LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 J
 
 POLAND
 
 By the tame Author 
 
 MAIN CURRENTS IN 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 BY GEORGE BRANDES 
 
 I. THE EMIGRANT LITERATURE 
 
 II. THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN 
 GERMANY 
 
 III. THE REACTION IN FRANCE 
 
 IV. NATURALISM IN ENGLAND 
 
 V. THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL IN 
 
 FRANCE 
 VI. YOUNG GERMANY 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. A Critical 
 Study. By GEORGE BRANDES. Demy 8vo, 
 buckram uncut, IQS. net. 
 
 HENRIK IBSEN. BJORNSTJERNE 
 BJORNSON. Critical Studies. By GEOKGB 
 BRANDBS. With Introduction by WILLIAM 
 ARCHER. Demy 8vo, Roxburgh, gilt top, or 
 buckram, uncut. los. net. 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN 
 21 BBDKORD STREET, W.C.
 
 POLAND 
 
 A STUDY OF THE LAND 
 PEOPLE AND LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE BRANDES
 
 All rifktt 
 
 Thit Edition tnjoyt copyright in all 
 countries signatory to the Berne 
 Treaty, and is not to be imported 
 intthe United Statett/Amtrica
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSION (1885) 
 
 PACK 
 
 I. JOURNEY FROM VIENNA TO WARSAW THE FRONTIER- 
 CUSTOM-HOUSE INSPECTION 3 
 
 II. WARSAW PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE CITY CONDITION OF 
 THE LANGUAGE AND OF THE THEATRE RUSSIANISA- 
 TION BANISHMENTS u 
 
 III. THE ANTECEDENTS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 
 
 POLES .22 
 
 IV. THE POLES AND THE FRENCH INSTABILITY, DILET- 
 
 TANTISMFEVERISH CHARACTER OF THE PLEASURES 
 OF LIFE STRENGTH AND SUSCEPTIBILITY OF THE 
 
 NATIONAL FEELING 31 
 
 V. CONSOLIDATION OF EVERYTHING POLISH RELIGIOUS 
 
 BELIEFS AND PARTIES POLAND A SYMBOL . .41 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION (1886) 
 THE EXPULSION OF THE POLES BY PRUSSIA 
 
 I. THE POLISH WOMEN 53 
 
 II. THE MEN POLISH IDEALS, VIRTUES, AND VICES . . 58
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 III. EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION DEMOCRATS, SOCIALISTS, 
 FREE-THINKERS COMPULSORY CHOICE OF THE 
 CULTURED 66 
 
 IV. POLISH LIFE AND THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM PUBLIC 
 
 FESTIVITIES AND MASQUERADES, SOCIAL LIFE IN 
 DIFFERENT CIRCLES THE SAME OPPRESSIVE ATMOS- 
 PHERE EVERYWHERE 78 
 
 V. THE CENSORSHIP DIFFICULTIES IN OBTAINING PER- 
 
 MISSION TO DELIVER LECTURES 85 
 
 VI. How ONE WRITES AND SPEAKS UNDER A CENSORSHIP. 93 
 VII. MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE SITUATION ON THE YOUNG . 96 
 VIII. Is POLAND AS AN OBJECT WORTH THE SACRIFICES 
 
 MADE FOR IT? 103 
 
 THIRD IMPRESSION (1894) 
 A POLISH MANOR-HOUSE 
 
 I. NEIGHBOURHOOD LANDSCAPE INCREASED SEVERITY 
 
 OF RUSSIAN RULE 109 
 
 II. CHOLERA CENSORSHIP ARRESTS 115 
 
 III. MONOTONY AND STILLNESS SUMMER-NIGHT SENTI- 
 
 MENTSPOLITICAL DIVERGENCE OF THE OLDER AND 
 YOUNGER GENERATIONS 121 
 
 IV. POLAND AND FRANCE POLAND AND GERMANY . .129 
 V. A CHURCH FESTIVAL POPULAR BELIEFS . . .136 
 
 VI. THE MEMORIAL PROCESSION OF 1894 PAINTERS AND 
 
 WRITERS 142 
 
 VII. A COMMON DOMESTIC OCCURRENCE, SIGNIFICANT OF 
 
 THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY 150 
 
 VIII. NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PATRIOTISM CON- 
 CLUSION 156 
 
 FOURTH IMPRESSION (1899) 
 I.-VIII. LEMBERG 165
 
 CONTENTS vii 
 
 THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE OF POLAND 
 
 IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 (1886) 
 
 POINTS OF CONTACT IN POLISH AND DANISH 
 LITERATURE 
 
 PACK 
 
 I. TENDENCIES COMMON TO ALL EUROPEAN LITERATURES 
 PECULIAR FEATURES RETROSPECT KOCHA- 
 NOWSKI SKARGA JESUITISM FRENCH PHILOSOPHY 
 RATIONALISM 192 
 
 II. POLISH ROMANTICISM DETERMINED BY THE CHARACTER 
 OF THE PEOPLE, BY EUROPEAN ROMANTICISM AND 
 THE POLITICAL SITUATION SPECIAL POINTS OF 
 VIEW FOR THE ANTITHESIS OF CLASSIC AND RO- 
 MANTICWORSHIP OF NAPOLEON AND BYRON- 
 RELATION TO SHAKESPEARE AND DANTE INFLU- 
 ENCE OF EMIGRANT LIFE ON THE SENTIMENT OF 
 WRITERS 199 
 
 III. BRODZINSKI, THE PIONEER OF ROMANTICISM POPULAR 
 
 BALLADS THE UKRAINIAN POETS : MALCZEWSKI, 
 ZALESKI, GOSZCYNSKI 215 
 
 IV. MlCKIEWICZ AND GOETHE FARIS AND THE ODE TO 
 
 YOUTH YOUTH OF MICKIEWICZ MICKIEWICZ AND 
 PUSHKIN 224 
 
 V. THE POLITICAL SITUATION DETERMINES THE MANNER 
 OF TREATING ALL SUBJECTS, THE POINT OF VIEW 
 FOR LOVE AND HATE, MATERNAL AND FILIAL EMO- 
 TIONS, THE RELATION BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND 
 THE PEOPLE, BETWEEN GENIUS AND THE SURROUND- 
 ING WORLD, BETWEEN EMOTION AND REASON, RELA- 
 TION TO RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY .... 239
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 VI. THE Two PRINCIPAL THEMES OF THE LEADING POETS 
 MICKIEWICZ, SLOWACKI, AND KRASINSKI : THE FIRST 
 Two THE POETS OF VENGEANCE, KRASINSKI THE 
 POET OF LOVE 253 
 
 VII. THE CHARACTER OF HAMLET IN POLAND THE TYPE OF 
 HAMLET CONCEIVED ON RADICAL LINES BY SLOWACKI, 
 AND ON CONSERVATIVE LINES BY KRASINSKI . . 269 
 
 VIII. "PAN TADEUSZ," THE ONLY EPOPEE OF THE CENTURY 
 MICKIEWICZ AND RZEWUSKI IMPORTANCE OF 
 MICKIEWICZ 282 
 
 IX. DIVISION AMONG THE POETS DISORGANISATION OF 
 ROMANTICISM POLISH LITERATURE OF TO-DAY- 
 CRITICAL SUMMARY 295 
 
 X. CONCLUSION 308
 
 PART I 
 
 OBSERVATIONS & APPRECIATIONS 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSION 
 
 1885
 
 I 
 
 JOURNEY FROM VIENNA TO WARSAW THE 
 FRONTIER CUSTOM-HOUSE INSPECTION 
 
 AT 1 1 o'clock in the forenoon on the 3rd of February the 
 train left the city of Hans Makart and Johann Strauss, and 
 thoughts and memories of Vienna long continued to revolve 
 in my brain ; cheerful thoughts and bright memories of 
 captivating friendliness, of cordiality, of warmth of feeling, 
 of the ardour of the moment ; of the well-turned speeches 
 of journalists and ex-ministers, the improvisations of young 
 poets, the smiles of elegant women, the jokes and laughter 
 of beautiful soubrettes, the importunities of ladies athirst for 
 literature and autographs ; of the pompous marble halls of 
 Theophilus Hansen, the slovenly splendour of j the Makart 
 Exhibition, and the cosy room where the King of the Waltz 
 gives his recitals of works, which it is true are only very 
 small works of art, but still genuine art ; and for a time I 
 still inhaled the atmosphere of peaceful extravagance, of 
 reckless but kindly joy of life, of amiable second-rate happi- 
 ness, which fills one's lungs in the great witches' cauldron 
 called Vienna. 
 
 Vienna is a city of freedom from restraint. How bright 
 are words, hues, and music there ! 
 
 If the inhabitants of Berlin have appropriated to them- 
 selves the dignity of Schiller's Anmuth und Wurde? grace has 
 become the inheritance of the Viennese. For this is a city 
 by itself, which everything becomes, for it has sound sense 
 enough not to do anything but what is becoming. How 
 rich in recollections and picturesque is it, how rich in strong 
 traditions in comparison with modern regular Berlin ! And 
 
 1 Grace and Dignity. 
 3
 
 4 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 how beautiful is the vicinity, how full of character is the 
 peasants' costume here in the region which we are going 
 through, the long white cloaks with red borders, and how 
 well they know how to wear their clothes in comparison 
 with the North German peasants in their stiff, ugly 
 costume ! 
 
 Austria is a rich land in a comparatively peaceful state 
 of dissolution, where there are many kinds of men, but no 
 Austrians. It is true we must except the imperial family and 
 one or two antiquities of the old Constitutionalists. Besides 
 these there are only Germans in Vienna, as outside Vienna 
 there are only Hungarians, Czechs, &c. 
 
 The train rushes on. A little Polish servant, accom- 
 panying a traveller, calls my attention to a young Russian, 
 who now and then spoke French to him. " He knows 
 very well that I understand Russian, but still he speaks 
 French to me ; that is the way with them all ; they are at 
 heart ashamed of being Russians," an extremely naive but 
 very significant expression of Polish national hatred. 
 
 To profit by the daylight while it lasts, I read Sienkie- 
 wicz's " Bartek Vainqueur " in the Nouvelle Revue. . . . 
 
 The train stopped at Granica, the frontier station. Pass- 
 ports have to be inspected and baggage examined. A blond 
 Russian police soldier, in his becoming uniform, a long 
 grey coat, a cap without a vizor, a sabre at his side, entered, 
 demanded the passports and carried them away. 
 
 Then we received permission and orders to alight. When 
 a traveller suggested that we could leave our rugs, overcoats, 
 and articles of that kind in the carriage, since we were to 
 return to the same train in an hour, the little Pole informed 
 him of his mistake : " Everything must be taken out ; even 
 an umbrella left behind excites suspicion, and if a coat is 
 left, the lining is examined." 
 
 The first things found in my travelling-bag were the two 
 numbers of the Nouvelle Revue, which I had been reading in 
 the carriage. 
 
 " What is this ? " asked the chief of the uniformed 
 custom-house officers in German. 
 
 " What is it ? " I answered. " It is the Nouvelle Revue."
 
 CUSTOM-HOUSE OFFICIALS 5 
 
 "Yes, but what is that?" "A French periodical." 
 " What does it contain ? " " Do you understand French ? " 
 I asked. " No." " Is there any one here who understands 
 French ? " " No." " There are all sorts of things in it ; 
 there are two numbers and there are ten articles in each 
 number. It is impossible to tell in a word what they con- 
 tain." "Then we shall take it and send it to the censor in 
 Warsaw." " Is this periodical forbidden ? " " Everything 
 is forbidden that I do not know, and I do not know this 
 book." He then began to flutter among the leaves, forwards 
 and backwards, and seemed to look for papers concealed in 
 the sheets that had not been cut. I was reminded of the 
 old lithograph which represents a monkey rifling the hand- 
 bag of a traveller and fumbling in his books. 
 
 "Have you any more of this sort?" "Yes, my trunk 
 is half-full of books." They were going to open it, when I 
 heard from another officer the expression, revolver, which I 
 understood, as the word is cosmopolitan. They had found a 
 pistol in my hand-bag. It circulated among them and was 
 examined. "Was it loaded ?"-" Yes, with six balls." 
 " Would I be kind enough to take them out ? " I declined 
 decidedly to be kind enough. "Then we must." They 
 extracted the balls and afterwards found in the bottom of 
 my trunk a little box of balls, which was put with the pistol. 
 
 Then began the examination proper. Every book, every 
 pamphlet was dug out and laid aside ; every newspaper, even 
 the newspapers in which my shoes were wrapped, were taken 
 out, smoothed, and laid in a pile. They asked in what 
 language the books were and what was in them. As my 
 explanation was not found fully satisfactory, they took the 
 whole from me, giving me a receipt for 15 pounds of 
 literature. At the same time they demanded three rubles for 
 the transportation of this same literature to Warsaw. I 
 should have attempted bribery, if Poles had not previously 
 told me that above all things, bribery must not be tried in 
 the wrong place. I should run the risk of their taking the 
 attempt as a proof of evil intentions. It was in vain that I 
 urged that I needed the books which they took from me for 
 my work in Warsaw. It was in vain that I called their
 
 6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 attention to the fact that they might safely leave me the 
 Danish books and newspapers, since no harm could be done 
 with them in Poland, where no one understands Danish. 
 " In the censor's office they understand all languages," was 
 the answer. " Grant that that is true, although I have my 
 doubts ; but the government censor, who is Russian, I 
 cannot corrupt, and the other people do not understand 
 Danish, do they ?" "That is true from your point of view," 
 was the answer, and, acting from their point of view, they 
 kept the books. There was a Danish-French dictionary 
 in the heap ; I showed them that it was a dictionary, that 
 the words were arranged in columns. They racked their 
 brains over it. At last, after mature reflection they gave 
 me the first part, A L, but with very serious looks replaced 
 part M Z among the literature which the censor was to 
 examine. 
 
 " When and how can I get all this again ? " " So far 
 as the books are concerned you can ask for them at the 
 censor's office ; you have a receipt for them. You will get 
 no receipt for the pistol. But you may address a petition 
 on a whole sheet of paper to the Governor-General for 
 permission to carry it, then, if he thinks fit, he can give 
 an order to the custom-house officer in Warsaw to deliver 
 it to you on your application there." 1 
 
 Thus on the very frontier itself we got the feeling that 
 from this point we were outside the precincts of real. 
 European civilisation. 
 
 In such a trifling matter as the custom-house examina- 
 tion the two distinguishing marks of the bulk of Russian 
 prudential regulations can be traced : the oppressive and 
 
 1 During my stay in Warsaw, in spite of my request, he did not give the order. 
 When one of my friends, after my return to Copenhagen, applied on my behalf to the 
 Governor-General for the delivery or return of this weapon which was guiltless of 
 shedding human blood, he received the following answer: He must (i) obtain 
 from me a power of attorney certified by the Russian Consul in Copenhagen ; (2) 
 make application to the Governor-General for permission to take the said revolver 
 over the frontier ; (3) after having received permission, apply to the custom-house at 
 Granica to send the pistol to the headquarters of the custom-house in Warsaw ; (4) 
 send the same by mail to Copenhagen and give proof to the office of the Governor- 
 General that the revolver had actually been sent.
 
 ANOMALIES OF THE CENSORSHIP 7 
 
 the inconsequent. If I had known of the prohibition against 
 having a pistol in my travelling bag, all I needed to do 
 was to put it into my pocket ; for the pockets are not 
 searched. If I had known that it was forbidden to carry 
 foreign books, I might have sent them from Vienna to a 
 bookseller in Warsaw, and I should have received them 
 without any delay. 
 
 The government regulations are not strict enough, and 
 yet so strict that, for fear of dismissal, the subordinate 
 officials are compelled to carry out their duty brutally as 
 well as injudiciously. The absurdities which met me on 
 the frontier, continually meet the foreigner and sometimes 
 the native born. A few years ago, on the Prusso- Russian 
 frontier, one of my friends, who had prepared himself for 
 the medical examination in Warsaw at the time when the 
 University was still Polish, but who was compelled to submit 
 to the examination after it had become Russian, had a 
 Russian grammar, written in Russian, taken from him be- 
 cause the custom-house official did not know the book. 
 
 The Russian rule is not like the Prussian, prudent and 
 uniform ; it is incoherent, absurd, and often entrusted to 
 clumsy hands. The pressure upon Russian Poland is so 
 great that it could not be borne for a month if many of 
 the regulations were not chaotic and meaningless, others 
 too trivial to be executed, others easily avoided by bribery, 
 others entrusted to instruments of so little keenness that 
 their effect is destroyed, and others again to such intelligent 
 and cultivated men that they are not put into practice. 
 
 I had accepted an invitation to deliver three lectures in 
 French in the town-hall of Warsaw. In regard to these 
 lectures I had many difficulties beforehand. I was com- 
 pelled to prepare them in time to send the manuscript 
 to Warsaw a month before my arrival, as they were to 
 be submitted to a double censorship, the usual one, and 
 a special one for public lectures. Since it was certain that 
 if they were sent by the ordinary post they would be 
 detained for an indefinite period at the frontier, it was 
 necessary to find a more convenient means of transit. 
 Ambassadorial courtesy enabled me to send them by a
 
 8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 special hand to St. Petersburg. Thus they reached their 
 destination without any other delay than that caused by the 
 round-about journey. Two copies were prepared and sent 
 to the different censors, but after they had twice been read 
 through in French, a day or two before my arrival in 
 Warsaw a new difficulty arose. The well-known curator 
 of the education department, Apuchtin the same person 
 who had his ears boxed by a student a year ago, which 
 created a commotion and tumult in the whole city at 
 the last moment required that all three lectures should be 
 sent in again in a Russian translation. This and the further 
 examination naturally took time. Nevertheless, to the 
 astonishment of many, not a line was struck out, although 
 the lectures contained not a little which, as it appeared, 
 excited emotion in the listeners. I was told also that the 
 strictness of the censorship was sometimes neutralised by the 
 carelessness or chivalrousness of the examiner ; it seems 
 as if the censor stationed in the hall did not always note 
 very exactly if what is said is really identical with what 
 the lecturer has handed in in his manuscript. 
 
 It appears here, as in innumerable other cases in Russia, 
 that an order or prohibition in order to be absolutely 
 effective requires a whole system of additional regulations. 
 This is especially so when the prohibition against printing 
 anything has a practical object. In January the celebrated 
 old poet Odyniec died in Warsaw. He was the faithful 
 friend and youthful travelling companion of Mickiewicz, 
 politically a neutral, almost a conservative ; but as his 
 name was so intimately associated with memories of the 
 revolt of 1830 and of the period of literary splendour, 
 as, moreover, he had been so close a friend of Mickie- 
 wicz, the most celebrated enemy of the Russian authority, 
 they endeavoured by means of the censor to prevent demon- 
 strations at his funeral. Consequently it was forbidden to 
 give any public notice of the time of his interment, not 
 only in the newspapers, but by the placards which are 
 commonly posted in the streets and before the churches. 
 The prohibition was enforced, but in spite of it a pro- 
 cession of 50,000 persons followed Odyniec to his grave.
 
 THE PASSPORT SYSTEM 9 
 
 It is thus that prohibition and censorship only succeed 
 in acquiring a character for ineffectual spite. This is not- 
 ably the case with the Polish press. It continually happens 
 that an article is forbidden by the censor on a particular 
 day, but a day or two later the author is allowed to make 
 free use of it. The result of this is only that the suspected 
 newspapers are behind their rivals in the discussion of the sub- 
 jects of the day. It continually happens also that an article 
 is forbidden by the censor in one newspaper and allowed 
 in another. 
 
 The passport system has the same character of annoy- 
 ance without profit as this form of censorship. Without a 
 passport, vised by the Russian consul in your place of 
 residence, generally speaking, you cannot cross the frontier 
 into Russia. It is called for, as already stated, in the 
 railway carriage, it is examined in a separate room during 
 the time while the baggage is being searched, and they 
 are so concerned to prevent the traveller from handing 
 it over to some offender or the other, that he does not 
 get his passport back till after he has taken his seat in 
 the train, immediately before the last ringing of the 
 bell ; a police soldier brings the passports in a case pre- 
 pared for the purpose with alphabetical letterings. You 
 hardly reach your place of destination before the passport 
 is again called for ; it is taken to the police office and kept 
 there during the whole stay of the traveller in the city, and 
 the information there given is supplemented by inquiries of 
 the servants in the house where you reside as to the full 
 names of your parents, whether you are married or un- 
 married the unmarried are regarded as the more dangerous 
 as to several matters. And this passport, which is only 
 given back on the day of departure, is examined again for an 
 hour at the station on the frontier through which you pass 
 on your return journey. 
 
 Nevertheless this vigilance also has a gap by which its 
 results are almost wholly destroyed. There is hardly 
 any attempt to ascertain whether the person named in 
 the passport is the same who has presented it. They 
 evidently have no means of knowing whether the name is
 
 io IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 right, but as the passports are examined en bloc in a sepa- 
 rate room from that in which the travellers are collected, 
 they do not attempt to find out if the description cor- 
 responds with the person. As nothing is easier than to 
 procure a passport in Germany, Austria, England or 
 France, and then remain at home and let a friend travel 
 with it, the result is wholly out of proportion to the 
 trouble and annoyance to say nothing of the fact that 
 hundreds who have no passports are daily guided over 
 the frontier on foot by men who are pointed out to every 
 one who needs them. 
 
 I had abundant opportunity of thinking over this subject, 
 as during the tiresome delay I walked up and down among 
 the tea- and grog-drinking idlers in the dirty waiting-room 
 at Granica, annoyed by intruders anxious to change my 
 Austrian money into rubles, consoled by others who ex- 
 plained to me that the officials were quite within their rights 
 in their treatment of me ; that the fact of my books being 
 in Danish was no security ; who could vouch for it, that 
 they did not contain accounts of the socialist congress in 
 Copenhagen ! 
 
 At last I got back what was left in my trunk for my 
 own disposal, and without anything contraband except what 
 I had in my head, I arrived the next morning in Warsaw.
 
 II 
 
 WARSAW PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE CITY CONDITION 
 OF THE LANGUAGE AND OF THE THEATRE 
 RUSSIANISATION BANISHMENTS 
 
 WARSAW (Warszawa) is a city of more than 400,000 in- 
 habitants. As is well known, it is situated on the river 
 Vistula (Wisla), a broad river, over which of late years a 
 great iron bridge has been built from the square where 
 the castle is situated to the suburb Praga, so tragically 
 celebrated in the history of Poland. I don't know if it was in 
 consequence of Hauch's beautiful song that the stream in its 
 winter dress, full of grey floating ice, appeared so melancholy. 
 
 The city is of great extent, but with its decayed grandeur 
 and the horrible memories it calls up at every turn, it 
 makes a mournful impression. In the last century, next 
 to Paris, it was the most brilliant city in Europe ; now 
 it is a Russian provincial town. It then had the character 
 of prodigal splendour ; now it is a forlorn, neglected place, 
 which declines more and more every day, not the least thing 
 being done by the authorities for its appearance and im- 
 provement. It cuts one to the heart to see the wretchedly 
 paved streets, or the terrible old sandstone figures in the 
 Saxon garden, on coming from a luxurious city like Vienna, 
 or one which has blossomed out with such rapidity as Berlin. 
 
 For whereas the capitals of countries elsewhere are 
 generally the object of the rulers' care, almost of their 
 tenderness, and cities elsewhere from mere self-love take 
 heed of beauty and convenience, and strive to provide as 
 great attractions for country folks and for foreigners as 
 possible, Warsaw is the capital of a country whose existence 
 the government does not recognise, and is a city whose pride
 
 12 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 the government wishes to humble in every way. We must 
 remember that Warsaw has no ll home rule," no civic council, 
 and nothing at all like it. Russian Poland is altogether a 
 country where nothing is elected. As there is no parliament, 
 so also there is no municipal government. Only a part of 
 the taxes collected in the city is used for the city itself, the 
 remainder goes to St. Petersburg. Russian self-esteem 
 makes all the arrangements, and Russian covetousness carries 
 them out. The condition of the roads in the vicinity of 
 the city is only to be understood by one who knows the 
 Russian idea in Poland, the rule that when 80,000 rubles 
 are appropriated to a highway, 40,000 must go into the 
 pockets of the officials. No illusion has been left to the 
 inhabitants of the city. As long ago as the i6th of 
 October, 1835, when the Tzar Nicholas visited Warsaw 
 for the first time after the great rising of the people in 
 1830-31, he said plainly to the deputation which came 
 to greet him, that the castle, which he had caused to be 
 constructed, was built not for the protection of the city, but 
 against it ; he threatened the Poles with the misfortunes 
 which awaited them if they did not give up their " dream of 
 a separate nationality, an independent Poland, and all such 
 chimeras," and he concluded with the words : " I have caused 
 this castle to be built, and I declare to you that at the least 
 attempt at insurrection I will have the city blown to pieces, 
 and I will then have it razed to the ground, and depend 
 upon it, it shall not be rebuilt during my reign." 
 
 Since the unfortunate revolution of 1863, nothing at 
 all has been undertaken for the cleanliness or well-being of 
 the place, though by reason of a lack of waterworks and 
 sewerage the beautiful city is one of the least healthy in 
 Europe. The bed of the streets is so soft that the paving 
 stones fall away from each other in ridges and holes, but 
 nothing has been done since 1863 to repair them ; nay, in all 
 these years, with the exception of the town-hall, which was 
 burned at that date, not a public building has been erected. 
 The whole of the civil and military administration is carried 
 on in confiscated private and public buildings. Time 
 destroys whatever it will without any one seeking to repair
 
 MONUMENTS IN WARSAW 13 
 
 the damage. Thorwaldsen's Copernicus, which is so popular 
 in Warsaw that the common people call a statue a Coper- 
 nicus, is covered with dirt, but is never cleaned. The 
 pedestal is crumbling away under it, but no one restores it. 
 The Copernicus is one of the oldest statues of the city. It 
 was completed and unveiled May n, 1830, after the dis- 
 tinguished author Stanislaw Staszic (1755-1826), the first 
 great orator of the Polish democracy, who gave all that he 
 possessed to objects for the public good, had made a contri- 
 bution of 70,000 Polish florins to the national subscription 
 for the erection of the memorial. On the other hand, the 
 monument to Prince Joseph Poniatowski which Thor- 
 waldsen had undertaken during his stay in Warsaw, Sep- 
 tember-October, 1820, and which in 1829 arrived in the 
 city to be cast in bronze, was indeed unveiled the same 
 day as the Copernicus, but was removed, as soon as the 
 revolt of 1831 was quenched in blood. It is now to be 
 found rebaptized as a St. George, and inaccessible, in the 
 grounds of a Russian private citizen, the Prince of Warsaw, 
 not far from the city. 
 
 The only public memorials in good condition are : the 
 colossal monument to Paskiewicz in the middle of the 
 main street of the Cracow Suburb (Krakowskie Przed- 
 miescie), erected in gratitude because he, " trusty and active 
 as the knout in the hands of the executioner " (Mickiewicz) 
 in September, 1831, when the last heroic defenders had 
 blown themselves up into the air, conquered the redoubts 
 before Warsaw and entered the city and the great iron 
 obelisk, commemorating the names of the Poles, who, in 
 1831, informed against their countrymen, and were hanged 
 or shot on that account as traitors or spies. On the 
 sumptuous granite pedestal rest four metal lions. About 
 the base of the obelisk are horrible-looking heraldic eagles 
 with two heads of supernatural size. The inscription in 
 Russian and Polish over the names reads thus : " The Poles 
 who fell for fidelity to their Sovereign." This obelisk very 
 possibly misses its mark in Warsaw ! 
 
 The street traffic is by no means inconsiderable ; in the 
 markets there is the same life as everywhere else where
 
 14 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 buying and selling take place in the open air. But it strikes 
 the stranger that in those places where the people are to be 
 seen in large numbers, as on their Sunday promenades in 
 the principal streets, they never have the contented and 
 well-to-do Sunday look common in other large cities, but a 
 melancholy or brooding expression. A merry scene is 
 never witnessed in the street, and a joke is never overheard. 
 
 The physiognomy of the city does not, however, lack 
 character. The Circassian regiments (that is to say, in 
 reality Cossacks and Armenians in Circassian costume) with 
 their fur caps, their sabres at their sides, their yataghans in 
 their belts, have a picturesque oriental appearance. Every 
 moment also you meet among the less characteristic Polish 
 carriages a Russian equipage, in which a Russian officer 
 is driven by a coachman in the long black national costume 
 with the blue scarf round the waist. 
 
 One of the most noticeable things, so far as externals are 
 concerned, in the streets of Warsaw is, that without exception 
 all the names (even of the streets), all the signs, all the 
 notices are in two languages or two kinds of characters ; on 
 the left side the inscriptions are in Polish, on the right in 
 Russian, or above in Russian and below in Polish. It is 
 a little element in the contest which the government keeps 
 up to force the foreign language on the Polish nationality. 
 
 Recently the government has even begun to try to 
 introduce the Russian language into the Roman Catholic 
 Church. On account of a refusal to carry out an order of 
 this kind, the Bishop of Wilna, Hryniewiecki, was exiled to 
 Yaraslaw, and some weeks later his substitute, Harasimowicz, 
 to Wologda. 
 
 The only place where it is allowed to speak the Polish 
 language publicly is on the stage. As yet it is not forbidden 
 to give Polish theatrical representations, and this circumstance 
 has given to the theatre a preponderance in Polish intel- 
 lectual life, which is intelligible, but unfortunate, and so much 
 the more harmful and unnatural as the dramatic litera- 
 ture of the country is rather poor. There is something 
 depressing in seeing this seriously constituted and highly 
 endowed people attributing an importance to the theatre
 
 THE POLISH STAGE 15 
 
 which it by no means deserves in a nation without pro- 
 nounced dramatic qualities. If many of the best literary 
 men have devoted themselves to theatrical criticism, it is 
 because in the guise of examination and analysis of the ideas 
 put forward in the plays, they can say and suggest much 
 which it would be impossible to advance without this oppor- 
 tunity or veil. 
 
 The theatre in Warsaw is on the decline at the present 
 moment. It is directed by a courtier who is bitterly hated, 
 and who rules it in a military fashion, without the least 
 artistic insight. It has indeed one important comic actor, 
 but otherwise no men of talent of the very first rank, and 
 no contemporary school of dramatic authors who could 
 place peculiarly national aims before the younger men who 
 frequent it. The greater part of the repertoire consists of 
 French plays, and the style of acting is essentially French. 
 However, in Helen Marcello, the theatre in Warsaw has an 
 actress who fascinates by her beauty and her glow of passion, 
 and only a few years since it had two admirable actresses 
 who would shine on any stage. 
 
 One, Madam Popiel-Svienska, whom I saw play at a 
 performance for a charity in Pailleron's " L'Etincelle," 
 was a roguish and delicately emotional ingenue; a chubby 
 little figure, youthful in her movements, with a delicate 
 face, which shone with goodness of heart, its shadows 
 dimples and its sunbeams smiles. When this lady married 
 an elderly man of high rank, he demanded (like the egoist 
 in Musset's Bettine) that she should retire from the stage, 
 and she complied with his humour, although the public in 
 Warsaw even now constantly embraces every opportunity 
 to protest against this determination. At the passage in 
 " L'Etincelle " where she says something to this effect : 
 " I must play comedy again," by a previous agreement 
 among the spectators hundreds upon hundreds of bouquets 
 were thrown upon the stage, so that the play was interrupted 
 for several minutes. 
 
 The second and far greater actress Poland has pro- 
 duced, who now enjoys a world-wide reputation, since of 
 late years she has played chiefly in English, in London
 
 16 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 and North America, and only for six weeks in each year 
 appears at the theatre in Warsaw, is generally known by 
 her first husband's name, as Mme. Modrzejewska. The Poles 
 are justly proud of her ; she is one of the wonders of the 
 nation. When in 1879 a national greeting was to be given 
 to Kraszewski on his fiftieth anniversary as an author, Helena 
 Modrzejewska was asked to come to Cracow and take part in 
 the play at the festival in honour of the prolific author. Her 
 appearance, like her art, is of the grand style. She has a 
 brilliant beauty, is now (1888) over forty years old, but her 
 figure is still slender and elegant without meagreness, and 
 her face, with its regular features, large dark eyes, pure 
 strong lines of the mouth, and the Asiatic grace of her 
 smile can never lose its beauty. I have seen her in " Dalila," 
 by Feuillet, in Sardou's " Odette," and in " L'Etincelle," and 
 I have never in my life seen better art than hers, when 
 as Odette during a visit to her daughter she has to suppress 
 the maternal feelings which overpower her. One of Mme. 
 Modrzejewska's best roles is Nora in Ibsen's " Doll's House " ; 
 I had a great wish to see her in it, and she was almost 
 equally eager to play it for a countryman of the author ; 
 but we did not count on the despotism of the director of 
 the theatre, who withdrew his consent at the last moment, 
 from pure spite. 
 
 Mme. Modrzejewska prefers to play Shakespere, and her 
 English repertoire consists almost wholly of Shakesperian 
 roles. She is indebted to her present husband, an ex- 
 tremely artistic man of the world, Karol Chlapowski, for her 
 taste for English poetry, as well as for her higher develop- 
 ment as an artist generally. Naturally enough, she felt 
 the need of a broader sphere for her talents than that offered 
 by the Polish language. But there is great danger that the 
 life of travel as a star, which she has led of late years, will 
 compel her to restrict her art to its coarser effects. 
 
 While the stage, as I have just said, is still Polish, the 
 Polish language is absolutely forbidden in the University. 
 All lectures, no matter whether they are delivered by men of 
 Russian or Polish birth, must be in Russian. Not even the 
 history of Polish literature may be taught in the language
 
 REGULATIONS AGAINST SPEAKING POLISH 17 
 
 of the country. Nay, even in the corridors of the University 
 the students are forbidden to speak Polish with each other. 
 
 Even more dangerous to Polish nationality is that pro- 
 vision of the law which requires that all instruction in the 
 schools shall be in Russian. Even the scanty instruction 
 in the Polish language is given in Russian. And so strict 
 is the prohibition against speaking Polish in playtime, or 
 generally in the school-grounds, that a boy of twelve 
 years old was recently shut up for twenty-four hours in the 
 dark because coming out of school, he said to a comrade 
 in Polish : " Let us go home together." But the regime 
 to which the schools are subjected with regard to the 
 suppression of the national peculiarities is not confined to 
 the domain of language. In a family which I was invited 
 to visit the following incident happened. The son of the 
 family, a boy of sixteen, the only son of a widow, one 
 evening in the theatre had thrown a wreath to Helena 
 Modrzejewska on behalf of his comrades. A few days after, in 
 obedience to an order from the Minister of Education, the 
 principal of the school called him up, and told him 
 that he must not only leave the school, but that all future 
 admission to any other school whatever was forbidden him ; 
 it was the punishment for having been guilty of a Polish 
 demonstration. The boy went home and put a bullet through 
 his head. 
 
 We may perhaps wonder that provisions which in 
 certain circumstances drive a half-grown lad to suicide 
 are maintained, or that so innocent a thing as the throwing 
 of a wreath is forbidden. But the answer is, that as, a 
 rule everything which betrays a love for the language is 
 forbidden in Warsaw. 
 
 For instance, strange as it may appear, it is forbidden 
 to give instruction to the common people, because instruc- 
 tion can only be given in Russian, which the common 
 people do not understand. Their ignorance is very great ; 
 only one-fifth of the population can read and write. This 
 strikes even the stranger who only remains for a few 
 weeks in Warsaw ; a coachman there is never seen reading 
 his newspaper as in other cities ; nay, the coachmen, as 
 
 B
 
 1 8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 a rule, do not even know the numbers. You tell them 
 the name of the street, say, as soon as you come into it, " to 
 the left " or " to the right," and signal them when to stop. In 
 the country the ignorance of everything to be learned from 
 books must be extraordinary. Nevertheless, it recently hap- 
 pened that a young lady, who on her own estate was privately 
 teaching four or five peasant children, received an injunc- 
 tion from the highest judicial officer of the district to 
 desist immediately, since he, who had known her parents, 
 was very unwilling to be the cause of her being sent far away, 
 which would inevitably be the result if she, by continuing 
 her efforts, compelled him to make a report thereon. 
 
 Whenever prosperous and patriotic people have asked 
 permission to establish Polish country schools they have 
 been refused. When at last several rich Poles, in their 
 despair at the low level of civilisation of their people, gave 
 way, and with the idea that Russian teaching was better 
 than none at all, began to open Russian schools, no one 
 attended ; the peasants preferred ignorance to instruction 
 in a foreign tongue. 
 
 Now and again the government stretches the bow so 
 tightly that it breaks. For instance, about ten years ago an 
 ukase provided that all domestic letters should be directed 
 in Russian characters. When as a result of this, the number 
 of letters was so greatly reduced that a considerable falling 
 off in the postal receipts was perceptible, they were com- 
 pelled to allow the decree to lapse. 
 
