The Undivine Comedy, and Other Poems/Preface to the French Edition
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 voluntarily 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 spontaneous 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 engenders 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 evidence of the moment.
Is it not indeed truly surprising to see this People, which, in the day of its greatest prosperity, and two centuries before its fall, had the fatal foreknowledge of that fall, affirm with the same certainty, now when its ruin is consummated, its approaching resurrection? In this faith, opposed to nature and fact, is there not something resembling 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 translations. The alliance between France and Poland, consecrated 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 public life, the principle of Duty as the "primum mobile" of the State and of the citizen. Is not her martyrdom truly a constant appeal to the selfsacrifice 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 development; 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 country, 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 combat 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 champions 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 extremes and antagonisms, in a reign of peace and happiness. 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 suppression 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 creation 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, demonstrated 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 independence 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 superhuman 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 entrancing fascination of a demigod, he joined the inexorable 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; society 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 oppressed with the oppressors, and conspired with the conspirators. His indomitable energy urged on the conspiring and antagonistic elements to a gigantic and 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 repelled 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 becomes necessary to exact obedience from them! Heliogabalus 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 oppressed 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 renounced 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, "Galilæe, vicisti!" and will be engulfed in his own nothingness! 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, 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. Pancras is the personification of human reason, which deifies itself in its own essence, and believes only in finite calculation,—in action as the result of the power of numbers. Count Henry also personifies human reason, which glorifies 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 suicide. 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 defeat of Pancras by Count Henry would have only resulted in the glorification of the genius of man; and the intervention 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 of 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 manifestations by order, harmony, love, and union, and is the woof in the work of the universe which, in the divine loom. 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 building reared by his ignorance and presumption.
All the generous ardor with which such convictions inspired our Poet, he wrought into the service of his cause in "The Psalms of the Future." Sublime Pleader! 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 nation 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, certain 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 divined 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 demonstrated all that was false in their ideas, all that was culpable in their contemplated acts, dissuading them from their designs; and then, rising to a majestic grandeur of conception, 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 themselves assumed the reply. Truly it was not Poland, but the all-powerful administration of M. Bach, which rose from the massacres in Galicia! 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, as it shall triumph over its despair or abandon itself to torpor! . . . . The Anonymous Poet, always in the breach, felt it now his duty to react against this discouragement, and to use the moral authority he had gained through such tragical occurrences to waken the dormant energies of his compatriots. Under this conviction, he published the "Psalms of Grief and of Good Will," in which, through his ideal, he returns to hope, —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 accumulated 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 decomposition 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 action, but in the midst of this explosion[1] 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 fact, but as a political event, 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 humanitarian 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 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 circumstances, 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 political 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 exactions of rhyme and rhythm. And never had he to complain 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 development, 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 possessed 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 defined 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 accustomed 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 Catholicity, to which the author definitely returned toward the close of his life.
This said, let the reader read and judge!
- ↑ The Revolution of 1848.