, when I strove in vain to find
expressions with double meaning, images, in themselves
indistinct, which could be understood by the audience,
circumlocutions, which could be seen through and yet
would be unassailable. Fortunately this Polish people,
half oriental, prefer the picturesque to the purely rational
style, being in this point as in many others, the opposite
of the French.
Gradually I acquired practice in the rebus style, and
wrote so that by an accent or a pause I could give a
sentence a new and more living character ; I became expert
in hints and implications.
At last I had two copies of my first lecture ready in
French and one in Russian for the curator of the Uni-
versity. I furnished them with the necessary stamps, drove
with the first lecture to the President of the Censorship, and
asked that the censor might begin. I had taken a priest
with me — it is always good to have a priest with you, he has
friends everywhere, in Poland especially, among the Polish
subordinates of the offices. There was nothing in the way.
But as bad luck would have it, Apuchtin refused to begin on
the Russian text till he had all the lectures.
This was bad ; for I wished to see by what was erased
in my first lecture what I might venture upon in the next.
Since it was now plain that the Russian February would
be at an end before I could get the lectures back from the
* DIFFICULTIES OF A LECTURER 89
censor, and since I also saw that three lectures would not be
enough for the subject, even if I spoke for two hours each
time, I sought to obtain from the chief of the police per-
mission to deliver four lectures instead of three, and asked to
have my time extended beyond February.
The number four did not meet with approval. — " Why
not ? " was then asked. — The answer was : " Because three
lectures are an entertainment; four are a course of instruction."
They were afraid, it seemed, that under the form of lectures
for charity, a sort of Polish university should be established
in the town hall, in which one cycle of lectures should in
some way or other be continued in the next.
The matter of the prolongation of the time was then
debated. Why do you not lecture in February ? It is
your fault if you do not do it. — I complained of the
difificulties with the censor. — Well, well, then there was this
to be done ; give a written petition to the chief of police ; he
would send it to Apuchtin, he would forward it to General
Gurko ; the latter would possibly inquire at St. Petersburg
if the request could be granted, and the reply would come
back through the same channels in reversed order. — When
could the answer be expected ? — Oh, in five weeks. —
But then March will be over, and by the ist of April
(Russian style) I must be in Copenhagen. — Well, that was
my affair, and did not concern the authorities.
Plainly enough they were not very anxious to have
lectures on Polish national literature delivered in Warsaw.
At this time I received my first lecture back from the
censor. They had been very thorough. The conclusion,
several pages, was struck out, and in various places the
erasures were numerous. Even a well-known quotation
from Schiller, "the living is right," was struck out. Words
like resignation or tristesse, used as characteristic of Polish
literature, were blotted out. In one place where I had
spoken of the Catholic piety of the poets these words were
erased. In another place where I had spoken of the life
which is described in the most celebrated work of Mickiewicz,
the red pencil had gone over these words : " The Lithuanian
forest, the natural setting of this life;" and in, "For the
90 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
first time, since the partition of the kingdom," the last phrase
was obliterated.
This was discouraging in so far as I saw that there would
not be anything left of the second lecture, which was the
boldest. I then made the third almost colourless in political,
religious and social respects, intending, to the best of my
ability, to atone for the weakness by a stronger colouring in
delivery and style.
Then it happened that my censor — the only one who was
hated among the censors of Warsaw — suddenly died. They
found my last two lectures, uncorrected, under his pillow.
They were as grateful to me in Warsaw as if a causal con-
nection had been found between this last-named fact and his
disappearance from his earthly vocations as judge.
Now everything looked brighter. There was hope of a
milder treatment. In order to shorten the process I deter-
mined to make a direct appeal to the Governor-General.
The hero of Tirnowa and the Pass of Shipka could not be
so narrow-minded as subordinate police officers and sub-
ordinate censors. I drove to the castle on Gurko's audience
day. It is the old royal palace on the Vistula, unchanged
externally, but plundered of all its objects of art.
In the ante - room, an oblong hall, several hundred
petitioners sat in a row with petitions. In an inner hall,
spacious and empty, with large mirrors and red furniture, the
notabilities of the city, old senators, old generals, the President
of the Censors, the President of the theatre, waiting their
turn, walked up and down in their uniforms. In the middle
of the hall stood a young Russian cavalry officer, Gurko's
adjutant, tall and good-looking, who spoke French fluently
with the other Russians, but with a strong Russian accent.
He struck his heels together so that the spurs jingled,
practised a dancing step, and seemed to be dreaming of
court balls at St. Petersburg. I made my request for an
audience to him. I met with an unqualified refusal.
The audience time was from one o'clock and it was now five
minutes past one. On my suggestion that I did not at all
expect to be the first to be admitted, the answer was that
the list of those seeking an audience was closed when the
DIFFICULTIES OF A LECTURER 91
clock struck one, and sent in to the Governor - General.
Nevertheless, as I declared I would not go, but was fully
determined, as I was, to find my way to General Gurko, I quietly
took a seat on a sofa and waited. A Pole with a great star
on came to me and asked if I was possibly on the list of
petitioners, meaning on the list of the poor petitioners in
the ante-room. When I replied no, he promised to put me
on the top of this list. Then the General, as soon as he had
got through the private audiences, and came out of his
apartment, would turn first to me.
I was obliged to wait more than three hours. Then the
General came with his staff. " You wish to speak with me ?
Your business ? " — -I presented my request for liberty to
speak in March, since February was almost over. — "Mais
cest tout simple." — I declared that I had met with obstacles
which were insurmountable for me. — " Who forbids you
then ? " — " Your Excellency, there is no need of any pro-
hibition. But I need a permission, and they do not give
it to me." — "Very well, I allow it." — "But they will not
believe me unless I bring a written word from your Excell-
ency. I have a written petition here addressed to you." He
took the letter and my pencil and wrote across the paper,
" Ordered. Gurko."
The principal difficulty was thus happily removed. But
still it was impossible to advertise the lectures, as the Russian
text had not yet been returned from Apuchtin.
Twice I personally sought to obtain an interview with
him. Each time I received the answer from his subordinate,
that M. Apuchtin could not receive me, but that he himself
was reading my lectures with the greatest interest — an interest
I would very gladly have dispensed with, and which seemed
to augur ill.
At last I got them back. Nothing was erased. Only by
a few pencil marks on the margin my attention was called to
certain phrases where the manner of expression was offensive
to a delicate Russian national feeling, as, for instance, where
I had said that Mickiewicz had had an influence on Lamen-
nais and Pushkin among foreign authors. These marks
indicated a keen and cultured reader, and I had to admit
92 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
that he had been content to point at what he might have
struck out and forbidden.
Now only the permission of the chief of police, Count
Tolstoi, was wanting to the posting of the notices. They
advertise lectures as they do the theatrical performances by
posters, not by notices in the papers.
But it proved unnecessary to put up the posters. For
with so much excitement and interest had the city followed
my exertions to get permission to deliver lectures on Polish
literature, that as soon as the report of Apuchtin's permission
got abroad, all the tickets, 3600 in number (for the three
lectures), were sold in a few hours, so that the permission
to post notices, which came in the forenoon, was superfluous.
VI
HOW ONE WRITES AND SPEAKS UNDER A
CENSORSHIP
To give an idea of how writing and speaking are done under
a censorship, here are some examples taken from my lectures.
I had to make it plain to my hearers that I well under-
stood the contents of certain books, even if I might not
allude to them directly. For instance, it was impossible to
quote the scene in Dziady where the martyrdom of Poland
is compared to that of the Crucifixion, but I could refer to it.
I therefore spoke as follows in my introduction : —
"You may learn from me how your literature of the first
half of this century is reflected in the mind of a European
reader ; you may learn what impression of your intellectual
life a favourably disposed foreigner receives.
" For a favourably disposed foreigner I am. No merely
artistic or intellectual interest, but a broader human sympathy
has drawn me to this subject. There is in it something
which not only occupies but lays hold of the mind ; the
modern literature of Poland excites the emotions in a higher
degree than that of most other nations. There is something
reserved, not easily penetrable in it. Or rather, it is at once
closed and open, according to the point of view at which
one places oneself. It reminds us in this respect of the
celebrated painting by Gabriel Max, The Handkerchief of
Veronica, a painting I do not value highly artistically, for it is
a piece of artifice, not a work of art, but which well illustrates
what I mean. At the first glance the countenance seems to
be that of a corpse ; the eyes are tightly shut, the expression
lifeless. But when you reach the right point of view the
face suddenly assumes life, the eyes open and turn a
sorrowful and solemn gaze on the spectator."
Direct mention of the various Polish attempts at insur-
94 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
rection was impossible. I could only express my meaning
by characterising in expressions as general as possible
mental conditions after great public misfortunes " such as
famine, floods, or unsuccessful revolution." It was equally im-
possible in commenting on Slowacki's famous poem, Kr6l
Duchf to say directly : " The cruelty which is here described
was actually perpetrated by Ivan the Terrible." I chose this
circumlocution : " When in Krdl Duch the principal character
narrates how with his sword he nailed the foot of the old
minstrel to the earth, and how the latter continued to deliver
his message unperturbed, it recalls an anecdote of the court
of Ivan the Terrible." In this form the sentence passed the
censor for the lecture, and the censor for its publication as a
feuilleton in the Gazeta Polska, but it was, however, struck out
later by another censor from the printed book.
In Mickiewicz's Dziady, in Conrad's improvisation, there
is a passage where the hero in despair complains to God of
the indifference with which He lets him suffer ; the most
effective line in it is this : Thou art not the father of the worlds
hut its — Tzar ! I required this line in my lecture, and wanted
to suggest it. To analyse the work was impossible, even to
name it difficult. On the other hand, it seemed feasible to
mention Conrad's name without saying in which play
he appeared, and to quote the passage with a slight change.
I could certainly depend on an exceedingly slight knowledge
of Polish literature in the censor.
I chose, therefore, to speak of the different attitudes of
Polish authors as to the problem of cognition, and insinuated
this in connection therewith. "And as the savages of
antiquity, when they were angry with their gods, discharged
an arrow into the vault of the heavens, so Conrad flings this
taunt out into the universe, which he says shall resound from
generation to generation : Thou God ! Thou art not the Father
of the world, but its . . ."
Here I made a pause of some seconds, during which
a shudder literally ran through the closely packed hall.
Then came the word tyrant, and they drew breath and
looked at one another. No one moved a hand. After
such passages a deathly silence prevails in order not to
THE CENSORSHIP 95
compromise the speaker. They vigorously applaud some
innocent comparison or other a few minutes later, or they
reserve the most hearty applause to the close, when no one
can determine what it is which has specially called forth the
storm of approval. The passage belongs to those which were
struck out in the censorship subsequent to the lectures and
the first printing in the feuilleton. This examination lasted
seven months j and left the little work extremely mutilated.
Here is a last example of what the censor, who probably
was not very familiar with Shakespeare, or who had no sense
for the symbolic, allowed to be said. The passage was about
the poets among Polish emigrants. I compared them to
Hamlet, and said among other things : —
" We find traits of Hamlet's character in all these spirits ;
they are in his position from their youth. The world is
out of joint, and it must be set right by their weak arms.
They feel, like Hamlet, all the inner fire and outward weak-
ness of their youth ; high-born as they are, and noble-minded
as they are, regarding the conditions which surround them
as a single great horror, they incline at once to day-dreams
and to action, to musing and to recklessness.
" Hamlet saw his mother, his dear mother, whom he loved
more than other sons love theirs, degraded under the hand
of the crowned robber and murderer. The court, which
is open to him, frightens him, just as the court in Krasinski's
Temptation (a symbolical representation of the St. Petersburg
court) frightens the young man. These descendants of
Hamlet, like him, allow themselves to be sent away to a
foreign land. When they speak, they dissemble as he does,
clothe their meaning in comparisons and allegories, and it
is true of them, as Hamlet says of himself to Laertes : —
" Yet have I something in me dangerous
Which let thy wisdom fear ; hold off thy hand."
Strangely enough, not one of the many censorships to
which these lectures were submitted, not one of the many
which preceded their delivery, and neither of the two new
ones which examined the edition in newspaper and book
form, found anything to object to in this passage.
VII
MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE SITUATION ON THE
YOUNG
An important result of the censorship in Poland is the con-
stant disquiet of the press and thereby of the people. As
it is impossible to obtain any certainty of what is going on
in the country, and impracticable to impart what one knows
or thinks one knows, eternal rumours float through town
and country, in which the political hopes and anxieties of
the people are reflected. At one time it is reported that
this or that high official has been recalled, because the
government itself finds the pressure too severe ; men believe
that they are going to breathe a more liberal air ; they find
in the most accidental negligences, from one or another of
the authorities, symptoms that for the future they will wink
at much that has been forbidden. Again, it is reported that
the severest measures are in preparation, that hitherto un-
known dangers are threatened. Thus the people are con-
stantly kept in a state of feverish agitation.
It will easily be seen how greatly such perpetual disquiet
hampers the growth and development of the intellectual life.
Only the exact sciences flourish. Medicine especially stands
high. Dr. Tytus Chalubinski, an old man, upon whose face
genius has stamped itself, has long been regarded as the
leading physician of Poland. Next to him Baranowski is the
most esteemed. Historical and political literature necessarily
stand somewhat in the background. At present Russian
Poland does not possess any historian of the first rank.
Szujski, who died recently, is the most important writer of
later historical literature, and as an essayist Julian Klaczko,
who has a European reputation, holds a like position. Both
of them lived and worked in Austria. In literary history a
96
CONFISCATION OF LAND 97
sober spirit of investigation predominates. Polish writers on
such subjects approach the German method and German
style. Poland's leading and distinguished literary historian,
Spasowicz, who is also the most renowned advocate of the
Russian empire, living and writing in Russia, has been
obliged to exercise a prudence in everything touching upon
politics, which has made his chief work, The History of Polish
Literature^ less interesting than it otherwise would have been.
The most esteemed critic. Professor Tarnowski of Cracow, is
an academician of the old school, of a romantic turn of mind,
whose tendency becomes more and more ultra-Catholic with
advancing age. Ultramontanism in Cracow has almost as
depressing an influence as the government tyranny in War-
saw. And when Tarnowski appears as a lecturer in Warsaw
he can only secure his effects by a purely external and
formal eloquence.
It is a general superstition, which must be given up, that
raw external means of power are powerless to crush and
break down national spirit.
The censorship is indeed the most intellectual of the
brutal means the authorities use for that purpose.
A less intellectual and even more effective means is con-
fiscation. After the rebellion of 1863 all the real estate of
the landed proprietors who participated in it, or who were
suspected of having given it sympathy or support, was confis-
cated. I know a man of a princely old Lithuanian family,
who possessed a princely fortune, and who now, after twenty
years in Siberia, is reduced to a little situation in a bank.
I know a lady who was the heiress to a property of a million
rubles, but who had been robbed of her inheritance because
the peasants on her uncle's estate had given provisions to
bands of rebels.
Even the confiscation of the soil is naturally not of final
importance, so long as the peasant remains on it and
continues Polish in his ideas. But Russia seeks to win the
peasant in every way. She abolished serfdom, the abolition
of which, proclaimed by the Poles themselves (in the consti-
tution of May 3, 1 791), she had set aside, and the old hatred
of the peasants towards their masters has been richly
G
98 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
exploited. And when the floods of the Vistula desolate the
land, Madam Gurko travels about the country distributing
rubles from the imperial treasury by hundreds of thou-
sands, to the peasants, who with the benefaction receive a
recommendation to be grateful to the Tzar, their father — a
recommendation which often bears fruit.
Exile to Siberia is another powerful weapon. There is
no doubt that the flower of a whole generation, the preceding
Polish generation, almost all of those most distinguished
for courage, intellect, and enthusiasm, died there. Those
who did return, have often lost something of their clearness
of vision. They have not infrequently remained at the point
where they stood when they left Poland. I may mention
two writers as examples, both on the editorial staff of the
Gazeta Polska, Haenckle, who, chained with four others to an
iron bar, was compelled to travel on foot to Irkutsk during
two winters and one summer, and was there for ten years,
and Boguslawski, who was there for the same length of time.
They are clever writers, but confirmed romanticists ; modern
men they will never be.
And the terrible uncertainty of the law is in itself destruc-
tive. A few weeks since a young man returned from a two
years' banishment. His offence was that the day after
Apuchtin received the box on the ear from the angry student
already spoken of, he had sent twenty-five rubles to a news-
paper for a charitable object with the words, " To com-
memorate a happy event." It did him no good that it could
be proved that his brother had had a son born to him the day
before — they would not believe that this was the event to
which he had referred — he was sent away. Physically he
had suffered nothing. He returned as so many Siberian
exiles do, fresh and rosy ; but he had become prudent, very
conservative in all his utterances, and would not allow himself
to criticise his sentence.
When the well-known Szymanowski, poet and publisher
of the Courier JVarszavsky, lay on his death-bed recently, I
visited him. He told me of the fright he had received when
a short time before some one had rung his door-bell in the
night. He was reminded of the night ten years before,
RUSSIANISING INFLUENCES 99
when the gendarmes came, forced him to get up, and carried
him away in a sleigh. He did not know of what he was
accused. His family was a long time learning his place of
detention. When he was set free after the lapse of some
months, he did not learn what was his offence, and has
continued ignorant of it ever since. And Szymanowski
has represented the most peaceful conservatism throughout
his whole life.
Let us now consider the psychical influences of this
general condition on the younger generation. It has now
gone so far in Russian Poland that many a young jurist or
doctor of an old Polish family speaks Russian better than
Polish, nay, speaks his mother-tongue with a foreign accent.
I may instance this case: The young man has studied in
St. Petersburg. He has by no means given up his nation-
ality, but he has associated and been compelled to associate
with Russians as comrades. He comes back to Warsaw,
where no Pole ever associates with a Russian, the national-
ities being as oil and water. It seems unnatural to him that
his mother and sisters oppose his visiting at the house of the
Governor-General. They live another emotional life, speak
another language. The nerve of national indignation is
blunted in him. Besides, there are practical considerations.
He is sure that if he makes no concessions he will never
get even a subordinate office in Poland, never be able to
live in the same city as his mother. He may become pro-
cureur in Riga, or subordinate magistrate in Kasan, but he
will never get a position in Warsaw, if he is irreconcilable.
The suppression of the language is also effective. Re-
cently at a competition for the prize offered by a private
person for the best drama, the winner, Koslowski, attracted
attention by the purity and strength of his diction. General
pride and joy were expressed that a young man of twenty-
five years, educated under the latest school regulations,
should write such beautiful Polish, Siowackt- Polish. There is
a pervading fear that the growing generation will be unable
to write the mother-tongue in its purity.
The temptation to make some concessions to the Russians
is, as has already been suggested, very great. It is, moreover,
100 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
often difficult to draw a strict line between Russians and Poles.
Even if the Russians are not received into society, it is
almost impossible to exclude individual Poles who are either
really subservient, or are suspected to be so. The Poles
who have taken office sometimes become mere officials,
loyal officials. Of many an one who would like to pass for
a Polish patriot, it is said that he has been unsuccessful in
his attempts to obtain the title of imperial flunkey. Some-
times in one family the father has Polish tendencies, the son
is politically indifferent, even has almost Russian tendencies.
Now and then one whose son fell as a hero of the rebellion,
is, like the President of the theatre, Gudowski, one of the
supporters of the throne.
There are also boundaries which passive resistance
cannot pass. As the theatre is the last place in which Polish
is still spoken, the dread of Russian plays on the national
stage is very great. It seems then simple enough, when a
Russian company comes, not only for all the Poles to remain
at home, but for the Polish press not to notice the perform-
ances. Yet it is not so simple. Free tickets are given to
all the Polish students and officials, and they are compelled
to go. Notices of these performances are demanded by tiie
censorship, and if they are not given — on the plea, for in-
stance, that no one on the editorial staff understands Russian
— then great obstacles are put in the way of the newspaper
by the censors ; the erasures become so relentless that they
must give way. The opposition the press might offer is
immediately broken down.
A dread continually broods over Russian Poland, that the
government will some fine day close the theatre in Warsaw,
and that the government will order the newspapers to appear
with double text, Russian and Polish. Then they must soon
surrender, and the language will die out.
So weak has unhappy Poland become that it accounts
itself happy when it finds itself not wholly forgotten.
Poles are delighted when a Polish tenor like Mierczewinski
attracts attention — then, at least, the name of Poland is men-
tioned. They are happy when a man with the Polish name
Rogoszynski (comically enough his real name is Schulze)
VITALITY OF THE NATIONAL IDEA loi
undertakes a voyage of discovery in Africa, although he was
not in a position to take possession of the smallest strip of
land for Poland — since there is no Poland — and was even
arrested and taken away on a German man-of-war by
order of Bismarck.
So depressing is a foreign rule.
And nevertheless this persistent suppression is to the
advantage of the nationality it would grind to powder.
The peasants are waking up. They teach themselves to
read in their Polish prayer-books. They club together and
hire a teacher to give them privately all the necessary
instruction in the correct writing of their forbidden tongue.
Religious persecution especially rouses them and makes them
conscious Poles. Before the Prussian Kulturkampf ihey did
not feel themselves to be Poles in Posen ; before the perse-
cution of the " United " they did not feel themselves Poles in
Russian Poland. When the police interferes against the
United priests, as in Lublin, the national consciousness
increases and rises in a whole province.
In the next place it is not wholly unfortunate that hardly
any Pole can become an officer in the army. It has had the
good effect of driving the Poles into paths so foreign to
them as those of trade and industry, has contributed greatly
to create the beginnings of a productive, working class of
citizens. It has finally aided not a little in the advancement
of agriculture.
And yet these good influences are manifestly of slight
account in comparison with the depressing ones. It seems
impossible that Poland should endure under such oppression
for more than a hundred years longer. But when we see a
people live materially and intellectually in the face of tremen-
dous hindrances, when we follow with interest a course of life
and intellectual development which takes place under such
conditions — then we may well ask ourselves whether the
nation to which we belong, and whose lot in life seems to
the Poles to be so enviable, has used the comparatively
heavenly conditions, in which it has lived, as it could and
ought. And when we see how far the Poles succeed, we are
amazed for a moment at a nation like the Danish, which has
102 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
everything which the Poles lack and want ; national inde-
pendence, a constitution, freedom of the press, liberty of
speech, liberty of assembly, right to use our money as we
like, the power of the state in our own hands, the army in
our service, free access to the sea, as well as to all the
benefits of freedom — we wonder that such a nation has led
a life comparatively so meagre, and so formless, and has
suffered so many of its greatest advantages to be torn from
it without any foreign intervention.
Although there is so much that is sanguine in the tempera-
ment of the Poles, nevertheless the lack of any future prospect
in their situation, humanly speaking, broods over their minds
like a nightmare. There is no visible prospect of their
emerging from their present state save the extremely vague
one which appears in the possibilities of a great war with
Russia on the one side, and Germany and Austria on the
other. Not that they cherish any wish to exchange the
Russian rule for the German, although the latter is more
humane — it seems on the other hand more dangerous,
less likely to be shaken off. If their hopes assume
a more definite direction, they rather tend to the estab-
lishment of a great Slav power, under the leadership of
Austria, in which a leading part would fall to the Poles in
that part of Poland belonging to Austria. These dreams of
the future assume no more definite form in the minds of the
most cultured and experienced.
But we shall hardly be wrong in the opinion that with the
majority of those of average culture, faith in the re-establish-
ment of the ancient kingdom of Poland in a not very distant
future is still a religion.
VIII
IS POLAND AS AN OBJECT WORTH THE
SACRIFICES MADE FOR IT?
Kraszevski during his exile once exclaimed : " Oh, thou land,
which, when we die, preserves so many reminiscences of us !
Oh, thou beautiful land, our mother ! When we say farewell
to our friends, we have the hope of meeting them again in
the next world, in heaven. But never, never again shall we
see thy loved landscapes, thy linden avenues, thy villas, thy
brooks and rivers, thy spring which was always young, none
of all these memories. Can heaven really be so beautiful that
it makes us forget all this, or does a river of Lethe flow
before the gate of Paradise ? "
In these words of a childlike believer, who hopes for a
future meeting with his friends, but yet cannot expect a
future sight of his fatherland there is a feeling, which, if we
give it a little greater scope, embraces far more than these
words. In fact how wonderful is this obstinate national
contest of the Poles ! They fight desperately for the pre-
servation and development of their language and popular
peculiarities, and suffer a thousand pangs for their sake.
Every one of them knows that he must die, but he would
have the consciousness that the language and the people will
survive when he shall know no more of them. Even those
among them who believe in another life do not imagine that
in that other life they will speak Polish. And those who do
not believe in a future life, who do not fear annihilation for
themselves, fear it for the whole nation, every individual of
which must die.
It is a similar feeling to that feeling of horror, which
seizes most men when they hear for the first time that this
earth is slowly cooling off, and that sometime in the far
103
104 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
distant future it will be an ice-cold sphere, on which no life
can flourish. They have always known that every individual
of the human race must die, but they would prefer that the
race itself should not. This conception of the frozen globe
destroys all their cherished illusions about the constant ad-
vance of culture, the religion which most of those who have
given up revealed religions live upon ; for there are even
now only a few who have grasped the ideal that the goal of
humanity cannot be at its end or death, if death be in store
for it, but must lie in its highest individualities. Even if
the human race is to die out, true culture is not on this
account less valuable, not less worth striving for. Its worth
does not depend on its continuance through all eternity.
We do not ask whether a symphony is long or short, but
whether it is beautiful. Its value is independent of the time
it occupies.
The Poles know historically, as we do, that many king-
doms and nations have blossomed and disappeared, but they
will not believe that this lot is now that of their nation and
language, however sorely they are pressed from all sides.
They will fight for their life, and this is to their honour,
whatever the result may be.
Many of them must necessarily doubt whether they will
ever succeed in tearing themselves free from a supremacy
which is supported by an enormous army, in establishing a
Polish political hierarchy, and in founding a kingdom out
of a nation unaccustomed to all self-government as the Poles
have now been for almost a century. Inevitably the question
presents itself which I once formulated thus (in the preface
to Cherbuliez's Ladislaus Bolski^ : " Is Poland an ideal or a
reality ? It could not continue when it existed, can it be
re-established, now it has fallen ? Is this Poland for which
the Poles live and go to death more than an abstraction and
a chimera ? Is the object worth the sacrifices ? Or is it the
sacrifices which give the object its worth ? "
The object, like all earthly objects, only more plainly,
more palpably, is an ideal, that is, an unreality, the concep-
tion of something good. It shows its power over the mind
by the strength with which it compels generation after gen-
POLAND THE TYPE OF NATIONALISM 105
eration to place spiritual advantages above material. The
sacrifices which are made to this ideal do not prove its
value. But it is in and of itself valuable, in so far as it
creates character, and develops talents, and it is incontrovert-
ible that it has called forth elevated thoughts, heroic actions,
and a literature both rich and important. As a motive power
it is a civilising power ; for it produces proud, liberal-
minded men.
We are unaccustomed to see a whole people absorbed in
an endeavour, which is resisted and fought against on all sides,
and which seems to be at variance even with the historic law
of decadence, an endeavour, which exists not only by
force of the instinct of self-preservation, but more or less
consciously by force of the fundamental idea that the life of
the world becomes poorer and more uniform for each
national individuality which disappears — an endeavour which
might nevertheless be futile. Yet Poland's disappearance
would not be like that of Assyria or Egypt in remote an-
tiquity ; for Poland in the presence of Russia and Prussia,
politically speaking, signifies independence, freedom, justice,
reason — that is to say, the question whether these forces shall
conquer or succumb. Poland is the question whether it is
military force or the will of the people that is to have the
last word in the history of the world of the present day.
Should Poland be definitely lost, it would indicate nothing
less in principle than that the culture of liberty and liberality
in Europe were lost. One independent country after an-
other would fall after Poland.
On the other hand, if the culture of freedom gains
ground, the oppression, which rests so heavily on Poland,
will be lightened, and Polish nationality will find a form,
under which it can live its own life. For a hundred years
it has now been under the yoke of three great powers, it
has served as their anvil, and has borne the blows of the
enormous hammers without being crushed. Either before
very long the hammers will be stopped, or this culture,
which was once the pride of western Europe, will be
annihilated.
We cannot see thoroughly into anything. Our life is a
I
io6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
phenomenon ; we are surrounded by phenomena and by
phenomena only. We are nothing but images for each
other. When we die the image remains in the conscious-
ness of others, because it was the only thing of us which
was ever there.
We know also that the ideals which in olden times were
localised and converted into the qualities of a supernatural
person, the greatest liberty, the highest justice, &c., are mere
images, never realised anywhere or at any time, and that
they will never be fully realised anywhere ; we know that
they have no other existence than that which our manner of
thought and action give them. They exist only in so far as
we love them. But we love them only so far as we labour
for them.
The highest love is a pain, which we soothe by living
and working for the object of our love.
That Poland's whole intellectual life is absorbed in the
question of the existence of the Polish nationality is therefore
not so poor a cause as it seems ; for Poland, in the his-
torical development of relations, has become synonymous
with the right of mankind to civil and intellectual free-
dom and with the right of nations to independence. Poland
is synonymous with our hope or our illusion as to the advance
of our age in culture. Its future coincides with the future of
civilisation. Its final destruction would be synonymous
with the victory of modern, military barbarism in Europe.
THIRD IMPRESSION
1894
A POLISH MANOR-HOUSE
I
NEIGHBOURHOOD— LANDSCAPE— INCREASED
SEVERITY OF RUSSIAN RULE
We left Warsaw in the afternoon. The town lay simmering
in the glowing sun ; people went slowly along in the shadow
of the houses ; all the military — infantry, Cossacks, gen-
darmes— were dressed in white linen.
In the train we met acquaintances — Poles who were
returning from the Carpathian mountains (Tatra) or from
Bohemian watering-places, others who were travellers or
residents in the environs. Groups were formed in the
corridors ; we jested and laughed ; thus time passed.
At K. a couple of carriages awaited us — one for ourselves,
another for the luggage — and off we went at full speed in the
summer evening, along excellent old military highways
of the Napoleonic era, along sandy, heavy roads, at last
through an endless avenue of tall poplars.
Franciszek told us of his conversations with the Governor-
General of Poland, whom I had once met.
After an attack of apoplexy he sent for Franciszek and
asked him to accompany him on a journey. Evidently
Gurko is more remarkable as a general than as a person
of ordinary intelligence. On leaving a place he always left
a pair of boots behind, convinced that this would be his only
chance of returning alive to the same place. Franciszek
pointed out to him that even if the fact of forgetting a pair
of boots were a main condition for returning, it would be
doubtful that this same result would be obtained if the boots
had been left on purpose. Gurko answered, that according
to his experience it was undoubtedly so. Whenever he had
»o9
no IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
been on his way to danger he had left a pair of boots behind,
and had thus scattered no less than 112 pairs of boots in
Russia, Turkey, and Asia.
Perhaps much apparent heroism may be explained by
such a firm faith in boots.
We drove on ; it grew dark and the stars appeared. We
drove through miserable towns and still more miserable
villages, whitewashed frame houses, common wooden houses
with thatched roofs, and outside swarms of bare-legged
children.
The horses did not get tired, and the avenue seemed to
be endless. As far as we could see, no manor-house was
visible for miles round. I began to insist that Krolewice
did not exist at all, that probably we were travelling in
a circle and most likely towards dawn we should drive
through B. at a gentle trot and return to the station at
K. Mme. Jozefa's grey eyes gleamed laughingly in the
darkness ; the two young girls, guests, agreed that I was
right, and began to tell stories, that moved them to inces-
sant peals of laughter. One funny story called forth
another, and while the fields sent forth their aromatic per-
fume, and the air grew cooler and fresher, the merry
carriage rushed on in the transparent darkness of the mid-
summer night. One might have supposed that it contained
only happy people.
At length we caught sight of something white behind large
groups of trees. Soon we faintly saw the outlines of a
spacious courtyard and the contour of a mighty garden.
The carriage makes a turn, drives through the open
gateway and stops. In the luminous hall were assembled
the staff of the manor and all the servants in gala dress to
receive their master and mistress. After a hasty toilet, we
all assembled late in the evening for the dinner so long
postponed. It looked so pretty ; the table was decked with
masses of flowers, and all was festively arranged for the
occasion, with excellent food and Polish champagne — that is,
French, imported half finished, and given the last admixture
here, as otherwise the duty would amount to two rubles and
fifty copecks for each bottle.
A POLISH COUNTRY HOUSE iii
Since this I have become famiHar with the country. I
know it pretty well, so much the better as no breath from
the surrounding world has disturbed my peace. Not a book,
not a newspaper have I been able to get during the time I
have been here. All my newspapers are sent to the censor-
ship, and my letters are detained in Warsaw. I don't know
anything about the world — that is, Denmark — save what is to
be found in the telegrams of the Gazeia Polska^ and that is
not much. I have telegraphed and written to the post office
in Warsaw ; everything rebounds from Russian bureaucracy.
I wonder if at any place, even in Turkey, there is such
a wonderful want of law as in Russia.
Outside the garden the landscape extends in all its flat-
ness. Rich it is, cornfield beyond cornfield, and pleasant,
for poplars and birches, willows and lindens shade the roads.
But the finest ornaments of the landscape at present are the
enormous stacks of rye, put up in a way unknown among
us, like ancient round towers with low, pointed roofs. The
roof is golden, the towers are brown, because here the ear
is not visible in all its length, and in the sun these stacks
look most cheerful. Save for these, the flatness is only
broken by windmills, trees, and now and then far away by a
church or a wood. All around, girls with white kerchiefs on
their heads are raking hay.
The arrangement of the house is above all praise. It is
an oasis of civilisation in a land of rustics. Everything pro-
claims the most exquisite refinement of taste ; and especially
pleasing is a library, so enormous, so entertaining, so
beautifully bound, that its equal will not easily be found
in the private houses of any capital. Each room has its
peculiar stamp, and the ground floor opens into a vast palm-
house.
The manor forms no slight contrast to the surrounding
habitations. When the peasants want help or advice, they
do not apply to the priest, who for the rest is a very honest
young man (he has been to Rome and speaks a little Italian),
but to our lady of the manor ; and it must be confessed that
human nature is so strong in them that they steal any-
thing they want which they do not obtain as a gift. They
112 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
steal everything that can be stolen, from poultry to garden
tools ; they fell the trees in the wood, and steal so much the
more passionately that Mrs. Jozefa brings no charge against
them. " What of that ? " she says ; " they are so poor, they
must be excused."
The weather is warm, but not too hot, and the bathing
arrangements are excellent ; only the flies and mosquitoes
are rather disagreeable. However, we are well protected
by an ingenious contrivance ; the inner windows consist of
fine wire netting, so that no insect can make its way into
the room, and we can sit with open windows and enjoy the
fresh air.
Never even in Holland have I seen such cleanliness as
reigns here. This, indeed, marks one of the sharpest con-
trasts between the higher classes and the common people
in Poland. The whole house is cleaned every day, nay,
even a couple of times a day ; three or four servants at a
time are sent to clean a room, so that everything is in order
in fifteen minutes.
Very often we have guests : yesterday came a couple of
Polish painters who are living in Munich ; they brought a
breath of ale and of art with them from the big art village.
To-day came the editor of one of the great papers of Warsaw.
Russian power has developed in an astounding manner
since last I was here. Then it was possible to have papers
by book post without their passing the censorship, if they
were written in a language not known by the officials. Now
all is sent to St. Petersburg to be examined if it is not
understood here. We get the Figaro a week late, and,
in every number, large pieces are blackened over. Even
a clerical and conservative paper like the Figaro is often
confiscated. In La Vie Parisienne the improper parts are
blackened over, and much is considered improper.
At present there is an exhibition of Polish industry
and art at Lemberg. The government has ordered that no
one in Russian Poland shall exhibit. (In several cases it has
been done, nevertheless.) But then the question arose
whether the papers might write about the exhibition. The
first month it was absolutely forbidden even to mention it.
OFFICIAL TYRANNY 113
Later each paper got permission to insert four articles from
Lemberg, none to exceed a hundred lines, and all to be
on the products of industry, not a word about art ; be-
tween each article an interval of a fortnight was to elapse.
This winter an editor was sent for by the director of police,
who, in a voice trembling with anger, asked him what he
meant by writing in a manuscript the Polish letters which
answer to " H.I.M." "What does ' H.I.M.' mean?" — "Of
course, His Imperial Majesty ; it is a generally used abbrevia-
tion."— " Aha 1 you have the audacity to abbreviate the title
of His Majesty the Emperor ? You have not room enough
in your paper for his whole title? In that case you may be
sure that he will find room for you, where you do not want
to go. Now you may pay 600 rubles provisionally for your
evil intention."
In Warsaw I saw odious examples of the brutality of
the police. On every possible occasion they strike and push
the poor cabmen with their sheathed swords. These drivers,
with their numbers hanging on their backs, resemble real
slaves.
Here in the country the common people are quite
broken by oppression. In the village school only Russian
is taught, which language the peasants do not understand.
But as instruction is not obligatory, very few of the children
go to school. In law-suits the language is likewise Russian,
and all must pass through an interpreter, so that the
accused is unable to control his own statement. The
official policy is to irritate the peasants against the higher
classes, and in all civil cases the former always gain their
point. A landed proprietor here with his huntsman sur-
prised four poachers who had committed a literal carnage
among his game, and who were about to load their booty
on a cart when he appeared. They escaped, but he got
hold of a coat, which he retained to produce as evidence.
The thieves were acquitted, as it was impossible, against
their denial, to prove that the game they had on their
cart belonged to the proprietor. The latter, on the other
hand, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for the
theft of a coat.
H
114 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Thus is justice meted out, and the only consolation is,
that however bad things may be, they might be worse.
And men rejoice that the worse has not yet come to pass.
In Poland, as everywhere, there is always cause for gratitude.
A man looked upwards, when a swallow, which was flying
above his head, dropped something on his nose. " How
lucky," he said, " that the cow has no wings."
People are unconcerned here in Poland in spite of their
torments. They live like a mutilated man, who proves
that it is possible to have but one leg, one arm, one eye, and
still be a man. They are like Josias Rantzau, who had only
some few pieces of himself left and yet kept up his courage
and good temper. They live, deprived of all political life, all
social endeavour, all direct pursuit of national aims, and
they live the more intensely the life left to them. They
live and feel as elsewhere, and they rest satisfied with speak-
ing that which must not be written or printed.
At this moment the sky is as clear as on a sunshiny day in
the south, and the sight I have before me beyond the wire is
full of peaceful beauty. In the foreground, a large lawn
studded with beds of tall rose-trees and flame-coloured
pelargoniums. A beautiful effect is made by a shrub with
white leaves among them. All around are grouped the
mighty old trees of the park. Outside the gateway a carriage
with four horses waits us to take us to the neighbouring
manor.
In short, life is charming for the moment.
Merim^e used to summarise his views of life as follows :
Harlequin fell out of the window from the fifth storey.
When he passed the third, spmebody asked him how he
felt. " Pretty well," he answered, " provided that this con-
tinues."
We all know how the fall will end, but as long as one is
in the air, it is not so bad.
II
CHOLERA— CENSORSHIP— ARRESTS
Towards seven o'clock when the burning heat of day is
over the different inmates of the house appear from their
rooms. Some take a ride on horseback, others walk in
the fields. A few of the elders are content with a walk in
the garden. Last night, when our host had dismounted
from his horse by the lawn before the veranda, and Miss
Helen had come in after a long conversation in the garden
about the future of mankind, religion, morals, love, and
other subjects, I laid before our hostess the number of
the Revue de Parisy containing part of the Hymn to Apollo
(music and words), found in Delphi, and asked her to sing
and play it. She did so, and exclaimed with surprise:
"fVagnerf It is pure Wagner ! " I told her that it was just the
impression this music had made on the French scientific man
who published it, and we lost ourselves in reflections on the
honour it was for Wagner, that those melodies so long
hidden beneath the earth of that ancient, wonderful land of
beauty, should present an analogy with his art. If Nietzsche
had lived to see this it would have made a deep impression on
him, and his criticism of Wagner would have been deprived
of a point of support. For it would be startling, indeed, to
insist on the decadence of art in Greece in the fifth century
before Christ.
From old Greek music the conversation glided to old
Greek vase-paintings. I showed a reproduction of the
remarkable painting of Eos carrying the corpse of her son,
which so absolutely anticipates the Christian Maier dolorosa.
We spoke of the satyr with the wooden leg painted on
an old vase showing, that the ancients practised amputation,
and replaced the lost limb by an artificial one. Then we left
Greece for Poland, Greek paintings for Wiwiorski's ceiling
"S
ii6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
and wall-paintings ; Greek misfortunes and sorrows for more
proximate modern miseries, Polish and universal.
The cholera has appeared in the villages around here :
at B., at K. — everywhere. Out of ten attacked by the
sickness, five at least generally die immediately. Unfor-
tunately in this month many church festivals are held.
Thus next week a local festival is impending ; the Pardon.
The peasants gather in crowds on this occasion to make
merry and enjoy life for a few days. In the Middle Ages
there was some sense in this kind of festival. At that time
the church imposed upon sinners of both sexes severe punish-
ments, all sorts of penances (such as not being allowed to
eat meat for five years ; the wearing of a hair shirt for years,
&c.). Now and then a general pardon was given, and of
course this was celebrated with extravagant joy. In our
days the punishments and penances have ceased, and only
the fairs remain. But under present circumstances they
are rather perilous. The peasants revel in fruit, much of
which is unripe, and drink a quantity of beer. We have
applied to the priest and asked him to write to the arch-
bishop to get the festival definitely postponed, but as the
latter has refused a similar request from a neighbouring
community, there is little or no hope.
Last week I went to Warsaw and had an audience of his
Excellency the President of the Censorship, M. Jankulio, a
handsome man of mixed race, who has, they say Greek, Jewish,
and Russian blood in his veins. He is allied to the Gurko
family ; was for a time secretary to the Governor-General,
and has made a speedy career. He received me with
courtesy, assured me that printed matter sent to me was not
retained, for one reason, because nobody in the censorship
understood Danish ; I should get everything sent to me without
delay, &c. Nevertheless, a week later, I received a Danish
newspaper of July 31, sent to me on the 12th of August
with the stamp of the censorship in St. Petersburg. His
Excellency, who called in several subordinates to report,
has, as may be seen, been greatly misinformed as to what is
taking place in his own office ; the functionaries, who do
not understand Danish, have simply sent everything to St.
ARBITRARY ARRESTS 117
Petersburg, where there are Finns enough in the censorship
who understand our language. No great regard is paid to
the convenience of the reader if it is a question of watching
the foreign press. Whole articles are cut out ; thus one in a
French review on the history of anarchism. All that is
disapproved on political, moral, or religious grounds, is
blackened over in such a way that not a letter is legible.
It is not to be denied that the Russians know how to
govern. The machine works to perfection — soundless, silent
as death, but effectual. For instance, the time is long
gone by when political trials had a certain publicity ; now
things are done in quite a different and undeniably a far
more intelligent way. Early some morning the person
concerned is fetched by a carriage and a couple of very
polite gendarmes. And from that moment ni vu ni su —
impossible to learn anything at all of him until he comes
back, if he comes back.
In one of the neighbouring manors a young girl of twenty
was arrested one morning. The parents' desperate demand to
know the reason why received no answer; the gendarmes had
their orders and knew nothing. The parents followed in their
carriage and reached Warsaw almost as soon as their daughter.
They rushed to the authorities ; they knew nothing, only that
the young girl was no longer in Warsaw. Six months later she
came back from the Petropavlovsk fortress in St. Petersburg.
A cousin of hers had been arrested on the charge of possess-
ing a number of forbidden books. Questioned as to whence
he had got each of them he had not answered, until the
constant awakening during the night-time, and other methods
loosened his tongue. He confessed that his cousin had
procured him one of these books. As nothing else could
be stated against her she was released that time ; but
this year, when the insane mourning procession of young
men and young girls took place through the streets of
Warsaw on the day on which the revolt in 1794 broke
out, she was arrested anew as a participator. It was of no
avail to the promoters of the demonstration that they had
called together the young people by means of a handbill
in these words : " A lady (here a fictitious name) of great
ii8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
virtues and abilities is dead. She was infinitely beloved
by her children, who cherish her memory and hope for
her resurrection. Those who knew her may assemble this day
in honour of her." It was intended to put garlands before the
house of the shoemaker where the revolt was proclaimed, but
the police surrounded and arrested all the members of the
procession — about three hundred ; they are all transported,
and the young girl among them. It is said that they are
isolated, each in a different place.
A student who, a couple of years ago, was arrested as
leader of a socialistic group, has disappeared so completely
that his brother, in spite of repeated supplications, has not
been able to learn even this — if he has been hanged or is
still alive.
The time has long gone by when executions were public.
They take place silently in the jails, and it is said that no
account is even kept of them in Petropavlovsk : they are
so easy there — plenty of water around the island.