 The arrangements which tend to bring the ownership 
 of the soil into Russian hands correspond to the endeavours 
 of the government to Russianise the language. When the 
 last great revolt was suppressed, an ukase was issued (Dec. 10, 
 1865) which prohibited the Poles from acquiring any land 
 in the old Polish provinces of Lithuania, Podolia, Wolhynia, 
 and Ukrainia, nay, which prohibited their bequeathing 
 their real estate in these provinces to any other persons than 
 their lineal descendants. Yet according to law, since the 
 revolt there have been no Poles ; they are all Russians. 
 Even the Kingdom of Poland is called officially Vistulaland. 
 It was thought, therefore, that by Poles the government
 
 REGULATIONS AFFECTING TENURE OF LAND 19 
 
 meant the adherents of the Roman Catholic creed in old 
 Poland, and that the prohibition would not be extended to 
 others. But on inquiry as to who the Poles were, the 
 answer was : " The Governor-General decides the nation- 
 ality," an answer which left no hope. 
 
 No blow could have struck the Polish national cause 
 more severely than this ukase ; for no country lies nearer 
 to the hearts of the Poles than Lithuania, which since the 
 days of Jagiello and Jadwiga (since 1386) has been united 
 with Poland, and in spite of the difference of language, 
 has felt itself to be a Polish land. Many of the leading 
 men of Poland natives of the region have echoed the 
 celebrated words of Mickiewicz : 
 
 Lithuania, like health art thou my fatherland ! 
 
 He who has never felt the want of thee has never known thy worth. 
 
 It was natural that when possible they evaded the law 
 by occupying and cultivating as tenants the land they 
 did not dare to possess as owners, a course which was 
 facilitated by the fact that the principal Russians, who 
 had government donations of Lithuanian estates, soon 
 felt themselves so isolated and so much out of place 
 in the country, that they were content to abandon their 
 new possessions, or at least to leave the care and cultivation 
 of them to others. The danger that after a while the 
 Russians would buy up all the land and soil of Lithuania 
 thus seemed to be warded off. But a short time ago a 
 new ukase of December 27, 1884, which set Warsaw in 
 a blaze, ordered that no Pole and the Governor-General 
 determines the nationality should be allowed to lease, act 
 as steward for, or manage the estates in any of the parts 
 of the country specified in the previous order, and which 
 seems still more rigorous to Western Europeans this ukase 
 has a retrospective force, so that all the earlier contracts 
 of lease or stewardship were declared by it to be null. 
 Effective power cannot be denied to a decree of this kind. 
 
 And of similar import are several of the regulations 
 which have been made of late to strike at those who have 
 some intellectual object in view.
 
 20 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Besides the ineffective censorship already spoken of there 
 is one which is effective. The weekly newspaper, Prawda 
 (Truth}, the most progressive newspaper in Poland, the organ 
 of the Positivists, has 3400 lines. It has happened that for 
 a single number 7000 lines have been erased before the 
 paper was published. The censor seems to be so capricious 
 that it is impossible to foresee what will be allowed. The 
 editor, the celebrated author, Alexander Svientochowski, 
 writes as if there were no censor, and as an editor he cannot 
 send his articles to any other paper. 
 
 The supervision of everything written would seem at 
 least to ensure that the writers would escape punishment ; 
 for since nothing can be printed unless it has been read 
 and approved, it would seem impossible to do wrong as an 
 author. Nevertheless, young authors are to be met with 
 who have repeatedly suffered a punishment of from three 
 to five months' imprisonment in the interior of Russia ; 
 they were punished for their intentions, for what was struck 
 out, or rather, they do not certainly know what they were 
 punished for, since they are struck at not by a law, but by 
 a police regulation. 
 
 The fact is the government does not need a law to attain 
 its end ; it has at its command what is better, the adminis- 
 trative way, and this administrative way means, as a rule, 
 Siberia. 
 
 I have named the word which is in the air in Warsaw, 
 the spectre which broods over the city like a nightmare, the 
 threat which lurks about every man's door, the memory of 
 which is to be read in the faces of so many men and women. 
 
 The first lady I took in to dinner on the first day of 
 my stay in Warsaw a beautiful, elegant woman with a 
 Mona-Lisa smile, and something proud in her bearing 
 spent three years in the mines of Siberia. She had carried 
 a letter during the revolt. 
 
 The next evening in a not very large room, more than 
 two hundred years of Siberia were collected. There were 
 not a few men who had spent from 1863-83 there, if we 
 reckon the time it took for them to go on foot ; this takes 
 more or less time according to the situation of the place
 
 DEPLETION OF POLAND 21 
 
 of exile in Siberia, but always a very long time, and the 
 journey on foot is one of the most painful portions of the 
 period of punishment. From Kief to Tobolsk it takes a 
 year ; to the Nertschink mines in the department of Irkutsk 
 more than two years. One evening at a party a young man 
 asked me to talk a little with his father who was sitting in 
 a corner. " He is," he said, " the old man with one leg you 
 see there." He had lost a foot in the revolt, was exiled, and 
 had been obliged to walk the whole distance on his wooden 
 leg ; it took him two winters and one summer. 
 
 Of course those who return from exile are taken care 
 of in Warsaw as they are always penniless, since confiscation 
 of real and personal property is part of the punishment. 
 Of the several surviving members of the national govern- 
 ment of 1863, one keeps a book-shop, another has a private 
 situation, and so on. 
 
 After the revolt about fifty thousand Poles in all were 
 carried out of the country. They were either sentenced to 
 hard labour in the salt works and mines or in the forts, or 
 (for the most part) to domicile in some country village 
 from which it would be impossible for them to escape, 
 yet with narrowly restricted choice of occupations. Others 
 again would be allowed to move freely within certain 
 limits ; yet even they were strictly forbidden certain occupa- 
 tions, as, for instance, all kinds of teaching. They were taken 
 to their places of destination in bands of about three 
 hundred persons, guarded by Cossacks and watch-dogs, 
 passing the nights in large sheds, where there were pallets 
 for the women and children, while the others slept as 
 they could. It is estimated that there are about one 
 thousand Poles in Siberia, but of the so-called Wodworency 
 that is, wandering peasants or petty nobles of Lithuania 
 several thousand. 
 
 Intellectually few countries would have been able to 
 survive such a depletion as Poland has endured for the last 
 twenty years. Only think what one-tenth of the loss of five 
 thousand or one-hundredth of the loss of five hundred of its 
 most advanced sons and daughters by an exile of many years 
 would mean for Denmark !
 
 Ill 
 
 THE ANTECEDENTS AND CHARACTERISTICS 
 OF THE POLES 
 
 AT the commencement of the century what was the condi- 
 tion of this people on which this pressure of foreign rule 
 rests, which, sundered into three parts, with an imperial 
 eagle over each part of its divided body, still lives and seeks 
 to convince indifferent Europe of its power and vitality ? 
 
 It was a people which at the brightest time of its re- 
 generation fell a victim to the breach of faith and covetous- 
 ness of a foreign power. 
 
 From the close of the fourteenth to the close of the 
 sixteenth century Poland had been the important power of 
 Eastern Europe, and had extended from the Baltic to the 
 Black Sea, from the Elbe and the Oder to the Dnieper, over 
 a territory of more than 20,000 square miles. Poland was 
 a great republic, with an elective king, or more exactly, a great 
 democracy of nobles ; for the nobility was so numerous, so 
 accessible, so zealous to maintain the political equality of 
 every single noble with greater peers, that the constitution, 
 though it conferred rights only on the nobility, had a demo- 
 cratic stamp. The organisation of the diet carried out the 
 idea of almost unlimited freedom for the individual. 
 
 The weak point in the state organisation was that the 
 nobility (Szlachtd) was only a class of from 800,000 to 
 1,000,000 men in a population of from 8,000,000 to 
 13,000,000, and that the ruling class, after having realised 
 its ideal of freedom and vitality, stood still in a dead con- 
 servatism. Until the middle of the eighteenth century 
 society was immovable, because the nobility regarded every 
 reform as an attack upon their freedom, and enthusiastically 
 upheld not only the free choice of a king, which had
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF 1791 23 
 
 degenerated into an actual auction of the crown to the 
 highest bidder, but also the liberum veto that is, the right 
 of every single member of the diet to prevent any enactment 
 by his protest. 
 
 Ideas of reform mostly from France made way slowly 
 in the last half of the eighteenth century, when it was too 
 late. They did not become predominant till after the first 
 partition of Poland in 1772. From that time forth Polish 
 politicians subjected the existing arrangements to a persistent 
 criticism, the political results of which were shown in the 
 celebrated four years' diet, which met a year before the 
 breaking out of the French Revolution. In this diet the 
 strong national party, in constant conflict with the obdurate 
 aristocrats, who were not very numerous, and the venal 
 traitors who were partisans of the Tzarina Catherine, worked 
 incessantly, secretly, and harmoniously at the reform of the 
 constitution. Finally, May 3, 1791, an epoch-making date 
 in Polish intellectual life, the constitution which had been 
 prepared (an excellent work for those days, which, among 
 other things, made the royal power hereditary, established a 
 responsible ministry and abolished the liberum veto) was 
 discussed, adopted, and sworn to by the king and the 
 members of the diet in common in a nine hours' session. 
 A fact like the adoption of this constitution is strong 
 evidence against the alleged unfitness of Poland for self- 
 government. 
 
 If the people themselves had dared to decide their fate, 
 they would easily have got the better of that little group of 
 reactionary nobles who, as early as 1792, met in Targowice, 
 at the instance of Russia, to invoke Russia for the protection 
 of their old liberties ; but the weak Stanislaus Augustus, as 
 is well known, submitted to the pressure from St. Petersburg, 
 broke his oath, and joined the confederation at Targowice. 
 Thus when the Prussian army, under the pretence of fighting 
 against Jacobinism, but in reality to divide the booty with the 
 Tzarina, invaded the land in 1793, the second partition of 
 Poland was carried out. 
 
 Then followed the first great Polish rebellion, under 
 Kosciusko as Dictator. After a three days' fight the Russians
 
 24 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 were driven out of Warsaw and in a short time Wilna, the 
 capital of Lithuania, was also liberated. With varying suc- 
 cess the contest was continued amidst victory, defeat, and 
 treachery, until Kosciusko on the sudden arrival of Suvorow 
 on the battlefield lost the battle almost won at Maciejo- 
 wice, and, severely wounded, fell into the hands of the 
 Russians. 1 Suvorow carried Praga by assault, and after 
 causing 20,000 men to be cut down on the 8th of Novem- 
 ber, entered Warsaw. In 1795 came the third and last 
 partition. There was no longer any kingdom of Poland. 
 But there was still a Polish people a people who had 
 heroic, chivalrous, brilliant, useless qualities enough, but 
 very few of the useful, civic virtues. It was an enthusiastic 
 and unpractical people, noble-minded and untrustworthy, 
 pomp-loving and volatile, vivacious and thoughtless, a people 
 who despised severe and fatiguing labour, and loved all 
 intense and delicate, sensuous and intellectual enjoyments, 
 but, above all, who worshipped independence to the point 
 of insanity, freedom to the extent of the liberum veto, and 
 who even now, when they had lost independence and free- 
 dom, had remained faithful to their old love. 
 
 It was a credulous and confiding martial people, always 
 ready to risk their lives upon a promise, which no one 
 thought of keeping. 
 
 Consider the relation of this people to Napoleon, on 
 whom, after the last partition of the country, they naturally 
 fixed their hopes. Only two years after the partition, 
 General Dombrowski agreed with Bonaparte that the Polish 
 legions (in national uniform, but under French leaders) 
 should fight in Italy with the soldiers of the republic. The 
 Poles received many a blow for the French in Lombardy 
 in 1797 and in the Italian campaign of 1798-99. The 
 first legion was almost annihilated under Dombrowski in 
 the battles of Trebbia and Novi ; the second under Wiel- 
 horski entered Mantua, which the Austrians were besieging ; 
 when the French were compelled to capitulate they bound 
 themselves to surrender these deserters that is, the Poles 
 to their masters. Nevertheless the Poles raised new legions, 
 
 1 His famous exclamation, "Finis Polonies!" is a legend of later invention.
 
 POLISH LEGIONS UNDER NAPOLEON 25 
 
 and took part during the Consulate in the battles on the 
 Danube and in Italy. But neither the treaty of peace at 
 Luneville in 1801 nor that of Campo Formio in 1797, 
 contained any article in which the name of Poland was 
 mentioned. 
 
 Nevertheless the Poles, deceived by lying promises, hoped 
 at every new campaign that by alliance with the French 
 troops they should succeed in restoring Poland. The cele- 
 brated song which the soldiers of the legion had composed 
 far from their native land, " The Dombrowski March " " It 
 is not yet all over with Poland, not so long as we live " 
 contains this thought. 
 
 But after the peace of Luneville, Bonaparte, who aspired 
 to imperial dignity, merely wished to keep the Poles as a 
 bodyguard for himself, and when General Kniaziewicz 
 answered him by demanding his dismissal, he determined 
 to get rid of them. They were first sent to Italy, and there 
 it was announced to them that they were to go to St. 
 Domingo to put down an insurrection of negroes who were 
 fighting for freedom. Their protests availed nothing. Threat- 
 ened on all sides with artillery, they were embarked at 
 Genoa and Leghorn, and in the unhealthy climate and in 
 the terrible war nearly all perished. 
 
 And yet the Polish legions again fought by the side of 
 the French at Jena. At the peace of Tilsit Russia was 
 treated leniently, while out of what was then Prussian 
 Poland the little Grand-Duchy of Warsaw was created. But 
 this was enough to arouse anew the confidence of the Poles 
 and win their whole trust. When preparations were made 
 for the campaign against Russia, it was in vain that Kosciusko 
 resisted Napoleon's hypocritical advances and flatteries, and 
 demanded positive and publicly given promises. When 
 Fouche was unable to induce Poland's dictator to give his 
 name by threats, they imitated his signature, and by a 
 shameless forgery issued a proclamation signed by Kosci- 
 usko to the Polish people, which earnestly entreated the 
 Poles to unite their forces with those of the French. It 
 might have been supposed that they were cured of the 
 worship of Napoleon. But in spite of everything which had
 
 26 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 happened, when, in 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen, by 
 simply calling his Russian campaign the second Polish war, 
 he induced 80,000 Poles under Josef Poniatomski to accom- 
 pany him. The following year only 8000 of them came 
 back. 
 
 The Poles are as vivacious as Southerners, but they are 
 not a politically prudent people, educated in the school of 
 Machiavelli, like the Italians, who understood how to make 
 the French pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. 
 They are a people whose legions Napoleon induced to shed 
 their blood on a hundred battlefields merely by holding the 
 white eagle before them, and a people whose battalions 
 Steinmetz, in 1870, induced to storm the terrible heights at 
 Spicheren, by allowing the Prussian bands to play the 
 melody of the national song, Jeszcze Polska nie zginela, which 
 is prohibited in Posen in time of peace. 
 
 Such a youthful or childish enthusiasm is certainly not a 
 sustaining element in the great struggle for life of the nations 
 in industrial and militarian ages. It does not flourish in 
 conjunction with thrift, industry, discipline, moderation, and 
 civil prudence, qualities which ensure the continuance of the 
 individual and of the state. 
 
 In old descriptions of the Poles it is commonly said 
 that their chivalry and personal bravery can be counted on 
 under all circumstances, but that there is something of vanity 
 in their magnanimity, something volatile in their generosity, 
 that they are obstinate, combative and quarrelsome, recog- 
 nising no higher law than their own will, and incapable of 
 keeping this will long on the same point. They are com- 
 monly represented as poor economists, very easily involved 
 in pecuniary embarrassments, however large their incomes, 
 as turning over thousands of books, but not studying any, 
 as being exceedingly erratic, and wasting their time and 
 talents. It has been charged against them that at the very 
 time they were raving over ideas of freedom, they were 
 playing the autocrat towards their peasants, and that though 
 they are the most tender husbands, they have two or three 
 mistresses as well as the adored wife. In brief, a combina- 
 tion of eastern and western peculiarities is ascribed to them.
 
 POLISH CHARACTERISTICS 27 
 
 Probably there was a great deal of justice and truth in 
 this older view. It is therefore interesting to inquire which 
 of these characteristics the foreign rule has developed and 
 which it has obliterated. 
 
 Love of external splendour is necessarily repressed. It 
 is evidently not killed. Love for all that is symbolised so 
 profoundly by the father's plume in Cherbuliez's Ladislaus 
 Bolski, lies deep in the Polish nature. The father's red and 
 white plume, which Ladislaus always carries with him in 
 a case, is the glittering principle of grandeur. And it is 
 extremely significant that in one of the leading poets of 
 Poland this definition of God is found : 
 
 " I see that he is not the God of the worms or of creep- 
 ing things. He loves the flight of gigantic birds and gives 
 the rein to the rushing horse. He is the fiery plume on the 
 proud helmet." (Beniowski, 5th Canto.) 
 
 Compare the prophet Habakkuk's grand description 
 of God. But the whole spirit of Poland is in these 
 lines. No other race could see divinity in the waving 
 plume. 
 
 Nevertheless the love of the tinsel and spangles of 
 glory is necessarily repressed now by a deeper feeling of 
 honour. 
 
 When I went to a ball in the town hall on my first 
 evening in Warsaw, where a thousand people, the flower of 
 good society in Warsaw, were assembled in the large saloon, 
 the fact struck me that, with the exception of three 
 Russian officers, there was not a man in the hall who wore 
 a decoration. From his birth almost every Pole renounces 
 decorations as well as uniforms. There is a tale told in 
 Warsaw of a poor school-teacher who had distinguished 
 himself, and received the order of Stanislaus. He kept 
 it hidden in a case, and only used it to punish his 
 children with. When the youngest was naughty, he said, 
 " If you cry again, you shall wear the order of Stanislaus 
 about your neck at dinner." That was enough. 
 
 The essentially aristocratic character of the nation 
 still exists, though greatly modified. The Pole has no 
 inborn inclination to the civic virtues ; his ideal is, and
 
 28 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 continues to be, that of a grand seigneur. The aversion to 
 counting and saving, to reckoning and computing and keep- 
 ing accounts, is universal. In all places where Germans 
 and Poles compete in the domain of trade and industry, 
 the Poles get the worst of it. The great manufacturers 
 in Russian Poland, who, thanks to the enormous pro- 
 tective duty, enrich themselves at the expense of the 
 purchasers, are almost without exception immigrant Aus- 
 trians or Prussians. Nay, in this century, a whole manu- 
 facturing town (Lodz) has sprung up and grown with 
 American speed ; a town, which, lying in the middle of 
 Poland, was founded and is inhabited by Germans only. 
 The Poles are, and continue to be, an aristocratic race ; 
 the middle class, which has been gradually wedged in be- 
 tween the nobles and the peasants, is yet comparatively 
 small, and, for a long time to come, for the educated 
 Pole of distinction, the life of the burgess will mean a life 
 passed in eating and drinking, or, as the Count says in 
 Krasinsky's Godless Comedy, in "sleeping the sleep of the 
 German Philistine with his German wife." 
 
 But we must not forget that the Szlachta in its con- 
 stitution was something very different from the nobility in 
 most of the countries of Europe. It was never a separate 
 caste. After the victorious defence of Vienna John Sobieski 
 ennobled all his cavalry. Even in our century whole 
 regiments of infantry have been ennobled. There are 
 thus at this moment in the different parts of Poland 
 not less than 120,000 noble families. The nobility thus 
 corresponds here most nearly to what elsewhere in Europe 
 is the upper middle class. It must also be noted that 
 the titles, prince, marquis, &c., are not originally Polish, but 
 were first conferred upon the most important families by 
 the foreign conquerors, for which reason they are not much 
 used in the country. In Warsaw in speaking French they 
 address a countess as madame and not as comtesse. Even 
 on making introductions I never heard any titles given 
 among the aristocracy an agreeable thing when one comes 
 from Germany. 
 
 At the same time the relations between people of rank
 
 POLISH CHARACTERISTICS 29 
 
 and their inferiors have certainly something Asiatic. No 
 small degree of extravagance is usual in the employment 
 of servants. In every house owned by a person of ample 
 means, for instance, there is a doorkeeper who sits the whole 
 day on a chair at the entrance to open the open hall 
 door. A Dane could never be induced to sit so long on 
 a chair. I was also much struck by the inclination or 
 custom of the servants to wait up for the master at night, 
 even when they were allowed to go to bed. Finally, 
 according to northern ideas, their humility was amazing. 
 A Polish servant does not kiss his master's hand but his 
 sleeve, and so deeply rooted is this custom of expressing 
 gratitude or affection that I have repeatedly seen young 
 Polish students carry to their lips the arm of a man to 
 whom they wished to show respect. 
 
 The Poles have not become much more economical 
 under foreign rule than before. If any change had taken 
 place in this respect it would have been in Posen, where 
 the German example has made itself felt. They are 
 prodigal of their time. 
 
 As there is no freedom of meeting, as no kind of associa- 
 tion is allowed the only club in Warsaw was closed, 
 when a few years since it tried to prevent riots against 
 the Jews in a suburb in which the police did not interfere 
 as, generally speaking, all public life is forbidden, so that 
 fifty men cannot assemble in a hall without the permission 
 and surveillance of the police, private society, which has to 
 supply everything that is lacking in this direction, consumes 
 an enormous amount of time. 
 
 The hospitality is very great and very tasteful. An 
 exceptional quality which is inborn in the race, is tact. 
 In this connection I must be allowed to note with 
 gratitude the delicacy with which hospitality was shown 
 to me on my arrival at Warsaw. I was taken to large, 
 luxuriously furnished apartments, adorned with fine pictures, 
 and supplied with books ; my name was on the door ; on the 
 writing-table were visiting cards with my Warsaw address ; 
 and two servants who could speak foreign languages were 
 told off to wait upon me.
 
 30 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Hospitality is a deep-seated instinct among the Poles. 
 It is certainly exercised towards foreigners more lavishly 
 now that foreigners seldom visit Poland, but the chief 
 reason of its culmination among the native born of to-day 
 is evidently that social intercourse has so completely to 
 supply the place of public life.
 
 IV 
 
 THE POLES AND THE FRENCH INSTABILITY, 
 DILETTANTISM FEVERISH CHARACTER OF THE 
 PLEASURES OF LIFE STRENGTH AND SUSCEPTI- 
 BILITY OF THE NATIONAL FEELING 
 
 IN many ways Warsaw affects the foreigner almost as if it 
 were a French city. French is the auxiliary language of the 
 Poles, the language which among the higher classes all know 
 perfectly although I met several who had half forgotten it 
 during a twenty years' exile in Siberia the language which 
 is spoken as fluently as the mother-tongue and even better 
 than the Russians speak it. In aristocratic circles Poles fre- 
 quently converse with one another in French, a state of things 
 which from the beginning of the century was promoted not 
 only by the continual intellectual intercourse with France, 
 and the emigration thereto, but by the need of being able 
 to meet the Russians on neutral territory so far as language 
 is concerned. As the Poles in addition are now frequently 
 called the Frenchmen of the North or East, and as they 
 themselves believe that they are closely related to the French 
 through their defects, which they themselves characterise as 
 inconstancy and instability, the foreigner is constantly asked 
 if he does not see a great and lamentable similarity between 
 the Poles and the French. 
 
 This great similarity is purely imaginary. 
 
 The trifling similarity which does exist consists in a cog- 
 nate capacity for swift enthusiasms and violent revulsions of 
 feeling, a craving for adventures and emotions, and a love 
 of fame and show. 
 
 But these points of similarity do not exclude a funda- 
 mental difference. The rationalistic, argumentative basis of
 
 32 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 the French character is entirely absent in the Pole. The 
 algebraic, arithmetical basis of the French manner of thought 
 is wholly wanting in the Pole. The Frenchman is a great 
 writer of prose, the Pole is a poet. On this account the 
 stronghold of the French world of letters is prose, that of 
 the Polish, poetry verse. In addition nothing can well be 
 less French than the continual and perfect use of a foreign 
 language, the remarkable knowledge of foreign authors, 
 which meet one everywhere in Poland. Young girls of 
 twenty who speak six languages perfectly and without 
 accent are met in Poland, certainly not in France. Almost 
 every young man or woman of the higher classes knows the 
 most important capitals of Europe, and knows the most 
 important literatures to a great extent. The passionate 
 fondness for travel and the versatility of culture resulting 
 therefrom are in the highest degree un-French. The Pole 
 widens his purview and diminishes his brain power by 
 learning four or five foreign languages ; the Frenchman as 
 a rule is either ignorant or a specialist. 
 
 But the most striking difference assuredly lies in the 
 relations between the sexes. The fundamental trait of the 
 Polish national character is a certain combination of mild- 
 ness and energy. But what gives Polish character, and 
 especially Polish patriotism in this century, its special stamp, 
 is the preponderance of the feminine elements over the 
 masculine. 
 
 That the relations between man and woman are very 
 different in Poland and in France is quickly perceived 
 in daily conversation. While the tone among French- 
 men, whenever conversation turns on women, is always 
 extremely free, sometimes to a foreigner repulsive, and 
 generally lascivious, the Poles as a rule in discussing 
 women manifest warmth, often tenderness or indulgence, 
 but, so far as I could judge, seldom frivolity. 
 
 I have found a remark in an Italian author which possibly 
 goes to the root of this. He thinks that while as a rule 
 among the Germanic races the man is more gifted than the 
 woman, and while among the Latin races man and 
 woman on an average stand on the same level as to
 
 POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF POLISH WOMEN 33 
 
 intellectual qualities, among the Poles, the most character- 
 istic Slav race, woman is decidedly superior to man. If 
 we set aside the power of invention or production, we must 
 be struck with the truth of these words. The men in 
 Poland are certainly not wanting in passion, in courage and 
 in energy, in wit, in love of freedom, but it seems as if the 
 women have more of these qualities. In Poland's great up- 
 risings they have been known to enter into conspiracies, to do 
 military duty, and frequently enough of their own free will to 
 accompany their loved ones to Siberia. Mickiewicz's Gracyna, 
 who led an army on horseback, has had successors in this 
 century. Celebrated above all others is Emilia Plater, a 
 young lady of one of the first families of Poland, who in 
 1830 induced a whole district to rise in rebellion, took part 
 in several battles, and at last, having joined the detachments 
 under Dembinski which refused to take refuge on Prussian 
 soil, attempted to cut her way with her corps through the 
 hostile army, but in December, 1831, died of want and over- 
 exertion at the age of 26, in the hut of a forester. Mickie- 
 wicz's, beautiful poem, The Colonel's Death, celebrated her 
 memory. During the rebellion of 1830-31 there was not 
 a battalion nor a squadron of the Polish army in which 
 there were not female combatants ; after a battle or a march 
 the soldiers always arranged a bivouac for the women, just 
 as they took care that no word was spoken which could 
 offend their ears. 1 
 
 The time for such achievements is now past, but still 
 the women are ever the most earnest patriots, because they 
 feel the most warmly and criticise the least keenly. Never- 
 theless, the influence of woman has somewhat fallen off in the 
 last twenty years. Once the women laboured as the chief 
 supporters of the Catholic faith ; but faith is vanishing where 
 it has not vanished. Once the woman laboured in the same 
 way as the priest, but the union between the women and 
 
 1 In his book on Poland General Roman Solyk says : " When Warsaw was 
 attacked, I noticed in the midst of the fire a soldier of the fifth light regiment who 
 continually leaned against the breastworks, did not trouble himself in the least about 
 the bombs and cannon-balls, but cheered his comrades on with vigorous gestures and 
 cries. Though he stood in the front rank I could not at first see his face ; but when 
 he turned I discovered him to be a beautiful girl of 18." 
 
 C
 
 34 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 the clergy is dissolving, just as culture and the Church are 
 drifting apart. And in addition to this, as all public life 
 is forbidden, and there are neither assemblies nor unions 
 of any kind, the men seek each other almost exclusively 
 in social life. Since the reception-room does duty as a 
 place of political and literary assemblies, the men think 
 less of winning women to their interests there. The latter 
 feel themselves set aside, overlooked and abandoned, as 
 in South Germany, where the man passes all his evenings 
 in the ale-house, only the desertion has other causes. 
 The pressure from above has evidently greatly aided in 
 separating the sexes and diminishing the social influence of 
 woman. It may at the present time be weaker in Poland 
 than in France. The education of the young girls, more- 
 over, is conducted in much the same way as there they 
 are never left a moment unprotected and marriages are 
 made in the same manner as in France ; the contracting 
 parties seldom know much of each other before the wedding, 
 and generally see each other for the first time a few weeks 
 before. 
 
 So far as the Polish instability is concerned, it also has 
 no similarity to the French. The instability of the French 
 shows itself more particularly in public life, especially where 
 they are collected in masses, as in public meetings or mobs. 
 It depends on the sudden change of mood, for which no 
 single person feels himself responsible. The instability of 
 the Poles is personal, depends partly on the propensity to 
 change, and partly on an instinctive inclination to universality. 
 
 In France the ruling principle is a prudent and some- 
 times subtle egoism which runs in the family and is in- 
 herited by the children, which is impressed upon them 
 from the beginning, and which as a rule directs their lives. 
 Parents do not, as in England and America, first strive to 
 develop the youth into a capable man, able to help himself, 
 but they try to smoothe his path in life, procure for him 
 favours, connections, patronage, assure his future or his 
 advancement. And if the path is smoothed, the young 
 man will not willingly abandon his career before the highest 
 rung of the ladder of honour is reached.
 
 DESULTORY CAREERS OF YOUNG POLES 35 
 
 The situation is entirely different in Poland, where the 
 young man in private life far oftener allows himself to be 
 led by fleeting instinct than by prudent egoism, and where 
 a single public interest (the lost fatherland, the lost inde- 
 pendence, the mother-tongue, the national literature and art), 
 stands immutable and imperishable. 
 
 Undoubtedly the foreign rule has tended to obliterate 
 Polish inconstancy in this highest domain ; on the other 
 hand, it has necessarily increased the national instability 
 within the circle of private life. 
 
 For what can an educated young man do in Russian 
 Poland ? For instance, he studies law ; he can never become 
 a judge, generally not even an official, without separating 
 himself from all intercourse with his countrymen. He 
 studies medicine ; he can never obtain a post at a university, 
 never be at the head of a hospital, never conduct a public 
 clinic, therefore can never attain the first rank in his science. 
 The result is that if he has means and there is still great 
 wealth in Poland, since to be rich is almost the only thing 
 which is permitted to every one he goes from one study to 
 another, obtains a smattering of different branches of science, 
 surprises the foreigner by the versatility of his knowledge 
 and information, but has no real mastery of anything. 
 
 The following instances were given me in my own 
 circle : A very able young man began as a jurist, passed on 
 to medicine and became a physician, then gave that up and 
 bought an estate, studied agriculture, mechanics, &c., for four 
 years, introduced many improvements on his estate, shortly 
 after sold it, and at the present time is the best theatrical 
 critic in Warsaw. Another young man began life as a 
 farmer, had given up agriculture for music, qualified as a 
 virtuoso, abandoned the career, established a manufactory 
 of instruments, made violoncellos for several years, lost 
 interest in that, and is now working at the Academy of Art 
 in Munich as a genre-painter. 
 
 They have too many talents and too little inducement 
 to persevere. 
 
 The women complain bitterly of this. Like good wives 
 they endeavour to share their husbands' interests, to identify
 
 36 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 themselves with their occupations, and are in despair that 
 every second or third year they have to interest themselves 
 in something quite different. They meditate with anxiety 
 on what the next year may bring. 
 
 One evening, when Fetiillet's Dalila was acted at the 
 theatre, and when the actor who took the part of Carnioli 
 was not especially happy, I could not suppress an out- 
 burst of wonder that the actor could be in want of a type 
 of the genial dilettante who educates the young composer, 
 in a city like Warsaw, where there are so many men of 
 Carnioli's stamp. The most admirable type stood by my 
 side behind the scenes. And the same evening, when in 
 a large circle I was asked how as a critic I would characterise 
 Polish society, I answered : " You are a society of dilettanti." 
 
 I belie\ T e that the definition is correct, taking the word in 
 its broad sense, and bearing in mind how the Poles have 
 come to be what they are. 
 
 We must picture to ourselves a naturally very energetic 
 people, against whose energy a barrier not to be broken 
 down has been erected, a warlike people, who only reluc- 
 tantly enter the army, in which practically no young man 
 voluntarily chooses the post of officer ; an extremely am- 
 bitious people, to whom all high positions and offices are 
 closed, and to whom all distinctions and demonstrations of 
 honour are forbidden, in so far as they are not bought 
 with sacrifice of conviction or denial of solidarity with their 
 countrymen ; a people naturally hostile to Philistine ideals, 
 but who needed to acquire the civic virtues, and whose 
 circumstances now give them constant encouragement to 
 unsteadiness ; a pleasure-loving people, in whose capital not 
 a single public place of entertainment is found ; a people 
 with a lively irresistible inclination to politics, for whom all 
 political education has been made impossible, because they 
 are allowed neither to elect representatives nor to discuss 
 affairs of state, and whose political press is silenced in all 
 political matters ; to speak of political newspapers in Poland 
 is like speaking of nautical journals in Switzerland. Let 
 us imagine to ourselves this people, constituted for a large 
 free life in the broad daylight of publicity, imprisoned in the
 
 FEVERISH SOCIAL LIFE OF THE POLES 37 
 
 chiaroscuro of private life ; let us conceive a people who, from 
 the time of Arild, had the most extravagant conceptions of 
 the rights of the individual in regard to the power of the 
 state, living their life without any sort of public security 
 against encroachments on the part of an accidental superior 
 official, thinking of Siberia, as we think of a disease, which 
 may come when least expected. 
 
 Conceiving all this, we shall understand that under the 
 pressure, which has been exerted simultaneously from so 
 many sides, there necessarily sprang up an extraordinary con- 
 centrated activity, a boiling intensity of life, in the narrow 
 circle which remained to them. 
 
 As the actual people were shut out, as all education of 
 them, all approach to knowledge was made impossible, the 
 higher classes, which could not adequately recruit themselves, 
 came to lead a kind of island life of the highest and most 
 refined culture, a life, which is indeed national in every heart- 
 beat, but cosmopolitan in every form of expression, a hot- 
 house life, where flowers of all the civilisations of Europe 
 have come to development and exhale fragrance, an eddy- 
 ing, seething maelstrom life of ideas, endeavours, amusements 
 and fetes. The best society scarcely ever goes to bed before 
 four o'clock in the morning in the month of February. In 
 carnival time the day in Warsaw has twenty hours, and 
 so long as the season lasts they are prodigal of time and 
 strength. 
 
 " Life in Warsaw is a neurosis," said one of the most in- 
 telligent men of the city to me ; " no one can keep it up 
 long." 
 
 This people, who discovered the dance of the planets 
 around the sun, also, as is well known, invented the polonaise 
 with its proud solemnity, and the mazurka, with its contrast 
 of masculine force and feminine gentleness, and the people 
 are perhaps almost as proud of the mazurka as of Coperni- 
 cus. In Poland the mazurka is not the dance we call by 
 that name, but a long, difficult, and impassioned national 
 dance, in which the gentlemen and ladies, though they dance 
 hand in hand, constantly make different steps in the same 
 time. It is a genuine sorrow to the Poles that the
 
 38 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 consistent Russian government has forbidden the dancing of 
 this dance in the national costume ; and the fourth or fifth 
 question the foreigner is asked in Warsaw is this : " Have 
 you seen our national dance ? " In every other country it 
 would at least be the thirtieth or fortieth. 
 
 They dance all through the carnival time as people dance 
 in no other place. Probably nowhere else are so many charity 
 balls given. They dance for everything for "the poor 
 sewing girls," for " the poor students," &c. I do not deny 
 that many times, when I stood watching the dances some- 
 times I was invited to two balls on the same night I could not 
 help remembering the old hard adage : slavus saltans ! But 
 as a young girl said in allusion to a moralising article in 
 Prawda : " What would be the advantage if we left off dancing 
 in Warsaw ? " 
 
 Yet the gaiety with which they whirl is not the common 
 joy of life ; it reminds us rather of that which the prisoners 
 of the Revolution displayed in their ignorance as to what 
 the next day would bring forth. This levity is not common 
 levity, but a lightness often found in those who daily defy 
 suffering and death. 
 
 For like reasons at times they are more serious than 
 people on similar occasions in other countries. At a very 
 sedate entertainment which the representatives of literature 
 and art gave me, when there were a series of speeches 
 in French and Latin, the ancient festival tongue of the 
 Poles, it happened, when one of the speakers said some 
 words which especially excited those assembled, that tears 
 at once stood in their eyes, and that old men, who had 
 passed a whole period of their lives in Siberia, and hundreds 
 of times had seen death staring them in the face, sprang 
 up, and while the tears rolled down their cheeks, embraced 
 the speaker. It seems, then, as if the foreign rule had 
 equally increased the susceptibility to social enjoyment and 
 the susceptibility to serious emotion. The power of feeling 
 pleasure and pain, the disposition to tears and laughter, seem 
 to be as strong as in the sick. 
 
