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THE

ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND,

COUNT SIGISMUND KRASINSKI.

THE UNDIVINE COMEDY,

AND

OTHER POEMS.

BY THE

ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND,

COUNT SIGISMUND KRASINSKI.

** He burned, a never consumed offering, upon the altar of his country."

HIS POLISH ANNOTATORS; ADAM AND LADISLA8 MICKI^WICZ. POLISH POETRY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, BY JULIAN KLACZKO.

A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF THE POET.

TRANSLATED BY

MARTHA WALKER COOK.

PHILADELPHl A:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1875-

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-FG7/SB

KrAe /evs

Entered, according to Act of Congp*ess, in the year 1875, t>y

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKI .... PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION ANAI.YSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY . POLISH POETRY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY THE "FRAGMENT," OR UNFINISHED POEM THE UNDIVINE COMEDY

IRIDION

THE LAST ....

TEMPTATION .... RESURRECTURIS IN MEMORIAM

FACE 7

31

41

53

i3«

173

275 467

487

508

512

PREFACE.

It is certainly the duty of a translator to be thoroughly convinced of the intrinsic merit of any work he may pro- pose to translate, for he will be in a measure responsible for its influence upon the minds of those to whom he may introduce it. No hope of sudden success should dazzle him into unworthy labor. Let him first ascertain if the proposed work be one of general human interest, calcu- lated to increase the moral worth of the people to whom it is to be offered, to express the influential conceptions of an original mind, open a new literature, throw light upon the hidden history of an epoch, or develop the char- acteristics of a nation ; — if any one of the above condi- tions be met, then is the translator justified in transplant- ing the quickening germs into the mental being of his own countrymen, to bloom in wider consciousness, in fairer actions.

It is claimed that the translations herewith offered meet not only one, but a// of the above conditions.

That the works of Krasinski are of *' general human interest' ' is proved by the fact that, even under their anony- mous publication, they were enthusiastically received by the critics of Europe, and immediately translated into French and German; that **they are calculated to in- crease the moral worth of the people to whom they are offered,'* is evident in that they contain a genuine attempt to introduce the sublime ethics of Christianity into the vexed and vicious sphere of modern politics; that *'they embody the influential conceptions of an original mind," may be read in the fact that these ** conceptions" modified the character of an entire People; that the translations open a "new literature" is clear, since they are the first specimens of modern Polish poetry as yet given to Amer-

7

8 PREFACE.

ican readers ; that they " throw light upon the history of an epoch and develop the characteristics of a nation," is manifest in the strange truth that, as stated by Julian Klaczko, only through the lessons of Krasinski can some of the startling occurrences of the last Polish revolution be interpreted at all.

A curious spectacle is spread before the utilitarian and material spirit of the nineteenth century in the closely interwoven history of our author and his unhappy country. A Christian Poet teaching only forgiveness, patience, and self-abnegation, — the possession of whose works in his native land was Siberia or death, and who, to shield those dear to him from the vengeance of the oppressor, was forced to publish anonymously, — has so influenced the action of a brave, injured, and fiery people, that only in his poems can be found the clue to deeds which puzzled the despot and astonished the world 1 Thus only can be explained that startling scene which occurred in Warsaw in February, 1 86 1, when unarmed va^ny women, and chil- dren bared their breasts, and fell without resistance before the Russian battalions maddened by the sight of the un- furled Polish banner. For their poet had sung :

** Holy Spirit, who hast taught us that the most sublime power on earth is the power of self-sacrifice^ that the most mighty of arguments is virtue, grant that through love we may win the nations to the end whereto we aspire !*'

** To each Nation Thou hast given avocation, O Christ ! A profound idea springing from Thee lives in each, and in it is the secret of its destiny ! Some Thou hast elected to defend the cause of celestial Beauty, and to offer to the world an angelic example by hopefully bearing their heavy cross along a weary way overflowing with their blood . . . until they have given loftier and more divine ideas to men through their sublime struggles ; given a holier char- ity, a wider fraternity, in exchange for the sword that has been plunged into their bosoms !

** Such a nation is thy Poland, O Lord Jesus !*'

— Psalms of the Future, Krasinski.

And with such ideas did this patriot-poet succeed in impregnating a nation ! To the eternal glory of Poland

PREFACE, 9

be it said, that, strengthened by the divine lessons of her Poet, she has hitherto been strong enough to resist all the temptations to avenge herself held out to her by Russia in the fell scheme of Pansclavism ; that, having shed her generous blood on almost every battle-field in Europe, and having been deserted and betrayed by those whom she so faithfully served, she still bares her own breast to the piti- less knife of the Czar, rather than aid him to whet it anew for the heart of the civilized world ! She knows the fury of the Russian Bear too well to let slip a single link of the chain she still holds in her manacled and wounded hands. Let the Russianized pansclavists of Bohemia call her the ** Judas of the Sclaves;'* England continue to temporize until India is lost and her own doom is near; Greece change the indolent Turk for the Muscovite Czar ; France, conquered of old under the Great Napoleon in Russia because of his treachery to the martyred nation, and fallen beneath the armed heel of the ruthless Teuton under Napoleon the Little, seek a new ally in Russia as she cries in her terror '* a bas les Polonais ;*' Italy wrap herself in her old indifference with regard to the fate of all '* North- ern Barbarians ;'* Austria in her fright -strive to conciliate Galicia while losing Bohemia ; Prussia rejoice in irritating stolen Posen, and join the oppressor in^^his dasigns until, having found his way through Vienna ro Constantinople, the prophecy of Frederick the Great is fulfilled : ** When Russia possesses Constantinople, two years later she will be in Konigsberg; young America bend her spotless brow as the bandage is wound round her flashing eyes, that she may not see the pool of blood surrounding the Autocrat ; — the Polish Eagle does not quail ; finding no home on earth, she spreads her snowy wings, mounts into the sky of holy sacri- fice, and hopes, * because she there sees God !* "

These works of Krasinski ** introduce a new literature to the American public/' Translations from the French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Arabic, Persian, Hindoostanee, etc., are placed before us, but, as if the Russian censor ruled our press, for us Niem- ciewicz, Mickiewicz, Chodzko, Vincent Pol, Slowacki, Lelewel, Duchinski, Trentowski, Ostrowski, etc., etc., have suffered, written, sung, reasoned, and prophesied in

2

/

lo PREFACE,

vain. Have we any life of the great and good Kosciuszko, or the brave and fiery Pulaski ? ""*

In 1855 the astute Russian, Pogodin, wrote to his own government : " The time has come in which we should seek an alliance with America." If an assassin can ob- tain the friendship and recommendation of a powerful friend of known honor and magnanimity, his nefarious schemes against the innocent may be pursued in com- parative safety. Much has been said on the unbridled license of an untrammeled Press, but as great £ danger lies in its purchased silence. Falsehood and exaggera- tion overleap their aims, destroy themselves, and perish in the light of liberty ; but silence veils ghastly secrets, and crime securely revels under its close shroud. How is the alliance of America to be won ? Silence ! Stifle the cries of the victims who for the last hundred years have been crimsoning with their blood the white deserts of Siberia ; the rattling of chains in the wastes of Tobolsk and the mountains of the Caucasus ; the moans and sobs of an entire People we have resolved to de- stroy ; the multitudinous cries of widows and bereaved orphans ! This subtle policy has been skillfully pursued ; and where silence has been impossible, history has been falsified, ethnography outraged, religious prejudices evoked, and the character of the Polish People traduced, that the deception might be complete. For, with Poland crushed and Constantinople won, Europe lies at the feet of the Mongolian-German, and, robed as an angel of emancipation and communistic light, he may Russify civilization at leisure.

With every generation since her partition, Poland has entered her united rejection of the iniquitous rule of her foes, by an attempted revolution, in which the awful protest has been signed in the blood of her martyred children, — men, women, and children alike ready to die in this solemn denial of voluntary subjugation.

The last disastrous attempt of Poland to arise from her sepulchre, occasioned by measures insulting to universal humanity, occurred during our own civil war. Russia endeavored to make it appear that the rebellion in Amer- ica and the attempted revolution of the Poles were phe-

PREFACE. 1 1

nomena bearing a similar character. No idea could be more erroneous, for the struggle in Poland was to restore le^timate authority to its rightful holders, to a govern- ment truly liberal, representative, and Polish ; while our revolted States sought to wrest authority from the legally- elected rulers, the Congress of the United States. The resurrection in Poland meant union, life \ the rebellion, division and destruction. The one sought to bring about general emancipation, the other to prolong slavery.

But in the hands of Russia all facts are wax, which her political artists mould to serve their own purposes. While branding the Poles throughout her own realm and monarchic Europe as freethinkers, republicans, and jaco- bins, she makes a sudden turn, and denounces them here as bigots, aristocrats, slaveholders, and despots, and their insurrection as but an attempt of the nobility to regain their ancient status^ — ^a feudal conspiracy ! Hear, shade of Kosciuszkol

Poland has long been anxious for the emancipation of her serfs, not only as moved by the advancing humanity of the world, but as a means of national power. Sword in hand, she defended it in the confederation of Bar, in 1768; discussed it in the diets of 1776, 1780, 1788, and finally adopted it by the famous Constituent Assembly of 1 791. Kosciuszko, May 7, 1 794, then Dictator of Poland, issued a document giving entire personal freedom to all the serfs; and on the 22d of January, 1863, the mem- bers of the National Polish Government decreed that the peasants were not only free^ but were entitled to a cer- tain portion of land, of which they should be sole pro- prietors. But emancipation would have made Poland too strong for her enemies, by uniting all classes, — and the oppressor would not permit it ! Only six months after the noble decree of Kosciuszko occurred the terrible massacre of Praga, which quenched the contemplated emancipation in gore, and the following year the very name of Poland was — at least for a time — effaced from the political chart of Europe ! In later days, the peti- tions addressed to the Emperor Ferdinand I., by the States of Leopol, 26th September, 1845, for the suppres- sion of serfage and corvee, led to the massacres in Gal-

12 PREFACE.

licia, and the destruction of the Republic of Cracow. Poland has been literally drenched in blood ever since her last emancipatory act of 1863. It is about as faiFto accuse Poland of the permission of serfage during the last hundred years as it would be to accuse Abraham Lincoln and Whittier of being promoters of slavery ! Yet this is precisely what Russia did, in order to assim- ilate the insurrection of Poland with our own rebellion , representing it as originating in the desire to support feudalism, in the very face of the first words promulgated by the Polish Committee, January 22, 1863 : **All the sons of Poland, without any distinction oi faith orraciy descent or station ^ djcfree and equal citizens of the country, ' ' Strong and startling are the contrasts between the United States and Poland. We are young, powerful, active, happy, the bulwark of freedom, the hope of oppressed Peoples ; — Poland has lived through many cen- turies; has been since her dismemberment so fettered that all action, save in the spasms of her revolutions, has been impossible; has been rendered utterly wretched, her body mutilated and thrice stabbed to the heart, and all that is material about her stifled in a living sepulchre. And yet there are striking points of resemblance. Both nations are daringly brave; both are confederatively formed, — Poland, Lithuania, and Ruthenia, uniting in 1569, being the first voluntary confederation in Europe ; both prefer elective governments; both are opposed to religious persecution and oppression ; both detest foreign domination, and love liberty better than life. And as if Heaven itself would draw the two countries in still closer communion, the idolized heroes of both nations, Washing- ton and Kosciuszko, bound by congenial friendship, stood breast to breast in the great cont^t for American freedom. Material aid being utterly impossible, and in every aspect impolitic, yet in the higher world of justice the moral sym- pathy of the triumphant with the wronged and murdered Nation must be deep and true ; her injuries will be ex- posed by the statesmen of freedom, and the tortures to which she is constantly subjected will flow in the burning words of fiery indignation from the eloquent lips of the freemen of America ! Is this so ? Alas ! silence ! silence !

PREFACE.

n

But why call up this terrible spectacle of a great Aryan Nation in her agony, with the prolonged death-rattle in her throat ; why lift the shroud of anguish from entire generations, fathers, sons, daughters, infants, all driven into dissolution by a barbaric and relentless foe, the ruin of schools and universities, the destruction of libraries, the deportation of students, the transplantation and con- sequent slaughter of thousands of innocent children, the forcible transportation of thirty thousand helpless inhabit- ants into the Caucasus, the desecration of maidens, the tortures of patriots, the knoutings of heroes, boys and matrons, and the persecution of the oldest form of Chris- tian faith ? Because the victim is not dead, and there is vast moral power in the force of public opinion. Because the American mission is the actualization everywhere of not merely nominal, but real freedom, founded upon jus- tice and eternal truth. But chiefly it is done in the present relation, because it is our ardent desire that the Polish poet should be understood in all his sublime patriotism by American readers, and to show that his deepest hues are not so dark as the truth they depict ; because, for full sym- pathy with his original conceptions, we must recognize his own sad ^and-point, and the melancholy position of the country he so earnestly loved. For poet and people hold positions entirely exceptional in the history of the world.

Poles and exiles ! it is with no light feeling of self- distrust that the daughter of a distant land has ventured to lay her daring hands upon the master-works of your poet, patriot, and statesman. She would fain have called the high poets of her country to the task of transmuting the thoughts of the Polish Dante into fitting English; but none seemed ready to begin the work. Wreathing their lyres with their own immortal flowers, singing their songs of freedom for the emancipation, cultivation, and delight of humanity, — some of them perchance momen- tarily charmed by the mystic might of Russia, — none were prepared to burn the torch of their own genius to illume the spiritual and majestic features of your illustrious dead. Feeble as may be the fire of this torch as now borne, sway and flicker as it may in the uncertain hands, may its light yet be strong enough to manifest something of the

M

PREFACE,

valiant " Polish soul' * to my countrymen I Strong enough to p)oint out to future translators the unexplored treasures of Polish literature, in order that in more inspired ver- sions they may yet place '*The Undivine Comedy" and "Iridion** where they deserve to rank, — after Dante and Shakespeare, among the loftiest creations of human genius.

I know that through the medium of a less impassioned language, and deprived of their exquisite form and bold and undulating rhythm, these poems will seem cold and imperfect in your eyes, but I beg of you to pardon the deficiencies, because of the difficulty of the task and the love and reverence which prompt its execution.

Whatever the material, venal, and passing phantoms of the hour may seem to say, believe not that American hearts have ceased to beat in unison with yours I Your courageous struggles for **a country" maybe still mis- represented and misunderstood ; the brilliant serf-eman- cipation in Russia may for a time dazzle us into ignorance of the atrocious torments to which you are subjected, but misconception not voluntary cannot long endure, the Sun of Truth is everywhere rising and everywhere dispersing the mists of falsehood under its happy light, true republi- cans will learn that ** the path to freedom lies not through the charnel-house." Right, not might, is the comer- stone of God's kingdom upon earth !

Liberty, justice, equality before the law, and self-govern- ment, are the normal dogmas of our political creed ; to renounce them were to stultify ourselves. They are comer- stones in the temple we are building for the refuge of men ; to uproot them were to bring it in ruins about our own heads.

We know that, tortured and mutilated, Poland still lives, and that, at every banquet of the " Holy Alliance," her grand and bloody form rises from her three graves to appal the three crowned and rival murderers of a nation. For she is buried, not in the corruption of the grave, but in the loyal hearts of her patriotic and tortured children, in the living sympathies of all who love virtue, self-sacri- fice, and heroism, and in the eternal justice of God ;— {herefbre is her resurrectipn cpr^ain I

Translator,

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKI.

The following imperfect sketch of the ** Anonymous Poet" is the only account we have been able to find of him in European literature. It is translated chiefly from "Unsere Zeit Jahrbuch zum Conversations Lexikon. No. 55. 1862. L. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig."

*' The silent organ loudest chants the master's requiem."

So chants the fact that as yet no details of the life of the great Pole can appear, because they might compromise friends once very dear to him, living within reach of the vengeful arm of Russia. He renounced all fame while living, ever publishing anonymously, and the manifold experiences of his internal life, with his numerous his- torical and political letters, must slumber in the shroud of silence, until Polish patriotism is no longer crime, and confiscation and exile cease to be the doom of all con- nected with those daring enough to defend their native land.

The reader may, however, round this skeleton biogra- phy into flesh, by clothing its bones from the veined tissues he will not fail to find in the nervous pages of Julian Klaczko.

When Napoleon entered Poland, in 1806, the leader of the Polish Legions, General Dombrowski, summoned the fiery patriot, Wybicki, to unite himself with armed hand to the conqueror of nations; and as Napoleon spoke freely of the reconstitution of the country, such summons fell not upon unheeding ears in Poland. Many patriots of high distinction offered up property and life

15

1 6 BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL

in the new-born hopes for fatherland, and, captivated by the fallacious promises of Napoleon, hurried to join the French eagles. Count Vincent Krasinski, then about twenty-four years of age, a man of great wealth and high distinction, was one of the first to greet the French Em- peror on Polish ground, and afterwards accompanied him in his campaigns as adjutant.

For a time Count Krasinski resided in Paris, in which city his wife, Maria, a princess of the house of Radziwill, presented him with a son, born on the 19th of February, 181 2, who received in baptism the name of Sigismund Napoleon. This boy became the ''Anonymous Poet of Poland."

Bitterly deceived were the high hopes of the Poles. After the signing of the act of abdication by Napoleon, April II, 1814, Count Vincent Krasinski, then under orders from the Czar Alexander, led the unhappy rem- nants of the Polish legions back from France into Poland.

His countess soon after joined him there with the little Sigismund, then about three years old. Upon the immense estates of his forefathers, under the tender care of a devoted but very sickly mother, lived for many happy years the young Sigismund, a dark-eyed boy with long, fair curls, remarkable from his earliest years for rare powers of wit and intellect, for rapid and acute answers to difficult questions, for true and chivalric feeling, for high-strung and self-sacrificing ardor. His health, how- ever, was exceedingly delicate. When but five years of age he was presented to the Czar, an especial friend of his parents, and recited for him the lines of Voltaire, "Tu dors. Brute r* meantime fearlessly gazing with childlike confidence into the keen eyes of the autocrat. Two years later he was introduced to the Empress, whom he pleased greatly. She said laughingly to him, " I ac- knowledge you as* my knight. Will you accept the ap- pointment, and defend me against my enemies?" His answer was as acute as chivalric. **I cannot," he re- plied ; " your Majesty has no need of defenders, since you have no enemies."

He had instructors of great ability, and so rapidly was

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL 17

he advanced in his studies, that he was soon able to enter the sixth class in the College of Warsaw. Uncommon powers of intellect, united with a great memory, ardent and unceasing efforts for thorough mental cultivation, distinguished him in his intercourse with his fellow- students. But however rapid his advances, he failed to satisfy his eager desire for exact and wide learning.

His mother died in 1822, and so bitter was the distress of his father, that he withdrew himself from all social intercourse, save that forced upon him by his ofi^cial po- sition, and devoted himself exclusively to the^ advance- ment of his idolized boy. He followed his mental and spiritual culture with eyes of constant watchfulness, and, at an examination to which the savants interested in the cause of education had been invited, he had the gratifi- cation of seeing his son, then but twelve years of age, astonish all present by his accurate knowledge of gram- mar, literature, geography, and history.

Although Sigismund was too young as yet to take any part in the meetings and discussions of the learned Poles so frequently held in the house of his father, they never- theless exerted great influence over the precocious boy, and aided in preparing him for the vocation of an author. His susceptible nature readily seized upon what- ever appealed to the imagination or soul, and he would often reproduce his impressions for the entertainment and instruction of his companions. When but fourteen years of age, he wrote a tale which he caused to be secretly printed, and then presented to his father, who approved the gift, but forbade all further essays at that time, fearing that the facility of composition might lead his son astray from more severe studies. But the boy stole from the hours allowed for sleep the time to write another tale, entitled "The Grave of the Family of Reichstal.'* This was followed by another, "Ladislaus Hermann and his Court," written in the style of the novels of Sir Walter Scott, of whose works he was at that time deeply enamored. Both of these tales were printed in 1829.