It is fair to say of the Russians that as a reigning caste
they are not to be trifled with. Four officers of the
Guards, who had abused their position by propagating
Nihilism among their subordinates, were arrested. One of
the rebellious books found at their house was a treatise
printed abroad, and a note was also found stating that it had
been lent the officer by a relation, a justice of the peace.
The latter was arrested, and cross-questioned as to why he
had procured the book. He answered, and with apparent
truth, that he had wished to read the book out of curiosity
without concurring in the ideas expressed in it. The four
officers of course were shot ; but it is more surprising to
learn that the justice was hanged. There is something ex-
cellent in the system ; it renders vanity as a motive of
political crimes impossible. No paper dares to mention the
name of the criminal, far less speak of his arrest, or anything
he might say in his defence. He disappears in silence and
his name is never mentioned in any paper. If this system
were adopted in Italy and France the number of political
murderers would probably be considerably diminished.
However, it is not to be denied that it has certain drawbacks.
COURTESY OF RUSSIAN OFFICERS 119
Of late years the severity concerning prohibited books
has been considerably augmented. It has become impossible
to procure any of these ; no bookseller dares now to order
one of them. For instance, none of the books I have pub-
lished in foreign languages since I was last here have crossed
the frontier.
The amiability and good breeding of the Russian officers
are in curious contrast to this severity. It must be admitted
that in the Russian officer of the Guards (and only the
Guards are stationed in Warsaw) we never notice the con-
ceit and arrogance which characterise the Prussian officer.
Courtesy, almost modesty, the bearing of the polished man
of the world, are the peculiar stamp of the Russian officer.
And this humanity is not merely superficial. The two Rus-
sian officers, whose position would enable them to do more
evil than any one, the commander of the gendarmerie,
General Brock, and the chief of the police. General Kreigels,
are actually beloved by the Polish population. They always
deliver the mildest possible reports. Every harshness dis-
played is against their wishes. But they are obliged to obey
the orders they get.
In the officers' staff itself there is no inclination to treat
the Poles as a vanquished people. They rather insist upon
a gentlemanly behaviour towards them. Recently we had a
striking instance of this. A son of the Governor-General
saw at the house of a comrade here a forbidden book and
asked him how he had got it ; the officer told him the name
of the bookseller. The young Lieutenant Gurko went to the
latter and asked for the book. — No, it was not to be had, it
was forbidden. — If he could procure it for him ? — Under
common circumstances it would be impossible, but as to the
son of the Governor-General, he supposed that the pro-
hibition might be waived. — Some weeks later the lieutenant
got his book, and denounced the bookseller, who was arrested.
Immediately thereafter the officers of the regiment, each and
all of them, sent in a petition that Lieutenant Gurko might be
struck off the list of officers ; failing this, they all requested
their own dismissal. They got no answer, but they insisted.
The consequence was, in fact, that Lieutenant Gurko was dis-
I20 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
missed ; to be sure he was at the same time placed upon
the general staff.
The overwhelming heat is now over ; the time in which
the shower-bath house in the park was our main consolation.
I never entered it without being reminded of the first act of
The Valkyries, for it is built up round four gigantic stems of
trees which rise through the house like the large tree in the
dwelling of Siegfried's mother.
Now the temperature is such that we should like to make
use of the invitations received from the neighbouring manors.
The sad state of the roads obliges us to pay our visits in a
carriage and four, otherwise we should never get along. At
the neighbouring manors there are several original men and
women.
Ill
MONOTONY AND STILLNESS— SUMMER-NIGHT SENTI-
MENTS—POLITICAL DIVERGENCE OF THE OLDER
AND YOUNGER GENERATIONS
The peaceful quiet that reigns here is of the kind possible
only to those who live miles from railway stations and towns.
Never a sound breaks the silence of the night, with the
exception of the watchman's horn, which every quarter of
an hour announces that he is awake. But as for me, I never
hear it after having gone to bed. We sleep calmly in this
stillness, and therefore I am always awake when in the
morning Wladislaw brings my clothes and opens the shutters
and windows. Wladislaw is from Lithuania, thirty years
old, and he it is who, among the servants of the house, has
been placed at my disposal. He is a jewel of a man — small,
slender, and strong, full of the Polish flexibility in every
limb, and particularly intelligent. He speaks French and
Italian very well, having passed five years in Florence with
Count Guybowsky, and two years with Franciszek in Paris.
He does not always express himself correctly in French, but
his locutions are always extremely picturesque. For in-
stance, he says : " // mouche fort aujourd'hui; " this is to be
interpreted: "There are a great many flies to-day." He
speaks Polish as his native tongue ; understands Lithuanian
and Russian. I am an ignorant fellow in comparison with
him. To be sure, I know German ; but he knows how to
shave. I know a little English ; but he can carry my tub
with a straight arm. In Paris he might become an inter-
preter, a hairdresser, or a waiter as it might happen ; were
he a little less good-natured, he would be the typical Figaro.
It does one good to open one's eyes on beautiful lawns
and trees. The more one has been condemned to live in a
town the more one is sensible of living with nature. When
122 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
I am driving about here and I perceive by the strong sweet
perfume that we are approaching a clover field in blossom, I
make the horse walk, that I may not be deprived of any of
this perfume. When one is unaccustomed to ramble about
on field-paths, every feather becomes interesting, and one
looks at the plants like a botanising schoolboy. In the fore-
noon I rove about alone, the heat being too intense for my
friends. But towards evening we all walk out together, and
every day a different way. The constant spectacle — the sun-
set, the twilight, the rising of the red moon on the horizon,
and its change into sparkling yellow — is every day the same
and every day new. One's mood and the conversation vary,
according to one's companion. Yesterday the air was calm ;
dusk came on speedily ; the mown fields breathed fragrance
after the rain, and the full moon was shining with an almost
hypnotising effect. The young girl beside me quoted in a
low voice a poem by Kistemaekers, of which these are the
first strophes : —
" J'aime la nuit.
La nuit des reves
Aux heures braves
Quand I'astre luit
Sur champs et greves,
J'aime la nuit.
Quand la nuit dort
Dans le silence,
La lune lance
Sa clart^ d'or,
Qui se balance
Quand la nuit dort"
It was surprising how these verses mingled with the harmony
of the summer night.
Thus the days pass ; monotonous days which are but a
succession of spectacles of nature and of conversations ; days
of which we do not know if they are Tuesday or Friday ;
weeks, of which only Sunday is recognisable, because then
at twelve o'clock the church bells call the faithful together
for mass. These church bells ! Every evening at nine o'clock
they strike a few times, and then cease as if in alarm. An
official explanation as to the signification of these strokes has
been given to the authorities. In reality they toll in memory
MURDER OF AN ACTRESS 123
of the Poles who fell for freedom during the revolution.
Few strokes only and muffled, a secret appeal to memory.
But no alarm-bell could conjure, as they are conjuring, all
over the land, in the capital as well as in the smallest village.
We are lulled by this monotony and stillness, this good,
pure air. The cholera is raging near us in Sochazew, but it
does not reach us. And we do not at all regret Warsaw,
where the epidemic has spread enormously. The only
temptation there is the theatre. Marcello is acting, and I
have not yet seen her this time.
When Poland's greatest actress, Modrzejewska, had
emigrated to America to act only in English, Wisnoska and
Marcello remained, only a few years ago, the two queens
of the theatre of Warsaw. Now Marcello, the dark beauty,
reigns alone. Her fair rival is no more. Many people still
remember how poor Wisnoska came to her death. A Rus-
sian officer of the Guards, who for a long time had been
persecuting her, and tormenting her with his jealousy, one
evening entered her house and demanded of her that she
should give up all and everybody for his sake ; if not, she
would not escape him alive. When she told him that he was
quite indifferent to her, and that she would preserve her
freedom, he pulled out his revolver, and was cruel enough to
keep the unhappy woman before the pistol-muzzle all through
the night ; all the while he was talking and drinking. At
length she understood that she could not escape, and every
quarter of an hour she put down on leaves, which she tore
out of her note-book, her desperate lamentations, rolled up
the leaves and threw them all around the room on the floor,
that they might be found after her death. Towards morning
he shot her, returned to the barracks, cried out to his
comrades : " I have shot Wisnoska ! " and was arrested as
soon as his brother officers, who thought he was raving, had
inquired into the matter and had found the corpse. In the
lower as well as in the two superior courts he was sentenced
to twenty years' hard labour. However, the emperor thought
that here was an occasion to exercise his prerogative. He
commuted the sentence and condemned the culprit to
degradation. He was reduced to the ranks ; a week later
124 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
he was promoted sub-lieutenant, another week later lieu-
tenant, and in this way justice as well as mercy were
satisfied. Poor Wisnoska ! Her hair was so rich and fair ;
her eyes so blue, and her smile so bright. I saw her before
me, beside Marcello, in the first row in the great council
hall one day when my lecture on Polish literature was
given there. Most earnestly she clapped her hands,
which were small and covered with delicate grey gloves.
She might be less beautiful than Marcello, but as an
artist she was certainly more gifted. She has left a void —
is not forgotten.
We need not go to Warsaw for society ; we have plenty
of neighbours within a drive of a couple of hours, neighbours
with long, curious names terminating in wtcz and ski.
Nearly all the landed proprietors about here are enormously
rich. They not only possess extensive properties, which they
manage together with their sons, with great skill, but gener-
ally a manufactory of beet-root sugar and sometimes of
alcohol is connected with the estate. Beside the cornfields
there are boundless fields of beet-root and potatoes.
The culture of the elder generation clings to democratic
and anticlerical ideals. A particular trait in the old gentle-
men is their hatred of priests, particularly their abhorrence
and dread of Jesuits. It always excited amazement when,
as I usually do, I mentioned the Jesuits with a certain warmth
and admiration. Most of the squires are cast in one mould,
and do not understand these fine shades. They read much,
but are most attracted by rather coarse, popular books,
directed against religious and political prejudices. They are
ardent patriots, anxiously watching the political horizon,
hoping to discern some sign of better times for Poland.
The younger generation is practically active and does
not care much for politics ; they have made their choice
in life. In the elder generation the men are more interesting
than the women ; in the younger the reverse is the case.
Though what is known elsewhere in Europe as the emanci-
pation of women is prohibited here, their independence of
thought is great, certainly not inferior to what it is in the
North, and the level of culture is higher, because the store of
POLISH FEMININE TYPES 125
general knowledge is greater, not to mention knowledge of
the world. The young women speak French and English
besides Polish, not like languages they have been taught, but
as they speak their native tongue, and they are familiar with
foreign literature because all their leisure time is spent in
reading, and they know the different countries well, having
passed at least one-third of their life in travelling.
Of course all species are to be found among them; not
excepting that of the goose, and even the pretentious goose
conscious of beauty and of descent from a most noble gander ;
but I only met one specimen of the kind. On the other
hand I saw a couple of noble falcons, a swan, a sphinx. . . .
Not far from here lives a young girl who is not exactly
beautiful, but so graceful that every moment she becomes
so. She never laughs, and her face is without a smile,
even the smile of courtesy ; she never speaks except when
alone with one person ; she is mute as a fish when we
assemble in the saloon or at table ; but she knows to a
turn the value of every person and every circle in Warsaw,
and though she is but twenty-four years old, she is as in-
dependent and as unprejudiced in her ideas as a clever man
of forty. She has read all the most daring books written in
the last twenty years.
And some few miles distant, in an old manor house with
antique furniture, and seven straight avenues which radiate
from the lawn before the house, you may meet a young
woman of thirty years of age who lives with her parents,
separated from her husband, who took to drinking and
squandered her fortune ; and this young woman is so re-
markable that she would make a sensation in any capital.
She is dark like an Italian, with a figure like a Roman,
but her whole personality is instinct with the Slavonic grace
and charm. She captivates because such a face as hers has
never been seen before. Her mouth especially is wonderfully
expressive, like that of a great actress. She reminds one of
bright purple, a purple poppy with an intoxicating perfume,
and she has a most melodious voice. Her manner is
aristocratic, quiet and self-contained. Other women look
meaningless beside her. But she does not appear to be
126 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
conscious of herself as an exceptional being. In my eyes
she is the embodiment of the spirit of Russian Poland.
From her radiates all its southern ardour, its Slavonic grace,
its mysteriously attractive inner life.
For this is certain : although Russian Poland is oppressed
and tortured as is neither Prussian Poland nor Austrian
Galicia, still it is only here that the heart of Poland is
throbbing, and only here that the Polish race may be
studied in its best and rarest originality.
In Posen and East Prussia the Polish landed proprietor
is impoverished ; generally he has been obliged to sell his
property ; the Germans, supported by the means of the state
and by all sorts of cunning prohibitions, with the hundred
million marks of the state in reserve, backed by the passion
of the German propaganda, have bought up the country inch
by inch. The Polish peasant in Prussia is trained by com-
pulsory instruction, and is on that account more cleanly
and prosperous than elsewhere, but the Polish population
is mixed there. The nobles are brought up in German
schools and at German universities. Galicia, a poor
mountainous district, is, as an Austrian province, negative.
The population enjoys full national and civil freedom.
Polish songs are sung and Polish speeches are delivered
freely in Austrian Poland. But parties fight against each
other with an unquenchable hatred. Cracow is the strong-
hold of the clerical majority, Lemberg that of the free-thinking
minority. Though the Galician press is free, it is never-
theless worse than the Russo- Polish, because its contents
consist almost entirely of personal insults occasioned by the
party strife. In Russian Poland the press is fettered to such
a degree that it has been, for instance, impossible to warn
the young people against the senseless political demonstra-
tions, so tragical in their consequences, to which they
constantly resort, urged on by the women. The press has
not dared to mention these demonstrations with a single
word, and still it is better than the Polish press in Austria.
The Polish vivacity and intellectual charm has its real
home in the kingdom of Poland — perhaps because only here
are the material conditions of the upper classes such as
WEALTH OF RUSSIAN POLAND 127
to enable them to lead a modern life, continuing their life
during the Renaissance. Russian Poland is the richest
corn-growing country in Europe. Every patch of ground
is fertile. The nobles here are often very rich, and people
enjoy their money. A host of servants, as is well known,
are kept in a well-conducted house in Poland, the houses
being almost always spacious, with many spare rooms. The
ladies revel in beautiful dresses. They dress two or three
times in the day, and if any come to stay for some time in
the house, they have as much luggage as Sarah Bernhardt.
The ladies of this house, who have no occasion to make
themselves smart, have appeared in fifty different dresses at
least. On my putting the question one day none of them
knew how many dresses they possessed. It is still more
singular to see that the gentlemen change their dresses
as frequently. None of them own less than two dozen
complete costumes, and in addition wraps, overcoats, hunting
and riding costumes. In this particular they live as in
the time of Pan Sopliga.
None of them would be impressed by the cupboard full
of boots, with which Bourget's Casal is supposed to overawe
the snobs.
Between the three parts, into which the ancient Poland
is divided and which are so closely bound together by
language and memories, there is politically not the slightest
co-operation ; they can never act in concert ; they have not
even common measures and coins or legal regulations or
stamps — nothing at all in common ; not even a man who
is popular in all three countries as a politician. In litera-
ture there is after all but one name which unites them ;
Sienkiewicz has by degrees become the jewel in the crown of
Poland. And he is far from being a genius of the first rank.
Nothing material is done to unite the parts of the
country ; only ideal means are possible. There is, especially
in the elder generation, a group of patriotic idealists, valiant
dreamers, simple and hopeful souls, who are constantly
travelling about between the severed parts of the land, and
who, by conversations, bargains, and agreements of an
innocent nature, keep up the holy fire. The great exhibi-
128 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
tion in Lemberg is an outcome of their exertions. But it
cannot be denied that only too many of the best of the
younger generation, both young women and young men,
have given up all national hope ; have ceased to watch for
gleams of light, looking upon all such gleams as ignes fatui.
Openly sceptical, nay, even contemptuous, they are melan-
choly spectators of the agitations of their elders.
IV
POLAND AND FRANCE— POLAND AND GERMANY
"Confess that our Polish cooking is excellent," said
Madame Halina.
" I do indeed, I think it the best in the world."
" That all our dishes are original ! "
" I admit that they taste very good, and that as a rule
one doesn't know what they are made of."
" Confess that our soil is more fruitful than any other,
that our scenery has a style and an attraction of its own,
and that it is more spacious than any other."
" I agree with all you say. Even flatness is imposing
here."
" Admit that our language is flexible and beautiful, soft
and malleable, melodious and luxuriant, even if it has not
the varied rhythms of Russian."
" I admit that your speech is fascinating."
" Admit that no other people dance as we do. Is there
any dance like our mazurka ? "
" I am hardly a judge, but I am inclined to think most
highly of Polish dancing. The ballets at Warsaw would
be hard to beat."
" Admit that our women are beautiful ! "
" Beautiful and beautifully dressed. Who could question
this ? "
"Admit that our men are intelligent and hospitable."
"They are indeed. But what do you want with all
these confessions ? "
" Admit that Nature has lavished upon us all the gifts
that should make a nation happy. We are cheerful,
easily pleased, and have withal the imaginative spark. Why
then have we become the most unhappy race on earth ?
129 >
130 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
For has there ever been a more hapless nation than ours
in all the history of the world ? "
" I doubt it, unless perhaps we except the Jews, who
are no longer a nation."
"Then is it not incredible, inhuman, that all Europe
has lost interest in us, that no one will lift a finger in our
behalf ? I am not thinking of the Powers responsible for
the partition. But is it not shameful to see France crawling
on her belly before our tyrant, that France we reverenced,
fought and bled for ? "
Every Polish man and every Polish woman is cut
to the heart by the enthusiastic servility of France
to Russia. Nowhere do people know France more
thoroughly than here. Educated Poles are brought up in
French fashion, they speak French as fluently as their own
tongue, they read and appreciate French books more than
any other people. It is for these very reasons that the
self-abasement of France before Russia has wounded them
so deeply.
No people in the world ever believed so firmly in France,
or sacrificed themselves so cheerfully for Prance as the
Poles. Read what Henri Houssaye says in his "1814."
Whenever things were most desperate, whenever some
forlorn hope or the personal safety of the Emperor was
in question, the Polish Lancers were always to the fore.
They and the Vieille Garde were always the last resource.
And neither ever failed.
A Polish woman, a woman Napoleon never won,
though he possessed her, and whose admiration for him
never became love, was the only woman who visited him at
Elba, after his downfall.
Poland is now so utterly forgotten by the French that
one never hears her mentioned by them. They know
nothing of the Poles, and it is impossible to get an article
dealing with their sufferings inserted in any French
review. Saoul comme un Pobnais (as drunk as a Pole) is
the only memento of them that lingers in the national
speech.
It has actually come to this, that French newspapers,
FRENCH SUBSERVIENCE TO RUSSIA 131
commenting on the incessant changes of ministry in their
own country, remark as follows : —
"What must our allies, the Russians, think of us, and
of these ministries that change every year, nay, several
times in one year ! With them, ministers remain in office
for twenty and thirty years." If the French were governed
for six months on the same lines as the Russian Poles,
their enthusiasm for Russian methods would, no doubt, be
considerably modified !
What would the French say, if it were absolutely for-
bidden to teach the French language in any French school ?
Or if school-children were strictly forbidden to talk together
in their native tongue in the playground or the street ?
But this is what is done to Polish children.
Or if, in the teaching of history, the name of their
fatherland were never mentioned, if its history were treated
as non-existent, and all the energies and efforts of teachers
were directed to the instilling into their children of an
idealised history of a foreign race ? If the fate of Alsace
and Lorraine, aggravated a thousandfold, were the fate of
all France !
This summer all young boys were refused passports
to cross the frontier. What would a French lady say
if she were forbidden to cross the frontier with her little
son ? If she were a Pole, she would, like a young mother
of my acquaintance, simply have to stay at home. The
authorities were afraid that the boys of the country would
be taken to the exhibition at Lemberg, that they would
witness political demonstrations, hear Polish songs and
speeches — and this was prevented by the simple device of
refusing passports. What would a Frenchman say, if all
official posts of distinction and lucrative situations, the
army and the navy, and the higher administrative functions
were all alike closed to him ? if the State forbade him
to fill any post, the emoluments of which exceed 1000
rubles ? Yet this is the case here. No Pole receives higher
payment.
When the State recently acquired all the private railways in
Poland, the whole of the Polish staff without exception was
132 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
dismissed ; hundreds of families were made destitute. In
the Postal Service, as elsewhere, the promotion of Polish
employe's ceases when they have reached a salary of looo
rubles.
What would the French say if every line written by
them for a newspaper had to be submitted to a Govern-
ment censor before publication, and if their authors were
punished for things they had intended to print, but which
had never appeared ? Such things are the rule here.
What would they say if the winter and summer revues,
so popular in their theatres, had to be absolutely renounced ?
Here no such things as revues are possible, or even im-
aginable. A review of the events of the year ? What
would these be ? There are no public men in Poland
save the Government officials, and their names may not
even be mentioned, nor their actions alluded to, in a news-
paper article, much less on the stage. Parliament, public
meetings, associations, and such like, which furnish material
for quips elsewhere, do not exist. The only possible topics
would be purely private scandals, but the Poles are not
ignoble, and there is no newspaper among them answering
to such a sheet as the Danish Witzbl'itfern, not even in
Galicia, where personal polemics are nevertheless in the
blood.
What would French workmen say if they were
absolutely forbidden to found any union, or enter into
any association ? If a strike were not only an unimag-
inable proceeding, but even any combined discussion of
their interests were impossible ? But these things would
be impossible to them if they were governed by Russia.
And it would avail them little to protest in the name of
the right of public meeting. For the right of public
meeting is unknown here.
Finally, what would devout French Catholics say, if
they found themselves handed over to the supremacy
of the Czar-Pope ? When from time to time (as happened
this spring in the village of Kroze) a church the authorities
have determined to Russianise is surrounded, and the
peasants who refuse to leave it and give it up are shot
INTOLERANCE TOWARDS CATHOLICS 133
down by Cossacks and soldiers, the survivors being knouted,
the incident goes the round of the European papers for a
day or two, and readers comfort themselves with the reflec-
tion that such occurrences are exceptional.
But the daily, cold-blooded annoyances are never men-
tioned. In his day, Krasinski called Poland the land of
graves and crosses. One of the most striking characteristics
of Polish landscapes are the lofty wooden crosses. They
are not crucifixes, as in Italy and Tyrol, but plain crosses.
If such a cross falls down or decays, it might be sup-
posed that it would be permissible to replace it. Not with-
out a Government permit, and this is not easily obtained.
Two years ago a cross of this kind in a field was struck
by lightning. It has been lying broken ever since ; the
owners dare not repair it, because the necessary permission
has not yet been forwarded from the Government offices
in St. Petersburg. If it had been a St. Andrew's cross
now ! But the actual one is looked upon as a Romish
symbol ! Under this regime even the cross is feared as a
sign of insurrection.
The land of graves and crosses ! If they try to restrict
the number of crosses, the graves at least are allowed to
multiply freely. In 1831 the Russian official bulletin ran
as follows : — L'ordre regne a Varsovie. Now order reigns no
longer, but cholera, though this does not appear in the
Russian bulletins. A pedagogic government gives the number
of cases and of deaths as it pleases, in such a manner as to
pacify inquirers in Europe and abroad.
Round two of the little towns in this district a military
cordon has been drawn. No one is permitted to leave or
to enter them, and the inhabitants are dying like flies. The
spread of the scourge is due not only to the poverty of the
people, but in a still greater degree to their ignorance.
When once the disease has appeared, it is impossible to
reason with them, or even to give them any remedies.
Neither peasants nor servants can be induced to give up
eating fruit. Cholera is fate, they say ; the person who is
to get it will have it. And no sick person, whatever is
the matter with him, will swallow a drop of medicine.
134 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
They imagine that there is a sort of conspiracy to get
rid of those afflicted with the disease as quickly as possible,
and are persuaded that anything offered them by a stranger
is poison. No arguments can overcome this idea.
But who is to blame for all this blind ignorance ?
A generation back all the hopes of the Poles centred
in France. This time has completely gone by. The then
policy of the Poles in Austria and Prussia consisted
of a mere barren opposition. Whatever the respective
Governments proposed, the Polish deputies refused. It was
in Austria that this policy was first modified. The Poles
were granted liberty of speech and action, they enccjuntered
sympathy, they gradually received power, and became con-
tented. As under William I. the Poles could always reckon
upon ill-will and oppression from the Government, their
activity in the German parliament gradually restricted itself
to the voting of perpetual nays. They rarely spoke, know-
ing the futility of such demonstrations, and being more-
over poor orators. It was not until Josef Koscielski became
a member of the Reichstag and of the Upper House that
these tactics were changed. He became intimate with the
Bismarck family in Berlin, and made up his mind to bear
the displeasure with which this intimacy was regarded by
his compatriots. He made his debut in the Reichstag as
an orator, and gained the ear of the house by his eloquence.
After the fall of Bismarck he became even a greater
favourite with the young Emperor than he had been in
the Bismarckian circle. He and his young wife were often
invited to dine alone with the Emperor and Empress, and
even now that he has retired from political life he and
his are frequently the guests of the Imperial family.
Koscielski met the wishes of the Emperor as far as it was
possible to him, and influenced the Polish party to vote in
the same sense. Thus he voted for the naval grant, a service
the Emperor rewarded by conferring an order of great dis-
tinction upon him. In return, as is well known, concessions
were made to the Poles as regards their language and
their Church. For the first time after a very long interval,
an Archbishop after their own hearts was nominated. And
KOSCIELSKI 135
for this they had to thank Koscielski. There is no doubt
that his winning personality and his poHtical tact had gained
more ground for them than they had conquered since
the time of Frederick WilHam IV., whereas the voting
of an extra ship or two to the fleet did them not the
sHghtest harm. But the Poles have never been tacticians,
and Koscielski's diplomacy brought him contumely rather
than popularity. He went by the name of Admiralski ever
afterwards. It was a nickname that every one could under-
stand, and that the meanest wit could grasp. Whenever
he voted in favour of a Government measure, he was
looked upon with suspicion. Like all Poles, he had a
certain Ibve of splendour, and he was perhaps not altogether
unaffected by the civilities shown him at Court. The
Poles never ceased to impress upon him that his personal
vanity was at the bottom of his activity in Berlin, and
that he sacrificed national interests to his own. He accord-
ingly resigned in the spring.
He justly estimated that the Poles, having nothing to
hope for from France, should now do their best to obtain
concessions from Germany.
J
A CHURCH FESTIVAL— POPULAR BELIEFS
It is the festival of forgiveness in the church to-day. From
early in the morning there has been ringing of bells and
concourse of peasants from miles round. Outside the church
of Petrovice sellers have run up small booths and huts for
the occasion, where all sorts of things are offered for sale —
holy images, rosaries, cruciform ornaments, and some toys
for the children the mothers have brought with them, but
all so infinitely poor that there was scarcely anything to be
had above a penny in price. It was most disheartening
to look at the pictures suspended beneath the eaves of an
old hovel — lithographs of the worst and most tasteless
paintings, and of daubs almost blasphemous in their em-
bodiment of bland Virgins and insipid Saviours. On closer
inspection we discovered with surprise that this factory work
was marked not only Paris, but most of it even New York.
It is the indefatigable Yankees, brave Protestants, who are
sitting on the other side of the ocean, gaining money by
making hundreds of thousands of holy pictures for the
Catholics in old Europe. No wonder that they are hideous.
Even a lithograph of the most nauseous Carlo Dolci would
be a relief among them.
The church is overcrowded ; the doors are wide open,
and a large column of men and women crowd before them
to catch as much of the sermon as possible. But besides, all
over the square in front of the church a whole little popula-
tion is standing, sitting, and kneeling, uncovered, in deep
devotion. All round lie beggars ; about eighteen have
arrived in a covered cart ; disgusting cripples with naked
arms or bandaged legs ; the whole crowd of palsied beings
on whom the Son of Man worked His miracles in days of
yore. Near the church a chapel has been run up by its
X36
A POLISH "PARDON" 137
master-mason, who is making repairs in it, and who desires
to display his pious disposition ; on the chapel is a wooden
crucifix, a monster of tastelessness !
All sense of art and beauty seems quenched in the
common people. How lively was formerly their sense of
beauty ; how handsome and becoming the national dress
which the Russians have now strictly forbidden ! What a
picturesque figure the peasant of Galicia still is in his white
coat ornamented with red, and with his large felt hat !
Here the peasant now wears the most horrible cap and a
dress without cut or character ; while the women and the
girls, who have been deprived of their national costume,
have a predilection for loud yellow and crude green.
They all walked about, looking at the stalls and bargain-
ing, now and then buying some pastry, and some of the fruit
offered in spite of the prohibition. But the forbidden fruit
has here, as elsewhere, its particular charm. The people of
the manor erected a booth at which bottles of boiled water,
with peppermint and brandy to flavour them, were offered
gratis ; the object was to prevent the dangerous drinking
of water. The peasants drank eagerly, contrary to our
expectations.
For several hours our ladies had sat in their church,
in spite of the heat and bad air. We men did not go
in, until the great mass at the very last. The sight from
the altar of the church was picturesque. Just behind the
priest sat the ladies, some from the neighbouring estates
with their husbands ; they were festively dressed, but their
devotion did not appear to be intense. Then the peasants,
men, women, and children, head beside head, as many as the
church could contain, the white, yellow, and pink headgear
of the women gleaming, among brown men's faces
with thick long moustaches, all kneeling down, then rising,
then bending their heads to fall again on their knees, sway-
ing like corn in the wind. Above them sounded the
hymn, one of the most ancient of Polish linguistic monu-
ments, music and simple words dating from the tenth
century : " Holy God, mighty God ! Deliver us from plague,
from famine and from war. God, the Almighty ! "
138 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
It goes back to the time -when Poland was first afflicted
with the plague, and has a new actuality in these days.
The sermon was not bad, impressing upon the hearers
that religious exercises and church-attendance count for
little in comparison to one's life and acts. On the other
hand, the priest, who celebrated the mass, with his stupid
expression, his thick cheeks 'and his fat figure was grotesque,
and his way of pronouncing Latin utterly rustic. All that
stood for art in the church was glaring and in bad taste ;
— the wall-paintings, the pictures on the banners waving
above the congregation ; but beautiful were the living decora-
tions of flowers and green round the pillars, and the blooming
oleanders in flower-pots before the altar.
Our own little priest was not officiating that day. He
was the host, and chiefly taken up with the great dinner of
forty persons, which he was to give after the service. He
knelt down with the others, but I read his thoughts. He
never speaks of his faith, but from what he says, we feel that
he thinks like the rest of us. It is always thus with the
priests who have studied for several years in Rome. A stay
there is more beneficial to intellect than to faith. This is
strongest in the poor creatures who ascend the pulpit directly
from the Polish seminaries. For the rest, the poor priests
had a hard day. Not less than four hundred peasants
came to confession, and there were but thirteen priests
to confess them. They were ready to drop with fatigue.
Fortunately they consoled themselves afterwards.
No greater contrast can be imagined than that between
the Polish and the Russian peasant in relation to religion and
its expounders. However orthodox the Russian peasant may
be, to him, as to the Russians in general, the priest is a most
inferior creature, half comical, half despicable. It is a
bad omen to meet him. The Russian priest does not differ
much from the peasant as to culture ; but having more money,
it is easier for him to get drunk, and in reality his life consists
in the main of carouses and sleeping ofl^ their effects ; but
the Polish peasant venerates his priest. Nay, the authority
of the Catholic priest is the only one that has remained
absolutely undisputed in Poland at all times. It is within his
RUSSIAN AND POLISH PRIESTS COMPARED 139
power to put the peasant into the mood he desires. This
always becomes apparent after confession. When a theft has
been committed, it constantly happens that the priest brings
back the stolen object. The peasant does not bring it him-
self, but in his anguish he gives it to the priest that the
latter may forward it to its owner.
The piety of the Russian peasant does not exclude
certain tricks and a good deal of sharp practice in his
dealings with the saints.
A Russian peasant with horse and cart had got upon
the ice, which was about to break up, and in his distress he
promised St. Nicholas the value of the horse, if he reached
the shore alive with his vehicle. This he did, and
now his main thought was how to get out of this scrape
without breaking his word to the saint. The horse was
worth more than a hundred rubles, and this was a loss he
did not like to suffer. At last he hit on a way of escape. He
went to the fair with his horse and soon found a purchaser.
" How much do you want for your horse ? " asked the latter. —
" Five rubles," was the answer. — " Five rubles ? You are not
in earnest ; but of course I will pay that." — "Very well,"
said the peasant ; " but I have decided not to sell it without
this hen, which I have on my back." — " And what is the
price of the hen ? " — " Ninety-five rubles." The bargain was
made and the saint got his five rubles.
The Polish peasant is more artless with his saints. He
has not the fire and fervour of invocation of the Italian
peasant, but he kneels lost in supplication before their
images. This was evident yesterday.
After the service the great dinner for all the clergy took
place at the young priest's house. The chief landed
proprietors of the neighbourhood were also present, forty
persons in all, as mentioned. As our young priest has only
an annual salary of 1 50 rubles, and with all his perquisites
does not get more than six or seven hundred rubles, it is im-
possible for him to give such dinners. But the custom is
to send him all the meat and drink he wants from the
manor, also table linen, dishes, plates, and glasses. The
thing was particularly difficult yesterday, because the festival
140 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
fell on a Friday, so that there could be no meat. Our lady-
had sent for four or five different sorts of fish, and from
the day before all was activity in the house. Our cook,
who has studied his art in Paris, and who moreover is both
baker and confectioner, excelled himself. The salmon and
the pike were lying, mighty in circumference, on heavy
dishes ; the wine was rolled in barrels from the cellar ; and
from early morning all the servants were hurrying to and fro
in an endless procession, carrying dishes and baskets filled
with all sorts of good things, between the manor and the
parsonage.
The thirteen priests and the other great folks were soon
seated in two spacious rooms to celebrate the fast-day. In
the sermon it had been said that the truly religious man
is not gloomy and choleric, but always cheerful, and about
this many a merry speech was made during the meal. But
it is fair to say, they ate more than they spoke, and they
drank more than they ate. Burgundy and Bordeaux and
Hungarian hock disappeared so hastily behind the clerical
waistcoats that every now and then an express was despatched
to the manor with a slip of paper requiring this and that
from the cellar. They drank hard like good Poles, and
nevertheless nobody spoke a word too loudly, because the
young priests were shy of exposing themselves before their
superiors, and these did not forget to keep up the respect
due to themselves. But to see my friend Franciszek at the
top of the table, presiding at this clerical dinner, having
his health proposed as the giver of the festival, as the
patron of the Church, as the great religious benefactor of
the country ! What may a worldling not become, if he is
rich, clever, and lavish !
Certainly several of the priests were no more believing
than he. The more gifted of them had all gone through
the Roman school. But no experience shakes the faith
of the common people. Things the most contrary to reason
and the most cruel are to him but further evidences of the
care of Providence. Listen to this Polish legend, which
Sienkiewicz has introduced in his tales : —
A peasant boy discovered one day, when passing a hollow
A LEGEND OF DEATH 141
tree, that somebody was within the trunk. He approached
and found that it was Death, who had fallen asleep there.
He quickly put a plug into the hole, and when Death
awoke, he was a captive. From that moment there was
exultation in the village. No more death ; no funerals ; no
mourners. But the joy only lasted for a time. As nobody
died, everything was overcrowded and the soil could not
supply food enough for so many. It then became necessary
to draw out the plug. Death got his liberty ; he hurried to
Christ and requested orders as to whom he was first to
mow down. Christ pronounced a name. It was that of
a mother of five children, and when Death came to her, she
was terrified, not so much for her own sake, as for her little
children's. She fell on her knees, and implored Death, saying :
" You see, yourself, that it would be a cruelty to take
me. What will become of my five babes when I am
gone ; who is to provide for them ? They will perish miser-
ably. I entreat you, go away I " Then Death hastened
anew to Christ, in spite of the command he had received,
explained the case, and asked for orders. Christ first
gave Death two strong boxes on his ears for his dis-
obedience [the rustic experience lies behind this trait] and
then said . " Fly over the ocean ; go diving where it is
deepest, and bring me the little white stone you will find
there." Death did as he was bidden ; found the stone, and
brought it. Christ said : " Crack it with your teeth."
It was hard for the fleshless lips of Death, but it was
cracked, and within was a little white living worm (!). Then
Christ said, " There, you see. I knew that in this little stone
was a worm, and think you that I, who know this, should not
have thought of the fate of the five little children, who will
become motherless at my command. Get on ! and kill the
mother immediately ! "
Such faith in the common people is very necessary
that they may not lose confidence in the decrees of Provid-
ence in a land and under a rule where it cannot be said
that the finger of Providence is particularly perceptible.
VI
THE MEMORIAL PROCESSION OF 1894—
PAINTERS AND WRITERS
The middle of summer is over, and authors, poets,
journalists begin to return to Warsaw. It is impossible
to show oneself in a restaurant without being overwhelmed
with embraces and men's kisses on both cheeks, always
to the same tune: "What treason to come to Warsaw
when everybody is absent ! " And then all sluices of con-
versation are opened, and the stranger, so long solitary, is
at once initiated into all sorts of literary affairs, hundreds
of family stories, scores of political misfortunes and intrigues,
and international farrago concerning remuneration, pub-
lishers, rivalries, and what not. Many half-forgotten and
half-effaced figures, fates and names, rise anew in one's
memory, and at last it appears as if one's absence had
been but of a few weeks, though it covers a space of
seven years.
The latest event is the arrest of a young medical man.
At four o'clock in the morning two police officials arrived
with their subordinates and set on foot an investigation in
his home, rummaged everything, seized all his papers, even
tore off the green cloth on his writing-table in order to
look for papers beneath it, and then carried him off to the
citadel. The two officials have since remained in the
dwelling, of which they have made a kind of a trap ; the first
few days they arrested every one who entered the house —
patients, friends, and acquaintances, to examine them.
Nobody knows why ; but they fear that he has collected
money for the young men and young girls who were
banished on account of the procession in memory of the
revolt in 1794. These raids are always made during
the night. Sometimes the matter takes on a certain humour,
X49
POLICE RAIDS 143
namely, when the police are on the wrong tack and
nothing is to be found. Such was the case with one of
my friends, the author Gavalewicz, whose house they searched
for some leaves of manuscript to compare with the manu-
script of an anti-Russian article printed in a paper
at Cracow, which the police had got hold of, nobody
knew how. Gavalewicz remained in bed during the
search, while his little servant in the kitchen was cross-
examined about every one who came to the house ; now and
then the commissaire came into his bedroom and asked
for a cigarette ; or one of the subordinates came to tell
him he might be easy, the search had not revealed anything
bad. At last this man accepted three rubles, and the
company trudged off, the commissaire having asked for a
leaf of G.'s manuscript "as a keepsake." As if anybody
here were stupid enough to send articles to Cracow in
his own handwriting !
But this time the search was not of so mild a nature ;
it extended to the rooms of a student named Stefan Bein,
who was living opposite, on the same floor. After having
searched here until eight o'clock in the morning without
having found anything, the policeman approached him and
said: "What is your name again?" He told his name. —
" Stefan, you say? No, Stanislaw?" — ** My name is Stefan." —
" Then I beg you to excuse us. The search-warrant is made
out in the name of Stanislaw." Of course it was a lie, but
in this way they covered their vexation at having searched
in vain.
If we consider the real cause of all this to-do, the most
piteous image of the misery of Poland takes on a tragi-
comic aspect. Everything that day was set in motion by a
lady, who, being old and ugly, wanted at any price, even
the highest, to be talked of, and who, accordingly went in
for patriotism. She got the idea of arranging a mourning
mass with a procession. Her son is a student, and many
of his friends came to the house. One of them went
to a priest to buy a mass without the latter suspecting
anything. He and his fellow-priests, who now all are
deported, were as innocent as children. It was not until
144 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
he turned round during the mass and saw the church full
of people, among them two or three hundred students in
uniforms, that he guessed he had fallen into a trap. She
had done her best to collect people, and was utterly dis-
gusted at the cowardice of those who declared that they
preferred to stay at home.
In the papers it had been announced among the adver-
tisements, and not in the text, that the mass was to be cele-
brated in thankful memory of the escape from death of a
little girl, whose name was added ; but this name did not
strike the advertisement censor, though it at once caught the
attention of those familiar with the history of Poland, because
in 1794, when the revolt broke out, this child was by a
mere chance ridden down by a whole squadron of Cossacks,
and drawn forth unhurt from beneath the horses. Con-
sequently the readers understood that the mass was a com-
memorative festival, and on that account the church was
crowded.
From the church the procession went to the historical
house of the shoemaker Kilinski, in the old market-place.
Before it all took off their hats respectfully. But as if no
sordid element should be wanting in this miserable parody of
a political action, the house where the shoemaker lived a
hundred years ago has now become a house of ill-fame.
The inmates, who saw the procession approaching and
noticed the salutations, believing that this was some youthful
frolic or other, kissed their hands to the young people from
the windows, and laughed. Then the police made its raid
and arrested all of them.
So insecure do the Russians still feel that this foolish
and pathetically ridiculous demonstration alarmed them.
When Gurko who was abroad heard of it he was beside
himself with despair. " This proves," he cried, " that my
labour of ten years has been in vain." And he continued,
*' We are now forced to use measures of the utmost severity."
— " The more so," added one of his sons, " because Poland
is our bulwark against Europe." — " You ought to move your
bulwark a good way back," observed a stranger. He received
no answer.
VISITORS FROM WARSAW 145
And all this on account of a mere trifle ! Here in Poland
the sublime is often closely akin to the ridiculous. I could
not refrain from thinking of the finding of the corpse of
Joseph Poniatowski in the Elster. Very possibly the general
looked something like the equestrian statue by Thorwaldsen
in real life, though this made him considerably younger
than he was. But the corpse was not to be recognised.
Everything about him was a sham. He wore a wig ; his
moustaches and eyebrows were false, and being bent and
feeble, he was tightly laced in a corset. It was owing
to a valuable watch that he was recognised. Some days
ago I visited the little country house where he lived.
Its exterior consists wholly of secret exits and entrances.
He was a pasha of many tails, but a good soldier, at once
ridiculous and heroic.
When authors from Warsaw come to see us here in the
country, we have much difficulty with them. They cannot
bear to be away from the capital more than one day ; they
miss their friends and their amusements. But if one of them
stays from Saturday evening until Monday morning, it is
sufficient generally; in that time he tells us all that he knows.
The painters enjoy a stay in the country more ; we have
quite a little colony of them here at a time — three young
men and a lady.
At meals we do not talk much, as the servants under-
stand French ; but later, when we are taking coffee in the
library, or on the veranda, or when on rainy days we gather
in the winter-garden, where there is a fragrance as in Zola's
hothouse, and where not even a polar-bear's skin is wanting,
these visitors relate the adventures of the summer.
The painter Witoid says: "You have heard of my
gaining much money of late years by official orders. This
is true. I have had a large income, but it was dearly pur-
chased. I was staying in Paris, and for the first time in my
life I had exhibited a military picture in St. Petersburg (you
know I never paint anything else) when I received a telegram
summoning me, as the great personage you know of wished
to see me, I arrived. My picture was bought for 12,000
rubles, and I got an order for a battle-piece from the Russo-
K
146 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Turkish war ; the field of battle was in Roumania. I went
down there, I am sorry to say, to no purpose, the battle-
field being but a common meadow with some rising ground
far in the background. I took great pains with the picture
and delivered it. New telegram. The great personage
wished to have more soldiers in the picture. You who
know how great he is, understand that any objection was
impossible. I had to repaint the whole picture, to put more
soldiers into it, and it is now without any artistic value.
Then came a new order : Suworow crossing the Alps. That
is a period which I have at the ends of my fingers and
which I adore. I know every incident, every button on each
uniform. I studied the landscape, finished the picture and
delivered it. True to fact I put Suworow on a simple Cossack
horse ; he never rode any other, and changed every day.
The horse was brown, because this colour looked best against
the light background. New telegram ; they wanted to see
me ; demanded alterations. First a general came ; asked
why Suworow was on a brown horse and not, according to
tradition, on a white one ? I answered, ' Because tradition is
false; he always rode Cossack horses. The horse is brown
because it agrees with the colour-harmony of the picture.'
Audience ; new questions ; the same answer. Order to put
Suworow on a white horse. I obeyed, though it looks
damnable. New order : Storming of a Turkish redoubt,
1878. I executed it ; put the redoubt in the foreground, to
the right ; very picturesque ; turbans, caps, cannons, silk
banners, confusion. Russian columns advancing at the
double from the background. I deliver the picture. Tele-
gram : my presence demanded. I arrive ; they are much
pleased, but request, nevertheless, an alteration. The
Russians in the foreground, the miserable Turks in the
background ; quite another picture, you see. This, too, I
finished and got 15,000 rubles for it ; but it is a poor affair,
I am sorry to say."