 Besides, passionately as the Poles are a people of the 
 moment, just as thoroughly are they a people of memories.
 
 PATRIOTISM IN ART AND LETTERS 39 
 
 Nowhere else can be found such a religion of remembrance, 
 such a clinging to national recollections. They cling to 
 everything that can recall the Poland of the past. It is 
 true that all the works of art of the city and all the 
 treasures of the nation have been carried away to St. Peters- 
 burg ; the city has even been robbed of the great Zaluski 
 library of 300,000 volumes, but the more stubbornly do the 
 people hold on to national recollections. They have 
 been assisted in this endeavour in the most forcible manner 
 by the fact that all the Polish poetry and historical 
 writings of this century, as well as Polish painting, have 
 been pressed into the service of the national idea. Artists 
 like Mateiko and Brandt both admirable colourists who 
 fall short in simplicity and perspicuity of composition 
 almost constantly treat national historical subjects ; their 
 poets have treated Poland and Poland's fate, even when, like 
 Krasinski in Irydion, they place the action in old Rome, or like 
 Slowacki in Anheli, transfer the scene to a fantastic Siberia. 
 Poetry in the Polish home has the same importance as 
 religion. The best works are, or have been, strictly forbidden 
 reading. Their acquisition as well as their possession was 
 perilous. Generally the books, when they had been carefully 
 read till the thoughts were remembered, even if the words 
 were forgotten, were burned with the same pain with which 
 a woman who is not free burns a letter from the man 
 she loves. But they have not forgotten in Poland, how, 
 when the young Levitoux was put into the citadel in Warsaw 
 because a copy of Mickiewicz's Dziady had been found in 
 his house, in his despair after the torture he had suffered, 
 and in his anxiety lest in his ravings he should name his 
 comrades, he with his manacled hands pulled his night-lamp 
 under his bed of rushes, and burned himself to death ; nor 
 have they forgotten that several hundred Lithuanian students 
 were seat to Siberia for having published the Temptation of 
 Krasinski in book form after the poem, which the censor had 
 not understood, had seen the light in the feuilleton of a little 
 paper. 
 
 The national authors are found to-day in every house, 
 and even if the Poles have been obliged to establish their
 
 40 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 national museum at Rapperswyl, Switzerland, for safety, still 
 there is to be found in almost every home in Warsaw an 
 album with reproductions of Arthur Grottger's remarkable 
 paintings at Cracow, representing the history of the sufferings 
 of Poland, a (prohibited) lithograph of the same artist's 
 March of the Exiles to Siberia, and some pictures of the defence 
 of Warsaw in 1831, representing the last Polish regiment, 
 which blew itself up with Ordon's redoubt. The Poles regard 
 with tenderness and emotion not only the faces, but the 
 antique, semi-comical chasseur uniform of the soldiers, with 
 the swallow-tail coats. This was, it is true, the last Polish 
 military uniform. 
 
 It is in accordance with this national feeling, made vigilant 
 by oppression, that they cherish a hatred for all foreign 
 authors who occasionally or systematically depreciate the 
 Poles. Not that they took Heine's celebrated lampoon 
 (Zwei Ritter] about the two valiant noblemen, Krapiilinski and 
 Waschlapski much to heart. They have laughed at its wit 
 and know it by heart, and they know very well how 
 warmly he expressed himself in many places about Poland. 
 But they are familiar with Freytag's Soil und Haben; they 
 attach great importance to a casual remark of the younger 
 Dumas about the Poles from everywhere, who took part in 
 the insurrection of the Commune, and in February they 
 were in an uproar over the word ausrotten (exterminate), in 
 reference to the Poles in Prussia, used by Eduard von Hart- 
 mann in an article in a review, an expression which they 
 took too much au serieux. The Poles pay altogether too 
 much attention to what is written about them in Europe. 
 Anxiety as to what is said about one is a general accompani- 
 ment of weakness.
 
 CONSOLIDATION OF EVERYTHING POLISH RELI- 
 GIOUS BELIEFS AND PARTIES POLAND A 
 SYMBOL 
 
 A WEIGHTY, and for Poland a decidedly happy, result of 
 the foreign rule has been the welding and uniting of every- 
 thing Polish. All provincial differences have vanished in 
 this unity ; the different parts of Poland, Austrian, Russian, 
 and Prussian Poles feel that they are without exception one 
 people. In these later days, Austrian Poland has become 
 the centre about which the others cluster, since the Poles 
 in Galicia have a parliament, where their language may be 
 spoken, besides two national universities, and whole towns 
 where many things may be printed, which the Russian censor 
 would forbid. 
 
 And like the provinces, so all the religious sects are 
 merged in the national unity. 
 
 Poland was once an exclusively Roman Catholic land. 
 Now mixed marriages are of frequent occurrence in Warsaw. 
 In the two homes with which I was most familiar, in one the 
 husband was a Protestant and the wife a Catholic ; in the 
 other the husband was a Catholic and the wife a Protestant. 
 It must be added that in neither of these homes did the 
 religious faith play an important part. 
 
 As to the Jews, who are so numerous in Poland, because 
 the kingdom of Poland offered them an asylum during their 
 long persecution, that form of hatred of the Jews, which has 
 been decorated with the affected name of Antisemitism, and 
 which certain sections of Danish society with their inclina- 
 tions to cultivate German reaction and German rudeness 
 have imported, has not struck root at all in Russian Poland. 
 Of course the far-reaching mutual aversion of Jews and
 
 4 2 
 
 Russians, dating from a thousand years back, persists even 
 here. The peasants have no dealings with the Jews, and it is 
 only recently that the Jews have been placed on the same 
 footing as the other citizens. Nevertheless, even in 1794, 
 when despair armed Warsaw against Russia, they took part 
 in the national defence ; a regiment of Jewish volunteers 
 fought under Kosciusko's banners, led by the Jewish Colonel 
 Berko, who in 1809 fell fighting against the Austrians. In 
 1830 the same prejudiced and irresolute national govern- 
 ment, which rejected the aid of the peasants, and would have 
 nothing to do with the revolt in the old Polish provinces, 
 rejected the applications of the Jews to be allowed to enter 
 the army instead of paying for exemption as formerly. 
 When the rebellion was suppressed, Nicholas punished them 
 for this application by incorporating them with his own 
 army, and that was not enough. Since the Jews had also 
 asked the national government for permission to share in the 
 higher and lower general instruction of the people, the Tzar 
 declared that for the future he would take care of their 
 education. He caused 36,000 Jewish families to be taken 
 across the frontier, " in order to remove the temptation to 
 smuggle," as it was said, and ordered them to settle on the 
 steppes of Southern Russia and cultivate the soil there. The 
 Cossacks came with the order of expulsion. All furniture 
 was thrown out into the street, old men, women, small 
 children, exhausted and famished, were obliged to drag them- 
 selves away to the place of destination. If a woman sank 
 down fainting by the way, the husband had to go on 
 notwithstanding. And at the new place of abode the exiles 
 were crushed by the most severe of punishments : child-con- 
 scription. In the great raids of 1842 all the small boys 
 of six years and upwards were seized and sent under Cossack 
 guards to Archangel to be brought up as sailors. Of course 
 they died like flies on the way. 
 
 Common misfortune has united the Polish Jews to their 
 Christian fellow-countrymen. For the other Poles have 
 also been compelled to endure the loss of their children. 
 An order from Prince Paskiewicz of March 24, 1832, which 
 was executed, began thus : " It has pleased his Majesty the
 
 COHESION OF JEWS AND POLES 43 
 
 Tzar to command, that all strolling, orphan, or poor boys 
 in Poland shall be admitted into the militia battalions, 
 and subsequently be sent away in a body to Minsk, 
 when decision will be made about them according to the 
 regulations of his Majesty's general staff." And the execu- 
 tion of this order is not any exceptional incident. Six 
 years later April 13, 1838 the following communica- 
 tion from the council of the government appeared in the 
 Warsaw newspapers: "On the 8th of this month, in the 
 Town Hall, there will be a public offer of contracts for the 
 transport to St. Petersburg and Ural of some thousands of 
 the sons of Polish noblemen." From this time forth Jewish 
 and Christian Poles have felt, not indeed as a community, but 
 as a nation. The fraternising of the people with the Jews in 
 Warsaw in 1860 solved the question as the equality of the 
 latter, and when in February 1861, in the square before the 
 castle, and in another larger square, shots were fired upon 
 the kneeling crowd, who with the mouths of the Russian 
 cannon before their eyes, gave utterance to a national hymn, 
 and besought God to send to the Poles freedom and a father- 
 land, the Jews felt impelled to manifest their national dis- 
 position by an unmistakable demonstration. In great 
 numbers they accompanied their Rabbis into the Catholic 
 churches, just as the Christians in great numbers went into 
 the synagogues to sing the same hymn. 
 
 But the feeling of unity was already strong in Poland's 
 greatest poet, Mickiewicz ; his work, Pan Tadeusz (of 1834), 
 which has become the Polish national epic, ends with the 
 playing of Poland's celebrated national song for Dom- 
 browski and his soldiers by a Jew. "The great Master," 
 as the poem calls him, by his cymbal music alone, in great 
 enthusiasm, evokes the whole history of Poland from 1791 
 for his audience. The impetuous polonaise of May 3rd 
 is the starting point, then follows the false chord, the 
 sound of the traitor-note, which calls to mind Targovice, 
 then march, attack, battle, storming and shot, groans of 
 the children, wailings of the mothers ; the blood-bath 
 of Praga rises before the eyes dim with tears. Then 
 the key changes to the wailing melody of the old popular
 
 44 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 ballads, to the story of the exiled warrior, who wanders 
 through woods and many a time is ready to perish in agony 
 and starvation, until at last he sinks down at the feet of his 
 faithful little horse, which digs his grave with its hoof. 
 Closely gathered about the master, the soldiers listen to the 
 well-known melody and recall the better days when they 
 sang this ballad at the grave of their fatherland. 
 
 " They raised their heads, for how entirely different, 
 how much lighter it sounded now louder, in another 
 time, carrying another message. And again the master let 
 his glance glide over the strings, folding his hands together, 
 and struck a blow with both staves, so fully, so powerfully, 
 that the strings resounded like a brazen trumpet, and this 
 renowned melody born of the holiest hope, this triumphal 
 march flew towards heaven : 'It is not yet all over with 
 Poland ! not so long as we live ! Up, Dombrowski ! To 
 Poland!' and all clapped their hands, and 'Up, Dombrowski !' 
 pealed through the hall. And as if he himself were startled 
 at the effect, the master trembled. . . ." 
 
 And covering his face, while a torrent of tears burst 
 out through his fingers, he says to Dombrowski : " Yes, 
 General, thou art he, whom the singer's mouth has heralded," 
 and the poet adds: "Thus he spoke, the brave Jew, he 
 loved his native country as a Pole." 
 
 Yet though there is now no religious division in Russian 
 Poland, of late years a party division of another kind has 
 arisen namely, that between the youth with positive ten- 
 dencies, who are disposed to make the liberation of the 
 intellect the highest aim, and the Catholic patriots, or those 
 working with them. 
 
 The Catholic religion has long seemed to be indissolubly 
 bound up in the national cause. Without the influence of 
 the Catholic clergy it would have been impossible to keep 
 the larger part of the population, which is excluded from 
 the higher culture, firmly united as a nationality. Now this 
 difficulty has arisen, that those possessing the highest culture 
 no longer believe in the Catholic faith, and that the leaders 
 of youth believe the only possibility for intellectual advance 
 to lie in opposing modern views of life to the tradition of
 
 CULTURE IN ITS RELATION TO CATHOLICISM 45 
 
 the past. They have asked themselves with anxiety if 
 Polish culture, by maintaining its relations with Catholicism, 
 as, for instance, do the great poets of the romantic school, 
 Mickiewicz and Krasinski, will not come to be antiquated and 
 outstripped in the general work of Europe, and some eminent 
 men, among them first and foremost Svientochovski, have 
 felt obliged to express themselves on the religious question 
 in a manner which has wounded some, and caused anxiety 
 to more. Recently so distinguished an author as Sienkiewicz, 
 who commenced his career as a radical, and whose opinions 
 were long radical, has been seen from prudential reasons to 
 ally himself with the conservative party. It is much to be 
 regretted, however, that by receiving a considerable annual 
 sum for holding a sinecure as nominal editor of a clerical 
 newspaper, he has complicated his situation and lost a great 
 part of his prestige. 
 
 There is a dilemma here, which troubles the Polish intelli- 
 gence more than anything else. Many of the best people 
 dare not say what they think, lest they should injure the 
 cause, which is to them the holiest, or rather the only holy 
 cause : the cause of Poland. Other eminent men are led to 
 the reflection, which under common conditions would be 
 unquestionable, but which in this case does not suffice, that 
 there are ideas which have greater weight and importance 
 than the idea of nationality. The question becomes practically 
 a question of expedience, toleration, and tact. 
 
 My purely personal relation to the question was this : 
 those on the progressive side in Warsaw were inclined to 
 appropriate me, while isolated men, who although entirely 
 liberal, desired for political reasons to avoid a breach between 
 the patriots and the " Young Poland " party, earnestly desired 
 my presence in Warsaw, because they thought it possible 
 that a foreigner, who had friends in both camps, might effect 
 a reconciliation. They sought, therefore, to make use of my 
 stay in Warsaw to bring this about, and it was said to me on 
 a certain occasion that, that evening for the first time in fifteen 
 years, representatives of the different parties were assembled in 
 the same room. What I personally saw in Warsaw could but 
 give me a lofty idea of the harmony of the Poles as a people ;
 
 46 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 the attitude of the conservative party especially surprised 
 me. More than one Catholic priest received me heartily, 
 and the greatest festivity to which I was invited during my 
 visit in Warsaw was given by the leader of the conservative 
 party, the owner of the newspaper Slovo (The Word}, Count 
 Przezdziecki. (He is the son of the man who published 
 the complete works of the Polish historian, Johanes Dlugosz, 
 in fourteen large quarto volumes, at great personal expense, 
 and a near relative of the Countess Przezdziecka, who is 
 Merimee's " Second Unknown " (Autre Inconnue).) 
 
 Although, according to my idea, Polish culture at present 
 must thus be limited to an extremely prudent and wary 
 evolution, it is evident that the year 1863 marks an epoch 
 in the intellectual life of Poland. The follies and horrors of 
 this year, the frantic chaotic rebellion, with its tragic result, 
 has made the nation sober. Too sober, it may seem to 
 some, for while before 1863 it was the wont of the Poles 
 to see all merits united in their own people, since that time it 
 has become the fashion to speak sorrowfully and depreciat- 
 ingly of Poland. But it is a great gain in any event to have 
 cast off the sickly self-worship which prevailed in the thirties, 
 at the time when the two great opponents, Mickiewicz and 
 Slowacki, simultaneously adopted the visionary dreams of the 
 mystic Towianski, who regarded the Poles as the Messianic 
 race, suffering for the sins of mankind, and by suffering, 
 working out the salvation of humanity. They have learned 
 to look the stern reality in the face, and the hopes they 
 cherish and though certainly not sanguine, they are by no 
 means without hope for the future are not founded on 
 dreams and fantasies. 
 
 Finally, the drastic foreign rule since 1863 has produced 
 an intellectual condition which, however unhappy it may be, 
 may in certain ways be called the finest and best possible 
 to a nation, a condition which calls to mind that of primitive 
 Christendom under the oppression of Rome, a conception of 
 the world, pessimistic in many points, but not on that account 
 less true. 
 
 Perhaps after all there is no condition more elevating for 
 a race than one in which no distinguished man ever has any
 
 TENACITY OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 47 
 
 external distinction, title, or decoration, and where the official 
 tinsel of honour is regarded as a disgrace, while on the other 
 hand the official garb of disgrace, the political prison blouse, 
 is regarded as honourable. 
 
 Every child who daily goes past Paskiewicz's monument, 
 who sees the names of traitors encircled by garlands on the 
 obelisk, is from a tender age familiar with the thought that 
 those whom the authorities honour are not as a rule the 
 best men, and that those whom they persecute are not as a 
 rule the worst. 
 
 That which is the pith, the true pith of Christian teach- 
 ing, a right estimate of the honours of this world, the 
 ignominy of this world, and the justice of this world, of real 
 greatness and real baseness this estimate, every one here, 
 even the least gifted, has accepted. What a school for 
 life ! Poland is the only country, I believe, where primitive 
 Christianity still exists as a power in society, and that equally 
 for those who are Christians and for those who are not. 
 
 The name of Poland is not found on the map of Europe. 
 The people of Poland are not reckoned among the peoples 
 of Europe. The freedom and welfare of its sons and 
 daughters are in the power of foreign rulers. Its language 
 is persecuted and suppressed. 
 
 This people has not a single friend among the mighty of 
 the earth ; on the other hand it has active, extremely active 
 and effectual enemies, and its misfortune is that its enemies 
 are the most absolutely powerful men in the world. 
 
 On the other hand Poland has, I believe, among all the 
 nations of the world the best and the most humane of their 
 sons for her friends. 
 
 Poland presents the spectacle of a nation which is not 
 only condemned to death, but which, as Cherbuliez has said, 
 has been buried alive, and yet which continually raises the 
 lid of its coffin, and shows that its vital power is still far 
 from exhausted. 
 
 We meet here a people in whom every nerve is strained, 
 because day in and day out they fight for their existence, 
 instead of enjoying it like other races. We see here a people 
 who are entirely absorbed in their national cause, and yet
 
 48 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 this national cause is nothing but the universal cause, the 
 cause of humanity. 
 
 We love Poland, therefore, not as we love Germany or 
 France or England, but as we love freedom. For what 
 is it to love Poland but to love freedom, to have a deep 
 sympathy with misfortune, and to admire courage and 
 enthusiasm ? 
 
 Poland is a symbol a symbol of all which the best 
 of the human race have loved, and for which they have 
 fought. In Poland everything is concentrated, all that is 
 most hateful and despicable, all that is most lovable and 
 most brilliant ; here the contrasts of human life are found in 
 bold relief ; here the cosmos is concentrated as in an essence. 
 
 Everywhere in Europe where there has been any fighting 
 for freedom in this century, the Poles have taken part in it, 
 on all battlefields, on all the barricades. They have some- 
 times been mistaken in their views of the enterprises to which 
 they lent their arms ; but they believed that they were fight- 
 ing for the good of humanity ; they regarded themselves 
 as the bodyguard of freedom, and still look on every one 
 who fights for freedom as a brother. 
 
 But conversely, it may also be said that everywhere in 
 Europe where there is any fighting for freedom, there is 
 fighting for Poland. The future fate of Poland is wholly 
 dependent on that of Europe ; for if the idea of the right 
 of the people to independence, and the right of every nation 
 to full political freedom continually gains ground in the 
 world, then the hour is drawing near when the resurrection 
 of Poland shall be something more than a hope.
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 1886
 
 THE EXPULSION OF THE POLES 
 BY PRUSSIA 
 
 THE two greatest military powers of the world, Germany and 
 Russia, which are on bad terms with each other, but neither of 
 which represents political freedom, the right of the nation and 
 of the individual to self-government, have at present one task 
 and object in common ; with all the means at their command 
 they wage a war of extermination against a nationality of 
 from 14,000,000 to 16,000,000 people, which is tied and 
 bound, oppressed and gagged as no other nationality in 
 Europe is, but which nevertheless is treated by its rulers as 
 if it overflowed or crushed out the elements which govern it, 
 and we see it incessantly described as a danger or a threat. 
 
 The partition of the Polish kingdom is nearly a hundred 
 years old. But it will not allow the three powers that 
 accomplished it to be at peace. Even now it demands 
 great efforts to establish it as just and right. It is not enough 
 that they have caused the history of the world to be written 
 as if all the blame were on the side of this old Poland. 
 It is not enough that what among other people is counted 
 as virtue or duty love of one's country, its memories 
 and language, hatred for its enemies and detractors is 
 branded and punished when professed by a Pole. It is not 
 enough that no Polish deputy in the German or Galician 
 parliament can escape swearing and protesting his faithful 
 allegiance to the foreign power that shared in the partition, or 
 that the youth of Poland are registered as soldiers in the 
 German, Austrian, and Russian armies, are put into regiments 
 where only a foreign language is spoken, and have to fight 
 for foreign interests ; more recently Russia and Germany
 
 52 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 have simultaneously initiated a persecution of the Polish 
 nationality, which comes very near to abuse. 
 
 At the beginning of this year, after a few days' warning, 
 Prince Bismarck drove out of Prussia fifty thousand Poles, 
 men, women, and children, helpless creatures who had to 
 seek a shelter or perish. His political motive seems to be 
 twofold. He is afraid of the Polonicising of the German- 
 speaking parts of the country ; for it appears that the Polish 
 language, in spite of everything that is done to root it out, 
 continually gains ground. And he would like to secure the 
 best possible conditions in a forthcoming war, and have as 
 few hostile elements in the country as he can. He is 
 not only driving out of Prussia all foreign Poles, even if they 
 have long been settled there and this so rigorously, that on 
 the ist of February a woman ninety-one years old arrived in 
 Warsaw, who was exiled from Posen as dangerous to the 
 State but he is also proposing measures that will make the 
 ownership of the soil as burdensome as possible to the 
 Prussian Poles who reside in Posen and possess land there. 
 He wishes to buy out the Poles from their old land, and 
 has asked for 300,000,000 marks towards colonisation, just 
 as if some region either uninhabited or inhabited by savages 
 were in question. And it is not even to be permitted to 
 every German to buy Polish land unconditionally ; no one 
 who has married a Polish woman can get permission ; for 
 experience teaches, says Bismarck, that such a wife makes 
 her husband a Polish patriot in the twinkling of an eye. In 
 future no Prussian Pole is to be allowed to settle in Posen, 
 unless he has married a German wife ; for only in this event 
 can there be any hope of Germanising him and his children.
 
 I 
 
 THE POLISH WOMEN 
 
 IT thus appears that Bismarck regards the Polish women 
 as even more dangerous to the unity and safety of the 
 German empire than the men. He has unintentionally borne 
 testimony to their pride and worth. And they deserve it, for 
 in all that relates to the contest for the preservation of the 
 national spirit, they are the marrow of the land. 
 
 The women here referred to belong to the aristocracy. 
 Among the common people there is only a religious national 
 consciousness, and there is no middle class as in the Germanic 
 and Latin countries. 
 
 Broadly speaking, we may say of these women of the 
 higher and lower aristocracy that their qualities, virtues, and 
 vices have nothing bourgeois about them. They are not 
 domesticated, they are not small-minded. The best of them 
 have a pride, which exalted and exceptional as it is, springs 
 from their feeling of the strength and purity of the spiritual 
 life. They are women who are born to rule, and who even 
 in narrow and straitened circumstances preserve the grand 
 self-esteem which runs in their blood. In women of this 
 type the emotional life is wholly absorbed in the national 
 cause. Several among them, indeed, are zealous children of 
 the Catholic Church, but for the larger number and the more 
 intelligent, Catholicism is precious only as the palladium of 
 the nationality. Cherbuliez's characterisation of the Polish 
 women as " Punch mixed with holy water " is now a trifle 
 antiquated. 
 
 The Polish women are renowned for beauty, and deserve 
 their reputation. It is a kind of dogma in Poland that 
 the real Polish woman is blonde ; it is considered most 
 elegant to be so ; still, although some women are to be found
 
 54 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 who not only approach the Swedes and Norwegians in the 
 golden yellow of their hair, but who surpass any Northerner 
 in the glistening whiteness of their skins, the dogma does 
 not hold true. Brunettes are everywhere more numerous, 
 and the colour of the hair of the larger number is a dark 
 brown. 
 
 The perfect form of the hands and the smallness of the 
 feet are remarkable in the Polish women. They even place 
 the beauty of the hands above all other perfections. " I 
 regard my hands, but not my face," said one, and one of 
 them who otherwise thinks little about her appearance and is 
 too cultivated to be vain, when her hands were frost-bitten in 
 Paris, caused the most celebrated physician in the city to be 
 sent for. Polish ladies maintain that when they visit the 
 shoemakers' shops in Vienna and show their small feet with 
 high insteps, the shoemakers exclaim : " Das kennen wir, das 
 sind polnische Fiisse ! " (We know that those are Polish 
 feet.) It is also said in Warsaw that in the Vienna shoe-shops 
 they have a separate case of boots and shoes for these feet, 
 and that its contents are widely different from that of the 
 case designed for English ladies. 
 
 The prevailing view here, as in all other nationalities 
 known to me, is, that the typical national woman lives for her 
 home and children perhaps more for the children than the 
 husband, and that she rarely leads a life of love. Matrimony 
 is not so paraded as in Germany, and is not so often the 
 occasion of catastrophes as in France. The Polish women 
 have hot heads, but their senses are under control. 
 
 Now and then a great irregularity happens : a lady leaves 
 her husband and lives with her lover ; a young girl marries 
 her father's valet, and the like. They are the rare exceptions. 
 When you meet an accomplished coquette in society, she is 
 almost always of foreign descent. On the other hand, great 
 examples of maternal sacrifice are by no means rare. 
 Countess Rosa K., called the first lady in Poland on account 
 of her family connections and fortune, has for years lived 
 entirely alone in an unimportant mountain town in the 
 Carpathian mountains, for the health of her feeble little 
 son.
 
 THE FEMININE PROPAGANDA 
 
 55 
 
 There are still found in Poland remnants of that abstract 
 worship of women, which, as long as the kingdom of Poland 
 endured, found expression in the following description of the 
 Madonna : Virgo Maria Regina Polonia. Although or perhaps 
 because the economic emancipation of women has not been 
 even mooted so far, gallantry towards the female sex is de 
 rigiieur. Men always rise in a tramway to give a lady a seat. 
 And in any public place whatever, even at the most elegant 
 receptions or balls, a chair is taken away from under one with 
 the words, " For a lady." 
 
 In the upper ranks of society the life of the women at 
 first sight seems to be purely idle. But in summer in the 
 country, where patriarchal relations to a great extent still pre- 
 vail, the mistress of the estate has much to do, and in Warsaw 
 it is only apparently that she lives a life of mere amusement. 
 
 The lady of position rises between eleven and twelve 
 o'clock in the forenoon, and goes to bed at four o'clock in 
 the morning ; she drives from one visit to another and from 
 one party to another. But in reality she labours every day 
 for public and national interests. Everything, the most in- 
 nocent enterprises, the founding of a library, a hospital, a 
 sewing school, no matter what it is, is made to strengthen 
 the Polish cause. Four ladies do not meet on a charity 
 committee without promoting the national cause under its 
 cover. 
 
 It is forbidden to teach girls Polish in a school, but it is 
 allowed to teach them to sew. They draw corsets on the 
 slate in case the gendarmes should come ; they have sewing 
 materials on the table, and books under it. 
 
 Several ladies, eminent for their talents, have attempted 
 to do more ; thus the renowned authoress, Elise Orzeszkowa, 
 even established a printing press to be carried on with a view 
 to the education of the people. This enterprise came to an 
 end when the government prohibited it, closed the printing 
 office, and confined Madam Orzeszkowa for several years at 
 Grodno. Her romances, which have attracted much atten- 
 tion Meir Ezofowicz is especially worth reading disclose 
 a talent which is akin to that of George Sand ; they are 
 written with a melancholy patriotism inspired by an en-
 
 56 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 thusiastic faith in freedom ; her minor novels have a 
 keener stamp of realism, and more decided artistic form, 
 but the same patriotic, didactic tendency. A younger 
 poetess, who has attained a very high rank in lyric poetry 
 Marja Konopnicka while contending with the most difficult 
 and oppressive conditions of life, has developed into the 
 poetic representative of a life of freedom of thought and 
 emotion which is still exceptional in Poland. The chord of 
 the love of country also vibrates strongly in her poetry, as, 
 for instance, in her ode to Matejko on the painting, The Battle 
 at Griinwald. 
 
 The opposition between Poland and Russia is never out 
 of the mind of the women. This is constantly noticeable 
 in daily life. A young girl was deserted by her lover. It 
 was always cited as a detail which made the perfidy and 
 cruelty more bitter, that it was for the sake of a Russian 
 dancer he left her. A young girl, not twenty years old, 
 rebuked a group of half-grown Polish schoolboys in the 
 Saxon Park because they were speaking Russian to each 
 other. Such little traits teach every one who resides for any 
 time in Russian Poland that it is the women who keep the 
 national passion at white heat. 
 
 In other respects, like the women of other countries, 
 of course they are of all sorts ; gentle and quiet, or sus- 
 piciously sharp-sighted, virginal and combative, or with erotic 
 tendencies, or vain, theatrical dispositions. There are some 
 who, genuine Slavs, are wholly absorbed in intellectual 
 enthusiasms, and there are individual commanding natures, 
 typically Polish, with the determination and firmness of an 
 exceptional man. There was one, whom her father, a general 
 of artillery, who wished to cure his child of fear, had compelled 
 from the time she was ten years old to stand at the side 
 of the cannon when they were fired, and who now, at the 
 age of twenty, was characterised as a woman who could 
 stand fire. 
 
 Often common patriotic interests unite them to the men ; 
 sometimes they choose a man instinctively for the reason 
 that he falls less short than others of their patriotic ideal. 
 On the whole it may be said that they think rather lightly
 
 REPRESENTATIVE POLISH WOMEN 57 
 
 of men, and know their faults thoroughly. Courage in a 
 man is not enough for them. " If they could not even 
 fight, they ought to be buried," was the retort made in 
 answer to a speech which exalted this virtue in men 
 by a young girl of much character. As a rule it may 
 be said of these women, that they demand much and give 
 much in return.
 
 II 
 
 THE MEN POLISH IDEALS, VIRTUES AND VICES 
 
 THE men are well-grown, often thin ; most frequently with 
 clear-cut faces and long, thick, pendant moustaches. This 
 type may be traced from peasant to aristocrat. A fre- 
 quent variation is the heavy, childishly frank country noble, 
 who greets his friends at meeting and parting with a 
 kiss, and has his heart on his lips, but who, nevertheless, 
 has a manly bearing and much natural dignity ; this is the 
 type which Mickiewicz has immortalised in several instances 
 in Pan Tadeusz. 
 
 Political qualities are universally wanting. While the 
 German generally feels as if he had found his destiny 
 when he is harnessed to the chariot of state, even if he 
 thereby loses some of the best of his nature, the Pole is 
 without any talent as a politician. The economic as well 
 as the political sense is but slightly developed in Russian 
 Poland. 
 
 Therefore there was in the old kingdom of Poland 
 (just as in Greece) a high civilisation without the material 
 foundation which could secure its continuance, and on that 
 account a development of personal freedom took place here 
 (as in Judaea) at the expense of the power of the kingdom 
 in its relation to foreign countries. 
 
 There are two Polish national songs, which together give 
 a complete picture of the national character of the Poles : one 
 is Wibicki's Jeszcze Polska of 1797, a poem famous through- 
 out the world as " Poland is not yet lost ; " the other is 
 Ujejski's Zdymen Pozarow of 1 846, written after the Galician 
 massacres. The Metternich Government, which got the idea 
 of using the peasants against their masters from Archduke 
 
 Ferdinand, persuaded the peasantry in Galicia that the em- 
 
 58
 
 POLISH NATIONAL SONGS 59 
 
 peror had granted them freedom from military service and 
 had given them the soil for partition, but that the nobility 
 prevented the carrying out of this imperial regulation. When 
 the young nobles then sought to win over the peasants to a 
 national revolt, the fury of the latter turned against the 
 Polish nobility ; in three days two thousand men, women, 
 and children of noble rank were exterminated, some being 
 burned alive, others flogged to death, and others cut to 
 pieces. 
 
 Ujej ski's song is the expression of the despair of the 
 younger race at seeing the hopes of Poland thus brought to 
 naught by the Poles themselves, as Wibicki's song is the 
 expression of the bright hopes of the old race, even after the 
 blow of the third partition had fallen. The first is a hymn 
 which resembles a psalm, the second a march which ap- 
 proaches a mazurka. 
 
 The two sides of the character of the people, the whole 
 Polish spirit, are reflected herein. In Ujejski's hymn there 
 is the lofty, burning earnestness, the love of country as a 
 religion : " Our lamentation mounts up to Thee, O Lord, 
 with the smoke of fire and the steam of our brother's blood!" 
 Jeszcze Polska, which is generally believed to be pathetic, 
 because it has played the same part in the national life of 
 Poland as the Marseillaise in that of France, is an extremely 
 careless, merry song, the ballad of heroic thoughtlessness. 
 Its argument is : No fear. Poland endures still. March, 
 march, Dombrowski ! It is joy to live, to sing, to fight. 
 
 The virtue which has gradually made its way in Europe 
 in modern times as the chief civic virtue is that of working, 
 and loving work for its own sake. The conception on which 
 it is based is very rare in Poland. Its children have culti- 
 vated the earth and cultivated their minds for centuries, but 
 they have at the same time obstinately regarded work merely 
 for money as a low, degrading thing. They have nourished 
 the inherited aristocratic contempt for the merchant and the 
 manufacturer, to say nothing of the shopkeeper and the 
 mechanic. They have collected great fortunes, but they 
 have spent them. Money was a means ; very seldom an end : 
 work a semi-disgraceful resource ; never its own reward.
 
 60 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 They wished to enjoy life, not earn bread, and above all, 
 to live lavishly and carelessly. 
 
 In this country the useful has always been given the 
 second place, often the third. 
 
 Not that their highest interest lay in an ideal reproduction 
 of life, as did that of Italy during the Renaissance, when it 
 was absorbed by its eternal art. No ; the end here was to 
 make life itself a festival which a great lord, a really grand 
 seigneur, gave to other gentlemen, great and small, and their 
 ladies. 
 
 Hospitality is a more essential feature in Polish life than 
 in that of any other country. Elsewhere people are hospitable 
 only when they are bored : here they are hospitable without 
 being bored ; to shrink from showing hospitality here is 
 accounted snobbery ; to shrink from accepting hospitality, 
 even on a grand scale, is also snobbery, for it shows that you 
 value it in money. 
 
 In ancient Poland even war was festive. In war the 
 Polish knights wore large wings on their cuirasses, real ostrich 
 wings on their saddles, and, as a matter of course, plumes 
 in rich variety. 
 
 And how beautiful and rich was the Polish costume in 
 peace ! It can scarcely be maintained that their mode of 
 dress was ever practical, but what glittering luxury it dis- 
 played ! What wonderful splendour in sashes, with their 
 gold and silver embroidery, which were wound many 
 times about the waist ! What a delicate and superior sense 
 of beauty in their silk embroideries ! The man who wore 
 such a sash about his waist had a constant impression of 
 happiness, fulness of life, prosperity. This was not tinsel, 
 like so much of the French finery of those days, but solid 
 and enduring splendour. 
 
 The individual mighty man of this people did not live for 
 himself alone, was not reserved, and the whole race was like 
 him. We have only to consider two such incidents as these : 
 that Poland opened its doors to the Jews in the Middle Ages, 
 and that John Sobieski liberated Vienna from the Turks ; two 
 rare incidents in the history of Europe of religious liberality 
 and political chivalry.
 
 THE ARISTOCRATIC IDEAL 61 
 
 But ideals, disinterested ideals, are a luxury, which bring 
 their own punishment on a people almost as national vices 
 do. The nations which attain to new religious ideals in the 
 emotional life, or in their contemplative life raise themselves 
 to new heights, or which follow aristocratic ideals in their 
 conduct, are always weak as makers of states ; frequently they 
 have been compelled to pay for more exalted qualities by the 
 loss of their political existence, but a race like the Poles is 
 placed in a more difficult position than ever in a period so 
 uniformly civic and martial as our own. 
 
 Especially does the old-time aristocratic contempt for 
 work prove fatal. No one works who does not need to, 
 and many who should, do not. Society in Warsaw is per- 
 haps more exclusive than anywhere else. The prejudice 
 against work is impressed upon the young by the old. A 
 distinguished old lady made this significant remark : " What 
 company they invited me to meet ! It was made up of 
 workmen, advocates whom we pay, manufacturers who sell 
 goods, doctors, into whose hands three rubles are slipped 
 for a visit ! " The wife of Don Ranudo would not speak 
 otherwise. 
 
 But how does a whole class get money in our time with- 
 out work ? some one will ask. That is exactly the crux ; 
 the money of the Polish aristocracy is coming to an end ; 
 those who still have land are frequently obliged to live wholly 
 on their estates. 
 
 But we must not believe that any one troubles himself 
 much about this. A Polish proverb runs : " I suppose it 
 will settle itself," a saying characteristic of the land of dis- 
 order. A poor paymaster, or one who lives on credit, is 
 judged less severely here than anywhere. About families who 
 are in debt to everybody it is said indulgently : " They were 
 forced to run into debt." They are not despised on that 
 account, hardly even when extravagance has amounted to 
 folly, as when the head of a family gambles and loses a fortune 
 in play. But just in such cases the bright and the shady 
 sides of the Polish character are seen in close proximity. 
 