But a dreadful crisis was approaching in the fate of the dutiful, loving, beloved, and patriotic son. His father

X8 BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKI.

and his country were to stand in deadly opposition to each other, and his young dreams of fame to be forever sacrificed. His life was a long penitential offering to his incensed country for the faults of his father. He sacri- ficed all glory to win silence and pardon for the illustrious offender.

The year 1825 was a memorable one in Russian history, in consequence of the sudden death of Alexander, and the outbreak of a wide-spread conspiracy for a constitutional government in Russia, of which the leaders were Pes- tel, Orloff, Ryl^i^f, Bestuchef-Rumin, and Kachowski. During the inquiries instituted at St. Petersburg, it became evident that there were societies existing in Poland whose principal object was the restoration of that country to independence. Uminski, Jablonowski, Soltyk, Krysa- nowski, Lukasinski, and others, members of one of these "Societies, were indicted for high treason. The trial fell under the jurisdiction of the ancient kingdom of Poland, whose capital was the city of Warsaw.

The reduced Poland of the Congress of Vienna en- joyed a nominal constitution, and the Polish Senate was convoked to preserve, ostensibly at least, a legal form. Some Senators were then living abroad, as Prince Adam Czartoryski, but they hastened home to record their pa- triotic votes. The President of this high tribunal was elected in the person of the Palatine, Peter Bielinski. The Commission of Inquiry classed the accused under five categories, and the Senate was charged to decide on their fate. It appointed lawyers as counsel for the prisoners ; the proceedings were public, and lasted a month, when the court, with the exception of one dissentient voice, set aside the charge of high treason, and gave their de- cision : ** Not guilty;" a decision based on the principle that all Poles naturally desire the independence of their fatherland. The one dissenting Polish voice was that of General Count Vincent Krasinski, the father of our Poet !

The Emperor ordered the judges to be reprimanded, a thing before unheard of, and consoled himself by con- fining the accused in the dungeons of St. Petersburg, in direct violation of the constitution, — and this was one of

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL 19

the grievances subsequently alleged in defense of the Polish revolution.

The constitutional victory of Poland, so full of pa- triotic joy, was, however, greatly saddened by the fact that a patriot so distinguished as Vincent Krasinski should have voted on the side of the absolute Russian Government, then represented in Warsaw by the Grand Duke Constantine, famous for his persecution of all pa- triotic Poles, as well as of the students of the univer- sity.

Peter Bielinski, the President of the Senate and Com- mission of Inquiry, died soon afterward, and, on the day of his funeral, the fiery fellow-students of young Sigis- mund Krasinski made a strong demonstration, in the way of threats and insulting expressions, against the young man, judging him utterly unworthy of their fel- lowship, because of the unpatriotic vote rendered by his father on the trial above mentioned.

An eye-witness, Professor Podbielski, then a fellow- student of young Sigismund on the benches of the uni- versity, thus describes the occurrence: **On one of the subsequent days, after the public lecture to the students in common of the faculties, I observed quite a commotion among the young men ; many leaving the hall, rushed to Krasinski, and as they tore the badges of the university away from him, I heard them cry : * You are not worthy to be our fellow-student, because your father cast his de- cision against our brothers, our noble patriots ! ' Sigis- mund, with chivalric and undaunted bearing, though of exceedingly slight form and delicate and refined ap- pearance, met them fearlessly, and with true Polish spirit offered them a sincere pardon -for their insults to himself, so utterly innocent in his own person of all wrong; but their leader, young Lubinski, and others, refused to listen to his manly explanations. I was astonished at pro- ceedings so unjust, but our Professor, with some friends, finally interfered ; I left the hall, and never again saw our great Anonymous Poet, our long unknown, pure, and noble patriot.'*

This college occurrence was, without doubt, the origi- nal of the scene described by "The Young Man*' to

20 BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL

'* Dante" in the first part of "The Unfinished Poem" or " Fragment/'

Constantine was greatly enraged at the decision of the Polish Senators, tortured Liikasinski in prison, and sent Krzyzanowski to Siberia. The Polish revolution broke out in 1830, November 29th. Flying with the Russian army from Poland, Constantine, cruel to the last, caused the unfortunate Lukasinski to be chained to a cannon and dragged with the fiying troops.

Xhere is but little doubt that the iron entered deeply into the soul of the brilliant and enthusiastic boy at the epoch of the mortifying scene above described. The struggle must have been terrible in the heart of this devoted son, this enthusiastic patriot. It was probably at that time he made the double resolve which filled his entire life with conflict. He piously determined to do all in his power to contribute to the happiness of the father who idolized him, never to desert him, and yet to make his whole life a silent expiation for the crime of that father ; to live only for the moral elevation of the wronged country ; to devote all his powers to her resurrection ; never to yield to the seductions of ambition ; never to permit himself to wear the laurel crown with which his unhappy country would so gladly have wreathed his brow of genius. Is there in the whole range of literature a cry more full of heart-rending pathos to be found than in the sole allusion he ever suffered himself to make to his father, in the appeal to his country, found on the last page of his weird tale, " Temptation" ?

From the time he quitted the university, his life was but an unbroken chain of wanderings in search of health. Always delicate, the shock he had received told sadly upon him, and, as he grew older, his sufferings assumed many depressing and severe forms. Henceforth the reader must expect little but dates, reading the history of his mind and soul in the original works marking the times and places of his pilgrimage.

On quitting the university, he went first to Geneva, where he wrote for the journals ; among such articles, were some written in French for the "Revue Encyclo- p^dique." Falling ill, his physician advised him to seek

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL 21

a milder climate, and he spent the winter in Italy. Re- turning again to Switzerland, he met there with Mickie- wicz, and they made together the tour of that romantic country. The daily association with that far-famed poet kindled the slumbering sparks of creative genius in the soul of Sigismund.

The close of the year 1830 found him in Italy, where he received the distressing intelligence of the disastrous events occurring in Warsaw. They made a profound impression on the enthusiastic and patriotic young Pole, but he was thoroughly unable to follow the dictates of his heart. His moral strength would have been sufficient to have supported him through the conflict then so wildly raging in his breast, but he was forced to succumb to physical weakness : the consequent struggle brought upon him an illness which chained him to his bed during a whole year. He has often declared that this was the most painful period of his existence, and a state of bodily suffering began in it which was to last as long as life endured.

At the urgent request of his father he returned to War- saw in 1832. Thence he went to St. Petersburg, where the Emperor offered him such position in the service of the state as he should deem most congenial with his tastes and wishes. He, however, begged permission to con- tinue his travels, and as the court physician declared the severity of the climate would prove disastrous to health so delicate, and his eyesight grew every day weaker and weaker, it was decided that he should at once repair to one of the foreign watering-places. His stay in St. Peters- burg having lasted all winter, gave him an opportunity to become thoroughly acquainted with Count Branicki, in whose house he first saw the maiden whom Heaven had destined to be the partner of his life.

It was about this date that Priessnitz, of water-cure fame, began to be celebrated, and Sigismund, with other Poles, hastened to Grafenberg to try that mode of cure. He found it, to a limited extent, beneficial, and it enabled him to pass the winters of 1833 and 1834 with some degree of comfort in Vienna. It was then and there he wrote the tale **Agai-Chan," in which there is a sketch of the

3

22 BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL

usurper Dimitri, as well as "Maryna/' a tale which he afterwards discarded as unsatisfactory.

The terrible disasters which had convulsed his native land in 1831 awakened in him the deepest sympathy, the most concentrated reflection. He gave words to the thoughts and feelings thus suggested in a marvelous drama, "The Undivine Comedy," the second part of which was written in Vienna, and in which he evinced not only the clearest insight into the perplexed Present, but even tore the blinding veil from the distant Future.

The year 1838 he spent in Italy, where, surrounded by the immortal memories of Rome, he wrote his "Iridion," a work which entitled him to a high rank in the literary world. He also visited Warsaw in 1838, but was not able to remain there for any length of time, for, though a true Pole, he could not bear the rigor of his native air; after a short stay in Karlsbad and Teplitz, he returned to Italy, meeting and associating with many of his beloved com- patriots in Rome and Naples.

In 1842, Count Branicki, with his three accomplished daughters, visited Rome. It had long been the wish of Count Vincent Krasinski that his son should seek his life- companion in this family; that wish was now fulfilled. Sigismund sued for the hand of Elizabeth Branicka, cele- brated his betrothal, and was married at Dresden. The blessing of the Church gave him a wife richly gifted in body and soul, of an amiable temper, and possessing that ready conception of the sublime and beautiful so calcu- lated to throw over the life of the poet the atmosphere necessary for full poetical development. The young couple spent the first two years of their married life in the land of their fathers, not indeed wholly untroubled, but far from the vexatious turmoil of the world. The malady of his eyes, as well as his general ill health, held him aloof from society, limiting his intercourse to a few trusted friends, among whom was Amilie Zaluska, who had grown up with him, and whom he loved as a sister. His first son, Ladislaus, was born in 1844. He would gladly have continued to reside in his native land, but as this could not be without the most injurious influence upon his health, he was forced to resume his wanderings, tarrying

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL

23

for some time in Nice. The frightful occurrences of which Galicia was the theatre, in 1846, affected him most painfully. When referring to an opinion regarding these circumstances expressed by him at a much earlier date, he passionately exclaimed : ** Ah ! why was I not a false prophet?** and almost cursed the exactness of his pro- phetic vision. These startling events gave rise to a discussion with the fiery poet, Julius Slowacki. This discussion, awakened intense interest, and will ever re- main a most valuable exposition of the political opinions of the times; it also placed in the strongest light the an- tagonistic genius of the two poets. Toward the end of the year 1847, ^"^ about a year after VI the birth of his second son, Sigismund returned to Rome, \jv and was consequently an eye-witness of the political K scenes occurring during 1848 in the capital of the world. < \HIs religious feelings were always deep, and it was most (s^ >natural that during his sojourn in Rome, a man of his char- acter and antecedents should become through conviction e,^ an ardent champion of the Catholic Church. In June, 1848, he returned to Heidelberg, whence he paid a short ^ visit to France, then convulsed by revolution. After a trial of sea-bathing, he remained some time in Baden, where, in spite of severe physical suffering, he labored upon the first and third divisions of " The Undivine Comedy," of which, as already stated, he had finished the second part in Vienna. It was his custom while thus occupied v^ to have his wife seated at the piano, that he might hear ysjier play the melodies he loved. When Baden was also ^ drawn into the whirlpool of the revolution, he went to ^^Berne, in which place he was utterly prostrated by sick- vhness. When just beginning to recover, he received acom- ^mand from the Government to return immediately home. ^ He obeyed the summons, and suffered the necessary re- sults. He spent that winter in Warsaw, but in consequence of the disastrous effects of the rigor of the climate upon his delicate organization, he was threatened with total loss of eyesight. With great difficulty he obtained from Russia permission again to leave Poland. He tried sea- bathing at Triport, which, instead of mitigating, greatly increased his maladies. He was allowed to select Heidel-

t4 BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKI,

berg as his residence for the winter, where his wife soon joined him. The disease of his eyes had so increased as to incapacitate him for all literary labor. The following summer he spent at Baden ; the following winter in Rome. He took great interest in the excavations and disinter- ments then being made in the Appian Way, finding in them the subject of a masterly poem dedicated to his wife, which has never as yet been published. He went also again to Naples, and was a frequent guest in the Palace of the Grand Duchess, Stephanie von Baden, who took as great pleasure in the society of the Polish poet as she had already taken in the perusal of such of his works as she could obtain in French. He then went to the Rhine, but was ordered by the Government to return to Poland, where he arrived with his family late in the autumn of 1852, and remained there until the close of the next summer. But as his residence in that climate would have been certain death to him, he again applied for permission to go abroad. Having obtained it, he went to Boppard, on the Rhine, to try for the second time the water-cure, but he derived no benefit therefrom. His sons remained in Warsaw with their grandfather, while he, tortured by continual suffering, remained upon the Rhine. His wife, after having given birth to a daughter, followed him to Heidelberg, — the only place abroad in which the Russian Government would allow him to remain for any length of time. Dreadfully emaciated, he had become so weak that, with tottering steps, he was only able to walk for a few moments during the day under the shadow of the trees in front of his dwelling, and could only write with his pencil. In this pitiable condition, the command was again issued for his immediate return to Poland I His wife instantly returned to Warsaw, to endeavor to have the order canceled. After the most untiring efforts she ob- tained its recall, but with the express understanding that permission to remain abroad was granted for the last time. Return was certain death, but as Russia knouts her own poets, she could scarcely be expected to attach any im- portance to the prolongation of the life of the noble Pole. The death of the stern Nicholas, in 1855, so far allevi- ated the position of Krasinski that his residence abroad was

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL

25

no longer bound by conditions so rigorous. The nomi- nation of his father as Governor of Poland gratified him exceedingly, so much the more as the appointment was received with general satisfaction by his countrymen.

He tried the water-cure again at Kissingen in 1856, but he remained so ill and debilitated that during a period of ten months he was only able to move about by the aid of crutches. He spent the following winter in Paris, and was advifed by his attending physician there to try sea- bathing the ensuing summer.

But a heavy misfortune now fell upon him. Through the failure of the house Thurneissen, he lost not only a considerable portion of his own, but nearly the whole of his wife's property.

As the old general greatly longed to see his son and grandchildren once more around him, Sigismund deter- mined to gratify the wishes of his father, although he was well aware that such a journey in his state of health would prove highly injurious to him. A new and deeper sorrow awaited him on his return to his native land : the death of his idolized daughter, Elizabeth. Utterly prostrated, he hastened to Heidelberg, to place himself under the advice of Dr. Chelius. He spent the remainder of that winter tortured by perpetual cramps and spasms. He also lost his beloved friend, Ary Scheffer. Dr. Walther, of Dresden, pronounced his lungs affected, and advised him to try Plombi^res, from which trial, however, he dej;ived no benefit. He also tried the springs at Ems, but with no better effect. He then returned to Dresden, to place himself under the immediate care of Dr. Walther : useless efforts ! The skillful physician saw at once the rapid ravages of the deadly disease, and could only advise Italy or Algiers. Krasinski, not satisfied with the advice of one physician, went to Dr. Louis, in Paris, for additional con- sultation, but, too timid to tell him the whole truth, that physician gave him so much encouragement that he re- soved to remain in that city. A new method of medical treatment was essayed, but at its very commencement his heart was again wrung by severe affliction. A telegraphic dispatch announced that his father was lying at the point of death. In consequence of his utter exhaustion, he was

3*

26 BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL

unable to hasten to the dying bed, and was forced to commit this tender duty to his wife, who fulfilled it so efficiently that she arrrived in time to close the dying eyes of Count Vincent Krasinski. The news of this death fear- fully shattered the sinking frame of Sigismund ; he with- drew from society, and was scarcely to be seen even by his most intimate friends. He tried to soothe his aching heart by preparing a sketch of his father's life for the Italian sculptor who was to execute the monument of General Krasinski, but was only able to bring it down to 1827.

Meanwhile, he was constantly urged by his friends, who saw how rapidly he was declining, to seek a milder clime ; but he would not listen to their entreaties, and remained in Paris. He watched the course of political events with intense interest, and his soul was filled with divinations of important and widely-spread changes yet to be. His illness now suddenly assumed a form so marked that he at last became alarmed, and recalled to Paris his wife, who, at his request, had remained in War- saw to attend to the inheritance left him by his father. His three physicians agreed in the opinion that his days were numbered, and his wife saw on her return that there was no hope for the husband so dearly loved.

The seal of death was indeed already upon him, and, after a painful struggle, lasting through ten entire days, his pure and immortal soul left his racked and suffering body during the night of the 23d to the 24th of Febru- ary, 1859.

The coffin containing his mortal remains was placed temporarily in the Church of the Madeleine ; but later, accompanied by Count Zamoyiski, it was taken to Po- land, and at Opingora, the ancestral seat of the Kra- sinskis, his body found its final resting-place, surrounded by illustrious ancestors.

And this is all our author, who evidently loved the subject of his biography, ventures to tell us of the inter- nal life of the man, of the exhausting conflict between filial veneration and duty and intense and glowing patriotism, forever surging through the soul of the sublime Poet.

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL 27

After a judicious analysis of the works of Krasinski, which we omit because the subject is more widely treated by the older and younger Mickiewicz, as well as by Julian Klaczko, our biographer continues :

A fragment only has as yet appeared of an apparently large work, entitled "Cracow in 1858," which seems to be written in the style peculiar to this poet. A volume of extracts from his letters has also been published in Paris» undler the supervision of one of his dearest friends, Constantine Gaszynski, under whose name Krasinski pub- lished ** The Dawn."

Poland venerates in him the distinguished author, the inspired poet, thp sublime spirit, the brave man who knew how to sustain hope in adversity, and to quicken with new powers the sinking soul. The effort of his life was to attain moral perfection in his own being. But he rested not in this alone; he strove, even through his own constant sickness and sorrow, to call it forth not only in individuals, but to make it the life-pulse of his en- tire nation / The character of his works, and their mar- velous influence upon his countrymen, have justly entitled him to the rank of a truly National Poet. Every chord which as an individual he struck upon his lyre rang in harmony with the desires, feelings, thoughts, and hopes of the Polish People. There certainly have been men on earth who could absorb into their own wider and deeper being all the thoughts, feelings, and hopes of their coun- try ; who were capable of fusing them in the glow of their own genius, and of bringing them forth in the clear light and close unity of art. Undoubtedly Krasinski takes a high, if not indeed the very highest, place among such rare national creators. Continually crushed under the weight of severe bodily afflictions, deeply wounded in heart, he took into his inmost soul the sad history of his People ; he felt it as his own anguish, and placed it as his peculiar seal upon everything he has written. Sin- cerity, truth, glow of sympathy, knowledge, nay, clear prophetic insight, were the strong rounds of the ladder by which he ascended to such glittering heights. Wher- ever his people still breathed, not yet crushed to dust under the merciless foot of the spoiler, there the Poet,

28 BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKI.

raising his own sorrow-crowned head above the miseries of Time, gazed with the holy trust of the martyr far into the heavens, and " there saw God," divining with sacred pride and joy that Future which the Polish people see clearly revealed to them through their present agonies, and which their poets, in spite of chains, prisons, tor* ture, and exile, never cease to sing to them. In the vast world of thought and the wide regions of poetry there were no limits for Krasinski, and he reveled in that mystic freedom of art which was alike denied to himself and country in the sphere of politics. But no impurity ever sullies his noble pages, and what he wrote on politi- cal regeneration is already graven on the heart of the world.

And yet he never once stooped to win popular ap- plause. Compared with the contemporary writers of Poland, he is especially distinguished by a nature not objectively, but essentially and spiritually poetic, which is stamped deeply upon all his writings. But his peculiar traits are not to be found in the rich gifts of an excitable fancy, wealth of imagery, charms of vivid description, or luxury of ever- varying combinations. They are to be looked for in a higher region, — in a love for justice, and a clear and far-reaching insight into truth, into its devel- opment in things yet to be, a power of so distinctly portraying the future that one is strongly disposed to characterize his works as * 'Apocalyptic.**

Known until now only as the "Anonymous Poet,** he never sought literary fame, but concealed the good he was effecting as sedulously as others conceal shame. En- joying the love and esteem of his countrymen, blessed with a wife as high-souled as beautiful, and lovely chilr dren, surrounded by many and true friends, and in the possession of large property, he might have been re- garded as one highly favored by destiny. But health, that most inestimable of blessings, was denied him from youth until his last sigh; and his heart was wrung by never-uttered sorrows. He was thus no friend to idle and useless amusements, and was seldom seen in the saloons of the gay world ; but he loved social inter- course with the friends whom he trusted, and it always

BIOGRAPHY OF KRASINSKL

29

gave him pleasure to converse upon the historical and philosophical questions of the day. Then would he open a mine of intellectual wealth, of original and striking views, of profound ideas, which, under more favorable circumstances, would have made him at least the equal of the statesmen of his time.