The author Olgerd : " Do not believe that he troubles
himself on that account. He is like our painters in Munich ;
they do not care a fig for art if they only make money.
They paint a Lithuanian hunting-party in a snow scene. A
PAINTERS AND WRITERS 147
dealer who sees that the picture takes greatly, immediately
orders fourteen copies for America. They get 5000 marks for
each, and they paint the same Lithuanian hunting-party in a
snow scene all the year round."
" Alas, such is the case ! It is certainly not to be denied,"
says Madame Jozefa, "that I remember distinctly from my
long stay in Munich, and that is what I despise in our
painters, those in Munich as well as elsewhere."
"Don't you talk, Madame Jozefa. While we paint, you
do nothing but order new dresses from your dressmakers."
" Exactly, and it does me credit. It is never the same dress,
mind. You compose a picture, a book. This is impossible to
us. But we, too, are artists in our little way. We compose
dresses for ourselves. This is not only an occupation, but
free poetical composition. We use all our talent in com-
posing, in the blending of colours, in the harmony of the
whole, and we never repeat ourselves, not even after the
lapse of weeks."
Olgerd turned to me. " You saw me the other day
at Warsaw in the Caf6 Europeiski lunching with my editor
and a gentleman with a beard. Do you know who he was ?
The Russian censor, who has the superintendence of our
journal. I had invited him to lunch ; was obliged to do so.
So far we have got. So low we have fallen. The Polish
lion, once so feared, has become a poodle that can fetch
and carry."
"When you were last here," continues the young poet
Mikola, " we were allowed to take in the papers we chose in
the editorial office. Now there is a list of those allowed,
and they are not numerous. It is absolutely forbidden to
take in any Galician paper, as well as to reprint any article
from these. If some cutting of such a paper is found in
a registered letter addressed to us, which is opened at the
post-office, we have to pay a fine, even if we never asked to
have it sent. The person addressed, not the sender, is
punished. If it happens — and this may be the case — that
one of our correspondents in Galicia, out of laziness, in-
stead of communicating some piece of news in his own
words, uses expressions he has just read in a Galician paper,
148 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
then we are severely punished for his neglect and indif-
ference. His text is compared with the Austro - Polish
paper, similarities are found, and the storm breaks over
our heads. The fine for this mistake is from a thousand to
fifteen hundred rubles. And it may become worse ; we may
live to see the Polish tongue absolutely prohibited, as is now
the case with Little Russian ; it is forbidden now to speak
Polish in the street in Lithuania, Podolia, and Wolhynia.
Even now instruction is given in the Russian language in
the deaf and dumb institution here. And see how insipid
our authors become. You know as well as I our great
friend Alexander S., with his lyrical eyes and his radical
mouth. Compare his style of to-day with that of seven or
eight years ago, and you will perceive the decline. We have
fixed all our hopes on the great war, so long expected."
" We will say nothing of the war," says Olgerd ; " we
believe that it will come, but talking will not hasten it.
We have become a country which does not exist in the
present, but partly in olden times, partly, and ever, in the
future. In a novel I have described a family which lives
thus, never in the moment, always in future expectations.
This family is the Polish people. We have not grown
insipid, as Mikolaj urges, but we are obliged, more than
ever, to take refuge in paraphrases and allegories. You
have seen my last book, which has made a sensation, and
which is so beautifully illustrated : Polish Legends of the Holy
Virgin. It has had a great success. Certainly not because
it is in the least clerical. But you know our old designation
of the Holy Virgin : Virgo Mater, Regina Polonice. The Holy
Virgin in my book is Poland itself ; and this has been
understood by every one except the censors. It is more
necessary than ever to be cautious. Last year an opera
by Moszniuszko was performed here ; these were the words
of one of the arias : " I loved my mother more than any
other woman, since her death everything has ceased to be
attractive to me." The censors maintained that the word
" mother " would suggest the word " fatherland " to the
audience, and demanded that it should be changed into :
" I loved my aunt," &c. This winter Sudermann's Heintath
PUERILE TYRANNIES 149
{Home) was acted here, but the censorship changed the title.
As the word " home " {Oiczysna) may signify fatherland, it was
changed into Family Nest.
" It is this pettiness that is torturing us to death little by
little." These words we hear from the corner under the
palm trees, where Helena is lying on a couch, and point-
ing to the firmament studded with stars, she recites in a low
voice this little French verse —
" L'immensitd
Vierge de flamme
Berce mon ime —
Felicite 1
Mon fime clame
L'immensitd"
VII
A COMMON DOMESTIC OCCURRENCE, SIGNIFICANT
OF THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY
An occurrence, in itself insignificant, that took place yes-
terday evening, gave me a sudden insight into the position
of that part of the population which the Russians wish to
humiliate, and at the same time into the relations of the
different classes in various districts.
We went over to Piasecznica, where we had been invited
to supper. We were fourteen at table — members of the
family and a few friends. When one of the servants was
changing the plates he did it in so noisy a way that the
conversation was interrupted. Some of us thought that he
was drunk, others that he had been clumsily anxious to
turn the plates in such a manner that the gilt monogram
might come straight before each person, which he succeeded
in doing. However, we soon forgot this little incident and
continued our conversation ; but no sooner had we risen
from the table and entered the saloon than we heard loud
cries. The servant had evidently been seized with a fit of
alcoholic mania, and in the kitchen he had seized a long
knife with which he had attacked the doorkeeper. They took
the knife from him, but he continued to rave, cry, and
scream, rushing up and down the great entrance hall. Now
and then he stopped to light a cigarette, screamed and
menaced anew, and began to abuse the company in Russian.
(He had formerly been a servant in a Russian house.) His
demeanour was so alarming that it appeared unreasonable to
allow him to pass the night in the manor, and we all agreed
it would be well to send for the police. Of course the
nearest police station in the country is often far away, and
even at full trot it is impossible to reach this one in less
A MAD FOOTMAN 151
than half-an-hour ; in fact, it was two clear hours before the
policeman arrived.
It was necessary to walk up and down the entrance hall
to watch the madman, who was very restless : now he
would rush into one chamber, then into another. I called
one of the young men's attention to the fact that the crazy
fellow had approached a cupboard ; he answered that this
belonged to the servant himself, and, accordingly, he did not
look after him, as he ought to have done.
" Oh dear ! " he cried suddenly, " he has taken a revolver
out of the wardrobe ; it belongs to my brother, and he is
certain to have taken it from the pocket of his overcoat,
but don't mention it to the ladies."
They, however, soon observed that he was rushing to and
fro with the loaded revolver in his hand, and some of them
were very much frightened. Suddenly a report was heard,
and two maids, pale as death, darted into the room, crying,
" He has fired ! " We all left the room, some to stop him,
others to seek refuge.
At the moment when the room was thus deserted, I
saw the most beautiful of the daughters of the house
crossing it, and, as if quite justified in doing so, she kissed
the lips of a young man who stood leaning against the
mantelpiece, an incident which I note, partly because it
is the only immoral action I witnessed during my stay here,
partly because it proves that Polish women do not lose
their presence of mind in alarming circumstances, but even
understand how to turn a general confusion to account.
It was now made clear that the servant in question, who
had been in the manor but one month and six days, was not
only intractable, but altogether a dangerous person. The
maids related that on the foregoing Sunday, when all the
family were absent, he had explained to the other servants
that they ought to set the house on fire, and if possible let
every one perish in the flames. And again and again he had
reiterated such remarks.
The master of the house had sent for no less than five
of his peasants, that they might get hold of him ; but they
would not touch him. They looked unpleasantly sullen
152 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
and hostile. Of late they have been so seriously worked
upon by agitators who set them up against their lords and
their families that they look on with a sort of satisfaction
whenever anything goes wrong. The Russians take ad-
vantage of this mood and add fuel to the fire. We only
need to take a walk in the country to note the disposition
of the peasants. All the elder rustics greet us politely,
muttering the formal : *' Niech bendzie pochevalouyy," that is,
"He (Christ) be praised 1" to which the answer is, *^Na wieky"
(ever and ever). None of the young men ever salute us.
Even many years ago, when we were talking over the
possibility of a revolution in Russia, I said : "A fine revolution,
that will consist in the peasants burning down the manors
of the liberal proprietors." My opinion was once more
confirmed.
My proposal that we ourselves should lay hold of the
madman roused a surprise and displeasure very instructive to
me. " In that case the police will side against us, and we
shall be arrested — not he." However, as he was going to
fire again, the coachman, more energetic than the masters,
got the better of him, and though six persons had great
difficulty in holding him, they succeeded in tying his arms
behind his back. Then — for fear of the police — a good
soft feather-bed was brought for him to rest on, while he
continued to rage and curse.
A pause — and we heard the sounds of carriage-wheels : it
was the Russian police officer. He is an unmilitary figure,
in uniform, with spectacles, long, black, straight hair, a look
of stupidity, reserve, narrow-mindedness, pedantry. He asks
to hear the witnesses. But for fear of the vengeance of the
servant after his release, nobody will submit to be examined.
The doorkeeper was not aware of having been attacked with
a knife ; the maids had never heard any threats. The revolver
had been flung into the garden beneath some bushes, and
was not to be found in the darkness. It began to look as
if the proprietor, who had caused him to be bound, was the
only one guilty.
Money was offered to the police officer, but in a way
so imprudent and public that he most virtuously refused the
CLASS HATRED FOSTERED 153
bribe. Then he begins to examine the things found in the
pockets of the servant. A pocket-book, with cards bearing
the name of a Russian baroness — servants commonly steal
cards of their master's in order to be able to procure
goods from the shops — then apparatus for making bullets.
The policeman orders the captive to be set at liberty. The
latter rises and demonstrates. He won't leave the house
without three months' wages — though he has not served
more than one month and six days — and even though the
moment is not very well chosen to speak of wages, when he
has just been accused of a serious crime. The policeman
supports his request, and offers to drive him away with
him.
" He has his own reasons for wishing him to be well
furnished with money," my host says to me. " As soon as
they have got into the carriage, they will begin to bargain
as to how many rubles the policeman is to have to let the
other jump down and disappear in the darkness. In
half-an-hour he may come back and set the outhouses on
fire if, indeed, he does not venture to come into the
house."
To prevent this immediate escape, we feigned great
anxiety for the precious life of the policeman, alone in
the carriage with the unbound malefactor, and my host
ordered one of the most trustworthy of his people to accom-
pany him — for protection.
Of course the escape may nevertheless have taken place
to-day.
At length the carriage drove away, and I thought that
this episode which had disturbed us was ended and would
be soon forgotten. But when I returned to the saloon I
remarked to my great surprise that the ladies were quite in
despair : " But why are you in low spirits now, when all is
happily over ? "
" Nothing is over," said young Mme. Wieloglowska. " It is
easy for you to keep up your courage, you who are going
back to Denmark in a few days. In a month my parents
are going to Warsaw ; one of my sisters is going to Paris,
the other to Germany. Then my husband and I will be
154 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
alone here. It is certain that this rogue will avenge himself,
because we tied his arms. He will kill us, or set fire to
the house. These people always avenge themselves. Last
year my brother-in-law, who lived in the neighbouring manor,
found two horses in his field. He brought them to his
stables, and when the peasant came to fetch them the next
day he demanded fifty copecks as a penalty. The peasant
began to lament ; he was a poor man, he could not afford
to pay. ' You must pay this fine,' my brother-in-law said
to him ; ' you are no poor man ; you have eight horses,
and last month you sent four of them into my fields to
graze.' The peasant paid the fine ; but that very evening
he stole upon my brother-in-law with a pitchfork and killed
him from behind at one blow. He escaped with a trifling
punishment."
" Yes, they are dangerous, the surroundings in which we
live," said the owner of Skotniki. " Last autumn I was obliged
to send away a servant who had been stealing. After that
my house was twice set on fire. Every one knows who did
it, but I am unable to prove anything."
We stayed until two o'clock, but the whole company
was depressed, with the exception of the young lady of the
kiss, who appeared to retain a certain cheerfulness. But
people in love live in their own sphere.
When, on the way home, I thought over the incidents
of the evening, I could not help feeling how seriously the
political and social disproportion, caused by the universal
oppression had manifested itself in this miserable occurrence.
It recalled to my mind the state of Galicia in 1846, when
the peasants, to whom the proprietors addressed themselves,
to induce them to participate in the national revolt, seduced
by the falsehoods of the Austrian emissaries, rose, and
vented their rage upon the Polish nobility, who, as they
imagined, prevented the carrying out of the imperial regula-
tions for their benefit. Certainly the nobility must bear the
blame of much ancient injustice towards the rustics, or such
things could not be possible, and the old hatred would not
persist. Yet nowadays the proprietors are so nationalist and
so humane that it is the ignorance of the common people,
CLASS HATRED FOSTERED 155
the bestial condition maintained by the Russians, which is
to blame for all the misery and the hatred.
Under the pressure here, everything, even class differ-
ences, becomes a caricature of conditions elsewhere in
Europe.
However strange it sounds, in spite of the dissatisfaction
with the higher classes here in Poland, the social problem
does not affect the common people as profoundly as the
national question.
It is inconceivable that the class-struggle of this age
should leave Poland unaffected. But the ill-will against
the Russian is nevertheless a hundred-fold stronger than the
distrust of the master. The Russian is despised for not
being a Catholic ; the most abusive term a peasant can
use is Moskal (Muscovite).
Among the people of rank and the common people there
is only the economic distance ; but between the Pole and
the Russian rises the barrier of religion, the most powerful
factor in the life of this country.
VIII
NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PATRIOTISM-
CONCLUSION
Our young priest came yesterday to pay a visit to me, and
was kind enough to bring the lithographed exegesis of
the Old Testament, used in the lessons at the seminary in
Rome. It is in Latin, composed by a Jesuit, rather intelli-
gent, not without acuteness, but of course quite unscientific,
as its demonstration always tends to justify orthodoxy. It is
not in the market, and it was interesting to me to ascertain
on what principles instruction is carried on. However
young Father Usmanowicz may be, he has suffered several
disappointments. He considers it an injustice and an insult
that he has been appointed parish priest here. His ambi-
tion was a professorship at the priestly school in Warsaw,
and most likely he will manage to get it. He is refined
and intelligent enough, if not too intelligent.
We had a good talk on many topics. Firstly, on the
papers. Yesterday we had read aloud the last literary
articles by Casimir Zalewski and Boguslawski, the first
suggested by the panegyric upon Sardou, in the Figaro,
by Henry Becques, the second by a feuilleton on the utility
of criticism by Sarcey. The quantity of abstract out of date
aesthetics in the papers is certainly caused by the oppression
of the censorship. We spoke about the insane administra-
tion in this part of the country : to think that we are daily
obliged to send for our letters to B , and that the mes-
senger may never bring a registered letter, only a notice that
one is lying at the post-office for me. I am obliged to
fetch it myself, and I mentioned the postmaster's answer
to my complaint : " Bui no one from Krolewice has ever been
here to make my acquaintance. " Then we spoke of the price we
pay for the delivery of telegrams ; two rubles and twenty
156
POLISH TRAITS 157
copecks for each (more than the telegram itself), and they
are brought day and night. On Mme. Jozefa's birthday the
bell rang all night, and Franciszek had to pay seventy
rubles for telegrams, the interesting contents of which were :
" Cordial felicitations " !
We went out into the fields, sat down under a high
poplar, listened to the whistling of the wind in the leaves,
and our conversation took a more serious turn. From
petty troubles it turned on the great national martyrdom,
from the daily denial of liberty and justice, to the great
historical injustice, which every day brings forth its venomous
fruit anew.
Old Field-Marshal Moltke one day said to Kosczielski, that,
in a book he had read about Poland, he had been most
pleased by this sentence : " We do not love Poland as we
love Germany or France or England, but as we love free-
dom ;" a very curious remark from the lips of one whom
one would not suspect of loving freedom overmuch. I
feel myself that the essential view, pronounced in those
words, has determined my view of Poland from the begin-
ning. Every one who loves freedom must love the most
oppressed population in Europe from the bottom of his
heart ; he overlooks its faults, and its perfections captivate
him.
But what is the use of seeking the pluperfect? No one
with a properly developed psychological sense can overlook
the qualities which form the weakness of the Poles, and which
have been exaggerated by their exclusion from public life.
What their enemies call falseness is rather the result of
a life of unreality. They have a propensity to put forward
pretensions which are only half real. This propensity is in
no way akin to the coarse extravagance of the Southern
French, but is the outcome of a life that has to be satisfied
with words instead of deeds. An editor of a newspaper here,
who never writes an article, scarcely reads his papers, and
who can still less be looked upon as its leader, takes a naive
and sincere pleasure in hearing himself mentioned as the
editor, and he talks gravely, without any deliberate intention
of lying, of his great work with the paper, his struggles
158 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
with the censorship, &c. A little party of patriots has
assembled every fortnight for twelve years ; every Thursday
they rescue their fatherland by ingenious plans and com-
binations, and hardly perceive themselves that all remains
as it was.
I said to the priest: "The Poles are perhaps the only
people on earth who do not claim common sense as a
national quality. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Italians,
Danes are convinced that common sense reigns among them.
The Poles do not believe this. They know too well that they
never have been able to take practical advantage of any his-
torical situation. They are not wanting in knowledge of
themselves."
He answered, " In our country, strangely enough, the
women seem essentially different from the men."
" As far as I can judge," I said, " the women of the
higher classes have a great deal of self-control and but little
temperament. The character of coldness, which Edmond
About assigned them in verse once, when he sighed in vain
for a Polish lady, is still very appropriate. Strange as it may
sound, I think that the Englishwoman Maud in Paul Bourget's
Cosmopolis, the placid, warm-hearted woman whom no agita-
tion is able to throw off her balance, is a type often to be
met with in Poland."
We had continued our talk about half-an-hour, sitting
under the tree, when we saw Franciszek, Madame Jozefa,
and Madame Halina approach ; they sat down beside us on
the grass and joined in our conversation. It turned on the
following topic.
As there are in Poland no Polish officers, politicians, or
high functionaries, woman's favour, which in other countries
falls to the lot of men who are prominent in some way or
other, here nearly always becomes the share of authors and
artists. Almost in every town in the world there are some
few men in whom all the women who have no other object
for their feelings delight. Such a man is a kind of a pawn-
broker's shop for women's hearts. In Poland Henryk Sien-
kiewicz is such a pawnbroker's shop. Though about fifty
years of age and by no means elegant, his reputation has made
PATRIOTISM OF POLISH WOMEN 159
him the man about whom the women rave. It is so much
the more curious, as he has never written a line of verse.
But when he arrives at one of the PoHsh watering-places in
the Tatra mountains, or when he enters a drawing-room in
Warsaw, all the women are electrified, from grandmothers
to schoolgirls. For the rest, he does not give them any
encouragement.
Even his tragi-comic matrimonial fiasco which took place
this year has not diminished his prestige. He married a
second time, a young girl of eighteen of the highest aris-
tocracy. No pains were spared to make this marriage an
event. The couple were married in the cathedral of Warsaw
by a cardinal ; the pope sent a letter of congratulation. All
the aristocracy of Poland met in the church. But only two
weeks after the marriage the young bride took refuge with
her mother and would not return to her husband. All the
women in Poland condemn her behaviour.
But still more characteristic than their hero-worship is
their enthusiastic and passionate patriotism. No feeling in
them is more serious than this. They are capable of any
sacrifice for patriotic aims, and prove their sincerity by their
actions.
The other day it happened in this house that a Polish
proprietor who had been brought up in England hazarded
the remark that patriotism was nowadays greatly lacking
in Poland. The gentlemen contradicted him, but the ladies
— it was quite a spectacle to see them. With flaming eyes
and blazing cheeks they stood round him, and their voices
trembled in refuting him. In a perfect fury one of the
youngest ladies exclaimed : " I promised you to take you
home in my carriage, but now you may go on foot."
We soon agreed that if this flame were not burning in
the hearts of the women the enemies of Poland would long
ago have got the upper hand. For no people in the world
has such oppression to endure, such manifold persecution
to sufTer. They are living under conditions which allow every
measure taken against them to be easily carried out, and
every evil person who concocts hostile or mean plans against
them has a wide field for his energy. It very seldom happens.
i6o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
as it did a year ago, that such plots are revealed, so that
a peep is opened into things which would otherwise remain
unpunished.
A student called Hendigery, who was studying at the
University six months ago, and who had made up his mind
to make a career for himself, began to write now and then
in the papers, and then went to Cracow with good intro-
ductions. He was very handsome, very active ; one of those
scoundrels who always have the game in their own hands
because simpletons believe that they are only to be met with
in bad novels. He posed in Cracow as a political victim of
the state in Russian Poland, met with sympathy everywhere;
after a month's acquaintance, he married the beautiful
daughter of a professor in easy circumstances. But im-
mediately after his arrival he had commenced a corres-
pondence with the police authorities in St. Petersburg ; had
declared himself able to produce proofs against all the
remarkable and leading men in Warsaw, implying that these
proofs were more due to his own sagacity than to any im-
prudence or to plots of the persons in question. His
advances were gladly received. With a false passport he
made a wedding trip to St. Petersburg — going ostensibly
to the south ; had an audience with the chiefs of the secret
police, and made all necessary preparations with them.
As soon as he had returned he began to frequent the
society of the miners in Galicia, apparently out of interest
in the labour question, but in reality to procure dynamite.
He got a quantity sufficient for his purpose. He made 150
small parcels of dynamite, which he addressed to 150 men in
Warsaw, pointed out to him by the Russian authorities.
These small parcels he sewed up in the overcoat of a man
whom he had engaged to carry them across the frontier.
In the meantime the Austrian police had noticed the
strange conduct of the man. They knew that he had gone
southwards and immediately after to St. Petersburg. They
knew of and watched his visits to the mines, and they deter-
mined to interfere. His messenger was arrested before he
reached the Russian frontier. A domiciliary visit brought
to light a number of letters and telegrams from St. Petersburg
THE KROZE OUTRAGE i6i
which, although cautiously composed, betrayed the intimate
relations of the political victim and his persecutors. A trial
was set on foot. Only five weeks after the wedding his wife
learned whom she had married. Of course the Russians
repudiated Hendigery, denying all knowledge of him. He
was sentenced to three years' hard labour, which he has not
yet expiated. It was a master-stroke that ended in disaster.
It is evident that the emperor is not always aware of the
way in which the system of government in Poland works ;
this was proved when the massacre and the knouting took
place on the occasion of the seizure of the church at Kroze
by the Russians. A Russian princess who was abroad read
about this in foreign newspapers, and sent a cutting to the
Czar. The latter, not believing in the exactitude of the
account, despatched his then favourite, the Prince Kan-
takuzen, to examine into the matter. But it happened that
Orezewski, the governor-general of the district of Kroze,
proved to be an old friend of Kantakuzen. These two spent
a couple of pleasant days together, whereupon the prince
returned to St. Petersburg with the information that the
whole affair had been ridiculously exaggerated. All that had
happened was that a few peasants, who would not yield to
the police, had got broken noses. And thus the matter was
hushed up. But the same princess, who was irritated at the
contradiction, procured proofs of the truth of the account,
which she had sent to the Czar. Orezewski received his dis-
missal and Kantakuzen was exiled. He went to Paris, where
he died.
It was a splendid evening ; the sun was setting behind
dark clouds in the horizon, leaving a luminous golden border
round the cloud. No sound from the fields except that of
the partridges flushed by Madame Jozefa's two blundering
poodles, Caro and Finka. It was my last evening, and I
was glancing round the country, which I should not see
again for a long time.
Franciszek said : " Do come again ! You can't be bored
with a Ubrary of 8000 volumes, and you may tell me what
books you want for next year and I will procure them."
Madame Jozefa said : " Do not forget us, but come back !
L
i62 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Now we have known each other for ten years and our friend-
ship has grown steadily. Do not return for the sake of books,
but for our sakes. Nowhere have you better friends."
The young priest said, smiling : " Come back, and we
will again defend the Jesuits when old M. Rostropowicz
attacks them, and again discuss the book of Ecclesiastes and
agree that all is not vanity."
Mme. Halina said : " Come again ; give us lectures in the
town hall, and we will attend in crowds and applaud with
all our hearts. Do not forget us."
And the wind whistling in the high poplars said : " Do
not forget us ! All Europe has forgotten us. Do not forget
this people, so winning and so richly endowed, which feels
so deeply, and dreams so vividly, and loves so profoundly.
Do not forget this earth which has absorbed so much noble
blood, this country, forsaken by Gods and scorned by men.
Do not forget us 1"
FOURTH IMPRESSION
1899
LEMBERG
I
In a speech made by the master of the University in the
capital of Galicia to me, he said : " You are our guest, but
we have not invited you in order to influence your opinions.
We certainly hope that you will write about us ; but we do
not ask for praise. We only desire the truth. Tell the truth
about us, however the words may sound, and we shall be
thankful to you."
To be able to speak the truth one must know it. But I
do not suppose that I myself know the truth about Austrian
Poland. If one is at a disadvantage in learning the real
state of a country when one arrives as an unnoticed stranger,
and has little opportunity of talking to any one but waiters,
curators, and a few fellow-travellers, the conditions are hardly
more favourable when one visits a country as an invited guest,
received at all stations, having one's day mapped out before-
hand from morning till well after midnight, scarcely alone
for one hour, presented to 400 persons in one day, and
handed about like a parcel sent by post. In a few weeks
one sees more than in a whole year under ordinary con-
ditions, but it is impossible to check one's impressions.
Every one knows how strong is the feeling of being a
stranger in a country, where one passes through the
towns without knowing any one, and sees all doors closed
to one ; but it is almost worse to find all doors open, and to
be known before having made the acquaintance of any one.
One needs the rest necessary to make observations, and it
takes time to really know people.
If the first condition of speaking the truth is to know it,
the next certainly is that one should be able to speak without
fear or favour. This is impossible to any one who has been
•65
i66 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
brought into close contact with all the leading personages in
a country, and who has met with the most perfect hospitality
from them. But this was my case here. My stay in Galicia in
the autumn of 1898 was one uninterrupted succession of
public and private festivities. Nay, even friends of mine who
had come to Lemberg to visit me were invited everywhere,
even in private circles.
My stay in Galicia had this great interest to me, that here
for the first time I saw the Poles as a free people. I know
a part of Prussian Poland, and I know some of the leading
men in Posen rather intimately. With Russian Poland,
I may say, I am fairly familiar, after four different visits.
But never before had I had an opportunity of observing
Polish life developing under self-government without any
foreign pressure, with the rights of public meeting and of
freedom of speech. At least I have here seen enough to
prove that the Poles do not lack the ability to shape their
life as an independent people. It is not the fault of the
population that Galicia is a poor country. The faults of
the Poles, among others, for instance, a certain irre-
sponsibility, are not characteristic here ; these are more
pronounced in old free states, where the capacity for
patriotic sacrifice which distinguishes the Poles is much
more scarce, and, even if strong prejudices still obtain
among them, these in themselves do not paraly.se the in-
telligence or the honesty of the people. These prejudices
have gathered strength from historical conditions less favour-
able here than elsewhere.
The Poles, as I have said elsewhere, have shown me more
kindness and affection than any other people in the world.
As a critic, therefore, I am bound to be on my guard against
the pleasant promptings of gratitude.
It is the more difficult for me to be impartial that I
avowedly come to my task with friendly prepossessions. I
love the Poles, not only because their fate has been so sad,
and the historical injustice they suffer is so great, but because
something in their entity strongly attracts me. Now and
then I have been praised in Poland, because, while others
do homage to the great people of the earth, I have preferred
JULIAN KLACZKO 167
to court misfortune. But it is not only the calamity of
Poland which has won me to the land and people. Among
the developments of the human plant, manifold as they are,
the perfect blossom of the Slavonic race is the flower that
most enchants me.
II
At Cracow, Wavel fell short of my expectations. Certainly
I visited the cathedral under most unfavourable conditions,
after its complete restoration ; but this was not so much the
cause of my disappointment as the fact that I had hoped for
and expected much more original architecture. The archi-
tect, who had carried out the restorations and very amiably
showed me all over the building, immediately pointed out
to me the most beautiful chapel, built by Florentine artists,
and said — and certainly he is right — that it was not much
inferior to similar chapels in Italy. But I, who a few
months before had travelled through Italy from Syracuse to
Verona, had expected something very different in Poland.
On the other hand, I was glad to see that the two monu-
ments by Thorwaldsen at Wavel looked extremely well.
The most original work of art in Cracow is certainly
Matijko's rich and glowing decoration in the chancel of the
Church of St. Mary.
I paid a visit to the very original old invalid, Julian
Klaczko. Stretched on his bed, he looked, with his thick,
fair moustache, like a Pole of the seventeenth century,
though he has Jewish blood in his veins, a proof among
many others of how strongly surroundings modify and
transform. He, who in 1848 was an ardent revolutionist,
has, affected perhaps by the air of Cracow, become more
and more conservative. He praised me, because in one of
my books 1 had evinced so much sense of the national
importance of the Catholic Church. I endeavoured to
cheer the sick man a little by telling him about a certain
diplomatic dinner in Rome six months before, at which,
when his name was mentioned, all the men present, from
i68 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
the Swedish Ambassador to the Turkish charge -iV affaires,
had proved to be as familiar with his works as myself,
though I know almost everything he has ever written. Of
course his position in Austria in 1867 as Secretary to Beust,
his part in the settlement between Austria and Hungary, as
well as his book, The Two Chancellors (Bismarck and Gorts-
chakoff), have contributed to keep him before the eyes of
the diplomatist.
Melancholy reigned in the sick room. He did not ap-
pear to have much hope of recovery. I owed him gratitude
for the benefit I had derived from his studies on Krasinski.
However, it appeared as if national feeling had repressed
and limited his liberalism. At last all other thoughts were
merged in the sad reflection that I was not likely to see
him again.
In the evening the Arts Club arranged a festival for me.
The old Kossak, the patriarch of the painters, took me to
dinner, and in a French, unearthed from his youthful recol-
lections of student life in Paris, he made a very cordial
speech to me. He said among other things : " Here you
see of what use the repression of language is ! From our
childhood we have been forced to learn German, to speak
German, and what is the consequence ? that we all speak
French to any stranger." I was elected honorary member
of the Letters and Arts Club, and Kossak promised to
decorate the certificate of membership for me. This was
not to be — a month later he was dead. He was an excel-
lent animal painter ; he had studied the character and
movements of the horse as no other artist has done ; his
more famous son, with his richer dramatic talent, is sure to
preserve the name from oblivion in Poland.
Among those present at the festival, the young Professor
of Literary History at the University, Ziedochowski, was
prominent. He is a refined and conscientious scholar of the
highest intelligence ; for the rest, a devout Cathohc. The
young Polonised Frenchman, Paul Rongier, French Lec-
turer at the University, was the only one in the circle who
spoke perfect French. He combined French charm with
Polish cordiality. Then the musician, Bielicki, played ; a
FRIENDS FROM WARSAW 169
handsome and lively man, who had been in Copenhagen
as the guest of Gade, and had studied Scandinavian popular
melodies. He played alternately charming compositions by
Chopin, and Swedish popular dances, until a fugitive refined
spirit of music and enthusiasm, mutual affection and frater-
nity was diffused in the hall. The air was fragrant with
happiness while we were together.
When I got out of the carriage, which had brought
me from the hotel at Cracow to the railway station, I was
received by a little party of men, the chief participants in
the festival of the evening before, who, with the old painter
Kossak at their head, had appeared to take leave of me.
But after the exchange of a few words, I saw with astonish-
ment some familiar figures from Warsaw, whom I had cer-
tainly not expected to meet with, hurrying down the high
broad staircase from the station.
They were Falad, the renowned painter, the poet Maryan
Gawalewicz, and my intimate friends and entertainers during
my different sojourns in Russian Poland — Jan and Madame
jozefa. "You here?" I exclaimed, surprised. "We are
going with you," replied Jan. Falad had only come down
to make arrangements about a portrait, which could not be
painted on account of my hurried departure. Gawalewicz
embraced me, Madame Jozefa shook hands with me.
In the train our intimate conversation soon became
difficult. People walked along the corridor to see the man
expected at Lemberg. While we were at table in the dining-
car at one of the stations an old gentleman came in, and,
with touching courtesy, handed me a volume of poetry. At
Przemysl a reporter entered, a little, good-natured, but neces-
sarily intrusive fellow, who was commissioned to interview
me for a Lemberg paper. One of my friends was kind
enough to answer on my behalf.
There was a swarm of people at the station when we
arrived in the evening. How strange is it to arrive thus, and
to be greeted by perfect strangers ! One is surrounded,
saluted, shaken hands with, and is scarcely able to discern
the faces or catch the names hastily mentioned. In the
waiting-room I was welcomed by the chairman of the Literary
170 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
and Artistic Union ; then the brilHant vice-president of the
Journalists' Union addressed me ; and then Professor August
Balasits and M. Antony Wereszczynski drove me to the hotel,
where I found a grand apartment on the first floor at my
disposal. On the tables were lying invitations for several
days, visiting-cards with my address in Lemberg, and many
letters.
At a long supper-table in the restaurant, Madame Jozefa,
handsome, large-eyed, and bashful as a young girl, presided
as the only lady. Members of the Sobieski Festival Com-
mittee dropped in, and the little reporter from the train also
sat down to take notes.
Ill
The next day I made the acquaintance of most of the
persons whom I was to meet so often later — the Mayor of
Lemberg, Dr. Godzimir Malachowski, who had invited me,
an amiable, cultured lawyer, elected to his position by the
suffrages of his fellow-townsmen, and well worthy of re-
election ; the Governor of Galicia, Count Leon Peninsky,
formerly Professor of History at the University, a man of
science, who some years ago was requested to assume the
duties of governor, none being better fitted for them by social
position, fortune, and commanding qualities ; and the great
Marshal, Count Stanislaw Badeni, a quiet, satirical man of
the world. He is the brother of the former Austrian Prime
Minister, who excited so much discontent among the German
population of Austria by his regulations decreeing equal
rights to all languages spoken in the Emperor's dominions.
Like his brother, he is pronouncedly Polish in type.
Among many others whom I visited the first day, I must
mention one of the best men of Poland, whose name
is everywhere pronounced with veneration, Prince Adam
Tapiecha ; in his mingled simplicity, refinement, and geniality
he is the typical grand seigneur. During the course of my
conversation with him, I first learned on what bad terms the
Poles and Ruthenians of Galicia live together. The great
GALICIAN NOBLES 171
people of Poland often complain of the fact that young
Ruthenians, whom they support and place, as soon as they
achieve independence, become hostile to the Poles and ally
themselves with the Russians. This is very astonishing,
because in Russia itself the Little Russian language is so
utterly repressed that nowhere within the frontiers of the
country are books allowed to be published in it. I was
soon to learn, however, on the other hand, what depths of
bitterness the Ruthenians nourish against the Poles.
Another aristocrat I became acquainted with, who has
devoted his whole life to patriotic objects, was the old Count
Dzieduszycki, now an invalid, almost completely paralysed,
and a prisoner to his couch. He has, at his own expense,
erected a national museum of another kind, but of equal
importance with the Czartoryski Museum at Cracow. It
contains specimens of the whole flora and fauna of Poland,
and is, besides, ethnographic, illustrating the customs, in-
dustries, and costumes of Poland, in every province and at
all periods.
I also paid a visit to another gentleman, less wealthy,
but no less refined and cultured. M. Wladislaw Lozinski
has made a very valuable collection of weapons ; he pos-
sessed many mementoes of the great period of Poland ;
they may not all be quite genuine, perhaps, but at any rate
many of them are relics. He and his wife — who, though
no longer young, has preserved that charm which is the
secret of the Polish women — have one of the most hand-
somely furnished homes in Lemberg, half dwelling and half
museum.
IV
During my stay several commemorative festivals were
held in honour of Sobieski (King Jan IIL as he is called in
Polish), whose equestrian statue was to be unveiled. At the
function held the evening before this event my hosts sang,
as an attention to their guest, the Danish song : IVhy ts the
Vistula swelling? Music and words are by Danes. The
172 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
words had been translated, and the song was now given
for the first time. It was most beautifully sung by a male
choir. Immediately after the choir struck up the national
anthem by Ujejski : Z dymen pozasow, which was undeniably
better understood and better known ; every one listened
standing. I am bound to say that the Danish song by
Gade, though much better executed, did not please the
Polish public very much. Their taste is rather for the slow
and monotonous.
It was a beautiful sunshiny day when the Sobieski festival
was inaugurated by Divine service in the cathedral. The
church was crowded, and the whole " Szlachta " had made
their appearance in their national costume, which outside
Russian Poland is worn on all solemn occasions.
The Governor, as representative of the Government, was
the only person in the costume of our own days. This
masquerade is in harmony with the love of ancient times
and things proper to the Poles ; and it was surprising to see
how becoming the magnificent old costumes were to the
handsome, vigorous, manly figures, whose regular features
preserve the hereditary stamp of the race.
A Jesuit priest delivered the historico-national speech in
memory of Sobieski. Then we walked in procession from
the church to the square, where the statue was waiting in its
coverings. The sun was shining, the enormous square was
crowded with people ; all balconies and windows were also
occupied. With lofty and masterly eloquence he empha-
sised the importance of the fact that the capital of Galicia
had erected a monument of the most beloved King of
Poland on Polish ground.
At the morning festival in the town hall a dejeuner
was given ; only a dozen people, specially invited, were
seated. I had the curious honour of finding myself at
the same table with three archbishops, a complement not to
be met with anywhere out of Rome, save in Lemberg. Un-
GALICIAN SAVANTS 173
doubtedly they were most holy men, but if so, their exterior
was deceptive — and they ate ! One might have supposed
they had fasted for a week before.
The other members of the clergy I met were much more
refined. The Jesuit who had spoken in the church sought me
out in the evening at the Mayor's reception, and thanked me
for refuting the vulgar prejudices that exist against the Jesuits,
for whom I have always had a weakness.
I was specially touched when Father Gnatowski, one of
the most influential of the Galician clergy, spoke to me with
warmth and kindness. In one of the best houses of the
town he made me a speech, concluding with this expression
thrice repeated : " / bless you." As a proof of how perfectly the
Catholic clergy is informed of all that even remotely con-
cerns the Church, I must mention that Father Gnatowski
was thoroughly acquainted with some remarks I had several
years ago addressed to Pere Lange, after having corrected
some particulars in a lecture delivered by him at the Danish
Students' Club. Father Gnatowski was further familiar with
an article published by me in a Danish paper, in connection
with the conversion of a Danish lady.
VI
Here, as in Russian Poland, I made friends with some
of the best specimens of the scientific Poles, well-informed,
sensible men, refined, discreet, and brimming over with
cordiality. The amiable and intelligent Balasitz, who
during my stay here devoted as much of his time to me
as I wished ; the fine animated old Dr. Antoni Malecki,
famous for his labours as the historian of Polish literature ;
and the cultivated professor of medicine. Dr. Ziembiecki,
who has studied in France, and who wears the red
ribbon of the Legion of Honour as a token of his sojourn
there. I also met with much learning and intelligence in
Galicia among unknown people. A young man, who had
never been in Denmark, had taught himself Danish, and pos-
sessed a copy of Danish Popular SongSj by Svend Gruntvig, with
174 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
which he was thoroughly conversant, and which he greatly
admired.
Among the artists I was most attracted by Jan Styka,
who has decorated the great reception-room of the town
hall with an enormous painting, the subject a kind of vast
synthesis of Polish history. He had just exhibited in Lem-
berg his excellent panorama of the battle of Raclavice,
painted m conjunction with the younger Kossak. It
represents the action in which Tadeusz Kosciuszko, on the
4th of April 1794, beat the Russian troops with his little
army ; the militia of Cracow, peasants, only armed with
scythes, decided the day by an assault upon the Russian
artillery and the capture of their guns. I share Styka's
enthusiasm for this dictator of Poland, who was certainly one
of the greatest and most simple-minded men in whom a
people has seen itself personified at its best. What a part
he has played even in the imagination of foreign nations
we may learn from such a book as that of Robert Arnold on
Kosciuszko in German literature, which contains an over-
whelming bibliography of German works alone dealing with
Kosciuszko. It makes a strange impression to see youthful
drawings by him in the Czartoryski Museum in Cracow,
executed in the most careful and elegant eighteenth-century
style, among them a symbolical drawing of the dominions of
his protector, the then Prince Czartoryski, entitled Le Fleuve
du Tendre, and one of the Temple of Honour. For the rest,
he certainly had in him the sacred fire which of all his
other countrymen perhaps Mickiewicz alone possessed.
Styka's studio was very interesting, and his artistic talent
manifests itself best in his surroundings, which reflect his
own generous, ardent, and enthusiastic nature.
Among journalists, I met of course with all types, from
the highest to the lowest. The cool, patronising, intrusive,
calmly insolent, eternally inquisitive journalist is always an
odious personage, and perhaps especially so in Poland,
where he becomes the more intolerable, that he bears an
ancient name, is admitted into aristocratic circles, and knows
how to make himself dreaded by the men, and indispensable
to the women, whom he supplies with news and scandal.
RUTHENIAN HOSTILITY 175
But others I met were cultivated, conscientious men of the
highest breeding, as, for instance, the excellent staff of
collaborators of Slowo Polsie. A few have a surprising gift
for the instantaneous rendering of a personality or a situa-
tion, an accomplishment which no Danish journalist pos-
sesses to the same degree. The accuracy of Galician
journalism is also extraordinary. The press as a whole
does its very utmost to obtain genuine and original informa-
tion. Thus one day I was much surprised to see in one
of the papers here a perfectly accurate account of a speech
which I had made at a torchlight procession in the year
1891.
Only a single section of the press became unfavourably
disposed towards me, the Ruthenian. It happened thus :
A long time before my arrival I had received an invitation
from the Ruthenians in Lemberg to an entertainment they
proposed to give. One day a deputation of three Ruthenians
appeared, of whom Professor Michael Hruxhevski was the
spokesman, while another, who now and then put in a word,
was the well-known agitator and journalist, Jan Franco. These
gentlemen asked me to attend a lecture on Little Russian
Literature at their club, and be present at the ensuing festi-
vity. I thanked them and accepted. But when in the course
of the day 1 mentioned this invitation to my Polish friends,
I discovered that I had made a mistake. They exclaimed
that it was impossible I could so far disregard their feelings
as to associate with these men, who were their worst enemies,
and the sworn foes of the Polish nationality. Though
Hruxhevski had been placed by the Poles at their University,
he had turned against them immediately after his appoint-
ment. The next day an article in a Ruthenian paper was
read to me, in which Jan Franco eagerly made use of me
against the Poles, making the statement that / had been the
first person to describe Mickiewicz as the poet of treason
(a description he had merely repeated), and hinting that the
Poles as a nation approved of treachery. He gave a garbled
version of my words, lending them a meaning exactly the
reverse of what I had intended, in order to carry his point.
I at once sent a letter to the Ruthenians, couched in the
176 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
most polite and cautious terms, in which I explained that,
knowing nothing of the merits of the case, I sided with
neither party in the controversies between Poles and
Ruthenians. I did not allow myself to judge in the matter,
but as I had been invited to Galicia by the Poles and
received by them, and as they had given me to understand
that they would consider it a kind of treachery if I attended
the Ruthenian meeting, I was obliged to beg to be excused.
I would not, I hinted in conclusion, risk the appearance of
sympathising with treason. Henceforward Franco attacked
me every day, and he is not yet weary of this work, for a
long time after he reprinted his Ruthenian articles against
me in German in Austrian periodicals, and quoted with
exultation some disconnected observations of an unfavour-
able kind, made by certain Galician landowners on one of
the types in a book of mine.
It remains to say a few words of the ladies in Lemberg,
to whom I owe such a debt of gratitude. Even before my
arrival they had prepared the splendid framed address,
which was handed me at the Sobieski Festival, with
2000 signatures. It seemed to me that they appeared
less in society than was the case in Warsaw. Most of the
entertainments to which I had been invited were men's
parties. The town being smaller than Warsaw, a more
rigorous conventionality reigns there. The social differences
are more marked. The ladies of rank are addressed with
their titles, which, in my opinion, is opposed to good taste,
and always sounds rather provincial. Perhaps some of these
grandes dames showed a certain lack of consideration for
others in their speech. Not that I personally had the least
reason to complain ; all showed me the most exquisite
courtesy. But sometimes I heard sharp remarks flung in
the faces of men, who were obliged to listen smiling, because
everything is allowed to the great lady.
For the young unmarried women the rules of society are
as severe as in France. The young girl is never allowed to
go out alone by day or by night, and I heard more than
one passionately envy the girls of the North, of whose
independence they had heard.
GYMNASTIC ASSOCIATIONS 177
The feminine type in Galicia is very attractive, if not so
beautiful as in Russian Poland ; the race is decidedly less
pure. But here as everywhere on Polish ground now and
then one meets a young woman so charming, that one feels
a kind of sadness at the thought of never seeing her again.