 Of two brothers, one lost 200,000 rubles in play and 
 fled from the country. The other brother assumed the debt,
 
 62 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 betook himself into the country, lived on his estate like 
 the humblest workman, toiled like the poorest peasant, and 
 during his whole life was paying off his brother's debt. 
 Exaggerated, heroic self-sacrifice flourishes alongside of crazy, 
 criminal recklessness. 
 
 The propensity to vain love of display, to extravagance, 
 generates in low and bad natures that disorder in all money 
 affairs and that lust for wealth which determine the peculiar 
 Polish form of rascality, that which makes swindlers in 
 private life and traitors in political life. Probably in every 
 well-marked nationality rascality in money matters has its 
 peculiar, favourite form. The two following incidents show 
 it in its Polish extravagance. 
 
 A young man of good family ran in debt to the amount 
 of 80,000 rubles, borrowed of all his relatives, impoverished 
 them at last, and carried it so far that he borrowed of every 
 one he met, of strange ladies, of ladies of his own country 
 whom he met abroad in a hotel ; he did not despise 
 even a loan of five or ten rubles. Finally, when he had 
 not a copeck left, he entered a monastery in Paris as a 
 novice. There was general edification in his family. A 
 short time after, he writes home to a pious old aunt, ex- 
 plains to her that each of the other brothers has given 
 the monastery a sum of money, and begs her urgently to 
 advance him a small sum, only 6000 rubles, so that the 
 other monks should not despise him. As soon as he receives 
 the money, he leaves the monastery, travels at full speed to 
 America, spends the sum to the last penny, returns to 
 France, becomes a monk again, and is to-day one of the 
 most popular father-confessors in Paris. 
 
 The following incident from real life shows a variation on 
 the same type, and illustrates at the same time peculiarities of 
 Polish character of an entirely different kind. 
 
 A rich lady of the Polish aristocracy, very austere and 
 demure in her whole conduct, peacefully and, as it is called, 
 happily, married, who had a worthy husband, a beautiful 
 home, and who had never been in love before, seemed to 
 fall under a spell when she became acquainted with a certain 
 elegant young nobleman. She abandoned husband and
 
 POLISH DISINTERESTEDNESS 63 
 
 children, house and home, and allowed herself to be carried 
 off to Paris under a forged passport. The young man 
 was kind to her for about a week, then gradually sold all 
 her articles of value and ornaments, locked her up when 
 he went out to amuse himself with the money, and soon 
 left her so completely in the lurch that, stripped of every- 
 thing, she was compelled to write to her mother for aid. 
 Her mother brought her home, and her husband declared 
 that he was willing to take her back again on the condition 
 that she first kneeled down at the threshold of the house 
 and asked pardon of all, even of the servants, for the bad 
 example she had given. She submitted, and he has never 
 since said a reproachful word to her, or recalled the past 
 by any allusion. 
 
 Just as the rascality in money matters which here mani- 
 fests itself among the depraved Poles is extreme, so is the 
 horror there is of any intermingling of monetary value in 
 an expression of gratitude to superiors or equals among the 
 better class. 
 
 An exiled Pole, who took part in the rebellion of 1863, 
 and who has since earned his bread as a photographer in 
 Christiania, sent back to Charles XV. an expensive pin which 
 the latter had sent him in remembrance of an interview, and 
 of a service he had rendered. Another little incident that 
 occurred in Warsaw last year is even more significant and 
 instructive. A young landed proprietor, Mankowski, won the 
 prize offered for a comedy by a Polish private citizen. He 
 sent a diamond ring as a thank-offering to a popular actor, 
 who had given him great assistance with the stage effects, 
 and had spent a good deal of time upon this. The actor 
 refused to accept the ring. When this was told me, and 
 I suggested : " Can he give his time without compensation ? " 
 I received the answer : " He does not need much, you see : 
 he does not take that kind of pay ; but also he himself does 
 not pay. People know that he has not much, and there- 
 fore regard it as mean to dun him. For instance, he has 
 now occupied a fine apartment for ten years. During this 
 time he has never paid his rent ; but when rent day 
 comes, he pays a visit to the landlord in the morning ; the
 
 64 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 latter offers him a cup of chocolate, the young actor makes 
 an excuse for his negligence with regard to the rent, laments 
 his want of money, and there is no more said about the 
 matter." "And his tailor, his shoemaker, does he not pay 
 them either ? " " No ; they hope that he will some day make 
 a rich match. On the other hand, he does not receive an 
 invitation to dinner without reciprocating, and when he gives 
 a dinner at the Hotel d' Europe to Kronenberg (the richest 
 banker in Poland), it is not less magnificent than Kronen- 
 berg's own dinners and then he pays." 
 
 According to this way of looking at it, it is only necessary 
 to pay for the unnecessary, the superfluous. Nowhere else 
 indeed does the superfluous stand in so great honour. The 
 young men of the highest class in Poland are products of 
 luxury, extremely engaging, gently affectionate like women, 
 delicate as late off-shoots of old noble stocks. As a rule 
 they do not work ; and when by exception they do, without 
 necessity, devote themselves to a study, prepare themselves 
 for a professorship, or something of that sort, they awake 
 general amazement and wonder. They applaud a young man 
 not for working, but because he does the superfluous. 
 
 Thus to do the superfluous has always been the char- 
 acteristic of Polish heroism. The men of the great days 
 of Poland have taken part in the most varied European 
 wars whenever the contest was about an object which had 
 their sympathy. They fought in 1848, and later in the 
 Crimea, in Italy, in Turkey. Thus it was with the old Ordon, 
 sung by Mickiewicz, the hero of 1831, who blew up his 
 redoubt before Warsaw when the Russians entered it, and 
 who was himself saved by a miracle. He had been every- 
 where where a blow was struck for freedom or against 
 Russia. Until last year this true hero, in whom all that is 
 lofty and rare in the Polish character was combined, lived a 
 quiet life in Florence. Proud and poor as he was and ad- 
 vanced in age, unable to work, in his fear of becoming a 
 burden to others, he put an end to his life by a pistol shot. 
 His courage was that of a knight-errant. And this kind of 
 martial courage is found in spirits of the second rank, as, 
 for instance, the lately deceased Tripplin, who in his accounts
 
 INCIDENT OF 1863 65 
 
 of his travels has given a sympathetic, idealised description of 
 Denmark. He also took part in the most varied wars for 
 freedom, and was everywhere where there was any righting 
 against Russia. 
 
 The following incident of the last rebellion well illus- 
 trates the Polish disposition to show a courage which has 
 no regard to the useful. When in 1863 all hope for the 
 cause of Poland was lost, at the last meeting of the national 
 Government its chief announced that he should remain in 
 Warsaw ; that he would not run away ; the other members 
 of the Government could still save themselves, and he handed 
 them the passports which had been prepared. Then they 
 also determined to remain, and to expose themselves to all 
 the dangers of being taken as leaders of the rebellion, rather 
 than fly before the enemy against whom they had risen. 
 
 With such virtues and the vices which have been touched 
 upon, people do not get on in the world in the nineteenth 
 century. They are not even honoured and respected, much 
 less strong and great. The grace of magnanimity and reck- 
 lessness is badly placed in our time between German 
 prudence and Russian might. 
 
 E
 
 Ill 
 
 EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION DEMOCRATS, SO- 
 CIALISTS, FREE-THINKERSCOMPULSORY CHOICE 
 OF THE CULTURED 
 
 OPPRESSION has now reached its greatest height in Russian 
 Poland since the partition of the kingdom. So complete is 
 the gagging of the press that the refutation of the arguments 
 in Bismarck's speeches, or any attack upon them, was strictly 
 forbidden. No one even dared to show that the Polish 
 agitation with which, according to the prince, it was necessary 
 to contend, for very good reasons only consisted in an 
 unbroken determination to maintain the nationality and 
 language against the foreign conqueror, who, on his side, 
 sets the whole machinery of state in operation, and uses all 
 its powers. 
 
 The aim of the government in Russian Poland, as already 
 mentioned, is especially directed to two objects : the Russian- 
 ising of the ownership of the soil, and the eradication of the 
 Polish language. 
 
 The ukase of 1865, which has been spoken of, forbade 
 the Poles in the old Polish provinces to devise their land 
 to any others than their children. In March 1886, however, 
 the Russian Courts hit upon a decision of even broader 
 import, since a will in which a Lithuanian proprietor had 
 left his estate to his son was declared invalid, and the land 
 was sold by auction. 
 
 In the Kingdom of Poland it is still permitted to speak 
 Polish in the open street, and to write a notice in Polish, 
 provided that above it the same is written in Russian ; but 
 anywhere outside of the so-called kingdom in the whole 
 of Lithuania towards the north, and in the south as far as 
 Odessa everywhere, where culture and language in the 
 
 66
 
 PROHIBITION OF THE POLISH LANGUAGE 67 
 
 cultivated "classes are still Polish, in and on all public build- 
 ings a notice is posted with the words : " The speaking of 
 Polish is forbidden." The violation of the prohibition is 
 punished severely, and every functionary, even to the low- 
 liest, who is reported to have said a few words in Polish, 
 even as an answer to a question in Polish, even to persons 
 who do not understand any other language, is punished with 
 heavy fines or dismissal. A tramcar conductor was recently 
 fined twenty-five rubles more than his month's pay for 
 having answered a Polish question in the same language. 
 
 Just imagine a trial in Russian Poland. The magistrate, 
 who is generally a Pole by birth, and speaks Russian with 
 difficulty and with a bad accent, questions in his Russian the 
 accused, a Polish peasant, who does not understand a word 
 of the judge's speech. The questions are therefore trans- 
 lated by an interpreter. He answers in Polish. New trans- 
 lation by the interpreter, unnecessary as it is, and thus 
 questions and answers continue, because neither magistrate 
 nor accused is permitted to speak his native language. 
 And at the public trial the prosecuting counsel speaks against 
 the accused in a language which the latter understands no 
 more than what his counsel says in his behalf. 
 
 The Kingdom of Poland, where the language is still 
 allowed, and where the Code Napoleon is still in force, seems 
 to the inhabitants of the other provinces comparatively a 
 paradise of freedom. They go from Wilna to Warsaw for 
 a few weeks every year to breathe freely. 
 
 He who has experienced the state of things in this 
 paradise of freedom can draw his own conclusions as to 
 what it is in the provinces. 
 
 So far as education is concerned, the parents keep 
 their little boy or girl at home and out of school as long as 
 possible, teach them themselves, or have them taught, in order 
 to give the first elements of knowledge in Polish and in the 
 Polish spirit. The child sucks in with his mother's milk 
 contempt for the Russians, and passionate hatred for them. 
 Everything which the child hears in the first years of 
 his life strengthens this hatred and contempt. He learns 
 so much that is great and good about the superior culture
 
 68 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 and exalted courage of his countrymen that he attributes 
 everything great to Poland and the Poles. " Is it possible that 
 Columbus was not a Pole ? " asked a little boy of his mother 
 in my presence. On the other hand, as a rule everything 
 which the child learns or experiences with regard to the 
 Russians is unfavourable, or it receives an unfavourable 
 interpretation. The Russian officers are unobtrusive in 
 their bearing in public places ; they are generally seen alone, 
 seldom two and two. It is not the custom as it is in other 
 armies for them to greet each other when they meet. Their 
 behaviour is not in the least arrogant ; they rather seem 
 oppressed by their situation as the detested representatives 
 of the ruling race. But the uniform is unpopular ; the 
 Poles do not give the officers credit for their modesty, they 
 take it rather as proof of consciousness of intellectual 
 inferiority. And a single little incident like this, that the 
 carriage of the Russian general, on leaving a public ball, 
 breaks the established row of carriages and goes ahead, 
 arouses the bitter feeling of living in a land conquered by 
 an enemy. 
 
 There is, of course, a Russian colony in Warsaw, but 
 there is no real Russian society on account of the great 
 disparities in rank among the Russians who live there. 
 They cannot accept each other as equals. And here, as 
 elsewhere, the Russian officials do not bear the highest 
 characters. In addition to which, the better-class Russians 
 think themselves too good to accept posts in Poland. They 
 shrink from the odium attached to the calling. 
 
 A few years ago a Russian was appointed Professor of 
 Zoology at the Warsaw University. He arrived, and was 
 shown over the museum of stuffed animals. He noticed 
 that the names on the labels were in Latin and Russian 
 only. " Why not in Polish ? " he asked. The Rector of the 
 University explained to him that he had been sent to 
 Warsaw not primarily to give instruction in zoology it 
 was comparatively unimportant whether the students learned 
 much or little of the subject but to carry on the Russian 
 propaganda. The new Professor then inquired when the 
 next train left for St. Petersburg, and departed incontinently.
 
 EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 69 
 
 In the same way the leading Russian actress declined to go 
 to Warsaw with the imperial troupe, and declared she would 
 not act there until she might do so in Polish. But such 
 cases are exceptional. 
 
 On the other hand, there are incidents of the very oppo- 
 site description, which a Polish child daily witnesses and 
 hears discussed in his home. Hatred of the Muscovite 
 (Moskal] becomes a part of his nature. 
 
 He is finally sent to school, that is, he has to be given 
 up to the Russian state, to Russian teachers. In his own 
 home his mother has always dressed him in the Polish 
 national costume, which is not allowed in the street. He 
 has lived with picture-books and paintings which have shown 
 him scenes of the past history of Poland, of the revolutions 
 of this century, of the march of the exiles to Siberia ; he 
 knows the career of Poland minutely. In school the boy 
 is dressed in Russian uniform, is addressed only in Russian, 
 is never allowed to speak a single word that is not Russian, 
 never hears anything about Poland or Polish literature, or 
 if it is mentioned at all, it is spoken of as something pro- 
 hibited, evil. He learns here that he is Russian, and 
 nothing else than Russian. What confusion in the child's 
 soul ! The boy is compelled to be a hypocrite, to tell lies. 
 The seeds of defiance and self-restraint, or of falsehood and 
 flattery, are planted in his soul. Desperate questions as to 
 whether resistance is of any use, whether justice exists, 
 necessarily arise. 
 
 The schools are bad. The circumstance that the whole 
 instruction is given in a foreign language, and that an 
 inordinate stress is laid upon the acquirement of it ; the 
 dislike and constraint, which are the result thereof ; lastly, 
 the habit of looking on the teacher as a foreigner and an 
 enemy have a great effect in diminishing the result. There 
 is a minority of the students who understand French, and 
 speak it well ; a certain number understand and speak the 
 language of the frontier German ; but the majority are 
 barely able to read foreign books, and many do not under- 
 stand a simple question in French or German. Those who 
 are well-to-do go to foreign lands to study; if they cannot
 
 70 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 obtain permission for this they prefer to go to St. Petersburg, 
 where they find less restraint and better professors, rather 
 than remain in Warsaw, where the university instruction as 
 a rule is bad. 
 
 When the University was suddenly transformed from 
 Polish to Russian, those professors who did not know 
 Russian asked leave to retire. Several of them remained, 
 however, chiefly from patriotic reasons. But by degrees 
 the University was purged, and the Polish professors were 
 replaced by Russians, or by those who were favourable to 
 Russia. The regulation has been made that after twenty- 
 five years' service a professor can be dismissed, unless the 
 faculty specially desire to retain him. They never desire to 
 retain an eminent Polish professor. Thus, last year, Bara- 
 nowski, the first medical professor of the University, received 
 his dismissal as coming within the limit, although, since he 
 was very young when he was appointed, he was just fifty 
 years old and in full possession of his powers. As Professor 
 of /Esthetics and the History of Literature, passing by the de- 
 serving and sound historian of literature, Piotr Chmielowski, 
 they have appointed a certain Struwe, the only man who 
 could be found who would speak Russian. Sometimes he 
 succeeds in obtaining three auditors. 
 
 The halls are so small that none of them hold over a 
 hundred, and not one of them is ever full. 
 
 The students have to wear a uniform like the pupils of 
 schools, and they are under strict supervision. It is naturally 
 forbidden to them to form any union whatsoever. They are 
 not allowed to stand in a knot on the street, and if they 
 even assemble at all in private to the number of six or 
 seven, they are sure to be reported and punished ; for 
 everything is known. No one goes in or out of a house 
 unseen. Latch-keys are unknown and there is no northern 
 institution one can speak of which astonishes an inhabitant 
 of Russian Poland more than the latch-key. " Does the 
 government allow such things ? " they ask, with amazement. 
 Every one, even the master of the house, must ring at 
 his door, and the porter (Siroz), who corresponds to the 
 Russian Dvornick, and whose duty it is to be responsible for
 
 THE DEMOCRATIC GROUP 71 
 
 the safety of the inmates, invariably serves also as an instru- 
 ment of the police. 
 
 Thus the students are driven to study alone, but this 
 is also made difficult. A great many of the most cele- 
 brated foreign works, as well as the most important of the 
 literature of their own land, are forbidden, and must be got 
 over the frontier as smuggled goods, which on the one hand 
 increases the cost and on the other is dangerous. Therefore 
 it cannot be wondered at that among the more intelligent 
 of these young men there are found many with far-reaching 
 anti-governmental views. 
 
 There are no Nihilists among them : neither the name 
 nor the thing is known in Poland. The most advanced 
 among them fall into two groups. Some call themselves 
 democrats and some socialists. The democrats hold the 
 views which are supported in Prawda. Still, their chief 
 interest is not social or political, but purely intellectual. 
 They constitute the first free-thinking group of this cen- 
 tury in Poland. But as Catholicism and the power 
 of the clergy from remote times have had their support 
 in the Polish aristocracy, which represents the national 
 tradition, and as the press of the aristocracy, especially the 
 newspaper S/owo, is the organ of Catholicism, free-thinking 
 allies itself with democratic inclinations and aims. 
 
 The young men who hold democratic views would like 
 to introduce into Poland modern thoughts, views, theories 
 and books. They would like to translate even the trivial 
 protests of Max Nordau, if they were not afraid of the censor. 
 Their strongest speaker, Swientochowski, is about forty years 
 old, handsome, clear-eyed, stubborn, with a head like that 
 of a provincial Christ, a poet and a fine writer, and, above 
 all, a character. He has great qualities as a controversialist 
 and as a didactic author, but his dogmatism causes him to be 
 easily involved in squabbles, and he lacks grace and tact. 
 His chief task is a war against the Catholic clergy. But an 
 attack upon the clergy in Poland, even more than elsewhere, 
 is an unpopular thing, because the nationality of the country 
 has been for so long a time bound up with the Romish 
 religion, and because the religious difference even now
 
 72 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 since the educational standard of the people is so low 
 makes the strongest bulwark of the nation. 
 
 Then it also appears albeit it is denied and the adherents 
 of Prawda do not like to hear it that the censor is more 
 indulgent to this paper than to any other. It has permission 
 to say things which would be forbidden to any other journal. 
 For everything which tends towards cosmopolitanism and 
 which undermines the Catholic church is far less dangerous 
 to Russia than the nationalistic religious tendency. The in- 
 fluence of the Roman Church still appears to Russia its chief 
 enemy and chief danger. 
 
 There is only one power in Poland which Russia per- 
 secutes and fears to the same degree, perhaps even more, 
 and that is singularly enough Socialism. 
 
 I have said that there is a group among the studious youth 
 who call themselves Socialists ; a large number of the woi k- 
 ing people are of the same mind through the influence of the 
 socialistic thought of Germany. I believe that these so-called 
 Socialists among the students are of the highest class, the best 
 informed, the most enthusiastic and devoted ; they are mostly 
 young doctors who have acquired modern science, and who 
 by reading at first or at second hand have become disciples 
 of Karl Marx. They feel keenly the existing injustice of the 
 conditions of society. They realise that, even if Poland per 
 impossibile should become free, little or nothing would be 
 gained if the aristocracy or the clergy should continue to 
 exercise the ruling influence, and capital should continue lo 
 exploit those who own no property. They have nothing 
 against the Russians as Russians, and dream vaguely of 
 allying themselves with the revolutionary elements in Russia, 
 of which indeed they know nothing. They pay dearly for 
 the perilous and wholly Platonic sympathy for Socialism 
 which they cherish. For every student who is accused or 
 suspected of socialist propagandism is sent relentlessly to the 
 castle, even if he has not been guilty of the smallest illegality. 
 
 It is the danger threatening from Russian socialism which 
 makes the government so anxious about that of Poland. 
 The five political criminals who were hanged in the prison 
 of Warsaw at the end of January were Russians. The case,
 
 THE BARDOWSKI CONSPIRACY 73 
 
 which came to an end here, turned upon a conspiracy 
 organised by an inferior magistrate by the name of Bardowski, 
 a political plot wholly without a prospect of success. The 
 conspirators had drawn up socialist proclamations, which 
 were to be given to the working people of Warsaw ; they 
 had stabbed a cigar dealer, in whose shop one of them, an 
 engineer by the name of Kunicki, had been stupid enough 
 to forget the protocol with the names of all the conspirators, 
 and who in his anxiety had taken the book to a police 
 station. 
 
 Very little appeared against the accused, so little that the 
 Governor-General of Poland the celebrated General Guiko, 
 who is of Polish descent, and whose name properly pro- 
 nounced is the Polish Hurko after the sentence of death was 
 pronounced, twice sent the papers to St. Petersburg with the 
 declaration that he could not see how they could condemn 
 these men to death. Since the death sentence was neverthe- 
 less confirmed, the governor, who is humane without on 
 that account being known as soft-hearted, acted as follows. 
 He caused the condemned persons to be awakened early 
 one morning, and they were then told that they were 
 sentenced to banishment, and must therefore take leave of 
 their relatives, and if they desired it, see a priest to prepare 
 them for their long journey. They all declared that they 
 did not desire to communicate with any minister of religion. 
 One of them wished to say good-bye to his father, who was 
 sent for. They were then taken to a closed room, where 
 the execution was to take place. The sentence was pro- 
 nounced there, and at the same moment the executioners 
 seized them and hanged them in the room. 
 
 It is most significant that two Russian officers who weie 
 condemned to death, but who at the last moment had their 
 sentence commuted to hard labour in the mines for life 
 which is virtually the death punishment, since no one can 
 endure it for more than four or five years were not guilty 
 of anything whatever except that they had received some 
 pamphlets and proclamations from Bardowski, which they 
 had not shown to any one, so far as could be proved, much 
 less sought to distribute, but which were found in their houses.
 
 74 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 So dangerous is it to have socialistic writings in one's 
 custody. 
 
 However, no Pole ought to hazard freedom and life for 
 the sake of socialistic ideas. For in general it may be said, 
 though young men with socialist sympathies in Warsaw are, 
 strangely enough, surprised to hear one maintain it, that there 
 is no sense in a Pole being a Socialist. For what does 
 Socialism mean, shortly expressed ? What else than directly 
 or indirectly, the expropriation of private rich men, capitalists 
 and landed proprietors, for the advantage of the State ? But 
 translate this into Polish, and it becomes under the con- 
 ditions that prevail now, and have long prevailed, absolutely 
 nothing else than the expropriation of Polish rich men for the 
 advantage of the Russian State. But whatever the Russian 
 State has once annexed may be called a thing of the past. 
 It would require a strong faith to think that it would ultimately 
 profit the Polish common people, when one lives in a city 
 like Warsaw, where there is no municipal government, and 
 where the revenues of the municipality go straight to St. 
 Petersburg and only an extremely small portion thereof is 
 used for the city's own advantage. 
 
 The only thing the Polish Socialist actually can do is 
 therefore to excite the workmen against their employers, 
 arouse their discontent, and lead them on to strikes which 
 almost always end in defeat. Since election does not exist, 
 so to speak, and a real party can never be formed, all socialist 
 action on a larger scale is impossible, wholly apart from its 
 ruinous effect upon the individuality of the Polish people. 
 
 A similar consideration to that which ought to prevent a 
 thoughtful and prudent Pole from placing himself on the side 
 of the Polish Socialists, even if he is otherwise inclined to 
 socialistic theories, should prevent him from giving his full 
 support to the free-thinking group in Poland. 
 
 One can be as good an European as any one, one may 
 despise all the chauvinism, which as national conceit merely 
 stupefies a people, and still regard the forcible annihilation 
 of a rich and valuable national individuality as a misfortune 
 for the whole of Europe. 
 
 It seems to me as if all other questions in Poland must
 
 THE DILEMMA OF THE DEMOCRATS 75 
 
 be subordinate to this first and most important : the pre- 
 servation of the nationality. But at a time like this, when 
 it is absolutely forbidden to establish Polish schools, or to give 
 peasants or the lower classes national instruction of any kind, 
 a comprehensive free-thinking agitation, which would paralyse 
 the Catholic faith, would also paralyse Polish national feeling. 
 Unquestionably there are Protestant Poles in Posen and 
 scattered in Russian Poland numerous united churches, 
 which (in spite of the fact that their priests are married and 
 their relations with Rome looser than those of the Roman 
 Catholics) feel themselves to be very good Poles ; but this is 
 the consequence of the power of a tradition. 
 
 A rupture with the religious tradition at this period, if it 
 could be brought about among the masses, would always 
 be a victory for the Russian principle. 
 
 To be called a democrat has no sound meaning either, 
 unless the word expresses the opinion that the masses of the 
 people ought to rule. It is rather fruitless to cherish this 
 opinion so long as nobility and peasantry are in an equal 
 degree under the whip of the foreigner. All that the 
 democrats are able to accomplish is to oppose the influence 
 of the large landed proprietors, by election of the parish 
 council in the country, and of the managers in private under- 
 takings, a good and useful thing, in so far as it arouses a 
 feeling of independence among the people, a cause of less 
 undoubted profit, in so far as it lightens for the Russians the 
 labour of breaking the power of resistance of the higher classes. 
 
 A dreadful dilemma presents itself to the Polish in- 
 telligence : it seems condemned either to choose progress, 
 with the danger of playing into the hands of its own worst 
 enemy, and the worst enemy of all progress, or to choose 
 stagnation, with the danger that the nationality which is 
 thereby preserved, and of which its sons were and are so 
 proud, should drop behind in the culture of Europe, becoming 
 antiquated and outstripped. 
 
 There is something really tragic in this situation. More 
 than one man, who represents the Polish intelligence in its 
 highest development, sees himself like the proud Count 
 Henrik in Krasinski's tragedy condemned to defend the
 
 76 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 citadel of the Holy Trinity. These men are modern men, 
 and they are silent on the subject. They are free-thinkers, 
 and if as landed proprietors in Posen they have seats 
 in the German Parliament and the Prussian Herrenhaus, 
 they vote invariably with the centre. There are those 
 among them who would very gladly dine with a socialist 
 leader like Viereck, and yet officially follow Windhorst's flag. 
 They know Heinrich Heine by heart and belong to the 
 Catholic party. They are free-thinkers, and as Poles feel 
 themselves compelled to support Rome an intellectual 
 torment which is not known anywhere else. 
 
 And in all domains it is manifest how patriotic or sup- 
 posed patriotic struggles repress modern intellectual life : 
 in the plastic arts, where patriotic allegories and symbols 
 have too long usurped the place of pictures of real life, 
 and in literature, where the historical romance still blossoms, 
 a late aftermath of Walter Scott. The writer of greatest 
 narrative talent among the living authors of Poland, Henryk 
 Sienkiewickz, made his debut with excellent modern novels ; 
 gradually associating himself with the Catholic party, he has 
 taken up the line of great patriotic historical romances in the 
 style of The Three Musketeers, with endless sequels. He re- 
 gards it as his task in view of the depressing present to 
 show the people the image of a past, when it still existed 
 as a nation, and he prefers to describe the most unhappy 
 period of the old history of Poland, in order to strengthen 
 the people's faith in the surmountableness of the existing 
 wretched condition by pictures of the terrible crises of 
 bygone days. Nevertheless, in spite of all his talent, the 
 result is that when from times which he knows he goes 
 back to times which he does not know, and works with an 
 aim entirely different from that of art before his eyes, he 
 generally falls so far short as an author that he loses his 
 best readers, and his novels are only successful as a means 
 of amusement, or as stimulants to patriotic feeling. 
 
 Just as socialist and democratic or free-thinking ten- 
 dencies do not mean the same in Poland as elsewhere, so 
 also Catholic and conservative leanings have a special 
 character here.
 
 CATHOLICISM A PATRIOTIC FORCE 77 
 
 In German literature, for instance, the Catholic tendency 
 of Romanticism in this century is sharply opposed to the 
 Protestant form of the earlier literature and the purely pagan 
 bias of contemporary literature ; but in Poland, Catholicism 
 in this century has always been in opposition, in con- 
 stant, restless conflict with the power of the State, frequently 
 blended with that love for the truth which emancipates, and 
 with that enthusiasm which exposes to martyrdom. In 
 Protestant countries the clergy are as a rule servile ; in 
 Poland they never are and never can be degraded into 
 tools of temporal power. 
 
 There are Catholic priests whom their superiors permit to 
 write in newspapers, to visit the theatres and participate in 
 social life, because it is known that they are wholly absorbed 
 in the double object of exercising charity and of keeping the 
 language of Poland alive in the most remote provinces. 
 People close their eyes to infringements of the Catholic 
 ritual among them, nay, even at a probable disbelief in 
 certain dogmas, because they know them to be zealous 
 supporters of Catholicism as the intellectual Polish national 
 power. The stamp of comparatively innocent hypocrisy, 
 which unquestionably adheres to them, injures them only 
 among the few. General opinion regards them favourably. 
 
 As may be seen, according to my opinion, the point of 
 view for the appraisement of the different parties and 
 intellectual powers, which the foreigner feels himself com- 
 pelled to adopt, is this : how far do they offer a greater or 
 lesser power of resistance to the principle which aims by all 
 means at breaking down the individuality of the people, the 
 new and fearful principle of Asiatic absolute monarchy ? 
 It will be only when the danger which is threatened herefrom 
 is removed that Poland can afford the luxury of measuring 
 the different aims of the times by a new and sounder standard. 
 But so long as this principle triumphs, so long will this dis- 
 membered and tortured Poland be the unquestioned repre- 
 sentative of humanity as opposed to it, the advance post of 
 civilisation, even in domains where its form is not modern, and 
 so long will the tattered flag with the white eagle of ancient 
 Poland remain the old unique, adorable banner of freedom.
 
 IV 
 
 POLISH LIFE AND THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM PUBLIC 
 FESTIVITIES AND MASQUERADES, SOCIAL LIFE 
 IN DIFFERENT CIRCLES THE SAME OPPRESSIVE 
 ATMOSPHERE EVERYWHERE 
 
 OPPOSED to the Polish life, impulsive, pulsating, now weaker, 
 now stronger, stands the Russian system, the heavy Russian 
 force system, working like a machine, the mechanism of 
 eradication and extermination. 
 
 It strives not only to cut down all free shoots of 
 nationality and of the culture of the language, but to strike 
 at its growth in its roots, to sap its germs, to blast its seed. 
 
 And even this is not enough. The system fears all the 
 germs which are floating in the air, which drift with the wind, 
 swim in the streams. It is afraid of everything which fills 
 the air in the guise of song or laughter or tears, of every- 
 thing which rises to the lips in words, of everything which 
 captivates the eye as a beloved colour. 
 
 Against everything, even things the most airy and spiritual, 
 the system has a prohibition. For the national dress it has 
 given a uniform ; for song, silence ; for laughter, silence ; 
 for wailing, silence ; for speech, silence ; and for everything 
 which is published at home or abroad, the censor. It has 
 built a wall about this land, and striven to make it so high 
 that no bird can fly over it, and so dense that no breeze can 
 pass through it. 
 
 The national dress is forbidden even as a carnival 
 costume, even in historical dramas in the theatre. Poland's 
 colours, Poland's arms are strictly prohibited, must not 
 even remain on the front of an old house, or on the 
 frame of an old painting. The national songs are so strictly 
 forbidden that people are shy of playing them even in a 
 private house, if there is a large company.
 
 SOCIAL MELANCHOLY 79 
 
 Laughter indeed is not forbidden, but it forbids itself. 
 It is so rare that a foreigner who late at night in the society 
 of his acquaintances laughs aloud at some conceit, sees the 
 police and gendarmes assemble with signs of astonishment. 
 I never heard any laughter in the streets of Warsaw but 
 my own. 
 
 Silence and seriousness are the two traits which above all 
 are characteristic of Poland. It is a land where no one 
 publicly expresses mirth. 
 
 Go into the great student cafe" which is situated opposite 
 the University. No one says a word aloud. Go out in the 
 street. There is never a shout. No one likes to attract 
 attention to himself. Or take as example a large public ball, 
 under the patronage of the best society. The orchestra 
 thunders, the mazurka is danced through all its figures for 
 three-quarters of an hour at the stretch. But in a corner 
 of the hall stands in a circle of young officers the strict 
 old General Kriidener, who was defeated at Plevna after 
 having been compelled to make a hopeless attack, much 
 against his will. In another corner stands Colonel Brock, 
 only some thirty years old, who has risen to be chief of 
 the gendarmerie, the political police, who are rather disliked 
 by the other corps of the army, and with whose officers 
 the officers of the army do not like to have anything to do, 
 but whose commander nevertheless is the most important 
 man in the city, more important even than the Governor- 
 General ; for a command of his is final ; there is no appeal 
 from his orders. The thought of the qualities which he 
 must have displayed in order to have attained such a post 
 at his age, presents itself involuntarily to the mind. His 
 glance flies uninterruptedly about the hall and puts a certain 
 damper on the gaiety. Where it falls, falls silence. 
 
 Or take a great rout in a public hall. It is a beautiful 
 sight, but a quiet festival. It is allowed because the object 
 is charitable ; an asylum or a foundling hospital receives the 
 profits. 
 
 Against the pillars of the hall sit the distinguished ladies 
 who preside over the festival and distribute the prizes 
 of the lotteries. The hall is full of young ladies in the
 
 8o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 most beaufiful toilettes, present to see and be seen. They 
 can talk freely there with the men they care to meet, 
 while the mothers and aunts keep their seats. But all 
 conversations are subdued. It was necessary to invite the 
 Governor-General of Poland, the strict and very much 
 dreaded General Gurko and his wife, a lady whose exterior 
 and bearing are less distinguished than her position. It 
 is the popular impression that Madam Gurko, plainly enough 
 the least popular person in Poland, who with womanly 
 fanaticism has appropriated to herself the task of serving the 
 Russian cause by all means, is the prime mover of all the 
 measures which have struck a blow at Polish hopes and 
 interests of late years. 
 
 The old aristocrat, Louis Gorski, called Poland's pope, 
 the most strong-willed representative of the Catholic party, is 
 the giver of the festival, and as such has to offer his arm to 
 Madam Gurko to take her round the room. No one greets 
 her ; all speak in an undertone or turn their backs. Behind 
 them come the Governor-General and Madam Gorska. Both 
 couples exchange ceremonious phrases only in French. 
 Gurko, who carries himself very gallantly, is a man of 
 medium height, of strong frame, with thin hair, a large fan- 
 shaped beard sprinkled with grey, a slightly reddish nose ; 
 the expression of his countenance does not evince the bold- 
 ness and celerity which have been his characteristics as a 
 general. He looks more fitted to command officers than 
 to rule a people. 
 
 Or take a soiree at the house of one of the leaders of 
 the aristocratic party. The names of the most renowned 
 families of Poland are represented. Here sits a Countess 
 Plater, niece of the celebrated Emilia ; here a Countess 
 Krasinska, married to a relative of the poet, both liberal 
 and patriotic to excess ; here a Countess Ostrowska who 
 is considered the most beautiful woman in Poland. We 
 might believe that the Poles would feel themselves here 
 within closed doors as free as possible ; but if a foreigner 
 says too bold a word, one of the young men of the family 
 touches him on the shoulder and whispers, " Not so loud ! 
 On the chair which is back to back with yours sits Count
 
 THE "TOMBOLA" 81 
 
 Tolstoi, the minister of police, whom my uncle has been 
 obliged to invite." 
 
 Or take a public masquerade. The largest, which is 
 given in carnival time, has the whole of the theatre at its 
 disposal. It is combined with a lottery, the profits of which 
 go to the theatre for a pension fund, and its name, 
 " Tombola," is derived therefrom. It opens at midnight ; 
 all the ladies are wrapped up tightly in dominoes and 
 impenetrably masked, and the masks are not taken off, 
 while the gentlemen are not allowed to wear either masks 
 or costumes, but come in evening dress. 
 
 This form of masquerade is very old here. E. A. T. 
 Hoffmann, more than eighty years ago, described it as a 
 jubilant and brilliant festival in the pleasure-loving Warsaw 
 of his time. 
 
 The piquancy of the arrangement is that the ladies can 
 say what they will to the gentlemen ; can attack them, show 
 themselves conversant with their secrets, without letting 
 themselves be known. The chief pleasure it affords is the 
 facility it offers to lovers of meeting one another and dis- 
 appearing together. If a man is very well known, he is 
 accosted and taken to task by scores of ladies in the hall 
 without being able to retort. A lady comes, takes his arm, 
 and walks off with him till another comes and takes him 
 from her. 
 