Devout in the very depths of his soul, he shrank from no sacrifice for his family or friends, and was generous and magnanimous almost to prodigality. His own words^ uttered in defense of the spirit of knighthood, are won- derfully appropriate to himself:

" He burned, a never-consumed offering, upon the altar of his country.*'

PREFACE.

TRANSLATED FROM LADISLAS MICKIEWICZ, SON OF ADAM MICKIEWICZ, THE GREAT POLISH POET.

Extracted from the French Edition of the Works of Krasinski

Polish Poetry, in the nineteenth century, stands in striking contrast with contemporary literature. While the latter has fallen under the corrupting influence of the schools, has proclaimed art for the sake of art, and volun- tarily restricted its empire to the mysteries of the worship of the Muses, the former has pursued another path, and Poetry has remained in Poland, what it ought ever to be in the heart of a great people, the vigorous and spon- taneous expression of the feelings and thoughts which constitute the spirit of the nation. From this common fund have the poets, or, to use their own language, the "prophets" of Poland, drawn all their inspiration; and prophets they really are, for like tongues of fire they were given to their people to express all their hopes and all their agonies.

They cling to a firm belief in the Resurrection of their Country, but no more than the patriotic feeling which en- genders it is this faith confined to themselves, for however irreconcilable it may seem with the actual fate of Poland, it is, nevertheless, found in all Polish souls impressed by an internal conviction far more powerful than the external jaevidence of the moment.

M' ^ Is it not indeed truly surprising to see this People, which,

f ixi the day of its greatest prosperity, and two centuries

before its fall, had the fatal foreknowledge of that fall,

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32

PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION,

affirm with the same certainty, now when its ruin is con- summated, its approaching resurrection ? In this faith, opposed to nature and fact, is there not something re- sembling a pledge from Providence, something like a sacred promise made to the oppressed ? At least the poets have so understood it, and, confiding in this intuition, they have, in the absence of a terrestrial country, created an ideal one, the admission into which is only to be won by devotion and virtue.

•' To be a Pole Is to have noble aspirations and a flame divine."

Thus the aim of the Polish poets was essentially national, but it would be a great error to deduce from this that the absorption of the genius of Poland in the sad mysteries of its own existence ever rendered it a stranger to the thoughts and interests of the West. So entirely would such a deduction be contrary to fact, that it is precisely through the intuitions of her poetical genius that the close union of the West and Poland — ^perhaps indeed the dependence of their mutual destiny — is most clearly revealed, the moral and intellectual life which animates both springing from the same sources, and the whole social organism being governed by the same necessities. The works of the Anonymous Poet bear the frequent stamp of this truth. They are full of important lessons even for the most prosperous peoples. We have placed ourselves in this double point of view in publishing these transla- tions. The alliance between France and Poland, con- secrated by blood, will be cemented by related ideas. We hope it will be fertile, for to it we owe that system of international justice, acknowledged by France, which is summed up in the principle of the nationalities. It is impossible to deny that the initiative in this movement belongs to the reclamations of Poland. However warped this principle may have been in Germany or elsewhere, it cannot be gainsaid that it constitutes a moral progress which will benefit all Europe.

It may be reserved for the history of Poland under her present circumstances to introduce another motive-power^ as yet too little heeded \n public life, the principle of Duty

PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION.

ZZ

as the " primum mobile*' of the State and of the citizen. Is not her martyrdom truly a constant appeal to the self- sacrifice of her sons, and to the fraternity of nations ?

That the nationalities are really collective individuals, that each one has its part to play in the destiny of this world, and that the lesson to be taught by Poland is the guidance of governments by principles of abstract justice and duty, are favorite themes with the Anonymous Poet. He regards a nation as an entity differing from a merely politically constituted State ; the one being merely a human, the other a divine idea founded in the very nature ^of things. It is the duty of nations to translate the designs of God into the world of fact ; to incarnate them, to make them useful to the entire humanity. Such should be their aim and the purpose of their existence. Should they fail to fulfill their mission, should they betray it, they must perish as nations; but if they struggle for the truth, material force alone will not be able to repress their de- velopment ; their spirit must at last prevail, and they will rise into a higher life.

From this theory springs a system of political morals, not different from individual morality, nor parallel with it, but the same elevated to a higher degree. Applying these conclusions to the situation forced upon his coun- try, the Poet teaches her that hate is death to the spirit, and always strikes it with impotence.

To struggle without relaxation is an absolute necessity, and he desires and urges it ; but let it be a constant com- bat of good against evil, of light with darkness ; let the love of God and man guide and support it, for such love is the pledge of victory ! Without an ardent desire that equal justice may be meted out to all, without Christian forgiveness and moral superiority, he sees only cham- pions of passion, or base gladiators in the wide arena.

The future of Poland looms magnificently before him ; she is to resume her existence in the reconciliation of ex- tremes and antagonisms, in a reign of peace and happi- ness. He has no doubt of the progress of humanity, but he assigns, as its absolute condition, the reparation of one of the greatest crimes committed since the Death on Calvary, — the assassination of a Nation, the violent sup-

4

^

34

PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION.

pression by man of a thought of God! He predicts a glorious resurrection to Poland, if she will faithfully guard the principle of life implanted in her, if, surrounded by hate, she can preserve herself from a moral fall.

Such are the ideas which have presided over the crea- tion of all his works, and which he has interpreted with unequaled splendor. He endeavored to present his thought under two aspects: — the sterility of hate, dem- onstrated in " Iridion" and "The Undivine Comedy;** and the fertility of love, as illustrated in "The Dawn" and "The Psalms of the Future."

We will attempt to give a rapid analysis of these poems.

Iridion is a type of the man of antiquity in deadly combat with Fate. The descendant of an illustrious family, which had fought to the last for the independ- ence of Greece, he only lived to pursue victorious Rome with the implacable enmity which had been enjoined upon him by his ancestors. To aid him in the superhu- man task to which he had been consecrated from infancy, the intense hate of several generations had been occupied in gathering mighty resources for the hour of struggle. Wealth, influence, rank, relations with the barbarians, alliances with their leaders, etc., had all been skillfully prepared. He, in his own person, seemed created for such a role. To great vigor, manly beauty, and the en- trancing fascination of a demigod, he joined the inexora- ble heart of a hero. He knew neither pity nor weakness. He had left room in his soul for only one thought, one desire, — the destruction of Rome. Whatever this one passionate thought could conceive, he executed without recoiling from any sacrifice. On the other hand, the Eternal City, under the rule of Heliogabalus, was but a corpse, crushing with its inert weight all who sought to live. All was peril without and confusion within ; soci- ety was crumbling into ashes, and there was nothing to sustain it save the imperial power, formidable for all who feared it, but weak for those who defied it. Iridion found everywhere fit instruments of vengeance ; he op- pressed with the oppressors, and conspired with the conspirators. His indomitable energy urged on the conspiring and antagonistic elements to a gigantic and

PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION,

35

decisive struggle, which he intended should terminate in their mutual destruction.

A single force refused to be made use of to serve the hatred of Greece : the persecuted Christianity, which re- pelled all violence, and placed its sole hope in spiritual arms. Astonished at a resistance which he could not understand, he at first sought to subdue it, but, growing irritated, he moved too rapidly, and precipitated events. The outbreak took place, but brought not the anticipated results. Uniting in the name of their resentments, men often move together in the path of their own interests. Hatred, the savage sentiment of individual egotism, although it may be strong enough to unite men in a common action, is not sufficiently powerful when it be- comes necessary to exact obedience from them ! Helio- gabalus perished, but Rome endured. The efforts of the heroic leader, aided by many chances of exceptional success, miserably failed, because the whole enterprise was vitiated by the very idea which inspired it !

The tendency of the poem is still more fully unveiled in the epilogue. Introducing the supernatural into the web of the plot, the Poet transports Iridion into our own epoch, and shows him that very Rome which had op- pressed others, itself destroyed and degraded, — fallen as low as even his hate had dreamed it. But these black ruins do not glorify vengeance, for above them rises the Cross, the emblem of those Christians who had re- nounced the transitory supremacy of power to establish a reign of faith, charity, and forgiveness.

And this Cross, which here appears as the synthesis of the Past, the Poet will once more bring before our eyes in glory, as the supreme hope of the world of the Present ! It will shine from the skies in sign of pardon and alliance, and, in seeing it, the guilty conqueror will say, **GALiLiEE, viciSTi!" and will be engulfed in his own nothingness 1 Such is the denouement of " The Undivine Comedy," in which the glowing imagination of the Anonymous Poet has traced the struggle which is to precede that apocalyptic day.

Humanity, in **The Undivine Comedy," is severed into two camps, under the leadership of two. chiefs,

\

36 PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION,

Count Henry and Pancras. Irreconcilable enemies, both having issued from a like critical spirit, the one repels the Future, the other the Past. This absolute exclusion is on both sides the fruit of an utter want of faith. Pan- cras is the personification of human reason, which deifies itself in its own essence, and believes only in finite calcu- lation,— in action as the result of the power of numbers. Count Henry also personifies human reason, which glori- fies itself, in his case, in his own individuality, denying all general laws, and, as a rule of conduct, bowing only to his individual fancies. If he believes in the cause which he defends, it is because he believes in himself, and when he is defeated, he despairs and rushes into sui- cide. He kills himself at the very moment that the God of Life has chosen to reveal Himself in the most striking manner to the conscience of the Peoples !

A feeling of astonishment is at first created by the fact that our author gives the victory to Pancras, the cynic and scorner, the unyielding antagonist of the truth whose triumph is announced. But this victory was necessary to demonstrate that in any struggle undertaken only with the arms of hate, the advantage is always assured to blind force. A still deeper design is also manifest. The de- feat of Pancras by Count Henry would have only resulted in the glorification of the genius of man ; and the inter- vention of the divine symbol, instead of originating an instantaneous reaction, would but have strengthened the pride of Count Henry, in such case, invincible. Now neither pride, nor genius, are the supreme arbiters oi human destinies ! The onward path which in their free progress leads men to good, is the Good itself, and it alone, in which, according to the noble words of the Poet, all wisdom is contained ! Upon the perfecting of virtue and on its reign depend our salvation in this world and in the next. Triple and one, identical in its terms which cannot be separated, cause, means, and effect, that .^•good is origin and life, divine order and immortality, for it is the universal bond which links the Spirit of every being to the Spirit of God. It proceeds in its manifesta- tions by order, harmony, love, and union, and is the woof in the work of the universe which, in the divine loom,

PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION.

37

supports and unites the infinite threads of Creation : — threads which all move under its direction, and weft, to which every human effort must be attached, if fertile or imperishable results are to be evolved. Whosoever works otherwise, builds upon the sands ; striving to annul the labors of the centuries, he can found nothing true, real, or absolute ; the lightest wind will sweep away the build- ing reared by his ignorance and presumption.

All the generous ardor with which such convictions in- spired our Poet, he wrought into the service of his cause in " The Psalms of the Future." Sublime Pleader I His nation in its agony was then ready to rush into measures of extremity, but, braving unpopularity, he started up at once to the defense of practical good sense and chivalric honor, against the madness of despair.

In 1846, Galicia was mined with conspiracies, all of which had adopted the national flag as their symbol of order and rallying sign. Nevertheless, for some of the affiliated, this flag was to bear in its folds, not only the independence of their country, but also a violent and radical transformation of society. These radicals, while holding up the foreign usurpers to the indignation of the people, also doomed the higher classes of the Polish na- tion as accomplices in an oppression from which they, however, had been the first to suffer* The Government of M. de Metternich, though fully informed with regard to the insurrection, left free course to the democratic and socialistic propaganda, jcertain in advance that when the revolution did break out, it would fall exhausted by mutual destruction before reaching the Government, and that in a soil so torn and uprooted by internal convulsions, it would be easy to build a firmer foundation for Austrian power.

The Anonymous Poet understood the danger, and di- vined the calculation of the Austrian Government ; he endeavored to avoid the peril, and disappoint Austria; and to effect this, he used the arms which his own genius placed in his hands, — that mastery of poetic form which stamped his words with so much authority ! He wrote the Psalms of Faith, of Hope, and of Love, and in them he made eloquent appeals to the heart, as well as to the political acumen of his fellow-citizens, He ^ejnppsfr^ted

Alt

38 PREFACE O THE FRENCH EDITION.

all that was false in their ideas, all that was culpable in their contemplated acts, dissuading them from their de- signs ; and then, rising to a majestic grandeur of concep- tion, he opened before them paths which would inevitably lead them to realize the highest ideal upon earth.

But the passions of men were already unloosed, and nothing could arrest them. They found even an apologist in a man of genius and a rival of our Poet, who replied to him in poetic tones — a mingling of biblical prophecy and zealous polemics — " that all progress must be bought by blood, and that God renewed the face of humanity as He did that of the earth, by a series of deluges !" The contest of the two poets retains its celebrity among the literary glories of Poland, and we will find its last echo in the final scene Of "The Fragment,*' which was not published until after the death of the author.

The contest was still in progress, when the events them- selves assumed the reply. Truly it was not Poland, but the all-powerful administration of M. Bach, which rose from the massacres in Galicia 1 Austrian domination triumphed materially and morally over its opponents, and seemed to realize the conditions which render a victory final. The ideas of the Anonymous Poet, slighted at a time when they would have insured success, were now confirmed in every conscience as a reproach or a regret. But the utter discouragement which pervaded all minds, joined to the conviction that repentance came too late, struck such regret with sterility.-* Alas ! hours of like prostration occur in the history of most nations ; hours of gloom and despair, when all that is still living lives only in the feeling of impotence and utter nothingness ! Such terrible trials are inevitable in the course of time ; — probations which decide upon the life or death of a people, ^ it shall triumph over its despair or abandon itself to torpor ! . . . t The Anonymous Poet, always in the bres^ch, felt it now his dqty to react against this dis- couragement, and to use the moral authority he had gained through such tragical occurrences to waken the dormant energies of his compatriots. Under this con- viction, he published the ** Psalms of Grief and of Good \Vill/' in which, through his ideal, he return^ to hope.

PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION.

39

— hope for Poland, whose immortality he never ceases to proclaim !

Especially is the last Psalm remarkable for its boldness of conception. In the very moment in which accumu- lated disasters bore his country to the earth, and the wretchedness of slavery consumed it like a leprosy, not suffering himself to be shaken by its apparent decomposi- tion and death, and looking far into the future, he points out how everything is preparing for and aiding in the Advent of Eternal Justice.

Addressing himself to God, he thanks Him for all the benefits He had never ceased to bestow on Poland, and blessing His all-powerful Hand, he exclaims: **It is not Hope which we beseech from Thee, O Lord ! it falls upon us like a rain of flowers, — nor is it the destruction of our enemies : their doom is written on to-morrow's cloud ! It is not to break the gates of our grave : they are already broken, O our God ! Nor is it arms for the combat : they are already speeding on the tempests' wings ! Nor is it succor : Thou hast already oped for us the field of ac- tion, but in the midst of this explosion* of dire events, we pray Thee, Lord, to purify our hearts ! Give us the gift of gifts : the Holy Will which opens every grave !"

A faith so vast, so limitless, almost defying Heaven to disappoint it, could not be without influence over other souls. It ought to have elevated and inspired them, — and so indeed it really did. Therefore the Psalms are not regarded merely as a literary facty but as a political events which has its place marked in the National History.

The Dawn was written several years before the Psalms. It is composed of a succession of lyrical pieces, in which we seethe constant development of the political and hu- manitarian ideal which had become, as it were, a religion to the Poet. This poem shadows forth the earth restored to the rule of harmony, which is its eternal law, and, after its deluge of blood and crime, blossoming anew under the eye of God.

All the works of the Anonymous Poet are written in the spirit we have essayed to portray in this succinct analysis. He devoted himself to the development of these ideas, and

♦ The Revolution of 1848.

40 PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION.

to their introduction into the morals and life of his nation. The mere singer of the beautiful, the worshiper of the Muses, is elevated by him into sterner regions \ he uses the poetic powers to enforce moral convictions, profound thoughts, and conscientious patriotism. In other circum- stances, and under another government than that to which Poland is subjected, he would not have strung the lyre, but would have mounted the rostrum, and become the centre of political action. But neither rostrum nor po- litical life was possible for him upon his .native soil. Through poetry alone could he popularize his conceptions by preserving their precision in the frame of an exquisite, imperishable, and easily-retained form : poetry is also the delight of the nation, whose woes are cradled in its magic, and whose soul palpitates in its divine accents, its lyric enchantment. Therefore he bowed his genius to the exac- tions of rhyme and rhythm. And never had he to com- plain that he had so done, for not only did he attain the proposed political aim, but he won a brilliant literary glory, only surpassed by that of Mickiewicz.

Before closing this preface, one point remains to be glanced at, which would furnish material for a long devel- opment, a profound examination. The Anonymous Poet is ranked in Poland among her Catholic writers. It would be far more conformable with the truth to say that he pos- sessed a religious soul, for, with regard to the doctrines revealed in his works, it is very evident that there are wide gaps to fill and important theses to be cut off, before it would be possible reasonably to include them in any de- fined limits of the dogmas of the Church. At all events, a commentary would be required to establish their exact meaning and bearing. But if the judgment of the public upon this point is erroneous, it is because that public is more logical than the author himself. Without following him into his theosophic ideas, obscure even for those ac- customed to such studies, his readers became imbued with the moral side of his work, and seized upon its spirit, — . a spirit which was soon to find its final form in Catho- licity, to which the author definitely returned toward the close of his life.

This said, let the reader read and judge !

ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.

EXTRACTED FROM " LES SLAVES," A COURSE OF LECTURES DELIV- ERED BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE (1842-43). BY THE MOST RENOWNED MODERN POLISH POET. ADAM MICKIEWICZ.

[In this very remarkable work, by Adam Mickiewics, written in French, and which, by some strange oversight, has not yet appeared in English, no less than four lectures are devoted to a criticism upon •• The Undivine (or Infernal) Comedy." The Essay of Julian Klaczko has been found so long and exhaustive, that it is the intention of the Trans- lator to give but a few condensed extracts from the analysis of Mickie- wicz. The whole course of Lectures is recommended to the reader, as full of information not elsewhere to be found ; and, although in the latter portion somewhat blemished by the elaboration of certain futile theories, containing a mine of brilliant, deep, and highly origipal thoughts.— Translator.]

The word "Undivine" is used in preference to " Infernal" (the term employed in the French translation) as better expressing the relation of the drama to the " Divine Comedy" of Dante. The word is so appro- priate that its coinage may be pardoned. — EDITOR.

It is ihy intention now to place before you the analysis of a very remarkable work which appeared in 1834, en- titled "The Undivine or Infernal Comedy."

I will not call this Work a fantastic Drama, although it is now customary to give this name to all compositions in which the characters land scenes are not immediately derived from the world of prosaic reality. Utility and Reality are indeed the boast of our century; but what can be more variable, more contingent, than. what we choose to call solid reality^ — that visible and material world which is ever on the wing, which is always yet to be, and which has no Present ? It is through the soul alone that we are able to seize the connections and rela-

41

\

42 ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.

tions of the visible world ; it alone gives them fixity or reality; it alone generates ideas, institutions, litera- ture,— the only things truly real^ the only things which penetrate the soul, become incorporated with it, and constitute the living traditions of the human race. Every work which causes the chords of souls to vibrate, which generates new. views of life, must be considered real; and foreign writers render but justice to Polish Poetry in declaring it, so regarded, as very real ; — and there is nothing more palpitating in its strange actuality than the work we are now about to consider.

The time, the place, the characters of ** The Undivine Comedy" are all of poetic creation. The scene of the drama is laid in the future ; and, for the first time in the history of art, an author has attempted to construct a prophetic play y — to des^ibe places, introduce persons, re- count actions which are yet to be. The struggle of the dying Past with the vigorous but immature Future forms the groundwork of the drama. The coloring is not local nor characteristic of any country in particular (though we recognize it to be Polish by the melancholy contrast felt rather than seen between the state of the nation and that of the individuals who compose it), because the truths to be illustrated are of universal application, and are evolving their own solution in all parts of the civil- ized world.