Among the ladies I met, several showed a surprising
knowledge of art ; a few even knew all the less famous
painters and paintings of value in the Italian towns that are
rarely visited by the ordinary traveller. Others, less travelled,
were nevertheless keenly interested in all manifestations of
art. I should like to mention Madame Mlodnicka, once the
betrothed of the famous dead painter, Grottger, and her
daughter, Madame Maryla Wolska, one of the most accom-
plished women I ever met, with a surprising talent for sculp-
ture as well as for music and poetry. In a Polish family,
that after 1863 lived long in Syria and Mesopotamia,
because the father, a highly accomplished man, had been
obliged to emigrate after the revolt, I noted in the beautiful
daughters a most attractive mingling of Polish and exotic
characteristics. The young girls spoke Arabic together as
fluently as they spoke Polish and French.
VII
An invitation, which I had great pleasure in accepting,
was to attend an ordinary lesson in the afternoon in the
Lemberg section of the gymnastic society, SokoL This
society is one of the most original of Polish institutions.
Sokol includes all Polish towns outside Russian Poland,
and all towns in the new as well as in the old world
(Chicago as well as Berlin), where a large number of
Poles are living. In Galicia alone the union has 18,000
members, who are considered by all Poles the flower of
the national army of the future. With so much enthu-
siasm are gymnastics practised here, that youths and men of
sixty perform their exercises side by side from the most
elementary to the most difficult, such as with us are only
attempted by professionals. For instance, they were able to
M
178 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
remain suspended by their heels on a trapeze and swing
round in the air. In the large hall all sorts of exercises,
hygienic and athletic, were performed at the same time by
different groups.
An elderly gentleman came to greet me ; he had been
twenty years in Siberia after 1863. "It is a calumniated
land," he said, smiling.
The speech addressed to me when I entered the hall, by
the President of the Sokol of Lemberg, Dr. Dzizelzielewicz,
I am able to quote ; it is the only one of which a copy was
handed to me. It is interesting, I think, on account of the
manly spirit by which it is inspired : —
" Friendship in prosperity is an easy thing, in adversity a
most rare one. Only men with their hearts in the right
place have a sincere sympathy with the feeble, and boldly
side with them.
" I pronounced a word which ought not to be heard within
these walls. We are weak this day, it is true, but if we only
deserved compassion, a man so clear-sighted, truthful, and
far-seeing as our guest, familiar as he is with our aims, would
not have shown the deep interest in us that he has manifested.
He looked for and probably found in us something more
than an unhappy people worthy of his pity. He sought
and found those, who, in their misfortune and in spite of
their misfortune, bear in mind their national dignity, and
whose aim it is to throw off their weakness as soon as
possible.
" His visit to us to-day proves this. He comes to us not
in order to listen to words of gratitude, not to attend a
festivity, but to see our daily work, to know and to judge of
this work.
"Your purpose in coming here makes our welcome doubly
warm and affectionate. I greet you in the name of the
oldest Gymnastic Union. Among our people, once so rich
in health and energy, bodily vigour has of late been a
plant slow to take root and to develop. All the more is it
essential to cherish this health and energy of the people, to
cultivate and develop the body as carefully as we tend,
culivate, and develop the mind.
SOKOL
179
" After long and toilsome work of almost thirty years, the
history of which is outside the scope of my present remarks,
we have advanced so far that our unions number about one
hundred ; seventeen of them have their own gymnasia, and
— we consider this the most important point of all — all
these unions are branches of one parent guild, which
forms an independent superior union having its seat in
Lemberg, and its rules sanctioned by the Austrian Ministry
of the Interior. Such a society also exists in the German
Empire and in the United States. The aim of this fellow-
ship is the homogeneity and firmness of our organisation,
and we look to it to ensure the exact fulfilment of our aims.
" I may be allowed perhaps to say a few words about
these aims. Every nation, and more especially a nation
such as ours, needs for its development health, ability, per-
severance, unity, and discipline. Our efforts must rest on a
national basis, though they have nothing to do with politics,
and do not involve enmity towards other nations. We want
to be a sound and able people, that we may be able to
hold fast our privileges, and fulfil our social duties. Natural
as this is, there are many who do not choose to understand
it, and many who deliberately misrepresent it in order to
injure our cause.
" You, most honoured master, who have come with a
sincere wish to learn the truth, will be able to form a just
and impartial notion of our efforts. We hope that you will
make the truth known wherever it may be necessary."
Listening to this speech, I was deeply impressed by the
eagerness the enemies of the Poles have shown to see in this
extensive organisation of men of a strong and capable race
from early youth to old age, a preparation for rebellion.
VIII
Most fatiguing was life in Lemberg ! The day before I
had given a lecture in the town hall in aid of a proposed
statue of Mickiewicz, and it had given me great pleasure,
partly because on this occasion I met Prince Czartoryski
i8o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
— and I had never before spoken with a Czartoryski — partly
because I was able to present the town with a handsome
sum of money, as all the tickets were sold at high prices.
Early in the morning I was obliged to submit to be
interviewed for the Petersburg journal, Kraj, and to do my
best to give evasive answers to adroit questions. During
the interview the young author arrived who was to introduce
me to no less than three clubs of young people, two of men
and one of women. I had unfortunately promised to meet
them on another occasion, and had forgotten the invitation.
Even now, I was rather late, but they had been patiently
waiting. All the ladies were seated, and the young men
were standing in groups around. There was hardly room
to pass, and here as elsewhere in Lemberg, even in the
town hall, the ventilation was very bad.
It was one of the most remarkable meetings I have
attended in Poland. Only on a few memorable occasions
in Warsaw have I ever seen so many young people
assembled. It was a representative audience of the in-
tellectual and advanced youth of the nation ; the men almost
all sociahsts, revolutionists, or anarchists — not a few had
suffered political imprisonment in Russian Poland. The
young women were all intellectual workers and thinkers
of the emancipated type.
They had invited me partly to show their good-will, and
partly to have the opportunity of explaining that I had
wronged the advanced youth of Poland by some conserva-
tive notions in a book of mine.
There were certainly not less than eight speakers, repre-
sentatives of the different groups, and all spoke well, clearly,
and instructively, with ideal youthful fervour and conviction.
Most impressive and attractive to me among the speakers
was a young lady, a beautiful Jewess, Madame Emma
Lilienowa, whose simple and logical speech I followed with
interest and admiration, though it told against me ; but in-
wardly I was delighted at being rebuked as too conservative,
not so much because the situation was new to me,
but because if these good people could have known me
thoroughly, they would have been perfectly content with
SOCIALIST GRIEVANCES i8i
me. If there be a point on which I have a clear con-
science, it is this : that no one can reproach me with having
too much respect for the existing state of things.
Of course I meant, and mean none the less to maintain,
what I asserted in my book as to its being unpractical to
be a socialist in Russian Poland. I certainly did not urge
that it would be meaningless to be a socialist in Austrian
Poland. When in 1885 I stated that the Jews were not
ill-used in Poland, I did not deny the possibility that an
intense hatred of the Jews might arise in Galicia ten years
later. If I had pleaded the cause of the Catholic Church
in Poland, in so far as I asserted it to be the chief factor
of resistance to the Russianising of the country, I did not
claim for it any exclusive privileges either here or else-
where. Very reasonably they pointed out the injustice
meted out to the Ruthenians and Jews, and the unfair treat-
ment of the free-thinking students at the University of
Cracow, urging that the Poles in positions of authority seem
hardly to realise the nature of that liberty for which they
themselves are struggling. I heard a great many things
that saddened and shocked me, things I could hardly have
thought possible. I will give an instance : — According to
law the Jew is allowed, like any other citizen, to possess
land, but last year, when a rich Jewish family bought a
Polish property, all the people of the district were greatly
agitated, and not only the inhabitants of the district, but the
well-known conservative and clerical professor, Tarnowski,
summed up the general exasperation elegantly in these
words : " The Poles are not anti-Semites, they do not at
all hate the Jews, but they object to seeing sacred Polish
land in the hands of Jews." The owners of the estate were
threatened with death, and were obliged to cancel the
bargain. That this harmonises ill with the ideal of freedom
is but too true. It is not surprising, therefore, that Zionism
has many adherents among the Jewish inhabitants of Galicia.
The persecution to which a student known to be a free-
thinker is often subjected is hardly less deplorable than the
want of toleration shown to the Jews. But no one with the
slightest knowledge of human nature could be supposed to
i82 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
have asserted that the Poles were exceptional. The national
cause is no less holy because of this. The main point of
the ensuing debate, however, as far as I was concerned, was
ray attempt to show my audience that I advocated a con-
servative policy in Russian Poland purely on strategic
grounds. It took time to make myself understood. Un-
fortunately for Poland, Macchiavelli was no Pole, and has
had no disciples among the leading men of Poland.
I had scarcely returned to the hotel when I had to step
into the carriage waiting to take me to the Union of Veterans,
the survivors of those who had taken part in the insurrection
of 1863. M. Tadeuz Czapelski, the intimate friend of my
Warsaw friends, came to fetch me. He was a member of
the Union, though he had taken no part in the actual rising,
being at the time a boy of fourteen, who had been kept
busily at work casting bullets. When we approached the
house we caught sight of the old men standing on the bal-
conies waiting for us. Kagetan Ivanowski, the President of
the Society of 1863, formerly Secretary of State under the
national government, and renowned for his bravery, received
me at the entrance, introduced me, and made a speech,
which was followed by numerous others. All these men
had served as soldiers or officers during the heroic struggle
against the Russian power. One among them, still vigorous
though past eighty, had been an officer in the revolt of 1830.
Every Sunday forenoon these men assemble at their club to
partake of a Spartan meal, consisting of national dishes, a meal
such as soldiers share in camp. I cannot describe the feeling
which came over me when all these old men formed a circle
around me and, with great enthusiasm, sang Jesd^ze Polska.
I had to answer all the speeches, but at last tears came
into my eyes and I could not speak for emotion — I, who
never weep. Czapelski and I took leave amidst songs and
acclamations. From the carriage we saw the veterans
waving farewell to us till we turned the corner of the street.
At the hotel we joined our friends for lunch. It was com-
puted that I had made eleven French and three German
speeches that morning. Jan and Madame Jozefa were to
return to Warsaw immediately after lunch. A crowd of
A MODERN FAUSTUS 183
friends accompanied them in carriages to the station, where
they, moreover, had the opportunity of taking leave of the
governor of Galicia, who had to go to Cracow in his official
capacity, and who left his carriage to greet them.
After having returned to the hotel I had to write some
friendly parting words on more than fifty visiting-cards to
send off in the town.
Then I was expected by a man, who had been repeatedly
mentioned to me even in Copenhagen as the discoverer of
a new and unknown force, the engineer Rychnowski. But,
ignorant as I am of chemistry and electro-biology, I was
incapable of forming any opinion as to the real worth of his
presumed discovery.
I was conducted across a court to the little entrance of
a side building where the laboratory was. It was dark, and
we had a difficulty in finding our way. A door was opened,
and we stood face to face with the strange magus, a stout
man of fifty with a greyish beard. His face was that of a
thinker, but also bore the stamp of mystery often seen in the
countenances of the half educated or the half crazy. He
received us most politely, and introduced us into his apart-
ment. It might have been Faust's studio, and suggested the
alchemists of the Middle Ages to me. The force he had
discovered was a motor power, stronger than any other
hitherto known ; besides, it was the vital power ! If he
brought it to bear upon himself, he would renew his youth,
his strength would increase, and he would be able to endure
bodily and mental fatigues to an unheard-of extent. On the
day of my arrival I had promised the old poet Bezazowski,
whom I had met at a public entertainment, that I would pay
him a visit. But my time had been so much taken up that
I had literally not had a single minute to fulfil my promise.
Now I drove in a hurry from Rychnowsky to his house.
He was certainly worth meeting, this venerable old man.
He had passed the last half of his life as a consul in the
East, and had familiarised himself with Oriental manners
and customs as few Europeans are able to do. Neverthe-
less, he had remained an enthusiastic Polish patriot. As
a poet he enjoys great favour among his countrymen.
i84 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Unfortunately, I could not stay more than half-an-hour
with him, it being already late. I had not done my packing,
and the train was to start at eleven o'clock. We returned
at full speed to the hotel, where the mayor presently came
to fetch me, and for the second time this day off we went
to the station, where, in spite of the late hour, a group of
friends had assembled. With my foot on the carriage-step
I pressed the hand of old Siberiak, who had greeted me
in the Sokol gymnasium.
And the evening came on, and night fell on the last
day of my stay in Lemberg.
THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE OF
POLAND IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY
1886
POINTS OF CONTACT IN POLISH AND
DANISH LITERATURE
There are few points of contact in the literatures of Poland
and Denmark.
In the Polish world of books we find a small but very
instructive contribution to the history of warfare and cul-
ture in Denmark in the seventeenth century, namely, Jan
Chrysostom Pasek's Recollections, As leader of a division of
the Polish army, which came to the help of the Danes
against Charles Gustavus of Sweden, this nobleman was in
Denmark in 1658 and 1659 ; took part in the memorable
conquest of the island of Als by cavalrymen, who swam
across the Alssund with their pistols behind their collars and
their powder-horns on their necks, and was present at the
storming of Koldinghus and the capture of Fridericia. He
observes and describes the manners and customs of the
peasants ; falls in love with the daughter of a Danish landed
proprietor, who cherishes a burning love for him, but he
tears himself away from his sweetheart, returns to his
fatherland and introduces two things, hitherto unknown in
Poland : Danish wooden shoes and long Danish cavalry
boots.
He describes the Danes as well formed; the women as
beautiful, btit too blonde. As regards the arrangements of
the houses, it strikes him as strange that the places for sleep-
ing are often mere cupboards in the walls. As to manners
and customs, he is astonished that every one, including the
women, sleep stark naked, and that no one regards it as
indelicate to dress and undress in the presence of others.
When the Poles criticised this as indecorous the women
replied that they had no reason to be ashamed of their
limbs, which were created by God. As regards living, he is
disgusted at all the sausage meat, which is eaten as a
187
-^
i88 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
delicacy, and as regards dress this peculiarity has become
fixed in his memory, that the women, who in other respects
dress with taste, wear wooden shoes, not only in the country,
but in the cities, " with which they make such a noise on
the stone pavements that one can hardly hear his neighbour
speak."
Of the Danish women in general he remarks that they
are not so reserved in their affections as the Polish. " For
although in the beginning they are extremely shy, they fall in
love in a single meeting so extremely and passionately that
they cannot conceal their feelings, but are ready to leave their
parents and rich surroundings and go out into the wide world
with their lovers." He quotes from a letter from his sweet-
heart, which as a specimen of composition is not uninterest-
ing. It runs as follows : —
" High, well-born, gracious Sir ; Persons, who are dear
to our hearts, we wish to honour with words and see
with our eyes. In how high a degree my father has conceived
love for thy renowned people and thy knightly brothers-in-
arms, he shows by often speaking thy name. It is his
earnest wish to look upon thee not only as an adopted but
an actual son. But if my father loves thee, then his
daughter, in whose heart an unchanging love for thee will
continually blossom, loves thee not less. Oh, couldst thou
read in my heart the force of my emotions ! I confess now
openly what I have so long kept secret, that my heart will
never beat for any other man but thee. ... I am going
where fate and my heart lead me. My family may claim
equality with the oldest in Poland. If my character is not
free from fault, thou hast praised it. My religion does me
no dishonour ; I believe in the holy Trinity. My father's
declaration that he will not let his fortune go to a foreign
land, is no impediment. My father lays down the law, but
thou wilt be able to interpret it freely, thou wilt be able
to assume control over his fortune. It is thy duty to com-
mand and mine to obey," &c.
For a time Pasek, kindled by the young lady's passion,
was tempted to stay with her in Denmark, but a double
fear of becoming as one dead to his relatives in Poland and
DANISH WRITERS ON POLAND 189
of losing his eternal salvation, in case he allowed himself to
be made a Lutheran, moved him to march home with the
rest of the Polish troops. He became the favourite of two
kings in his native land and at last died in old age in 1700.
It was not till 1836 that his admirable memoirs were found
and published.
When to this description of the Denmark of that period
we add that Lelewel wrote a book on Edda Skandinawska,
and that in several of the romantic poems of Poland, as for
instance in Krasinski's Irydion, there are here and there fan-
tastic descriptions of Denmark in heathen days, in " King "
Odin's time, we shall have summed up the impressions of
Denmark to be found in the culture and intellectual life of
Poland.
But the existence of Poland has made a deeper impres-
sion upon Danish literature. This is more especially true of
the critical periods in the history of Poland in this century,
the revolutions of 1830 and 1831 and of 1863, which at-
tracted attention to the country and aroused sympathy, a
fleeting sympathy certainly, but genuine.
Between the years 1830 and 1840 there appeared in
Denmark, as elsewhere, beautiful and emotional lyric poems
on Polish subjects (such as Paludan-MuUer's Call to Poland,
Aarestrup's A Polish Mother), and in the fifties appeared
Hauch's great and famous novel, A Polish Family, with its
beautiful songs, one of which, Hvorfor svulmer Weichselfloden,
is one of the best lyrics of our literature.
This novel is interesting as the one great attempt of a
Dane to identify himself with the spiritual and social life of
the Poles. Nevertheless, as a novel it is a work of the second
rank, the description of character being weak and abstract.
It was quite in accordance with the spirit of his time, that
Hauch made no attempt to write from his own knowledge.
He never travelled in Poland, never even made any efforts
to study one or two Polish families before he so elabor-
ately presented one ; but he had studied the Polish ballads,
which had been translated with great diligence, reproducing
or paraphrasing many of them in Danish, and thus in the
tones of sadness, despair, love of country and Catholic piety.
190 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
which ring through the romance, an occasional chord is
struck which sounds Uke a Polish chord.
Even the renowned song, which in a certain sense is the
spirit of the whole book, condensed into the smallest possible
space (it is sung at a dance in one of the principal scenes
in the book), is built upon motives from Polish ballads, still
sung during the Cracovian dance.
The ballads always consist of two-line verses, the first
of which gives an image and the second a parallel or an
explanation of it.
For instance : —
" Yonder by the high walls of Cracow the Vistula flows,
All the sons of Poland pass away in long lines."
Hauch expresses it thus : —
<' The floods of the Vistula wind slowly under the walls of
Cracow, Strong hosts march to break the eagle's dungeons."
Or again : —
" They all march out with smiles and do not return. There-
fore woods, meadows, and women all mourn deeply."
Hauch : — .
" Sword and scythe flashed in smoke and fog on the plain.
Not a warrior comes back from the wild fight, Therefore
field and meadow mourn, And Poland's daughters have lost
their merry smile."
The composition of Hauch's poem as a whole is far above
the scattered lines of the ballads in effect, but the Polish
diction is shorter, it has more emphasis and force.
Although the events of 1863 gave rise to several more
or less eloquent and well-considered articles in the Danish
press, they called forth nothing else of literary value save
four or five fine poems by Snoilsky, which first appeared in a
Danish newspaper. Since then the people of Denmark have
not given much thought to Poland ; the last uprising has
been called the death battle of the Poles, and the Pohsh
nation is regarded as dead.
But " it is not yet all over with Poland," although this
poor Poland resembles an elegant and defenceless woman
upon whom all have fallen and trampled. Even in the
thirties the friends of Poland regarded its history as closed.
HUNGARIAN SYMPATHY 191
In 1 83 1 the Hungarians in an address to the Emperor of
Austria offered to fit out at their own cost an army of a
hundred thousand men to aid the fighting Poles. The offer
was naturally declined ; but in 1832, when all was over, a
member of the Hungarian Parliament, Polocsy, uttered these
words : " If kings and emperors regard themselves as members
of one great family, and wear mourning when one among
them dies, then with far greater reason ought the destruction
of a nation to cause all the other nations to mourn ; but the
mourning which kings wear on their hats or arms, these
nations wear in their hearts." These are fine words, but
Poland was no more a corpse in the thirties, than she is now
to be regarded as blotted out of the number of nations.
I
TENDENCIES COMMON TO ALL EUROPEAN LITERA-
TURES — PECULIAR FEATURES — RETROSPECT —
KOCHANOWSKI — SKARGA — JESUITISM — FRENCH
PHILOSOPHY— RATIONALISM
The Polish literature of this century presents the same
picture of changing elemental tendencies as the other
European literatures with which I am familiar. The setting
is everywhere the same. At the beginning of the century
an antiquated classicism and soon cast aside, a romanti-
cism absorbing the largest part of the century, and in the
seventies and eighties a dawning realism.
This is common to Europe, But in every nation these
tendencies assume a different character, according to its
historic theories and historic relations. The Polish litera-
ture of this century bears a peculiar stamp, apart from the
peculiarities issuing from the national character, in this
respect, that it developed in a country which had recently
ceased to exist as an independent state. The literature, and
especially the poetry, came on this account to supply, as it
were, the place of all the organs of a national life which
were lost at the partition of the State. It gains thereby in
spiritual exaltation, but necessarily loses in variety.
A brief retrospect of the history of development in the
last few centuries is necessary to the understanding of the
poetry of the present century.
The upheavals which the Reformation caused in the
principal countries of Europe left Poland comparatively
undisturbed. While kindred Bohemia, under the desire
for a great social and ecclesiastical reform, wore itself
out in the Hussite War through the whole of two
centuries, from the death of Huss to the battle at the White
»9«
THE RENAISSANCE IN POLAND 193
Mountain (1620), and for two hundred years more seemed
as if it had actually slipped out of history, under the stress
of its superhuman exertions, the Roman Catholic Church
stood comparatively unassailed in Poland, and the country
was spared any very radical religious discord.
The period which is generally described as the Renais-
sance was for Poland her time of greatness, and introduced
her first golden age of poetic literature. Its greatest figure
was Jan Kochanovski (1530-84), a worshipper of Horace
and Virgil, a contemporary and acquaintance of Ronsard,
who made his debut as a poet in the Latin language, but
soon adopted the Polish, becoming its greatest master of
those days. Imbued with the spirit of antiquity and of
the Renaissance, cool towards Christianity, warm towards
the republic, a pagan theist, he tried his hand at all sorts
of poetry, and in all gave evidence of manliness, liberality,
and humanity. His Treny, a series of delightfully simple
and touching elegies on the death of a beloved daughter,
are of such excellence that they are not even surpassed
by the admirable poems on the same subject, written by
Victor Hugo so many years after.
The two principal poetic forms which flourished in
this period are the idyll and the satire — the idyll because
the sympathies of certain poets break through that ring
which the " Szlachta," the Polish nobility which is every-
thing in the republic, has drawn about itself, and approach
the common, suppressed people, who are glorified in
bucolics ; the satire^ because the sharp critical sense of other
poets turns against the ruling caste of nobility, and attacks
the idea that nobility is an accidental privilege of birth.
Just then, about the year 1600, the "Szlachta" became
decidedly hostile to progress, clinging desperately to the
privileges of its powerful position.
The social movement in those times, which in Germany
was broken by the suppression of the rebellion of the
peasants, and the extermination of the Anabaptists, was
overcome by the Polish nobility during the war with the
Cossacks, by the most tremendous efforts. The intellectual
regeneration which, in Germany, when humanism was
N
194 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
absorbed by Lutheranism, halted at the mediocrity of a civic
and ecclesiastic intermediate form, broad and strong enough
to resist for long the pressure of the times, became stunted
at once in its growth in Poland, because in contrast to the
movement of the Reformation, it was absorbed by a humanism
to which only the most cultured of the highest classes were
susceptible, and which was therefore overcome with ease,
as soon as the religious counter-revolution, with Jesuitism at
its head, attacked it.
Polish Protestantism assumed the form of a heretical
philosophy, which rejected the teaching of the Church, and
at the same time its morality, without being able to formulate
any independent positive morality. It seemed mainly in-
spired by a polemical tendency to approve all that had been
the subject of earlier prohibitions (marriage between blood
relations, as well as free relations between the sexes), and
by the dogma that the confiscation of the property of the
Church was essential. In the meantime, since the Pro-
testant nobility needed religion to keep the common people
in check, its own humanism being incomprehensible to the
masses, and since, trembling for its privileges, it was
necessarily apprehensive of the principle of free investiga-
tion, which lies at the bottom of all Protestantism, the
appearance and agitation of individuals of talent in the
aristocratic and clerical party was alone required to make
this Protestant nobility fall off, and one by one return to
the motherly bosom of the Catholic Church. Such an
oratorical genius was Orzechowski (1515-66), who showed
the nobility that the clergy alone were able to strike the
king with terror of breaking the oath, which he was
always obliged to swear to the " Szlachta " promising to
preserve its privileges.
He was succeeded by a man of even greater and more
celebrated oratorical talent, the priest Skarga (1536-1612),
a Jesuit, who was an ardent Polish patriot, a regenerator
of fallen Catholicism, who foresaw all the dangers of the
anarchy of the nobility, and in one of his sermons to the
diet, even foretold the partition of Poland. Let us quote
his words: —
INFLUENCE OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHY 195
"A foreign enemy will come upon you, will take
advantage of your internal discord, and say : ' Your hearts
have become divided, now you will be ruined.' These in-
ternal strifes will bring you into a captivity, in which all
your freedom will be lost, and abased. Great countries
and principalities, which had become united with the crown,
will fall off and be torn away, and you, who once ruled
other races, will, like an abandoned widow, become a
mockery and sport for your enemies. You lay waste your
people and your language, the only free people among all
the Slav races, you destroy what there is left of this
ancient and far-reaching people, and will be swallowed up
by other races who hate you." (Third sermon.)
It is in the act of delivering this sermon to the diet that
Skarga is represented in the well-known painting by Matejko.
From his time until the middle of the eighteenth century
Jesuitism was predominant in Poland and determined its in-
tellectual life. It was for ecclesiastical even more than for
political reasons that Sobieski undertook his campaign to
Vienna against the Turks in 1683 ; it was zeal for the pre-
servation of the Catholic faith that led the Polish clergy to
summon the order of the Jesuits, and by degrees place the
whole province of instruction in their hands. The only
intellectual product which flourished under this rule was
eloquence, which attained an extraordinary height in Latin as
well as in Polish. It even became the custom of the times
to mix the two languages into a macaronic medley which
only false taste could approve.
This Jesuitical movement was finally dissolved by the
current which emanated from the philosophical ideas of
the eighteenth century in France. In so far as these ideas
were reformatory in political matters, they first began to
influence minds only when an incurable breach had already
been made in the Polish State. The conservative caste of
nobility had long succeeded in branding every attempt at
reform as reactionary — that is to say, as an injury to their
precious personal freedom, that freedom which through the
liherum veto had led to anarchy, and the sale of the crown
to the highest bidder. Now the young Poles travelled to
196 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
France to get advice from its most celebrated thinkers as
to a new constitution for their fatherland threatened with
dissolution. Wielhorski addressed himself to Rousseau as
author of the Contrat Social, and received from him Con-
siderations sur le Gouvernement de la Pologne, to the Abb6
Mably, and procured from him De la situation politique de la
Pologne. So in our own days have Japanese envoys applied
to Professor Gneist in Berlin, requesting him to draw up a
constitution for their country.
Rousseau considered the question in a purely a priori
manner. His dislike of absolute power led him to recom-
mend the division of the powers of the State, to advise a
confederate government, to adhere to the elective king, and
even to retain the liberum veto, only limiting its use. He
advocated democracy in forms quite unsuitable to Poland ;
his ideas served as a pretext to the later anarchists, the
traitors of the confederation of Targowice, who were
protected by Russia. Mably, who showed more political
sense, advised the introduction of a hereditary constitutional
monarchy.
The first partition of Poland in 1772 put an end to these
consultations with foreigners, but after 1778 the Poles of the
national party took the most energetic counsel with each
other as to the foundation of a new form of government,
finally agreeing upon the excellent constitution of the 3rd
of May, 1 79 1, which has been called Poland's patent of
nobility among the nations of Europe. It was followed by
the second partition, and after the insurrection of Kosciuszko
by the third.
One of the most eminent men of these times, the leader of
the rationalistic classicists, Jan Sniadecki, whose narrowness
in relation to the budding romanticism did not exclude broad
and clear views in other domains, gave pertinent expression
to the spirit of these times, when he said that after the dis-
appearance of their fatherland as a State the Poles felt
themselves as it were condemned to suppress and ex-
terminate all the mental emotions in themselves which were
engendered by education, habit, and the desire of seeing the
public weal advanced, emotions which had been the soul of
POLISH SYMPATHY WITH FRANCE 197
all their intellectual powers and qualities. " Now," he says,
" the Poles must outlive themselves, must create for them-
selves a new soul, and enclose their emotions within the
narrower boundaries of private life." It is therefore no
wonder that a pause of several years in the manifestation
of general intellectual development appears between the end
of the kingdom and the dawn of the new romantic literary
movements.
During this pause the revolutionary period and Napoleon's
metamorphosis of European conditions took place.
Immediately after the massacre at Praga, the con-
querors imprisoned a number of the leading men of Poland ;
many of them disappeared in the fortresses of Prussia and
Austria ; others were sent to Siberia ; nay, certain Polish
generals were carried as far as Kamschatka. Those who
escaped emigrated to France, Italy, or Turkey.
It was natural that the Poles, whose republic had just
succumbed in a contest with three hereditary monarchies,
should sympathise with the French Republic during its wars,
and in the hope that it would take up their cause, their
legions fought by the side of the French troops. Again
and again the Republic and Bonaparte deceived them in
their hopes ; again and again Napoleon gave them promises
he never thought of keeping ; again and again the Poles shed
their blood for him in crowds, nay, in hosts. In his solitary
sledge journey on the retreat from Russia, he was accom-
panied from Smorgoni, the temperature being thirty degrees
below zero centigrade, by a hundred Polish lancers, who
voluntarily offered their escort in the evening, and of whom
only thirty-six survived the next morning.
Kosciusko did not believe in Napoleon ; he refused in
the most determined manner to induce his countrymen to
fight under him. "And if you were made to do so by
force ? " asked the Duke of Otranto in the capacity of
negotiator. " Then I should declare plainly and loudly that
I was not free and that my sympathies were not with you."
— " Very well, we can do without you," answered Fouch^.
They could to a certain point, because the Poles were carried
away by the idea that Napoleon, as the founder of a new
198 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
dynasty, would be compelled to wage war against the old
royal families that had partitioned Poland. And yet, as
already stated, before his Russian campaign Napoleon did
not disdain to issue a proclamation to the Poles in
Kosciusko's name, in which he speaks of himself with the
most profound admiration. It begins thus : " Amid the
din of arms with which Poland resounds, Kosciusko ad-
dresses himself to you. Thus has Napoleon's high destiny
willed, he who destroys and creates kings, who strikes down
hostile nations with his lightning, . , . the man of fate turns
his eyes and thoughts on you."
Upon all occasions Napoleon abused, sacrificed, and
deceived Poland. But this people, who since the dissolution
of the State seemed doomed to hope against hope, did not
abandon him on that account. On the contrary. Im-
mediately after the Emperor's fall, as we shall see, a
Napoleon-cult sprang up in Poland, in comparison with
which that in other countries and other literatures is in-
considerable.
Alexander I. in his first period was mildly disposed to-
wards Poland. In the short interval between the year 18 15,
with the good constitution it brought, and the time when
Alexander's reactionary efforts began, the intellectual de-
velopment proceeded smoothly and freely, undisturbed by
political contests. At this period the Franco-classical pro-
duction of the time of Stanislaus Augustus was rejected as
mere drawing-room literature. There was a struggle here
as elsewhere, but of short duration, between the classicists
and the romanticists ; then the different provinces enter in
turn upon the scene, with their new brood of poets ; first
Ukrainia, then Lithuania, then the others, were all permeated
by the feeling that it was time to leave the hot air of
luxurious rooms for contact with the people at large under
the open heavens.
II
POLISH ROMANTICISM DETERMINED BY THE CHARACTER OF
THE PEOPLE, BY EUROPEAN ROMANTICISM AND THE POLI-
TICAL SITUATION— SPECIAL POINTS OF VIEW FOR THE ANTI-
THESIS OF CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC— WORSHIP OF NAPOLEON
AND BYRON — RELATION TO SHAKESPEARE AND DANTE —
INFLUENCE OF EMIGRANT LIFE ON THE SENTIMENT OF
WRITERS
The period 1 820-1 850 was the richest and most important
as regards poetry. And in this period the three funda-
mental factors which determined the Hterature were evidently
these : the national character, European romanticism, and
the exceptional political situation.
The national character, as it had been developed down
to this period, was specially adapted for the influences of
romanticism. It was intelligent and magnanimous, splen-
dour-loving and visionary, with a propensity to chivalrous
virtues and religious aspirations. Then as now it lacked
the ballast which the Germanic nations have in their native
phlegm, and the Latin races in their native logic. It was
akin to the French in its fickleness, different from it in the
nature of its capriciousness ; for the Frenchman is capricious
when his native rationalism leads him to shatter his historic
heritage, the Pole when temperament or enthusiasm carries
him away. It was akin to the Italian in its idolatry and
its vivacity, but differed from it in its want of shrewd
political sense, and of that plastic tendency which has made
the inhabitants of Italy pagans under all forms of religion.
When European Romanticism reached this nation, it did
not fare as in Germany, where it was engendered in the
non-political societies of provincial towns, and allied itself
to the indefinite idealism, the want of social feeling, and the
aversion to reality, which had laid hold of the minds of
thinking men — nor as in England, where Romanticism found
199
200 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
itself in direct antagonism with the ingrained bias of the
people for the useful and the practical, and where it allied
itself with the old Norse tendency to an indomitable inde-
pendence and defiance in the free individual, even towards
his fatherland — nor as in France or Italy, where a Latin
and classical element, essentially foreign to Romanticism,
prevented its conquest of the intellectual heart of the people,
and limited it to a purely artistic intoxication of short
duration.
In Poland, where the national character was peculiarly
adapted to assimilate Romanticism, the common national
misfortune had moreover given a romantic bias to minds.
Romanticism, therefore, did not isolate souls either in
egotism, as in Germany, or in wild independence, as in
England, but bound them together in a visionary feeling of
compalriotism. Neither was it contingent upon a dislike to
reality, but upon the sense that the fatherland was already
an unreality, something which must be believed in, and could
not be seen with the bodily eye. Finally, the Latin element,
even if stronger than in any other non-Latin country, was
but an importation, and made no serious resistance.
Here, with far greater force than elsewhere, romantic
enthusiasm swept away all barriers, spread out in far wider
circles — because of the national character, which is not
rational, but fantastically heroic — and harmonised far more
thoroughly than elsewhere with existing times and con-
ditions— because of the national fate, which occupies all
thoughts, and round which all day-dreams revolve.
We shall recognise this peculiarity most plainly if we
turn our attention to countries and literatures where the
political situation was akin to that of Poland. It is true
that a counterpart is nowhere to be found, but there are
analogies more or less strong.
Let us consider, for instance, the Flemish literature,
which arose in Belgium about 1830. It resorts to great
historical romance in the style of Walter Scott, in order
to excite Flemish national feeling. Henry Conscience's
romance. The Lion of Flanders, is the leading work, a book
of the same kind as Rzewuski's Memoirs of Soplica. This
MICKIEWICZ 20I
literature is strongest in the pure lyric. But it is the pro-
duct of a peaceful nation, a nation not prone to exaltation.
It is a literature of the common people, which clings to the
earth, not like the Polish, a soaring and flaming poetry,
which throws its light over the whole horizon, and loses
itself in the clouds.
Or let us consider Finland, with her Runeberg, who
has analogies with Mickiewicz. Fanrick Stals Sdgner, which
treats of the contest for Finland in the year 1810, is cer-
tainly the nearest European counterpart to Pan Tadeusz.
The author describes the Finnish national character, as it
appeared during the war, just as Pan Tadeusz presents the
Polish national character of the same time. There is no
national hatred in any of these poems. The only Russian
officer who figures in the Finnish poetic cycle, Kulneff, is
the type of a noble enemy, high-minded and gentle ; the
only Russian officer who figures in the Polish epic, Rykow,
is an honourable man, incorruptible, faithful, and brave.
What is lacking in Runeberg is the lofty national self-
criticism, which distinguishes Mickiewicz, and the poets
of Poland as a whole. His Finns are heroes, heroes " in
winter dress," heroes in tatters sometimes, but always heroes.
They have almost no faults. In spite of all their glowing
love for their countrymen, the poets of Poland are far more
synthetic, painting the frail as well as the strong side of
the inherited character of their nation. To be sure they
have had a far richer material at their command ; they
were not an undeveloped people like the Finns, whose lan-
guage even lacked all literary form and polish, but a people
with the lights and shadows of a thousand years of civilisa-
tion.
The peculiar situation of Poland necessarily modifies
the points of view from which we contrast Classicism and
Romanticism elsewhere.
When we read Mickiewicz's poem, Romanticism, with its
dogma that the superstitions of the people are worth more
than classical rationalism, we note in this enthusiasm for a
belief in ghosts, and this hatred for cold acumen, which
observes through the microscope, something which is
202 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
common to Romanticism in all countries, nay, something
wearisomely romantic. The romanticists everywhere feel a
satisfaction in leading the swelling currents of new emotion
into spiritual beliefs and popular superstition. Everywhere
also there is a connection between the advent of Romanti-
cism in literature, and the great religious reaction of the
nineteenth century against the indifference to all dogma of
the eighteenth.
But there are two circumstances which nevertheless give
Polish Romanticism a peculiar character. Firstly, the
opposing catholic tendency had not the medieval feudal
stamp as elsewhere. Secondly, the double contrast of
Classicism and Romanticism, Liberalism and Conservatism,
did not obtain here as in so many other countries. In France,
for instance, Romanticism from the beginning was suspected
not only as hostile to enlightenment but as legitimist. Victor
Hugo's first odes and ballads were both anti-Voltairean and
loyal. The most distinguished opponent of the Romanticists
was the celebrated liberal, Armand Carrel, the recognised
leader of the French republicans. In Poland, on the con-
trary, the opponents of Romanticism (men like Sniadecki,
Beku, Osinski) were usually officials, and conservative in
their political convictions, while from the very first Romanti-
cism was rightly regarded as oppositional.
As the recognised laureate of a whole nation in the first
half of the nineteenth century Mickiewicz occupies a
position, which finds a parallel in that of Oehlenschlaeger
and Tegn6r. But apart from all other dissimilarities,
there is this difference between Mickiewicz and the two
Norse poets, that when the latter employed their talents to
glorify their nation, they chose the material of its legendary
world or worked out themes from its antiquity, its middle
ages, or even a more distant past, substantially without
ever describing the life they themselves had had the oppor-
tunity of observing, while Mickiewicz, especially where he
is at his best (as in Pan Tadeusz and certain parts of
Dziady) reproduces a life he has seen with his own eyes, or
a life the memory of which still hovers in the air about
him.
ROMANTIC POETS OF POLAND 203
This is the secret of his superiority over a whole army
of contemporary national poets ; it is this which gives his
Romanticism and that of several of his contemporaries
in Poland a comparatively modern stamp. At that time
they did not yet feel in Europe that the poet must be
the offspring of his age as a rule ; they were too strongly
attracted by distant times or foreign countries. The results
in their descriptions of mankind, oftener than not, were
beings who never existed and never could exist, beings
whose spiritual life was created by the subtraction of a great
many qualities which only modern men can have, and by the
mechanical addition of qualities which the poet's reading
had taught him were found in the past. Not in consequence
of a correct theory, but by virtue of a sound instinct,
Mickiewicz resorted to an old subject or a distant period only
when political considerations made it easier for him to express
what he had at heart, when the fundamental thought con-
cealed itself behind an allegory, as is the case in Grazyna and
Wallenrod.
Throughout the romantic literature of Poland, we find
here and there traits so realistic that they do not seem to
belong to the period. In some of the poets the observ-
ance of reality is carried so far, that they even introduce
living or recently deceased persons into their poems. But
that which is peculiarly Polish, is that hand in hand with
the hankering after reality and futurity there is an uncon-
querable tendency to abstraction, allegory, and superstition.
They are at once realists and spiritualists.
Two circumstances united to make their poems abstract
and allegorical : first, the propensity to mysticism which lay
in the inmost recesses of their souls and which, after having
slumbered for a while, was easily awakened in them all, since
they had been educated as Catholics from the first ; in the
next place, the political oppression, the consideration of the
censorship which compelled them to describe their thoughts
by circumlocution, and etherealise the outlines of the beings
whom they painted.
There were, in particular, two great persons, at that time
recently deceased, who had set the forces of imagination
204 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
in motion all over Europe, but who aroused greater enthus-
iasm here than in any other country outside of their native
lands : Napoleon and Byron.
It was the period when the cult of Napoleon was spread-
ing over Europe. The real being was forgotten ; genuine
historical research had not yet begun. Napoleon had
become a legend, which had deeply affected Henry Beyle, of
which Victor Hugo, B^ranger, and Heinrich Heine, each in
his own way, made themselves priests, and which Thiers
unfolded as a great epopee, accessible to the crowd. How-
ever little cause the Poles had to thank Napoleon, they had
attached such great hopes to him, that after the desolation
of the last years of his life and his impressive death had
cast a transfiguring light over his life, they continued to pay
honour to his shade as their liberator and saviour.
As the years passed by after his fall, he became the
superhuman, supernatural man to the popular fancy. To
the Romanticists he became an enigma. In those days
the eighteenth century was regarded as the time of
frivolous exposition. Here was a phenomenon which
could not be judged by ordinary standards of intellectual
observation. This awakened anew the quality of admira-
tion, which had been lost in the preceding century. They
thought that the prosaic English hated him because
he was incomprehensible to them. No human being had
been able to strike him down, nor any general but General
Frost and General Hunger. In the preface to Dawn
{Przedswif) Krasinski dates a new epoch from Napoleon.
He says : —
" The age of Caesar has returned in that of Napoleon.
And the Christian Caesar, who is superior to his prede-
cessor by the achievement of nineteen centuries, and who
was perfectly clear as to himself and the object for which the
divine spirit, which leads the course of history, had sent
him — dying, said on his rock of exile : ' The beginning of
a new period will be reckoned from me.' These words
contain a complete revelation concerning him and the
future." Mickiewicz in his mystic period reveres Napoleon
as a demi-god. He was no Gaul, he had no esprit, no wit,
NAPOLEON AND BYRON 205
he felt himself drawn to the East. " Like all the greatest
men/' says Mickiewicz with a turn which foreshadows
Disraeli, " Napoleon felt himself mysteriously at home
in the East." His life demonstrated to Mickiewicz the
existence of the invisible and mystic world. He believed in
omens, and acted on them ; he had direct intuition. There-
fore he is the man of the Slav race ; for the Slavs are a
people of intuition. And thus for Mickiewicz he becomes
the source of everything which the Polish people of that
time admire. .
Again and again Mickiewicz contends that Napoleon
created Byron, and that Byron's life and glory had awakened
Pushkin, so that Napoleon had also indirectly engendered
the latter.
Since poetry, according to Mickiewicz's definition, is
action, Napoleon's life becomes the loftiest poetry. Nay,
even more ; his mission was to liberate nations and there-
by the whole world. (Preface to L'£glise et le Messianisnte.)
And while St. Helena comes near to being a place of
suffering like Golgotha, a glimmer of the Passion of Christ
falls over the life and death of Napoleon.
The same propensity to uncritical transports, the same
enthusiasm for the dazzling, is brought to light in the
relations of these Slav poets to Byron. Thus poets so diverse
as Mickiewicz and Slowacki meet on common ground for
years in their Byronism. As Washington had made no
impression on them while Napoleon fascinated them, so not
one of them cared for Shelley, while Byron was on every-
body's lips. They believed in all seriousness that Byron was
the greatest lyric poet of England.
To make Byron's intellectual descent from Napoleon
more obvious, Mickiewicz, who had evidently no knowledge
of Wordsworth, or Coleridge, or Keats, or Shelley, wrote :
" I regard it as certain that the flash which kindled the fire
of the English poet came from the soul of Napoleon. How
could we otherwise explain this man's existence in the midst
of the jejune English literature of his day, a survival of the
former century ? . . . Byron's English contemporaries, in
spite of the example of his genius and the influence eman-
2o6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
ating therefrom, produced nothing which can be compared
therewith ; and after the death of the poet, English literature
sank back to the level of that of the past century."
Every sentence here is a blunder. Every one of the
contemporaries of Byron named above, so far as poetry is
concerned, several times reached his level, and in some
respects even excelled him. But undeniably no one of them
was so dazzling as he ; they were neither dandies and
poseurs in youth, nor theatrically heroic as men. Even he
who would by no means rob Byron of his undying honour
as a poet, and of his never-to-be-forgotten services as a
friend of freedom, must feel that in Poland he is estimated
as much by his false prestige as by his real greatness.