 There are two or three thousand people present and the 
 crowd is great ; but there is not the least trace of joviality. 
 There is neither music nor song nor laughter nor loud con- 
 versation. If this is a love-masque, it bears a striking likeness 
 to a funeral, or, more exactly, several funerals, different 
 funeral processions which move silently past each other in 
 the spacious rooms. 
 
 Wherever you are the oppression is felt. 
 
 I recall a grand breakfast at the house of one of the 
 recognised leaders of democratic youth. There were demo- 
 crats and free-thinkers present, men who had the tradi- 
 tions of 1863 far behind them. The most characteristic 
 thing about them is, that they are men who hardly have 
 an ideal which they expect to be realised before many 
 
 F
 
 82 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 hundred years. Otherwise they are heterogeneous enough, 
 controversialists, dissatisfied, independent thinkers, or mere 
 admirers and echoes, yet almost all of good courage 
 in so far as they are persuaded that the world can be re- 
 formed, that it is only necessary to set about it the right 
 way. Among them we may note some aristocrat, erstwhile 
 in debt, then richly married, who in his quiet way is 
 as radical as any of them, some gaunt figure with dis- 
 orderly beard and hair hanging down over the eyes, just 
 returned for the fifth time from a Russian fortress in the 
 Ural mountains, where he usually does penance for his 
 socialist sympathies for several months at a time. Here, 
 as everywhere in this quiet land, a general conversation 
 is an unknown thing ; conversation is carried on with 
 subdued voices in small groups. And in whatever direction 
 the conversation drifts, you always stumble as if against 
 a wall upon innumerable obstacles and hindrances, which 
 every kind of attempt to achieve some human object invariably 
 encounters in this land. " Naturally you are right," says 
 the host to the foreigner. " We really have neither democratic 
 nor any other politics whatsoever in this country, but we 
 have reflections of what are so called in Europe " a remark as 
 exact as it was hopeless. 
 
 The same thing strikes one under a slightly different 
 aspect in the peculiarly intelligent Bohemia, which does not 
 trouble itself about politics, but lives wholly in studies and 
 art. Here we are (intellectually speaking) in the land of the 
 extreme left. I hardly met a more interesting circle in Poland 
 than that which I found collected in the house of the art 
 critic, Antoni Sygietinski, who, with the highly gifted artist 
 Witkiewicz, unfortunately a great invalid, represents artistic 
 socialism in Poland. 
 
 Sygietinski is a slender, handsome young man, with a long 
 red beard and bright, enthusiastic eyes. Common art sym- 
 pathies have brought him and his Polish and foreign 
 colleagues together. In Swientochowski's circle one day a 
 foreigner stood alone in his unfavourable judgment on the 
 Polish art of painting of the present day. The conversation 
 was somewhat as follows : " Your art is wholly on the wrong
 
 POLISH ARTISTS 83 
 
 road. It loses sight of life. You paint allegories or knightly 
 spectacles. Every other picture at your exhibitions is the 
 closing tableau of a five-act play just before the curtain falls. 
 Your great deceased idealist, Grottger, was a poet,not a painter. 
 Your great living master, Matejko, is a near-sighted psycho- 
 logist, not a painter. The picture which took the prize at 
 the exhibition this year, a Catholic allegory with angels at 
 the bedside of a sick person, is a horror." Some one asked, 
 " Is there then in your opinion absolutely nothing which is 
 good for anything ? " The foreigner answered, " Horowitz's 
 portraits and Witkiewicz's paintings ; but the best thing I have 
 seen is certainly an album with drawings by the brothers 
 Gierymski. The best of these well over with talent ; one sees 
 a study of Nature in them and the perception of an artist. 
 They have been seen and felt, a praise one can rarely give to 
 modern Polish art." A tall man behind him clapped his 
 hands ; it was the man who had published the album and 
 written the text for it, Sygietinski. 
 
 So little has the art of the brothers Gierymski been 
 understood in their native land that the publisher, an 
 enthusiast in modern art, lost 8000 rubles on this album. 
 At last he publicly offered to give it for nothing to the sub- 
 scribers to the weekly paper Wedrowiec, but the majority 
 of them did not even care to fetch it. 
 
 The circle which has formed about the journal just 
 named, unfortunately a publication hardly destined to long 
 life, has, as its leading power, the energetic artist Witkiewicz, 
 who comprehends characterisation as few do. It consists 
 further of young doctors, engineers, literary historians, novelists 
 like Prus, gifted mechanics (a smith, perhaps the most subtle 
 student of literature in Poland), a number of painters, 
 musicians, amateurs representatives of refined radicalism. 
 
 Swientochowski's group is antiquated in its views of art, 
 in spite of its lofty culture. The men who belong to it have 
 admirable collections of books, but pictures on their walls 
 which a Parisian concierge would despise. Swientochowski 
 even writes old-fashioned didactic dramas like Elvia or 
 Antea. The younger men who write for Wedrowiec or design 
 for it, live in rooms without furniture, but with magnificent
 
 84 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 drawings and paintings on the wall. They are modern not 
 only in their mode of thought, but in sight and sense. 
 They are wild birds, and since birds of a feather flock 
 together, significantly enough, the one among them who 
 wields the most spirited pen is married to a remarkably 
 beautiful wild Indian girl from South America. She is 
 adapted to Poland in so far as it has been found impossible 
 to teach her any idea of money or its value. 
 
 In this circle Bohemian freedom rules, a puff of real 
 intellectual freedom which fills the lungs ; but it fills them 
 in complete silence, making as little noise as possible. Here 
 also an invisible pressure descends from above. Here also 
 an everlasting damper is laid upon the spirit a damper of 
 seriousness, of melancholy, a quiet despair of ever being 
 able to accomplish any good in life. Art and ideas are used 
 as a means of forgetfulness. And all these young men, what- 
 ever they are writers, journalists, draughtsmen, physicians, 
 engineers, &c. must, wholly apart from the contest for bread, 
 daily fight a double battle, receiving ideas from the surround- 
 ing world of Europe and imparting those ideas to their own 
 world.
 
 THE CENSORSHIP DIFFICULTIES IN OBTAINING 
 PERMISSION TO DELIVER LECTURES 
 
 GOING from the Theatre Square in Warsaw along the Miodowa 
 Street, at No. 7 on the left there is a house, over the door of 
 which in Russian letters appear the words, "Censorship Com- 
 mittee." Across the yard to the right you enter through a 
 narrow street door, and as in a post-office you see immense 
 piles of newspapers and books in wrappers lying in heaps. 
 It is the day's mail. 
 
 Every single newspaper which comes is taken out of its 
 wrapper and examined ; everything displeasing to the 
 authorities is blackened over. Every book is opened and 
 the leaves examined. Consequently there is no regular 
 time for the arrival of this kind of mail. Sometimes three 
 or four newspapers are received at once, and then for four 
 or five days not one. 
 
 In another room the native newspapers are examined. 
 On account of the conditions of censorship they are almost 
 all evening papers. None the less are they unable to make 
 use of the foreign mail of the day, which arrives from Berlin 
 in the afternoon. They are generally poor. With one 
 exception they are all assisted by private contributions. 
 Their subscription list seldom rises to more than fifteen 
 hundred. The professional journalists are compelled to 
 write for four or five different papers on the same subject 
 in order to live by their pens. 
 
 At eleven o'clock all the proof sheets go to the censor. 
 The censors correct them according to their pleasure and 
 caprice, their severity or indulgence depending very much on 
 whether they have personal animosity towards the writer or 
 not, whether they hope to obtain concessions from him, 
 and whether they have been bribed or not. 
 
 85
 
 86 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Almost all articles in which anything is really said 
 are therefore not intended to be understood at the first 
 reading. The language is abstract, vague, of doubtful 
 meaning. The whole public is taught to read between the 
 lines. Almost all the feuilletons are allegories ; they say one 
 thing and express another. Since words such as " freedom " 
 or " fatherland " are always prohibited, it is natural that cir- 
 cumlocutions should be used. 
 
 At four o'clock the proofs are returned to the offices of 
 the newspapers. The matter erased has to be replaced 
 by articles in reserve, which have been through the censor- 
 ship in season and are lying ready for use to fill the 
 gaps. 
 
 In another place again all foreign books are examined to 
 see whether they ought to be offered for sale in the book- 
 shops or not. They allow a variety of natural science 
 Darwin, Haeckel even in translations ; on the other hand, 
 little history. The extremely conservative Polish historian, 
 Szujski, is wholly forbidden, even in German, because he 
 writes on Polish topics. 
 
 Of course all books published in the country itself 
 are scrutinised with the greatest strictness. Even the classics 
 of antiquity are examined. It has happened that the Roman 
 verse nee timeo censores futuros has been struck out because it 
 was translated : I do not fear the censors of the future (the 
 meaning is, the judgment of the future). In a play dealing 
 with the past of Poland they struck out before Jagiello the 
 word King of Poland, and substituted Duke, although there 
 never have been dukes of Poland. Nay, even the cookery 
 books are subjected to the censorship, and are corrected with 
 such puerility that lately the words " to be boiled over a free 
 fire " were erased because the word free was used. 
 
 Manuscripts for public lectures, the textsjfor recitations, 
 the songs for concerts, are examined in another place. Even 
 if a song belongs to a collection of poems, which has passed 
 the censor ten times in different editions, it cannot be sung 
 at an evening entertainment without having been examined 
 anew. 
 
 It happened this winter that an actress, who, recalled
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF A LECTURER 87 
 
 on such an occasion, recited a little harmless poem about 
 a mother and her child, which was not on the programme, 
 was fined no less than a hundred rubles. 
 
 This winter I had occasion to study the censor very 
 closely. In return for the kindness which had been shown 
 to me the year before in Warsaw, I had promised to return, 
 and to speak on the Polish literature of this century, which 
 is treated almost exclusively as philology by the critics of 
 the country. 
 
 The task was extremely difficult for many reasons. 
 There was in the first place the intrinsic difficulty of telling 
 the Polish people something new about a literature which 
 they knew better than I. Then there were the external 
 difficulties. At the University of Warsaw it is absolutely 
 forbidden to speak of the history or literature of Poland 
 after the year 1500. Not even in Russian, not even in 
 the Russian spirit must the subject be dealt with. And in 
 addition to this, the good literature of the whole of this 
 century is patriotic in the extreme, thoroughly hostile to 
 the Russian rule, and forbidden on that account. How 
 should I manage to discuss Mickiewicz's Dziady, in which 
 political prison life in Wilna is described, or Slowacki's 
 Kordjanj which treats of an attempt to assassinate the Tzar 
 Nicholas, or Krasinski's whole works, not to speak of the 
 lyrics of war and rebellion ; how, on the other hand, could I 
 omit to speak of all these ? 
 
 First and foremost it was necessary to get permission to 
 speak at all on this subject. There was only one thing 
 to depend on the dislike of the persons in authority to be 
 regarded as barbarians by Europe. 
 
 In the middle of January I sought permission from 
 Count Tolstoi, the head of the police, to deliver lectures 
 for a charitable object. The answer came in the middle 
 of February. I was permitted to lecture three times in 
 Russian February (the ist of which answers to our I3th). 
 I then drove immediately to the President of the Censors 
 and presented my request, basing it on the invitation which 
 had been given me the year before in Warsaw : " Come 
 again and speak about our own literature." The President :
 
 88 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 " Ah ! you wish to treat of Russian literature." " Not this 
 time, your Excellency ; you know that the people here 
 generally speak Polish, and are most interested in what is 
 written in that language." " In what language will you 
 speak ? " " In French." " That is well ; you can say a 
 great deal thus. You address yourself to good society. 
 It would be another affair if you wished to speak in 
 German ; there are so many uncultured, hot-headed persons 
 who understand German." His Excellency promised me 
 speedy permission, and kept his word. 
 
 It was only then that I could begin my composition, and 
 it progressed extremely slowly. 
 
 There were days when in spite of all my diligence I 
 wrote almost nothing, days, when I strove in vain to find 
 expressions with double meaning, images, in themselves 
 indistinct, which could be understood by the audience, 
 circumlocutions, which could be seen through and yet 
 would be unassailable. Fortunately this Polish people, 
 half oriental, prefer the picturesque to the purely rational 
 style, being in this point as in many others, the opposite 
 of the French. 
 
 Gradually I acquired practice in the rebus style, and 
 wrote so that by an accent or a pause I could give a 
 sentence a new and more living character ; I became expert 
 in hints and implications. 
 
 At last I had two copies of my first lecture ready in 
 French and one in Russian for the curator of the Uni- 
 versity. I furnished them with the necessary stamps, drove 
 with the first lecture to the President of the Censorship, and 
 asked that the censor might begin. I had taken a priest 
 with me it is always good to have a priest with you, he has 
 friends everywhere, in Poland especially, among the Polish 
 subordinates of the offices. There was nothing in the way. 
 But as bad luck would have it, Apuchtin refused to begin on 
 the Russian text till he had all the lectures. 
 
 This was bad ; for I wished to see by what was erased 
 in my first lecture what I might venture upon in the next. 
 
 Since it was now plain that the Russian February would 
 be at an end before I could get the lectures back from the
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF A LECTURER 89 
 
 censor, and since I also saw that three lectures would not be 
 enough for the subject, even if I spoke for two hours each 
 time, I sought to obtain from the chief of the police per- 
 mission to deliver four lectures instead of three, and asked to 
 have my time extended beyond February. 
 
 The number four did not meet with approval. " Why 
 not ? " was then asked. The answer was : " Because three 
 lectures are an entertainment; four are a course of instruction." 
 They were afraid, it seemed, that under the form of lectures 
 for charity, a sort of Polish university should be established 
 in the town hall, in which one cycle of lectures should in 
 some way or other be continued in the next. 
 
 The matter of the prolongation of the time was then 
 debated. Why do you not lecture in February ? It is 
 your fault if you do not do it. I complained of the 
 difficulties with the censor. Well, well, then there was this 
 to be done ; give a written petition to the chief of police ; he 
 would send it to Apuchtin, he would forward it to General 
 Gurko ; the latter would possibly inquire at St. Petersburg 
 if the request could be granted, and the reply would come 
 back through the same channels in reversed order. When 
 could the answer be expected ? Oh, in five weeks. 
 But then March will be over, and by the ist of April 
 (Russian style) I must be in Copenhagen. Well, that was 
 my affair, and did not concern the authorities. 
 
 Plainly enough they were not very anxious to have 
 lectures on Polish national literature delivered in Warsaw. 
 
 At this time I received my first lecture back from the 
 censor. They had been very thorough. The conclusion, 
 several pages, was struck out, and in various places the 
 erasures were numerous. Even a well-known quotation 
 from Schiller, " the living is right," was struck out. Words 
 like resignation or tristesse, used as characteristic of Polish 
 literature, were blotted out. In one place where I had 
 spoken of the Catholic piety of the poets these words were 
 erased. In another place where I had spoken of the life 
 which is described in the most celebrated work of Mickiewicz, 
 the red pencil had gone over these words : " The Lithuanian 
 forest, the natural setting of this life;" and in, "For the
 
 90 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 first time, since the partition of the kingdom," the last phrase 
 was obliterated. 
 
 This was discouraging in so far as I saw that there would 
 not be anything left of the second lecture, which was the 
 boldest. I then made the third almost colourless in political, 
 religious and social respects, intending, to the best of my 
 ability, to atone for the weakness by a stronger colouring in 
 delivery and style. 
 
 Then it happened that my censor the only one who was 
 hated among the censors of Warsaw suddenly died. They 
 found my last two lectures, uncorrected, under his pillow. 
 They were as grateful to me in Warsaw as if a causal con- 
 nection had been found between this last-named fact and his 
 disappearance from his earthly vocations as judge. 
 
 Now everything looked brighter. There was hope of a 
 milder treatment. In order to shorten the process I deter- 
 mined to make a direct appeal to the Governor-General. 
 The hero of Tirnowa and the Pass of Shipka could not be 
 so narrow-minded as subordinate police officers and sub- 
 ordinate censors. I drove to the castle on Gurko's audience 
 day. It is the old royal palace on the Vistula, unchanged 
 externally, but plundered of all its objects of art. 
 
 In the ante -room, an oblong hall, several hundred 
 petitioners sat in a row with petitions. In an inner hall, 
 spacious and empty, with large mirrors and red furniture, the 
 notabilities of the city, old senators, old generals, the President 
 of the Censors, the President of the theatre, waiting their 
 turn, walked up and down in their uniforms. In the middle 
 of the hall stood a young Russian cavalry officer, Gurko's 
 adjutant, tall and good-looking, who spoke French fluently 
 with the other Russians, but with a strong Russian accent. 
 He struck his heels together so that the spurs jingled, 
 practised a dancing step, and seemed to be dreaming of 
 court balls at St. Petersburg. I made my request for an 
 audience to him. I met with an unqualified refusal. 
 The audience time was from one o'clock and it was now five 
 minutes past one. On my suggestion that I did not at all 
 expect to be the first to be admitted, the answer was that 
 the list of those seeking an audience was closed when the
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF A LECTURER 91 
 
 clock struck one, and sent in to the Governor - General. 
 Nevertheless, as I declared I would not go, but was fully 
 determined, as I was, to find my way to General Gurko, I quietly 
 took a seat on a sofa and waited. A Pole with a great star 
 on came to me and asked if I was possibly on the list of 
 petitioners, meaning on the list of the poor petitioners in 
 the ante-room. When I replied no, he promised to put me 
 on the top of this list. Then the General, as soon as he had 
 got through the private audiences, and came out of his 
 apartment, would turn first to me. 
 
 I was obliged to wait more than three hours. Then the 
 General came with his staff. " You wish to speak with me ? 
 Your business ? " I presented my request for liberty to 
 speak in March, since February was almost over "Mais 
 cest tout simple." I declared that I had met with obstacles 
 which were insurmountable for me. " Who forbids you 
 then ? "- " Your Excellency, there is no need of any pro- 
 hibition. But I need a permission, and they do not give 
 it to me." "Very well, I allow it." "But they will not 
 believe me unless I bring a written word from your Excell- 
 ency. I have a written petition here addressed to you." He 
 took the letter and my pencil and wrote across the paper, 
 " Ordered. Gurko." 
 
 The principal difficulty was thus happily removed. But 
 still it was impossible to advertise the lectures, as the Russian 
 text had not yet been returned from Apuchtin. 
 
 Twice I personally sought to obtain an interview with 
 him. Each time I received the answer from his subordinate, 
 that M. Apuchtin could not receive me, but that he himself 
 was reading my lectures with the greatest interest an interest 
 I would very gladly have dispensed with, and which seemed 
 to augur ill. 
 
 At last I got them back. Nothing was erased. Only by 
 a few pencil marks on the margin my attention was called to 
 certain phrases where the manner of expression was offensive 
 to a delicate Russian national feeling, as, for instance, where 
 I had said that Mickiewicz had had an influence on Lamen- 
 nais and Pushkin among foreign authors. These marks 
 indicated a keen and cultured reader, and I had to admit
 
 92 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 that he had been content to point at what he might have 
 struck out and forbidden. 
 
 Now only the permission of the chief of police, Count 
 Tolstoi, was wanting to the posting of the notices. They 
 advertise lectures as they do the theatrical performances by 
 posters, not by notices in the papers. 
 
 But it proved unnecessary to put up the posters. For 
 with so much excitement and interest had the city followed 
 my exertions to get permission to deliver lectures on Polish 
 literature, that as soon as the report of Apuchtin's permission 
 got abroad, all the tickets, 3600 in number (for the three 
 lectures), were sold in a few hours, so that the permission 
 to post notices, which came in the forenoon, was superfluous.
 
 VI 
 
 HOW ONE WRITES AND SPEAKS UNDER A 
 CENSORSHIP 
 
 To give an idea of how writing and speaking are done under 
 a censorship, here are some examples taken from my lectures. 
 
 I had to make it plain to my hearers that I well under- 
 stood the contents of certain books, even if I might not 
 allude to them directly. For instance, it was impossible to 
 quote the scene in Dziady where the martyrdom of Poland 
 is compared to that of the Crucifixion, but I could refer to it. 
 I therefore spoke as follows in my introduction : 
 
 " You may learn from me how your literature "of the first 
 half of this century is reflected in the mind of a European 
 reader ; you may learn what impression of your intellectual 
 life a favourably disposed foreigner receives. 
 
 " For a favourably disposed foreigner I am. No merely 
 artistic or intellectual interest, but a broader human sympathy 
 has drawn me to this subject. There is in it something 
 which not only occupies but lays hold of the mind ; the 
 modern literature of Poland excites the emotions in a higher 
 degree than that of most other nations. There is something 
 reserved, not easily penetrable in it. Or rather, it is at once 
 closed and open, according to the point of view at which 
 one places oneself. It reminds us in this respect of the 
 celebrated painting by Gabriel Max, The Handkerchief of 
 Veronica, a painting I do not value highly artistically, for it is 
 a piece of artifice, not a work of art, but which well illustrates 
 what I mean. At the first glance the countenance seems to 
 be that of a corpse ; the eyes are tightly shut, the expression 
 lifeless. But when you reach the right point of view the 
 face suddenly assumes life, the eyes open and turn a 
 sorrowful and solemn gaze on the spectator." 
 
 Direct mention of the various Polish attempts at insur- 
 
 93
 
 94 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 rection was impossible. I could only express my meaning 
 by characterising in expressions as general as possible 
 mental conditions after great public misfortunes " such as 
 famine, floods, or unsuccessful revolution." It was equally im- 
 possible in commenting on Slowacki's famous poem, Krol 
 Duck, to say directly : " The cruelty which is here described 
 was actually perpetrated by Ivan the Terrible." I chose this 
 circumlocution : " When in Krol Ditch the principal character 
 narrates how with his sword he nailed the foot of the old 
 minstrel to the earth, and how the latter continued to deliver 
 his message unperturbed, it recalls an anecdote of the court 
 of Ivan the Terrible." In this form the sentence passed the 
 censor for the lecture, and the censor for its publication as a 
 feuilleton in the Gazela Polska, but it was, however, struck out 
 later by another censor from the printed book. 
 
 In Mickiewicz's Dziady, in Conrad's improvisation, there 
 is a passage where the hero in despair complains to God of 
 the indifference with which He lets him suffer ; the most 
 effective line in it is this : Thou art not the father of the world, 
 but its Tzar! I required this line in my lecture, and wanted 
 to suggest it. To analyse the work was impossible, even to 
 name it difficult. On the other hand, it seemed feasible to 
 mention Conrad's name without saying in which play 
 he appeared, and to quote the passage with a slight change. 
 I could certainly depend on an exceedingly slight knowledge 
 of Polish literature in the censor. 
 
 I chose, therefore, to speak of the different attitudes of 
 Polish authors as to the problem of cognition, and insinuated 
 this in connection therewith. "And as the savages of 
 antiquity, when they were angry with their gods, discharged 
 an arrow into the vault of the heavens, so Conrad flings this 
 taunt out into the universe, which he says shall resound from 
 generation to generation: Thou God! Thou art not the Father 
 of the world, but its . . ." 
 
 Here I made a pause of some seconds, during which 
 a shudder literally ran through the closely packed hall. 
 Then came the word tyrant, and they drew breath and 
 looked at one another. No one moved a hand. After 
 such passages a deathly silence prevails in order not to
 
 THE CENSORSHIP 95 
 
 compromise the speaker. They vigorously applaud some 
 innocent comparison or other a few minutes later, or they 
 reserve the most hearty applause to the close, when no one 
 can determine what it is which has specially called forth the 
 storm of approval. The passage belongs to those which were 
 struck out in the censorship subsequent to the lectures and 
 the first printing in the feuilleton. This examination lasted 
 seven months, and left the little work extremely mutilated. 
 
 Here is a last example of what the censor, who probably 
 was not very familiar with Shakespeare, or who had no sense 
 for the symbolic, allowed to be said. The passage was about 
 the poets among Polish emigrants. I compared them to 
 Hamlet, and said among other things : 
 
 " We find traits of Hamlet's character in all these spirits ; 
 they are in his position from their youth. The world is 
 out of joint, and it must be set right by their weak arms. 
 They feel, like Hamlet, all the inner fire and outward weak- 
 ness of their youth ; high-born as they are, and noble-minded 
 as they are, regarding the conditions which surround them 
 as a single great horror, they incline at once to day-dreams 
 and to action, to musing and to recklessness. 
 
 " Hamlet saw his mother, his dear mother, whom he loved 
 more than other sons love theirs, degraded under the hand 
 of the crowned robber and murderer. The court, which 
 is open to him, frightens him, just as the court in Krasinski's 
 Temptation (a symbolical representation of the St. Petersburg 
 court) frightens the young man. These descendants of 
 Hamlet, like him, allow themselves to be sent away to a 
 foreign land. When they speak, they dissemble as he does, 
 clothe their meaning in comparisons and allegories, and it 
 is true of them, as Hamlet says of himself to Laertes : 
 
 " Yet have I something in me dangerous 
 Which let thy wisdom fear ; hold off thy hand." 
 
 Strangely enough, not one of the many censorships to 
 which these lectures were submitted, not one of the many 
 which preceded their delivery, and neither of the two new 
 ones which examined the edition in newspaper and book 
 form, found anything to object to in this passage.
 
 VII 
 
 MENTAL EFFECTS OF THE SITUATION ON THE 
 
 YOUNG 
 
 AN important result of the censorship in Poland is the con- 
 stant disquiet of the press and thereby of the people. As 
 it is impossible to obtain any certainty of what is going on 
 in the country, and impracticable to impart what one knows 
 or thinks one knows, eternal rumours float through town 
 and country, in which the political hopes and anxieties of 
 the people are reflected. At one time it is reported that 
 this or that high official has been recalled, because the 
 government itself finds the pressure too severe ; men believe 
 that they are going to breathe a more liberal air ; they find 
 in the most accidental negligences, from one or another of 
 the authorities, symptoms that for the future they will wink 
 at much that has been forbidden. Again, it is reported that 
 the severest measures are in preparation, that hitherto un- 
 known dangers are threatened. Thus the people are con- 
 stantly kept in a state of feverish agitation. 
 
 It will easily be seen how greatly such perpetual disquiet 
 hampers the growth and development of the intellectual life. 
 Only the exact sciences flourish. Medicine especially stands 
 high. Dr. Tytus Chalubinski, an old man, upon whose face 
 genius has stamped itself, has long been regarded as the 
 leading physician of Poland. Next to him Baranowski is the 
 most esteemed. Historical and political literature necessarily 
 stand somewhat in the background. At present Russian 
 Poland does not possess any historian of the first rank. 
 Szujski, who died recently, is the most important writer of 
 later historical literature, and as an essayist Julian Klaczko, 
 who has a European reputation, holds a like position. Both 
 
 of them lived and worked in Austria. In literary history a 
 
 96
 
 CONFISCATION OF LAND 97 
 
 sober spirit of investigation predominates. Polish writers on 
 such subjects approach the German method and German 
 style. Poland's leading and distinguished literary historian, 
 Spasowicz, who is also the most renowned advocate of the 
 Russian empire, living and writing in Russia, has been 
 obliged to exercise a prudence in everything touching upon 
 politics, which has made his chief work, The History of Polish 
 Literature, less interesting than it otherwise would have been. 
 The most esteemed critic, Professor Tarnowski of Cracow, is 
 an academician of the old school, of a romantic turn of mind, 
 whose tendency becomes more and more ultra-Catholic with 
 advancing age. Ultramontanism in Cracow has almost as 
 depressing an influence as the government tyranny in War- 
 saw. And when Tarnowski appears as a lecturer in Warsaw 
 he can only secure his effects by a purely external and 
 formal eloquence. 
 
 It is a general superstition, which must be given up, that 
 raw external means of power are powerless to crush and 
 break down national spirit. 
 
 The censorship is indeed the most intellectual of the 
 brutal means the authorities use for that purpose. 
 
 A less intellectual and even more effective means is con- 
 fiscation. After the rebellion of 1863 all the real estate of 
 the landed proprietors who participated in it, or who were 
 suspected of having given it sympathy or support, was confis- 
 cated. I know a man of a princely old Lithuanian family, 
 who possessed a princely fortune, and who now, after twenty 
 years in Siberia, is reduced to a little situation in a bank. 
 I know a lady who was the heiress to a property of a million 
 rubles, but who had been robbed of her inheritance because 
 the peasants on her uncle's estate had given provisions to 
 bands of rebels. 
 
 Even the confiscation of the soil is naturally not of final 
 importance, so long as the peasant remains on it and 
 continues Polish in his ideas. But Russia seeks to win the 
 peasant in every way. She abolished serfdom, the abolition 
 of which, proclaimed by the Poles themselves (in the consti- 
 tution of May 3, 1791), she had set aside, and the old hatred 
 of the peasants towards their masters has been richly 
 
 G
 
 98 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 exploited. And when the floods of the Vistula desolate the 
 land, Madam Gurko travels about the country distributing 
 rubles from the imperial treasury by hundreds of thou- 
 sands, to the peasants, who with the benefaction receive a 
 recommendation to be grateful to the Tzar, their father a 
 recommendation which often bears fruit. 
 
 Exile to Siberia is another powerful weapon. There is 
 no doubt that the flower of a whole generation, the preceding 
 Polish generation, almost all of those most distinguished 
 for courage, intellect, and enthusiasm, died there. Those 
 who did return, have often lost something of their clearness 
 of vision. They have not infrequently remained at the point 
 where they stood when they left Poland. I may mention 
 two writers as examples, both on the editorial staff of the 
 Gazeta Polska, Haenckle, who, chained with four others to an 
 iron bar, was compelled to travel on foot to Irkutsk during 
 two winters and one summer, and was there for ten years, 
 and Boguslawski, who was there for the same length of time. 
 They are clever writers, but confirmed romanticists ; modern 
 men they will never be. 
 
 And the terrible uncertainty of the law is in itself destruc- 
 tive. A few weeks since a young man returned from a two 
 years' banishment. His offence was that the day after 
 Apuchtin received the box on the ear from the angry student 
 already spoken of, he had sent twenty-five rubles to a news- 
 paper for a charitable object with the words, " To com- 
 memorate a happy event." It did him no good that it could 
 be proved that his brother had had a son born to him the day 
 before they would not believe that this was the event to 
 which he had referred he was sent away. Physically he 
 had suffered nothing. He returned as so many Siberian 
 exiles do, fresh and rosy ; but he had become prudent, very 
 conservative in all his utterances, and would not allow himself 
 to criticise his sentence. 
 
 When the well-known Szymanowski, poet and publisher 
 of the Courier Warszavsky, lay on his death-bed recently, I 
 visited him. He told me of the fright he had received when 
 a short time before some one had rung his door-bell in the 
 night. He was reminded of the night ten years before,
 
 RUSSIANISING INFLUENCES 99 
 
 when the gendarmes came, forced him to get up, and carried 
 him away in a sleigh. He did not know of what he was 
 accused. His family was a long time learning his place of 
 detention. When he was set free after the lapse of some 
 months, he did not learn what was his offence, and has 
 continued ignorant of it ever since. And Szymanowski 
 has represented the most peaceful conservatism throughout 
 his whole life. 
 
 Let us now consider the psychical influences of this 
 general condition on the younger generation. It has now 
 gone so far in Russian Poland that many a young jurist or 
 doctor of an old Polish family speaks Russian better than 
 Polish, nay, speaks his mother-tongue with a foreign accent. 
 I may instance this case : The young man has studied in 
 St. Petersburg. He has by no means given up his nation- 
 ality, but he has associated and been compelled to associate 
 with Russians as comrades. He comes back to Warsaw, 
 where no Pole ever associates with a Russian, the national- 
 ities being as oil and water. It seems unnatural to him that 
 his mother and sisters oppose his visiting at the house of the 
 Governor-General. They live another emotional life, speak 
 another language. The nerve of national indignation is 
 blunted in him. Besides, there are practical considerations. 
 He is sure that if he makes no concessions he will never 
 get even a subordinate office in Poland, never be able to 
 live in the same city as his mother. He may become pro- 
 cureur in Riga, or subordinate magistrate in Kasan, but he 
 will never get a position in Warsaw, if he is irreconcilable. 
 
 The suppression of the language is also effective. Re- 
 cently at a competition for the prize offered by a private 
 person for the best drama, the winner, Koslowski, attracted 
 attention by the purity and strength of his diction. General 
 pride and joy were expressed that a young man of twenty- 
 five years, educated under the latest school regulations, 
 should write such beautiful Polish, Shwacki-Polish. There is 
 a pervading fear that the growing generation will be unable 
 to write the mother-tongue in its purity. 
 
 The temptation to make some concessions to the Russians 
 is, as has already been suggested, very great. It is, moreover,
 
 ioo IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 often difficult to draw a strict line between Russians and Poles. 
 Even if the Russians are not received into society, it is 
 almost impossible to exclude individual Poles who are either 
 really subservient, or are suspected to be so. The Poles 
 who have taken office sometimes become mere officials, 
 loyal officials. Of many an one who would like to pass for 
 a Polish patriot, it is said that he has been unsuccessful in 
 his attempts to obtain the title of imperial flunkey. Some- 
 times in one family the father has Polish tendencies, the son 
 is politically indifferent, even has almost Russian tendencies. 
 Now and then one whose son fell as a hero of the rebellion, 
 is, like the President of the theatre, Gudowski, one of the 
 supporters of the throne. 
 
 There are also boundaries which passive resistance 
 cannot pass. As the theatre is the last place in which Polish 
 is still spoken, the dread of Russian plays on the national 
 stage is very great. It seems then simple enough, when a 
 Russian company comes, not only for all the Poles to remain 
 at home, but for the Polish press not to notice the perform- 
 ances. Yet it is not so simple. Free tickets are given to 
 all the Polish students and officials, and they are compelled 
 to go. Notices of these performances are demanded by the 
 censorship, and if they are not given on the plea, for in- 
 stance, that no one on the editorial staff understands Russian 
 then great obstacles are put in the way of the newspaper 
 by the censors ; the erasures become so relentless that they 
 must give way. The opposition the press might offer is 
 immediately broken down. 
 
 A dread continually broods over Russian Poland, that the 
 government will some fine day close the theatre in Warsaw, 
 and that the government will order the newspapers to appear 
 with double text, Russian and Polish. Then they must soon 
 surrender, and the language will die out. 
 
 So weak has unhappy Poland become that it accounts 
 itself happy when it finds itself not wholly forgotten. 
 Poles are delighted when a Polish tenor like Mierczewinski 
 attracts attention then, at least, the name of Poland is men- 
 tioned. They are happy when a man with the Polish name 
 Rogoszynski (comically enough his real name is Schulze)
 
 VITALITY OF THE NATIONAL IDEA 101 
 
 undertakes a voyage of discovery in Africa, although he was 
 not in a position to take possession of the smallest strip of 
 land for Poland since there is no Poland and was even 
 arrested and taken away on a German man-of-war by 
 order of Bismarck. 
 
 So depressing is a foreign rule. 
 
 And nevertheless this persistent suppression is to the 
 advantage of the nationality it would grind to powder. 
 
 The peasants are waking up. They teach themselves to 
 read in their Polish prayer-books. They club together and 
 hire a teacher to give them privately all the necessary 
 instruction in the correct writing of their forbidden tongue. 
 Religious persecution especially rouses them and makes them 
 conscious Poles. Before the Prussian Kulturkampf they did 
 not feel themselves to be Poles in Posen ; before the perse- 
 cution of the " United " they did not feel themselves Poles in 
 Russian Poland. When the police interferes against the 
 United priests, as in Lublin, the national consciousness 
 increases and rises in a whole province. 
 
 In the next place it is not wholly unfortunate that hardly 
 any Pole can become an officer in the army. It has had the 
 good effect of driving the Poles into paths so foreign to 
 them as those of trade and industry, has contributed greatly 
 to create the beginnings of a productive, working class of 
 citizens. It has finally aided not a little in the advancement 
 of agriculture. 
 
 And yet these good influences are manifestly of slight 
 account in comparison with the depressing ones. It seems 
 impossible that Poland should endure under such oppression 
 for more than a hundred years longer. But when we see a 
 people live materially and intellectually in the face of tremen- 
 dous hindrances, when we follow with interest a course of life 
 and intellectual development which takes place under such 
 conditions then we may well ask ourselves whether the 
 nation to which we belong, and whose lot in life seems to 
 the Poles to be so enviable, has used the comparatively 
 heavenly conditions, in which it has lived, as it could and 
 ought. And when we see how far the Poles succeed, we are 
 amazed for a moment at a nation like the Danish, which has
 
 102 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 everything which the Poles lack and want ; national inde- 
 pendence, a constitution, freedom of the press, liberty of 
 speech, liberty of assembly, right to use our money as we 
 like, the power of the state in our own hands, the army in 
 our service, free access to the sea, as well as to all the 
 benefits of freedom we wonder that such a nation has led 
 a life comparatively so meagre, and so formless, and has 
 suffered so many of its greatest advantages to be torn from 
 it without any foreign intervention. 
 