The soul of the hero. Count Henry, is great and vig- orous ; he is by nature a poet. Belonging to the Future by the very essence of his being, he becomes disgusted with the debasing materialism into which its exponents, the new men, have fallen ; he then loses all hope in the possible progress of humanity, and is soon presented to us as the champion of the dying but poetic Past. But in this he finds no rest, and is involved in perpetual strug- gles and contradictions. Baffled in a consuming desire to solve the perplexing social and religious problems of the day by the force of his own intellect ; longing for, yet despairing of, human progress; discerning the im- practicability and chicanery of most of the modern plans for social amelioration ; finding nowhere his ideal ; he determines to throw himself into common life, — to bind

ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY,

43

himself to his race by stringent laws and duties. The drama opens when he is about to contract marriage. The Angels desire to aid him, to open a way into the Future for him through the accomplishment of his du- ties; the Demons tempt him to embrace falsehood.

Voice of the Guardian Angel, *' Peace be to men of good will I Blessed IS the man who has still a heart : he may yet be saved !

Pure and true wife, reveal thyself to him I And a child be bom to their House !"

Thus the words once heard by the shepherds, and which then announced a new epoch to humanity, open the Drama. They are words spoken only to men o^ good will, — men who sincerely seek the truth, — who, in great or new epochs, are able to comprehend it, or willing to embrace it. The number of tha * who have preserved a heart during the excited passions of such eras is always very small, and without it they cannot be saved, for love ancl self-abnegation are the essence of Christianity.

To instill new life and hope into the disappointed man, the Angel ordains that a pure and good woman shall join her fate with his, and that innocent young souls shall de- scend and dwell with them. Domestic love and quiet bliss are the counsel of the heavenly visitant.

Imniediately after the chant of the Angel, the voice of the Demon is heard seducing the Count from the safe path of humble human duties. The glories of the ideal realm are spread before him ; Nature is invoked with all her entrancing charms ; ambitious desires of terrestrial greatness are awakened in his soul; he is filled with vague hopes of paradisiacal happiness, which the Demon whispers him it is quite possible to establish on earth. In the temptations so cunningly set before him by the Father of Lies, three widely-spread metaphysical systems are shadowed forth : ist. The Ideal or Poetic ; 2d. The Pantheistic; 3d. The Anthropotheistic, which deifies man. The vast symbolism of this drama is recom- mended to the attention of the reader.

^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^w^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^

Abiding by the counsel of the Angel, our hero mar- ries, thus involving another in his fate. He makes a

44 ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.

solemn vow to be faithful, in the keeping of which vow he takes upon himself the responsibility of the happiness of one of God's creatures, a pure and trusting woman, who loves him well. A husband and a father, he breaks his oath. Tempted by the phantom of a long-lost love, — the Ideal under the form of a maiden, — he deserts the real duties he has assumed to pursue this Ideal, — per- sonated indeed by Lucifer himself, and which becomes — true and fearful lesson for those who seek the infinite in the finite — a loathsome skeleton as soon as grasped! From the false and disappointing search into which he had been enticed by the Demon, he returned to find the innocent wife, whom he had deserted, in a mad-house. False to human duties, his punishment came fast upon the heels of crime.

In the scene which occurs in bedlam, we find the key which admits us to the meaning of much of the sym- bolism of this drama. We accompany the husband into the mad -house to visit the broken-hearted wife, and are there introduced into our still-existing society, — formal, monotonous, cold, and about to be dissolved. Our hero had married the Past, a good and devout woman, but not the realization of his poetic dreams, which nothing could have satisfied save the infinite. In the midst of this strange scene of suffering, we hear the cries\)f the Future, and all is terror and tumult. This future, with its turbulence, blood, and demon ism, is represented as existing in its germs among the maniacs. Like the springs of a volcanic mountain, which are always dis- turbed before an eruption of fire, their cries break upon us ; the broken words and shrill shrieks of the madmen are the clouds of murky smoke which burst from the ex- plosive craters before the lava pours forth its burning fiood. Voices from the right, from the left, fi'om above,, from below, represent the conflicting religious opinions and warring political parties of this dawning Future, already hurtling against those of the dissolving Present.

Into this pandemonium, by his desertion of her for a vain ideal, our hero has plunged his wife, the woman of the Past, whom he had sworn to make happy. It is to be observed that she was not necessarily his inferior, but,

ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVmE COMEDY. 45

in the world of heart, superior to himself. A true and pure character, feeling its inferiority, and anxious to ad- vance, cannot long remain in the background ; it l>as sufficient power to attain the height of self-abnegating greatness. God sometimes deprives men of the strength necessary for action, but He never robs them of the faculty of progress, of spiritual elevation. Meanness and grovel- ing are always voluntary, and their essence is to resist superiority, to struggle against it : thus all the bitter reac- tions of the Past against the changes really needed for the development of the Future, spring from a primeval root of baseness.

An admirable picture of an exhausted and dying society is given us in the person of the precocious, but decrepit child ; the sole fruit of this sad marriage. Destined from its birth to an early grave, its excitable imagination soon consumes its frail body. Nothing could be more exquis- itely tender, more true to nature, than the portraiture of this unfortunate but lovely boy.

After the betrayal of our hero by his Ideal, the Guar- dian Angel ag^in appears to him to give him simple but sage counsel :

•' Return to thy house, and sin no more ! Return to thy house, and love thy child !"

But vain this wise advice ! As if driven to the desert to be tempted, we again meet our hero in the midst of storm and tempest, wildly communing with Nature, trying to read in her changeful phenomena lessons he should have sought in the depths of his own soul ; seeking from her dumb lips oracles to be found only in the fulfillment of sacred duties ; for thus alone is to be solved the perplex- ing riddle of human destiny, — ** Peace to men •f good will." Roaming through the wilderness, sad and hope- less, and in his despair about to fall into the gloomy and blighting sin of caring for no one but himself, he hears the angel, who once more chants to him the divine lesson that only in self-sacrificing love and lowly duties can the true path to the Future be found :

•*Love the sick, the hungry, the despairing! Ix)ve thy neighbor, thy poor neighbor, as thyself, and thou wilt be re- deemed !"

5

46 ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY,

The reiterated warning is given to him in vain. The Demon of political and warlike ambition then appears to him under the form of a gigantic eagle, whose wings stir him like the cannon's roar, the trumpet's call ; he yields to the temptation, and the Guardian Angel pleads no more ! He determines to become great, renowned, to rule over men : military glory and political power are to console him for the domestic ruin he has spread around him, in having preferred the delusions of his own excited imagination to the love and faith of the simple^but tender heart which God had confided to him in the holy bond of marriage. The love and deification of self in the delu- sive show of military and political glory is the lowest and last temptation into which a noble soul can fall, for indi- vidual fame is preferred to God's eternal justice, arid men are willing to die, if only laurel-crowned, with joy and pride even in a bad cause.

In the third part of the comedy we are introduced into the **new world." The old world, with its customs, prejudices, oppressions, charities, laws, has been almost destroyed. The details of the struggle, which must have been long and dreadful, are not given to us ; they are to be divined. Several years are supposed to have passed between the end of the second and the beginning of the third part ; and we are called to witness the triumphs of the victors, and the tortures of the vanquished. The character of the *' idol of the people" is an admirable conception. All that is negative and destructive in the revolutionary tendencies of European society is skillfully seized upon and incarnated in a single individual. His mission is to destroy. He possesses a great intellect, but no heart. He says: ^^Of the blood we shed to-day^ no trace will be left to-morrow V In corroboration of this conception of the character of a modern reformer, it is well known that most of the projected reforms of the present century have proceeded from the brains of logi- cians and philosophers.

This man of intellect succeeds in grasping power. His appearance speaks his character. His forehead is high and angular, his head is entirely bald, his expression cold and impassible, his lips never smile, — he is of the same

ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY, 47

»

type as many of the revolutionary leaders during the French reign of terror. His name is Pancras, which name, from the Greek, signifies the union of all material or brute forces". It is not by chance he received that name. The profound truth in which this character is conceived is also manifested in his distrust of himself, in his hesita- tion. As he is acting from false principles, he cannot deceive himself into that enthusiastic faith with which he would fain inspire his disciples. He confides in Leonard because he is in possession of that precious quality.

His monologue is very fine ; perhaps it stands next in rank to that of Hamlet. It opens to us the strange secrets of the irresolution and vacillation which have always characterized the men who have been called upon by fate alone to undertake vast achievements. In proof of this, it is well known that Cromwell was anxious to conceal the doubts and fears which constantly harassed him. It was those very doubts and fears which led him to see and re-see so frequently the dethroned. Charles, and which at last drove the conscience-stricken Puritan into the sepul- chre of the decapitated king, that he might gaze into the still face of the royal victim whose death he had himself effected. Did the sad face of the dead calm the fears of the living?

It is well known that Dan ton addressed to himself the most dreadful reproaches. Even at the epoch of his greatest power, Robespierre was greatly annoyed because he could not convince his cook of the justice and perma- nence of his authority. Men who are sent by Provi- dence only to destroy, feel within them the worm which gnaws forever: it constantly predicts to them, in vague but gloomy presentiments, their own approaching destruc- tion.

A feeling of this nature urges Pancras to seek an inter- view with his most powerful enemy, the Count; he is anxious to gain the confidence of his adversary, because he cannot feel certain of his own course while a single man of intellectual power exists capable of resisting his ideas. In the interview which occurs between the two antagonistic leaders of the Past and Future, the various questions which divide society, literature, religion, phi-

48 ANALYSIS OF THE UKDIVINE CO MED \.

losophy, politics, are discussed. Is it not a profound truth that in the real world also »f(f«/a/ encounters always precede material combats ; that men always measure their strength, spirit to spirit^ before they meet in external fact, body to body ? The idea of bringing two vast systems face to face through living and highly dramatic personifica- tions is truly great, suggestive, and original.

But as the Truth is neither in the camp of Pancras nor in the feudal castle of the Count our hero, the victory will profit neither party !

The opening of the last act is exceedingly beautiful. No painter could reproduce on canvas the sublime scenery sketched in its prologue ; more gloomy than the pictures of Ruysdael, darker than those of Salvator Rosa. Before describing the inundation of the masses, our author natu- rally recalls the traditions of the Flood. The nobles, the representatives of the Past, with their few surviving ad- herents, have taken refuge in their last stronghold, the fortress of the Holy Trinity, securely situated upon a high and rocky peak overhanging a deep valley, surrounded and hedged in by steep cliffs and rocky precipices. Through these straits and passes once howled and swept the waters of the deluge. As wild an inundation is now upon them, for the valley is almost filled with the living surges of the myriads of the *' NeW Men," who are rolling their millions into its depths. But everything is hidden from view by an ocean of heavy vapor, wrapping the whole landscape in its white, chill, clinging shroud. The last and only banner of the Cross now raised upon the face of the earth streams from the highest tower of the Castle of the Holy Trinity; it alone pierces through and floats above the cold, vague, rayless heart of the sea of mist, — naught save the mystic symbol of God's love to man soars into the unclouded blue of the infinite sky !

After frequent defeats, after the loss of all hope, the hero, wishing to embrace for the last time his sick and blind son, sends for the precocious boy, whose death-hour is to strike before his own. I doubt if the scene which then occurs has, in the whole range of fiction and poetry, ever been surpassed. This poor boy, the son of an insane mother and a poet-father, is gifted with supernatural facul-

ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.

49

tieS} with second or spiritual sight. Entirely blind, con- sequently surrounded by perpetual darkness, it mattered not to him if the light of day or the gloom of midnight was upon the earth ; and in his rayless wanderings he had made his way into the dungeons, sepulchres, and vaults which were lying far below the foundations of the castle, and which had for centuries served as places of torture, punishment, and death for the enemies of his long and noble line. In these secret charnel-houses were buried the bodies of the oppressed, while in the haughty tombs around and above them lay the bones of their oppressors. The unfortunate and fragile boy, the last scion of a long line of ancestry, had there met the thronging and com- plaining ghosts of past generations. Burdened with these ^dreadful secrets, when his vanquished father seeks him to embrace him for the last time, he shudderingly hints to him of fearful knowledge, and induces him to follow him into the subterranean caverns. He then recounts to him the scenes which are passing before his open vision among the dead. The spirits of those who had been chained, tortured, oppressed, or victimized by his ancestors appear before him, complaining of past cruelties. They form a mystic tribunal to try their old masters and oppressors ; the scenes of the dreadful Day of Judgment pass before him ; the awe-struck and loving boy at last recognizes his own father among the criminals ; he is dragged to that fatal bar, he sees him wring his hands in anguish, he hears his dreadful groans as he is given over to the fiends for torture, — he hears his mother's voice calling him above, but, unwilling to desert his father in his anguish, he falls to the earth in a deep and long fainting fit, while the wretched father hears his own doom pronounced by that dread but unseen tribunal : ^^ Because thou hast laved no- thing but thyself y revered nothing but thyself and thine own thoughts y thou art damned to all eternity /* '

It is true this scene is very brief, but, rapid as the light- ning's flash, it lasts long enough to scathe and blast ; — breaking the darkness but to show the surrounding horror, to deepen into despair the fearful gloom. Although of bald and severe simplicity, it is sublime and terrible. It is so concise that our hearts actually long for more, un-

5*

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ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.

willing to believe in the reality of the doom of that ghostly tribunal. It repeats the awful lessons of Holy Writ, and our conscience awakes to our own deficiencies, while the marrow freezes in our bones as we read.

Nor is the close of the drama less sublime. Because the Truth was neither in the camp of Pancras nor in the Castle of the Count, IT appears in the clouds to con- found them both.

After Pancras has conquered all that has opposed him — has triumphantly gloated over his Fourieristic schemes for the material well being of the race whom he has robbed of all higher faith — he grows agitated at the very name of God when it falls from the lips of his confidant, Leon- ard : the sound seems to awaken him to a consciousness that he is standing in a sea of blood, which he has himself shed ; he feels that he has been nothing but an instrument of destruction, that he has done certain evil for a most uncertain good. All this rushes rapidly upon him, when, on the bosom of a crimson sunset cloud, he perceives a mystic symbol, unseen save by himself: **The extended arms are lightning flashes ; the three nails shine like stars," — ^his eyes die out as he gazes upon it, — he falls dead to the earth, crying, in the strange words spoken by the apos- tate Emperor Julian with his parting breath, "Vicisn GALiLiEE !** Thus this grand and complex drama is really consecrated to the glory of the Galilean !

Nothing more intensely melancholy than this poem has ever been written. The author could only have been born in a country desolated for ages ! Therefore this drama is eminently Polish. The grief is too bitter to express itself oratorically. Its hopeless perplexity of woe has also its root in the character and depth of the truths therein de- veloped. The poet-hero aspires for the Future ; it dis- appoints him ; — he then grasps the dying Past, because, as he himself says, ** God has enlightened his reason, but not warmed his heart. * ' His thoughts and feelings cannot be brought into harmony. The tortures and agonies of struggling with pressing but insoluble questions are not manifested in artistic declamations, in highly- wrought phrases, nor in glowing rhetorical passages proper for citation. The Drama is as prosaic and bitter as life itself;

ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY, 51

as gloomy as death and judgment ! The style is one of utter, nay, bald, simplicity. The situations are merely in- dicated ; and the characters are to be divined, as are those of the living, rather from a few words in close connection with accompanying facts, than from eloquent utterances, sharp invectives, or bitter complaints. There are no highly-wrought amplifications of imaginative passions to be found in its condensed pages, but every word is in itself a drop of gall, reflecting from its sphered surface a world of grief — of voiceless agony f

The characters are not fleshed into life ; they pass before us like shadows thrown from a magic lantern, showing only their profiles, and but rarely their entire forms. Flitting rapidly o*er our field of vision, they leave us but a few lines ; but so true are the lines to nature, so deeply significant, that we are at once able to produce from the shifting and evanescent shadows a complete and rounded image. Thus we are enabled to form a vivid conception of all who figure in* these pages ; we know the history of their past, we divine the part they will play in the future. We know the friends; the stilted godfather with his stereotyped speeches; the priest, in whom we recognize an admirable sketch, the original of which could only be found in a decomposed and dying society.

Our author also stigmatizes the medical art of our day as a science of death and moral torture. While the an- guished father tries to penetrate the decrees of Providence, and in his agony demands from God how the innocent and helpless infant can have deserved a punishment so dread- ful as the loss of sight, the doctor admires the strength of the nerves and muscles of the blue eyes of the fair child, at the same time pedantically announcing to his father that he is struck with total and hopeless blindness ! Im- mediately after the annunciation of this fearful sentence, he turns to the distressed parent to ask him if he would like to know the name of this malady, — that in Greek it is called a/xaupaxrt^.

Through the whole of this melancholy scene, only one human being manifests any deep moral feeling — a woman : a servant ! Falling upon her knees, she prays the Holy Virgin to take her eyes, and place them in the sightless

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ANALYSIS OF THE UNDIVINE COMEDY,

sockets of the young heir, her fragile but deeply-loved charge 1 Thus it is a woman of the people "who y in the midst of the corrupt and dying society, alone preserves the sacred traditions of sympathy and self-sacrifice.

The cruel tyranny of Pancras and the mob is also full of important lessons. From it we gather that despotism does not consist in the fact of the whole power being vested in the hands of one or many, but in the fact that the government is without love for the governed^ whatever may be its constitutional form. One or many, an assembly of legislators or a king, an oligarchy or a mob, may be equally despotic, if Love be not the ruling principle !

POLISH POETRY IN THE NINETEENTH

CENTURY.

THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND : HIS INFLUENCE UPON THE SOULS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN IN THEIR STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM IN 1861.

BY JULIAN KLACZKO.

Translated from La Revue des Deux Mondes of yon. i, 1862.

The events occurring in Poland since the commence- ment of the year 1861, stamped as they are with a char- acter so remarkably original, and so difficult of compre- hension in Western Europe, so skeptical with regard to all magnanimous political aspirations, have had among other results that of concentrating attention upon a writer who died about three years ago, and whose renown has been, as yet, almost confined within the limits of his own country. But such a fame can no longer be thus limited. The strange influence of thie Anonymous Poet of Poland in the national movement which has broken out upon the banks of the Vistula, and the marvelous power, so clearly seen throughout the progress of the recent agitation, which his writings have exercised upon the spirit of his People, have been already noticed in this Review. What more astonishing spectacle could indeed be presented than the transmutation of ideal, nay, even mystical thought, into living, suffering, and palpable reality? A marvel truly in this age of utter practicality, is the moral and posthu- mous power exercised over a whole people by a solitary and contemplative genius, who, step by step, succeeded in impregnating an impassioned Nation with the most power- ful, yet wholly abstract convictions, with a love of truths, the more difficult of comprehension as they were in a

53

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measure metaphysical, and utterly opposed to the natural instincts of the masses ! Marvelous indeed that capa- bility of creating a policy hitherto unprecedented and nowhere understood, and yet well fitted to disconcert a powerful and subtle adversary ! Ah ! apart from all feel- ings of justice and outraged national rights so vividly engaged in the formidable Polish question, is there not an interest of the very highest order in this novel phenome- non of a living poetry throwing the light of a new day upon the most startling events, a poetry which, while in- carnating itself in the form of palpitating actuality, does not the less continue to hold its being in the realm of the Ideal, to retain its character as one of the most remark- able manifestations of modern genius, marked with that seal of excellence stamped upon the highest works of art ? Truly here is food for thought I Such has been the power, and such is the poetry of the author of "The Undivine Comedy," of " Iridion," of " The Psalms of the Future" — a spirit as mighty as unknown !