Nevertheless Napoleon and Byron have this merit in
common, that they drew the Poles out of their purely
national absorption. Polish literature had been national in
the sixteenth century, but it had lacked the stamp of common
humanity which makes a literature accessible to Europe
at large ; in the eighteenth century it had been cosmopolitan,
but in such a fashion that it ended in the French imitation of
classical culture without the deeper national stamp, which
makes a literature interesting to Europe. Sniadecki was a
friend and admirer of Delille, Bogomolec imitated the plays
of Moli^re in a conventional and foreign style. This litera-
ture had become petrified in its slavish reverence for rules.
Now all barriers were broken down. A time of national
wandering had returned. The material boundaries were no
longer fixed, and the intellectual boundaries widened at the
same time. The Poles fought under Napoleon in the most
diverse countries, and Napoleon's hosts brought troops of
the most diverse races through Poland. So, too, in the
intellectual world, when the nations mingled intellectually,
the Poles found in the poetry of Byron the common
European despair and thirst for liberty, supplemented them
with their national peculiarities, and introduced them after
the manner of Byron to their countrymen.
Of the great poets whom the romantic school in Germany
had first revealed to the romanticists in all countries, Shake-
speare and Dante made the greatest impression in Poland.
SHAKESPEARE AND DANTE 207
Slowacki especially appropriates Shakespeare's style and
manner of treatment. Nevertheless what made the most
impression in Shakespeare were the horrible events, the
murders and mutilations, which appear in some of the
historical plays and legendary tragedies. The Polish fancy
was attracted by that side of Shakespeare which is most
strikingly represented in his earlier drama, Titus Andronicus,
with its accumulated horrors. Only rarely is this tempered
by the influence of the Shakespearean comedies, as in
Ballandyna.
But perhaps the kinship which the Polish authors of
this time felt for the great exiled Italian, whose poem was
separated from them by so many centuries, is most
significant. They were unhappy and exiled as he was ;
like him, they looked on at the political destruction of a
state by acts of violence, and sought, as he did, consolation
in penal sentences and prophecies. Krasinski especially is
under his influence, and through Krasinski, Slowacki. It
is the influence of the Inferno which can be most plainly
traced. Only rarely, as in some of Krasinski's poems, does
a form like that of Beatrice point towards a regenerate world
and a happy life.
Now just as the special fate of the nation determines
its receptiveness of foreign influence, it modifies, as we have
seen, the point of view in judging of opposing forces like
classicalism and romanticism, reaction and progress. It
acts on the character of the literature so strongly, because it
first acts on that of the writers.
They have much in common. They are all of aristo-
cratic birth, all educated in the Roman Catholic Church, all
passionate patriots. But they have this in common especially,
that they all left their country between twenty and thirty years
of age, and never returned. Even those authors among
them who had not taken part in the rebellion of 1830, went
away to a foreign land in order to write freely. Therefore
they all become emigrants and pilgrims, work as leaders who
have no firm connection with their people, and are never
sure of a following, and live in a state of hope constantly
deferred as to a general revolution in European politics.
2o8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
All this together evoked a political Romanticism of a
special kind, very different from the reactionary German and
the humanitarian French varieties.
But what especially interests us in these men is to note
the influence of the emigrant's life on the emotional life
of the author.
They are enthusiasts by nature, and as romanticists,
enthusiasts by theory. The emigration gives their emotional
life something morbid, impatient, meaninglessly restless, be-
cause it doubles its exaltation.
Let us see what forms an elemental emotion like love
takes on with them.
Mickiewicz, who had long been in love with Eva
Ankwiczova, had even been religiously affected by her
childlike faith, nay, by her visions — she had seen him in
white robes with a lamb in his arms — suddenly leaves Rome
just as Eva's father is on the point of giving his consent to
their union, which he had for some time forbidden, and
never again seeks to see his loved one, the memory of whom
nevertheless fills his chief work, Pan Tadeusz.
Krasinski, who had paid homage to his friend. Madam
Delphine Potocka, in the most extravagant language as his
soul's sister, his muse, &c., as a minor, abandons his loved
one in obedience to his father, and marries another lady in
accordance with his father's wish. But at the same time he
writes to the deserted lady, whom he sings in his poem. The
Dawn : " Pray for me, that my eternal love for thee may not
drag me down to hell. Pray that I may sometime fight my
way to God in heaven to meet thee again ! "
Slowacki becomes acquainted with Maria Wodzinska,
while in Madam Patteg's pension on the lake of Geneva.
Both the two young people cherish a strong passion for each
other, and Slowacki's delicate and intellectual poem, In
Switzerlandy survives as a memorial of the happy hours of
this love in beautiful surroundings. But the middle-aged
daughter of Madam Patteg, Eglantine, who is enamoured
of Slowacki, languishes and raves in her jealousy, and makes
scenes. This is enough to make the poet draw back from
his beloved, and the Wodzinski family depart. Slowacki
TOWIANSKI 209
moves over to the other side of the lake of Geneva, writes a
poem to Eglantine, The Accursed, and then returns to her
again.
The passions, indeed, seem strong, but the characters
are weak. These poets leave their loved ones, not to save
themselves from the consequences of passion, nor from
fear of ties (like Goethe), nor because they have ceased to
love, or feel themselves drawn in another direction ; they
behave as if they had become a little unhinged.
As nomads or emigrants they are dependent, not lords
of their fate, and far too fantastical to lay out a practical
plan of life. They have no abiding place, no home. Their
upheaval from their paternal soil affects their characters,
makes them unstable, and increases their propensity to a
mystic intellectual life.
When in the beginning of the forties, Towianski, a Polish
nationalist visionary, a cross between P6re Enfantin and
Cagliostro, suddenly appears among them, most of them
fall under his power. And even those who do not follow
him, become none the less mystics, at least at some period
in their life. They die young, worn out long before old
age, either in monastic subjection, like the once indomitably
defiant Slowacki, or, like Krasinski, in a mental condition of
uninterrupted melancholy, to which he gave expression in
the words : " Thy people has been given to other races to
eat, for the renewal of their blood."
They were all religiously inclined or religiously educated.
They expected that an object was to be accomplished directly
or indirectly in every great event, consequently also in all
that most nearly concerned them; they traced a divine plan
in what they experienced in life. They did not understand
that a nation could be annihilated, blotted out from the
number of the living. When these Roman Catholics looked
out over human life and history, they could not conceive
that the bad and the hard-hearted, the cruel and the ruthless,
should prosper so greatly, and that God should make no
sign. They thought that the Almighty must have concealed
a mysterious meaning in all things, so that at last everything
must turn to good.
O
2 10 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
If they believed it possible to decipher this meaning they
became preachers, seers, and prophets ; when they despaired
of finding this, they held their peace in disconsolate grief.
But all their thoughts and dreams revolved about the
mysterious significance of the great shipwreck their State
had suffered.
There is something deeply romantic in this. The
romantic intellect is (as I have elsewhere said) a kind of
atavism. It questions, as men in remote superstitious times
did. It asks for the significance of what happens, while
the modern intellect asks for its cause. Thus these minds
hardly ever seek the causes of Poland's fate, but they seek
with anguish, with poetic frenzy, and the added passion
of the religious visionary, to penetrate the darkness, to
learn the significance of that fate, and phantasy, enthusiasm,
and passion give the answer.
Generally they start from certain historical assertions as
dogmas. In the past of their nation we note traits of
character, peculiar and important, to be found in no other
nation. These traits emanated from pre - historic Slav
antiquity, and the future of the nation depended on loyalty
to these primitive national institutions (the assemblies of the
people, and the Slav communism in property, although the
latter is more Russian than Polish). The misfortune of the
nation was due to its defection from these. In other words,
they fastened on a little group of cognate ideas and principles,
which, as Spasovicz has expressed it, being inherent in the
nation from its origin should indicate its vocation. The great
and learned historian of that time, Lelewel, a, writer some-
what earlier than the Romantic school, and one who in
many respects had a very strong influence on their funda-
mental theories, formulated this theory, which for one or two
generations was undisputed in Poland.
It might seem that the poets would have served their
people better if they, with their greater insight into the
powers which are effective in history, had presented the
causes of the disappearance of the nation as a State; their
readers would then have gained some insight into the
means of withstanding the national decay, and of aiding in
EXALTATION OF POLISH POETRY 211
a resurrection. But, in reality, their poetry, by its very
obscure and prophetic character, has had a greater bearing
on the future of the nation than a lucid or even a logical
and convincing poetry could have had. Their over-
exaltation which explained nothing, but which was in itself
so explicable, inspired readers with an enthusiasm which,
in the political conditions they were in, was very useful,
nay, necessary. It inspired perseverance, self-reliance, firm
faith in the future, and obstinate optimism, which were
so much the more remarkable, as no country seemed likely
to offer a more fruitful soil for pessimism.
It is as if the poets had felt that their mission was to
give the people spiritual nourishment and a spiritual tonic
to support them on their way, even if this should lead them
on for some hundreds of years. Therefore in their works
they concentrated all their thoughts upon their own nation,
condensed and compressed patriotism, hope, hatred of
treason and wrong, confidence in the final victory of the
right, focussing these emotions round a common centre in
a perfectly unique fashion. Hence they are not seekers of
truth but soothsayers.
In this way their poetry acquired a peculiar stamp both
religious and artistic. The idea of nationality which per-
meates everything with them, was embraced with a religious
heartiness in its essence, and the contest for it was accepted
as a duty of a religious nature.
Thus it came to pass that the Polish poetry of the
Romantic period, which superficially gives such a defective
picture of the condition of the country and of the people,
taken as a whole constitutes a sort of modern Bible, an Old
Testament with its books of the Judges and the Prophets,
with patriarchal descriptions (as we find in Rzewuski or
in Pan Tadeusz), with psalms (like Krasinski's), here and
there with representations of a Judith, of a struggle of the
Maccabees, or of a persecuted Job, and now and then with
a hymn of love, more ethereal, but far weaker than that of
old Palestine.
The whole may be regarded as a collection of national
books of devotion.
212 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
The literature most distinctly assumes this character
from the time (1830) when the Polish nation next con-
ceives hopes, rises, and is crushed, and when its youog
generation is sent to Siberia, and its poets emigrate, so that
we get three kinds of Polish literature — that of those who
were transported, of those who emigrated, and of those who
remained at home.
In the eyes of the Poles the cause of Poland, far from
sinking from this moment, becomes for them the holy cause,
the country the holy country, the people the martyr people,
the people of freedom who suffer for the whole of humanity.
The symbolic importance they had once given to Napoleon
as the saviour of the nations, Poland itself now assumes, only
the picture shines with still more glowing colours.
Stephen Garczynski writes thus during the cannonade of
the redoubts of Warsaw : —
" O my nation ! As the Saviour's wounded head for ever
impressed its bloody image upon a veil, so wilt thou, my
nation, stamp the bloody image of thy fate upon the whole
of this generation. Thou wilt throw this generation into
the face of Europe as were it Veronica's veil, and the history
of thy suffering will be read thereupon. And the time will
come, ye nations of Europe ! when your eyes and thoughts
will be fixed as if by enchantment on the bloody image of
the crucified nation."
Thus also cries the Abbot in the second part of Mickie-
wicz's Dziady in the great vision scene, which symbolises the
attitude of Russia, France, Prussia, and Austria towards
Poland.
" He has risen, the tyrant — Herod ! O Lord ! see
the whole of young Poland given over into the hands of
Herod ! what do I see ? These white streaks are roads
which cross one another, roads which are so long that they
seem without end ! Through deserts, through drifts of snow
they all lead to the North. . . . See this multitude of
sleighs, which drive away like clouds, which are driven by
the wind, all in the same direction ! O heavens, they are
our children. . . .
" I see the whole of this troop of tyrants and execu-
THE MARTYR NATION 213
tioners hastening to seize my fettered nation. The whole of
Europe mocks at it : To judgment ! The mob drags the
innocent to judgment. Beings who are nothing but tongues,
without hearts or arms, are their judges. And cries rise from
all sides : ' Gallus, it is Gallus who shall judge this nation ! —
Gallus has not found it guilty, he washes his hands. But the
kings shout : Sentence it, give it to its executioners, the
blood be upon us and our children. Release Barabbas.
Crucify the Son of Mary, crucify him ! He has scoffed at
Ciesar ! '
" Gallus has delivered up my nation ; it is already bound ;
see, they exhibit its innocent face, soiled with blood as it is,
with a crown of thorns in derision about the forehead. And
the people hurry and Gallus shrieks : ' See, this is the free,
independent nation.'
" O Lord, already I see the cross. How long, how long
time yet shall my nation endure it ? Lord, have pity on thy
servant, give him strength that he may not fall down and
expire on the way. His cross has arms so long that they
stretch out over the whole of Europe ; it is made of three
nations which are as dried up as three withered trees.
'' They drag my nation away, there it is, there on the
throne of sacrifice. The crucified one says : * I thirst,' and
Ragusa offers him vinegar, and Boms refreshes him with gall,
and his mother. Freedom, who stands at the foot of the cross,
lifts her head and weeps. . . . And see, the Muscovite
soldier runs up and thrusts his spear into his side."
This is the picture which impresses itself most deeply on
the memory, when one has studied the Polish poetry of
the first half of the century ; the pale profile of a martyred
nation which consoles itself that its suffering is its honour,
and that it suffers for the common cause of nations.
But the value of this romantic literature is not limited
to its significance for the people of Poland. Even if
European ignorance of the language in which it is written
has made it impossible for it to have a wide influence, it
yet has influenced the minds of other literatures (as
Mickiewicz influenced Pushkin, and as his Book of the
Polish Pilgrims was copied by Lamennais in 77?^ Word
2 14 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
of a Believer) ; even now surprises and charms the foreigner
by the intensity of its emotional life, by its love for the ideal,
and, when it attains its highest level, by its vigorous pictures
of nature in Poland, of the steppes of the Ukraine, of the
forests of Lithuania, and of the human life in recent and
distant times, for which these surroundings form the natural
and indispensable background.
This group of poems showed to foreign countries the
presence of a sum of life, whose strength people had begun
to doubt, and which they did not know how to value. We
must always, in the first instance, demonstrate that we are
alive ; for, as Schiller says, the living are right. In the
next place, we must know how to show to friends and
enemies that we are in no respect behind them, that we
dare to measure ourselves against them, and that we have
other rights besides the mere right to live, namely, the rights
that pertain to culture and to intellectual superiority.
In both these respects the romantic poets of Poland
have demonstrated what it was necessary for them to show
to Europe.
"I
BRODZINSKI, THE PIONEER OF ROMANTICISM —
POPULAR BALLADS— THE UKRAINIAN POETS:
MALCZEWSKI, ZALESKI, GOSZCYNSKI
The new literature had a forerunner, who bore the same
relation to it as did Herder to the German intellectual
revolution, and Steffens to the Danish ; Kasimir Brodzinski, a
man of a gentle, genial nature (born in 1791 in a country
town in Galicia), who lost his mother early, and who, badly
treated by his step-mother, took refuge in the servants' hall
and in the cottages of the peasants. He thus became early
familiar with the way of living and manner of thought
of the common people, and also with the national fairy
tales, traditions, and ballads. In other respects his educa-
tion was German. As in 1809, a part of Galicia had been
united to the grand-duchy of Warsaw, Brodzinski entered
the Polish army and took part in Napoleon's Russian cam-
paign of 1 81 2. In 1 81 3 he was taken prisoner at the
battle of Leipsic ; some years later he settled in Warsaw,
where in and after 1822 he delivered admirable lectures at
the University on Polish literature, Shakespeare, Goethe,
and Schiller, &c., and directed the attention of his hearers
to the value and quickening influence of popular national
poetry. Most of the members of the Ukrainian school of
poets, as well as Mickiewicz, received an impulse from him.
He had a rival, who, in the eyes of his contemporaries,
far eclipsed him, Osinskt, also professor of the history of
literature in the University, the favourite of society, a
fanatical champion of the classical taste, a blind contemner
of the rising romantic poetry, and a brilliant speaker.
Brodzinski's voice was not strong, and his appearance was
simple, but his eloquence was genuine, and his influence on
young men very great.
2i6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Slightly under the influence of Goethe's Hermann and
Dorothea, he wrote the idyll, Wieslaw, a quiet love story,
enacted among the peasants of Cracow, which is read to
this day. With proud humility he called himself " the
modest village sexton, whose only service has been that
he awakened literature to its morning devotions before day-
break."
As a teacher he prized naturalness above everything,
naturalness in manners, in style, in poetry ; he turned the
minds of the young generation from classical localities,
" the regions of Arcadia," and exhorted its poets to sing of
their own beautiful land, " the soil on which thy youth was
passed, for which the sons of Sarmatia have poured out their
blood, and where thou shalt sometime lay down thy white
head, while the firs grow green over thy grave."
As an aesthete Brodzinski cannot be called a scientific
man ; he was less and more ; less, in so far as he lacked
methodical skill ; more, because what is called science in
this domain, may exist without originality, without judgment,
without the least perception of individuality, while genuine
literary production in its billowy life, in the lot and part,
which the personality, its mood and its art have in it, ex-
cludes direct scientific treatment. In him arose an author
who belonged at once to life and to the world of books.
He stood half-way between science and art, and above
science in the fields where mere science is no art.
The revolution of 1831 tore him away from his peaceful
labours, and threw him into a vortex of national fanaticism
which had hitherto been foreign to his being. Like so many
others, even of the greatest, he became convinced of the
Messianic mission of his fatherland and lost himself in
prophecies. In an essay on the nationality of the Poles
he wrote this sentence : " The Polish natio/i is the Coper-
nicus of the moral world ; it has discovered the law of
the attraction of all races to the central moral point — the
idea of humanity ; it was granted to this nation to bring
the rights of the throne and of the people into equili-
brium on scales the beam of which stood fast in Heaven
itself."
SLAV BALLAD POETRY 217
So strongly did the recent and apparently final defeat of
Poland affect the clearest and purest intelligences.
Popular ballads gave the first inspiration to this brood
of poets ; for this was the form most remote from the
classical. All the Slav nations and the Lithuanians, a race
allied to the Poles, possessed national ballads in great abund-
ance but of very unequal merit. The best is certainly the
Lithuanian ballad {Datno), in which a race far different from
the Slavs has incorporated everything poetical which it had
at heart. Servia's rich, popular poetry, now known over the
whole of Europe by translations and adaptations, had an
influence on Runeberg in the North. That of Poland is less
plastic, softer and milder, sometimes also lighter and gayer.
Finally, the poetry of the steppes and the boldness and
melancholy of its inhabitants live in the South Russian ballad,
the Duma of the Cossacks.
While yet a child, Mickiewicz learnt the Polish popular
ballads from an old servant. They are known in Denmark
only by two or three paraphrases in Hauch's Polish Family.
Among these is a long one which begins : —
" Why, O birch tree, dost thou stand so solitary ?
On the heath in the winter and wind ? "
This little song is a paraphrase, in Shakespearean style, of
an ancient unrhymed popular ballad of the fifteenth or six-
teenth century.
" Birch tree, birch tree ! Beautiful birch tree ! why art
thou so sad ? Does the old white frost make thy sap
stiffen, or is it the wicked wind which blows upon thee ? Or
is it the brook which washes the earth from thy tender roots ?
" ' Sister Olga,' says the birch, ' the old white frost, and
the wind do not hurt me, neither does the brook.
" * But from far, far distant lands came the Tartars, and
they broke my boughs and they kindled great fires and trod
down the grass, the beautiful green grass, round about me.
And where they built the fire, there the grass will never
grow any more. And where they rode through the crops
they look like the autumn stubble.
" ' And where their horses waded through the brooks, no
2i8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
beast will drink, and where their arrows strike, the wound
heals only in the grave.' "
Even before the greatest poet of Poland was inspired by
the Polish national ballads, the group of poets, which was
directly influenced by Brodzinski, pointed out the way to
Mickiewicz, studied the Cossack Duma, and lost them-
selves in the broad horizons of the steppes. This group
formed the so-called Polish Ukrainian school of poetry,
whose three greatest names are Malczewski, Zaleski, and
Goszczynski.
Anton Malczewski, born in 1793 in Wolhynia, died when
only thirty-three years old, unappreciated, nay, unknown.
He is the author of the most popular poem in Polish
literature, and perhaps the one most frequently republished
and illustrated, Marja, an Ukrainian Tale, in style recalling
Byron's early shorter epics. Malczewski was the son of a
Polish general, received the French culture of the fashion-
able world, entered the army under Napoleon, was severely
wounded, resigned his position as an officer, travelled in
foreign countries from 1816 to 1821, took part in the
amusements and pleasures of the society of the upper classes
till he lost his fortune and health, when he returned to
Wolhynia, settled in the country, and was drawn into an
intrigue with his cousin, the invalid wife of a neighbouring
landed proprietor, whom he restored to health by a magnetic
cure. She left her husband, and the two lived together for
some years in Warsaw, where Malczewski, who was now
very poor, supported himself by a private appointment,
until the uneasiness and importunity of his companion — she
could not endure him to be away from home — compelled
him to resign his position. Although very neurotic himself
and harassed by the exactions of an excessively neurotic
woman, he forced himself to the culminating work of his
life. Marja appeared in 1825, was unfavourably judged by
stupid critics, attracted no attention, and did not sell.
Malczewski died under the impression of this failure, and
when his death was announced in the newspapers of the
classicists, Osinski gave him these parting words : " He is
said to have tried his hand at Polish poetry."
BYRON AND MALCZEWSKI 219
The important event in Malczewski's literary life was that
he became personally acquainted with Byron in Venice.
Byron was then thirty years old, Malczewski twenty-four,
both very fine-looking men. They belonged to the same
rank in society, were both melancholy and sensual, but the
former had a martial, the latter a sensitive and delicate nature.
It was natural that Malczewski should fall under the influence
of the great Englishman ; in return he (it is said) gave
Byron the idea of his poem Mazeppa.
The model of the hero of Marja was Felix Potocki,
who appears frequently in Polish literature, one of the
" fated chieftains " of the confederation of Targowice \ he is
here idealised into a handsome and blameless knight under
the name of Waclaw. As he had married a young lady of
the petty nobility against his father's will, the cruel and
artful father, after a pretended reconciliation, sent him and
his father-in-law away on an expedition against Crimean
brigands, and then caused his bride to be drowned by
masked men in the moat of the castle.
By placing this event in the times of the Tartar con-
tests, the poet has enabled himself to treat it in such a way
as to give himself the opportunity of playing on all the
strings, and using all the powers of which he was master.
He described the freedom, wildness, and silence of the steppes
of Ukraine, when he sang of the solitary Cossack who rode
over the steppes to carry the Wojewode's false message of
reconciliation ; dwelt lyrically on the character of the Cossack,
freeborn, yet so faithful to his lord ; gave with force and
precision the picture of the sortie of the Polish knightly
band, with the ring of the trumpets and the clatter of the
horses' hoofs under the Gothic portals ; and painted in
contrast the portrait of the solitary Marja, the ideal of the
gentle devoted Polish woman, the consolation and pride
of her father, who, when near him, lives for him, but who
ever and always is thinking of her beloved, her husband,
consumed by a longing for him, "the world of her soul,"
whom, in the poem, she only sees for a few hours again
before she bids him an eternal farewell.
The conversations between the lovers are reproduced
220 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
with sentimental enthusiasm, the battle between the Poles
and the Tartars is depicted with great impetuosity ; the
fundamental traits of the two different races of men stand
out sharply, and we are sensible of the significance of the
conflict between civilisation and barbarism in those times,
when the campaigns of the Poles were directed against
perpetrators of violence of the most cruel kind, and their
self-defence became the bulwark of Europe. And in the
next place the poet has drawn a skilful contrast between
the uproar of the masked men at home, and the fury of the
battle-field ; the former concerned with the murder of a
defenceless woman, and the latter taking place to protect
that home which was being destroyed at the same
moment.
The murder of the young woman is not described at
all ; we see that the author shrank from it. Hardly anything
is made of Waclaw's meeting with the corpse, although his
longing for the living woman on the ride home is very
strongly emphasised. Where his imaginative power failed
him, the poet understood how to conceal the want by
setting the reader's fancy in action, while he opens up
possibilities, suggests a great deal, leaves a great deal
undetermined.
Malczewski, in his treatment of this theme of his native
country, was influenced, as we cannot fail to note, by re-
miniscences of his travels. When he opens the second canto
(like the first) with a description of the steppes, he draws
a parallel between their natural characteristics and those of
the beauties of nature in Italy, and declares that the
depressed man who would be cured of his melancholy,
must hie to the south, since the melancholy uniformity
of the steppes only lays bare the wounds of the heart.
When the masked men are about to enter into the castle
with a song, the author is also full of Italian reminiscences.
The carnival at Venice was before his eyes with its gaiety,
as a contrast to this horrible mummery, and he has mingled
the tones of a dirge with the gay song of the masqueraders,
much as Victor Hugo would have done.
Partly in memory of his association with Byron and his
THE POET ZALESKI 221
influence, partly as an expression of something Polish and
personal, Malczewski introduces a mysterious page, who is
present when the preparations are made for the murder, and
who later meets Waclaw, and jumps upon his horse behind
him, when he rides away for revenge. Of him the poet
sings : " Who was he, the young man with the tearful look ?
Angel or devil ? Was it the spirit of his misfortune ? Will
he add to the pangs of Waclaw ? Share his sorrow ? I
know not ! He embraces him and they disappear at a
gallop." Elsewhere this young page says of himself : " I am
a foreigner in my native land, my fate has left black scars
on my breast. That I, so young, was compelled to eat the
poisoned bread of the world, it is that which has burdened
my heart and set my tears flowing. . . . When I sing a
song, the melody is sad." It is plain that in a naive and
awkward manner the author here introduced his own per-
sonality into the poem, which was to survive him, and make
him famous after his death.
To the Ukrainian group of poets in addition to a series
of minor intellects (Padura, who became a wandering ballad
singer, and Grabowski, who wrote Ukrainian melodies),
belong the two Zaleski and Goszczynski, both greatly
influenced by Brodzinski's lectures, with their references to
the nature of their own country.
Bohdan Zaleski (born in 1802), who, after a silence of
more than a generation, died two or three years ago in
Paris, is not, like Malczewski, the poet of the Polish nobility,
but of the Cossacks. Again and again he has praised, in
verse, his beloved steppes, his Dnieperland, and in fact he
has sung of nothing else. He himself says that for him
the carol of the birds, the ditties of the young girls, and the
songs of the men in praise of the Attaman, flowed together
into a single living song, which he drank in a full draught.
Mildly and elegiacally he sings the longing for the steppes,
the yearning for the scenery of the Ukraine, the dangerous
life and the solitary death that are the lot of the Cossack.
Placable and gentle, he passes over the time when Poland
harassed and oppressed the Cossacks, who rose in continual
conflicts against his native land, and goes back to the peace-
222 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
ful times of the sixteenth century, which again he purges of
everything grotesque and brutal. His best known poem,
The Holy Family, a somewhat bloodless Christian idyll (which
treats of the time after the Passover in Jerusalem, when
Christ was a child, describes the uneasiness of the parents
until He was found teaching in the temple, and paints with
delicate colours the tone within and without this temple), is
mainly valuable for the picture of the pilgrims' journey to
and from Jerusalem in the fragrant spring, the bivouacs
under the open heavens, with the frugal supper obtained
from the country village, and the shouts of the children
around the camp-fire — a picture which is an exact repro-
duction of what he had seen on the steppes of his native
land, when the South Russian pilgrims went on pilgrimages
to their holy places at Easter — only that there is not the
boldness in the description which the subject demands, but
the bland mildness of miniature-painting.
After the revolt of 1831 was ended, Zaleski emigrated,
and soon after, like other greater poets, became in Paris a
votary of Towianski's fanaticism. Later, he turned back
from mysticism to orthodox Roman Catholicism, and wrote
a long, shallow poem, in the ascetic spirit.
Severin Goszczynski (born in 1803, died in 1876) came
from a village in the department of Kief, was educated as a
comrade of Padura, Crabowski, and Zaleski, as a young man
was mixed up in a conspiracy, took part in the revolt in
1830, and afterwards emigrated to Paris, but later came
back to Austrian Poland.
His chief work, The Castle in Kanto'w (1828), which
treats of a sanguinary revolt of the peasants of the last half
of the eighteenth century, is a poem rich in romantic
horrors, represented with an undaunted eye and a firm
hand. Goszczynski was a gloomy, superstitious, martial
being, with great dramatic gifts, who dwells by preference on
outbursts of violent passion, scenes of murder, madness, and
fire. While Byron's spleen and melancholy gave Malczewski
courage to give expression to cognate traits, it was Byron's
taste for wildness and violence which appealed to Goszczynski.
His soul vibrated at the recollection of the war of exter-
GOSZCZYNSKI 223
mination waged against each other by the PoHsh nobiUty
and the Cossacks ; he dwells on the hot desire and cold
cruelty of the men, and the ungovernable love of the
women, leading them to madness or murder in order to
free themselves, and he loses himself, without trembling, in
visions of the massacres of that time, of punishments such as
impalement, and the red glare of burning castles.
IV
MICKIEWICZ AND GOETHE — PARIS AND THE ODE
TO YOUTH— YOUTH OF MICKIEWICZ— MICKIE-
WICZ AND PUSHKIN
One day in August 1829, two young Poles arrived at
Weimar, in order, if possible, to make the acquaintance of
the great Goethe. They had letters of introduction to his
daughter-in-law. Madam Ottilie, whose maiden name was
Pogwisch, and to him, also, from a Polish artist of high
standing, the court pianist. Madam Szymanowska, of St.
Petersburg.
They were well received, and were remarkably popular,
not only in Goethe's house, but also in all the best society
of Weimar, and they well deserved it, for they belonged to
those persons who amply repay the hospitality shown to
them. They were Adam Mickiewicz, at that time thirty
years of age, and his twenty-six-year-old friend, Odyniec,
the most enthusiastic and amiable Patroclus any Achilles
could desire.
Odyniec's natural and graceful letters from Weimar show
us, as in a mirror, what the widely celebrated little city was
in the days when Goethe had reached his eightieth year, and,
in addition, describe with a delicate gift of observation, even
if not without partiality, the contrast between the two
greatest poets of Germany and Poland, when one was an
old man, and the other in all the vigour of his youth.
We hear the old and the young master talk, and their
utterances deal with the life of the moment. The descrip-
tion of the first visit to Goethe is delightful, when they were
admitted, after having waited for a while, with frightful
beatings of the heart. We actually hear the accents of
Goethe's enthusiastic exclamation concerning Madam Szy-
manowska: " Elle est charmante; comme elle est belle et
MICKIEWICZ AT WEIMAR 225
gracieuse ; comme elle est charmante ! " And later, the little
party at the house of Madam Ottilie, when young Odyniec was
so fascinated by the charming Madam Vogel. Goethe asks him
the good-natured question : " Nun, wie gefallen denn Ihnen
unsere Damen ? " and the young Pole, not yet entirely perfect
in the German language, answers, smiling : " Paradiesischen
Vogel, Excellenz," meaning to say, " Paradiesvogel." ^
One day when Odyniec had taken breakfast with the
Vogels, and remained so long that he missed the dinner-
hour in the hotel, on his return he found Adam at the table
from which the cloth had been removed, with two French
gentlemen. They wanted him to help them to the name of
Poland's greatest poet. But he constantly mentioned names
which they rejected as wrong. One of them said : " Non,
Non ! ce n'est pas le nom ! Mik . . . Mis . . . Mik . . .
Eh ! qui est done votre grand po^te ? " Mickiewicz looked
significantly at Odyniec and nodded his head gently, then
proposed the name of Krasinski, and, during the indig-
nation of the Frenchmen at the ignorance of the Poles of
their own literature, Adam rose and went to his room.
The gentlemen, the elder of whom was the celebrated
sculptor, David d' Angers, who had come to Weimar to
make a bust of Goethe, now turned to Odyniec, asking if he
did not know the name of Poland's greatest poet. " Probably
you mean Adam Mickiewicz," he replied. When David
broke out : *' Exactly, exactly, it is of him that I wished to
speak ; " he received the answer : " It is he who just went
out of the door." — " Oh, how droll, but it is so. I have his
picture in a Spanish cloak."
It was the well-known portrait of Mickiewicz, leaning
against the rock Ajudagh.
David immediately seeks Mickiewicz in his room, and
finds this changeable being, who was just now gloomy and
indifferent, genial and gay. During the lively conversa-
tion— according to the enthusiastic description of Odyniec —
Adam suddenly grows to a giant and shoots forth sparks
like a Vulcan, so that David, wholly carried away, begs
^ " Well, what do you think of our ladies ? " " Paradisaical birds, your Excellence "
(for Birds of Paradise). The play on the name Vogel (bird) is lost in translation.— Tr.
P
226 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
permission to execute his portrait as a medallion. On a
succeeding day he persuades the poet to read aloud to him
something of his own in a French prose translation.
Mickiewicz reads the poem, which is certainly the best of
his short poems, Farts. The strongest part of it is as
follows : —
<' How happy is the Arab when he lets his horse leap
out into the desert from a block of stone ! The horse's feet
sink into the sand with a dull sound as when the glowing,
red-hot steel is plunged into the water. So he swims away
in the golden sea of sand, and parts the dry waves with his
breast.
" Faster, even faster ! Already his hoofs hardly touch
the plain of sand. Farther, farther ! He has already vanished
in a cloud of dust.
" He is black, my steed, like a thunder-cloud. A star
shines on his forehead. He spreads his withers like an
ostrich wing before the wind, and his white hoofs flash
lightning.
" Fly, fly, my brave horse with the white hoofs ! You
forests, you mountains, place, place !
" The cliffs, the watchmen of the boundaries of the
desert, turn their dark faces toward me, repeat the echo
of my gallop, and seem to threaten me. It is as if they
shouted. Whither does this madman go ? There where he
is hastening there are neither any palms with their green
crowns, nor any tent with its white breast for shelter against
the arrows of the sun. There sleep only the mountains,
there only the stars pursue their course.
" I hasten, hasten. When I turn my head, I see the
shamefaced cliffs flying and hiding one behind the other.
" But a vulture has heard their threats. It is stupid
enough to believe that it can make me its prey here in the
desert, and it swings down through the air towards me.
Three times it sighs around my head and encompasses me
as with a black crown.
" ' I scent,' it croaks, * the smell of death. O mad knight !
O mad horse 1 Does the knight seek a path here ? Here
lies only death, here only vultures fly/
MICKIEWICZ'S "PARIS" 227
" He shrieked and threatened me with his shining claws.
Three times we measured each other with our eyes. Which
of us quailed first ? The vulture. I hasten, I hasten, and
when I turn my head, I see the vulture far, far away like a
black spot on the heavens, at first as large as a sparrow,
then as a butterfly, then as a gnat, and then it vanishes in
the blue of the heavens.
" Fly, fly, my brave horse with the white hoofs ! Ye cliffs,
ye vultures, place, place.
" Then I let my eyes run round the circle of sight as if I
were the sun himself and I saw no one all around me. Here
sleeping nature has never been wakened by man. Here the
elements rest peacefully, just as beasts on a newly discovered
island do not fear the sight of man.
" But Allah ! I am not the first, not the only one
here. Are they travellers or robbers, who are lying in
wait? ,How white they are, the horsemen! And their
horses are also hideously white. I fly towards them ; they
do not move. I shout, they answer not. Allah ! It is
death. A caravan long since buried in the sand, from which
the storm has now blown the sand away ! On the bony sides
of the camels sit skeletons of Arabian men ! Through the
holes where eyes once sat, the sand flows out and seems to
mumble a threat : The madman ! why does he ride hither ?
He will soon meet the hurricane.
" I hasten, I fly — O death, hurricanes ! place, place.
" But the hurricane comes, the most fearful of Africa's
disturbers of peace, which move solitary over the sea of
sand ; it seems to me to be far away ; it is surprised, it stops ;
it whirls around me as if saying to itself : What younger
brother of mine among the winds is this, which, so feeble
in growth and so slow in flight, ventures into my old kingdom
of the deserts ? It roars and comes towards me like a
pyramid in motion. But when it sees that I am only a
man and do not step aside, it stamps, raging, on the ground
and leaps over half of Arabia. It seizes me as a kite does
a sparrow ; it strikes me with its whirling wings, burns me
with its flaming breath, hurls me up into the air and throws
me down on the earth. I jump up and fight against it,
228 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
tear apart the gigantic knots of its whirls. I bite it ; crush
with my teeth whatever I can get hold of in its body of
sand. It would like to slip out of my arms, but it cannot
tear itself loose and it grows weak. Its head falls back,
dissolved in a shower of dust, and its immense corpse
stretches itself out at my feet like the rampart before a
city.
" Then I took breath, lifted up my eyes and looked
proudly on the stars, and all the stars looked steadily down
on me with their eyes of gold ; for they did not see any-
thing but me in the desert. Oh how sweet it is to breathe
here, to breathe in and out, in full draught of a full heart !
I breathe freely, fully, deeply. All the air of Arabia is
hardly enough air for my lungs. Oh how sweet it is to
look around as far as the eye can reach ; my eyes are
enlarged, strengthened ; their gaze already pierces through
the circle of vision. Oh how sweet it is to stretch one's
arms out freely, peacefully, to their full length ! I feel as
if I could embrace the whole world from East to West.
My thoughts fly like an arrow, higher, higher, higher up
yet into the abyss of the heavens. And as the bee entombs
his life with the sting with which it pierces, so I hurl and
pierce with my thought my whole soul into the vault of
heaven."
David gave a bound in the chair on which he was
sitting modelling his medallion with a bit of wood which he
had splintered from a stick which lay behind the stove.
" How did you hit on that ? " he asked.
*' I like that," answered Mickiewicz ; " there you see
the artist who wants to know the conditions under which
the work came into existence, and had to come." And
he related that while still very young he had read some
Oriental poems in a French translation — and how one
day in St. Petersburg, as he was leaving a gay dinner party
and saw that a storm was coming up, he had taken a
droshky and said to the driver that he must hurry. And
the driver let the horse go as fast as the reins and
harness would allow, and this chasing and rattling, the
soughing of the blast, the rolling of the thunder, and
THE "ODE TO YOUTH" 229
more than all this, his delight in the rapid movement,
awakened the melody of Faris in his mind, and the poem
was completed the same night.
This poem is admirable not only for its grand fan-
tasy but for its vigorous youthful force. There is in it a
pride, a self-assurance, which the poet's first readers needed ;
it encouraged them not to succumb. There is no Goethe-
like self-limitation here, none of Schiller's sense of the dis-
tance between the ideal and the reality. It is the apotheosis
of endless temerity.
And it is indeed quite in the same spirit as the cele-
brated Ode to Youth, which Mickiewicz completed soon after.
This ode has been called his first political poem, although
in itself it is entirely unpolitical, but, without any intention
on the part of the author, it became the Marseillaise of the
Polish youth : —
" He who as a boy has already killed serpents will
as a youth be able to strangle centaurs, wrest from hell
its spoil, and win laurels in heaven. Mount so high that
no eye can follow. Break and demolish what intellect
alone does not break. Youth ! thy flight is the flight of
the eagle — and thy arm leads the lightning. Let us
place ourselves arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, and
surround the world with a chain, collect our thoughts to
a single flame and all our souls to a single hearthstone !
And thus, old world ! out of thy tracks ! we will thrust thee,
old earth, out into new paths and peel off thy decayed shell,
that the spring of thy youth may blossom on thee ! "
Reading this lyric, we understand Odyniec's joyful out-
burst about his friend, when he says that in the conver-
sations with Goethe, Adam's words were glowing metal,
Goethe's bright, cold coins. But we also understand the
amazement of the conventionally educated young Pole at
Goethe's whole manner of thinking and feeling. It is
specially when the conversation in Goethe's house turns
on the natural sciences that both the Poles have occasion
to wonder at Goethe's purely pagan contemplation, while
they themselves are all fire and flame, devotion and faith.
Goethe at times expresses one simple and weighty thought
230 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
after the other. Odyniec quotes some expressions, taken
directly from the lips of the old man : " La nature a Vattrait
et la chartne de tinfini. — We must be consistent in our in-
vestigation, and Nature deceives no one. — Nature's treasures
are enchanted ; no spade, but a word discloses them to the
eye. — I have often been at war with Nature, but I have
always ended by asking her to forgive me." And many
other similar sentences. He writes home to a friend in
Poland thus : "If you are already astonished that here
the talk is only of Nature, what will you say if I tell you that
this term recurred at least two hundred times and that the
word 'God' was not mentioned once? As if Nature were
one and all. Alpha and Omega, its own creator and deity !
This is, then, the Pantheism, which I have hitherto, God
be praised ! only known by report, and which I believed
was only proclaimed by people who spoke against their
own better convictions, and did not understand what they
themselves said. But to-day it was otherwise. Everything
that Goethe said, and even everything which he did not
say plainly, was clear. And this clearness, this winter-light
chilled me with such coldness, that even the radiant glances
of my beautiful companion at the table (Madam Vogel)
only struck on my heart like the rays of the sun on snow
which it cannot melt. I looked inquiringly over to Adam,
in order to guess his thoughts ; but he sat gloomy and
silent." And Odyniec rejoices that his great friend still be-
lieves, as he says in Dztady, that there was some one who
hung the weights in the clock of the world, and that the
Polish prophet thus distinguishes himself from the German
Titans. For him Goethe is the wise man : " who does
not know the living truth, sees no miracle," and he applies
to himself with reference to Goethe the words of Mickie-
wicz's poem, Romanticism : " Emotion and faith speak more
strongly to me than the eye and the telescope of a sage."
And then follows a criticism of Faust, dismay at the creed,
that God is only an emotion, which man draws from nature,
and every name a mere sound. What is this Faust ? Satire ?
Irony ? Insult ? and against what is it directed ? he asks.
Against German scholasticism, or the everlasting moral laws
CHILDHOOD OF MICKIEWICZ 231
and truths, emotions and ideas, traditions and aims of all
humanity. He asks Mickiewicz for counsel, and we see
that the latter is content with excusing Geothe : " We must
always recognise that he never takes the offensive against
religion as the authors of the last century did, but is only in-
different to the fundamental religious truths." "Consequently
not eighteen, but twenty less two ! " bursts out Odyniec.
So foreign was Goethe's view of life to Mickiewicz.
The nature of the latter shines out in its Polish individuality
when we place him by the side of the greatest poetical genius
of Germany.
He was born in 1798 in the little village of Zaosie near
Nowogrodek in Lithuania, a descendant of an old noble
family. In the spring of 181 2, when he was thirteen years
old, he saw the armies of Napoleon march through Poland
on the campaign against Russia, Poland's white eagle united
with the golden eagle of the empire. The King of West-
phalia had his headquarters in Mickiewicz's ancestral home at
Nowogrodek. The hopeful and martial spirit of the times
filled the child's soul and fertilised that of the man. He says
in Pan Tadeusz : —
" O Spring ! to have seen thee in our home that great
year, thou memorable Spring of War, thou Spring of ferti-
lity ! O Spring ! to have seen thee with flowers in masses,
with the green of the fields and woods, and the pomp of
warriors in battle array, rich in miracles and achievements,
and with a thousand hopes in thy lap, memory great and
fair, thou fillest me even to-day. Born and bred in thral-
dom, as a child an exile in chains, I have never in my life
known but one such Spring."
In 1 81 5 Mickiewicz came to the University of Wilna,
began to study philology, and formed an intimate friendship
with the afterwards well-known Thomas Zan, the soul of
the private society of the Philomathians and of the public
society of the Philaretans, both of which recall the Ger-
man Tugendbund, non-political associations having the in-
tellectual and moral development of the students as their
aim, which were, however, soon to be overtaken by the
suspicion and persecuting fury of the Russian authorities.
>.
tJJ*
232 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
After having made his first essays in composition in a
purely classical style — like Oehlenschlaeger and Victor Hugo
— Mickiewicz turned to the new European romanticism.
Here, as in England, it was Burger's Lenore which called
forth a new ballad poetry. Itself evoked by old English
ballads, the poem had so strong an influence on Walter Scott
that he made his debut with a translation of it. A version
by the Russian poet Zukowski made so deep an impres-
sion on Mickiewicz that he adopted an entirely new style
and composed a whole series of ballads, one of which, called
The Flighty even treats of the same theme as Letwre. These
poems, which are founded upon local popular traditions or
Slav superstitions, are now romantic in the tone of popular
ballads, now vigorously dramatic like the admirable song of
the Wojewode — immoral as a poem in prose by Merim^e —
or again humorous, like the description of the terror of the
devil at a termagant in Madam Twardowska.
Mickiewicz had had a first " unhappy love," as it was
called, a passion on which the poets of that time (Byron,
Heine, and many others) lived poetically for a long time.
He had already fallen in love in Nowogrodek with a young
girl of good family, Maria Wereszczaka (celebrated in his
verse by the name of Marylka\ who preferred another to him.