 Although there is so much that is sanguine in the tempera- 
 ment of the Poles, nevertheless the lack of any future prospect 
 in their situation, humanly speaking, broods over their minds 
 like a nightmare. There is no visible prospect of their 
 emerging from their present state save the extremely vague 
 one which appears in the possibilities of a great war with 
 Russia on the one side, and Germany and Austria on the 
 other. Not that they cherish any wish to exchange the 
 Russian rule for the German, although the latter is more 
 humane it seems on the other hand more dangerous, 
 less likely to be shaken off. If their hopes assume 
 a more definite direction, they rather tend to the estab- 
 lishment of a great Slav power, under the leadership of 
 Austria, in which a leading part would fall to the Poles in 
 that part of Poland belonging to Austria. These dreams of 
 the future assume no more definite form in the minds of the 
 most cultured and experienced. 
 
 But we shall hardly be wrong in the opinion that with the 
 majority of those of average culture, faith in the re-establish- 
 ment of the ancient kingdom of Poland in a not very distant 
 future is still a religion.
 
 VIII 
 
 IS POLAND AS AN OBJECT WORTH THE 
 SACRIFICES MADE FOR IT? 
 
 KRASZEVSKI during his exile once exclaimed : " Oh, thou land, 
 which, when we die, preserves so many reminiscences of us ! 
 Oh, thou beautiful land, our mother ! When we say farewell 
 to our friends, we have the hope of meeting them again in 
 the next world, in heaven. But never, never again shall we 
 see thy loved landscapes, thy linden avenues, thy villas, thy 
 brooks and rivers, thy spring which was always young, none 
 of all these memories. Can heaven really be so beautiful that 
 it makes us forget all this, or does a river of Lethe flow 
 before the gate of Paradise ? " 
 
 In these words of a childlike believer, who hopes for a 
 future meeting with his friends, but yet cannot expect a 
 future sight of his fatherland there is a feeling, which, if we 
 give it a little greater scope, embraces far more than these 
 words. In fact how wonderful is this obstinate national 
 contest of the Poles ! They fight desperately for the pre- 
 servation and development of their language and popular 
 peculiarities, and suffer a thousand pangs for their sake. 
 Every one of them knows that he must die, but he would 
 have the consciousness that the language and the people will 
 survive when he shall know no more of them. Even those 
 among them who believe in another life do not imagine that 
 in that other life they will speak Polish. And those who do 
 not believe in a future life, who do not fear annihilation for 
 themselves, fear it for the whole nation, every individual of 
 which must die. 
 
 It is a similar feeling to that feeling of horror, which 
 seizes most men when they hear for the first time that this 
 
 earth is slowly cooling off, and that sometime in the far 
 
 103
 
 104 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 distant future it will be an ice-cold sphere, on which no life 
 can flourish. They have always known that every individual 
 of the human race must die, but they would prefer that the 
 race itself should not. This conception of the frozen globe 
 destroys all their cherished illusions about the constant ad- 
 vance of culture, the religion which most of those who have 
 given up revealed religions live upon ; for there are even 
 now only a few who have grasped the ideal that the goal of 
 humanity cannot be at its end or death, if death be in store 
 for it, but must lie in its highest individualities. Even if 
 the human race is to die out, true culture is not on this 
 account less valuable, not less worth striving for. Its worth 
 does not depend on its continuance through all eternity. 
 We do not ask whether a symphony is long or short, but 
 whether it is beautiful. Its value is independent of the time 
 it occupies. 
 
 The Poles know r historically, as we do, that many king- 
 doms and nations have blossomed and disappeared, but they 
 will not believe that this lot is now that of their nation and 
 language, however sorely they are pressed from all sides. 
 They will fight for their life, and this is to their honour, 
 whatever the result may be. 
 
 Many of them must necessarily doubt whether they will 
 ever succeed in tearing themselves free from a supremacy 
 which is supported by an enormous army, in establishing a 
 Polish political hierarchy, and in founding a kingdom out 
 of a nation unaccustomed to all self-government as the Poles 
 have now been for almost a century. Inevitably the question 
 presents itself which I once formulated thus (in the preface 
 to Cherbuliez's Ladislaus Bolski} : " Is Poland an ideal or a 
 reality ? It could not continue when it existed, can it be 
 re-established, now it has fallen ? Is this Poland for which 
 the Poles live and go to death more than an abstraction and 
 a chimera ? Is the object worth the sacrifices ? Or is it the 
 sacrifices which give the object its worth ? " 
 
 The object, like all earthly objects, only more plainly, 
 more palpably, is an ideal, that is, an unreality, the concep- 
 tion of something good. It shows its power over the mind 
 by the strength with which it compels generation after gen-
 
 POLAND THE TYPE OF NATIONALISM 105 
 
 eration to place spiritual advantages above material. The 
 sacrifices which are made to this ideal do not prove its 
 value. But it is in and of itself valuable, in so far as it 
 creates character, and develops talents, and it is incontrovert- 
 ible that it has called forth elevated thoughts, heroic actions, 
 and a literature both rich and important. As a motive power 
 it is a civilising power ; for it produces proud, liberal- 
 minded men. 
 
 We are unaccustomed to see a whole people absorbed in 
 an endeavour, which is resisted and fought against on all sides, 
 and which seems to be at variance even with the historic law 
 of decadence, an endeavour, which exists not only by 
 force of the instinct of self-preservation, but more or less 
 consciously by force of the fundamental idea that the life of 
 the world becomes poorer and more uniform for each 
 national individuality which disappears an endeavour which 
 might nevertheless be futile. Yet Poland's disappearance 
 would not be like that of Assyria or Egypt in remote an- 
 tiquity ; for Poland in the presence of Russia and Prussia, 
 politically speaking, signifies independence, freedom, justice, 
 reason that is to say, the question whether these forces shall 
 conquer or succumb. Poland is the question whether it is 
 military force or the will of the people that is to have the 
 last word in the history of the world of the present day. 
 Should Poland be definitely lost, it would indicate nothing 
 less in principle than that the culture of liberty and liberality 
 in Europe were lost. One independent country after an- 
 other would fall after Poland. 
 
 On the other hand, if the culture of freedom gains 
 ground, the oppression, which rests so heavily on Poland, 
 will be lightened, and Polish nationality will find a form, 
 under which it can live its own life. For a hundred years 
 it has now been under the yoke of three great powers, it 
 has served as their anvil, and has borne the blows of the 
 enormous hammers without being crushed. Either before 
 very long the hammers will be stopped, or this culture, 
 which was once the pride of western Europe, will be 
 annihilated. 
 
 We cannot see thoroughly into anything. Our life is a
 
 106 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 phenomenon ; we are surrounded by phenomena and by 
 phenomena only. We are nothing but images for each 
 other. When we die the image remains in the conscious- 
 ness of others, because it was the only thing of us which 
 was ever there. 
 
 We know also that the ideals which in olden times were 
 localised and converted into the qualities of a supernatural 
 person, the greatest liberty, the highest justice, &c., are mere 
 images, never realised anywhere or at any time, and that 
 they will never be fully realised anywhere ; we know that 
 they have no other existence than that which our manner of 
 thought and action give them. They exist only in so far as 
 we love them. But we love them only so far as we labour 
 for them. 
 
 The highest love is a pain, which we soothe by living 
 and working for the object of our love. 
 
 That Poland's whole intellectual life is absorbed in the 
 question of the existence of the Polish nationality is therefore 
 not so poor a cause as it seems ; for Poland, in the his- 
 torical development of relations, has become synonymous 
 with the right of mankind to civil and intellectual free- 
 dom and with the right of nations to independence. Poland 
 is synonymous with our hope or our illusion as to the advance 
 of our age in culture. Its future coincides with the future of 
 civilisation. Its final destruction would be synonymous 
 with the victory of modern, military barbarism in Europe.
 
 THIRD IMPRESSION 
 
 1894
 
 A POLISH MANOR-HOUSE 
 
 I 
 
 NEIGHBOURHOOD LANDSCAPE INCREASED 
 SEVERITY OF RUSSIAN RULE 
 
 WE left Warsaw in the afternoon. The town lay simmering 
 in the glowing sun ; people went slowly along in the shadow 
 of the houses ; all the military infantry, Cossacks, gen- 
 darmes were dressed in white linen. 
 
 In the train we met acquaintances Poles who were 
 returning from the Carpathian mountains (Tatra) or from 
 Bohemian watering-places, others who were travellers or 
 residents in the environs. Groups were formed in the 
 corridors ; we jested and laughed ; thus time passed. 
 
 At K. a couple of carriages awaited us one for ourselves, 
 another for the luggage and off we went at full speed in the 
 summer evening, along excellent old military highways 
 of the Napoleonic era, along sandy, heavy roads, at last 
 through an endless avenue of tall poplars. 
 
 Franciszek told us of his conversations with the Governor- 
 General of Poland, whom I had once met. 
 
 After an attack of apoplexy he sent for Franciszek and 
 asked him to accompany him on a journey. Evidently 
 Gurko is more remarkable as a general than as a person 
 of ordinary intelligence. On leaving a place he always left 
 a pair of boots behind, convinced that this would be his only 
 chance of returning alive to the same place. Franciszek 
 pointed out to him that even if the fact of forgetting a pair 
 of boots were a main condition for returning, it would be 
 doubtful that this same result would be obtained if the boots 
 had been left on purpose. Gurko answered, that according 
 to his experience it was undoubtedly so. Whenever he had
 
 no IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 been on his way to danger he had left a pair of boots behind, 
 and had thus scattered no less than 112 pairs of boots in 
 Russia, Turkey, and Asia. 
 
 Perhaps much apparent heroism may be explained by 
 such a firm faith in boots. 
 
 We drove on ; it grew dark and the stars appeared. We 
 drove through miserable towns and still more miserable 
 villages, whitewashed frame houses, common wooden houses 
 with thatched roofs, and outside swarms of bare-legged 
 children. 
 
 The horses did not get tired, and the avenue seemed to 
 be endless. As far as we could see, no manor-house was 
 visible for miles round. I began to insist that Krolewice 
 did not exist at all, that probably we were travelling in 
 a circle and most likely towards dawn we should drive 
 through B. at a gentle trot and return to the station at 
 K. Mme. Jozefa's grey eyes gleamed laughingly in the 
 darkness ; the two young girls, guests, agreed that I was 
 right, and began to tell stories, that moved them to inces- 
 sant peals of laughter. One funny story called forth 
 another, and while the fields sent forth their aromatic per- 
 fume, and the air grew cooler and fresher, the merry 
 carriage rushed on in the transparent darkness of the mid- 
 summer night. One might have supposed that it contained 
 only happy people. 
 
 At length we caught sight of something white behind large 
 groups of trees. Soon we faintly saw the outlines of a 
 spacious courtyard and the contour of a mighty garden. 
 
 The carriage makes a turn, drives through the open 
 gateway and stops. In the luminous hall were assembled 
 the staff of the manor and all the servants in gala dress to 
 receive their master and mistress. After a hasty toilet, we 
 all assembled late in the evening for the dinner so long 
 postponed. It looked so pretty ; the table was decked with 
 masses of flowers, and all was festively arranged for the 
 occasion, with excellent food and Polish champagne that is, 
 French, imported half finished, and given the last admixture 
 here, as otherwise the duty would amount to two rubles and 
 fifty copecks for each bottle.
 
 A POLISH COUNTRY HOUSE in 
 
 Since this I have become familiar with the country. I 
 know it pretty well, so much the better as no breath from 
 the surrounding world has disturbed my peace. Not a book, 
 not a newspaper have I been able to get during the time I 
 have been here. All my newspapers are sent to the censor- 
 ship, and my letters are detained in Warsaw. I don't know 
 anything about the world that is, Denmark save what is to 
 be found in the telegrams of the Gazeta Polska, and that is 
 not much. I have telegraphed and written to the post office 
 in Warsaw ; everything rebounds from Russian bureaucracy. 
 I wonder if at any place, even in Turkey, there is such 
 a wonderful want of law as in Russia. 
 
 Outside the garden the landscape extends in all its flat- 
 ness. Rich it is, cornfield beyond cornfield, and pleasant, 
 for poplars and birches, willows and lindens shade the roads. 
 But the finest ornaments of the landscape at present are the 
 enormous stacks of rye, put up in a way unknown among 
 us, like ancient round towers with low, pointed roofs. The 
 roof is golden, the towers are brown, because here the ear 
 is not visible in all its length, and in the sun these stacks 
 look most cheerful. Save for these, the flatness is only 
 broken by windmills, trees, and now and then far away by a 
 church or a wood. All around, girls with white kerchiefs on 
 their heads are raking hay. 
 
 The arrangement of the house is above all praise. It is 
 an oasis of civilisation in a land of rustics. Everything pro- 
 claims the most exquisite refinement of taste ; and especially 
 pleasing is a library, so enormous, so entertaining, so 
 beautifully bound, that its equal will not easily be found 
 in the private houses of any capital. Each room has its 
 peculiar stamp, and the ground floor opens into a vast palm- 
 house. 
 
 The manor forms no slight contrast to the surrounding 
 habitations. When the peasants want help or advice, they 
 do not apply to the priest, who for the rest is a very honest 
 young man (he has been to Rome and speaks a little Italian), 
 but to our lady of the manor ; and it must be confessed that 
 human nature is so strong in them that they steal any- 
 thing they want which they do not obtain as a gift. They
 
 112 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 steal everything that can be stolen, from poultry to garden 
 tools ; they fell the trees in the wood, and steal so much the 
 more passionately that Mrs. Jozefa brings no charge against 
 them. " What of that ? " she says ; " they are so poor, they 
 must be excused." 
 
 The weather is warm, but not too hot, and the bathing 
 arrangements are excellent ; only the flies and mosquitoes 
 are rather disagreeable. However, we are well protected 
 by an ingenious contrivance ; the inner windows consist of 
 fine wire netting, so that no insect can make its way into 
 the room, and we can sit with open windows and enjoy the 
 fresh air. 
 
 Never even in Holland have I seen such cleanliness as 
 reigns here. This, indeed, marks one of the sharpest con- 
 trasts between the higher classes and the common people 
 in Poland. The whole house is cleaned every day, nay, 
 even a couple of times a day ; three or four servants at a 
 time are sent to clean a room, so that everything is in order 
 in fifteen minutes. 
 
 Very often we have guests : yesterday came a couple of 
 Polish painters who are living in Munich ; they brought a 
 breath of ale and of art with them from the big art village. 
 To-day came the editor of one of the great papers of Warsaw. 
 
 Russian power has developed in an astounding manner 
 since last I was here. Then it was possible to have papers 
 by book post without their passing the censorship, if they 
 were written in a language not known by the officials. Now r 
 all is sent to St. Petersburg to be examined if it is not 
 understood here. We get the Figaro a week late, and, 
 in every number, large pieces are blackened over. Even 
 a clerical and conservative paper like the Figaro is often 
 confiscated. In La Vie Parisienne the improper parts are 
 blackened over, and much is considered improper. 
 
 At present there is an exhibition of Polish industry 
 and art at Lemberg. The government has ordered that no 
 one in Russian Poland shall exhibit. (In several cases it has 
 been done, nevertheless.) But then the question arose 
 whether the papers might write about the exhibition. The 
 first month it was absolutely forbidden even to mention it.
 
 OFFICIAL TYRANNY 113 
 
 Later each paper got permission to insert four articles from 
 Lemberg, none to exceed a hundred lines, and all to be 
 on the products of industry, not a word about art ; be- 
 tween each article an interval of a fortnight was to elapse. 
 This winter an editor was sent for by the director of police, 
 who, in a voice trembling with anger, asked him what he 
 meant by writing in a manuscript the Polish letters which 
 answer to " H.I.M." "What does 'H.I.M.' mean?" "Of 
 course, His Imperial Majesty ; it is a generally used abbrevia- 
 tion." " Aha ! you have the audacity to abbreviate the title 
 of His Majesty the Emperor ? You have not room enough 
 in your paper for his whole title? In that case you may be 
 sure that he will find room for you, where you do not want 
 to go. Now you may pay 600 rubles provisionally for your 
 evil intention." 
 
 In Warsaw I saw odious examples of the brutality of 
 the police. On every possible occasion they strike and push 
 the poor cabmen with their sheathed swords. These drivers, 
 with their numbers hanging on their backs, resemble real 
 slaves. 
 
 Here in the country the common people are quite 
 broken by oppression. In the village school only Russian 
 is taught, which language the peasants do not understand. 
 But as instruction is not obligatory, very few of the children 
 go to school. In law-suits the language is likewise Russian, 
 and all must pass through an interpreter, so that the 
 accused is unable to control his own statement. The 
 official policy is to irritate the peasants against the higher 
 classes, and in all civil cases the former always gain their 
 point. A landed proprietor here with his huntsman sur- 
 prised four poachers who had committed a literal carnage 
 among his game, and who were about to load their booty 
 on a cart when he appeared. They escaped, but he got 
 hold of a coat, which he retained to produce as evidence. 
 The thieves were acquitted, as it was impossible, against 
 their denial, to prove that the game they had on their 
 cart belonged to the proprietor. The latter, on the other 
 hand, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for the 
 theft of a coat. 
 
 H
 
 1 1 4 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Thus is justice meted out, and the only consolation is, 
 that however bad things may be, they might be worse. 
 And men rejoice that the worse has not yet come to pass. 
 In Poland, as everywhere, there is always cause for gratitude. 
 A man looked upwards, when a swallow, which was flying 
 above his head, dropped something on his nose. " How 
 lucky," he said, " that the cow has no wings." 
 
 People are unconcerned here in Poland in spite of their 
 torments. They live like a mutilated man, who proves 
 that it is possible to have but one leg, one arm, one eye, and 
 still be a man. They are like Josias Rantzau, who had only 
 some few pieces of himself left and yet kept up his courage 
 and good temper. They live, deprived of all political life, all 
 social endeavour, all direct pursuit of national aims, and 
 they live the more intensely the life left to them. They 
 live and feel as elsewhere, and they rest satisfied with speak- 
 ing that which must not be written or printed. 
 
 At this moment the sky is as clear as on a sunshiny day in 
 the south, and the sight I have before me beyond the wire is 
 full of peaceful beauty. In the foreground, a large lawn 
 studded with beds of tall rose-trees and flame-coloured 
 pelargoniums. A beautiful effect is made by a shrub with 
 white leaves among them. All around are grouped the 
 mighty old trees of the park. Outside the gateway a carriage 
 with four horses waits us to take us to the neighbouring 
 manor. 
 
 In short, life is charming for the moment. 
 
 Merime'e used to summarise his views of life as follows : 
 Harlequin fell out of the window from the fifth storey. 
 When he passed the third, somebody asked him how he 
 felt. " Pretty well," he answered, " provided that this con- 
 tinues." 
 
 We all know how the fall will end, but as long as one is 
 in the air, it is not so bad.
 
 II 
 
 CHOLERA CENSORSHIP ARRESTS 
 
 TOWARDS seven o'clock when the burning heat of day is 
 over the different inmates of the house appear from their 
 rooms. Some take a ride on horseback, others walk in 
 the fields. A few of the elders are content with a walk in 
 the garden. Last night, when our host had dismounted 
 from his horse by the lawn before the veranda, and Miss 
 Helen had come in after a long conversation in the garden 
 about the future of mankind, religion, morals, love, and 
 other subjects, I laid before our hostess the number of 
 the Revue de Paris, containing part of the Hymn to Apollo 
 (music and words), found in Delphi, and asked her to sing 
 and play it. She did so, and exclaimed with surprise; 
 "Wagner! It is pure Wagner ! " I told her that it was just the 
 impression this music had made on the French scientific man 
 who published it, and we lost ourselves in reflections on the 
 honour it was for Wagner, that those melodies so long 
 hidden beneath the earth of that ancient, wonderful land of 
 beauty, should present an analogy with his art. If Nietzsche 
 had lived to see this it would have made a deep impression on 
 him, and his criticism of Wagner would have been deprived 
 of a point of support. For it would be startling, indeed, to 
 insist on the decadence of art in Greece in the fifth century 
 before Christ. 
 
 From old Greek music the conversation glided to old 
 Greek vase-paintings. I showed a reproduction of the 
 remarkable painting of Eos carrying the corpse of her son, 
 which so absolutely anticipates the Christian Mater dolorosa. 
 We spoke of the satyr with the wooden leg painted on 
 an old vase showing, that the ancients practised amputation, 
 and replaced the lost limb by an artificial one. Then we left 
 Greece for Poland, Greek paintings for Wiwiorski's ceiling
 
 n6 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 and wall-paintings ; Greek misfortunes and sorrows for more 
 proximate modern miseries, Polish and universal. 
 
 The cholera has appeared in the villages around here : 
 at B., at K. everywhere. Out of ten attacked by the 
 sickness, five at least generally die immediately. Unfor- 
 tunately in this month many church festivals are held. 
 Thus next week a local festival is impending ; the Pardon. 
 The peasants gather in crowds on this occasion to make 
 merry and enjoy life for a few days. In the Middle Ages 
 there was some sense in this kind of festival. At that time 
 the church imposed upon sinners of both sexes severe punish- 
 ments, all sorts of penances (such as not being allowed to 
 eat meat for five years ; the wearing of a hair shirt for years, 
 &c.). Now and then a general pardon was given, and of 
 course this was celebrated with extravagant joy. In our 
 days the punishments and penances have ceased, and only 
 the fairs remain. But under present circumstances they 
 are rather perilous. The peasants revel in fruit, much of 
 which is unripe, and drink a quantity of beer. We have 
 applied to the priest and asked him to write to the arch- 
 bishop to get the festival definitely postponed, but as the 
 latter has refused a similar request from a neighbouring 
 community, there is little or no hope. 
 
 Last week I went to Warsaw and had an audience of his 
 Excellency the President of the Censorship, M. Jankulio, a 
 handsome man of mixed race, who has, they say Greek, Jewish, 
 and Russian blood in his veins. He is allied to the Gurko 
 family ; was for a time secretary to the Governor-General, 
 and has made a speedy career. He received me with 
 courtesy, assured me that printed matter sent to me was not 
 retained, for one reason, because nobody in the censorship 
 understood Danish ; I should get everything sent to me without 
 delay, &c. Nevertheless, a week later, I received a Danish 
 newspaper of July 31, sent to me on the i2th of August 
 with the stamp of the censorship in St. Petersburg. His 
 Excellency, who called in several subordinates to report, 
 has, as may be seen, been greatly misinformed as to what is 
 taking place in his own office ; the functionaries, who do 
 not understand Danish, have simply sent everything to St.
 
 ARBITRARY ARRESTS 117 
 
 Petersburg, where there are Finns enough in the censorship 
 who understand our language. No great regard is paid to 
 the convenience of the reader if it is a question of watching 
 the foreign press. Whole articles are cut out ; thus one in a 
 French review on the history of anarchism. All that is 
 disapproved on political, moral, or religious grounds, is 
 blackened over in such a way that not a letter is legible. 
 
 It is not to be denied that the Russians know how to 
 govern. The machine works to perfection soundless, silent 
 as death, but effectual. For instance, the time is long 
 gone by when political trials had a certain publicity ; now 
 things are done in quite a different and undeniably a far 
 more intelligent way. Early some morning the person 
 concerned is fetched by a carriage and a couple of very 
 polite gendarmes. And from that moment ni vu ni su 
 impossible to learn anything at all of him until he comes 
 back, //he comes back. 
 
 In one of the neighbouring manors a young girl of twenty 
 was arrested one morning. The parents' desperate demand to 
 know the reason why received no answer; the gendarmes had 
 their orders and knew nothing. The parents followed in their 
 carriage and reached Warsaw almost as soon as their daughter. 
 They rushed to the authorities ; they knew nothing, only that 
 the young girl was no longer in Warsaw. Six months later she 
 came back from the Petropavlovsk fortress in St. Petersburg. 
 A cousin of hers had been arrested on the charge of possess- 
 ing a number of forbidden books. Questioned as to whence 
 he had got each of them he had not answered, until the 
 constant awakening during the night-time, and other methods 
 loosened his tongue. He confessed that his cousin had 
 procured him one of these books. As nothing else could 
 be stated against her she was released that time ; but 
 this year, when the insane mourning procession of young 
 men and young girls took place through the streets of 
 Warsaw on the day on which the revolt in 1794 broke 
 out, she was arrested anew as a participator. It was of no 
 avail to the promoters of the demonstration that they had 
 called together the young people by means of a handbill 
 in these words: "A lady (here a fictitious name) of great
 
 n8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 virtues and abilities is dead. She was infinitely beloved 
 by her children, who cherish her memory and hope for 
 her resurrection. Those who knew her may assemble this day 
 in honour of her." It was intended to put garlands before the 
 house of the shoemaker where the revolt was proclaimed, but 
 the police surrounded and arrested all the members of the 
 procession about three hundred ; they are all transported, 
 and the young girl among them. It is said that they are 
 isolated, each in a different place. 
 
 A student who, a couple of years ago, was arrested as 
 leader of a socialistic group, has disappeared so completely 
 that his brother, in spite of repeated supplications, has not 
 been able to learn even this if he has been hanged or is 
 still alive. 
 
 The time has long gone by when executions were public. 
 They take place silently in the jails, and it is said that no 
 account is even kept of them in Petropavlovsk : they are 
 so easy there plenty of water around the island. 
 
 It is fair to say of the Russians that as a reigning caste 
 they are not to be trifled with. Four officers of the 
 Guards, who had abused their position by propagating 
 Nihilism among their subordinates, were arrested. One of 
 the rebellious books found at their house was a treatise 
 printed abroad, and a note was also found stating that it had 
 been lent the officer by a relation, a justice of the peace. 
 The latter was arrested, and cross-questioned as to why he 
 had procured the book. He answered, and with apparent 
 truth, that he had wished to read the book out of curiosity 
 without concurring in the ideas expressed in it. The four 
 officers of course were shot ; but it is more surprising to 
 learn that the justice was hanged. There is something ex- 
 cellent in the system ; it renders vanity as a motive of 
 political crimes impossible. No paper dares to mention the 
 name of the criminal, far less speak of his arrest, or anything 
 he might say in his defence. He disappears in silence and 
 his name is never mentioned in any paper. If this system 
 were adopted in Italy and France the number of political 
 murderers would probably be considerably diminished. 
 However, it is not to be denied that it has certain drawbacks.
 
 COURTESY OF RUSSIAN OFFICERS 119 
 
 Of late years the severity concerning prohibited books 
 has been considerably augmented. It has become impossible 
 to procure any of these ; no bookseller dares now to order 
 one of them. For instance, none of the books I have pub- 
 lished in foreign languages since I was last here have crossed 
 the frontier. 
 
 The amiability and good breeding of the Russian officers 
 are in curious contrast to this severity. It must be admitted 
 that in the Russian officer of the Guards (and only the 
 Guards are stationed in Warsaw) we never notice the con- 
 ceit and arrogance which characterise the Prussian officer. 
 Courtesy, almost modesty, the bearing of the polished man 
 of the world, are the peculiar stamp of the Russian officer. 
 And this humanity is not merely superficial. The two Rus- 
 sian officers, whose position would enable them to do more 
 evil than any one, the commander of the gendarmerie, 
 General Brock, and the chief of the police, General Kreigels, 
 are actually beloved by the Polish population. They always 
 deliver the mildest possible reports. Every harshness dis- 
 played is against their wishes. But they are obliged to obey 
 the orders they get. 
 
 In the officers' staff itself there is no inclination to treat 
 the Poles as a vanquished people. They rather insist upon 
 a gentlemanly behaviour towards them. Recently we had a 
 striking instance of this. A son of the Governor-General 
 saw at the house of a comrade here a forbidden book and 
 asked him how he had got it ; the officer told him the name 
 of the bookseller. The young Lieutenant Gurko went to the 
 latter and asked for the book. No, it was not to be had, it 
 was forbidden. If he could procure it for him ? Under 
 common circumstances it would be impossible, but as to the 
 son of the Governor-General, he supposed that the pro- 
 hibition might be waived. Some weeks later the lieutenant 
 got his book, and denounced the bookseller, who was arrested. 
 Immediately thereafter the officers of the regiment, each and 
 all of them, sent in a petition that Lieutenant Gurko might be 
 struck off the list of officers ; failing this, they all requested 
 their own dismissal. They got no answer, but they insisted. 
 The consequence was, in fact, that Lieutenant Gurko was dis-
 
 120 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 missed ; to be sure he was at the same time placed upon 
 the general staff. 
 
 The overwhelming heat is now over ; the time in which 
 the shower-bath house in the park was our main consolation. 
 I never entered it without being reminded of the first act of 
 The Valkyries, for it is built up round four gigantic stems of 
 trees which rise through the house like the large tree in the 
 dwelling of Siegfried's mother. 
 
 Now the temperature is such that we should like to make 
 use of the invitations received from the neighbouring manors. 
 The sad state of the roads obliges us to pay our visits in a 
 carriage and four, otherwise we should never get along. At 
 the neighbouring manors there are several original men and 
 women.
 
 Ill 
 
 MONOTONY AND STILLNESS SUMMER-NIGHT SENTI- 
 MENTSPOLITICAL DIVERGENCE OF THE OLDER 
 AND YOUNGER GENERATIONS 
 
 THE peaceful quiet that reigns here is of the kind possible 
 only to those who live miles from railway stations and towns. 
 Never a sound breaks the silence of the night, with the 
 exception of the watchman's horn, which every quarter of 
 an hour announces that he is awake. But as for me, I never 
 hear it after having gone to bed. We sleep calmly in this 
 stillness, and therefore I am always awake when in the 
 morning Wladislaw brings my clothes and opens the shutters 
 and windows. Wladislaw is from Lithuania, thirty years 
 old, and he it is who, among the servants of the house, has 
 been placed at my disposal. He is a jewel of a man small, 
 slender, and strong, full of the Polish flexibility in every 
 limb, and particularly intelligent. He speaks French and 
 Italian very well, having passed five years in Florence with 
 Count Guybowsky, and two years with Franciszek in Paris. 
 He does not always express himself correctly in French, but 
 his locutions are always extremely picturesque. For in- 
 stance, he says : " // mouche fort aujourd'hui; " this is to be 
 interpreted: "There are a great many flies to-day." He 
 speaks Polish as his native tongue ; understands Lithuanian 
 and Russian. I am an ignorant fellow in comparison with 
 him. To be sure, I know German; but he knows how to 
 shave. I know a little English ; but he can carry my tub 
 with a straight arm. In Paris he might become an inter- 
 preter, a hairdresser, or a waiter as it might happen ; were 
 he a little less good-natured, he would be the typical Figaro. 
 
 It does one good to open one's eyes on beautiful lawns 
 and trees. The more one has been condemned to live in a 
 town the more one is sensible of living with nature. When
 
 122 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 I am driving about here and I perceive by the strong sweet 
 perfume that we are approaching a clover field in blossom, I 
 make the horse walk, that I may not be deprived of any of 
 this perfume. When one is unaccustomed to ramble about 
 on field-paths, every feather becomes interesting, and one 
 looks at the plants like a botanising schoolboy. In the fore- 
 noon I rove about alone, the heat being too intense for my 
 friends. But towards evening we all walk out together, and 
 every day a different way. The constant spectacle the sun- 
 set, the twilight, the rising of the red moon on the horizon, 
 and its change into sparkling yellow is every day the same 
 and every day new. One's mood and the conversation vary, 
 according to one's companion. Yesterday the air was calm ; 
 dusk came on speedily ; the mown fields breathed fragrance 
 after the rain, and the full moon was shining with an almost 
 hypnotising effect. The young girl beside me quoted in a 
 low voice a poem by Kistemaekers, of which these are the 
 first strophes : 
 
 " J'aime la nuit, 
 La nuit des reves 
 Aux heures braves 
 Quand 1'astre luit 
 Sur champs et greves, 
 J'aime la nuit. 
 
 Quand la nuit dort 
 Dans le silence, 
 La lune lance 
 Sa clartd d'or, 
 Qui se balance 
 Quand la nuit dort." 
 
 It was surprising how these verses mingled with the harmony 
 of the summer night. 
 
 Thus the days pass ; monotonous days which are but a 
 succession of spectacles of nature and of conversations ; days 
 of which we do not know if they are Tuesday or Friday ; 
 weeks, of which only Sunday is recognisable, because then 
 at twelve o'clock the church bells call the faithful together 
 for mass. These church bells ! Every evening at nine o'clock 
 they strike a few times, and then cease as if in alarm. An 
 official explanation as to the signification of these strokes has 
 been given to the authorities. In reality they toll in memory
 
 MURDER OF AN ACTRESS 123 
 
 of the Poles who fell for freedom during the revolution. 
 Few strokes only and muffled, a secret appeal to memory. 
 But no alarm-bell could conjure, as they are conjuring, all 
 over the land, in the capital as well as in the smallest village. 
 
 We are lulled by this monotony and stillness, this good, 
 pure air. The cholera is raging near us in Sochazew, but it 
 does not reach us. And we do not at all regret Warsaw, 
 where the epidemic has spread enormously. The only 
 temptation there is the theatre. Marcello is acting, and I 
 have not yet seen her this time. 
 
 When Poland's greatest actress, Modrzejewska, had 
 emigrated to America to act only in English, Wisnoska and 
 Marcello remained, only a few years ago, the two queens 
 of the theatre of Warsaw. Now Marcello, the dark beauty, 
 reigns alone. Her fair rival is no more. Many people still 
 remember how poor Wisnoska came to her death. A Rus- 
 sian officer of the Guards, who for a long time had been 
 persecuting her, and tormenting her with his jealousy, one 
 evening entered her house and demanded of her that she 
 should give up all and everybody for his sake ; if not, she 
 would not escape him alive. When she told him that he was 
 quite indifferent to her, and that she would preserve her 
 freedom, he pulled out his revolver, and was cruel enough to 
 keep the unhappy woman before the pistol-muzzle all through 
 the night ; all the while he was talking and drinking. At 
 length she understood that she could not escape, and every 
 quarter of an hour she put down on leaves, which she tore 
 out of her note-book, her desperate lamentations, rolled up 
 the leaves and threw them all around the room on the floor, 
 that they might be found after her death. Towards morning 
 he shot her, returned to the barracks, cried out to his 
 comrades : " I have shot Wisnoska ! " and was arrested as 
 soon as his brother officers, who thought he was raving, had 
 inquired into the matter and had found the corpse. In the 
 lower as well as in the two superior courts he was sentenced 
 to twenty years' hard labour. However, the emperor thought 
 that here was an occasion to exercise his prerogative. He 
 commuted the sentence and condemned the culprit to 
 degradation. He was reduced to the ranks ; a week later
 
 124 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 he was promoted sub-lieutenant, another week later lieu- 
 tenant, and in this way justice as well as mercy were 
 satisfied. Poor Wisnoska ! Her hair was so rich and fair ; 
 her eyes so blue, and her smile so bright. I saw her before 
 me, beside Marcello, in the first row in the great council 
 hall one day when my lecture on Polish literature was 
 given there. Most earnestly she clapped her hands, 
 which were small and covered with delicate grey gloves. 
 She might be less beautiful than Marcello, but as an 
 artist she was certainly more gifted. She has left a void- 
 is not forgotten. 
 
 We need not go to Warsaw for society ; we have plenty 
 of neighbours within a drive of a couple of hours, neighbours 
 with long, curious names terminating in wicz and ski. 
 Nearly all the landed proprietors about here are enormously 
 rich. They not only possess extensive properties, which they 
 manage together with their sons, with great skill, but gener- 
 ally a manufactory of beet-root sugar and sometimes of 
 alcohol is connected with the estate. Beside the cornfields 
 there are boundless fields of beet-root and potatoes. 
 
 The culture of the elder generation clings to democratic 
 and anticlerical ideals. A particular trait in the old gentle- 
 men is their hatred of priests, particularly their abhorrence 
 and dread of Jesuits. It always excited amazement when, 
 as I usually do, I mentioned the Jesuits with a certain warmth 
 and admiration. Most of the squires are cast in one mould, 
 and do not understand these fine shades. They read much, 
 but are most attracted by rather coarse, popular books, 
 directed against religious and political prejudices. They are 
 ardent patriots, anxiously watching the political horizon, 
 hoping to discern some sign of better times for Poland. 
 
 The younger generation is practically active and does 
 not care much for politics ; they have made their choice 
 in life. In the elder generation the men are more interesting 
 than the women ; in the younger the reverse is the case. 
 Though what is known elsewhere in Europe as the emanci- 
 pation of women is prohibited here, their independence of 
 thought is great, certainly not inferior to what it is in the 
 North, and the level of culture is higher, because the store of
 
 POLISH FEMININE TYPES 125 
 
 general knowledge is greater, not to mention knowledge of 
 the world. The young women speak French and English 
 besides Polish, not like languages they have been taught, but 
 as they speak their native tongue, and they are familiar with 
 foreign literature because all their leisure time is spent in 
 reading, and they know the different countries well, having 
 passed at least one-third of their life in travelling. 
 