For those who love to seize genius, in its passage across this earth, in the joys and sorrows of its human existence, who seek above all in the works of a great author the mys- tic alphabet by which they may learn to read the man himself, the life of the Polish writer, in its details and catas- trophes, presents a study as curious as pathetic. Even the name of "Anonymous Poet," which the author of " Iridion" retained during life, and which remains his even after death, is sufficient to force us to acknowledge that we stand in the presence of a situation by no means com- mon, perhaps of a state of suffering happily exceedingly uncommon, and which at once commands our respect. For no longer do we live in the days of modesty and innocence, when the painter gave himself but a little corner in his picture, and disappeared in his work ! In our times, the artist is too apt to make his own personality the one luminous point of his composition ! And well indeed it were if only the truly imperial genius should thus seize the wreath of laurel to crown himself; or if the halo of glory were only wreathed by those who merit at least some degree of public attention. But where is now the talent, however wretched, to be found, which will re-

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nounce one iota of its own claim to glare, to celebrity, if even but for a day ; where is the name which will refuse to be bruited abroad, however ephemeral the worthless echo? Yet here is a man of the most incontestable genius, whose precepts have modeled the soul of a nation ; a writer applauded by a whole people, and yet who through life steadfastly declined to receive the homage so sincerely offered; who never suffered the confession of that which was his glory to be torn from him even by his most intimate friends, and who preserved until death sealed his eloquent lips his position of renunciation and abnegation. In times so full of personal infatuation, so eager for success, so intoxicated with the incense of vanity, is not this renunciation of self calculated to excite our astonishment? But astonishment turns to sympathetic emotion, when we learn that this act of absolute self- abnegation was at the same time an act of painful expia- tion; that by this silence constantly kept with regard to himself, the author in a manner implored silence with re- gard to another ; — that it was a son who thus magnani- mously immolated his own memory to win the boon of forgetfulness for that of a guWiy father J

Reserve is a duty toward him who, during his whole life, tried to hide himself from all public notice. Let us, however, endeavor to reanimate this noble figure by some of those general and almost impersonal traits of which he himself made use in portraying more than one of the heroes of his dramas. He assigned them no dates, he gave them no family names, they were rather symbols than persons. To present him thus to our readers will be to give them a type rather than a person. Let us im- agine, then, a man of large fortune, of ancient family, allied even with some of the reigning sovereigns ; a man who numbered among his ancestors leaders in a national war held in perpetual veneration, and who was brought up to reverence his own father, then dear to the country, and illustrious in many famous battles. A day came when that idolized father, so intrepid in the fire of combat, gave proof of pusillanimity in civil life,* and deviated from the

* Vincent Krasinski. the father of the AnonymotLs Poet, replaced Prince Poniatowski in the command of the Polish army at the end of the Em-

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path of patriotic duty, at least as the Nation then under- stood it. It was neither treachery nor treason, still less- could the act be attributed to motives of personal inter- est ; it was but the infirmity of a weak character, whose vanity had yielded to the subtle seductions of the ruler of Poland. But the public indignation was not lessened by such considerations, and it fell upon the son, then but seventeen ; an insult was at that time inflicted upon him for which nothing could console the man of honor, the high-spirited gentleman. This was, however, but the commencement of trials far more severe ; three years later, the unfortunate son was to find in his father a per- jured traitor, overwhelmed alike by the curses of his country and the honors pouring upon him from the tri- umphant oppressor, the blood-stained conqueror of an outraged people.

A haughty soul would have found in such circumstances the pretext for an extreme decision ; it would perhaps have sought in the unmerited insult and persecution an excuse for the acceptance of a situation which it had not created for itself, and toward which the animadversions of the conquered, and the splendid temptations of the conqueror, equally urged it. On the other hand, an unscrupulous spirit, yielding to the weakness of an age which proclaims the sovereignty of the end, and peaces our duties to a public cause above all family ties, would have seized this occasion to gain a popularity as easily won as

pire, and afterwards took part in the government of the kingdom of Poland after the Restoration. He was a descendant of one of the leaders of the Confederation of Bar. General Krasinski unfortunately excited the national sentiment against himself by his vote in the Senate in a trial for conspiracy in 1828, and the young Sigismund in consequence received a deadly insult upon the public square from his fellow-students; this filled him with anguish, and, at the request of his father, he left Poland. When the Revolution of November 29, 1830, broke out, he started im- mediately for his native land, but was forced to stop at Berlin. His jfather had been taken at Warsaw by the insurgents ; he saved himself by a promise of devoting himself to the natibnal cause, — but soon after set out for St. Petersburg. This treachery filled Sigismund with despair, his health failed, he could no longer dwell in the land he loved, but lived al- most entirely abroad, devoting himself to poetry, publishing successively his poems without ever confessing himself to be their author. Through him Polish patriotism found a new expression, a mode of thought as yet unknown in the actual world. — F^om Charles de Mazade. TR.

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brilliant, and would at once have sought and published a rupture, which would have been everywhere welcomed with applause. But this unhappy son was neither a Co- riolanus nor a Brutus ; he was only a Christian ! He received in utter simplicity the simple command of God : ''Honor thy father and mother." He never believed he had the right to deny him who had given him life, nor even to sit in judgment upon his actions ; but at the same time he felt himself as strongly the son of the nation, — he shared in all her agonies, and in all the hopes of his op- pressed and murdered country. Thus placed by God be- tween his father and his country, with sublime resignation he accepted the unceasing struggle without any possible issue, which two sentiments equally sacred were to wage forever in his soul. He lived almost always abroad, thus avoiding a contact more bitter than dangerous ; without, however, ever being able to withdraw himself from the pitiless arms which forever weighed upon him and his. He once said to us: "My footsteps have almost always pressed a foreign soil. I have only heard from afar the groans of the victims ; but I feel everywhere the hand of the executioner.** Thus it was upon a foreign soil that he became a poet, but he only accepted this celestial gift from Heaven as a means of penitence on earth ; and in giving such master-works to his suffering country, he forever re- nounced the reward so dear to poets — glory. He believed it to be his duty to expiate a fault not his own, by immo- lating the most legitimate and purest personal fame, and always pleaded for another by this persistent sacrifice of silence, or at most, by these brief and timid words, heart- breaking in their pathos for those who understand them : " O my Country, my mother thrice murdered ! They who merit most thy tears, are perhaps they who merit not thy pardon !** Thus he knew all the torments of creative genius without ever tasting its raptures ! Erostratus re- versed, he passed his whole life in erecting a temple, that a name might be forever forgotten !

Certainly such a life has that in it which must touch the soul, and in a time when poets so often shock us by facti- tious griefs, and a parade of wounds upon which they en- large at pleasure, one is consoled — we were about to say,

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happy — to see a great and noble grief supported with such true and quiet dignity. And that which seems to us to merit still higher esteem is the great moral vigor which the Anonymous Poet displays in his work of expiation, the unflinching integrity, the firm tread of a conscience ever bearing so heavy a burden. It is the peculiarity, as well as the dangerous shoal of all efforts at rehabilitation, to exceed due measure, to fall into excess; and to whom would the world have more readily pardoned the adop- tion of extreme passions and sublimated ideas, of ultra and excited patriotism, than to this son, the labor of whose life it was to cause his father's name to be forgot- ten, and who, to effect that end, had taken up the arms of poetry, — that is to say, even the weapons of passion and exaltation? He was, however, strong enough to resist this dangerous temptation, and he who bore in his heart such a touching necessity to win the favor of the public, has almost constantly braved it in its inclinations and caprices ! He was, without doubt, faithful to the national sentiment, but refused to submit to its entrancements of the hour; on the contrary, he boldly stemmed the cur- rent of whatsoever he believed wrong or injudicious, even at the risk of drawing upon himself an unpopularity which would have been to him doubly grievous. Ah ! let us for one moment consider the grandeur, virtue, and merit of such courage in the painful position he occupied. His first literary effort was distinguished by a defiance boldly* thrown at the humanitarian and socialistic systems, then so much in vogue in his own country ; and at a later date, he armed himself with all his poetic lightning to combat a democratic propaganda, of which he clearly saw the fatal consequences, but which had at that time subjugated almost all minds. Not only did he wound his nation in its transitory political predilections ; he was not afraid to strike it in its sentiments the most profound, the most deeply rooted in its heart. As an example of this, he preached the utter powerlessness of vengeance, of hate, to a subjugated people, chafing under oppression, gnawed by despair,' proclaimed dead, and who saw in this ever- vivid vengeance, this persistent hate, the ever-living proof of its own vitality. He sung to them the majesty of a

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wholly moral resistance, the glory of a quiet martyrdom without combat : ideas not calculated to be agreeable to the masses, especially to a people warlike by instinct, and gifted by nature with a temperament of fire. He preached to the cruelly wronged, a theory of sublime mysticism filled with such divine forgiveness that it exposed itself to criticism and suspicion, as it seemed to border upon an enervating submission, and could easily be confounded with it. Indeed, a long time after the death of the poet, on the eve of the late evejits in Warsaw, a maddened de- mocracy was not ashamed to rail at the "lyric cowardice of the great anonymous poet."* He, however, was neither discouraged by raillery nor by bitter and cruel invective. His faith was deep in the truths he pro- claimed, and for all further results he trusted to time, to justice, and — why should we not say it? — ^to his inspired words, of which he knew the irresistible power among his people.

It is, indeed, an exceedingly difficult thing for any foreigner to estimate aright the immense and sovereign power which Poetry exercises upon that unfortunate na- tion. This arises from the fact that a very false and in- complete idea ts generally held of the position of the country, and of the kind of foreign domination which has tortured it, especially in Russian Poland, and under the rule of Nicholas. We do not now speak of the scattered persecutions always arising upon the discovery of con- spiracies as little dangerous as cruelly punished ; we speak of the ordinary state of things^ the every-day life in Poland. Religious faith constantly annoyed and suspected as a symptom of ill will toward the government ; no univer- sities nor institutions of science ; all schools given entirely up to a foreign tongue, and regulated by officers or sub- officers from the heart of Russia ; a censorship ignorant, susceptible, and timid sitting in judgment upon every thought 2ind. every word; the administration, government, and courts of justice directed by foreigners speaking a language rarely understood, and universally detested ; the manners, customs, and habits of the country violently up-

* Mieroslawski : Insurrection of Posen. Second edition, i860.

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rooted ; every glorious memorial of the past destroyed or severely punished ; a police of spies forever upon the watch to entrap the unwary ; menace and the most fearful punishments suspended over every Polish head ; in a word, repose nowhere, and death everywhere 1 In such a state of affairs, the moral life, which is, whatever may be said, the national life, finds its only refuge in Religion and in Poetry.

This is not the time to appreciate aright the part held by religioa in this whirl of torment ; but it may be said without exaggeration that Poetry divides the influence over souls with religion, if with some natures it does not even monopolize it. Works of imagination do not con- stitute in Poland, as in more happy lands, the mere de- light of the intellect ; they are not read in saloons, nor discussed in freedom and with eager play of thought. Imported secretly by the Jews, they are bought literally at their weight in gold ; and such poems are devoured in mystery, often at midnight, in the midst of friends long and fully tried, and who are all sworn to keep the secret. The doors are bolted, the shutters barred, and one of the Faithful is always placed in the street to give the alarm should the enemy approach ; for the discovery would be Siberia or death ! After such readings have been again and again repeated, feverish and palpitating as they are rendered by the attendant precautions and risks, the pages of the poem are given to the flames, but the verses remain indelibly graven upon the excited memory. Under such circumstances do. our unfortunate youths hear the burning words of our poets, which alone speak to them of country, liberty, hope, virtue, and combat. It is often only through the "Sir Thaddeus*' and **The Ancestors*' of Mickiewicz that the greater part of our young men and maidens may learn anything of the his- tory of their own times. A Polish writer once made the profoundly true remark, that history could only point to two nations which had received an education exclusively poetic : Greece in ancient times, and the Poland of the nineteenth century. Is such an education harmless, irre- proachable? Is it devoid of the greatest dangers both for the man and the citizen ? We are far from pretend-

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ing it is so, but beyond doubt it is the only practical — alas ! the only possible — course ; and it alone explains the strange sovereignty exercised by poetic genius in that country.

Such sovereignty, like all others, has its cares, nay, even its agonies and remorse ; and Mickiewicz has ad- mirably symbolized the glory and the misery of the poetic mission in Poland in the famous Banquet Scene in " Wal- lenrod." Our readers will doubtless recollect the sub- ject of this celebrated tale. Wallenrod, while still an infant, had been torn from his own country, and brought up in the midst of its enemies ; he had held the highest po- sitions, and would perhaps have forgotten his origin, had he not been accompanied by an old blind man, a poor Bard, a '* Waidelote," to remind him always of his birth, and reanimate his hate. This Bard enters in the midst of a banquet, and in the very presence of the con- querors, in a language which they cannot understand, pours into the ears of the young Wallenrod his sonorous chant, the memories of his childhood, his plighted faith, his oaths, and the duties still to be accomplished. And such has indeed been the glorious role of the Polish Poet in recent times ; but how cruel and terrible this role often is, is also indicated at the close of this pathetic scene, when Wallenrod, subdued and fascinated by the words of the poet, renews his oaths, but at the same time makes him responsible for the calamities certain to ensue. He says to the Bard :

." You desire struggle ? You urge me on to combat ? Amen ! But let the blood which must flow be upon your own head ! Oh ! I know, I know you ! Every hymn of the Bard is a presage of misfortune, like the howling of hounds at midnight ! Death and devastation are your favorite chants ; to us you leave the glory and the punishment / From the very cradle your perfidious songs twine their serpent rings round the bosom of the infapt, breathing into his soul deadly and subtle poison. — a stupid passion for glory ^ and a wild love of country / and these songs forever haunt a young man like the ghost of a dead enemy, appearing in the midst of every festival to mingle blood with the full cups of wine ! Aye, I have heard them, these songs; I have hearkened too much to them / llie die is cast, and you have won the throw ! It will be the deeUh of the disciple, the triumph of the poet /"

This will serve to give us a conception of the sombre and appalling nature of the power exercised in that

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country by the inspired words of the poet, who has not only the moral responsibility for the ideas propagated which every writer must incur, but who must also assume that of the material fact of publication, with the conse- quences it entails upon all concerned in such publica- tion, endangering the safety of publishers, readers, and possessors ! Let the reader strive to conceive the tor- ments endured by a poet of loyal soul and upright de- sires, urged on the one sjde by genius, perhaps more strongly still by conscience, to keep up the sacred fire in human hearts by the propagation of original and impas- sioned ideas ; yet who, on the other side, shudders at the thought that the pages written when he was safe from per- secution may, in other hands, become proofs of a crime always severely punished, give cause for protracted tor- tures, and expose the innocent to death 1 As an ex- ample : Young L^vitoux, on a certain day, was seized and confined in the citadel at Warsaw, because a copy of ** The Ancestors,** by Mickiewicz, had been found in his possession. Wrung and exasperated by torture, and above all fearing that he should become delirious under its in- fliction, and betray the names of his companions in the crime ^ a confession of which was sought to be torn from him, the prisoner drew the night lamp closer with his manacled hands, placed it under his bed, and actually burned himself to death !

Accustomed as the country was to such scenes of horror, the terrible torture endured by this brave boy of seventeen excited profound emotion ; but he who suf- fered most was the poet, Mickiewicz ; the idea of having been, however involuntarily, the cause of such a death, everywhere pursued him, and many years after the occur- rence he could not think of it without a shudder. Nor was the Anonymous Poet spared the anguish of such literary successes! He published in Paris a little tale called "The Temptation," at the close of which is found the sole cry from his soul which he ever allowed his lips to utter upon his own situation, and in which it was gen- erally believed is figured, under poetic types, a recital of a real evenv, — a meeting between the poet and the Em- peror Nicholas. The students Qf Lithuania |-^§olve(:J tg

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reprint the tale, which had indeed appeared in the columns of a journal of that country, stamped with the imprimatur of the censor, who had understood nothing of the manuscript. But information soon came from St. Petersburg, an inquiry was ordered, and several hundred young men were thereupon forced to make the journey to Siberia ! They were the flower of young manhood, and the grief of the bereaved families was heart-rending. The distress of the Anonymous Poet must have been great, and the relative security which he enjoyed at such a moment must have oppressed his soul, especially when he considered to what high protection he was indebted for his own immunity.

Under conditions so full of difficulty, so appalling for a scrupulous and delicate conscience, the Anonymous Poet found a kind of solace in relinquishing fame, — in being able to bear witness to himself that he never wrote with any view to glory, that he never sacrificed to frivo- lous tastes, or to the higher fantasy of art for the sake of art. The author of **Iridion" and the " Psalms" never sang but of his country, addressing himself only to the moral, political, national, and religious thought of his audience, — to the " Polish soul," as they say in that land. He also sought other means to lighten the burden of responsibility which almost stifled him, and, fantastic as they may seem, they will yet be readily understood by^ those who can trace the subtle and ingenious refinements of a generous and anguished spirit. Yielding in a man- ner to an imperious internal voice, he mdtt^ published his poems, but he never took any steps to disseminate them, to extend .the circle of their influence, to augment or multiply their editions. He was, on the contrary, in- genious in his methods of decreasing their number, of paralyzing their circulation. Thus he offered the contra- dictory spectacle of an author desirous of influencing public opinion, and at the same time striving to diminish the means of such action 1 He had adopted a belief nearly fatalistic on this subject, which he suffered to come to light under rather curious circumstances. His short poem, "Resurrecturis," first appeared in the ./?^- view of Posen, an important and estimable publication

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without doubt, but which its gravity, its locality, and above all its exceedingly conservative tendencies, pre- cluded from any wide circulation. A friend of the poet extracted this poem from the Review^ and published an edition of it in Paris of some thousands of copies. It was no young, enthusiastic, and reckless student of Lithuania who had conceived the idea of this republica- tion ; it was a man of mature mind, an old general of tried wisdom, and accustomed to weigh well his actions. The complaints of the poet, however, were not the less full of bitterness. "But the salutary truths contained in the ' Resurrecturis,' " it was said to him, "would have been almost lost for the nation in a review so difficult to obtain." "No," was the characteristic reply; *^ the soul which had need of those words would have found them there ^ as well as elsewhere; the poem would have been offered to them by destiny^ by fatality ; why should we pass from lip to lip a cup of bitterness f^

And this poetry, to speak only of it, — to say nothing of the immense correspondence held by our author on all sides, of which only extracts have as yet appeared, and which for a long time yet to come may not see the light of day, — this poetry, what is it? Polish poetry gener- ally, that of the author of " Iridion" especially, has been accused of being too obscure and symbolic, of speaking in enigmas and allegories ; in a word, of wanting* that serenity and transparency which are the true conditions of all pure art. But art, in order to be true and living, must always bear the marks of the moral surroundings in which it has been developed, and, to judge impartially of Polish poetry, the moral state of Poland itself must never be lost sight of. In a country so long overwhelmed by misery, all works of the imagination will necessarily be cloudy and sombre. Also, where long-continued oppres- sion has taught men to understand one another by a half- word, a glance, the language of poetic inspiration must content itself with occult signs. This becomes a custom, almost an aesthetic necessity. We must again call the attention of the reader to the fact that works of imagina- tion cannot be read in Poland as with us ; that they are perused in secret, with guarded caution, and in the midst

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of dangers very real ; that they are committed to, and graven upon the memory, and thus constitute for months, for entire years, the nourishment of the soul. Such Po- etry must hide in its bosom depths that thought may slowly explore. The messenger received in mystery, must speak of mysterious things, of mystical ideas, and the least that can be demanded of books held at the risk of life, and arriving like leaves of the Sibyl, is, that they should speak the language of Oracles. This language is never complained of there ; they learn rapidly to under- stand it ; they grow accustomed to it, as one grows accus- tomed 10 see in darkness. Besides, of all the works of the Anonymous Poet, the ** Undivine Comedy** is the only one really of an enigmatic character. All the rest were seized by the national intelligence from the first moment of their appearance. Marvelous Poetry, born from the situation forced upon Poland by her sufferings and mis- fortunes, and which, next to that of Goethe, has, in our times, devoted the most profound scrutiny to the mys- teries of life, the emotions of the soul !

II.