In the condition of erotic desperation, which he was now
experiencing, Byron became his only reading, and he wrote
the oldest parts of Dziady (the Festival of the Dead), which,
in connection with an old Lithuanian custom of placing
food and drink in the churchyards for the dead on All
Souls' Day (the 2nd of November), introduces peasants,
shepherds, an exorcist, and a great number of spirits on an
imaginary stage. Among these spirits is a suicide, the victim
of unhappy love. In other fragments this suicide — called
Gustavus, after the hero in Madam de Kriidener's sentimental
romance Valerie — appears as a ghost, who is condemned
every year, on the 2nd of November, to suffer his agony of
mind again. All these fragments, full of romantic ghosts
and overstrained emotion, are without interest to the foreign
reader. Werther and Werther's offspring appear on the scene
again. Immediately after, however, came the little heroic
IMPRISONMENT OF MICKIEWICZ 233
poem, Gracyna, which treats in fresh verse an old Lithuanian
motive of patriotism and female bravery, and in this there
was nothing obscure or mawkish ; the form is clear, and
the intellectual impulse vigorous.
After two or three years' residence in Kowno as a
teacher, Mickiewicz returned to Wilna, where events soon
revolutionised the calm life he had hitherto led. The murder
of Kotzebue by Sand had helped on the reaction in Germany.
It was awakened at the same time in the great neighbouring
land.
Alexander's liberal tendencies came to an end with the
year 1823. The authorities began to hunt out attempts at
rebellion on the part of the students. Nowosilcow, who had
fallen into disgrace, after having squandered in excesses what
he had scraped together in all sorts of ways, set himself to
discover a conspiracy in Poland, and went with his whole staff
of spies to Lithuania. All the monasteries in Wilna, eight in
number, besides several other public buildings, were made
into prisons. At the end of October, 1823, Mickiewicz, Zan,
and all their friends were arrested. The young men were
confined in cells, but could see each other in the evening in
the cloisters. How long they were there they did not rightly
know ; they had no almanac and received no letters ; there
were wooden shutters on the windows, so that it was diffi-
cult to distinguish the morning from the evening. Thomas
Zan, who took upon himself all the blame of the innocent
meetings of the Philomathians and Philaretans, was treated
the most severely, and suffered especially from hunger. He
was sent to Orenburg, and was not pardoned until 1837.
The long exile changed his views of life ; he, who had
been a freethinker and an oppositionist, entered the service
of the Russian state as a mystic and ascetic. After ten
months of detention, Mickiewicz was sent to St. Petersburg,
and, when he was assigned to service in one of the
governments of the interior, he chose Odessa. When he
came thither there was no vacancy for a teacher. Then
(in company with the subsequently celebrated Rzewuski,
who tried his hand at authorship at the request of Mickiewicz)
he made a journey to the Crimea, and in his case, as with
234 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
many others of the best Slav poets, the first view of the
mountain landscape and the southern scenery sharpened
his appreciation of nature. What the Caucasus was to
be for Pushkin, Lermontow, and Tolstoi, that the grand
panorama of the Crimea was for Mickiewicz. His Crimean
Sonnets have justly been given a chief place among his poems.
In Moscow, where he obtained a post in the office
of the governor-general, he wrote Wallenrod, as well as
Gracyna, taking his subjects from the pagan days of Lithu-
ania, and the contest of its princes with the Teutonic Knights.
The hero, historically a grand master of the order, who,
himself ruined, brought the whole order to ruin, was made
a Lithuanian by Mickiewicz ; in order to withstand the
national enemy more efifectually he insinuates himself into
the enemy's camp, pretends to be of his party, becomes a
leader of his army, and thus with one blow avenges his
countrymen. It is a glorification of dissimulation and
treachery in the service of the fatherland — a Macchiavellian
idea incarnated in a Byronic hero. Interwoven with this
fundamental theme there is a sentimental love story in the
romantic style.
The censor, who read the poem without understanding
it, allowed it to be printed, and this, in conjunction with the
Crimean Sonnets, soon caused the name of Mickiewicz to be
in everybody's mouth. The best Russian society was opened
to him, not only in Moscow but in St. Petersburg, whither
he speedily received permission to travel. It was the
Princess Zeneide Wolkonskaya who introduced the poet to
the Russian aristocracy, where he became a favourite and
was greatly loved and admired. Many ladies took lessons
of him in Polish, and the Princess Wolkonskaya became his
translator. The Sonnets and Wallenrod were now read as
zealously in Russia as in Poland, and the author, somewhat
enervated by the amusements of society life and the favour
of the ladies, for a long time only wrote trifles. He had a
great desire to see foreign countries, and it was the influence
of the Princess Wolkonskaya which obtained him a passport
for an indefinite time ; with this he left St. Petersburg in
May, to see the wide world, by way of Weimar.
MICKIEWICZ AND PUSHKIN 235
We have seen him in personal contact with the greatest
poetical mind of Germany. A year before he sought out
Goethe he had entered into personal relations of friendship
with the most eminent Russian authors of that period.
Mickiewicz and Pushkin were of the same age. They came
to occupy parallel positions, each at the head of one of the
two great Slav literatures. Both commenced as disciples of
Byron, both with advancing years became more and more
national. A fundamental difference between them lies in
the fact that Pushkin, after the controversial and rebellious
attitude of his early youth towards absolute power, allowed
himself to be won over by the personal good-will of the
Tzar Nicholas, and lost all faith in the ideals of his youth ;
while Mickiewicz, to his death, continued faithful to his first
political enthusiasms and hopes.
The memory of their intercourse is preserved in Push-
kin's poem. The Bronze Horseman, and in the fourth part of
Mickiewicz's poem, St. Petersburg, which bears the sub-title
The Monument of Peter the Great.
Mickiewicz has here preserved the impression of a con-
versation which the poets, one day in 1829, the very year
before the fates of Russia and Poland were divided, had in
St. Petersburg, during a shower, both covered by Mickie-
wicz's cloak, at the foot of Falconnefs celebrated monument
to the Tzar. The verses are as follows : —
" One afternoon two young men stood hand in hand,
seeking shelter from the rain under the same cloak. One
of them was a pilgrim who had come from the West, an
unknown victim to the power of the Tzar ; the other was
the poet of the Russian people, celebrated through the whole
North for his songs. They were not old acquaintances,
though they knew each other well, and a few days before
had become friends. Their souls, which had raised them-
selves high above the barriers of the earthly life, resembled
two twin mountain peaks in the Alps, which, separated by
a furious mountain torrent, are hardly sensible of the roar of
the force which separates them, and bend their lofty peaks
toward each other. The pilgrim stood lost in deep thought,
when the Russian poet, in a low voice, said to him : —
236 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
"'To the first Tzar, who created this magnificent city,
the second Tzarina raised this memorial.^ The Tzar, already
cast in bronze of heroic size, sat on the back of his
Bucephalus, and waited till a place should be prepared for
him and his horse. But there was not ground enough for
him to stand on in the land of his birth. So they sent a
messenger over the sea for a pedestal for him. And from
Finland's rocky shore a huge granite block was torn away,
and, at the bidding of the Tzarina, swam over the waves,
sprang on shore, rolled on, until, in the great city, it cast
itself down at its ruler's feet. There it lay firmly, and then
the bronze Tzar dashed forward, the knoutocratic Tzar in his
Roman toga ; he spurred his horse so that with a leap he
mounted on the granite block, steadied himself on the edge,
and reared up in the air.
" ' Not thus in old Rome does Marcus Aurelius, that
favourite of the people, sit on his horse, he who first made
his name famous by driving out spies and accusers, then,
after having punished the tormentors at home, chastised the
highwaymen on the Rhine, and the barbarians on the Pac-
tolus, and peacefully returned to the Capitoline. Beautiful,
noble, and gentle is his brow, from which one idea shines,
that of the welfare of the kingdom. He raises his right
hand majestically, as if to give his blessing to the whole
host of his subjects ; the other hand rests on the reins and
restrains the ardour of his steed.
" ' But the Tzar Peter gives his horse the reins ; we see
that he has ridden everything down in his way. Now he
has sprung up on the upper side of the rock. The fore-
leg of the horse already plays in the air ; the Tzar does not
hold him back ; he pulls at the bit ; he must fall and be
crushed. It has already stood thus for a century without
falling. Thus a waterfall issues from a mountain, is caught
by the frost and stiffens into ice, hanging over an abyss.
"' Yet when the sun of freedom rises and a breath from
the West warms these frost-bound regions, what will then
become of the waterfall — and of tyranny ? ' "
As various internal signs show, the words are really the
^ The inscription is : " Pietro primo Catharina secunda."
MICKIEWICZ AND PUSHKIN 237
words of Mickiewicz, not of the Russian poet into whose
mouth he has put them. Pushkin for his part afterwards
wrote a poem about this meeting in St. Petersburg, which
was not printed till four years after his death in 1841, and
which, since at that time it was impossible to mention
Mickiewicz's name in Russia, merely bears the superscription
"To M." In it is the following passage : —
" He was our guest. Among a race which was foreign
to him, he cherished no hatred to us and on our side we
loved him. Gentle and as a friend he sat at our table. We
exchanged with him pure dreams and poems. He was
inspired by heaven and looked down upon life as if from
above. He often spoke about the days of a great future,
when the nations should forget their dissensions and be
united in a single great family. We listened eagerly to his
prophecies. Then he passed on to the West and our
blessings followed him on the way. But now our peaceful
guest has become our enemy ; to flatter the fierce multitude
who listen to him, he sings the praise of hatred in his
verses. His voice comes to us from afar. O God ! give
peace to his embittered heart."
There is no shadow of any personal ill-humour in this
utterance, in which Mickiewicz's later position is judged
from a Russian point of view. A still warmer sympathy
inspired the article which Mickiewicz published in the French
newspaper, Le Globe, on receipt of the news of Pushkin's death.
In spite of all the attraction towards each other which they
experienced at a certain period of their lives, and in spite of
their common descent from Byron, they were and continued
to be contrasts in so far as Pushkin in his whole being was
an aristocrat, a poet for the few, a scorner of the many, while
Mickiewicz, on the other hand, was a spirit wholly given up
to his nation. For Pushkin, to be national meant recon-
ciliation with the authorities, a rupture with trust in freedom
and in the future of Europe. On the other hand, Mickiewicz
became national only by emancipation from all connection
with official Russia and by an optimistic enthusiasm, which
stands in the sharpest contrast to Pushkin's constantly
increasing satiety. In his later productions Pushkin con-
238 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
stantly complains that the dreams of his youth have left
him, dreams of love, of freedom, of honour. And he ex-
claims, " I see no goal before me."
The strength of Mickiewicz as a productive genius was
that he was not for a moment in doubt as to his aim.
Pushkin was Russian as Mickiewicz was Polish. But as
Michelet has somewhere expressed it, if I am not mistaken,
at that time Russia was not as yet a nation, only an
administration and a whip. The administration was the
German and the whip the Cossack. But while Russia was
a government without a nation, Poland had the compara-
tively better lot of being a nation without a government.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION DETERMINES THE MANNER OF TREAT-
ING ALL SUBJECTS, THE POINT OF VIEW FOR LOVE AND
HATE, MATERNAL AND FILIAL EMOTIONS, THE RELATION
BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE PEOPLE, BETWEEN
GENIUS AND THE SURROUNDING WORLD, BETWEEN EMOTION
AND REASON, RELATION TO RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
As soon as we have observed how the three factors, national
character, Romanticism, and the poHtical situation, determine,
develop, exalt, humble or stamp the nature of these poets
as men, we easily discover how these same motive powers
invariably determine their productions. But since Roman-
ticism is the same in all countries, and the national character
manifests itself quite differently in different times (for instance
quite otherwise now than at that time) it appears that the
political situation is the important factor.
It determines the point of view from which the life of man
is beheld, the point of view for all the spiritual problems,
which are treated, the character of the masculine and
feminine leading persons, and the entire symbolic and
allegorical form of the poems.
The study of Polish literature leaves no doubt that it is
the poetico-political dream life, which modifies the spiritual
condition and the spiritual questions that are contempo-
raneously treated in European poetry, because it brings
them within the national angle of vision, wholly excludes
some questions and brings forward certain new ones, which
are not treated in any other place.
For instance, let us consider the subjects on which the
poetry of Goethe and Heine, Byron and Shelley, Hugo and
Musset turns, and see what form and shape they assume
here.
Such subjects are the whole domain of love and hate,
339
240 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
the description of all the passions in their conflict and battle
with duties, the question of the power of the human spirit
to penetrate and understand the universe, of the justification
and future of religious faith, of the relative right of the
different ranks in the war of classes, of the right of genius
and its meaning for its nation and for humanity, the
different views of life of two generations succeeding each
other, &c.
Take an emotion like love between a man and
woman, and see how it is treated by a Polish poet of
that period.
In the narrative and dramatic works it often has a wild
and criminal, but never a sensual character. But when the
poets either express themselves in their own name or through
heroes, behind whose masks we catch a glimpse of their
traits, it is amazing how abstract and incorporeal love
becomes in their hands. It is always emotion, never desire.
It is in unison with this that the sorrow of love — and there
is more of the sorrow of love than of its joy in their poetry
— is forced into the background and overcome by other less
personal emotions, like political enthusiasm or patriotism. In
Mickiewicz's Dziady, the hero, under the impression of such
a revulsion of feeling, even gives himself a new name. He
designates the day on which he was imprisoned (which
corresponds with the day on which the author was im-
prisoned) as the day of the death of his old ego, as his new
birthday, drops his peaceful name, Gustavus, and assumes
the new martial one, Conrad. Gustavus obiit MDCCCXXIII
Calendis Novemhris. Hie natus est Conradus, &c. That is,
the name of the hero of Byron's Corsair replaces that of
Madame de Kriidener's emotional romance. The incident is
typical. There is generally a Gustavus who dies in order
that a Conrad may arise. And it is also in harmony with
this that the Polish women in poetry are so unearthly. We
can never imagine them engaged in the daily work of life.
They are either heroines, who, high on horseback, rush into
the tumult of the battle, or they are ethereal phantoms, visions
from a better world, angelic manifestations, whose being is
pure soul.
IDEALISATION OF WOMAN 241
There are in one of Wordsworth's poems these well-known
lines about a young woman whom he admires : —
" A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food ;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death ;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill."
Such an earthly and simple ideal of woman, as it may be
called, is never found here, because the national keynote and
the secret political thought of the poets demand to see her
either in the guise of a patriotic Amazon, or as the personifi-
cation of the national genius.
Thus woman is greatly admired, much glorified, but little
observed or studied here. Neither as a sweetheart, nor as
a daughter, nor as a sister, nor as a mother does she stand
out purely as a human being, with strongly individualised
qualities. The picture immediately becomes ideal, and is
always kept within the definitions of a species. Love is
generally described without any shadows, filial affection is
often exalted, as in Slowacki's Lilla IVeneda, by all the cruel
sufferings which a hostile prince makes the father endure ;
and the mother appears as one whose emotions are hardened
early, and whose vocation consists in accustoming the son to
bear with firmness whatever hard fate life may have in store
for him. This is the " note " of Mickiewicz's celebrated poem,
To the Polish Mother : " Take thy son in time into a solitary
cave, teach him to sleep on rushes, to breathe the damp and
vitiated air, and to share his couch with poisonous vermin.
There he will learn to make his wrath subterranean, his
thought unfathomable, and quietly to poison his words, and
give his being the humble aspect of the serpent. Our
Redeemer, as a child, played in Nazareth with the cross on
which He saved the world. O Polish mother ! In thy
place I would give to thy son the toys of his future to
play with. Give him early chains on his hands, accustom
Q
242 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
him to push the convict's dirty wheelbarrow, so that he shall
not grow pale before the executioner's axe, nor blush at the
sight of the halter. For he will not go on a crusade to
Jerusalem, like the olden knights, and plant his banner in
the conquered city, nor will he, like the soldier of the tri-
colour, be able to plough the field of freedom and water it
with his blood. No ! an unknown spy will accuse him ; he
must defend himself before a perjured court ; his battle-
field will be a dungeon underground, and an all-powerful
enemy his judge. The blasted wood of the gallows will be
the monument on his grave ; a few woman's tears, soon
dried, and the long talks of his countrymen in the night-time,
will be his sole honour and memorial after death."
The masculine leading characters in these poems, like
romantic heroes in general, are nationalists, and moreover
passionate and martial natures. But there are traits which
distinguish them among all others.
In the North in those days our poets went to antiquity to
find heroes. The most celebrated of them, the heroes of
Oehlenschlaeger, are types of the most vigorous youth of .those
times, light-hearted, eager for battle, fond of travelling, in
the main good-natured, not without transitory relations
with mermaids and terrestrial women. Tegner's Frithiof is
something of the same kind in Swedish, a knight whose
relation to the political events of his time is extremely
weak, almost nil.
They do not in any respect resemble the heroes of the
contemporary Polish literature. These are all much more
weird and all pursue politics. If, for instance, we compare Teg-
ner's Axel with Mickiewicz's Gracyna, two poems whose whole
form is borrowed from the poetic narratives of Byron, and
which further have this in common, that in both a woman
fights in the dress of a man, then the difference is especially
this, that in Tegner's poem everything is wanting which,
even if ever so feebly, could sound like an exhortation or
warning to the poet's contemporaries. On the other hand,
in Mickiewicz, whose scene is laid in pagan Lithuania, the
action is as follows : Prince Litawor, dissatisfied with his
father-in-law Witold, called on the Teutonic Knights for help.
MICKIEWICZ'S "GRACYNA"
243
His wife Gracyna, who has not been able to keep him from
this defection, arbitrarily commands that the German mes-
senger shall be denied access to Nowogrddek. And when
the wrathful allies direct their campaign against Litawor
instead of against Witold, Gracyna puts on her husband's
armour, passes herself off for him, and goes to battle agamst
the Germans. Although the victory falls to the Lithuanians
— thanks to Litawor who hastens to the spot at the right
time — the princess herself is mortally wounded by a shot
from a German gun. Her slayer is thrown upon the
funeral pyre with her body, and Litawor casts himself into
the flames. The lesson which the author seems to wish to
teach to his countrymen is therefore this : A wife, in spite
of her husband and prince's command, may dare to send
away allies, deceive the army, expose the country to danger,
carry on war, lose the battle, provided only that she has the
national honour in view ; everything is allowed, when the
highest object is at stake.
Or let us take another group of leading masculine char-
acters which have their origin in Byron's heroes, the young
men of Alfred de Musset. One and all they are placed in
this dilemma : the possibility of distinguishing themselves
by achievements, now that the Napoleonic era is over, seems
to be closed to them. They accordingly throw themselves
into debaucheries, and in a life which excites and stupefies
the senses, but weakens the energy, they become more or
less unfit for political, artistic, or martial action.
This internal contest between the inclination to amuse-
ments and the impulse to action never appears in the Polish
poets. Here the conflict is always between the inclination to
action on a large scale and some kind of obstacle which
lies before the individual, and which he is not in a position
to get out of the way.
Just as little as in Victor Hugo, are the heroes here
young representatives of the new stratum of society which,
as if inspired by the recollection of the French revolution,
rises in bitter contest against the higher classes. The hero
here is never a democrat from principle, to say nothing of a
republican. In social aspects the whole of this poetry has a
244 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
conservative stamp. Even Slowacki, who passes for the
poet of the future, is no serious exception. The only work in
which class contests play an important part, Krasinski's God-
less Comedy, is so far from showing the advocate of democracy
in a heroic light, that he even appears as a figure of a
Caliban-like roughness, who is not even fully certain of his
rights and convictions.
And finally if we compare the leading characters in the
Polish poets with those of Byron's own poetic youthful
narratives, which had such an extraordinary influence upon
the Polish poets, we find that there is indeed a certain
resemblance in the violence of mind, and the wild and melan-
choly despair ; their life is a chain of sufferings, disappoint-
ments, passions, crimes, and imprecations, but they never
have the trait, which passed from Byron's own nature into
that of Cht'lde Harold and Lara, of despising their own
countrymen, their own country. When they become
traitors to it or fight against it — like Litawor, like Wallenrod
— it is in a transitory fit of passion, which is immediately
repented of, or the treachery is feigned for a short time
only with the intention when it comes to the point, of
serving it the more energetically. Nay, even when, like
Slowacki's fantastic king, they subject the nation to suffer-
ings and torments without number, it is only from a kind
of higher love, which under the mask of cruelty is the
motive power of their method of treatment. They would
harden the nation as the smith hardens the metal on his
anvil, they would by harshness force the nation up to a
continually higher plane of development. And the poet's
intention is never, like Byron's, to nettle or rebuke a circle
of readers, but to arouse a nation, to teach it that a national
existence is not too dearly bought by the torture of a
whole generation. In order to arouse his nation he would
" beat on the heavens as on a brazen shield."
The schism between the great individual and the nation,
which is so characteristic of the life and poetry of Shelley
and Byron, never manifests itself here ; this is, indeed,
partly because the poets never exalted themselves so high
above the average intellectual condition of their people, its
r
INSPIRED STRAIN IN POLISH POETRY 245
religious and political daily life, as Shelley, for instance, but
also quite as much because of their feeling of homogeneity
with the people whose only organs they were.
And as they felt themselves one with the people, so
also they saw the people collectively. This is the reason
why they never tried to describe the opposition between
two successive generations, a theme which generally supplies
such a fruitful material for poetry, and which Kraszewki
afterwards made his own. Mickiewicz, indeed, glanced at
the subject as a theme of the past in his dramatic frag-
ment written only in French, Jacques Jasinski ou Les deux
Polognes." In Pan Tadeusz he makes the imitation of foreign
customs and the praising of foreign countries the subject
of mild derision ; he contrasts therewith the love of the
beautiful natural scenery and old usages of his native
country, but he never desired to use as a subject any
contrast between the methods of thought of two generations.
And on the feeling of the indissoluble connection of
these poets with their people depends also the existing
conception of poetic genius. In those times they never
conceived of the poet in Poland as an artist, but as a
seer. That poetry is above all an art, according to some
the first of all arts, that its function is the representation
of the life of nature and of man in a perfect and irreproach-
able and therefore imperishable form, was seldom suggested.
If by exception one of these poets undertook such a peace-
ful and comprehensive reproduction, as did Mickiewicz in
Pan Tadeusz, he personally valued this work of his very
little, and did not even understand its exceptional worth.
They conceived of poetry above all as inspiration, as a
divine frenzy, which discloses itself in hallucination and
improvisation, and as a fact these poets were almost all
eminent improvisatores and subject to illusions. In a certain
sense it can therefore be said that Conrad's improvisation in
Dziady, which gives an intensified conception of Mickiewicz's
own improvisation, marks the apogee of the romantic poetry
of Poland.
There is only one among their poets, Krasinski, who is
alive to the dangers of the nervous exaltation, which resulted
246 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
from this ideal. In his melodrama, The Godless Comedy, he
pointed out vigorously the weakness of character which was
its bane. The poet is regarded by the others as the chosen
leader of the people, not " myriad-minded " in a general sense
as Shakespeare calls the poet, but exclusively representing
the millions of men who make up his people. In this sense
we must take what Conrad says of himself : " I am called
Million, for I love and suffer for millions of men."
The greatness and beauty of this interpretation of genius
depend on its narrowness. Genius here is intensified
patriotism, which is thought to make a man inspired and far-
seeing, and which by putting in his mouth the words which
charm, secures his ascendency over other minds. In the
improvisation, Conrad says : —
" My love does not rest on a single being like the
insect on a rose ; nor on a family nor on a century. I
love the whole nation. I have embraced all its past and
coming generations, pressed them to my heart as a friend,
a lover, a bridegroom, a father. I would give my father-
land life and happiness, make it admired by all the nations
of the earth if I could. But the power for that is wanting
to me, and I stand here armed with all the might of my
thought — and also with that power which men do not give,
the feeling which burns within me as in a crater and some-
times breaks out in words. ... I was born a creator. 1
have my powers from the same source as Thou, God, hast
thine. ... Is it Thou who hast given me my mighty pene-
trating gaze, or did I myself take it there where Thou
didst take Thine ? In the moments of my full strength,
when I lift my eyes towards the driving clouds or the
sailing bird of passage, then I only need to will, and with a
glance I bring them to a standstill, catch them as in a
net . . . only men, corrupt, frail, even if immortal, serve
and know me not. . . . But I will lead them, not with
weapons, for one weapon protects from another — by the
feeling which is in me. Let men be for me as the thoughts
and words with which, when I will, I construct poems. It
is said that it is thus that Thou rulest. ... I would have
power. Give it to me or show me the way to it. My soul
POLISH POETS ESSENTIALLY RELIGIOUS 247
is incarnated in my native land, and in my body I have all
the soul of my native land. My country and I are one only.
I look on my unhappy country with the same eyes with
which a son sees his father broken on a wheel ; 1 feel the
pangs of a whole nation, as a mother feels in herself those of
her child."
This is not the careless northern conception of men of
genius as the elect of fortune, who, by a miracle, easily
find what inquirers seek for in vain. But Conrad is just
as far removed from the brooding heroes, the Manfreds or
Fausts, with whom George Sand in her time compared him.
For the joys and sorrows of a life of thought are far from
occupying the prominent place in the poetry of Poland
which they hold in that of Germany or England. The
slow and toilsome struggle of human thought for freedom,
for strength to cast aside the cerements of prejudice, its
attempt to penetrate the secrets of the universe, which is
elsewhere described with confidence in thought as the
guiding power, and with faith in its final victory — all this
appears here only as foolhardy exertion, or an outburst of
tragic despair.
For to all these poets the answer which religion gives
is the final answer. They sometimes doubt, they never
reject. Even when they lose faith in some dogma of
Catholicism, even when they make attacks upon the Church
and its priests, or show sacred things in a comic light,
they do not dissociate themselves from the Christian con-
ception of the world.
Thus we saw from Odyniec's letters during his residence
in Weimar, those admirable descriptions of the intercourse
between men of genius and talent, and beautiful women,
that, however great an admiration the author cherished for
Goethe as artist and scientist, he understood nothing what-
ever of his philosophy of life, and even if Mickiewicz under-
stood this better, it is clear that he did not feel a greater
attraction to it. Odyniec's reflections on Faust are as
feminine as those of Mme. de Stael in her Germany, and
Mickiewicz was not able to see anything in Goethe's
nature-worship and natural piety but avowed indifference
248 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
to revealed religion. Krasinski also expresses himself wholly
in the same spirit when, in the preface to Dawn, he says
that "the phlegmatico-delirious atheism of German philo-
sophy has resulted in chaos," and when in the bold
anticipatory attempt to give a positive system of funda-
mental definitions and laws of the universe, he only sees
the negation of a revelation.
The Polish poets did not share the rationalistic belief of
the greatest of Germans, because they vaguely felt that with
this belief no firm immovable bounds were prescribed to
the human understanding, and that, as a necessary comple-
ment, it circumscribed the possibilities of and the capacity
for action. They wanted a belief in the energy of youthful
enthusiasm as it appears in the Ode to Youth, a belief in
miracles of courage and achievement which presupposed
belief in miracles as a link in the government of the world,
and therefore necessarily regarded reason as a quality of
very great limitations. Since they wished to have a right
to demand the improbable, the impossible of youth, they
had necessarily to secure for themselves an enclosure for
the supernatural in space as well as in time.
Finally, they felt strongly, with regard to Goethe, that the
religion they needed was not a religion of contemplation like
his, but a religion of action and suffering. Goethe's pan-
theism therefore could not compensate for their inherited
circle of ideas, which incited to deeds, and surrounded
torments with glory.
Nor could the otherwise predominant influence of
Byron's poetry disintegrate this circle of ideas. They
encountered in him no opposite convictions, only doubts
and questions. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument,
that Shelley in his lifetime had received the recognition he
only obtained half a century after his death ; then the
Polish poets would have found in him the combination
which nowhere met them — Goethe's lofty and sure con-
ception of nature in combination with the practical en-
thusiasm, the strong hope, and the belief in the miracles
of activity, which they themselves required, and which to
their sorrow they missed in the old man at Weimar ; for
CONRAD'S MONOLOGUE IN " DZIADY " 249
Shelley was eternally young, and, like them, appealed to the
youth of the mind. If they had come under his influence
instead of Byron's, the cause of intellectual freedom in
Poland would have a less difficult battle to fight now.
Without wounding the religious feelings of their readers,
they would have been able to transform them so far, that
the inevitable schism in the future between the ideas of this
century and the emotional life of the nation, would have
been less deep.
It is especially in Conrad's great monologue in Dziady,
that Mickiewicz has tried his powers of formulating a theory
of the universe. The enormous extent of human suffering
has brought Conrad to doubt the existence of God. From
the first he feels himself as strong as a god. The poets
in those times liked to regard themselves as gods. This is
the confusion of ideas which appears in all countries when
Romanticism culminates. The poet who, in imagination, can
stop the flight of the birds and the course of the stars, can
it is argued, really do so, since in this fantasy of his he
has a divine power ; for, according to the romantic teaching,
imagination is the decisive quality, that which God and man
have in common ; the creative power of the divinity is
imagination.
And it is in this feeling of his supposed power over
nature that Conrad asks of space if there is a higher power
than his own : " Show thyself, and let me be sensible of
thy superiority ! " He cannot solve the contradiction that
divinity is a quiet spectator of the sufferings of life on
earth. " I suffer, I rage ! — and contented and secure Thou
rulest continually, judgest continually, and it is said that
Thou art never wrong. Listen to me, if it be true, that
which I learned even in my cradle, and have believed in
with childish faith, if it be true that Thou lovest, that Thou
lovedst the world, because Thou didst create it, ... if a
heart, which feels, is not a freak of nature, which is
produced by accident and dies before it comes to
maturity ; if in Thy kingdom emotion is not an illegal
thing ; if millions of unhappy beings, who call for help,
are anything else in Thine eyes than an equation, which it
250 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
is difficult to solve, then . . . Thou art silent ! I have
unveiled Thy inmost being — with a voice which will resound
from generation to generation I cry out into the universe,
to the utmost borders of creation, that Thou art not the
world's father, . . . but (the voice of the devil) its Tzar."
We see that the poet has taken care that the reader should
not confound his own way of thinking with that of the
hero, for it is the devil who here prompts Conrad, and
the irritation under which he speaks is imparted to him by
^invisible demons, who fill the air about him.
Thus, but even more distinctly, Krasinski, when in The
Godless Comedy he gives expression to doubts, which he him-
self had perhaps felt at times, puts them on the lips of
distracted men and women. The strongest outburst of
doubt which appears in Krasinski's works is uttered in
a madhouse. The sick Countess says : " Christ can no
longer save us. He has seized His cross with both hands
and thrown it down into the abyss. Do you hear this
cross, which has been the hope of millions, rebounding in
its fall from star to star ? It breaks, it is splintered, and
with its dust it obscures the universe."
So we also see that the only one of the poets who
really believed in philosophy, the brave lyrist Stephan
Garczynski, the war -poet of the revolution of 1831, the
favourite and imitator of Mickiewicz, the writer who, as the
disciple of Hegel, seems personally to have separated him-
self most widely from the church creed, in his principal
work Waclaw, makes his hero, it is true, attack monks and
priests with harsh and angry words, but still in such a
way as to leave religion undisturbed by the assault. He
blames the monks because they destroy the capacity for
thought and action by their teaching, but he himself be-
lieves and prays ; it is in the name, not of reason but
of emotion, that he declares himself to have outgrown
ecclesiastical forms.
Garczynski's hope or wish as man and poet was to
bring his world of emotion into harmony with his reason, to
reconcile the kingdom of the heart with that of the mind.
The fourth canto of his IVaclaw, entitled Science, shows that,
POLISH CATHOLICISM 251
unlike the German teacher, whose disciple he was, he did
not see salvation and the highest life in thought and its
development in science. The reaction from theory to
practice, the enthusiasm which leads from contemplation
to action, seem to him to comprise the complete truth of
human life. According to his conception, only in the
contest for practical ideals does the opposition between
emotion and reason cease to be a strife. And the personal
preference of the poet, as it appears from the poem and
as was to be expected, lay not on the side of rational
understanding but on that of enthusiasm.
Finally, we note the same trait in Slowacki, even when
in Beniowski he makes his great and passionate onslaught
upon the Jesuits. Here he goes so far as to prefer a father-
land without a future to a fatherland under the guardian-
ship of the Jesuits. He overwhelms Rome, nay, even the
Pope with taunts, but he is so far from calling Christianity
itself in question that he cries to Poland, The Cross, that t's
thy Pope.
No outburst could be more significant of the emotional
life of those days. In the revolt of 1831, the Polish priest,
crucifix in hand, marched at the head of the troops, and
was in reality the power which attached the common people
to the cause of independence. But this Catholicism was
not that of Rome. For when in the same year languishing
Poland, praying for help, stretched out her hands to the
Pope, he referred the Poles to the Tzar, demanded obedience
and submission, and stamped the rising as rebellion. Again
there was no opposition from the Pope, when in 1833 the
forced conversion of the " United " communities who had
joined the Catholic Church took place. Dragoonades of
Cossacks were employed on the Russian side ; they sur-
rounded the villages and knouted the priests. Then the
Russian pope, with his whip in his hand, held a review of
his new parishioners, and in military colonies the stubborn
were put to death as rebellious soldiers. It was officially
stated on the Russian side, as regards this amalgamation of
the united congregations with the Greek Church, that it was
to be looked upon as a "happy union, which had cost no
252 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
tears ! Only gentleness and persuasion have been used."
And the Pope, the one sovereign whose duty it was to do
his utmost for Poland, looked on without protest. We
can understand how Slowacki, in 1841, could at once
express his aversion for the Pope and his confidence in
Church and Cross.
Nevertheless it is very suggestive that, at least until the
last, when he was enthralled by Towianski, he was - scep-
tical and wavering in his faith. The preface to Lambro, with
its attack upon the poets of the religious school and its
keen sense of the false and artificial in the theories of
Friedrich Schlegel, is a proof of this. Neither is it without
significance, that in the tragedy of his youth, Mendog, as
well as in his poem The Monk, the conversion from paganism
or Mohammedanism to Christianity, whether from calcula-
tion or belief, is represented as bringing misfortune, calling
forth the execration and hatred of the nearest relatives. In
any case, this is especially peculiar to Polish Romanticism,
that the political defection resulting from the abandon-
ment of the old customs of the nation or the community,
is described as so unpardonable that no rising to a more
lofty religious conception of life can atone therefor.
VI
THE TWO PRINCIPAL THEMES OF THE LEADING POETS MICKIE-
WICZ, SLOWACKI AND KRASINSKI ; THE FIRST TWO, THE
POETS OF VENGEANCE, KRASINSKI, THE POET OF LOVE
Among the romantic poets of Poland there are three whose
names are written in letters of fire : Adam Mickiewicz,
Julius Slowacki, Zygmunt Krasinski.
If we glance over the collected works of these three
great romanticists, we shall find them dwelling especially on
two themes : they depict horrors and they sing of hope.
In other words, a double current flows through the
Polish poetry of the years 1820- 1850; it describes suffer-
ings which lead to thoughts of revenge, and sufferings
which tend to produce spiritual development and purifi-
cation. And, whereas in other respects we must generally
put Mickiewicz by himself on one side, Slowacki and
Krasinski as two united friends on the other, here it is
Mickiewicz and Slowacki who come nearest each other
in spirit, who willingly and frequently occupy themselves
with thoughts of vengeance, while Krasinski stands opposed
to them as the advocate of universal brotherhood.
The inclination to that which is tragical and heart-
rending is common to all the poets ; they either hasten
towards a bloody catastrophe like Mickiewicz in Gracyna,
Slowacki in Hugo, or the whole poem is taken up with
scenes of destruction.
Julius Slowacki, born in 1809 at Krzemieniec, the son of
a professor of the history of literature, lost his father while
he was a little child, but through his whole life maintained
the tenderest and most confidential relations with his mother,
who was soon married a second time to the Professor Beku
of Wilna, who was assailed in Mickiewicz's Dziady. Spoiled
by the daughters of his stepfather, loved by his mother,
853
254 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
the boy grew up in a life of fancy, which resulted in an
exclusively poetic bias and an all-absorbing artistic ambition
which became the stimulus and spur of his life. He be-
came the typical romanticist, who took it for granted that
a romantic life was the true condition for the production
of genuine poetry, and who never wasted time or thoughts
on giving his planless career a material foundation of
work or effort. All deference to the useful was hateful
to him.
His strong imagination was, in its essence, not so much
creative as musical, picturesque, and decorative. In fact, his
talent was a great gift of language. He impresses by the
melody of his verse and his wealth of imagery.
He was educated at the University of Wilna, which at
that time could offer no further nourishment to his mind ;
it was already laid waste by reaction. As compensation
he imbibed the exalted patriotism of the period, and all the
ecstatic sentiments of the romantic frame of mind. Byron
laid hold upon him as upon so many other poets, and
nowhere did the English poet come upon a better prepared or
more congenial spirit. Byron's way of thought and Byron's
desperate characters became almost immediately his own.
He too, as a youth, experienced an unhappy love for a young
girl (a daughter of Andreas Sniadecki), a cultured maiden a
good deal older than himself, who would not listen to the
story of his flame, and on this account he suffered his first
infernal pangs of wounded pride. His stepfather died.
Slowacki in 1829 entered the office of the Polish Ministry
of Finance in Warsaw as clerk, when the revolt broke out
and so took possession of him that he wrote several lyrical
poems in the revolutionary spirit. It seems that his enthu-
siasm was speedily cooled, and in the year 1831 we find
him suddenly leaving Poland under circumstances which
made it impossible that he should ever return. He travelled
to foreign countries with a passport from the revolutionary
government ; at Dresden he was commissioned to carry
despatches to London, and journeyed from London to Paris,
where in the following year he printed his first volume of
poems, containing dramas and narratives in the Byronic style.
MICKIEWICZ AND SLOWACKI 255
Mickiewicz also soon came to Paris. He was already
widely celebrated, and Slowacki, a beginner, consumed with
an unsatisfied ambition, full of self-esteem and thirst for
recognition, regarded his great rival with mingled feelings.
His first poems did not cause any great sensation, yet some
lovers of Polish literature after reading his drama, Mary
Stuart, recognised in him certain qualities lacking in Mickie-
wicz. Half in doubt and half inclined to overestimate
himself, he burned to hear the opinion of Mickiewicz.
In the preface to the third volume of his poems he wrote ;
" Neither encouraged by praise, nor disheartened by criticism,
I throw this third volume down into the silent abyss which
has swallowed the first two." His pride prevented him from
seeking Mickiewicz. But common friends brought them
together, and then followed a reciprocal exchange of civili-
ties and compliments. Soon after Slowacki became a
member of the Polish literary society of which Mickie-
wicz was president. Their pleasant relations were neverthe-
less soon disturbed. Acquaintances carried to Slowacki
Mickiewicz's dictum that his poetry resembled a wonderful
temple, but that there was no God in it. And to Slo-
wacki everything about Mickiewicz soon became disgusting,
" from his crumpled shirt to his papistry." He even denied
that Mickiewicz had any poetic ability. Then the third part
of Dziady appeared, in which the author rises higher than
ever before, but in which, unfortunately, Slowacki's step-
father Beku, whose memory was dear to him and precious
to his mother, was represented as Nowosilcow's lickspittle,
struck by lightning as a punishment for his baseness.
From this time forth Slowacki hated Mickiewicz. He even
thought of challenging him. " O mother ! " he writes,
" there is nothing left for me but to encompass thee with
such an effulgence of honours that the arrows of others
cannot strike thee. God has inspired me. It will be an
equal fight with Adam."
In the first as in the later poems which he publishes,
his poetry shows a basis of agony, a frame of mind appa-
rently induced by a vision of annihilation.
Naturally, with him as with other poets his mood depends
256 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
mainly upon the harmony which exists between an artist
and his public. Wherever such a sombre seriousness has
mastered all minds as that which fell upon the Poles after
the unsuccessful revolution, a poet simply to be heard, in
order not to be pushed aside as a buffoon who misunder-
stands the common temper, must necessarily in his art
reflect suffering, discontent, wrath at terrestrial or celestial
injustice, and depict numberless unsuccessful attempts to
prevent wrong, or at least to avenge outraged right. He
does it because generally he is subject to the same influences
as his people, receiving all impressions far more keenly
and sympathetically.
This disposition appears in its most abstract form in such
works as Slowacki's The Plague in the Desert, which is justly
celebrated as a tragic description of a calamity recalling that
of Niobe. In 1835 Slowacki made a journey from Paris
to Italy by way of Marseilles, later a journey from Naples
to the East, which took him to Greece, Egypt, Nubia,
Syria, and from which, in 1837, he returned to Italy by
way of Cyprus. On the way to Syria, at El Arish, he was
compelled to lie in quarantine in the middle of the desert.
To this sojourn was due the poem of the plague-stricken
family of El Arish, in which an Arab tells in simple, eloquent
words how he has seen his four sons, three daughters, and
his wife torn away from him by the plague one after the
other. This narrative, which, in contrast to several others
by the author, has not a line too many, but is characterised
by an antique severity and Biblical grandeur, has obtained
such high recognition, not only because of its artistic ex-
cellence, but because of its harmony with the melancholy of
its readers. More than one found the picture of his own
trials and losses in the poem. With a vague feeling that
there was a certain bond, a certain point of union between
the subject and the reader, commentators have endeavoured
to give a symbolical explanation of the episode, seeing
allusions to the loss of their fatherland, and their grief
thereat, only to be arrived at by the most far-fetched inter-
pretations. The truth is that without any symbolism
whatever, the reader might well see, in the family visited
CRUELTY A POETIC THEME 257
by the plague, a group of beings whose fate was akin to
his own.
Slowacki's Arab is a poem of the same character. It
depicts the abstract mania for annihilation, the Satanic desire
to spread death and destruction, and destroy the joy of life,
wherever it is found. The being, who from an ambush shot
the arrows of the plague against the unfortunate Arab father
and his children, might be supposed to have such thoughts.
Nevertheless there is more here than the mere poetry
of suffering. The poetry of cruelty is combined with it, a
theme which recurs again and again. Slowacki especially
revels in the description of horrible cruelty. It came near
home. For these poets had experienced great cruelty in
their lives, and fancy is receptive above all things ; it
gives out the pictures with which it has been filled. The
cruelties with which all Slowacki's dramas and most of his
narratives swarm, betray how deep an impression the tortures
he experienced in his life, or had heard or read about, made
upon his mind. Several of the fiercest traits of cruelty in
his poems are founded on actual historical incidents. Ivan
the Terrible, like the leading character in Krdl Duck, on one
occasion nailed the foot of a messenger to the ground with
his sword, without diverting him from the delivery of his
message, just as happened with the old bard in the poem.
And the prototype of many such traits in Slowacki must be
sought for in contemporary events, which made his blood
boil and inflamed his fancy.
All the poets dwell insistently on prison scenes, scenes
of banishment, and harSh punishments. Descriptions of
sufferings, long speeches that narrate and describe cruelties,
take up nearly the whole of the third part of Mickiewicz's
Dzt'ady, in which the author has delved so deeply into his
own personal experiences and fearlessly brought upon the
stage contemporaries under their real names. He has never
elsewhere achieved such scorching realism of effect. And
strangely enough he thought that this was genuine Roman-
ticism. In his poem, Romanticism, he began by rejecting
dead truths : ** If you would see wonders full of the truth of
life," he says, " have a heart and look into hearts." Shortly
R
258 IMPRESSIONS OP^ POLAND
after he defined the essence of Romanticism thus : "When the
romanticists write they have the naked truth before them,
while the classicists are content with marionettes ; " here he
proclaims distinctly the right of the poet to seek the naked
truth in his nearest environment, however lowly and simple
it may seem to be. Finally, he upholds the same doctrine
distinctly in this poem, in which after the manner of Dante,
he praises and condemns his contemporaries without respect
of persons.
The poet describes how a young gentleman relates the
story of Chikowski in a drawing-room in Warsaw. He, one
of the handsomest, gayest and most spirited young men of
Poland, recently married and happy, disappeared one day
from his home. It was said that he had committed suicide,
no one understood why. The police caused it to be rumoured
that his cloak had been found by the Vistula. Years passed
by ; one gloomy and rainy evening some prisoners were
brought from the Carmelite monastery to the Belvedere. An
intrepid young man in the crowd of spectators shouted out :
" Prisoners, who are you ? " and among a hundred names
the name of Chikowski was shouted back in answer. His
wife was informed, and she sent petition after petition to
the government, but could learn nothing. Reports floated
about Warsaw during the three following years, during
which no news of him was received, that he was being
tortured, but that he would confess nothing, that he was
kept awake at nights, that for whole months he had salt
herring to eat without any water to drink, that he was given
opium to frighten him with visions and spectres, that he was
tickled under his arms and on the soles of his feet, and
more — until his name was forgotten among the names of
the other persons who had disappeared. Then one night
there was a ringing at the door of his wife's house ; outside
stood an officer, a gendarme, and a prisoner whom they
delivered, demanding a receipt. They threatened him with
uplifted finger : " If you dare to talk ! " and went away. He
was changed, had become stout, but with the unhealthy fat
of the prisoner. The wrinkles of half a century were on his
forehead. He did not seem to recognise his old friends who
THE STORY OF CHIKOWSKI 259
came to greet him, but looked at them with an absent
gaze. " All that he had suffered in the days when he was
tortured, and all that he had thought in the nights when he
lay awake, was revealed by his eye in a second. This eye
was frightful to look at, it was like the panes of the grated
windows of a prison, the colour of which is greyish like a
spider's web, but which, seen from the side, has rainbow
reflections and in which we discern a bloody rust, mirrored
lights and dark spots. They have lost their transparency, but
their surface betrays that they have long been exposed to
dampness, neglect, dust and darkness." When he was asked
a question, imagining himself still in prison, he replied, " I
know nothing, I know nothing."