 Of course all species are to be found among them; not 
 excepting that of the goose, and even the pretentious goose 
 conscious of beauty and of descent from a most noble gander ; 
 but I only met one specimen of the kind. On the other 
 hand I saw a couple of noble falcons, a swan, a sphinx. . . . 
 
 Not far from here lives a young girl who is not exactly 
 beautiful, but so graceful that every moment she becomes 
 so. She never laughs, and her face is without a smile, 
 even the smile of courtesy ; she never speaks except when 
 alone with one person ; she is mute as a fish when we 
 assemble in the saloon or at table ; but she knows to a 
 turn the value of every person and every circle in Warsaw, 
 and though she is but twenty-four years old, she is as in- 
 dependent and as unprejudiced in her ideas as a clever man 
 of forty. She has read all the most daring books written in 
 the last twenty years. 
 
 And some few miles distant, in an old manor house with 
 antique furniture, and seven straight avenues which radiate 
 from the lawn before the house, you may meet a young 
 woman of thirty years of age who lives with her parents, 
 separated from her husband, who took to drinking and 
 squandered her fortune ; and this young woman is so re- 
 markable that she would make a sensation in any capital. 
 She is dark like an Italian, with a figure like a Roman, 
 but her whole personality is instinct with the Slavonic grace 
 and charm. She captivates because such a face as hers has 
 never been seen before. Her mouth especially is wonderfully 
 expressive, like that of a great actress. She reminds one of 
 bright purple, a purple poppy with an intoxicating perfume, 
 and she has a most melodious voice. Her manner is 
 aristocratic, quiet and self-contained. Other women look 
 meaningless beside her. But she does not appear to be
 
 126 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 conscious of herself as an exceptional being. In my eyes 
 she is the embodiment of the spirit of Russian Poland. 
 From her radiates all its southern ardour its Slavonic grace, 
 its mysteriously attractive inner life. 
 
 For this is certain : although Russian Poland is oppressed 
 and tortured as is neither Prussian Poland nor Austrian 
 Galicia, still it is only here that the heart of Poland is 
 throbbing, and only here that the Polish race may be 
 studied in its best and rarest originality. 
 
 In Posen and East Prussia the Polish landed proprietor 
 is impoverished ; generally he has been obliged to sell his 
 property ; the Germans, supported by the means of the state 
 and by all sorts of cunning prohibitions, with the hundred 
 million marks of the state in reserve, backed by the passion 
 of the German propaganda, have bought up the country inch 
 by inch. The Polish peasant in Prussia is trained by com- 
 pulsory instruction, and is on that account more cleanly 
 and prosperous than elsewhere, but the Polish population 
 is mixed there. The nobles are brought up in German 
 schools and at German universities. Galicia, a poor 
 mountainous district, is, as an Austrian province, negative. 
 The population enjoys full national and civil freedom. 
 Polish songs are sung and Polish speeches are delivered 
 freely in Austrian Poland. But parties fight against each 
 other with an unquenchable hatred. Cracow is the strong- 
 hold of the clerical majority, Lemberg that of the free-thinking 
 minority. Though the Galician press is free, it is never- 
 theless worse than the Russo-Polish, because its contents 
 consist almost entirely of personal insults occasioned by the 
 party strife. In Russian Poland the press is fettered to such 
 a degree that it has been, for instance, impossible to warn 
 the young people against the senseless political demonstra- 
 tions, so tragical in their consequences, to which they 
 constantly resort, urged on by the women. The press has 
 not dared to mention these demonstrations with a single 
 word, and still it is better than the Polish press in Austria. 
 
 The Polish vivacity and intellectual charm has its real 
 home in the kingdom of Poland perhaps because only here 
 are the material conditions of the upper classes such as
 
 WEALTH OF RUSSIAN POLAND 127 
 
 to enable them to lead a modern life, continuing their life 
 during the Renaissance. Russian Poland is the richest 
 corn-growing country in Europe. Every patch of ground 
 is fertile. The nobles here are often very rich, and people 
 enjoy their money. A host of servants, as is well known, 
 are kept in a well-conducted house in Poland, the houses 
 being almost always spacious, with many spare rooms. The 
 ladies revel in beautiful dresses. They dress two or three 
 times in the day, and if any come to stay for some time in 
 the house, they have as much luggage as Sarah Bernhardt. 
 The ladies of this house, who have no occasion to make 
 themselves smart, have appeared in fifty different dresses at 
 least. On my putting the question one day none of them 
 knew how many dresses they possessed. It is still more 
 singular to see that the gentlemen change their dresses 
 as frequently. None of them own less than two dozen 
 complete costumes, and in addition wraps, overcoats, hunting 
 and riding costumes. In this particular they live as in 
 the time of Pan Sopliga. 
 
 None of them would be impressed by the cupboard full 
 of boots, with which Bourget's Casal is supposed to overawe 
 the snobs. 
 
 Between the three parts, into which the ancient Poland 
 is divided and which are so closely bound together by 
 language and memories, there is politically not the slightest 
 co-operation ; they can never act in concert ; they have not 
 even common measures and coins or legal regulations or 
 stamps nothing at all in common ; not even a man who 
 is popular in all three countries as a politician. In litera- 
 ture there is after all but one name which unites them ; 
 Sienkiewicz has by degrees become the jewel in the crown of 
 Poland. And he is far from being a genius of the first rank. 
 
 Nothing material is done to unite the parts of the 
 country ; only ideal means are possible. There is, especially 
 in the elder generation, a group of patriotic idealists, valiant 
 dreamers, simple and hopeful souls, who are constantly 
 travelling about between the severed parts of the land, and 
 who, by conversations, bargains, and agreements of an 
 innocent nature, keep up the holy fire. The great exhibi-
 
 128 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 tion in Lemberg is an outcome of their exertions. But it 
 cannot be denied that only too many of the best of the 
 younger generation, both young women and young men, 
 have given up all national hope ; have ceased to watch for 
 gleams of light, looking upon all such gleams as ignes fatui. 
 Openly sceptical, nay, even contemptuous, they are melan- 
 choly spectators of the agitations of their elders.
 
 IV 
 
 POLAND AND FRANCE POLAND AND GERMANY 
 
 " CONFESS that our Polish cooking is excellent," said 
 Madame Halina. 
 
 " I do indeed, I think it the best in the world." 
 
 " That all our dishes are original ! " 
 
 " I admit that they taste very good, and that as a rule 
 one doesn't know what they are made of." 
 
 " Confess that our soil is more fruitful than any other, 
 that our scenery has a style and an attraction of its own, 
 and that it is more spacious than any other." 
 
 " I agree with all you say. Even flatness is imposing 
 here." 
 
 "Admit that our language is flexible and beautiful, soft 
 and malleable, melodious and luxuriant, even if it has not 
 the varied rhythms of Russian." 
 
 " I admit that your speech is fascinating." 
 
 " Admit that no other people dance as we do. Is there 
 any dance like our mazurka ? " 
 
 " I am hardly a judge, but I am inclined to think most 
 highly of Polish dancing. The ballets at Warsaw would 
 be hard to beat." 
 
 " Admit that our women are beautiful ! " 
 
 "Beautiful and beautifully dressed. Who could question 
 this ? " 
 
 " Admit that our men are intelligent and hospitable." 
 
 "They are indeed. But what do you want with all 
 these confessions ? " 
 
 " Admit that Nature has lavished upon us all the gifts 
 that should make a nation happy. We are cheerful, 
 easily pleased, and have withal the imaginative spark. Why 
 then have we become the most unhappy race on earth ? 
 
 139
 
 130 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 For has there ever been a more hapless nation than ours 
 in all the history of the world ? " 
 
 " I doubt it, unless perhaps we except the Jews, who 
 are no longer a nation." 
 
 "Then is it not incredible, inhuman, that all Europe 
 has lost interest in us, that no one will lift a finger in our 
 behalf ? I am not thinking of the Powers responsible for 
 the partition. But is it not shameful to see France crawling 
 on her belly before our tyrant, that France we reverenced, 
 fought and bled for ? " 
 
 Every Polish man and every Polish woman is cut 
 to the heart by the enthusiastic servility of France 
 to Russia. Nowhere do people know France more 
 thoroughly than here. Educated Poles are brought up in 
 French fashion, they speak French as fluently as their own 
 tongue, they read and appreciate French books more than 
 any other people. It is for these very reasons that the 
 self-abasement of France before Russia has wounded them 
 so deeply. 
 
 No people in the world ever believed so firmly in France, 
 or sacrificed themselves so cheerfully for France as the 
 Poles. Read what Henri Houssaye says in his "1814." 
 Whenever things were most desperate, whenever some 
 forlorn hope or the personal safety of the Emperor was 
 in question, the Polish Lancers were always to the fore. 
 They and the Vieille Garde were always the last resource. 
 And neither ever failed. 
 
 A Polish woman, a woman Napoleon never won, 
 though he possessed her, and whose admiration for him 
 never became love, was the only woman who visited him at 
 Elba, after his downfall. 
 
 Poland is now so utterly forgotten by the French that 
 one never hears her mentioned by them. They know 
 nothing of the Poles, and it is impossible to get an article 
 dealing with their sufferings inserted in any French 
 review. Saoul comme un Polonats (as drunk as a Pole) is 
 the only memento of them that lingers in the national 
 speech. 
 
 It has actually come to this, that French newspapers,
 
 FRENCH SUBSERVIENCE TO RUSSIA 131 
 
 commenting on the incessant changes of ministry in their 
 own country, remark as follows : 
 
 "What must our allies, the Russians, think of us, and 
 of these ministries that change every year, nay, several 
 times in one year ! With them, ministers remain in office 
 for twenty and thirty years." If the French were governed 
 for six months on the same lines as the Russian Poles, 
 their enthusiasm for Russian methods would, no doubt, be 
 considerably modified ! 
 
 What would the French say, if it were absolutely for- 
 bidden to teach the French language in any French school ? 
 Or if school-children were strictly forbidden to talk together 
 in their native tongue in the playground or the street ? 
 But this is what is done to Polish children. 
 
 Or if, in the teaching of history, the name of their 
 fatherland were never mentioned, if its history were treated 
 as non-existent, and all the energies and efforts of teachers 
 were directed to the instilling into their children of an 
 idealised history of a foreign race ? If the fate of Alsace 
 and Lorraine, aggravated a thousandfold, were the fate of 
 all France ! 
 
 This summer all young boys were refused passports 
 to cross the frontier. What would a French lady say 
 if she were forbidden to cross the frontier with her little 
 son ? If she were a Pole, she would, like a young mother 
 of my acquaintance, simply have to stay at home. The 
 authorities were afraid that the boys of the country would 
 be taken to the exhibition at Lemberg, that they would 
 witness political demonstrations, hear Polish songs and 
 speeches and this was prevented by the simple device of 
 refusing passports. What would a Frenchman say, if all 
 official posts of distinction and lucrative situations, the 
 army and the navy, and the higher administrative functions 
 were all alike closed to him ? if the State forbade him 
 to fill any post, the emoluments of which exceed 1000 
 rubles ? Yet this is the case here. No Pole receives higher 
 payment. 
 
 When the State recently acquired all the private railways in 
 Poland, the whole of the Polish staff without exception was
 
 132 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 dismissed ; hundreds of families were made destitute. In 
 the Postal Service, as elsewhere, the promotion of Polish 
 employe's ceases when they have reached a salary of 1000 
 rubles. 
 
 What would the French say if every line written by 
 them for a newspaper had to be submitted to a Govern- 
 ment censor before publication, and if their authors were 
 punished for things they had intended to print, but which 
 had never appeared ? Such things are the rule here. 
 
 What would they say if the winter and summer revues, 
 so popular in their theatres, had to be absolutely renounced ? 
 Here no such things as revues are possible, or even im- 
 aginable. A review of the events of the year ? What 
 would these be ? There are no public men in Poland 
 save the Government officials, and their names may not 
 even be mentioned, nor their actions alluded to, in a news- 
 paper article, much less on the stage. Parliament, public 
 meetings, associations, and such like, which furnish material 
 for quips elsewhere, do not exist. The only possible topics 
 would be purely private scandals, but the Poles are not 
 ignoble, and there is no newspaper among them answering 
 to such a sheet as the Danish Witzblittern, not even in 
 Galicia, where personal polemics are nevertheless in the 
 blood. 
 
 What would French workmen say if they were 
 absolutely forbidden to found any union, or enter into 
 any association ? If a strike were not only an unimag- 
 inable proceeding, but even any combined discussion of 
 their interests were impossible ? But these things would 
 be impossible to them if they were governed by Russia. 
 And it would avail them little to protest in the name of 
 the right of public meeting. For the right of public 
 meeting is unknown here. 
 
 Finally, what would devout French Catholics say, if 
 they found themselves handed over to the supremacy 
 of the Czar-Pope ? When from time to time (as happened 
 this spring in the village of Kroze) a church the authorities 
 have determined to Russianise is surrounded, and the 
 peasants who refuse to leave it and gi\ 7 e it up are shot
 
 INTOLERANCE TOWARDS CATHOLICS 133 
 
 down by Cossacks and soldiers, the survivors being knouted, 
 the incident goes the round of the European papers for a 
 day or two, and readers comfort themselves with the reflec- 
 tion that such occurrences are exceptional. 
 
 But the daily, cold-blooded annoyances are never men- 
 tioned. In his day, Krasinski called Poland the land of 
 graves and crosses. One of the most striking characteristics 
 of Polish landscapes are the lofty wooden crosses. They 
 are not crucifixes, as in Italy and Tyrol, but plain crosses. 
 If such a cross falls down or decays, it might be sup- 
 posed that it would be permissible to replace it. Not with- 
 out a Government permit, and this is not easily obtained. 
 Two years ago a cross of this kind in a field was struck 
 by lightning. It has been lying broken ever since ; the 
 owners dare not repair it, because the necessary permission 
 has not yet been forwarded from the Government offices 
 in St. Petersburg. If it had been a St. Andrew's cross 
 now ! But the actual one is looked upon as a Romish 
 symbol ! Under this regime even the cross is feared as a 
 sign of insurrection. 
 
 The land of graves and crosses ! If they try to restrict 
 the number of crosses, the graves at least are allowed to 
 multiply freely. In 1831 the Russian official bulletin ran 
 as follows : L'ordre regne a Varsovie. Now order reigns no 
 longer, but cholera, though this does not appear in the 
 Russian bulletins. A pedagogic government gives the number 
 of cases and of deaths as it pleases, in such a manner as to 
 pacify inquirers in Europe and abroad. 
 
 Round two of the little towns in this district a military 
 cordon has been drawn. No one is permitted to leave or 
 to enter them, and the inhabitants are dying like flies. The 
 spread of the scourge is due not only to the poverty of the 
 people, but in a still greater degree to their ignorance. 
 When once the disease has appeared, it is impossible to 
 reason with them, or even to give them any remedies. 
 Neither peasants nor servants can be induced to give up 
 eating fruit. Cholera is fate, they say ; the person who is 
 to get it will have it. And no sick person, whatever is 
 the matter with him, will swallow a drop of medicine.
 
 134 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 They imagine that there is a sort of conspiracy to get 
 rid of those afflicted with the disease as quickly as possible, 
 and are persuaded that anything offered them by a stranger 
 is poison. No arguments can overcome this idea. 
 
 But who is to blame for all this blind ignorance ? 
 
 A generation back all the hopes of the Poles centred 
 in France. This time has completely gone by. The then 
 policy of the Poles in Austria and Prussia consisted 
 of a mere barren opposition. Whatever the respective 
 Governments proposed, the Polish deputies refused. It was 
 in Austria that this policy was first modified. The Poles 
 were granted liberty of speech and action, they encountered 
 sympathy, they gradually received power, and became con- 
 tented. As under William I. the Poles could always reckon 
 upon ill-will and oppression from the Government, their 
 activity in the German parliament gradually restricted itself 
 to the voting of perpetual nays. They rarely spoke, know- 
 ing the futility of such demonstrations, and being more- 
 over poor orators. It was not until Josef Koscielski became 
 a member of the Reichstag and of the Upper House that 
 these tactics were changed. He became intimate with the 
 Bismarck family in Berlin, and made up his mind to bear 
 the displeasure with which this intimacy was regarded by 
 his compatriots. He made his debut in the Reichstag as 
 an orator, and gained the ear of the house by his eloquence. 
 After the fall of Bismarck he became even a greater 
 favourite with the young Emperor than he had been in 
 the Bismarckian circle. He and his young wife were often 
 invited to dine alone with the Emperor and Empress, and 
 even now that he has retired from political life he and 
 his are frequently the guests of the Imperial family. 
 
 Koscielski met the wishes of the Emperor as far as it was 
 possible to him, and influenced the Polish party to vote in 
 the same sense. Thus he voted for the naval grant, a service 
 the Emperor rewarded by conferring an order of great dis- 
 tinction upon him. In return, as is well known, concessions 
 were made to the Poles as regards their language and 
 their Church. For the first time after a very long interval, 
 an Archbishop after their own hearts was nominated. And
 
 KOSCIELSKI 135 
 
 for this they had to thank Koscielski. There is no doubt 
 that his winning personality and his political tact had gained 
 more ground for them than they had conquered since 
 the time of Frederick William IV., whereas the voting 
 of an extra ship or two to the fleet did them not the 
 slightest harm. But the Poles have never been tacticians, 
 and Koscielski's diplomacy brought him contumely rather 
 than popularity. He went by the name of Admiralski ever 
 afterwards. It was a nickname that every one could under- 
 stand, and that the meanest wit could grasp. Whenever 
 he voted in favour of a Government measure, he was 
 looked upon with suspicion. Like all Poles, he had a 
 certain love of splendour, and he was perhaps not altogether 
 unaffected by the civilities shown him at Court. The 
 Poles never ceased to impress upon him that his personal 
 vanity was at the bottom of his activity in Berlin, and 
 that he sacrificed national interests to his own. He accord- 
 ingly resigned in the spring. 
 
 He justly estimated that the Poles, having nothing to 
 hope for from France, should now do their best to obtain 
 concessions from Germany.
 
 A CHURCH FESTIVAL POPULAR BELIEFS 
 
 IT is the festival of forgiveness in the church to-day. From 
 early in the morning there has been ringing of bells and 
 concourse of peasants from miles round. Outside the church 
 of Petrovice sellers have run up small booths and huts for 
 the occasion, where all sorts of things are offered for sale 
 holy images, rosaries, cruciform ornaments, and some toys 
 for the children the mothers have brought with them, but 
 all so infinitely poor that there was scarcely anything to be 
 had above a penny in price. It was most disheartening 
 to look at the pictures suspended beneath the eaves of an 
 old hovel lithographs of the worst and most tasteless 
 paintings, and of daubs almost blasphemous in their em- 
 bodiment of bland Virgins and insipid Saviours. On closer 
 inspection we discovered with surprise that this factory work 
 was marked not only Paris, but most of it even New York. 
 It is the indefatigable Yankees, brave Protestants, who are 
 sitting on the other side of the ocean, gaining money by 
 making hundreds of thousands of holy pictures for the 
 Catholics in old Europe. No wonder that they are hideous. 
 Even a lithograph of the most nauseous Carlo Dolci would 
 be a relief among them. 
 
 The church is overcrowded ; the doors are wide open, 
 and a large column of men and women crowd before them 
 to catch as much of the sermon as possible. But besides, all 
 over the square in front of the church a whole little popula- 
 tion is standing, sitting, and kneeling, uncovered, in deep 
 devotion. All round lie beggars ; about eighteen have 
 arrived in a covered cart ; disgusting cripples with naked 
 arms or bandaged legs ; the whole crowd of palsied beings 
 on whom the Son of Man worked His miracles in days of 
 
 yore. Near the church a chapel has been run up by its 
 
 136
 
 A POLISH "PARDON" 137 
 
 master-mason, who is making repairs in it, and who desires 
 to display his pious disposition ; on the chapel is a wooden 
 crucifix, a monster of tastelessness ! 
 
 All sense of art and beauty seems quenched in the 
 common people. How lively was formerly their sense of 
 beauty how handsome and becoming the national dress 
 which the Russians have now strictly forbidden ! What a 
 picturesque figure the peasant of Galicia still is in his white 
 coat ornamented with red, and with his large felt hat ! 
 Here the peasant now wears the most horrible cap and a 
 dress without cut or character ; while the women and the 
 girls, who have been deprived of their national costume, 
 have a predilection for loud yellow and crude green. 
 
 They all walked about, looking at the stalls and bargain- 
 ing, now and then buying some pastry, and some of the fruit 
 offered in spite of the prohibition. But the forbidden fruit 
 has here, as elsewhere, its particular charm. The people of 
 the manor erected a booth at which bottles of boiled water, 
 with peppermint and brandy to flavour them, were offered 
 gratis ; the object was to prevent the dangerous drinking 
 of water. The peasants drank eagerly, contrary to our 
 expectations. 
 
 For several hours our ladies had sat in their church, 
 in spite of the heat and bad air. We men did not go 
 in, until the great mass at the very last. The sight from 
 the altar of the church was picturesque. Just behind the 
 priest sat the ladies, some from the neighbouring estates 
 with their husbands ; they were festively dressed, but their 
 devotion did not appear to be intense. Then the peasants, 
 men, women, and children, head beside head, as many as the 
 church could contain, the white, yellow, and pink headgear 
 of the women gleaming, among brown men's faces 
 with thick long moustaches, all kneeling down, then rising, 
 then bending their heads to fall again on their knees, sway- 
 ing like corn in the wind. Above them sounded the 
 hymn, one of the most ancient of Polish linguistic monu- 
 ments, music and simple words dating from the tenth 
 century : " Holy God, mighty God ! Deliver us from plague, 
 from famine and from war. God, the Almighty ! "
 
 138 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 It goes back to the time when Poland was first afflicted 
 with the plague, and has a new actuality in these days. 
 
 The sermon was not bad, impressing upon the hearers 
 that religious exercises and church-attendance count for 
 little in comparison to one's life and acts. On the other 
 hand, the priest, who celebrated the mass, with his stupid 
 expression, his thick cheeks and his fat figure was grotesque, 
 and his way of pronouncing Latin utterly rustic. All that 
 stood for art in the church was glaring and in bad taste ; 
 the wall-paintings, the pictures on the banners waving 
 above the congregation ; but beautiful were the living decora- 
 tions of flowers and green round the pillars, and the blooming 
 oleanders in flower-pots before the altar. 
 
 Our own little priest was not officiating that day. He 
 was the host, and chiefly taken up with the great dinner of 
 forty persons, which he was to give after the service. He 
 knelt down with the others, but I read his thoughts. He 
 never speaks of his faith, but from what he says, we feel that 
 he thinks like the rest of us. It is always thus with the 
 priests who have studied for several years in Rome. A stay 
 there is more beneficial to intellect than to faith. This is 
 strongest in the poor creatures who ascend the pulpit directly 
 from the Polish seminaries. For the rest, the poor priests 
 had a hard day. Not less than four hundred peasants 
 came to confession, and there were but thirteen priests 
 to confess them. They were ready to drop with fatigue. 
 Fortunately they consoled themselves afterwards. 
 
 No greater contrast can be imagined than that between 
 the Polish and the Russian peasant in relation to religion and 
 its expounders. However orthodox the Russian peasant may 
 be, to him, as to the Russians in general, the priest is a most 
 inferior creature, half comical, half despicable. It is a 
 bad omen to meet him. The Russian priest does not differ 
 much from the peasant as to culture ; but having more money, 
 it is easier for him to get drunk, and in reality his life consists 
 in the main of carouses and sleeping off their effects j but 
 the Polish peasant venerates his priest. Nay, the authority 
 of the Catholic priest is the only one that has remained 
 absolutely undisputed in Poland at all times. It is within his
 
 RUSSIAN AND POLISH PRIESTS COMPARED 139 
 
 power to put the peasant into the mood he desires. This 
 always becomes apparent after confession. When a theft has 
 been committed, it constantly happens that the priest brings 
 back the stolen object. The peasant does not bring it him- 
 self, but in his anguish he gives it to the priest that the 
 latter may forward it to its owner. 
 
 The piety of the Russian peasant does not exclude 
 certain tricks and a good deal of sharp practice in his 
 dealings with the saints. 
 
 A Russian peasant with horse and cart had got upon 
 the ice, which was about to break up, and in his distress he 
 promised St. Nicholas the value of the horse, if he reached 
 the shore alive with his vehicle. This he did, and 
 now his main thought was how to get out of this scrape 
 without breaking his word to the saint. The horse was 
 worth more than a hundred rubles, and this was a loss he 
 did not like to suffer. At last he hit on a way of escape. He 
 went to the fair with his horse and soon found a purchaser. 
 " How much do you want for your horse ? " asked the latter. 
 " Five rubles," was the answer. " Five rubles ? You are not 
 in earnest ; but of course I will pay that." "Very well," 
 said the peasant ; " but I have decided not to sell it without 
 this hen, which I have on my back." " And what is the 
 price of the hen ? " " Ninety-five rubles." The bargain was 
 made and the saint got his five rubles. 
 
 The Polish peasant is more artless with his saints. He 
 has not the fire and fervour of invocation of the Italian 
 peasant, but he kneels lost in supplication before their 
 images. This was evident yesterday. 
 
 After the service the great dinner for all the clergy took 
 place at the young priest's house. The chief landed 
 proprietors of the neighbourhood were also present, forty 
 persons in all, as mentioned. As our young priest has only 
 an annual salary of 150 rubles, and with all his perquisites 
 does not get more than six or seven hundred rubles, it is im- 
 possible for him to give such dinners. But the custom is 
 to send him all the meat and drink he wants from the 
 manor, also table linen, dishes, plates, and glasses. The 
 thing was particularly difficult yesterday, because the festival
 
 140 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 fell on a Friday, so that there could be no meat. Our lady 
 had sent for four or five different sorts of fish, and from 
 the day before all was activity in the house. Our cook, 
 who has studied his art in Paris, and who moreover is both 
 baker and confectioner, excelled himself. The salmon and 
 the pike were lying, mighty in circumference, on heavy 
 dishes ; the wine was rolled in barrels from the cellar ; and 
 from early morning all the servants were hurrying to and fro 
 in an endless procession, carrying dishes and baskets filled 
 with all sorts of good things, between the manor and the 
 parsonage. 
 
 The thirteen priests and the other great folks were soon 
 seated in two spacious rooms to celebrate the fast-day. In 
 the sermon it had been said that the truly religious man 
 is not gloomy and choleric, but always cheerful, and about 
 this many a merry speech was made during the meal. But 
 it is fair to say, they ate more than they spoke, and they 
 drank more than they ate. Burgundy and Bordeaux and 
 Hungarian hock disappeared so hastily behind the clerical 
 waistcoats that every now and then an express was despatched 
 to the manor with a slip of paper requiring this and that 
 from the cellar. They drank hard like good Poles, and 
 nevertheless nobody spoke a word too loudly, because the 
 young priests were shy of exposing themselves before their 
 superiors, and these did not forget to keep up the respect 
 due to themselves. But to see my friend Franciszek at the 
 top of the table, presiding at this clerical dinner, having 
 his health proposed as the giver of the festival, as the 
 patron of the Church, as the great religious benefactor of 
 the country ! What may a worldling not become, if he is 
 rich, clever, and lavish ! 
 
 Certainly several of the priests were no more believing 
 than he. The more gifted of them had all gone through 
 the Roman school. But no experience shakes the faith 
 of the common people. Things the most contrary to reason 
 and the most cruel are to him but further evidences of the 
 care of Providence. Listen to this Polish legend, which 
 Sienkiewicz has introduced in his tales : 
 
 A peasant boy discovered one day, when passing a hollow
 
 A LEGEND OF DEATH 141 
 
 tree, that somebody was within the trunk. He approached 
 and found that it was Death, who had fallen asleep there. 
 He quickly put a plug into the hole, and when Death 
 awoke, he was a captive. From that moment there was 
 exultation in the village. No more death ; no funerals ; no 
 mourners. But the joy only lasted for a time. As nobody 
 died, everything was overcrowded and the soil could not 
 supply food enough for so many. It then became necessary 
 to draw out the plug. Death got his liberty ; he hurried to 
 Christ and requested orders as to whom he was first to 
 mow down. Christ pronounced a name. It was that of 
 a mother of five children, and when Death came to her, she 
 was terrified, not so much for her own sake, as for her little 
 children's. She fell on her knees, and implored Death, saying : 
 " You see, yourself, that it w r ould be a cruelty to take 
 me. What will become of my five babes when I am 
 gone ; who is to provide for them ? They will perish miser- 
 ably. I entreat you, go away ! " Then Death hastened 
 anew to Christ, in spite of the command he had received, 
 explained the case, and asked for orders. Christ first 
 gave Death two strong boxes on his ears for his dis- 
 obedience [the rustic experience lies behind this trait] and 
 then said . " Fly over the ocean ; go diving where it is 
 deepest, and bring me the little white stone you will find 
 there." Death did as he was bidden ; found the stone, and 
 brought it. Christ said : " Crack it with your teeth." 
 It was hard for the fleshless lips of Death, but it was 
 cracked, and within was a little white living worm (!). Then 
 Christ said, " There, you see. I knew that in this little stone 
 was a worm, and think you that I, who know this, should not 
 have thought of the fate of the five little children, who will 
 become motherless at my command. Get on ! and kill the 
 mother immediately ! " 
 
 Such faith in the common people is very necessary 
 that they may not lose confidence in the decrees of Provid- 
 ence in a land and under a rule where it cannot be said 
 that the finger of Providence is particularly perceptible.
 
 VI 
 
 THE MEMORIAL PROCESSION OF 1894 
 PAINTERS AND WRITERS 
 
 THE middle of summer is over, and authors, poets, 
 journalists begin to return to Warsaw. It is impossible 
 to show oneself in a restaurant without being overwhelmed 
 with embraces and men's kisses on both cheeks, always 
 to the same tune: "What treason to come to Warsaw 
 when everybody is absent ! " And then all sluices of con- 
 versation are opened, and the stranger, so long solitary, is 
 at once initiated into all sorts of literary affairs, hundreds 
 of family stories, scores of political misfortunes and intrigues, 
 and international farrago concerning remuneration, pub- 
 lishers, rivalries, and what not. Many half-forgotten and 
 half-effaced figures, fates and names, rise anew in one's 
 memory, and at last it appears as if one's absence had 
 been but of a few weeks, though it covers a space of 
 seven years. 
 
 The latest event is the arrest of a young medical man. 
 At four o'clock in the morning two police officials arrived 
 with their subordinates and set on foot an investigation in 
 his home, rummaged everything, seized all his papers, even 
 tore off the green cloth on his writing-table in order to 
 look for papers beneath it, and then carried him off to the 
 citadel. The two officials have since remained in the 
 dwelling, of which they have made a kind of a trap ; the first 
 few days they arrested every one who entered the house 
 patients, friends, and acquaintances, to examine them. 
 
 Nobody knows why ; but they fear that he has collected 
 money for the young men and young girls who were 
 banished on account of the procession in memory of the 
 revolt in 1794. These raids are always made during 
 the night. Sometimes the matter takes on a certain humour,
 
 POLICE RAIDS 143 
 
 namely, when the police are on the wrong tack and 
 nothing is to be found. Such was the case with one of 
 my friends, the author Gavalewicz, whose house they searched 
 for some leaves of manuscript to compare with the manu- 
 script of an anti-Russian article printed in a paper 
 at Cracow, which the police had got hold of, nobody 
 knew how. Gavalewicz remained in bed during the 
 search, while his little servant in the kitchen was cross- 
 examined about every one who came to the house ; now and 
 then the commissaire came into his bedroom and asked 
 for a cigarette ; or one of the subordinates came to tell 
 him he might be easy, the search had not revealed anything 
 bad. At last this man accepted three rubles, and the 
 company trudged off, the commissaire having asked for a 
 leaf of G.'s manuscript tl as a keepsake." As if anybody 
 here were stupid enough to send articles to Cracow in 
 his own handwriting ! 
 
 But this time the search was not of so mild a nature ; 
 it extended to the rooms of a student named Stefan Bein, 
 who was living opposite, on the same floor. After having 
 searched here until eight o'clock in the morning without 
 having found anything, the policeman approached him and 
 said : " What is your name again ? " He told his name. 
 " Stefan, you say? No, Stanislaw?" " My name is Stefan." 
 " Then I beg you to excuse us. The search-warrant is made 
 out in the name of Stanislaw." Of course it was a lie, but 
 in this way they covered their vexation at having searched 
 in vain. 
 
 If we consider the real cause of all this to-do, the most 
 piteous image of the misery of Poland takes on a tragi- 
 comic aspect. Everything that day was set in motion by a 
 lady, who, being old and ugly, wanted at any price, even 
 the highest, to be talked of, and who, accordingly went in 
 for patriotism. She got the idea of arranging a mourning 
 mass with a procession. Her son is a student, and many 
 of his friends came to the house. One of them went 
 to a priest to buy a mass without the latter suspecting 
 anything. He and his fellow-priests, who now all are 
 deported, were as innocent as children. It was not until
 
 144 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 he turned round during the mass and saw the church full 
 of people, among them two or three hundred students in 
 uniforms, that he guessed he had fallen into a trap. She 
 had done her best to collect people, and was utterly dis- 
 gusted at the cowardice of those who declared that they 
 preferred to stay at home. 
 
 In the papers it had been announced among the adver- 
 tisements, and not in the text, that the mass was to be cele- 
 brated in thankful memory of the escape from death of a 
 little girl, whose name was added ; but this name did not 
 strike the advertisement censor, though it at once caught the 
 attention of those familiar with the history of Poland, because 
 in 1794, when the revolt broke out, this child was by a 
 mere chance ridden down by a whole squadron of Cossacks, 
 and drawn forth unhurt from beneath the horses. Con- 
 sequently the readers understood that the mass was a com- 
 memorative festival, and on that account the church was 
 crowded. 
 
 From the church the procession went to the historical 
 house of the shoemaker Kilinski, in the old market-place. 
 Before it all took off their hats respectfully. But as if no 
 sordid element should be wanting in this miserable parody of 
 a political action, the house where the shoemaker lived a 
 hundred years ago has now become a house of ill-fame. 
 The inmates, who saw the procession approaching and 
 noticed the salutations, believing that this was some youthful 
 frolic or other, kissed their hands to the young people from 
 the windows, and laughed. Then the police made its raid 
 and arrested all of them. 
 
 So insecure do the Russians still feel that this foolish 
 and pathetically ridiculous demonstration alarmed them. 
 When Gurko who was abroad heard of it he was beside 
 himself with despair. "This proves," he cried, "that my 
 labour of ten years has been in vain." And he continued, 
 " We are now forced to use measures of the utmost severity." 
 " The more so," added one of his sons, " because Poland 
 is our bulwark against Europe." " You ought to move your 
 bulwark a good way back," observed a stranger. He received 
 no answer.
 
 VISITORS FROM WARSAW 145 
 
 And all this on account of a mere trifle ! Here in Poland 
 the sublime is often closely akin to the ridiculous. I could 
 not refrain from thinking of the finding of the corpse of 
 Joseph Poniatowski in the Elster. Very possibly the general 
 looked something like the equestrian statue by Thorvvaldsen 
 in real life, though this made him considerably younger 
 than he was. But the corpse was not to be recognised. 
 Everything about him was a sham. He wore a wig ; his 
 moustaches and eyebrows were false, and being bent and 
 feeble, he was tightly laced in a corset. It was owing 
 to a valuable watch that he was recognised. Some days 
 ago I visited the little country house where he lived. 
 Its exterior consists wholly of secret exits and entrances. 
 He was a pasha of many tails, but a good soldier, at once 
 ridiculous and heroic. 
 
 When authors from Warsaw come to see us here in the 
 country, we have much difficulty with them. They cannot 
 bear to be away from the capital more than one day ; they 
 miss their friends and their amusements. But if one of them 
 stays from Saturday evening until Monday morning, it is 
 sufficient generally; in that time he tells us all that he knows. 
 
 The painters enjoy a stay in the country more ; we have 
 quite a little colony of them here at a time three young 
 men and a lady. 
 
 At meals we do not talk much, as the servants under- 
 stand French ; but later, when we are taking coffee in the 
 library, or on the veranda, or when on rainy days \ve gather 
 in the winter-garden, where there is a fragrance as in Zola's 
 hothouse, and where not even a polar-bear's skin is wanting, 
 these visitors relate the adventures of the summer. 
 