"The Undivine Comedy** appeared in 1835, being the first work which attracted general attention to the Anon- ymous Poet ; nor is its date one of the least original sides of this vigorous creation. In fact, the poem seemed like a defiance thrown to the general tendencies of the time ; a solemn protest against the contemporary aspirations. Let us for a moment recall the character of that epoch, a period of general effervescence in ideas, beliefs, and pas- sions. ThCx revolution of July had just given the world an impetus which nothing had as yet arrested. Young manhood almost universally dreamed of Republics; spirits religiously inclined appealed to the Gospel itself in sup- port of Democracy ; new and mystic sects, supporting the cause of those disinherited by fortune, accused the vicious organization of the Social Status as the cause of wide- spread misery, and claimed for all human beings a right of which they had hitherto been ignorant, and which was full

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of temptation : the right of happiness I The tunms rerum ordo of Virgil was adopted as the creed of the millions; and is it at all astonishing that this cry should be especially heard and re-echoed by misery and poetry ; that is to say, by the two things in the world the least inclined to be content with that which really exists? Poland was then suffering under immense evils, unmitigated woes, and perhaps it needed nothing less than the conviction of an approaching and universal upheaval, of an entire renova- tion of society, to inspire its poets again with words of faith and hope. Even the Muse of Mickiewicz, so dis- couraged and hopeless once, as shown in his widely cele- brated ** Song of the Polish Mother," which appeared on the eve of the combat of 1830, now acquired a serenity of foresight, a haughty attractiveness, in the strangest con- trast with the gloom of the deceptive reality, but which gathered force and charm from the previsions of a new era. These same previsions inspired another poet of ar- dent and feverish genius, of vivid imagination, and still more vivid passions, Slowa^ki. None escaped the en- trancement of this prophetic spirit ; even the sweet and melodious singer of waves and plains, Bohdan Zaleski, was borne into the universal current. The presentiment, nay, the certainty, of a political, social, and religious trans- formation, broke forth in all the inspired works which the Polish poets then sent from the bosom of exile to their desolate country as the harbingers of good news.

But in the midst of this unanimous concert in honor of the regeneration of humanity, all at once tolls a knell of doom : an anonymous author takes up the theme then so popular, — the trial of the Past and of the Future, the final struggle of the Old World and the New, — and in his drama a Count Henry (the last defender of a state of things which has reached its final term) is seen to fall, if not without 6clat, without appeal, before Pancras, the ener- getic representative and avenger of the oppressed and disinherited of our times. The theme was indeed well known, but the picture was combined and painted in such a manner, that it was not necessary to be endowed with the soul of Cato, it was sufficient to l)e simply hu- man, to become interested in the conquered cause, to

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be forced to withdraw a moment from the heavy conflict, and to fear the triumph. But of triumph, properly speak- ing, the Drama proclaims nonfy for the adversary, tri- umphant only for a moment, suddenly sinks, confessing himself conquered in his turn \ the combat only ends for want of combatants, and it is precisely this end, which is no solution, which adds so wondrously to the horror of the picture. In this Infernal Comedy nothing remains standing upon the upheaved soil ; the horizon is closed around us at every point. At the final catastrophe, the Cross alone appears^ flaming and bloody, rather as sign of condemnation than redemption ; it seems only to descend upon the earth as the funereal seal upon a grave immense as the universe I

As strange, as contradictory to the aspirations and hopes of the epoch as this work appeared, it did not the less take hold of all intellects by a sort, of provoking fas- cination. In one very fine scene of the drama, the leader of the incarnate democracy, irresistibly attracted to his great adversary, curious to know him, having eagerly sought the interview that he might penetrate his thoughts and motives, is introduced. The "aristocratic*' poem seemed to exercise the same kind of mysterious attraction upon a public then in a measure imbued with the ideas of Pancras; the readers returned again and again to the startling figure of Count Henry, with a shivering eager- ness partaking at the same time of repulsion and sympathy. The true problem, the enigma of the drama, was indeed the adversary of Pancras, the champion of the Past, the defender of a dying society. It was truly difficult to un- derstand this enemy of the democracy, who yet seemed attached to it by more than one secret and unconquerable affinity ; this friend of the rich, of the nobles, who yet esteemed them so little; who even overwhelmed them with his contempt ; this martyr without enthusiasm, this confessor without faith ! The experience taught by a revolution, the painful trials of 1848, were necessary to enable even the critics to understand the mysterious hero of the Anonymous Poet ; and it may well be said that it was only by the light of the flames that kindled all Eu- rope that for the first time, in all its palpable and salient

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truth, this idea of a skeptical defender of a dying world was seen and comprehended.

Let us here endeavor to retrace the meaning of this figure, to unite its principal and characteristic traits. They may be found in **The Undivine Comedy," as in the ** Fragment," in which the author handles the same sub- ject under different treatment, which ** Fragment," how- ever, remains but a sketch, published after the death of the author. They are strangely mistaken who receive to the letter the position forced upon the adversary of demo- cracy by the fatality of the passions and times, and who can only see in Count Henry the Aristocrat with narrow prejudices and timid foresight. He himself tells us ** that he had had his nights of stars, in which his soul had believed it possessed sufficient strength to float through all the worlds suspended in the infinite azure, and to reach the threshold even of God without losing breath." In a sublime episode of the ** Fragment" entitled **A Dream," all the evils, all the miseries of our century appear before the eyes of the hero: armies drilled in the art of fighting against the independence of the nations, and stifling the liberties of the citizens; the Police suspending over all its vigilant eye, like the immense and movable vault over a prison, picking up everything, even to a pin, for a pin might grow and become a formidable weapon in the hands of the oppressed ; the workers famished, emaciated, crowded into subterranean and deadly caverns, strange Cyclops with lamps fastened upon their foreheads, drilling without rest the heads of needles, with fingers soft and weak as wax, and sighing in vain for the sunshine ; nations buried alive, strike their chains forever against the walls of their sepulchre, while men of religion, crushed into slavery, advise them to die in silence, so that they may neither break the repose nor trouble the enjoyment of the "Powerful upon earth!" ... In another grand episode of the same ** Fragment," the centuries past are made to defile before us in the most ingenious symbolism, and in that magical order which the philosophy of history so delights in developing. Liberty appears slowly disen- gaging herself from epoch to epoch, ever increasing with every people, and with every new elevation of humanity :

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surely the meaning of these two pictures is evident. Count Henry has shared in all the virtuous indignation, as well as in all the generous aspiration of his century. We hear him break forth into imprecations against the robbers who wear crowns; against the priests who counsel men **to die in slavery;*' against the bankers and merchants, ** who would bargain for the nails with which the feet of Christ were fastened to the Cross, and who will scarcely admit that God could have created the world without capital^ We see him affiliating himself to secret societies: '*to those who aspire and conspire ; who labor in darkness on the work of the Future !" ** The increasing insolence of vice had seemed to him the most certain sign of approach- ing downfaJl, the moment had once appeared to him not very distant when Justice should reign upon the earth, when all nations should conquer their independence, when man would regain his dignity, and even woman rise from the state of degradation in which laws without either jus- tice or love had thrown her."

It is, however, the same man who is soon after to appear as the determined adversary of the cause of the people ; as the obstinate advocate of an order of things which he had so often cursed ! When his own invocations to liberty and humanity are repeated to him by immense and palpi- tating choirs of the people, the inspired prophet of the Future becomes at once the resolute soldier of the Past, acknowledging nothing but his vocation, and repulsing all compromise. He now calls to his aid all the vigor he had once devoted to earth's agonies, and has recourse to arms and the principles of other days. Formerly he esteemed but lightly the advantages of birth and the priv- ileges of assured position ; but now he draws himself to his full height in his pride of being a gentleman ; he ap- peals to the lessons of history consecrated by past centu- ries. Formerly he only spoke of God in the humanitarian and vague language so dear to our speculative pantheism, or, still further astray, he only addressed his prayers to ^ ^Mother Nature ;^^ but now he assumes as his war-cry the names of ^^ Jesus'^ and of ^^Mary^^^ and chooses for his last bulwark a crumbling feudal tower, which bears the name of ** The Holy Trinity. " With a convulsive grasp

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he clings to the ruins of a dying generation, and bursts into demoniac laughter at the word once of such power : * * Progress ! " * * Progress ! " he replies to the chief of the democratic party, ''happiness of the human race! I too once believed it possible ! Here, take my head, if it may be. . . . The first man in the desert died, and we may ne'er re-enter Paradise 1 ... It might have been perhaps, . . . but it is no longer possible. . . . Nothing but murder now will satisfy, — ^unceasing war and ceaseless mutual slaughter !",... It is not, however, that he has a single hope left in the happy issue of the struggle, nor even that he has any faith in the absolute justice of his espoused cause. If the new order of things inspires him only with horror, he has not therefore learned to esteem the cause he defends! **Your side I hate : the other I despise f^^ is the confession which escapes him even in the presence of the chief of the inimical party. What . an avowal ! what a position ! and above all, what a startling change I

Nevertheless, it is not so strange as it may appear at first sight, and the only thing which should really astonish us in this exciting creation is, that it should in i8j^ have so fully divined the situation which would be forced upon us in 1848 ! In truth, does not this poem resemble and recount in the most singular manner recent realities? Does it not contain the inner history of nearly all men among us ? Have we not all of us also been rocked for our hour in these enchanting dreams of infinite progress? have we not all been associated in hopes or in act with those who ^^ aspired and conspired,^ ^ or who "worked in the darkness at the edifice of the Future" ? There was a time in which all new doctrines found eager acceptance among us ; every Utopia was met with a benevolent smile. The infallibility of majorities had become for us a dogma, the organization of labor pleased us for the moment, even socialism might prove effective, and a man truly liberal was close on the admission of the **free woman /" Then came the day in which the spirits so long evoked and flattered suddenly rose, imperious and menacing, sum- moning us to keep our promises, to fulfill the dreams we had excited, or the people in their collected strength

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would hurl themselves upon us, and seize with their own hands the happiness of which we were defrauding them ; — and we all recoiled in terror ! Then in order to save society menaced to its base, we too made our appeal to a personal, helpful, and incarnate God, — truly hitherto a little too much forgotten by us, — ^we seized arms which had been rustinc for ages, and escaped for shelter be- hind the remains of the thrones and altars still left stand- ing upon the earth ; ** to the fortress of the holy Trinity !" To the socialism of the future, we opposed the society of the past ; we were seized with a sudden veneration for the memories, the institutions, and even the abuses of feudalism ; we smiled contemptuously on all who spoke of progress. "Progress!" we exclaimed with Count Henry. ** We too once believed it possible, — but it is no longer of that the masses speak, — it is of a return to the state of the savage 1" " Unceasing war and ceaseless mutual slaughter !'*

Alas ! in this just and holy struggle we found ourselves associated with strange auxiliaries and marching some- times under still stranger flags, and we confounded more than one righteous claim from civilized Peoples with the iniquitous and bloodthirsty pretensions of the barbarous masses. Every revolt against oppression then seemed odious in our eyes ; every cry of liberty filled us with terror ; and we might well have made the confession so comically tragic of Falstaff", that "we had become cowards through conscience /* ' No humiliation had been spared to our pride, no recantation to our ancient faith, no trouble nor remorse to our innermost feelings. Truly we have had personal experience enough to enable us now perfectly to understand Count Henry, — to pity him also, — it is so sweet to compassionate ourselves /

We must not, however, compassionate him too deeply ; let us rather preserve the strict impartiality of the author toward him. The fall was not undeserved, and the poet acknowledges it in an apostrophe to his hero, of which every word has its meaning. He says :

•' Stars are around thy head — under thy feet surges the sea — a rainbow forever floats upon the waves before thee and disperses the clouds ! What-

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soever thou lookfest upon is thine, — the shores, the cities, the men belong to thee, — the heavens are thine, — and nothing seems to equal thy glory :

" To listening ears thou chantest airs of rapture inconceivable, — thou twinest hearts and then unwreathest them, like a garland, at the caprice of thy skilled fingers ! Thou forcest tears, then driest them by a smile, — and then thou frightenest the smile away for a moment-^an hour — too often forever . . . . ! But what dost thou feel ? What Greatest thou ? Of what dost think ? The stream of beauty flows through thee, but thou art not beauty I Woe to thee ! woe 1 The child weeping upon its mother's breast, the field flower ignorant of its«gift of perfume, have more merit than thou before the Lord !

" Whence comest thou, ephemeral shadow, bearing witness to the light which yet thou knowest not, hast never seen, and never art to see? In anger or in mockery wert thou made ? Who gave to thee this life so wretched and delusive, that thou canst play the angel till the moment of thy fall, when thou wilt creep a reptile to be stifled in thine own corrup- tion ? Thou and the woman have one origin !

"And yet thou sufTerest, although thy agony brings naught to birth, and serves for nothing ! The groans of the lowest beggar are counted in heaven, comp>ensated amid the music of the angels' harps ; but thy despair and sighs fall to the bottomless abyss, and Satan gathers them and adds them with joy to his delusions, lies !"

The meaning of this apostrophe is easily understood. Count Henry certainly aspired to the ideal, and had borne bitter grief; but he had never tried to reproduce the ideal within his own soul; he had only drawn vanity and severity from his afflictions. His enthusiasm was not only false, but for the false. He had rather sought emo- tions than experienced true feelings. ** He and the woman have one origin.*' He had had neither simplicity nor spontaneity. Pride had taken possession of his soul, and, while he believed that he loved and adored human- ity, he only loved and adored himself and his own thoughts. ** Peace to men of good will !** the Guardian Angel cries at the commencement of the Drama; but it is rather a warning than a benediction. Let us notice in passing these words of ^^ good wtlV^ They are the first words, as they will be the last, of the magnanimous poetry of the anonymous author ! These words are at the commencement of his ** Infernal Comedy,** as they will form, at a later date, the title of the last of his ** Psalms.** This ^^ good will ^^^ the existence of which the poet does not acknowledge in his Count Henry, the humanitarian dreamer, or defender of established order, he understands as comprising good faith, sincerity, up-

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right and pure intentions : ** that tranquil and loving force against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. " From the cold and troubled source of false exaltation he makes all the misfortunes of his hero flow ; the misery of the man, the embarrassment of the citizen, the distrac- tions of his public and private life.

The drama commences with a wedding scene. After having lived long alone with his thoughts and his dreams, Count Henry *^ descends to terrestrial vows," and con- tracts a marriage. For a moment we are induced to be- lieve that the visionary dreamer at last understands the true vocation of life, and the sweetness it still holds in reserve for him ; that he will taste the happiness of a pure and lasting love ; that he will found a family ; but a few words, eloquent in their brevity, soon dispel such illu- sions. With the straightforward sense of a loving soul, the young bride says to the husband : "I will be to thee a faithful wife, as my mother has taught me, as my own heart dictates to me." To which he replies: **Thou shalt be my song for eternity." The wife speaks the language of society; he responds with the accents of poetry ! She is fatigued with the noisy ball, forming so painful a contrast with the soft emotions of her heart, and feels faint ; but the Count finds her so lovely in her exhaustion and pallor, that he begs her to return to the dance. ** I will remain here and gaze upon thee, as I have often watched the floating angels in my dreams." She still complains of weariness, but he insists, implores, and is obeyed ! By such traits as these the poet reveals his character from the very commencement. Thus one is not astonished in so soon finding Count Henry wander- ing about the mountains, in dark and stormy nights, in pursuit of his old phantoms. ''Since my marriage, I have slept the sleep of the benumbed, eating and drink- ing and sleeping like a German artisan!" His wife is "bom for home and hearth," but "not for him;" she is not what he dreamed. He certainly does not fail in finding words for the expression of a grand sorrow, nor lacks he powerful images ; but how much deeper and even more poetic is the sentiment of the young wife in these simple words: '* Yesterday I went to confession ; I

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examined into all my sins; but I could find nothing which ought to offend thee !*'

A son is born of this union ; but the father is not present at the ceremony of baptism, at the moment when his infant receives a name and enters into the human city. The mothe^ comes forward tottering, her eyes haggard and wandering in delirium, and cries, to the amazement of the assistants: ** I bless thee, George ! I bless thee, O my child ! Become a Poet, that thy father may love thee ; that he may not one day deny thee ! Thou wilt merit well of thy father thus ; thou wilt please him, and then he will pardon thy mother. ... I curse thee, George, if thou becomest not a Poet !" . . . She becomes mad, and is taken to an asylum for the insane. At this frightful news the soul of the husband is torn ; he breaks into sobs of remorse. ** I promised her fidelity and happiness, and I have thrown her, living still, into the hell of those already damned ! I blast all upon whom I breathe, and am doomed to destroy myself Hell has thrown me here, that I might be to men its image upon earth ! Up>on what pillow of horror lays she now her head ! With what harmonies have I surrounded her? The howls of madmen !'* He would perhaps have pursued this mono- logue for a longer tinT^, if a mysterious and sardonic voice had not suddenly cried to him : ^' Thou chantest a Drama f '

This madness of the wife is a masterly invention ; it is indeed with an art akin to the genius of Shakespeare that poetic justice is here administered to the hero of the Drama. He had found his wife too practical, — tran- quilly sleeping at regular hours, and never soaring above the earth. Well ! She will quit the earth ; she will sleep no more, save with the tossing restlessness of the de- ranged ! The sense of reality will altogether escape her, and she will lose her earthly reason ! He was a dreamer ; she will become a lunatic; she will in good faith practice the exaltation of which he has only dreamed, and to his poetic inspirations she will reply in delirium. ** Thou wilt no longer despise me, Henry !** she says to him when they meet in the mad-house. ** I am full of inspira-

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tion now ; my soul has left my heart and mounted into my brain I Look at me ! Am I not thine equal now ? I can comprehend all now, — express it, sing it; I chant the sea, the stars, the clouds, battles, — no, I have never seen a battle. You must take me there ! I must see and describe a corpse, a shroud, blood, air, the dew, a coffin. . . . I am so happy!**

These incoherent speeches^n which, however, each word has its own tale to tell — are interrupted at intervals by cries still more incoherent breaking from all sides. They are the cries of the insane who are confined in other cells in the house. But let us take good care not to imagine all this to be only a puerile effort to produce a tragic scene ! Alas ! these voices have a profound sig- nificance in themselves ; this symphony of madness has its dominant key; the mad poetry of the wife is de- signedly interrupted by these wild cries, which are the precursory signs of the approaching delirium of society entire ; and through the domestic anguish is already seen the misery of the world.

^^A voice from above. You have chained up God ! One is already dead upon the Cross. I am the second God, and you have given me also up to the execu- tioners !

^^A voice from below. To the scaffold with the heads of kings and nobles ! Through me will begin the liberty of the people.

^^A voice from the left. The comet tracks its way in fire across the sky ; the awful Day of Judgment draweth near.

^^A voice from below, I have killed three kings with my own hands ; ten still remain and a hundred priests who still sing mass."

"Are not these people terribly deranged?*' asks the wife, in listening to these infernal cries. ** They do not know what they are saying,'* she continues; "but I can tell you what would happen if God Himself should go mad !** If God should go mad I The thought is of a ferocity, but also of an energy almost unequaled, nor does it lessen in its wild development. ** But I can tell you what would happen if God should go mad.** (She seizes him by the hand.)

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"All the worlds would fly about in space, mount up on high, or roll in the abyss : and every creature, every worm, would cry, / am God! and they would all die one after another, and all the comets and suns would go out in the sky : and Jesus Christ would save us no longer ! Tearing his hands from the nails, with both hands he would hurl his cross into the abvss 1 Listen ! how this cross, the hope of millions, falls from star to star! It breaks at last, and covers with its ruins the universe en- tire ! The Holy Virgin alone continues to pray, and the stars, her servants, are still faithful to her, — but she too will plunge where all created things are plunging down — for God is mad !" . . .