A young lady (the feminine Providence of the emigrants,
Claudia Potocka) asks : " Why do you not treat such sub-
jects in your poems ? " A count answers : " Old Niemce-
wicz may use them in his memoirs." A man of letters
exclaims: "That is a frightful story." Another, "Tragic,
on my word." A third finally says : " We listen to such
things, but who would read them ? It is outrageous io
bring eye-witnesses upon the stage instead of mythical
persons. And then besides there is an inviolable and holy
rule of art. It is that poets must not treat of an incident
till . . . till. ..." A young man : " How many years are
we to wait till a fresh fact has become as dry as tobacco
and as honey — sweet as a fig ? " The first : " There are no
fixed rules." The second : " A thousand or two thousand
years. Besides, you could not say in a poem that he was fed on salt
herring'' An impression may be obtained from this quota-
tion of the force and clearness with which sufferings are
depicted here.
Or read Sobolewski's comment on the twenty kibitkas
(sleighs) full of young students and schoolboys of Samo-
gitien, which he saw drive away to Siberia to the beating of
drums, while the crowd stood like a wall before the prison
behind guards with fixed bayonets. Every feature here is
full of life. Take for example these lines : " Poor children,
you all have shaved heads like recruits, and fetters on
your feet. The youngest, who was only ten years old,
26o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
complained he could not lift his chains, and showed his bare
and bleeding feet. The police officer asked what he com-
plained of, and being a humane person, himself examined his
chains. ' Ten pounds I that is according to the regulation,'
he said. Then Janczewski was brought out . . . torture
had made ugly, thin, and dark, him who a year ago had
been the gayest and handsomest of them all. He looked
down from his kibitka like the Tzar from his pedestal of
rock. His glance was proud, dry, clear ; he seemed to
wish to console his comrades, and his smile seemed to
say to the assembled multitude : ' See how little mis-
fortune touches me 1 ' . . . He noticed that people wept
when they beheld his chains, so he lifted them up in the
air and shook them to show that they were not too heavy
for him. The kibitka set off at a gallop, he waved his
hat, crying : * No ! it is not all over with Poland yet 1 ' and
the crowd hid him from my sight ; but for a long time
his arm could still be seen, raised up against the heavens
as a background, and the tattered black felt hat waving
like a banner of woe above the smoothly-shaven young
head, the proud and spotless head which from afar bore
witness to the innocence of the victim and the shame of the
executioners."
Just as colour has its complement, and the chord of the
seventh its resolution, so this theme always arouses in
Mickiewicz and Slowacki the motive of vengeance.
We can follow this most clearly in the third part of Dziady
throughout the different songs which the prisoners sing.
First comes Jankowski's song : " In order that I may
become a believer, I must first see Jesus and Mary chastise
the Tzar who defiles my country. So long as the Tzar lives,
and Nowosilcow drinks, and I myself go in fear of Siberia,
so long must not any one expect me to say : Jesus! Mary ! "
Then follow Kalakowski's ironical verses : " What does
it matter if I must suffer banishment, hard labour, chains,
if only as a faithful subject I am allowed to labour for my
Tzar ! — when in the mines I have to hammer diligently
and skilfully, I say to myself : This grey iron will some
day become an axe for the Tzar. — If I get out of the
THE POETRY OF VENGEANCE 261
house of correction, and take a young Tartar woman to
wife, I say to her : ' Bear us a Pahlen for the Tzar !
[Pahlen, Paul I.'s murderer.] — If they send me out as a
colonist, and I become hetman or boyar, then I will sow
my field with hemp, only hemp, for the Tzar. — Of hemp
a halter is made, a grey halter, which can be interwoven
with silver ; perhaps an Orloff may throw such a scarf
around the neck of the Tzar." [Orloff, murderer of
Peter III.]
Finally Conrad sings : " My spirit was silenced, my song
lay in the grave, but my genius smelled blood, and with a
shriek it rises like a vampire, eager for blood. It thirsts for
blood, for blood. Yea, vengeance, vengeance ! Vengeance
on our executioners ! Vengeance, if God will, and whether
God wills or not ! "
We see that the poetry of vengeance has its germ here.
If God will not avenge them, then the Poles must avenge
themselves.
Vengeance as here pictured almost always wears a mask,
lurks behind dissimulation, strikes unexpectedly, dealing a
blow long prepared. The fundamental thought is always
that he who is persecuted by God and men is entitled
to use all means, and that the salvation of the fatherland
is the supreme law. Thus Gracyna is wholly right when
in disobedience to her husband and lord she follows the
higher call to prevent any false alliance with the hereditary
enemy. And Wallenrod contains the same idea in another
form : here it is not a false alliance but a feigned one I
Against the foreign enemy hypocrisy and treachery are
legitimate weapons. Thus Wallenrod as the Master of
the Order prolongs the campaign against the Lithuanians
until thousands of Germans perish. When Lithuania is
freed, all lost for the Order, and he himself condemned
to death by the secret council of the Knights, with proud
contempt he throws aside the mask of hypocrisy, tramples
the cross of the Grand Master under foot, and jubilantly
confesses the sins of his life.
It was overlooked by Mickiewicz himself, though not by
his critical rival Slowacki, that in the doctrine which Wallenrod
262 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
proclaims, a justification might be found for every apostasy.
At any rate, misunderstanding and abuse did not frighten
him. The ballad Alpujarras, which is sung at the great
banquet, certainly gives the clearest expression to his train
of thought. Almansor, Prince of the Moors, is forced to
surrender Granada, because the plague is raging in the city ;
he makes his way through and flies. The Spaniards are
sitting at a drinking bout, when the guard announces that
a stranger begs admission for an important message which
he brings. He is an Arab. " Spaniards," he cries with
humble mien ; " your God will I serve, your prophet will I
believe in, your vassal will I be." They recognise Almansor.
The chief presses him to his heart and gives him the
brotherly kiss ; all the leaders embrace him, one after the
other. Then he suddenly becomes faint, falls to the ground,
twists his turban, and exclaims triumphantly, " I am sick of
the plague ! " With his pretended submission he has brought
the plague to the Spaniards in his brotherly kiss.
So we also find Slowacki again and again singing of
the curse, which overtakes treachery practised towards
fellow-countrymen — Jan Bielecki, Waclaw (the same Felix
Potocki who appears in Malczewski's Marya and afterwards
in Slowacki's Horsztynski) — and, varied again and again, a
glorification of deceit or surprises practised against the
enemy {Lambro, Kordjan). Lanibro is the story of a Greek,
who becomes a brigand and renegade in order the more
safely to strike at the Turkish perpetrators of violence
— an inhuman figure, the model for which is hardly to be
found in life, but in the Oriental poems of Byron. Kord-
jan is a Pole, fantastical and nervous, far too refined and
delicate for the bloody task he assumes, an attempt to
kill the Tzar Nicholas — a character who, although inspired
by Mickiewicz, is built up on a basis of personal observation.
The drama as well as the poem both deal solely with the
thought of vengeance.
It is against this fundamental idea that Zygmunt
Krasinski directed his most important works. His birth
and his family relations brought him to evolve a less
simple doctrine from the spectacle of human suffering.
KRASINSKI'S YOUTH 263
Zygmunt Krasinski was born in Paris in 18 12 of Polish
parents, who belonged to the highest aristocracy. His
father entered Napoleon's army as a young man, Served
till he became imperial adjutant, and after Napoleon's abdica-
tion brought back the Polish regiments as a general. He
became a senator and Woyewode, opened a grand salon for
scientists and artists in Warsaw, in which classical thought
had one of its strongholds, and soon appeared as one of the
most faithful servants of Alexander and Nicholas. He made
himself conspicuous in a most sinister manner in 1828
as a member of the court of the Diet established to try
political offenders in Poland, he alone voting for severe
sentences on the conspirators. Just as he was brave in
battle, so he showed himself timid, easily flattered and
tempted by the Russian Government in time of peace.
This high public position of the father — he succeeded
Paskiewicz as Governor in 1856 — was a potent factor in the
son's life. In spite of his absolute disagreement with his
father he felt himself bound to him by inviolable piety,
and thus deprived of all freedom, not only in his personal
relations but in his literary career.
When only sixteen years old, he endured an insult for
his father's sake which he could never forget. When in
1829 one of the popular men of Poland, Bielinski, the
President of the Court, was buried, all the students of the
University of Warsaw attended the ceremonies in a body,
and left the lecture rooms empty. By his father's command,
nevertheless, Zygmunt Krasinski was obliged to go to the
University as usual, on which account his comrades, on the
next day, fell upon him and turned him out. The scene
is described in Krasinski's Unfinished Poem : " I see the old
building, in whose halls a thousand of the same age sit,
and the teachers speak from their chairs. I see the stairs
which wind about like a serpent. Is it not so ? I was a
brave little fellow, although as yet not full grown and not
strong. I came from home, went proudly past them all,
knowing indeed that they hated me, but not why. They
surrounded me and pressed upon me from all sides, and
shouted : ' Young noble ! young noble I ' as if it were a
264 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
disgrace to know where my ancestors are buried. I seized
hold of the iron railing, but they pulled me by my hands,
my feet, my cloak. . . . Then thou didst manifest thyself
to me, my good genius, saying : ' They are unjust. Be thou
more than just, forgive them and love them.' "
Fate had dedicated him to suffering, and he did not see
in the injury he had suffered, an invitation to play the part
which the injustice of his countrymen and the tempta-
tions of the rulers laid in his way. Just as little did it com-
mend itself to his refined and temperate nature to make
himself the favourite of the mob by a breach with his father.
Both as a youth and as a man he paid an exaggerated filial
respect to this father, who, as a deserter, was covered
with Russian honours and Polish curses. For his sake,
during his whole life, he continued to be an anonymous
poet, and the consciousness of having a father in the opposite
camp made it impossible for him to proclaim the gospel of
vengeance in his poems. He thus dared to defy one of the
dogmas of his nation, and a fundamental doctrine in the
literature of the time, since he proclaimed the impotence
of hatred in a nation passionate by temperament, martial
by instinct, and besides, so tortured and desperate, that all
the products of its imaginative power hitherto had been not
only sombre as a clouded heaven, but traversed by the
lightning of vindictiveness. Touching the productions of
the other poets, he says in Wallenrod: "Murder and fire,
that is what you Waidelots [Lithuanian bards] love to sing
about, you leave honour and the pangs of death to us.
From the cradle your song winds itself like a serpent around
the breast of the child, and pours its poison into his soul ;
the insane yearning for glory and the insane love of country."
But none of them had such a feeling of responsibility as
Krasinski. He suffered terribly when he heard of the cruel
punishments inflicted on young students for having circulated
his forbidden poems.
Krasinski again describes only sufferings. In Irydion
he represents the suffering which a foreign rule actually
caused, and gives a picture of ancient Greece some hun-
dreds of years after it was conquered by Rome. He depicts
KRASINSKI'S "IRYDION" 265
the love of the most eminent Greeks for Hellas, as the land
to which Europe owes all noble culture, the land which
first taught her the significance of political freedom, and
portrays the hatred of Rome, the cruel and haughty master
of Greece, from whom her half barbaric culture was bor-
rowed. The drama shows us the national spirit of Greece,
pondering on a great work of revenge, after centuries of
oppression and dishonour, at a time when the terrible abuse
of power of Caracalla and Heliogabalus had excited the
minds of all the better sort of people.
Irydion is the " Son of Revenge " child of the avenger ;
he is the son of the great Greek Amphilochos, who himself
belonged to a generation for which revenge did not seem
ripe, but who had impressed upon Irydion and his sister,
Elsinoe, his two children by a northern woman, hatred of
Rome. When he blessed them while they were sleeping as
little children, he said to them ; " Remember to hate Rome
and avenge yourselves ; thou, Irydion, with fire and sword ;
thou, Elsinoe, with all a woman's shrewdness and perfidious
art."
And in his palace in Rome Irydion lives solely for the
idea of revenge, and in its service unites his charming sister
to the weak and miserable boy who is the head of the
State. Elsinoe bends Heliogabalus like a reed, and Irydion
explains to the emperor that it is not his rival, Alexander
Severus, but the city of Rome itself that is his enemy. He
should wage that war against the city which Nero began
with the conflagration, and then transfer the imperial throne
to Byzantium. And Heliogabalus is fascinated by this
poetry of annihilation on a vast scale, which captivates him
as it has captivated better men than he — Polish poets, for
example.
Krasinski justly felt that for most of his countrymen
of that time Poland had gradually become only a name,
which called for vengeance. He saw the danger to the
nation's sense of right, which lay in its having come to
believe that everything was allowable as against the
oppressor. Even in the poem to the Polish mother, false-
hood, hypocrisy, and fraud were painted as virtues. Thus no
266 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
one had regarded it as wrong that the hero of Ostrolenka,
General Bern, had professed Mohammedanism simply in
order the better to strike at Russia in the Turkish service.
So no one at a later period regarded it as wrong in
Wielopolski that, in an open letter to Metternich after the
massacres in Galicia, he preached the merging of the people
in Russia, in the hope that union with the most powerful
enemy would procure vengeance on the two other enemies,
Austria and Prussia, which a new Attila might then crush.
Krasinski was alarmed at this national feeling, which
lived only in hate, at this patriotism, which was even stronger
than death, but always carried death in its mouth. He wrote
Irydion to warn his people.
At the last moment all Irydion's schemes miscarry,
because of the distrust he arouses in the Christian bishops.
Elsinoe demands the death of Heliogabalus, to avenge
herself for what she has suffered by being his mistress ;
then she kills herself. Alexander Severus conquers, and
becomes emperor. And Irydion would fain die, when Massi-
nissa — his bad tutelary genius, the Waidelot of Walknrod
on a grander scale, and moreover, a kind of incarnation of
the horror of antiquity for the institution of Christianity —
carries him away in space. In the distance he sees from
a height on the coast, Rome, "showing its marble in the
sun as the tiger shows its white teeth." And a fear
comes upon him that Rome will not be destroyed as his
mother had foretold. Massinissa then informs him that the
Goths, it is true, will trample Rome into ruins, but that
the Christians will then create a new Rome, which will take
the warriors of the north in leading strings, and once more
rule all the nations of the world.
Krasinski wished to show his people, in one grand
example, that the mere thirst for vengeance produces
nothing durable, and that hatred is unfruitful. In addition,
perhaps, as Klaczko has keenly observed, he wished to hint
that the enemy may find a new lease of life, where it is least
to be expected, as Rome found the basis of its second period
of greatness in Christianity, the successors of the Teutonic
Order a like fundamental force in the Reformation ; it may
KRASINSKI'S ETHICS 267
be Russia will find it in the civilisation of our century, the
very force which would seem to be a threat against Russia.
The epilogue transports us to the papal Rome of 1830.
Irydion wanders with Massinissa over the ruins of old Rome,
and among those of its later splendour. The ruling power
is represented by two old men in purple mantles, whom some
monks salute, and call princes of the Church. They are
seated in a carriage with a pair of old black horses, and a
servant stands behind with a lantern. These are the suc-
cessors of the Caesars ! says Massinissa. Irydion no longer
hates Christianity, whose fate now seems to him as sorrowful
as formerly did that of Greece.
At last Irydion hears a voice, which calls to him: "Go
north, in the name of Christ, and stop first in the land of
graves and crosses. Thou mayst know it by the silence of its
warriors, and the melancholy of its little children. Thou
mayst know it by the huts of its poor, destroyed by fire, and
the palaces of its exiles, which have been laid waste. Go
there and dwell among the new brethren whom I give to
thee. This shall be thy second trial. For the second time
thou shalt see the object of thy love pierced through, and in
the death struggle, and the sufferings of thousands of souls
shall be contained in thy heart."
The moral, then, is this : Your task in the land of graves
and crosses, as in the land of temples and cypresses, is not
the making war upon your enemy by all means, but the
conquering him by intellectual and moral superiority.
Krasinski's doctrine, proclaimed again and again, js this :
Not to expect better times from the evil we may wish to inflict
upon our enemies, but from the good we develop in our
own minds. What he fears is the poison which thraldom
engenders and secretes in the soul. To him, Siberia, the
knout, and tortures, are less terrible than to see the national
spirit poisoned in the thirst for vengeance.
Consequently we have this radical contrast : —
On the one hand, the recklessness of despair, which sanc-
tions everything, if it only strikes the tyrant : the act of
Gracyna, the fraud and treachery of Wallenrod, the plague-
kiss of Almansor, Kordjan's attempt at murder.
268 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
On the other, when Paskiewicz is ruler in Warsaw, a
voice which warns against unproductive hatred, and which,
when it is answered with derision on account of its sup-
posed cowardice, is content again and again to point at
efforts towards a higher culture, by which to echpse, and
thus to conquer the enemy through intellectual development
and purification.
There are two great leading principles in the battle of
life. The one is earthly, and the other spiritual. The former
has the more immediate results of an act in view, the latter
the more remote. The former is to this effect : Since life is
full of horrors, then make thine enemy harmless by annihilat-
ing him. For this, all means are lawful. The other is to
this effect : Since life is full of horrors, diminish their num-
ber by returning hate with love ! Love thine enemy, disarm
him by a self-esteem, which only unfolds itself in love, and
which, stronger than death, everywhere awakens life ! The
former is Conrad's and Kordjan's, the latter is the principle
of the great Anonymus. Perhaps they are both equally
unpractical, as between nation and nation. The one, be-
cause vengeance continually calls forth vengeance anew,
the other because love, as the only principle, is inadequate,
in a world where the gentleness of the lamb does not protect
it against the teeth of the wolf.
But it is these two principles, both equally romantic,
which permeate the romantic literature of Poland.
There is also a third unromantic and unsentimental prin-
ciple ; it teaches neither to exterminate nor to love your
enemy, but to work more and better than he. The future
belongs neither to the avenger nor to the apostle, but to him
who labours with genius.
VII
THE CHARACTER OF HAMLET IN POLAND — THE
TYPE OF HAMLET CONCEIVED ON RADICAL
LINES BY SLOWACKI, AND ON CONSERVATIVE
LINES BY KRASINSKI
There is yet another variety of the avenger, with much
of the type of the prophet in it, which has not yet been
touched upon, and which must be treated apart. It is
that group of figures in the romantic Hterature of Poland
which may be called Hamlet characters. In the literature
of the Renaissance there is this one great type from which
modern poetry may be dated, Shakespeare's Hamlet, spring-
ing originally from the English sense of reality and the
scepticism of Montaigne. As Hamlet is the first philoso-
phical drama of the more modern times, so also here for
the first time the typical modern man appears with his
keen sense of the contest between ideals and surroundings,
of the disproportion between strength and task, with all his
variety of spiritual being, delicate feeling and cruelty, his
wit without merriment, his everlasting procrastination and
furious impatience.
Much of the most modern of the poetry of the nineteenth
century derives from Hamlet. In Germany Goethe interprets
him in Wilhelm Meister, and this remodelled Hamlet calls
Faust to mind. When Faust was transplanted to English
soil, Byron's Manfred springs up, a new, if remoter, heir of
Hamlet. But in Germany the Byronic nature even assumes
a new and Hamlet-like (Yorick-like) form in Heine's bitter
and fantastic wit, in his hatred and caprice and intellectual
superciliousness. The generation to which Alfred de Musset
belonged in France, and which he described in his Confessions
(fun Enfant du Slide, nervous, inflammable as powder, with
its wings prematurely clipped, without the field for its thirst
369
270 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
for action, and without energy in its actual field, forcibly
reminds us of the type. And perhaps the best of Mussefs
masculine characters, Lorenzaccio, becomes the French
Hamlet, skilled in dissimulation, languid, brilliant, gentle
with women, yet wounding them with harsh words, mor-
bidly desirous of remedying the unimportance and foolish-
ness of his life by a deed, and acting desperately, uselessly,
and too late.
Hamlet, who centuries ago had been young England,
and who to Musset for a long time was young France,
afterwards became the name by which the Germany of
the fifties christened itself. " Hamlet is Germany," sang
Freiligrath.
In the development of Polish Romanticism there comes
a time when its poets are inclined to say : Hamlet is Poland.
It was the result of kindred political circumstances that
the character of Hamlet even at this same time, but still more
twenty years after, came to dominate another Slav literature,
the Russian, where we can trace it from the productions of
Pushkin and Gogol to those of Gontsharof and Tolstoi, while
in Tourgenief's works it really occupies the chief place. But
we shall see that the peculiar point in the Hamlet conscious-
ness, the vocation of vengeance, is wanting here, because all
the emphasis is laid on the disagreement between reflection
and energy in general.
On the other hand, we find marked traits of Hamlet's
nature in all the Polish political geniuses. From their youth
up, they all stand in his position. The world is out of joint,
and it is to be set right by their weak arms. High-born and
noble-minded as they are, they all feel like Hamlet the in-
ward fire and outward impotence of their youth ; conceiving
the conditions which surround them as one supreme horror,
they are constituted at once for dreaming and for action, for
musing and for recklessness.
Like Hamlet, they have seen their mother, the country
to which they owe their lives, dishonoured under the hand
of crowned robbers and murderers. The court, access to
which is sometimes open to them, frightens them as the
court of Claudius frightened the Danish Prince. These
HAMLET A TYPE OF POLAND 271
descendants of Hamlet are, like him, cruel to their Ophelia,
they abandon her when she loves them best ; like him, they
suffer themselves to be sent away to foreign lands, and
when they speak they dissemble like him, clothe their mean-
ing in comparisons and allegories. Finally, what Hamlet says
of himself holds good of them : <* Yet have I in me some-
thing dangerous." The peculiarly Polish feature is, that
what weakens them and hinders them is not their self-con-
sciousness but their poetry. While the Germans of this type
are ruined by self-consciousness, the French by debauchery,
the Russians by sloth, self-irony, or self-abandonment, it is
imagination which leads the Poles astray, and causes them
to live a life at variance with the true life.
It is true that the Hamlet character has many different
sides. Hamlet is the doubter, and, committed to inaction
by all sorts of scruples and considerations, is a man of
brains, who now acts nervously, now unmanned by nervous-
ness does not dare to act ; finally, he is the avenger, the man
who dissembles in order to be better able to avenge himself.
Every one of these aspects is developed by the Polish poets.
There is little of Hamlet in the personal character of
Mickiewicz, if we except the almost insane transport at an
idea which appeared in him at the moment when Towianski
entered into his existence. From this time forth the libera-
tion of Poland became a religion, a certainty for him. He
wanted to write to Nicholas, to convert Rothschild, in
order to win them to his cause. The chair of Slav history
and literature, which the Monarchy of July had bestowed
on him at the College of France, was taken from him,
when his lectures came to consist merely of the develop-
ment of fantastic patriotic theories (1844). But he pos-
sessed energy. In 1848 he tried to form a regiment of Poles
in Italy. During the reign of Napoleon III., who, according
to his belief, was to realise the Messiah -promises of the
great Napoleon, he filled for some years the modest position
of librarian at the Arsenal, which the Emperor had given
him, but during the Crimean war he travelled to Turkey
to raise a Polish legion against Russia. He died there, in
the midst of these efforts, in November 1855.
272 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Nevertheless there is a gHmpse of something Hke Hamlet
in several of the characters he created — Wallenrod, Gus-
tavus, Conrad, Robak. Gustavus speaks the language of
significant insanity, Conrad loses himself in philosophical
reveries, Wallenrod and Robak dissemble or disguise them-
selves in the service of vengeance, and the latter, like
Hamlet, kills the father of his beloved.
The Hamlet nature plays a far greater r6le in the char-
acter of Slowacki. He was wild and gentle, unruly and
ivy-like, in life clung to his friends, in art to predecessors,
lived not with his whole person, but with his head, in his
ideas and his fancy. His imagination is richly coloured and
melodious, decorative and sonorous, but he is wholly lacking
in the plastic sense. It is on this account that Krasinski's
advice to him is so excellent ; " Put granite under your
rainbows."
Practically, he was greatly influenced by his conscious-
ness of rivalry with Mickiewicz. His poetical writings are
mainly governed by this. In the history of the Middle Ages
we read of anti-popes. Slowacki belongs to the race of
anti-popes. His real originality is that of form. So far
as characters and fundamental themes are concerned he is
almost wholly limited by the models he imitates, and the
rivals he strives to outstrip or contradict. Thus we can trace
all the more plainly the general tendencies of Polish litera-
ture in his receptive nature.
His drama, Kordjan, written in sight of Mont Blanc,
which seemed to Slowacki " a carved statue of Siberia," is
founded on the coronation conspiracy against the Tzar
Nicholas. The conspirators here hold their meetings in a
church at night, and the young Polish nobleman, Kordjan
(the man of heart), offers to commit the murder of the Tzar.
Nothing could be more Hamlet-like than Kordjan's answer
to the President's exclamation, " Thou hast a fever, thine eyes
are wild ! "
" Kordjan. — It is nothing, old man ! It is my hair which
has become white and consumes my skull. I feel every one
of my hairs suffering the pangs of death ; but that amounts
"KORDJAN" 273
to nothing. . . . Plant two poplars and a rosebush on my
grave — streams of tears will water them, and I shall have
hair on my head again. . . . Hast thou a pen ? I would
fain write the names of those who will lament me — my
father, dead ; my mother, dead ; all my relatives dead ; she,
worse than dead. . . . Therefore I shall leave none behind
me. They are all with me ! And the gallows will be my
monument.
"The President. — Kordjan 1 There is the note thou
gavest the conspirators ; take it, burn it, and be free of
thy word ! "
" Kordjan. — One, two, three ! Carry arms ! Sentinel
on the castle ! Take care ! What foolish words 1 they are
to teach one how to walk. Old man : you irritate me with
your peaceful countenance : I cannot forget that I shall
never be old. If I ever surround thee with my flock of
children, then spit on my white hair, I permit it. {The clock
strikes eleven.) It is heaven which calls me." {^Hastens out.)
Kordjan's entrance into the castle is now described in
a great fantastic scene. He keeps the watch for the night,
and, with his carbine on his arm, he goes towards the
emperor's bedroom, while the voices of imagination and
fear speak to him incessantly. Imagination says : Listen
to me ! I speak to thine eyes ! Fear says : Listen to me !
I speak in the beating of my heart, until walls and
columns become serpents and sphinxes, the floor lives, the
plants have ears, the flowers move, and long funeral pro-
cessions wind from the church into the castle ; caskets,
sceptres, crowns, corpses, and ever more corpses, while
the church bells chime. Kordjan falls down on the floor
with his arm around his bayonet. He was not equal to
the deed. The Polish tendency to phantasmagoria inter-
vened between him and his action.
Not less Hamlet-like is the earlier, finely worked out
scene in Kordjan, in which Kordjan as an emigrant has an
audience with the Pope, the same Gregory XVI. who in
July, 1832, in a letter to the bishops of Poland, had con-
demned the Polish revolution as rebellion against the
s
274 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
legitimate ruler, and praised the high-minded Tzar who —
thank God ! — had restored order and peace.
The scene takes place in the Vatican. The Pope is
sitting in his chair. On a stool by his side is his tiara.
On it a red-breasted parrot. A chamberlain opens the
door for Kordjan, and announces in a loud voice : " Count
Kordjan, a Polish nobleman."
" The Pope, — Welcome, descendant of Sobieski." {He
extends his foot. Kordjan kneels and kisses it.) " Poland
is constantly overwhelmed with benefactions from heaven,
is she not ? Daily I thank God in the name of this happy
land. For the emperor, who is really like an angel with an
olive leaf, ever has the best disposition towards the Catholic
religion. We ought to sing hosannas. . . .
" The Parrot {shrilly). — Miserere.
" Kordjan. — I bring you here, holy father, a holy relic :
it is a handful of the earth, where ten thousand men, children,
old people and women were murdered . . . without even
the sacrament of the altar beforehand. Treasure it, where
you treasure the presents of the Tzars, and in return give me
a tear, only a tear. . . .
"The Parrot. — Lacrymce Christi.
"The Pope. — . . . To-morrow you shall see me in all
my majesty distributing blessings to the city and the world.
You shall see whole races on their knees before me. Let
the Poles pray to God, reverence the Tzar, and hold fast by
their religion.
** Kordjan. — But this handful of bloody earth, does no
one bless that ? what shall I answer to my friends ?
" The Parrot. — De profundis damavi, clamavi.
" The Pope. — . . . My son 1 may God lead thee, and
grant that thy people may tear the germs of Jacobinism out
of their bosom and wholly and entirely devote themselves to
honouring God and cultivating the earth, henceforth holding
nothing in their hands but psalm-book, hoe, and rake.
" Kordjan {throwing his handful of earth into the air). —
I throw the ashes of the martyrs to all the winds. With a
sorrowful soul I return to my native land.
"THE GODLESS COMEDY" 275
"The Pope. — If the Poles be conquered, thou canst be
sure that I shall be the first to excommunicate them. May
religion increase like an olive tree, and may the people live
in peace in its shade.
"The Parrot. — Halleluja!"
And if in Slowacki we find the radically disposed type of
Hamlet, the conservative Hamlet meets us in Krasinski, who
for so many years was Slowacki's friend and supporter.
The poet was not able to develop his views of life from
within with perfect freedom. A certain reserve was imposed
upon him by his position as his father's son and by a heritage
of aristocratic tendencies. Often and often his personality
was plainly in an inward strife, constantly suppressed, with
the doctrine he proclaimed and the view of life he advocated
— a view of life which has all the advantage of an elevated
mode of thought hostile to the mob, but which is never
young, not even in the first youth.
The hero of The Godless Comedy has more than one trait
in common with the most celebrated of all Danes. He has
Hamlet's sensitiveness and force of imagination. He strives
towards an ideal, but yet stands outside reality, poetising
his life. He is punished for the absurd difficulty of his
character by the insanity of his wife, just as Hamlet is
punished for his pretended madness by the real insanity of
Ophelia. But this Hamlet is torn by a more intense inward
conflict, and devoured by deeper doubt than the Hamlet
of the Renaissance. The latter doubts whether the spirit,
whose cause he espouses, is anything more than a phantom.
When Count Henry shuts himself up in the Castle of the Holy
Trinity he is not sure that the Holy Trinity is more than this.
He has no faith, only the need of faith. He is conservative
and clerical, not from conviction, but from the fear that the
forces that are besieging this castle are only destructive
forces. For political reasons he supports a religious system
as to which he hears from his coarse antagonist, Pancratius,
the democratic leader (a character like Renan's Caliban), the
harshest truths, without being able to refute them. When
Pancratius unfolds his Utopias to him, it is of little use that
276 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
he has the answer ready, " You do not yourself believe in
them " ; when the latter to his remark about the human race,
all being saved through Christ, can retort : " Why then has
He not helped men in the two thousand years of misery
and wretchedness which have elapsed since His death ?
Are you created in the image of man or in that of the
nursery ? "
This pang is pecuUar to the Polish Hamlet.
Krasinski cherished no illusion as to a speedy resurrec-
tion of the kingdom of Poland. He regarded the whole of
western European civilisation, including that of Poland, as
doomed. Nay, even Christianity seemed to him to be dying,
although he himself always wrote in a Christian spirit.
When he made his appearance as an aristocratic conservative
in his poems, it was with the agonising feeling that he was
defending the bad for fear of the worse. The adversities
of his private life and national misfortunes combined to
crush him early. From his thirty-fourth year he was a
broken-down old man, afflicted with nervous debility and a
disease of the eyes. The thirteen years he had still to live
were an uninterrupted struggle with death.
It has been already stated that Hamlet was, so to speak,
introduced at the court of Claudius by him. The episode
occurs in his beautiful poem the Temptation, a typical example
of the symbolical form of representation in which the
political conditions of those days compelled the poets of
Poland to express themselves. The poem dwells plainly
enough on personal recollections of Krasinski's youthful
residence in St. Petersburg, and is, moreover, a fantastic
representation of what he would have experienced in life if
he had followed his father's example.
The poem opens mysteriously with an invocation : " O
mother, six times pierced, unhappy mother ! " and describes
a landscape where on a gentle rising hill a coffln lies under
a slender fir tree ; in the coffin is a figure with chains on
the hands and a crown on the forehead. Six hills are
separated by green furrows, where blood runs like babbling
brooks, and weeds sprout over broken weapons.
Then the poet describes the arrival of a young noble
KRASINSKI'S "TEMPTATION" 277
at a great city and a great castle, by the stairs of which
all ascend as eagerly as if they were going up to heaven.
There is the sound of many musical instruments, perfumes
surround the new-comer, he sees a throne in the sunlight
elevated above the crowd of dancers. On the throne sits
the absolute ruler of life and death under a canopy of
flags. From one of these flags, which is torn in tatters,
drops of blood now and then fall. But no one pays any
attention to them except the youth.
The crowd separates, and the lord of the castle steps
down from the throne and goes, erect and vigorous, towards
the young man. The youth looks him steadfastly in the
eyes ; the ruler knits his brows and says gently : " Come,
let us go together, and I will show you the wonders of my
castle." And when the youth stands as if lost in a dream,
he gives him a kiss on his forehead and leads him away.
With his mother's coffin before his eyes the young man
walks by the side of the ruler of life and death, and the
blood in his arm beats against the hard arm of the usurper.
And the latter speaks of the past, even mentions the name
of the murdered mother without shuddering, as if her death
did not rest upon his conscience.
They pass through rows of men whose foreheads touch
the malachite floor ; then at the other end of the castle
marble doors are suddenly opened. The youth looks into
an enormous treasury, into mines of endless extent. Foun-
tains of flowing gold and silver shine with blended splendour,
and amethyst vaults rear themselves in all the colours of the
rainbow. But now and then there is also heard as it
were a shriek of some one dying, a clanking of chains ; now
and then human forms pass by like black cloudlets over the
moon ; they raise their hands with a clank, and pray for a
drop of water ; then the eyes of the ruler grow blood- red
with wrath.
From this time all show honour to the young man.
They wish to kiss the hand which has touched that of the
ruler. They offer him goblets full of costly wine, and a
beautiful young woman speaks to him of love.
In the throne-room the lord of life and death has given
278 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
the youth a place at the table by his side under the con-
quered flags. Ambassadors from the kings of the East and
of the West appear before the ruler, and every general puts
at the foot of the throne an urn of pure gold, full of the ashes
of those who have fallen in battle for the holy cause in the
different quarters of the globe. The ruler asks : " Are they
really dead, and will they never rise again ? " The answer
comes, " Certainly never," and the urns are ranged on both
sides of the hall on black granite columns. Fire is laid in
them, and they burn with a bluish flame ; pale clouds of
incense convey the odour of the dead to the ruler.
Directly opposite the young man stands the urn which
bears his mother's name and contains the ashes of her sons.
As often as he looks on it he forgets his beaker, but the
beautiful woman by his side continually offers it to him
again. A veil spreads itself over his consciousness. Then
the ruler smiles and says : " You are my guest ; it is time
that you take the oath of allegiance to me and renounce your
old name," and he throws a handful of diamond crosses to him
with the words, '< Wear them in remembrance of me." A
herald steps forward, and out of a black book he reads aloud
the formula of the oath to the young man, who repeats it
with sunken head, while it becomes dark before his eyes.
He has hardly ended when the lord of life and death rises
and calls out : *' You slave of my slaves ! you shall die by
the halter if you break your oath 1 " Then he smiles with
scorn. But when the youth raises his eyes, he reads on
the urn, where his mother's name was written, only the one
word — Dishonour, and thousands shout dishonour to him,
before him, around him. Dishonour resounds in the vaults
of the castle from the throne-room to the treasury.
It was all a dream, from which the youth awakes, and
the poem ends as it began, with an enthusiastic invocation
of the six times pierced mother.
As already indicated, the poem is an expression of the
Polish Hamlet's horror of the court of Claudius.
But only a partial representation of the peculiarity and
versatility of these Polish writers is given by laying stress
upon their analogies with Hamlet. Hamlet's antithesis in
MICKIEWICZ AND KRASINSKI 279
Shakespeare's tragedy is Fortinbras, the rejuvenating prin-
ciple of fresh reality, who inherits the throne and the
kingdom when all else is lost and poisoned. There is
also a glimmering of the nature of Fortinbras in several of
these poets, but the very essence of that which he symboli-
cally represents lives in Mickiewicz.
In Mickiewicz there was a fountain of bubbling, youthful
power. There was something in him which was freshness
itself, irresistibility itself, a something which is expressed
in words in the Ode to Youth and in the immortal poem,
Farts. It is youth which believes in being able to tear
the old world out of its groves, and which makes the
attempt. It is youth which, like Faris or the Jehu of
Scripture " drives furiously." It is before this that birds
of prey take flight and hurricanes must yield. This tumultuous
force and self-confidence is not to be found so primitively
either in Slowacki or Krasinski. It is from this force in
Mickiewicz that springs a passion as exalted as that which
stretches the bow in the third part of Dziady^ and a mas-
culine equilibrium of thought such as that which is disclosed
in the masterpiece of Polish literature, Pan Tadeusz.
Such robustness of emotion is not found in any other
Polish poet. Mickiewicz alone approached those great
names in poetry, which stand in history as above all healthy,
far healthier than Byron, healthier even than Shakespeare :
Homer and Goethe.
It is not by the healthfulness of his soul that Krasinski
raises himself above his period and belongs to the future.
It is by the loftiness of his soul, the sublimity of his outlook,
and his mode of thought. His works have not the blush
of health, but the purity of colourlessness. There is a defiant
independence in his isolated position, a peculiar foresight
in his views as to the danger of inciting the people against
the Polish nobility — those views which Slowacki arrogantly
and scornfully ridiculed, but which received an apparently
incontrovertible justification when the peasants of Galicia, in
1846, were paid by Metternich's agent, Breindl, five gulden
for every living and ten for every murdered Polish noble-
man. There is finally a depth of understanding in The Godless
28o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Comedy, the genius of which surprises us, when we remember
that it was composed by a youth of twenty-one.
It is neither their robustness nor their independence that
will enable Slowacki's productions to defy time. It is true
that, in religious respects, he is more liberal, in political,
more audacious, than his great rivals, but he is so as much
from a spirit of contradiction as from conviction. No
one is more brilliant than he. He has the genuine Polish
love for show and colour, he for whom the divine was
symbolised by the plume in the helmet. But if he has the
Polish love for pomp, he has, above everything else, the
common Slavic faculty for imitation. In almost every one of
his works we are distracted in our enjoyment by the
recollection of a very definite exemplar.
The manner in which he appropriates Shakespeare is
slavish ; his Balladyna, a, blending of Midsummer Night's
Dream, King Lear, and Macbeth, in which beautiful single
passages and profound scenes are to be found, but in
which the elements are inharmoniously adjusted to each
other, leaves a painful impression as a whole, in spite of
the boldness of certain conceptions. He has utterly ruined
his treatment of the tragedy of Beatrice Cenci, supplanting
the study of the human soul by a long drawn-out romantic
dance of witches, a mere dilution of the witch theme,
treated with the judicious reserve of the master in Macbeth.
His Cenci is far behind Shelley's much earlier and more
admirable version of the same theme, with which Slowacki
was evidently not acquainted, otherwise he would have
imitated it. His Mary Stuart is more independent and
characteristic. It follows, almost act for act, the same
portion of the life of the Scottish Queen, afterwards treated
by Bjornson and Slowacki's Mary, as a character, is more
interesting and more important than Bjornson's, while the
treatment as a whole is more lyrical.
Slowacki was perhaps too much taken up by himself
to become properly absorbed in humanity before he described
men. He studied human life less than the works of Byron,
Shakespeare, Mickiewicz, Krasinski, and finally Calderon.
So he drew figures half living, half dream-like ; characters
THE THREE GREAT POLISH POETS 281
of which some fragments are true, others incorrect, and
concealed the weakness of the drawing by throwing the
rainbow glow of his diction over it. His style is bold
and eloquent but seldom closely knit. Its strength and
weakness is its overwhelming richness of colour.
There is no bird which in strength of wing and power
of flight can rival the eagle. Fitly is it called the king of
birds. There is no bird which, in unblemished whiteness
and quiet dignity of movement can rival the swan. Fitly
is it called the symbol of noble purity. The peacock
cannot fly like the eagle, nor sail like the swan, but neither
of them can come near it in the incomparable splendour
of its plumage.
Mickiewicz is the eagle, Krasinski the swan, Slowacki
the peacock among the winged spirits of Poland.
VIII
PAN TADEUSZyTUE ONLY EPOPEE OF THE CENTURY—
MICKIEWICZ AND RZEWUSKI— IMPORTANCE OF
MICKIEWICZ
Among the works which these poets have produced there
is a single book which competent judges at an early day
pronounced to be the best poetical work in Polish litera-
ture. It is the only work in which one of the three great
poets has attempted to give a picture of the many-sided
national culture during a period of agitation of which he
was himself a witness ; the only work in which we find a
broad and rich representation of the natural scenery of
Poland ; the only one in which the poet does not think
it beneath him to let everyday men appear in large
numbers ; finally, the only one in which the keynote is no
longer that of tragical or lyrical exaltation, but a quiet
humour, from which the passage to satire, tenderness,
melancholy, or enthusiasm is easy.
As we all know, the number of epic poems of real value
is small. But certain of these works remain in the litera-
ture of the world as essential books, national books,
in which a whole nation or race has found its character
described, its life embodied in true and living form ; they
belong to remote times like the patriarchal books of the Old
Testament, like Homer, Ramayana, Firdusi, the Niebelunge-
lied. The reason is that the naive consciousness of a nation
generally expresses itself for the first time in a genuine epic.
It comes into existence when the nation has such a clear
understanding of itself that it can enjoy a glorified reflection
of its conditions in art, and yet has not become so civil-
ised that its religion has stiffened into dogmas and its
forms of society into a commonwealth of police or of
law. For the conditions are epic — that is to say, in the
282
ESSENTIALS OF EPIC POETRY 283
broadest sense heroic — only when the ruHng power does
not lie outside of the individual, and has not destroyed inde-
pendent activity, as it is destroyed when discipline and com-
mand rule in war, and royal power, official force, and
even more powerful society standards in time of peace.
In Homer every single leader is an independent Greek ;
even if Agamemnon is the king of kings, the other kings
are not under his sceptre. We meet with similar conditions
in the epic poems of far later times, as in the Cid of the
Spaniards and in the Italians, Ariosto and Tasso, even if the
naivete is weaker here, and the Virgilian models, not-
ably in Tasso, have a depressing effect. Tasso's Jerusalem
could be a genuine national book only in so far as the
people delighted in the sound of the verses and in the
brilliant adventures. It did not find its own life re-
produced therein.
The attempt to create a national epic failed most
conspicuously when Voltaire wrote the Henriade in the
eighteenth century. From that time all thinking men began
to understand that wholly peculiar conditions are demanded
for the production of a national epic poem, and that it could
hardly be written in an intellectual age, since it was neither
probable that we should be able to find that naivete in a poet,
nor that primitive anarchy in a period he knew and could
describe, on which the power of the great epics to strike
deep into the national consciousness seems hitherto to have
depended.
Since naivete has again come to honour and dignity
in this century, and since poets have again become child-
like to some extent, and to some extent have simulated
simplicity, they have tried to avoid the regularity of
modern conditions by laying the scene of their epic
essays in grey antiquity.
It is in the nature of the epic to give a broad picture of
the culture of the people, with a detailed description of their
entire manner of living, their eating and drinking, their
dress and dwelling, manners and customs. In Homer all
this still lives. The Homeric man and woman find them-
selves again in their surroundings. Odysseus has him-
284 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
self fashioned his bed, the women have themselves woven
their apparel, the king's daughters themselves attend to
the washing, the men themselves pitch their tents, or build
their houses. Nothing of their own is strange to them,
nothing, like the dwellings or materials of our own days, is
the product of a manufactory or of a machine. The heroes
themselves gained their rare weapons, each of which has its
own peculiarity, by fighting or as booty.
When the Scandinavian authors, shrinking from their
own organised and regulated age and the tyranny of factory
and machine, turned back to antiquity, they produced narra-
tive poems like Hrolf Krake, or Frithiof, books of a certain
qualified value, but which have no deep intellectual interest,
because they have not the slightest resemblance to the period
they represent. The only modern poets, who have succeeded
in producing anything which has the character of an epic, are
Byron, whose Don Juan is a picture of the world, although
in its nature it is a bitter, glowingly sensual, wrathful satire,
and before him Goethe, who in Hermann and Dorothea repro-
duced something of the simplest and best substance of the
German people in the old art form of the narrative poem.