Between these scenes of domestic life so vigorously sketched, and those of public life soon so stormily to unroll, is placed a melancholy idyl : a series of episodes between the father and child, the widower and orphan. And rarely has the imagination of a poet created a form so exquisitely graceful, or of a symbolism so deep, as the little George of the drama. His mother's prayers have been but too well answered ; her son, like the Count, is also a poet, indeed, a poet in a higher sense, for he does not seek emotions, they rise spontaneously in his heart ; his soul vibrates like a harp, and multiform images, even against his will, ferment in his brain and "give him pain in his head." He recites sweet and harmonious songs, he says he hears his mother sing them, whom he has never known ; he declares that he hears celestial voices, but in spite of high nervous energy he is weak and sickly. At the age of ten years the child withers away, becomes blind, and finds life only within his own soul. It is easily divined that the poet meant to personify in George those pure and contemplative natures which are often met even in the midst of the most agitated society and in the most stormy times ; naive and delicate souls with high thoughts and refined perceptions, but timid and shut up in them- selves ; blind to all the things of this earth, and under- standing nothing of the commonplace facts of the world, which are, however, its stern necessities. Little George has strong religious instincts ; he wants to pray always, he

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refers everything to God. But let us not be deceived ; it is not really faith, it is rather the necessity of beliefs the eager desire of certainty. The piety of the child pro- ceeds too much from the poetry of the father; this the author indicates in the most ingenious manner. The Count takes his son to the cemetery ; George kneels before the tomb of his mother, and recites the "Ave** : ** Hail Mary, full of grace 1 Mary, Queen of heaven. Lady of all that blooms on earth, that scents the fields, that paints the fringes of the streams.*' . . . The father silences and reproaches him. He recommences: "Hail Mary, full of grace ! The Lord is with thee ! The angels bless thee, and as thou glidest softly through them each plucks a rainbow from his wings to cast beneath thy feet.** . . . Who does not know this tendency to endeavor to increase faith by poetry, to adorn the words of the gospel, to beau- tify Golgotha itself? But is this really religion ? It is indeed a religion able to produce internal delights and mystic raptures, but it can give neither dogmas to the intellect nor rules to the conscience, nor can a society tottering to its base find any support therein. In the social war so soon to burst forth, little George dies from a wandering ball.

Behold us instantaneously launched in the midst of the horrors of a social revolution ! The transition is abnipt and violent ; it is a surprise in the Drama, as it also was in our history. The Count, undeceived by time and grief, cured of his chimeras upon the progress of the human race, has now taken in hand the defense of society menaced at all points, — and further commentary is un- necessary ! Let us, however, remark that in this new transformation our hero no less retains the original vice of his nature, the capital sin of which consists in seeking impressions, emotions, rather than searching for truth; in burrowing into his imagination rather than scrutinizing his conscience. He regards this civil war only as a fatal and bitter task ; and yet he sometimes surprises himself by his keen relish for its savage poetry, representing in ad- vance to himself its fields of battle, its torrents of blood. It is the ^^ sublime horror of the cannon,^ ^ admired from the opposite point of view ! His pride, hitherto latent,

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flashes into ominous light. He delights in playing his rdle as a Titan ; and we are often tempted to ask if, at his pleasure, he does not exaggerate the perversity of human nature, as he had before eicaggerated its indefinite perfectibility. The dangers which threaten civilization are, nevertheless, great and real ; and the dissolution of society is painted with the direst and most frightful hues. Let the reader turn to the new " Walpurgis Night" in " The Undivine Comedy," at which Count Henry, unknown, assists ; let him look into the wild Saturnalia of the fam- ished masses eager for pillage and murder, in the midst of which our hero recognizes some of his old acquaint- ances, his ancient associates in the " Great work of the Future /* * Let the reader survey these scenes of misery and carnage, in the midst of which stands out one of masterly power, — the interview between Count Henry and the chief of the revolutionists.

In vain may the plebeians hate and curse all social superiority; it will not the less exercise upon them a disturbing and mysterious attraction ! In the ingenious picture of Paul Delaroche, it is evident that the beheaded Stuart still awes Cromwell from the folds of his shroud ; he imposes upon him even to his white hand, so long and taper, so skillfully brought in close contact with the rough and bony fist of the Puritan chief. It is not, then, aston- ishing that Pancras should feel an irresistible desire to see his aristocratic adversary, to speak to him, that he should even desire to save him ; but why should the Count, on his side, feel an equal attraction, and consent to an inter- view of which he must so well have known the futility? Alas ! that which forCs.d it upon him was the attraction which sometimes induces us to open a grave that we may contemplate a face, now deformed and revolting — once idolized ! In this broken mirror, the Count wished to gaze upon his own image, wildly altered and distorted. Strange, and well calculated to excite despair, is the fact that in this contest between Count Henry and Pancras, nothing determinative is brought to light ; only their own individual sources of complaint are justly put, and well founded ; no brilliant fusing spark of universal truth flashes from the contact of these negative poles. Pancras

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says: "You who are old, rotten, satiated with food and drink, worm-eaten and crumbling into dust, give place to those who are young, vigorous, hungry and robust !" — **Ah! I know you too," replies the Count; "I have visited your camp at night, and have seen the bloody dance of fools and barbarians ; their floor was the decapi- tated heads of those who differed in opinion from them I I recognized all the vices of the Old World peering from the new garments ; they sang a new song, but it ended ever in the old refrain : Bread, meat, gold, and blood !" ** Your ancestors were robbers!'* cries Pancras. "And yours were slaves !" replies the Count.

The adversaries separate; the struggle recommences more furiously and implacably than before, and in the final moment, when the last bastion crumbles, the Count kills himself by leaping from the top -of the precipice. He had already heard the doom of Heaven, which condemned him because " he had esteemed nothing, loved nothing but himself and his own thoughts;** — ^and it was his own son who must explain to him the meaning of those voices from the sky I The death of Pancras is still more sudden ; it is unforeseen, unprepared, and therefore deeply signifi- cant. Scarcely has he reached in triumph the top of the ramparts when the victorious chief suddenly and without apparent cause grows faint ; he totters and expires, only indicating with his hand a bloody cross which appears in the heavens, and uttering but the words: "Galilaee, Vicisti!*'

We have already said that the most despairing phase of "The Undivine Comedy** is found precisely in this termi- nation without solution ; this univenal triumph of nothing- ness, in which all the principal actors in the drama, the Count, his wife, Pancras, and even poor little George, have been engulfed. Are we, then, forever to despair? or must we seek among the actors of the second rank a figure, a shadow to whom an interest, a hope may be attached ? May it perhaps be Leonard, the beloved dis- ciple of Pancras, the sincere enthusiast, who shared all the dislikes, all the ideas of his master, but whose hands are unstained with blood, and who, either by chance, in- stinct, or good fortune, has no crimes with which to re-

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proach himself? Has the task of reconciliation been re- served for him (the type of the rising generation) who has shared in our struggles, seen our misery, taken a part in our follies, but has kept himself pure from our atro- cities ? At all events, the rdle of this generation will be vast ; it will have much to forget and much to learn. It must above all things weigh well the words addressed to our tragical hero by his Good Genius : ** Thou wishest to salute the new sun ; and for that thou fixest thine eyes upon the highest point of the heavens ! Look rather round thine own horizon /' ' Let us too watch our horizons / Let us each measure and cultivate with care the field given to his individual action ; let us mount from the known to the unknown, from ourselves to the human race, and who can say that we will not again find ourselves in the pres- ence of our ** lost God*' ?

However that may be, it is, alas ! certain that we have by no means reached the term of our trials, and that The Undivine Comedy will ^\S)\fora longtime continue to be the Drama of the Future, The dangers threatening society will force us more than once to prefer the established order to the moral order, and will more than once surprise us into invoking the phantoms of the Middle Ages from the fear of the red spectre ; into playing the sons of the crusaders without even being the children of the cross ; into proclaiming ourselves Papists, without even being Catholics !

Taken in a general sense, the problem developed in ** The Undivine Comedy" is not at all restricted to the present time ; it has already traversed more than one phase, and found its expression in more than one masterpiece. The problem is in truth no other than the struggle between the ideal and society ; the situation forced upon the man who, bearing in his conscience a fancied type of justice and happiness, must find it realized in the world surround- ing him, or impose it upon it. Even the Middle Ages had endeavored to formulate this problem in the creation of Perceval, a hero of pure soul and high aspirations, who takes the first passers-by for angels, seeks an ideal city through numberless trials and struggles, and ends by find- ing it, conformably to the ascetic character of the times.

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in a monastic and mysterious order, that of the Templars, the Guardians of the Holy Grail, of whom he becomes the King. But above all, Shakespeare has created in Hamlet the eternally tragic type of a man placed between his ideal and society ; of a man such as the upheaval of religious opinions and the revival of learning have made him ; with an immense extent of knowledge^ but without any interior power to govern it ; with the precious gift of being able to look at all things from their varying stand-points, but without any instinctive and genuine con- victions ; with a susceptibleand quest ioning conscience, but which for that very reason has grown more hesitating, more uncertain with regard to good as well as to evil ; in short, with that excited and luxuriant imagination which too often supplies the want of will or force by brilliant and unreliable fantasies.

Magnificent indeed is the conception Hamlet forms of man in the abstraction of his philosophy, ** So like a god in reason, so sublime !" But how little conformable with this ideal appears to him the society in which he is called to live ! How well he knows how to ridicule and scathe the rogues and villains who reign and govern, the politicians who would deceive God himself, and how full is his soul of melancholy indignation against ** The whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's con- tumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns thjyt patient merit of the unworthy takes." . . . His own noble inspirations, his dearest interests, the sum- monings even from another world, — all call and urge him to undertake a work of reparation. The task is with him almost a personal question ; he has a father to avenge and a throne to reconquer, but when this work is placed be- fore him, he grows weak, hesitates, his reason totters. His refined conscience suggests to him, at the same time, the most subtle scruples as well as the most perfidious cruelties, and after having weighed and scrutinized every- thing, he comes to the strange conclusion that " nothing in itself is good or bad, but that our thinking makes it so." He takes refuge in his imagination, and stifles all action in profound and brilliant soliloquies. '^ He com- poses for himself a dramas ^ gives himself as spectacle to ^ 8

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himself, and enjoys his success as an artist \ he selects the roost ingenious means for the simplest objects^ and forgets the end in his complicated means. Through the very force of his determination to foresee everything, to leave nothing to chance or remorse, he ends by becoming the mere plaything of the most fortuitous circumstances, and by committing the most atrocious as well as the most use- less crimes. He spares his enemy, and only strikes those who had loved him, or who had done him no harm, and pronounces judgment on himself in those melancholy lines which bear witness at the same time to his desire that the right should prevail and his want of power to accomplish it, —

•• The time is out of joint ; O cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right I"

The hero of "The Undivine Comedy" reminds us by more than one trait of the Prince of Denmark : he has the same imagination and the same sensibility ; he loves to make soliloquies and compose for himself dramas; he^ joins to highly elevated and generous aspirations weak- ness and impotence ; and his conscience, refined to ex- cess, at last grows hard and sinks to cruel actions. There is more than one element common to the two works ; among others, the poetic justice which punishes Count Henry's determinate exaltation by the madness of his wife, is very like that which punishes the counterfeit madness of Hamlet, by the too real insanity of Ophelia. But let us not be deceived by this resemblance ; if the character of the catastrophe is the same, the situation is aggravated, and the denouement becomes more saddening. The hero of the Polish poet not only recalls the type created by Shakespeare, he continues it, — continues it under entirely new conditions, created by contemporary and still more heart-rending disasters. It is certainly very sad to will and see the Good, and yet feel utterly powerless before the Evil ; the Prince of Denmark fully felt this terrible anguish ; — but it was reserved for the man of our times to endure a torment far more horrible, — that of aspiring to the Good, and to be not only forced to tolerate the Evil, but even to defend it — through/ear of worse ^ — through dread

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of utter destruction and the abyss of nothingness / Hamlet defending the reign of fools and rogues, of the Poloniuses and Osrics; Hamlet making his breast and heart a ram- part for the throne of the crowned murderer, Clod i us,— and all this to escape the spicy logic of the ** grave-dig- gers,'* who found the greatest nobility should belong to the tanners and undertakers : — certainly the irony would be bitter — satanic ! This is, however, precisely the r6le which devolved upon Count Henry ; the kind of combat to which a liberal man of the nineteenth century is some- times called ! The contest is sad and deceptive in a very different manner from what it was in times not far re- moved from our own, for in the present struggle we sur- prise ourselves not only in wanting faith, but in failing to act in good faith; — and the drama becomes so much the more poignant that, in being tragic and infernal^ it does not the less resemble a comedy /

HI.

There is one thing very remarkable in considering the collective works of the Anonymous Poet : that is, — ^if I may so term it, — the descending movement of his mind from universal questions embracing all humanity to na- tional or psychologic subjects. The phenomenon is sur- prising, because it is not the common movement of poetic genius. Take Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe, you will find them gradually rising from the special to the general, from the finite to the infinite, from the Vita Nuova to the Song of Paradise ; from the historic and national drama, and from Romeo, to the vast and deep conceptions of Macbeth and Hamlet; from Werther and Goetz von Ber- lichingen to the second part of Faust, and Wilhelm Meister, But without leaving the regions of Polish poetry, the career of Mickiewicz offers a most striking example of a development always ascending. He begins by ballads and romances based upon traditions and popular legends ; that is to say, by that which is the most inherent in the natal soil, the most closely shut in by the domestic horizon. He rises afterwards to the tale of Grazyna, in which the

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memories of a feudal past are depicted ; to WalUnrod^ where he presents to us the present of the nation with all its feverish preoccupations; we hear already in it the tocsin of 1830. He afterwards, in his Sir Thaddeusy repre- sents to us the national life collectively in its customs and memories, and in the most minute analysis of its internal being, — and only then, for the first time, does the poet enter upon the problems of the Future. It is exactly the reverse with the Anonymous Poet. At the very beginning of his career, at the age of twenty-three, he wings his first flight into the highest regions of speculation, pierces with a single look the whole structure of Society and Morals, but this sphere once flown over, or rather, passed through, he never returns to it ; he folds designedly his wings, tracing circles ever more and more narrow; and the choice of the forms successively adopted by the poet is like an image of his own internal development. For his first works, he preferred the Allegoric Drama, the widest and freest form which can be found; then he limited himself to the Tale, to the imaginative, or rather, visionary tale, it is true, but a species of composition far more closely united and regular than the dramatic allegory; and he finally ended by restricting himself to the most individual and concentrated expression possible, — to a severe and measured lyricism.

We might perhaps try to explain this phenomenon of a development so different from that of Mickiewicz by purely external circumstances; by stating that Mickie- wicz had lived for a long time in his own country, and had only gradually attained a position which might be termed cosmopolitan, while the Anonymous Poet had been early and violently thrown into other lands, among the ideas and prepossessions of the West, and <5hly through the force of will and reflection returned to the feelings and wants of his own people. But there are far more inherent, far deeper causes for the fact. A moral question here leads the historic or literary inquiry, and the concentric development of the genius of the poet is in exact correspondence with the leading ideas which he had formed upon the duties of the present, upon the mission of man and of nations in the critical epoch we

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are now traversing. " The Undivine Comedy* * was rather a farewell than a salutation ; it was an energetic protest against a fatal delusion of the age, in which it was thought possible to regenerate humanity without having first regenerated man; to establish universal rights^ with- out having first strengthened the individual in his duties. The noble precept, that " in order to salute the sun, we must look at our horizon," the poet was resolved to put into practice. He did look at his own horizon; he labored more and more to understand the ground given to him to cultivate,-^the field left to his action and good will ; he tried to formulate more and more exactly his individual mission with the means accorded him, and under the circumstances in which he found himself placed, and thus, in successively narrowing his circles, he arrived at a point, — the human soul ; according to the national expression, "the Polish soul," — "at that im- perceptible point which nevertheless has an infinite periphery, since it contains God."

At the first glance, however, the work which so closely followed "The Undivine Comedy" (1836) resembles it in many respects. First, as to form, it also is a dramatic allegory, with varied scenes boldly sketched, and inter- woven with lyric digressions. Secondly, as to subject, it also represents the fall of a world, the crumbling away of a society. But that which from the first distinguishes "Iridion" from "The Undivine Comedy" is, that the scenes are no longer to be played in the future; they occur in a well-known and determinate past. With the rare intelligence of sublime conceptions, the poet places himself on the v^xy knot of these three elements, viz., the classic element, the barbaric element, and the Chris- tian element : the tissue of which three, providentially combined, interwoven, and developed by the centuries, has formed our modern civilization.

The triple name borne by the hero of this poem — Iridion, Sigurd, Hieronymus — immediately indicates the point of intersection in the history of humanity in which the drama is set. Is it due to the possession of an his- toric base that the second work has over the first the ad- vantage of a firmer, yet more plastic, design ? Or should

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it not rather be attributed to the special place chosen by the poet, — to the antique world whose genius, even in decline, seems to have had the gift of giving lucidity and transparency to all with which it came in contact ? At all events, it is certain that this second composition is in bolder relief, and more harmoniously ordered, than "The Undivine Comedy;" the figures are no longer mere sym- bols; they have marked traits, sculptured by a skillful graver ; they are stamped with distinct individuality, and the characters are largely developed. However, that which most distinguishes it from **The Undivine Com- edy" is, that in place of a cosmopolitan and humanita- rian tendency^ it has a patriotic bearing; it aims at the special situation forced upon Poland since her dismem- berment, which must not be forgotten as we read.

Without doubt, history is familiar with more than one country which has gnawed its chains of foreign domina- tion in despair ; it knows even nations which, like Greece, after ages of oppression, awake to the full en- ergy of patriotic feeling; but, with the exception of Spain under the yoke of the Moors, it offers no nation which has struggled as constantly as Poland against its subjection. A century has elapsed since the division of Poland ; and how many insurrections does she not count in her sad annals ? how many efforts always conquered yet always springing forth anew ? And what untold bit- terness must have accumulated in hearts always crushed yet always obstinate to combat ! Above all, let us not forget that, for the most part, the generations bom after the division have never known, in its living reality, the country for which they have fought without cessation ; the fatherland has only been for them a mournful mem- ory,— the recollection of a great grief, of a great crime remaining unpunished, and forever calling upon them for vengeance. Let us likewise note that to a material dis- memberment a spiritual dismemberment had also cor- responded ; that a current of emigration was renewed after every catastrophe, the chief cause of which lay in an undying feeling of protestation against the cruel work of the invaders. A strange situation has grown up from these facts, — one beyond the limits of all ordinary rules ;

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a situation of constant excitement, feverish and delete- rious, calculated to mine the morality of the nation, and threatening to pervert the delicate sense of the just, of the upright. Foreign domination is not only odious in what she permits herself to inflict upon the oppressed; she is more horrible through that which the oppressed deem jus- tifiable to inflict in turn upon her I

The state of being forced upon Poland by the triple yoke, recommenced in her interior in the necessity of simulating and dissimulating, in raising cunning to the height of a civic duty, while the art of deceiving the op- pressors becomes almost a virtue ; and for her children thrown into exile, it created externally the mission of struggling against the enemy upon every battle-field, and through every available means. The example of Bem alone would be sufficient to make evident the danger in- curred in the possible distortion of the most sacred feel- ings of a nation by this constant and violent struggle without quarter. That the glorious soldier of Ostro- lenka and Transylvania should have embraced the faith of Mahomet, only in the hope of still making war upon the Russians, is sufficient to prove how the moral sense may sometimes be eclipsed even in the most heroic soul ; but that the illustrious renegade should have lost none of his prestige with a nation so fervent in its faith, and whose whole past history had been an unceasing combat against Islamism ; that the pious peasant of Posen should have still continued to hear and salute in the sound of the bells of his church the magical and still venerated name of **Bem,*' — ^this becomes a grave matter, and shows with what feelings the country is animated for those who love it ! And what can be said of the ideas of a vengeful Panslavism, which were already beginning to germ and delude souls, at the time when the Anony- mous Poet was composing his work ? How are we to speak of this strange and satanic doctrine which preaches suicide, that death may be given to others? which recommends voluntary slavery, the reconciliation with the most cruel but also the strongest of the adversaries, that thus vengeance . may be wreaked on the less guilty ? that pleases itself in the hope of preparing a new Attila

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for a world which remained an impassive spectator during the agonies of the crucifixion of a people ? . . .