The types here are plain, of homely grandeur. Hermann
and Dorothea stand before the reader's eyes as the German
Adam and Eve. But the epic foundation is slender ; family
life in a little German town ; pastor and apothecary ; the
landlord and landlady of the inn ; the relations between
parents and a grown-up son; but as background we have:
the French Revolution, the fugitive emigrants, who bring
from the left bank of the Rhine the orphaned, homeless
girl whom Hermann leads to his home and to his parents.
The contrast between vagrancy and the cosiness of a pro-
vincial town, between upheaval and bourgeois stagnation, is
also indicated here. The whole is less an epic than an idyl
of family life on an epic background.
In Pan Tadeusz Poland possesses the only successful epic
our century has produced. The good star of Mickiewicz
ordained that this time he should not go back to the remote
past in order to produce something epic. Here he suc-
ceeded in seeing the heroic in his own age.
"PAN TADEUSZ" 285
Elizabeth Browning in the beautiful and eloquent verse
of her Aurora Leigh has a memorable passage as to the
possibility of seeing this. She says : —
"... every age.
Through being beheld too close, is ill discerned
By those who have not lived past it, we'll suppose
Mount Athos carved, as Alexander schemed.
To some colossal statue of a man ;
The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear,
Had guessed as little as the browsing goats
Of form or feature of humanity
Up there — in fact, had travelled five miles off
Or ere the giant image broke on them,
Full human profile, nose and chin distinct.
Mouth muttering rhythms of silence up the sky."
Thus the ordinary man and the ordinary poet do not see
the contours of the age in which they live.
Mickiewicz was the rare epic poet in this sense, that he
succeeded fully in reproducing not only the origin and
source of the customs of his native land, but all the great-
ness and all the poetry which the period about the year
181 2 had in its bosom for Poland. He dared to found a
whole epic on his own observation.
Its genesis is remarkable. It emanated from Mickie-
wicz's feeling of despair when the revolution of 1831, in
which he had not participated, was crushed. In 1832, after
Garczynski's death, he writes ; " I am like a Frenchman on
the retreat from Russia, demoralised, weak, almost without
boots." He became reserved, gloomy, sullen, misanthropic,
and negligent in his dress. To escape this despairing dejec-
tion, he turned back to the land of his childhood, Lithuania,
in which he had seen the light, which he had not visited
since the years of his early youth, and which he, the exile,
was never to see again. And he, who as a poet, directly
or through disguises, had always spoken only in his own
name, he who had defied and incited, protested and agitated,
became an epic poet of perfect calm and mighty breadth.
He achieved the epic naivete, which is so rare and so
costly, which was denied to all other poets in and out of
Poland, for a double reason ; firstly, because of a peculiarity
286 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
in his relation to his subject, and, secondly, because of a
peculiarity in the subject itself.
The other poets lacked natvek'. But he, who had only
seen his fatherland with the eyes of a child, and never could
see it again with the eyes of a mature man, had never had
this picture clouded. He received in compensation for this
exclusion from the land of his fathers the long lost gift of
the epic poet, the naive feeling of growing up with the
country, its customs and conditions, as they were when
he was a child.
And then it happened that the subject which presented
itself to him had just the characteristics of the old epic sub-
jects. Lithuanian life about 1812 was an entirely civilised
condition in its way, yet one wholly outside of the mono-
tonous cosmopolitan civilisation. Everything in this Szlachta
epos was, therefore, as untouched by the culture of western
Europe as are the enormous primeval forests of Lithuania
by forestry. Here everything is original, from the peculiar
food of the country, with its wonderful names, to the varie-
gated dress — zupan, kontusz, confoderatka. There is a
wealth of characteristic customs ; there is even a special
costume in which to collect edible sponges. And every
weapon, every club, every sabre, every gun, has a history
which is told. Originals swarm here ; every other person
who appears is an original of the primeval forest. Here
there is neither supremacy nor discipline. The relation
between the upper classes and the servants is still, as in the
Middle Ages, a purely personal relation, not infrequently a
passionate attachment.
Finally, in this aristocratic epopee there is a relation
between the nobles such as we see between the princes in
Homer. A wild independence blossoms here, in spite of
apparent subordination to a king, a state of things unknown
elsewhere in Europe. Men do justice for themselves with
weapons in their hands ; they acknowledge no superior,
carry on war and give battle on a small scale, rend the land
with internecine conflicts until the coming of the Russian
drives the enemies into each other's arms, and Napoleon's
entry into Poland lights the fire of patriotic enthusiasm.
HENRYK RZEWUSKI 287
But the anarchy of the nobiHty, which in the world of reaUty
had shown itself so fatal to the existence of Poland, proved,
as if in compensation, so admirable an epic subject, that
Poland got its only epos by virtue of that very condition
which annihilated the country as a State. And Mickiewicz,
describing this host of Don Quixotes with love and humour,
opened up vistas in the past and the future which explained
the glorious past of his people and its present ruin.
The action lasts from the summer of 181 1 to the spring
of 181 2. By choosing this point of time, his hopeful nature
found scope in his poem, this epos of a humiHated people,
for he could close with a lyric flight, an inspired burst
of consolation. He had experienced this popular feeling,
when as a boy he saw the entrance of the French bat-
talions into Nowogrodek.
In his travels in the Crimea, Mickiewicz had as fellow-
traveller the somewhat older Henryk Rzewuski, the heir of
one of the old families of the great nobility of Poland. This
intellectual man, an excellent narrator, had been educated
in a reactionary, aristocratic circle, which swore by Bonald
and De Maistre. In 181 2 he had made the personal ac-
quaintance of De Maistre in St. Petersburg, and he appeared
first in private life, afterwards in literature, as the uncom-
promising spokesman of his mai^ter, the greatest champion
of authority of the age. Rzewuski abounded in recollections
of the life of the Polish nobility of the eighteenth century.
He was endowed with a literary talent of which he was not
conscious. When Mickiewicz was residing in Rome and
passed two winters in company with Rzewuski, the poet
urged him to write. He inferred the talent of written de-
scription from his gift of oral narrative. When, in response
to his suggestion, Rzewuski produced some verses which
Mickiewicz pronounced bad, the latter did not on that account
mistrust his own judgment ; for he had perceived from the
beginning that the talent of Rzewuski could only manifest
itself in a prose form. Therefore he earnestly advised him
to write prose. Rzewuski followed this advice and succeeded.
Strange to say, this prose afterwards had a reflex influence
upon Mickiewicz.
288 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
Rzewuski wrote a thick volume of memoirs of the previous
century in the style of the period. The fictitious author was
Severin Soplica, one of the servants and adherents of Prince
Charles Radziwill. In these loosely knit memoirs, which give
glowing pictures of the time, rich in strong features and with
admirable descriptions of character, the leading personage
is that Prince Radziwill, so popular in Lithuania, called
Paniekochanku, on account of his favourite form of salutation
(Dear sir ! Dear friend). The time of the action is about
1770. When the book appeared in 1839 ^^ ^^^ received
with great enthusiasm ; it was read as if it were a volume
of genuine reminiscences.
It was completed in 1832, and it is probable that
Mickiewicz had received from Rzewuski the incentive to
deal with the Poland of the end of the eighteenth century.
That his hero also bears the family name of Soplica implies
this. At the close of 1832 he began the elaboration of
Pan Tadeusz which, in a letter written in December, he
characterises as " a rural poem in the style of Hermann and
Dorothea^' of which he " has altogether scribbled a thousand
verses." While he was writing it, he felt as if he were
transported to Lithuania. In February 1834 ^^ finished
the poem, which for the rest he mentions carelessly, with a
certain lack of respect, as " a piece of nonsense," in com-
parison to Dziady, which he means to continue in order to
finish " his one work worth reading." Wonderfully enough
the public soon judged far more justly than the author him-
self in this matter. He did not even appreciate his good
fortune, in lighting upon such an untouched subject, such
primitive nature, whose poetry he could reproduce with
lively fancy, and such a characteristic anarchy regulated by
customs, and marked by all the unruly freedom of the indi-
dividual, which was in such contrast to the police-ridden
uniformity of other European countries.
And since he was not like Rzewuski merely a gifted
narrator, who presented a past in careless fragmentary prose,
but a writer who embalmed his recollections, observations,
visions, and hopes in a form of entrancing melody, so that
no syllable could be taken away from any line without loss,
"PAN TADEUSZ" 289
he endowed his chief work with such a power of resistance
to time, that it will come to later generations in Poland as
the great diamond in the national patrimony, the cutting of
which has made its value incalculable, and whose hard
surface resists all attack.
It is very suggestive that the contemporaries of Mickiewicz
paid particular attention to the descriptions of the past in
Pan Tadeusz. They considered the poem in connection
with the Recollections of Soplica, and thus, in the period which
immediately followed, that one of the elements of the Polish
romanticists became the predominant one, which in the
beginning had not been specially prominent, namely, the
element of the ancient nobility. In the track of Pan Tadeusz
the epopees and romances of the ancient nobility grew so
rapidly that even Slowacki — in Agamemnon's Tomb — was
obliged to utter a warning against this continual poison of the
past, this Nessus-shirt which the new Poland wore, the red
kontusz and golden girdle of the old Szlachta.
Now we can hardly comprehend that it was that in Pan
Tadeusz which suggests Walter Scott, which about 1840 gave
this unique poetical work its chief effect. At the present
time it is clear that the reason that Mickiewicz, and he alone
of the three greater poets, finally succeeded in producing a
work at once popular and imperishable, was the circum-
stance that he, and he alone, gave a description of realities
with no fantastic or mystical elements interwoven, and painted
a world which did not lie half-hidden behind the mists of
the past, but one which he himself had seen with the clear,
wise eyes of childhood before it vanished.
The sub-title of the poem is "The Last Raid in Lithu-
ania," and treats of the old anarchical custom of determining
litigation between two noble families thus : one of them with
its adherents in a body simply rode out and took possession
by force of the object in dispute. Thus it happens here.
Between the families Soplica and Horeszko there is an old
quarrel about the possession of a ruined castle. The nobility
of the district is assembled at Soplicowo to settle the
quarrel. There we become acquainted with all the persons
who appear ; the leading character, Tadeusz, his uncle, the
T
290 IMPRESSIONS OP^ POLAND
Judge Soplica ; the opposing party, the fooHsh Italianate,
romantic Count Horeszko, in whom the author seems to
have given the portrait of the man who supplanted him
in the heart of Marylka ; a handsome and amiable coquette
from St. Petersburg, who is no longer young, Telimene ; the
young ingenue Sophia of the house of Horeszko, who was
brought up in the family of the judge (a young girl, who has
some of the traits of Marylka); finally, a swarm of excellently
drawn guests. They go on a bear-hunt in the primeval
forest, which is described with incomparable power. The
hunters come into peril of their lives, but the bear is
struck down by Robak, a mystic Bernardine monk, who
intervenes on all occasions to help and rescue. The dispute
about th^ bear's head excites Count Horeszko, and leads
him on to take forcible possession by " raid " of the castle
adjudged to Soplica. This triumph is celebrated by a
drinking-bout, at which all the participants become so intoxi-
cated that the Russian soldiers passing by are able to over-
come them like beasts, and bind them. But against the
Russians all the Poles feel as if they were allies. Robak
forms a plan to liberate the prisoners and take the Russians
by surprise. It comes to a battle, in which indeed he is
mortally wounded, but the Poles prevail. Their leaders must
now, it is true, escape further pursuit by flight, but they
cross the Niemen to the troops of Napoleon, and soon return
as officers in the Polish army under Dombrowski, whose
banner unites all the former opponents. The marriage of
Tadeusz Soplica with Sophia Horeszko is celebrated as a
symbol of the reconciliation of the rival houses, and at a
great banquet Jankiel plays the history of Poland down to
1812, until all ends as in a golden dawn of bright hopes.
The leading character, Tadeusz, is an amiable and brave
young fellow, not more interesting than one of Walter Scott's
young heroes, and has no other function than that of hold-
ing the story together. His youthful nature is fully described,
without hypocrisy or dissimulation ; nevertheless there is
nothing in him which fascinates. The real hero is not
Tadeusz, but his father Jacek, who conceals his name and his
rank under the cowl of the monk Robak.
"PAN TADEUSZ" 291
Jacek has formerly killed Sophia's father, the magnate
Horeszko, just as he was defending his castle against the
Russians. It is true that the great lord had rejected
Jacek as a suitor, much as Count Ankwicz, from whom
he is painted, had turned away Mickiewicz. Jacek never sees
the daughter Eva again (the very name is preserved), and
she is forced into the marriage in which Sophia is born.
He himself marries afterwards without love, and becomes
the father of Tadeusz, does penance for the murder of
Horeszko as a Bernardine monk, has Sophia educated,
and watches over her and his son like a Providence. As
the murderer of Horeszko he acquired the reputation of
having been a tool of the Russians ; in reality he is one
of the trusted men of the French government, and has been
entrusted with the task of arranging a great Polish insur-
rection. When he dies in the victorious battle with the
Russians, the cross of the Legion of Honour is placed on
his grave.
In Jacek's personality we see as it were Mickiewicz's
new poetry grow out of the older. As a murderer through
injured pride, as the patient monk, who pays for the untamed
wildness of a moment by the renunciation of a life-time, he
reminds us of the old Byronic heroes, in his nature closely
related to all the romantic and passionate characters of
Mickiewicz. In certain ways he is as true a reflection of the
personal life, experiences, and sentiments of the author as
Gustav and Conrad. But out of the lyrico-romantic kernel
of his spiritual life the whole epic wealth bursts forth as a
mighty oak grows from an acorn. The fate of the individual
man is entirely absorbed in that of the whole nation, whose
vices and virtues are unfolded to the reader, as we become
acquainted with its quarrelsomeness, party dissensions and
inclinations to civil war, but also the enthusiasm, which
makes it ready, as soon as the blast from Europe reaches
it, to rise as one man and realise its ideal. The blind
hatred of the earlier poetry has vanished here. Plut,
the born Pole, is put to shame and removed without
mercy as a deserter. On the other hand the Russian
Rykow is a brave and honest fellow, a little inclined to
292 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
drunkenness — like the Poles themselves — but incorruptible
and good-natured.
In the main the description of individuals is not at all
the most important thing here. The principal subject is the
broad description of natural life and of human life as deter-
mined by natural surroundings.
In the description of the bear-hunt there is a passage
where the Wojski (a title of honour, tribune) of the district,
when the bear is killed, plays a flourish on his horn over the
dead bruin. It is as follows : —
"Then our Wojski grasped his horn, which was tied
securely to his belt, his buffalo horn, long, with many
windings, like a boa — carried it to his mouth with both
hands. His cheeks are stretched like a pumpkin, bloodshot
his eyes burn.
" Now he drops his eyelids, then draws in his paunch,
and draws breath and wind into his chest with all his might
and blows — like a stormblast whirls the roar away into the
deep thicket, where echo plays with it. Then the huntsmen
are dumb with astonishment, fascinated by the melody,
purity, force, and fulness of the strong tones. All the art
which formerly won him honour, now as an old man he
displays once more in the assembly of the huntsmen. He
soon wakes the oaks, fills the woods round about, as if he
were beginning a hunt, as if the hounds were baying around.
For it was the hunt, painted in tones, strong, clear. First
it sounds aloud into the world — the fanfare of the morning
signal. Then whines and howls, the sounds of a pack of
hounds. Then it thunders now and then, it is the booming
of the guns when they fire.
" Here he stopped, yet he did not drop the horn. They
believed he was still playing, but it was the echo. He blew
again, and the horn was as if enchanted, now harsh, now
delicate, wholly as the mouth of the Wojski treated it. He
imitates the voices of the animals. Just like a wolf's mouth
the horn now howls so hideously that all hearts fail. It
opens like the throat of a bear and sends out a loud roar.
Suddenly, like the roar of the wild ox, they feel it rend
the air.
"PAN TADEUSZ" 293
" Here he stopped, yet the horn did not drop. They
believed he was still playing, but it was the echo.
" For the trees repeated the matchless work of art, and
it resounded from beech to beech, from oak to oak.
" He blew again, as if there were hundreds of horns in
his horn. So the wild chase through the grain of the
peasant is heard. Shots, baying of hounds, the death rattle
of the deer — now he raises the mouth of the horn. And
the triumphal fanfare strikes with power against the vault of
heaven.
" Here he stopped, but the horn did not drop. They
believed he was still playing, but it was the echo.
" There sounded as many horns as there are trees in
the forest, as from choir to choir it sped from tree to tree.
And tones rolling wider follow on tones, then they become
softer, purer, and more tender till they die away softly some-
where on the threshold of heaven."
What is said here about the playing of the Wojski
expresses exactly what Mickiewicz had the power to do.
Because he, the exile, dreamed himself back to his childish
impressions of nature and human life in a land which lay
in a naive and motley civilisation, outside of trade, but
with a characteristic stamp of handicraft, outside of a
state of police, but with a recognised anarchy of established
custom, he succeeded in making the ancient old Lithuanian
forest speak, was able to conjure up the wild and merry
hunt in the country, the natural sounds of the animals, the
twitter of the birds, the growling of the bears, the bellow of
the wild ox, the choir of all the human voices. He rises
from the quiet whispering between beech and beech, oak and
oak, until it is as if he had the melody of hundreds of horns
in his horn, as if he had the voices of all the deceased
generations of the land therein.
These voices are heard through the poem ever in broader
i^ood, ever in purer tone, giving utterance to the yearnings
of the country in love and pain, hope and anger, wildness
and folly, mirth and enthusiasm, until it appears as if the
whole heaven of Poland were filled by his song. And when
294 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
we have seen how deeply this poem of his even to this
day affects the minds of the Poles, we are reminded of the
words about the listeners to the Wojski, that it seemed to
them that he was still playing when he had longed ceased.
So completely does Mickiewicz live in the echo he has
evoked.
IX
DIVISION AMONG THE POETS — DISORGANISATION
OF ROMANTICISM— POLISH LITERATURE OF
TO-DAY— CRITICAL SUMMARY
Not one of the three great romantic poets sang for long.
Mickiewicz did not publish any more poems after 1840,
though he lived thirteen years longer. And Slowacki, who
died in 1849, when only thirty-seven, wrote almost nothing
in the last three years of his life.
Rivalry and difference of opinion separated them widely
in the forties.
The rupture between Mickiewicz and Slowacki was most
complete. Slowacki's ill-fortune and his irritable nature,
as well as a somewhat unjustifiable coldness on the part
of Mickiewicz, had constantly kept the former at a distance
from his more fortunate rival in the admiration of his country-
men. Nevertheless there was a moment when they met
in unison ; some days after the Slav lectures by Mickiewicz
at the College of France had been begun during the
Christmas of 1840, the Polish emigrants in Paris arranged
a dinner for him. At this festivity Slowacki was also
present ; Pan Tadeusz had made him forget all his earlier
injuries and all his old rancour. He even rose and in
improvised verse celebrated the guest of honour as the
first singer of their common fatherland. The best of his
spiritual life broke through here. He sacrificed none of his
dignity ; there was a touch of bitterness in the way in which
he alluded to his own fate, and a melancholy pride in the
hope he expressed that he also in his way had rendered
services his fatherland would value ; but he addressed
Mickiewicz with heartiness, and gave him his homage with
sincere warmth. He declaimed his improvisation with so
much enthusiasm that he won universal applause, except
296 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
from some fanatical admirers of Mickiewicz, who were
instantly offended at liis comparing his talent and fate with
that of the great man. Mickiewicz gave a comparatively
friendly answer, also in verse, probably the last verses he
ever composed. There was some severity in his criticism
of Slowacki's works and character — he advised him to
control his pride of spirit — but he also said flattering things
to him, and mentioned that he himself in his day at Wilna
had prophesied to Slowacki's mother the coming honour
of her son. The two poets embraced each other, the
bystanders embraced them with tears in their eyes, and
the old enmity seemed to be a thing of the past.
But soon after, a final breach was brought about by a
trifling cause, a silver bowl, which Slowacki was asked to
present to Mickiewicz in memory of this festival. Slowacki
regarded this request as an insult, an imputation of vassal-
age, and when he refused, the new Catholic journals of the
emigrants fell upon him and attacked his best poems, and
those of his friend Krasinski. He responded by attacking
the bUnd admirers of Mickiewicz, and described their conduct
towards him and his friend, after which the papers gave
erroneous accounts of what had happened at the festival
between the two improvisatores. Slowacki expected that
Mickiewicz would now give an account of the actual
occurrence, but when he wrapt himself up in a dignified
silence, exasperation took such hold upon Slowacki that it
inspired him. He published Beniowski, a poem in the style
of Byron's Don Juan and Musset's Namouna, in which the
material was only a pretext for lyrical and emotional or
scornful and pugnacious digressions from the main subject ;
and here he attacked Micl^iewicz's adherents, " the Jesuits
of the emigrants," as he called them, scourged them with
passion and wit, and settled his relation to Mickiewicz,
made a brief abstract of his improvisation, and in con-
clusion, threw at him this challenge : *' We are two gods,
each of whom rules upon his own sun. ... I will not go
with you on your wild path, but by quite another path, my
own, and the people will follow me."
At this point in Slowacki's literary life, Krasinski came
SOCIALISM AMONG THE EXILES 297
publicly to his aid ; in a somewhat lengthy article — the
anonymity of which deceived no one — he sought to adjudi-
cate between Mickiewicz and him, attributing to each his
great qualities, and to each his own sphere. He attributes to
Mickiewicz centripetal, to Slowacki centrifugal force ; to the
former plastic talent, and to the latter musical, laying stress
on Slowacki's extraordinary control of language. With
some inordinate and diffuse comparisons, he finally char-
acterises Mickiewicz as the Michael Angelo of form, while
Slowacki, he says, corresponds to " Correggio and Raphael,
or to Beethoven." The intention at least was good enough,
and from that time the reputation of Slowacki was on the
rise. Thus the faith was justified which led Slowacki in
his time to symbolise his relation to Krasinski by that of
the twin brothers. Lei and Polel, who, bound together with
an iron chain, constitute, as it were, one single person in
the contest, the one wielding the sword, the other the shield.
But soon this bond, apparently so strong, was to break.
In the first half of the forties, political life among the
Polish emigrants had reached its apogee. They had an
instinct that a general European outburst of revolutionary
passions was imminent, and they gladly anticipated its
coming in the belief that an insurrection was the only
means of restoring Poland. Towianski's sect had created
a mental ferment, but the most efifective group among the
emigrants was the Democratic Society which had its seat
first at Poitiers, and afterwards at Versailles. It arranged
a general revolt, which was to begin in Austrian and
Prussian Poland, and since it justly contended that a revolt
could not succeed without the help of the peasants, it
addressed itself through secret messengers and pamphlets
to the common people. In order to win them, it suggested
a new partition of the soil, and thus raised a threat against
the landed proprietors. Pamphlets, the most important of
which were signed with the pseudonym Prawdowski, carried
on the revolutionary propaganda by declamations against
the part which the aristocracy and clergy had played in the
history of Poland.
His dread of freethinking, and his aversion to demagogues
298 IMPRESSIONS OP^ POLAND
and socialists led Krasinski, in 1845, under the pseudonym,
Spiridion Prawdzicki, to write against Prawdowski three
psalms (of Faith, Hope, and Charity), fascinating in their
verbal diction, but mystical in their preaching of prayer and
moral self-purification as the only permissible means of con-
tending with oppression, unjustly aggressive in their concep-
tion of the democrats as bloodhounds. Although he was
so full of faith personally in the superior virtues, heroism,
chivalry, &c., of the nobility, he did not deny their past sins,
but appealed to the men, who, with childlike cruelty, shouted
for their blood, " to throw away the knife."
These psalms so greatly irritated Slowacki that he
allowed himself to be drawn into a poetic answer, " To the
Author of the three Psalms." With warmth and force, but
also with bitter scorn he refutes the doctrine of the right
and use of passive resistance, and scoffs at Krasinski as
the distinguished son of the nobility, who, tender of the
welfare of the privileged class, sees dangers everywhere for
the poor nobleman : " Who has threatened you with the
knife ? . . . Perhaps the light has penetrated through the
red curtains of your windows ; it has seemed to you to
look like blood, and you shout. Do not murder the Szlachta.
I am humble enough not to curse any intellectual move-
ment. Moreover, do not believe that the divine idea only
unfolds itself under the direction of angels ; God often
allows it to be born in blood, and He sometimes sends
it with Mongols." Against Slowacki's wish and design this
poem was published.
The horrors of Galicia, which broke out immediately
after, came as if to give the lie to Slowacki. Under the
guidance of Austrian agents and liberated galley slaves (like
that Szela who caused the whole family of Bohusz, twenty-
two persons, to be put to death), in 1846, 8000 Polish
soldiers to whom furlough had been given, persuaded the
peasants in Galicia to believe that the Tzar had emanci-
pated them, but that the nobility prevented their exemption
from service in the army, and a new partition of the land.
They rose up as one man against their lords in the three
bloody days which have been already spoken of.
KRASINSKI AND SLOWACKI 299
Although it was not the democrats of Poland, but dis-
tinguished members of the Austrian Government who were
behind these murders, still they showed how easy it was to
turn the Polish peasants into madmen. Krasinski's pro-
phetic soul was justified, and in the year 1848 he responded
to Slowacki's poem with the Psalm of Sadness.
It is true that a superficial reconciliation between the
two former friends was brought about, but still their last
literary relation to each other was marked by jarring dis-
cord. In Slowacki's posthumous play, The Incorrigibles,
Krasinski is caricatured as Count Phantasius Dafnicki, who
sets out to marry a fortune ; nay, even his inamorata,
Delphine Potocka, is caricatured as the divorced Countess
Idalia, who accompanies him everywhere. And in Kra-
sinski's great posthumous work, The Unfinished Poem, in
the suite of the demagogue Pancratius, Slovvacki appears
under the name of Julinicz, as the popular prophet, who
introduces himself with the outburst : " I am a great man,
a prophetic spirit, place, place," proclaiming with unhealthy
enthusiasm his contempt for Christianity, and that indiffer-
ence for human life which was expressed in his Krol Duch.
In 1848 Slowacki laid before his countrymen in Paris
his plan for an insurrectionary league among the Poles.
He went to Posen to induce the national committee there to
adopt it, and take part in the contest. But the revolt was
then near its end. The battles of the 29th of April and
the 2nd of May prepared the Poles for final defeat. After
having seen his mother once more at Breslau, Slowacki
turned back to Paris, and died the year after, of a tedious
and painful illness.
In the great revolutionary year, 1848, the Polish emigra-
tion had played out its part. Although national movements
and efforts in this year had been so vigorous, not a single
new State arose on a national foundation, nay, States (like
Austria) which the carrying out of the principle of nation-
ality would have shattered, came out of the crisis more
powerful than ever. But so far as the Poles are concerned
this made little impression. The romantic ideals, whose
central point was the speedy regeneration of the kingdom,
300 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
still controlled the minds of all ; though after the great
poets became silent, Romanticism could no longer take so
high a flight. The terrible collapse of 1863 was the first
decisive thing which awakened the people out of their
dream-life, and showed them the reality as it was.
From this point in the literature of Poland, history and
historical criticism have driven poetry into the background.
In opposition to the old ideals and watchwords, a new ideal
has arisen, that of the historic truth, and a new watchword,
labour, and the most eminent writer and poet of the next
succeeding age was the man who has most energetically
extolled the importance of labour for his nation, and who
has himself set an example in taking his task in literature
as that of a workman on the grandest scale. Joseph Ignatius
Kraszewski (18 12-1886) who, in 1879, on his jubilee as an
author, was visited by delegates from all quarters of Poland
with gifts and letters of honorary citizenship as the greatest
Hving national author of Poland, had at that time published
four hundred and forty volumes, without collaborators, and
if articles scattered here and there are included, perhaps six
hundred volumes in all. As a writer of romances he pre-
vented the higher classes from forgetting their nationality by
exclusive reading of foreign books, and taught the nation to
know itself, in so much as he assailed the national delusions
alternately in journalistic and poetic form, and as an energetic
educator of the people showed the Poles what duties their
political misfortunes had laid upon them in a higher degree
than upon other nations.
Kraszewski wrote historical romances, modern novels,
fables, recollections, poems, comedies, books of travel,
published popular books, and books for the young of
ethnographical, archaeological, historical, and philosophical
import, was a theatrical director, editor of a daily paper,
and a political writer, as well as an illustrator, designer, and
etcher ; in brief, this one man distributed writings like a
Bible Society, and strove in these writings to form a national
school for his people. It goes without saying that such
fecundity was not combined with that artistic perfection
which was the glory of the romantic poems. Nevertheless,
ADAM ASNYK 301
romances like Morituri and Resurrecturi, novels like Ulana,
and above all, the extremely interesting Potter Jermola,
are works of real value.
At the present time Poland has no author of the first
rank, although it does not lack eminent talent in different
directions. In Adam Asnyk Poland has a graceful lyric poet,
in Boleslaw Prus (Alexander Glowacki), a humorous and
sensitive novelist. This last author, a self-taught writer, a
bold and truth-loving journalist, is one of the men whose
influence is most important, and who will prove most instru-
mental in forming the new times in Poland.
Asnyk was born at Kalisz in 1836, the son of a father
who had been a captain in the disbanded Polish army.
From his nineteenth year he studied medicine at the
academy at Warsaw, and later at the Universities of Breslau
and Heidelberg, and returned in i860 to the capital in
order to lend his aid to the organisation of the secret
military force, which the young people in their resentment
and heat intended to direct against the Russian power. He
then took his share in the arrangements for the Revolution
of 1863, a movement which remains a monument alike to
the heroism and the lack of political judgment of its pro-
moters. He had already been arrested in i860 and placed
under police surveillance ; he then went to Heidelberg and
stayed there until the outbreak of the revolt recalled him,
and other Poles studying at foreign universities, to Warsaw.
He displayed such vigour and determination that although
only twenty-live years old he was placed at the head of the
movement, and elected a member of the secret national
government, which, under that gentle and loyal hero,
Micesyslow Siczicki, issued secret orders, which were obeyed
by all Poles, while the commands of the imperial authorities
became dead letters.
After the definitive triumph of the Russians, Siczicki
would not leave Warsaw. He was accordingly sent on
foot to Siberia, where he remained twenty years. Asnyk
fled to Austrian Poland, where he settled, first at Lemberg
for a short time, then at Cracow, where every friend of
Poland was sure of a welcome at his house. He travelled
302 IMPRESSIONS OP^ POLAND
to Switzerland, Holland, England, and Italy, and he has
written on subjects suggested by these travels. But his
spiritual life has been dominated entirely by the impression
left on it by the failure of the revolt of 1863, namely, that
all hope of an independent Poland must be abandoned, at
least during his lifetime. He lost all faith in historical
progress. The anguish he had gone through determined
his manner of feeling for the rest of his life, his constant
pessimism, his melancholy and doubt. Never again has he
seen Russian Poland. But far from charging the calamities
upon the comrades of his youth, as many others have done,
he continued to communicate with them — with Siczicki,
with Karol Benni, with all who still frequent Benni's house
in Warsaw. They always hold their patriotic, but politically
innocent meetings there. He published his poems (a
selection of which appeared in a mediocre German transla-
tion) under the pseudonym El — y, and took an active part
in the public life of Galicia. He became a prominent
member of the democratic party, and (from a sense of
duty, and without any pleasure in his task) editor of
a great political paper, finally founding The Society of Public
Schools, the efforts of which have been marked by such con-
stant success.
In addition, there are two men of very great ability,
both a little over forty years of age, who are the most
important representatives of light literature.
Alexander Swientochowski is of noble birth, but without the
aristocratic stamp, the man of modern times, the funda-
mental spokesman of free thought, the representative of the
advanced culture of Europe ; of strong will and character,
possessing a vigorous style and strong in argument, as an
author wholly identifying himself with his principles. His
dramas are without artistic value, but his novels, Chawa
Rubin, Damian Capenko, Karl Krug, apart from their moral
endeavour to teach the Poles humanity towards foreigners
on the soil of Poland, the Jewess, the Little Russian, the
German, — have a compact and concentrated form of high
artistic merit. The novel Clemens Boruta develops the drama
of starvation with poetic force.
HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 303
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Poland's favourite author, presents a
sharp contrast to the untiring agitator Swientochowski. He
has a patrician nature, with a rich and versatile talent, at once
emotional and bitterly satirical. He has reached his highest
point, and shown himself a keen realist in the spiritual
domain, in his Charcoal Drawings (Szice-weglem), the affect-
ing story of how a poor young peasant wife is driven to sell
herself in order to free her husband from military service, a
masterpiece. He is excellent in the very short story {The
Lighthouse, The Angel), picturesque in representation and full
of glowing intensity. I am sorry to say that of late years he
has been absorbed in the production of endless historical
novels, in the style of the elder Dumas, which have made
his name widely popular, and produce a large income.
And yet Pan Tadeusz had already pointed out to later
poetry the way towards real life, the peculiar life of the
century, and in fact inaugurated the epoch of Polish realism.
It cannot be long before the conviction makes its way, that
if the authors of Poland of our time would compete with
the best authors of Europe, with those like the great prose
writers of France and Russia, it is absolutely necessary
that they should turn their backs on the distant past, and
limit themselves to the one domain, where it is possible for
the author wholly to escape convention, and to be not only
inspired but true.
It is only natural that the fancy of Polish writers should
have, to an extent unprecedented elsewhere, continued to
revolve about the past. Since the Polish people as a people
has been condemned to practical inactivity, the past must
appear to them as their last most glorious possession, and
so, even after the decline of genuine Romanticism, Polish
poets long continued to dwell on the memories of the
past, which they found in books, instead of reproducing
a life fully as interesting which flowed unheeded past them.
The strong artistic impulse towards the past, nevertheless,
depends in the last instance on the superstition, that the past,
or, as it is called, history, alone admits a representation of
the ideal. But perhaps we shall see that the historical is as
negligible in poetry as the spirituaUstic. In the flourishing
304 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
age of Polish Romanticism nothing could be told or repre-
sented dramatically in which spirits did not play a part,
frequently a chief part. They seemed more poetic and more
ideal than men of flesh and blood. They took the place of
the gods in the ancient poems, even intruded in contemporary
subjects as in Dziady, and in historic drama, as in Slowacki's
Cenci. The conjuring up of the figures of the remote past
in Polish romantic literature may be a new, and only a
slightly less abstract spiritualism. For these also may often
be classified as good and evil spirits.
There is only one future for Poland's literature, after
its days of Romanticism are over, and that is to become a
modern, a living expression of the life of our own time.
The whole intellectual life, the whole literary world of
Poland for a long time turned upon the question of its
existence. We have seen that this question developed into
the question of the reality of the loftiest ideas. But it
goes without saying that the literature of a people cannot
everlastingly continue to turn upon so abstract a theme.
The fundamental emotion, to which the romantic literature
of Poland gave expression, is not likely to disappear, but
it cannot continue to be predominant without impoverishing
her literature.
The too predominant sensations of feelings of cohesion,
of common sufferings and common exertions, the continual
playing on a single string, must prevent individuals from
coming forward in literature in all their originality. Because
they are continually regarded as a link in a whole,
sharing pleasures and disappointment with others, they do
not reach the depth of the agony of existence. They are
not represented as solitary enough. If it is an evil not to see
the wood for the trees, then it is also an evil not to see the
trees for the wood. No doubt we find here in the youthful
works of the poets enough of the half-assumed sensation of
loneliness of the Byronic heroes. But the loneliness of the un-
complaining man obtains no expression. It is in consonance
with this that the characters in this literature, in spite of all
the hardships and evils which shower down upon them
from without, are not unhappy enough. The misfortunes
LACK OF HUMOUR 305
whose stage is the outer world, are found here in abundance.
But the greatest tragedy, that of which the human soul may
be the theatre, even without any special pursuit of a hostile
fate, is not presented to the reader's consciousness in the
same degree. These poets have so naturally felt impelled
to say a consoling, hopeful word to their readers, that they
have not sounded misery to the lowest depth with their
imaginative power. And on the other side the romantic
literary group of Poland, rich as it is, has this defect, that
it has allowed very little scope to the comic elements of
existence. Thus it lacks a full grasp of human life, its
whole intensity. It seems as if the sense of the comic
were not very strong or very widespread among the Polish
people. The poets, who like Fredro have had a sharp eye
for it, have not used their talent for the comic in the service
of the more elevated ideas, and the poets, who, like the
romanticists, have laboured in the name of ideas, have
shown little skill in the use of laughter either as a weapon
or as the expression of cheerfulness.
There is a gleam of humour diffused throughout Pan
Tadeusz, which could not be more delicately beautiful, but
it is weak, and the poet has not succeeded in making a
really comic impression when he intends to. Thus the
Count now and then becomes tedious when he ought to
be comic. With a better developed sense of humour
Mickiewicz again would not have produced a figure like
Gustav in Dziady. He is unintentionally comic when he
ought to be most impressive. Neither does Slowacki ever
achieve a strong comic effect. His comic secondary char-
acters are never observed from real life, but constantly
remind us either of a Shakesperean clown or of a Calderonian
Gracioso, and at best create a smile, never laughter. He
really produces a comic effect only when he does not in-
tend to, as in depicting the achievements of his sottish and
desperate hero Lambro. Finally, however alien comic
effects are to a talent like Krasinski's, still the drawing of the
character of the Italian baron in The Unfinished Poem shows
that he possessed undeveloped ability in that direction. It
is a pity that he did not in the least feel the impulse to use
u
3o6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
it. There would have been a fine scope for comic effects
in The Godless Comedy, Pancratius and his associates would
have gained thereby.
Generally speaking, it may be said that a more widely
diffused and more delicate sense of the comic among the
leading persons of the nation would have prevented several
of the excesses of the romantic heroes, driven the romantic
ghosts and witches more into the background, and sharpened
the delineation of a crowd of secondary characters.
The lack of the comic element in this literature has a
triple reason ; first, the serious, nay, melancholy temper of
the public for whom the poets wrote, secondly, their
strenuous conception of their calling, for they regarded
themselves as the teachers and leaders of the people, never
as their maitres de plaisir; finally, the exaggerated idealism of
the Polish intellectual life of this century.
This idealism, which naturally has engendered no little
boldness in expressing an unwelcome conviction or a burning
protest, excluded the bold and many-sided conception and
description of human nature. Polish Romanticism lacks the
strong contrasts which produce the impression of the comic,
because it has represented man too exclusively from the
intellectual side. That man is first and foremost a being with
necessities, not a being with ideas, is here suppressed or glossed
over. That strong erotic or political passion is an exception
in human life we note as little in this romantic literature as
in others. But there is perhaps no literature in which the
life of the senses and instincts, which is the foundation of all
passions, is so set aside, or — where it could not be wholly
passed over — is so foreshortened and placed in the back-
ground. Therefore we shall seek in vain for more sexless
love-making than that which is described in the romantic
literature of Poland, in Slowacki's In Switzerland, in Kra-
sinski's Aurora, &c. We are actually astonished at the note
and the key which Telimene puts into the hand of the hero
in Pan Tadeusz, and yet this is all that we learn of the relation
between the two. But where the whole sensual entity of
man, and therewith one of the strongest elements of contrast
between spiritual struggles and earthly instincts is omitted
VITAL ELEMENT OF ROMANTICISM 307
in the picture, there the tragic hemisphere in poetry must
necessarily lack the supplement which the comic hemisphere
supplies.
Perhaps, nevertheless, what is most wanting in this epoch
of Polish literature is, as was to be expected, the expression
of the peaceful pleasures of life. It contains much love,
but no contentment. It is a great exception when a char-
acter appears who now and then breathes fully and freely.
Still, what this epoch possesses is rich and abundant ;
an earnestness so great, that no other literature in Europe
is so intensely earnest, a pathos so deep, that only the
greatest tragic authors of Greece and England speak in
such a strain, and an enthusiasm so lofty and pure, that it
is only occasionally manifested in other countries. Nowhere
else do we see a whole generation carried away as here
by it.
As a form of art Romanticism is dead, a thing of the
past. Its heroes and heroines, its spirits and witches, in part
even its language and style are antiquated. Nevertheless,
there is a Romanticism which outlives forms of art and
schools of art, and which still preserves its vitality and
worth. It is the element of healthy enthusiasm, which every
strong human emotion can assume when it is refined and
intensified beyond the average. Without any background
whatsoever of superstition, and without relation to anything
supernatural, our feelings for nature, for the woods and
fields, the sea and the heavens, may assume this form of
romantic ecstasy, and in even higher degree emotions like
love, friendship, love between parents and children, love of
language and native land, and common memories may
take a like form.
In few literatures has this abiding Romanticism attained
to an expression of such beauty as in the Polish.
CONCLUSION
Passing through the side wing of the great KremHn palace
at Moscow, which contains the armoury (Orusheinaya Palata),
we see, in the lower storey, twenty-two marble busts of Polish
kings and distinguished Poles; in the storey above, in the
large round hall, the Polish throne, and, near by, the crown
worn by the last king of Poland, Stanislaus Augustus ; and
finally, in the adjoining room (opposite Charles XI I. 's sedan
chair, taken at the battle at Poltawa), sixty Polish banners,
captured from 1831 to 1863, with Polish inscriptions, torn by
bullets, and to the right of these, on the floor, a beautifully
made closed casket. In this casket is deposited the constitu-
tion of the 3rd of May 1791. "Poland's patent of nobility
among the people of Europe" has become an object in a
museum. A Russian who accompanied me to the Kremlin,
in spite of his nationality, made the remark : " It makes a
melancholy impression to see the banners and the casket
here." How strange it must be for a Pole, with any national
feeling, to see the great men of his country, the insignia
which were the symbols of the dignity of his fatherland as
an independent power, its ensigns with the white eagle, nay,
even the Magna Charta, which his people, in the most supreme
moment of its life, formed for its future, and which was
never rightfully displaced, exhibited here in the imperial
palace of a foreign capital, as curiosities for the amusement
of spectators ! It must be like reading one's own name on
a tombstone.
To be fought against, to be persecuted, to be treated as
a criminal, when you are in the right, may be borne ; but
to see yourself treated as dead, to see your memories, your
pride, your banner, your charter exhibited to the scorn of
another as his possessions, as trinkets found in a grave,
308
POLAND THE TYPE OF FREEDOM 309
that is to see with your own eyes, with your own hands to
grasp the complete destruction of that for which you Hve —
and yet to go on living and believing in it.
Again and again we return to the thought ; How
symbolical this Poland is ! For in this period, what other
lot than that of the Pole has every one had, who has loved
freedom and wished it well ? What else has he experienced
but defeat ? When has he seen a gleam of sunlight ? When
has he heard a signal of advance ? Everywhere, everywhere
the fanfare of the violent, or the organ peal of the bold-
faced hypocrite ! And everywhere stupidity as bodyguard
of the lie, and everywhere veneration for that which is paltry,
and everywhere the same vulgar disdain for the only thing
which is holy.
Yes, Poland, thou art the great symbol. The symbol of
pinioned freedom, whose neck is trodden upon, symbol of
those who lack any outlook, yet hope against all probability,
in spite of all.
When the foreigner sees thee covered with thy mantle of
snow in the winter time, then it seems to him as if the cold
and the snow, and the eternally gloomy heavens, were so in
harmony with thy being that he can hardly imagine these
bare trees covered with leaves, these streets and roads free
from snow, these heavens pure and warm, this land without
winter.
But if he comes to Warsaw on a summer day when the
sun glimmers through the thick foliage in the Saxon park,
when the Green Square (Zielony Plac) deserves its name,
and Lazienki lies, smiling and elegant, bordered by its group
of trees, reflected in its park, then he feels that sunshine
and the warmth of summer are also at home here. Wila-
now allures him, Sobieski's beautiful country seat, which
he has hitherto seen only in the light of a cold spring day,
and he finds the palace surrounded by a luxuriant, fragrant
flora, by tall trees, which Sobieski planted himself, or caused
to be planted.
Never has he seen such tall, such magnificent poplars,
tall as the cypresses in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, proud like
them, melancholy and yet solemn like them.
3IO IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND
And when, on a summer afternoon, the breezes sigh
gently through the tall poplars at Wilanow, and the foreigner
walks slowly through the broad avenue they form, while he
hears the Polish language about him, and perhaps sees dear
beings beside him who live wholly and entirely in their
passion for the cause of Poland, as the cause which
gives a meaning and a consecration to their lives, and
in faith in the future of Poland, as the faith which alone
has made them brave, useful men — then when the sunset
is beautiful, and the flowers exhale their fragrance, and
the temperature is mild, and the air a caress, the foreign
wanderer feels less hopeless, and he says to himself : Who
knows ! Perhaps — in spite of all.
THE END
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson ^ Ca
Edinburgh <5r* London
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