It is difficult, nay, it is almost impossible, for the happy upon earth, for those who enjoy a free and inde- pendent country, to comprehend the surging hell of temptations, of torments, which are massed in the single word, Slavery y for a subjugated people ! But the Anon- ymous Poet understood this Hell, and shuddered at the sight! Diving into the tortured depths of the ''Polish soul," he suddenly encountered this current of sombre and ferocious ideas, — ** they chilled his soul !*' He was appalled at the force of that national feeling feeding itself upon hate of the oppressors ; he was frightened at that love of country stronger far than deaths but which began to think of giving death to others ! He wished to give a warning to his people, and thus he wrote ''Iridion/'

The Anonymous Poet depicts the patriotic grief caused by foreign oppression in its most legitimate, as well as in its most vivid aspects. What could be more touching, more attractive to our imagination, than the memories of Hellas, the classical home of art, of poetry, and of that love of country which brought forth so many heroes and originated so many illustrious actions? What could be more justifiable than the resentment of a descendant of Themistocles and Miltiades "against the people born of a wolf;*' against the Roman who came to Corinth as a liberator, friend, and then became the proud and cruel master of Greece, nay, of the entire world? "Iridion" gives us the genius of Hellas meditating a great stroke of vengeance after ages of subjection and oppression. The scene is placed at the epoch of Caracalla and Heliogaba- lus, in the time of the deepest abasement of the empire, when the grandeur of Rome was naught but monstrosity, seeming ready to fall before any bold attack. Thus heightened by the splendor of a glorious past, justified by causes of well-founded complaint, favored by the most propitious circumstances, the attempt of ** Iridion*' offers still another element of success: it is not the sudden growth and bloom of a single will, a single age ; it was prepared afar off by a generation which gave itself up in

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advance to the task of sowing, without the hope of har- vesting, even of living, save in its successors ! This is the deep thought developed in the Prologue, in which two persons are boldly sketched who are doomed to die before the real Drama actually begins, but who give birth to the future hero, to the ^^ Son of Vengeance,''*

Amphilochus, a Greek of illustrious race, counting even Philopoemen among his ancestors, had deeply felt all the woes of his subjugated people: **a slave because a Greek, he was by nature an avenger/' With the clear- sightedness of hate, we had almost said the hate of the exile, he had seen on the still clear horizon the dark speck from which the tempest would one day break forth, and had divined in the barbaric race of the Northmen the future destroyers of the Eternal City. He went to the Cimbric Chersonesus, to the land of "Silver-Torrents," among the Scandinavians, not to induce them to move against the common enemy, Rome, but to find a wife ; an oracle having predicted to him that great misfortunes to the im- perial city would be the fruit of such an alliance. The contrast between the Greek genius, refined almost to sub- tlety, and the uncultivated but heroic character of the Scandinavian, briefly indicated as it is, is yet portrayed with the highest skill. The Greek fixes his choice upon the purest of virgins, upon Crimhild, the High-Priestess of Odin, the daughter of King Sigurd : a civilized Othello fascinating a barbaric Desdemona I She says to him : ** I know not thy country ; I have not even seen it in my dreams ; nor do I know thine enemies ; and yet, O mis- erable virgin, dishonored Priestess, struck by the curse of Odin, I will follow thee!" The scene in which Crim- hild appears for the last time to take her place upon the stone of sacrifice, to sing her last hymn in the holy forest of the God of the North, surrounded by the chiefs of the hordes, by the lords of the plains, by the kings of the sea, is stamped with massive grandeur. Filled with mystic inspiration, her eyes gazing into infinite space, she fore- sees the ages yet to come, hears the hammer of Thor breaking the helmets and bucklers, the breasts and skulls of men into dust ; she sees her brothers, her people, leaving the land of Silver-Torrents, precipitate themselves

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Upon an immense city, a city on seven hills^ of which she vainly tries to find the name, — this name suffocates and escapes her — she writhes to find it — but no utterance re- lieves her tortured breast — she falls to the earth. The Greek then advances from the ranks of the breathless crowd; amidst the universal stupefaction and indigna- tion, he enters the dread and sacred circle, and, bending over the priestess, says to her: "In the name of Rame^ name of thy enemy and mine, I call thee back to life ! Crimhild, rise!** Then turning to the crowd, he thrice cries : Rome ! Rome ! Rome 1 The virgin rises, repeats after him the mysterious name, and then follows the stranger ** as the wife, the husband I**

From this union so strangely assorted by destiny, from this pair settled in an island of the Ionian Sea, where everything recalls the past, two children, pledges of love, are born, whom Amphilochus, on his return from his expeditions in the neighboring archipelagoes, blesses in their sleep with the words : " Remember to hate Rome ! When you shall be grown up, let each of you pursue it with curses ; Iridion, with fire and sword ; and ElsinoS with all the genius and subtleties of woman !" The Pro- logue ends with the touching picture of the death of Crimhild.

Many years pass, and we are transported to Rome, whither Amphilochus had taken the ashes of his wife, his household gods, and his hate. He too is dead, but has left his designs to his son, beautiful as a demigod, ** but pale, because of airthe Roman blood yet wanting to his cheeks!*' Amphilochus has also left his son, as coun- selor, guardian, and friend, Masinissa, an old man whom he had first met in the land of the Getulians when he had lost his way upon a tiger-hunt : he is the walde- lote of the classic Wallenrod. The work of the Greek has ripened, and Iridion has now immense forces at his com- mand, destined to be employed against the accursed city. Through his father he belongs to Hellas and the part of Asia so thoroughly hellenized ; through his mother he is affiliated with the Germans, who begin to throng into Italy, filling the ranks of the cohorts and legions. He has with him the ancient world and the modern, even the

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Romans are on his side, — not the abject freedmen whom the conqueror of Numantia had already repudiated with scorn, and who then formed the senatus populusque, but the true Romans, the legitimate descendants of the old patricians. There is a fine scene in which a wretch named Sporus, by the command of a jester of Heliogabalus comes to assassinate Iridion ; but, ** he was hungry, and in the Palace of Amphilochus they had given him food ; he was thirsty, and they gave him wine ; he had heard his brother gladiators bless the name of the Greek,** and he gives his secret and himself to Iridion. Iridion is struck by the language of the slave ; he discerns the traces of past greatness upon his brow, shining like a lamp in a tomb. . . . **Thy name?** — "Sporus, but formerly Scipio." . . . **I can bring thee a Verres, a Capius, a Sylla, all gladiators like myself." . . . And the son of Amphilochus is filled with joy. But all this is not yet enough ; he must have a vengeance more refined, and above all he must secure himself against the Fatum of the Eternal City. What if he could gain the Emperor himself to side against the empire ! If he could but make the successor of Augustus the instrument of his vengeance, and force the last of the Caesars to destroy with his own hands the last of the Romans ! . . . And why should that be impossible? Had not Nero already tried to bum the city? and the present occupant of the throne, the foolish son of the mad Caracalla, was he not more insensate than Nero, and even more of an artist than he who loved to see the flames flash high ? Besides, the grasp of the ' Greek was already upon Caesar ! Heliogabalus had be- come deeply enamored of Elsinoe, whom Amphilochus had consecrated from her infancy to pursue his work '* by all the genius, all the perfidy of woman !**

The drama opens precisely at this point, when Iridion is saying farewell to his sister, who is about to be taken to the palace of Caesar. Our poet possesses in the highest degree the difficult art of creating female characters, and his works contain a gallery of feminine figures full of pathos and originality. The daughter of Amphilochus has been brought up from infancy in the idea that she is to be the victim to expiate the shame of her fathers and

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the sufferings of many nations ; she has been taught by Masinissa; and the decrees of her brother have hitherto been her law. But when the fatal moment arrives for the accomplishment of her destiny, her soul revolts, and, like Antigone, she bursts into lamentations up>on her doom, upon her youth condemned to pain, her beauty to pro- fanation. Iridion remains inexorable, and refuses all temptation to pity. He leads Elsinoe to the statue of their father.

** Formerly'* — he says to her — " the sacrifice of the life of a man sufficed for nations; now even honor must be offered up ! . . . Maiden, listen to me as to the dying, as if never again to hear my voice on earth I Thou art to enter the Palace of the Accursed, to live with the damned ; to yield thy body to the son of shame : — see to it that thy soul remains. high, pure, and free! Let Caesar never sleep upon thy breast ! Alarm him constantly with cries that the Praetorians call to arms, that the patricians con- spire, and that the people storm his palace gates ! and slowly, day by day, and hour by hour, madden him with rage and fear ; drink all the life-blood of his heart ! Now rise and bow thy head 1 Conceived in the desire of ven- geance, grown up in hope of this revenge, destined to shame and to perdition, I consecrate thee to the infernal gods — and to the manes of Amphilochus the Greek."

It has sometimes been given to poetry to render history probable, thus, for example, the Richard III. of the Chro- nicles first becomes possible for our intellect, or acceptable for our imagination, in the tragedy of Shakespeare. The Anonymous Poet has, in the same manner, succeeded in making us believe in the existence, the reality, of one of those Roman Caesars, who, in spite of Suetonius and Tacitus, have always seemed to us inexplicable enigmas. Through an ingenious and profound art our author has succeeded in unraveling all the elements constituting that remarkable and fantastic being called Heliogabalus. Born under the burning sky of Asia, the son of Caracalla became High-Priest at Emesus at fourteen years of age, and was familiar with all the sanguinary voluptuousness of the worship of Mithras. At seventeen, he was Caesar, master of the world ; and placed upon this giddy height, the

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young man rapidly exhausted all feelings, all sensations. He was a child, with the instincts of a decrepit old man ; his passions were worn out ; his soul was only lighted by the flickering gleams of lubricity. Worlds could not fill the ennui of his heart ; it was the incarnate void 1 In spite of his power, his eye could rest but upon one thing, the abyss into which so many of his predecessors had fallen ; the thought of death everywhere pursued him, and what he most feared in it was the idea of giving up his tender limbs, white as snow, t^.the rage of the popu- lace, for in his own manner he was an artist, he was in love with his own divine form, and if he must die, he in- tended that ** his blood should flow over diamonds before descending to Erebus.'* He had had a jeweled court pre- pared, into which he might precipitate himself in case of sudden danger.

We may now understand the plans founded by Iridion on such a character when it should be shaken and tortured by an arm vigorous as the hammer of Thor, supple as a serpent, white as a lily ; — and Elsiuoe knew well her part 1 She became the strong virgin borne in the bosom of Crim- hild, the Scandinavian Valkyria, with proud looks and haughty scorn when in the presence of the enfeebled son of Asia. Why did he speak to her, this weak Caesar, of his divinities of light, of his Genii of the night, and of his sacrificial powers, so adored by the highest pontiffs of the East ? The daughter of ice and snow despised the effeminate gods who float in clouds of incense, rocked by the sound of flutes, and bathed in the blood of trembling roes or infants newly born I : Ah ! he was very diff*erent, her mother's god and hers, strong Odin, made of oak and steel, who, calm amid rains, snows, and tempests, held a cup of foaming blood of heroes in his stalwart hands, and saw the Northern seas break at his feet I Why did he speak to her of sharing all his splendor, greatness, and infinite power? She knew too well the end of all the Caesars ; the first chance centurion might plunge his knife into the swan-like throat, and throw the divine majesty of Caracalla's son to the dogs to tear ! Does not Severus plot against him even in his own palace? are not the cohorts in revolt even at the gates of his own capital ?

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Before pretending to make the chaste body of a virgin of Odin seek shelter in his arms, he must learn not to tremble ^ himself before his eunuchs and Praetorians; she has no dream of bliss for him who has no morrow ! Heliogabalus foams with baffled desire, with spite, with rage, with fear, — beyond all, with /Jrar/ Yes, it is too true; he is sur- rounded with plots and snares, he must be crushed, and no one can possibly save him ! . . . Yes, replies the Valkyria; in her pity for this wretched master of the world she has prayed for him to her strong gods, and these gods have revealed to her the name of one who could secure the throne of Csesar ; — but she will not give this word. Why should she? The Emperor would not have sufficient courage to appeal to this hero of fate, — he who shivers at his own slaves ! At last, however, she suffers this name to be torn from her lips, — it is the son of Amphi- lochus, her brother ! Heliogabalus then sends for Iridion. The palace of the Caesars opens to the descendant of Philopcemen, nor does he enter it as ^^GraculuSy^ as had so many of his countrymen, as simple poet, ranting rhe- torician, or amusing epigrammist. No, he comes as master, who dictates his commands, and looks scornfully upon the debased throng encumbering the Court. It is an easy thing for him to augment the terror of Heliogabalus, to represent to him his situation as utterly desperate, treason everywhere hatching, and a convulsion ready to break forth, but, after having raised the *fears of the crowned child to their utmost height, he suddenly changes his tone, tells him to take courage, ^r /« this eternal war be- tween the Emperor and the city, shall the ijictory never be with the Emperor? He then unfolds to him a complete, strange, and demoniacal philosophy of history; he shows him Rome in perpetual struggle with its Emperors, ren- dering all government impossible ; Rome, always dream- ing of a republic, and revenging itself upon its rulers by stoical opposition, by well-devised treason, or by bribing the Praetorians ! Rome has unceasingly conspired against and massacred its Caesars ; then let Caesar in his turn play conspirator ! let him give the death-wound to his mortal enemy ! The question now is not of Alexander Severus, of such a cohort, of such a senator ; it is of his great and

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implacable Persecutor ; it is of this Rome^ always enraged against the successors of Augustus ; — of the Eternal City, — not, however, more eternal than Babylon or Jerusalem — both in ruins ! Let but the son of Caracalla bear himself with a strong will ; let him become that which but few heroes have ever dared to be, a Destroyer ; let him leave this accursed place, always in rebellion, to scorpions and serpents 1 The source of the eternal evil thus destroyed, he can return to the country of his birth, "Where men speak freely with the stars,** and under the bright and sunny sky of Asia he will found a new empire. Freed from his sleepless nights, High-Priest and at the same time Caesar, like an Egyptian demigod surrounded by the odor- ous incense of myrrh and aloes, he will pass his happy days, the great names of the past will perish in his brighter fame, and there will no longer be senators nor jurists to dream of republics, nor daring to sneer at Mithras, or the long hanging sleeves of the Oriental costume loved by the Emperor. . . . The perspective shown is full of sublime horror, and well calculated to fire the brain of the son of Caracalla, but the most striking point in this fantastic scene is that it has its r^^z/side ; that it unseals a pregnant thought, to germ in future time and become an historic reality. For the hour will come when the Caesars, step by step, will actually withdraw from the city of the Tiber ; when they will sacrifice Rome to save the empire ; when Constantine shall at last transport the capital of the world into the East; — ^and it is curious to observe how skillfully the presentiment of the work of future ages is wrought into the texture of this extraordinary scene of vengeance and of folly. As to the execution of this plan of destruction, let him confidently trust in the son of Amphilochus. He will introduce into the city the revolted troops who are about to proclaim Alexander Severus; he will advance against them with the Praetorians who are as yet faithful, and while the two armies are slaughtering each other, he will let loose upon them the slaves, the gladiators, the barbarians, and the Nazarenes. The onslaught would be truly grand, the devastation general, Rome would be ruined, and the peace of the successors of Augustus for- ever secured ! Heliogabalus is fascinated by this poetry

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of desolation ; Iridion seems to him a new Prometheus with the stolen heaven-fire. He names him Prefect of the Praetorians, and confides to him the fortune of the Caesars.

The only grave care now of the Greek is with respect to the Christians, the confessors of the Prophet of Naza- reth, whose name we now for the first time hear, although they have for a long time been a subject of anxiety to the Son of Vengeance, for Masinissa had predicted to him that the only danger of the resurrection of Rome would arise from these despised sectaries. Aside from this dark prophecy, the Christians would necessarily enter into the plans of one about to unite all the heterogeneous elements of the empire, in order to unchain them against the empire itself. Obscure, despised, and persecuted, breathing freely only in the Catacombs, the new commu- nity had not the less attracted to itself much that was really great and living, both from among the Romans and barbarians ; it had grown rapidly, and had be- come an imposing force. Alexander Severus had already counted upon it, and was a Christian. The son of Am- philochus had also joined these worshipers of a crucified God ; he had been baptized. Iridion for the Greeks, Sigurd for the Germans, for the Christians he was called Hieronymus. But it was only an external sign and name he had received from them. He did not understand their mystic dogmas ; their doctrines of resignation and pardon only irritated him ; but he intuitively saw that the most dangerous resistance to his plans would spring from them. He did not, however, despair of conquering this rebellious element. He based his hopes upon the fact that he had seen secret and involuntary curses against their butchers germing in the souls of the young, even in the midst of words of charity and forgiveness.

From the Forum and Palace of Rome we are taken into the Catacombs. Poetry and history have alike delighted in placing the empire of Christ in opposition to that of the Caesars ; in contrasting the purity of the primitive Chris- tians with the abject corruption of expiring paganism ; from which has been drawn a glorification for the true God, which, however brilliant, is not just in its method.

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The comparison would only be equitable, if, in opposi- tion to this new world, in all the fullness of its vigorous youth and purity of origin, should be placed the old world, with all it possessed of good and true, and in the beauty of its maturity. Every living being would easily triumph if brought near a corpse I The advantage would not the less surely be with the new law ; it would in fact ht far greater y for the proportions would not have been falsified at the pleasure of the writer. The Anonymous Poet took good care to fall into no such injustice. The conception of the symbolic type, Iridion, the ideal of both ancient and modem Hellas, has enabled the poet to bring epochs widely distant in time near to each other, and place the classic genius, in its most perfect mani- festation, in direct opposition with Christianity, in all its pristine vigor. From paganism in its age of decay, the poet has taken the only grand thing of the era which re- lieved the vices of the Csesars : I mean the great spirit of legislation which, under the most vicious of reigns, col- lected the statutes of the future code, of the Roman law, for which so glorious a future was reserved. With rare skill he has managed to make the celebrated jurist, Domi- tian, a vigorous representative of the antique Roman virtue, as well as a decided antagonist of the Nazarenes. The soul of Cato dwells in the breast of this confidant of Alexander, for whose accession he schemes like a true son of daring antiquity. Imbued with the philosophy of the Stoics, bearing in his heart the image of Rome once so glorious and free, Domitian still does not. think the re- turn to a republic possible ; it was too late for that even in the days of Cassius ; he only prays the gods to give Rome a master capable of rejuvenating the decrepit em- pire, even if, instead of the olive branch, he be forced to bear the axe of the lictor I But let them never speak to him of a crucified God ; let them never seek new vigor there ! The glory of the Eternal City can never be re- stored but by the aid of the principles which had first raised it from the dust: **the mystic rites of the ances- tors, and their inflexible courage."

This is not, however, the supreme dental of the doc- trines of the Sayiour. Their utter negation has been in-

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carnated by the poet in the person of Masinissa^ who is perhaps the most profound and original conception of the whole drama. The counselor of Iridion is not simply a ^^wdidelotey^ he is the Spirit of Evil, Satan himself, — but Satan ingloriously reduced to antique pro- portions, such as a mythology always seeking beauty and serenity, even in the darkest and saddest creations, would have pictured him. Masinissa has neither the bitter and desolating irony of Mephistopheles, nor the tempestuous rage of Milton's fallen angel ; he is a grave and majestic old man. Seek not in him that "eternal and infinite ne- gation" which Goethe has given to Evil ; his hatred IS, on the contrary, very determinate and very plastic. Christianity repels him by that which must have deeply wounded all minds truly and classically antique, — ^by its apparent absence of virile energy, its want of sensuous beauty. The doctrines of submission and resignation, always preached by the confessors of the Cross, appeared to him unworthy of a manly spirit, of a free man ; he called them cowardice ; and there was nothing in Chris- tianity, even to its rehabilitation of woman, — one of the immense benefits of the Gospel, — ^which was not re- volting to all his instincts. ** They adore a maid," he says, ** a creature whose infancy is eternal, whose old age precocious ; they build a strange, mysterious worship upon the ruins of their carnal lusts, and they prostrate themselves before a woman, — before the slave of the hus- bandy . . . Thus, as he saw it, but little fit to inspire vigorous acts, the Christian ideal seemed also to him essentially ugly, ** They are full of admiration