 The painter Witold says: "You have heard of my 
 gaining much money of late years by official orders. This 
 is true. I have had a large income, but it was dearly pur- 
 chased. I was staying in Paris, and for the first time in my 
 life I had exhibited a military picture in St. Petersburg (you 
 know I never paint anything else) when I received a telegram 
 summoning me, as the great personage you know of wished 
 to see me. I arrived. My picture was bought for 12,000 
 rubles, and I got an order for a battle-piece from the Russo- 
 
 K
 
 146 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Turkish war ; the field of battle was in Roumania. I went 
 down there, I am sorry to say, to no purpose, the battle- 
 field being but a common meadow with some rising ground 
 far in the background. I took great pains with the picture 
 and delivered it. New telegram. The great personage 
 wished to have more soldiers in the picture. You who 
 know how great he is, understand that any objection was 
 impossible. I had to repaint the whole picture, to put more 
 soldiers into it, and it is now without any artistic value. 
 Then came a new order : Suworow crossing the Alps. That 
 is a period which I have at the ends of my fingers and 
 which I adore. I know every incident, every button on each 
 uniform. I studied the landscape, finished the picture and 
 delivered it. True to fact I put Suworow on a simple Cossack 
 horse ; he never rode any other, and changed every day. 
 The horse was brown, because this colour looked best against 
 the light background. New telegram ; they wanted to see 
 me ; demanded alterations. First a general came ; asked 
 why Suworow was on a brown horse and not, according to 
 tradition, on a white one ? I answered, ' Because tradition is 
 false ; he always rode Cossack horses. The horse is brown 
 because it agrees with the colour-harmony of the picture.' 
 Audience ; new questions ; the same answer. Order to put 
 Suworow on a white horse. I obeyed, though it looks 
 damnable. New order : Storming of a Turkish redoubt, 
 1878. I executed it ; put the redoubt in the foreground, to 
 the right ; very picturesque ; turbans, caps, cannons, silk 
 banners, confusion. Russian columns advancing at the 
 double from the background. I deliver the picture. Tele- 
 gram : my presence demanded. I arrive ; they are much 
 pleased, but request, nevertheless, an alteration. The 
 Russians in the foreground, the miserable Turks in the 
 background ; quite another picture, you see. This, too, I 
 finished and got 15,000 rubles for it ; but it is a poor affair, 
 I am sorry to say." 
 
 The author Olgerd : " Do not believe that he troubles 
 himself on that account. He is like our painters in Munich ; 
 they do not care a fig for art if they only make money. 
 They paint a Lithuanian hunting-party in a snow scene. A
 
 PAINTERS AND WRITERS 147 
 
 dealer who sees that the picture takes greatly, immediately 
 orders fourteen copies for America. They get 5000 marks for 
 each, and they paint the same Lithuanian hunting-party in a 
 snow scene all the year round." 
 
 " Alas, such is the case ! It is certainly not to be denied," 
 says Madame Jozefa, "that I remember distinctly from my 
 long stay in Munich, and that is what I despise in our 
 painters, those in Munich as well as elsewhere." 
 
 " Don't you talk, Madame Jozefa. While we paint, you 
 do nothing but order new 7 dresses from your dressmakers." 
 
 " Exactly, and it does me credit. It is never the same dress, 
 mind. You compose a picture, a book. This is impossible to 
 us. But we, too, are artists in our little way. We compose 
 dresses for ourselves. This is not only an occupation, but 
 free poetical composition. We use all our talent in com- 
 posing, in the blending of colours, in the harmony of the 
 whole, and we never repeat ourselves, not even after the 
 lapse of weeks." 
 
 Olgerd turned to me. "You saw me the other day 
 at Warsaw in the Caf6 Europeiski lunching with my editor 
 and a gentleman with a beard. Do you know who he was ? 
 The Russian censor, who has the superintendence of our 
 journal. I had invited him to lunch ; was obliged to do so. 
 So far we have got. So low we have fallen. The Polish 
 lion, once so feared, has become a poodle that can fetch 
 and carry." 
 
 "When you were last here," continues the young poet 
 Mikola, "we were allowed to take in the papers we chose in 
 the editorial office. Now there is a list of those allowed, 
 and they are not numerous. It is absolutely forbidden to 
 take in any Galician paper, as well as to reprint any article 
 from these. If some cutting of such a paper is found in 
 a registered letter addressed to us, which is opened at the 
 post-office, we have to pay a fine, even if we never asked to 
 have it sent. The person addressed, not the sender, is 
 punished. If it happens and this may be the case that 
 one of our correspondents in Galicia, out of laziness, in- 
 stead of communicating some piece of news in his own 
 words, uses expressions he has just read in a Galician paper,
 
 148 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 then we are severely punished for his neglect and indif- 
 ference. His text is compared with the Austro - Polish 
 paper, similarities are found, and the storm breaks over 
 our heads. The fine for this mistake is from a thousand to 
 fifteen hundred rubles. And it may become worse ; we may 
 live to see the Polish tongue absolutely prohibited, as is now 
 the case with Little Russian ; it is forbidden now to speak 
 Polish in the street in Lithuania, Podolia, and Wolhynia. 
 Even now instruction is given in the Russian language in 
 the deaf and dumb institution here. And see how insipid 
 our authors become. You know as well as I our great 
 friend Alexander S., with his lyrical eyes and his radical 
 mouth. Compare his style of to-day with that of seven or 
 eight years ago, and you will perceive the decline. We have 
 fixed all our hopes on the great war, so long expected." 
 
 " We will say nothing of the war," says Olgerd ; " we 
 believe that it will come, but talking will not hasten it. 
 We have become a country which does not exist in the 
 present, but partly in olden times, partly, and ever, in the 
 future. In a novel I have described a family which lives 
 thus, never in the moment, always in future expectations. 
 This family is the Polish people. We have not grown 
 insipid, as Mikolaj urges, but we are obliged, more than 
 ever, to take refuge in paraphrases and allegories. You 
 have seen my last book, which has made a sensation, and 
 which is so beautifully illustrated : Polish Legends of the Holy 
 Virgin. It has had a great success. Certainly not because 
 it is in the least clerical. But you know our old designation 
 of the Holy Virgin : Virgo Mater, Regina Polonice. The Holy 
 Virgin in my book is Poland itself ; and this has been 
 understood by every one except the censors. It is more 
 necessary than ever to be cautious. Last year an opera 
 by Moszniuszko was performed here ; these were the words 
 of one of the arias : " I loved my mother more than any 
 other woman, since her death everything has ceased to be 
 attractive to me." The censors maintained that the word 
 " mother " would suggest the word " fatherland " to the 
 audience, and demanded that it should be changed into : 
 " I loved my aunt," &c. This winter Sudermann's Heimath
 
 PUERILE TYRANNIES 149 
 
 (Home) was acted here, but the censorship changed the title. 
 As the word " home" (Oiasysna) may signify fatherland, it was 
 changed into Family Nest. 
 
 " It is this pettiness that is torturing us to death little by 
 little." These words we hear from the corner under the 
 palm trees, where Helena is lying on a couch, and point- 
 ing to the firmament studded with stars, she recites in a low 
 voice this little French verse 
 
 " L'immensite 
 Vierge de flamme 
 Berce mon 4me 
 Felicite ! 
 Mon <ime clame 
 L'immensitd."
 
 VII 
 
 A COMMON DOMESTIC OCCURRENCE, SIGNIFICANT 
 OF THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY 
 
 AN occurrence, in itself insignificant, that took place yes- 
 terday evening, gave me a sudden insight into the position 
 of that part of the population which the Russians wish to 
 humiliate, and at the same time into the relations of the 
 different classes in various districts. 
 
 We went over to Piasecznica, where we had been invited 
 to supper. We were fourteen at table members of the 
 family and a few friends. When one of the servants was 
 changing the plates he did it in so noisy a way that the 
 conversation was interrupted. Some of us thought that he 
 was drunk, others that he had been clumsily anxious to 
 turn the plates in such a manner that the gilt monogram 
 might come straight before each person, which he succeeded 
 in doing. However, we soon forgot this little incident and 
 continued our conversation ; but no sooner had we risen 
 from the table and entered the saloon than we heard loud 
 cries. The servant had evidently been seized with a fit of 
 alcoholic mania, and in the kitchen he had seized a long 
 knife with which he had attacked the doorkeeper. They took 
 the knife from him, but he continued to rave, cry, and 
 scream, rushing up and down the great entrance hall. Now 
 and then he stopped to light a cigarette, screamed and 
 menaced anew, and began to abuse the company in Russian. 
 (He had formerly been a servant in a Russian house.) His 
 demeanour was so alarming that it appeared unreasonable to 
 allow him to pass the night in the manor, and we all agreed 
 it would be well to send for the police. Of course the 
 nearest police station in the country is often far away, and 
 
 even at full trot it is impossible to reach this one in less 
 
 150
 
 A MAD FOOTMAN 151 
 
 than half-an-hour ; in fact, it was two clear hours before the 
 policeman arrived. 
 
 It was necessary to walk up and down the entrance hall 
 to watch the madman, who was very restless : now he 
 would rush into one chamber, then into another. I called 
 one of the young men's attention to the fact that the crazy 
 fellow had approached a cupboard ; he answered that this 
 belonged to the servant himself, and, accordingly, he did not 
 look after him, as he ought to have done. 
 
 " Oh dear ! " he cried suddenly, " he has taken a revolver 
 out of the wardrobe ; it belongs to my brother, and he is 
 certain to have taken it from the pocket of his overcoat, 
 but don't mention it to the ladies." 
 
 They, however, soon observed that he was rushing to and 
 fro with the loaded revolver in his hand, and some of them 
 were very much frightened. Suddenly a report was heard, 
 and two maids, pale as death, darted into the room, crying, 
 " He has fired ! " We all left the room, some to stop him, 
 others to seek refuge. 
 
 At the moment when the room was thus deserted, I 
 saw the most beautiful of the daughters of the house 
 crossing it, and, as if quite justified in doing so, she kissed 
 the lips of a young man who stood leaning against the 
 mantelpiece, an incident which I note, partly because it 
 is the only immoral action I witnessed during my stay here, 
 partly because it proves that Polish women do not lose 
 their presence of mind in alarming circumstances, but even 
 understand how to turn a general confusion to account. 
 
 It was now made clear that the servant in question, who 
 had been in the manor but one month and six days, was not 
 only intractable, but altogether a dangerous person. The 
 maids related that on the foregoing Sunday, when all the 
 family were absent, he had explained to the other servants 
 that they ought to set the house on fire, and if possible let 
 every one perish in the flames. And again and again he had 
 reiterated such remarks. 
 
 The master of the house had sent for no less than five 
 of his peasants, that they might get hold of him ; but they 
 would not touch him. They looked unpleasantly sullen
 
 152 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 and hostile. Of late they have been so seriously worked 
 upon by agitators who set them up against their lords and 
 their families that they look on with a sort of satisfaction 
 whenever anything goes wrong. The Russians take ad- 
 vantage of this mood and add fuel to the fire. We only 
 need to take a walk in the country to note the disposition 
 of the peasants. All the elder rustics greet us politely, 
 muttering the formal : " Niech bendzie pochevalowy" that is, 
 "He (Christ) be praised !" to which the answer is, "Na wieky" 
 (ever and ever). None of the young men ever salute us. 
 Even many years ago, when we were talking over the 
 possibility of a revolution in Russia, I said : "A fine revolution, 
 that will consist in the peasants burning down the manors 
 of the liberal proprietors." My opinion was once more 
 confirmed. 
 
 My proposal that we ourselves should lay hold of the 
 madman roused a surprise and displeasure very instructive to 
 me. " In that case the police will side against us, and we 
 shall be arrested not he." However, as he was going to 
 fire again, the coachman, more energetic than the masters, 
 got the better of him, and though six persons had great 
 difficulty in holding him, they succeeded in tying his arms 
 behind his back. Then for fear of the police a good 
 soft feather-bed was brought for him to rest on, while he 
 continued to rage and curse. 
 
 A pause and we heard the sounds of carriage-wheels : it 
 was the Russian police officer. He is an unmilitary figure, 
 in uniform, with spectacles, long, black, straight hair, a look 
 of stupidity, reserve, narrow-mindedness, pedantry. He asks 
 to hear the witnesses. But for fear of the vengeance of the 
 servant after his release, nobody will submit to be examined. 
 The doorkeeper was not aware of having been attacked with 
 a knife ; the maids had never heard any threats. The revolver 
 had been flung into the garden beneath some bushes, and 
 was not to be found in the darkness. It began to look as 
 if the proprietor, who had caused him to be bound, was the 
 only one guilty. 
 
 Money was offered to the police officer, but in a way 
 so imprudent and public that he most virtuously refused the
 
 CLASS HATRED FOSTERED 153 
 
 bribe. Then he begins to examine the things found in the 
 pockets of the servant. A pocket-book, with cards bearing 
 the name of a Russian baroness servants commonly steal 
 cards of their master's in order to be able to procure 
 goods from the shops then apparatus for making bullets. 
 The policeman orders the captive to be set at liberty. The 
 latter rises and demonstrates. He won't leave the house 
 without three months' wages though he has not served 
 more than one month and six days and even though the 
 moment is not very well chosen to speak of wages, when he 
 has just been accused of a serious crime. The policeman 
 supports his request, and offers to drive him away with 
 him. 
 
 " He has his own reasons for wishing him to be well 
 furnished with money," my host says to me. "As soon as 
 they have got into the carriage, they will begin to bargain 
 as to how many rubles the policeman is to have to let the 
 other jump down and disappear in the darkness. In 
 half-an-hour he may come back and set the outhouses on 
 fire if, indeed, he does not venture to come into the 
 house." 
 
 To prevent this immediate escape, we feigned great 
 anxiety for the precious life of the policeman, alone in 
 the carriage with the unbound malefactor, and my host 
 ordered one of the most trustworthy of his people to accom- 
 pany him for protection. 
 
 Of course the escape may nevertheless have taken place 
 to-day. 
 
 At length the carriage drove away, and I thought that 
 this episode which had disturbed us was ended and would 
 be soon forgotten. But when I returned to the saloon I 
 remarked to my great surprise that the ladies were quite in 
 despair : " But why are you in low spirits now, when all is 
 happily over ? " 
 
 " Nothing is over," said young Mme. Wieloglowska. " It is 
 easy for you to keep up your courage, you who are going 
 back to Denmark in a few days. In a month my parents 
 are going to Warsaw ; one of my sisters is going to Paris, 
 the other to Germany. Then my husband and I will be
 
 154 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 alone here. It is certain that this rogue will avenge himself, 
 because we tied his arms. He will kill us, or set fire to 
 the house. These people always avenge themselves. Last 
 year my brother-in-law, who lived in the neighbouring manor, 
 found two horses in his field. He brought them to his 
 stables, and when the peasant came to fetch them the next 
 day he demanded fifty copecks as a penalty. The peasant 
 began to lament ; he was a poor man, he could not afford 
 to pay. ' You must pay this fine/ my brother-in-law said 
 to him ; ' you are no poor man ; you have eight horses, 
 and last month you sent four of them into my fields to 
 graze.' The peasant paid the fine ; but that very evening 
 he stole upon my brother-in-law with a pitchfork and killed 
 him from behind at one blow. He escaped with a trifling 
 punishment." 
 
 t{ Yes, they are dangerous, the surroundings in which we 
 live," said the owner of Skotniki. " Last autumn I was obliged 
 to send away a servant who had been stealing. After that 
 my house was twice set on fire. Every one knows who did 
 it, but I am unable to prove anything." 
 
 We stayed until two o'clock, but the whole company 
 was depressed, with the exception of the young lady of the 
 kiss, who appeared to retain a certain cheerfulness. But 
 people in love live in their own sphere. 
 
 When, on the way home, I thought over the incidents 
 of the evening, I could not help feeling how seriously the 
 political and social disproportion, caused by the universal 
 oppression had manifested itself in this miserable occurrence. 
 It recalled to my mind the state of Galicia in 1846, when 
 the peasants, to whom the proprietors addressed themselves, 
 to induce them to participate in the national revolt, seduced 
 by the falsehoods of the Austrian emissaries, rose, and 
 vented their rage upon the Polish nobility, who, as they 
 imagined, prevented the carrying out of the imperial regula- 
 tions for their benefit. Certainly the nobility must bear the 
 blame of much ancient injustice towards the rustics, or such 
 things could not be possible, and the old hatred would not 
 persist. Yet nowadays the proprietors are so nationalist and 
 so humane that it is the ignorance of the common people,
 
 CLASS HATRED FOSTERED 155 
 
 the bestial condition maintained by the Russians, which is 
 to blame for all the misery and the hatred. 
 
 Under the pressure here, everything, even class differ- 
 ences, becomes a caricature of conditions elsewhere in 
 Europe. 
 
 However strange it sounds, in spite of the dissatisfaction 
 with the higher classes here in Poland, the social problem 
 does not affect the common people as profoundly as the 
 national question. 
 
 It is inconceivable that the class-struggle of this age 
 should leave Poland unaffected. But the ill-will against 
 the Russian is nevertheless a hundred-fold stronger than the 
 distrust of the master. The Russian is despised for not 
 being a Catholic ; the most abusive term a peasant can 
 use is Moskal (Muscovite). 
 
 Among the people of rank and the common people there 
 is only the economic distance ; but between the Pole and 
 the Russian rises the barrier of religion, the most powerful 
 factor in the life of this country.
 
 VIII 
 
 NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PATRIOTISM- 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 OUR young priest came yesterday to pay a visit to me, and 
 was kind enough to bring the lithographed exegesis of 
 the Old Testament, used in the lessons at the seminary in 
 Rome. It is in Latin, composed by a Jesuit, rather intelli- 
 gent, not without acuteness, but of course quite unscientific, 
 as its demonstration always tends to justify orthodoxy. It is 
 not in the market, and it was interesting to me to ascertain 
 on what principles instruction is carried on. However 
 young Father Usmanowicz may be, he has suffered several 
 disappointments. He considers it an injustice and an insult 
 that he has been appointed parish priest here. His ambi- 
 tion was a professorship at the priestly school in Warsaw, 
 and most likely he will manage to get it. He is refined 
 and intelligent enough, if not too intelligent. 
 
 We had a good talk on many topics. Firstly, on the 
 papers. Yesterday we had read aloud the last literary 
 articles by Casimir Zalewski and Boguslawski, the first 
 suggested by the panegyric upon Sardou, in the Figaro, 
 by Henry Becques, the second by a feuilleton on the utility 
 of criticism by Sarcey. The quantity of abstract out of date 
 aesthetics in the papers is certainly caused by the oppression 
 of the censorship. We spoke about the insane administra- 
 tion in this part of the country : to think that we are daily 
 obliged to send for our letters to B , and that the mes- 
 senger may never bring a registered letter, only a notice that 
 one is lying at the post-office for me. I am obliged to 
 fetch it myself, and I mentioned the postmaster's answer 
 to my complaint : " But no one from Krolewice has ever been 
 here to make my acquaintance." Then we spoke of the price we 
 pay for the delivery of telegrams ; two rubles and twenty 
 
 156
 
 POLISH TRAITS 157 
 
 copecks for each (more than the telegram itself), and they 
 are brought day and night. On Mme. Jozefa's birthday the 
 bell rang all night, and Franciszek had to pay seventy 
 rubles for telegrams, the interesting contents of which were : 
 " Cordial felicitations " ! 
 
 We went out into the fields, sat down under a high 
 poplar, listened to the whistling of the wind in the leaves, 
 and our conversation took a more serious turn. From 
 petty troubles it turned on the great national martyrdom, 
 from the daily denial of liberty and justice, to the great 
 historical injustice, which every day brings forth its venomous 
 fruit anew. 
 
 Old Field-Marshal Moltke one day said to Kosczielski, that, 
 in a book he had read about Poland, he had been most 
 pleased by this sentence : " We do not love Poland as we 
 love Germany or France or England, but as we love free- 
 dom ; " a very curious remark from the lips of one whom 
 one would not suspect of loving freedom overmuch. I 
 feel myself that the essential view, pronounced in those 
 words, has determined my view of Poland from the begin- 
 ning. Every one who loves freedom must love the most 
 oppressed population in Europe from the bottom of his 
 heart ; he overlooks its faults, and its perfections captivate 
 him. 
 
 But what is the use of seeking the pluperfect ? No one 
 with a properly developed psychological sense can overlook 
 the qualities which form the weakness of the Poles, and which 
 have been exaggerated by their exclusion from public life. 
 What their enemies call falseness is rather the result of 
 a life of unreality. They have a propensity to put forward 
 pretensions which are only half real. This propensity is in 
 no way akin to the coarse extravagance of the Southern 
 French, but is the outcome of a life that has to be satisfied 
 with words instead of deeds. An editor of a newspaper here, 
 who never writes an article, scarcely reads his papers, and 
 who can still less be looked upon as its leader, takes a naive 
 and sincere pleasure in hearing himself mentioned as the 
 editor, and he talks gravely, without any deliberate intention 
 of lying, of his great work with the paper, his struggles
 
 158 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 with the censorship, &c. A little party of patriots has 
 assembled every fortnight for twelve years ; every Thursday 
 they rescue their fatherland by ingenious plans and com- 
 binations, and hardly perceive themselves that all remains 
 as it was. 
 
 I said to the priest : " The Poles are perhaps the only 
 people on earth who do not claim common sense as a 
 national quality. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Italians, 
 Danes are convinced that common sense reigns among them. 
 The Poles do not believe this. They know too well that they 
 never have been able to take practical advantage of any his- 
 torical situation. They are not wanting in knowledge of 
 themselves." 
 
 He answered, " In our country, strangely enough, the 
 women seem essentially different from the men." 
 
 " As far as I can judge," I said, " the women of the 
 higher classes have a great deal of self-control and but little 
 temperament. The character of coldness, which Edmond 
 About assigned them in verse once, when he sighed in vain 
 for a Polish lady, is still very appropriate. Strange as it may 
 sound, I think that the Englishwoman Maud in Paul Bourget's 
 Cosmopolis, the placid, warm-hearted woman whom no agita- 
 tion is able to throw off her balance, is a type often to be 
 met with in Poland." 
 
 We had continued our talk about half-an-hour, sitting 
 under the tree, when we saw Franciszek, Madame Jozefa, 
 and Madame Halina approach ; they sat down beside us on 
 the grass and joined in our conversation. It turned on the 
 following topic. 
 
 As there are in Poland no Polish officers, politicians, or 
 high functionaries, woman's favour, which in other countries 
 falls to the lot of men who are prominent in some way or 
 other, here nearly always becomes the share of authors and 
 artists. Almost in every town in the world there are some 
 few men in whom all the women who have no other object 
 for their feelings delight. Such a man is a kind of a pawn- 
 broker's shop for women's hearts. In Poland Henryk Sien- 
 kiewicz is such a pawnbroker's shop. Though about fifty 
 years of age and by no means elegant, his reputation has made
 
 PATRIOTISM OF POLISH WOMEN 159 
 
 him the man about whom the women rave. It is so much 
 the more curious, as he has never written a line of verse. 
 But when he arrives at one of the Polish watering-places in 
 the Tatra mountains, or when he enters a drawing-room in 
 Warsaw, all the women are electrified, from grandmothers 
 to schoolgirls. For the rest, he does not give them any 
 encouragement. 
 
 Even his tragi-comic matrimonial fiasco which took place 
 this year has not diminished his prestige. He married a 
 second time, a young girl of eighteen of the highest aris- 
 tocracy. No pains were spared to make this marriage an 
 event. The couple were married in the cathedral of Warsaw 
 by a cardinal ; the pope sent a letter of congratulation. All 
 the aristocracy of Poland met in the church. But only two 
 weeks after the marriage the young bride took refuge with 
 her mother and would not return to her husband. All the 
 women in Poland condemn her behaviour. 
 
 But still more characteristic than their hero-worship is 
 their enthusiastic and passionate patriotism. No feeling in 
 them is more serious than this. They are capable of any 
 sacrifice for patriotic aims, and prove their sincerity by their 
 actions. 
 
 The other day it happened in this house that a Polish 
 proprietor who had been brought up in England hazarded 
 the remark that patriotism was nowadays greatly lacking 
 in Poland. The gentlemen contradicted him, but the ladies 
 it was quite a spectacle to see them. With flaming eyes 
 and blazing cheeks they stood round him, and their voices 
 trembled in refuting him. In a perfect fury one of the 
 youngest ladies exclaimed : " I promised you to take you 
 home in my carriage, but now you may go on foot." 
 
 We soon agreed that if this flame were not burning in 
 the hearts of the women the enemies of Poland would long 
 ago have got the upper hand. For no people in the world 
 has such oppression to endure, such manifold persecution 
 to suffer. They are living under conditions which allow every 
 measure taken against them to be easily carried out, and 
 every evil person who concocts hostile or mean plans against 
 them has a wide field for his energy. It very seldom happens,
 
 160 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 as it did a year ago, that such plots are revealed, so that 
 a peep is opened into things which would otherwise remain 
 unpunished. 
 
 A student called Hendigery, who was studying at the 
 University six months ago, and who had made up his mind 
 to make a career for himself, began to write now and then 
 in the papers, and then went to Cracow with good intro- 
 ductions. He was very handsome, very active ; one of those 
 scoundrels who always have the game in their own hands 
 because simpletons believe that they are only to be met with 
 in bad novels. He posed in Cracow as a political victim of 
 the state in Russian Poland, met with sympathy everywhere; 
 after a month's acquaintance, he married the beautiful 
 daughter of a professor in easy circumstances. But im- 
 mediately after his arrival he had commenced a corres- 
 pondence with the police authorities in St. Petersburg ; had 
 declared himself able to produce proofs against all the 
 remarkable and leading men in Warsaw, implying that these 
 proofs were more due to his own sagacity than to any im- 
 prudence or to plots of the persons in question. His 
 advances were gladly received. With a false passport he 
 made a wedding trip to St. Petersburg going ostensibly 
 to the south ; had an audience with the chiefs of the secret 
 police, and made all necessary preparations with them. 
 
 As soon as he had returned he began to frequent the 
 society of the miners in Galicia, apparently out of interest 
 in the labour question, but in reality to procure dynamite. 
 He got a quantity sufficient for his purpose. He made 150 
 small parcels of dynamite, which he addressed to 150 men in 
 Warsaw, pointed out to him by the Russian authorities. 
 These small parcels he sewed up in the overcoat of a man 
 whom he had engaged to carry them across the frontier. 
 
 In the meantime the Austrian police had noticed the 
 strange conduct of the man. They knew that he had gone 
 southwards and immediately after to St. Petersburg. They 
 knew of and watched his visits to the mines, and they deter- 
 mined to interfere. His messenger was arrested before he 
 reached the Russian frontier. A domiciliary visit brought 
 to light a number of letters and telegrams from St. Petersburg
 
 THE KROZE OUTRAGE 161 
 
 which, although cautiously composed, betrayed the intimate 
 relations of the political victim and his persecutors. A trial 
 was set on foot. Only five weeks after the wedding his wife 
 learned whom she had married. Of course the Russians 
 repudiated Hendigery, denying all knowledge of him. He 
 was sentenced to three years' hard labour, which he has not 
 yet expiated. It was a master-stroke that ended in disaster. 
 
 It is evident that the emperor is not always aware of the 
 way in which the system of government in Poland works ; 
 this was proved when the massacre and the knouting took 
 place on the occasion of the seizure of the church at Kroze 
 by the Russians. A Russian princess who was abroad read 
 about this in foreign newspapers, and sent a cutting to the 
 Czar. The latter, not believing in the exactitude of the 
 account, despatched his then favourite, the Prince Kan- 
 takuzen, to examine into the matter. But it happened that 
 Orezewski, the governor-general of the district of Kroze, 
 proved to be an old friend of Kantakuzen. These two spent 
 a couple of pleasant days together, whereupon the prince 
 returned to St. Petersburg with the information that the 
 whole affair had been ridiculously exaggerated. All that had 
 happened was that a few peasants, who would not yield to 
 the police, had got broken noses. And thus the matter was 
 hushed up. But the same princess, who was irritated at the 
 contradiction, procured proofs of the truth of the account, 
 which she had sent to the Czar. Orezewski received his dis- 
 missal and Kantakuzen was exiled. He went to Paris, where 
 he died. 
 
 It was a splendid evening ; the sun was setting behind 
 dark clouds in the horizon, leaving a luminous golden border 
 round the cloud. No sound from the fields except that of 
 the partridges flushed by Madame Jozefa's two blundering 
 poodles, Caro and Finka. It was my last evening, and I 
 was glancing round the country, which I should not see 
 again for a long time. 
 
 Franciszek said : " Do come again ! You can't be bored 
 with a library of 8000 volumes, and you may tell me what 
 books you want for next year and I will procure them." 
 
 Madame Jozefa said : " Do not forget us, but come back ! 
 
 L
 
 1 62 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Now we have known each other for ten years and our friend- 
 ship has grown steadily. Do not return for the sake of books, 
 but for our sakes. Nowhere have you better friends." 
 
 The young priest said, smiling : " Come back, and we 
 will again defend the Jesuits when old M. Rostropowicz 
 attacks them, and again discuss the book of Ecclesiastes and 
 agree that all is not vanity." 
 
 Mme. Halina said : " Come again ; give us lectures in the 
 town hall, and we will attend in crowds and applaud with 
 all our hearts. Do not forget us." 
 
 And the wind whistling in the high poplars said : " Do 
 not forget us ! All Europe has forgotten us. Do not forget 
 this people, so winning and so richly endowed, which feels 
 so deeply, and dreams so vividly, and loves so profoundly. 
 Do not forget this earth which has absorbed so much noble 
 blood, this country, forsaken by Gods and scorned by men. 
 Do not forget us ! "
 
 FOURTH IMPRESSION 
 
 1899
 
 LEMBERG 
 
 I 
 
 IN a speech made by the master of the University in the 
 capital of Galicia to me, he said : " You are our guest, but 
 we have not invited you in order to influence your opinions. 
 We certainly hope that you will write about us ; but we do 
 not ask for praise. We only desire the truth. Tell the truth 
 about us, however the words may sound, and we shall be 
 thankful to you." 
 
 To be able to speak the truth one must know it. But I 
 do not suppose that I myself know the truth about Austrian 
 Poland. If one is at a disadvantage in learning the real 
 state of a country when one arrives as an unnoticed stranger, 
 and has little opportunity of talking to any one but waiters, 
 curators, and a few fellow-travellers, the conditions are hardly 
 more favourable when one visits a country as an invited guest, 
 received at all stations, having one's day mapped out before- 
 hand from morning till well after midnight, scarcely alone 
 for one hour, presented to 400 persons in one day, and 
 handed about like a parcel sent by post. In a few weeks 
 one sees more than in a whole year under ordinary con- 
 ditions, but it is impossible to check one's impressions. 
 
 Every one knows how strong is the feeling of being a 
 stranger in a country, where one passes through the 
 towns without knowing any one, and sees all doors closed 
 to one ; but it is almost worse to find all doors open, and to 
 be known before having made the acquaintance of any one. 
 One needs the rest necessary to make observations, and it 
 takes time to really know people. 
 
 If the first condition of speaking the truth is to know it, 
 the next certainly is that one should be able to speak without 
 
 fear or favour. This is impossible to any one who has been 
 
 165
 
 1 66 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 brought into close contact with all the leading personages in 
 a country, and who has met with the most perfect hospitality 
 from them. But this was my case here. My stay in Galicia in 
 the autumn of 1898 was one uninterrupted succession of 
 public and private festivities. Nay, even friends of mine who 
 had come to Lemberg to visit me were invited everywhere, 
 even in private circles. 
 
 My stay in Galicia had this great interest to me, that here 
 for the first time I saw the Poles as a free people. I know 
 a part of Prussian Poland, and I know some of the leading 
 men in Posen rather intimately. With Russian Poland, 
 I may say, I am fairly familiar, after four different visits. 
 But never before had I had an opportunity of observing 
 Polish life developing under self-government without any 
 foreign pressure, with the rights of public meeting and of 
 freedom of speech. At least I have here seen enough to 
 prove that the Poles do not lack the ability to shape their 
 life as an independent people. It is not the fault of the 
 population that Galicia is a poor country. The faults of 
 the Poles, among others, for instance, a certain irre- 
 sponsibility, are not characteristic here ; these are more 
 pronounced in old free states, where the capacity for 
 patriotic sacrifice which distinguishes the Poles is much 
 more scarce, and, even if strong prejudices still obtain 
 among them, these in themselves do not paralyse the in- 
 telligence or the honesty of the people. These prejudices 
 have gathered strength from historical conditions less favour- 
 able here than elsewhere. 
 
 The Poles, as I have said elsewhere, have shown me more 
 kindness and affection than any other people in the world. 
 As a critic, therefore, I am bound to be on my guard against 
 the pleasant promptings of gratitude. 
 
 It is the more difficult for me to be impartial that I 
 avowedly come to my task with friendly prepossessions. I 
 love the Poles, not only because their fate has been so sad, 
 and the historical injustice they suffer is so great, but because 
 something in their entity strongly attracts me. Now and 
 then I have been praised in Poland, because, while others 
 do homage to the great people of the earth, I have preferred
 
 JULIAN KLACZKO 167 
 
 to court misfortune. But it is not only the calamity of 
 Poland which has won me to the land and people. Among 
 the developments of the human plant, manifold as they are, 
 the perfect blossom of the Slavonic race is the flower that 
 most enchants me. 
 
 II 
 
 At Cracow, Wavel fell short of my expectations. Certainly 
 I visited the cathedral under most unfavourable conditions, 
 after its complete restoration ; but this was not so much the 
 cause of my disappointment as the fact that I had hoped for 
 and expected much more original architecture. The archi- 
 tect, who had carried out the restorations and very amiably 
 showed me all over the building, immediately pointed out 
 to me the most beautiful chapel, built by Florentine artists, 
 and said and certainly he is right that it was not much 
 inferior to similar chapels in Italy. But I, who a few 
 months before had travelled through Italy from Syracuse to 
 Verona, had expected something very different in Poland. 
 On the other hand, I was glad to see that the two monu- 
 ments by Thorwaldsen at Wavel looked extremely well. 
 
 The most original work of art in Cracow is certainly 
 Matijko's rich and glowing decoration in the chancel of the 
 Church of St. Mary. 
 
 I paid a visit to the very original old invalid, Julian 
 Klaczko. Stretched on his bed, he looked, with his thick, 
 fair moustache, like a Pole of the seventeenth century, 
 though he has Jewish blood in his veins, a proof among 
 many others of how strongly surroundings modify and 
 transform. He, who in 1848 was an ardent revolutionist, 
 has, affected perhaps by the air of Cracow, become more 
 and more conservative. He praised me, because in one of 
 my books I had evinced so much sense of the national 
 importance of the Catholic Church. I endeavoured to 
 cheer the sick man a little by telling him about a certain 
 diplomatic dinner in Rome six months before, at which, 
 when his name was mentioned, all the men present, from
 
 1 68 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 the Swedish Ambassador to the Turkish charge -d'affaires, 
 had proved to be as familiar with his works as myself, 
 though I know almost everything he has ever written. Of 
 course his position in Austria in 1867 as Secretary to Beust, 
 his part in the settlement between Austria and Hungary, as 
 well as his book, The Two Chancellors (Bismarck and Gorts- 
 chakoff), have contributed to keep him before the eyes of 
 the diplomatist. 
 
 Melancholy reigned in the sick room. He did not ap- 
 pear to have much hope of recovery. I owed him gratitude 
 for the benefit I had derived from his studies on Krasinski. 
 However, it appeared as if national feeling had repressed 
 and limited his liberalism. At last all other thoughts were 
 merged in the sad reflection that I was not likely to see 
 him again. 
 
 In the evening the Arts Club arranged a festival for me. 
 The old Kossak, the patriarch of the painters, took me to 
 dinner, and in a French, unearthed from his youthful recol- 
 lections of student life in Paris, he made a very cordial 
 speech to me. He said among other things : " Here you 
 see of what use the repression of language is ! From our 
 childhood we have been forced to learn German, to speak 
 German, and what is the consequence ? that we all speak 
 French to any stranger." I was elected honorary member 
 of the Letters and Arts Club, and Kossak promised to 
 decorate the certificate of membership for me. This was 
 not to be a month later he was dead. He was an excel- 
 lent animal painter ; he had studied the character and 
 movements of the horse as no other artist has done ; his 
 more famous son, with his richer dramatic talent, is sure to 
 preserve the name from oblivion in Poland. 
 
 Among those present at the festival, the young Professor 
 of Literary History at the University, Ziedochowski, was 
 prominent. He is a refined and conscientious scholar of the 
 highest intelligence ; for the rest, a devout Catholic. The 
 young Polonised Frenchman, Paul Rongier, French Lec- 
 turer at the University, was the only one in the circle who 
 spoke perfect French. He combined French charm with 
 Polish cordiality. Then the musician, Bielicki, played ; a
 
 FRIENDS FROM WARSAW 169 
 
 handsome and lively man, who had been in Copenhagen 
 as the guest of Gade, and had studied Scandinavian popular 
 melodies. He played alternately charming compositions by 
 Chopin, and Swedish popular dances, until a fugitive refined 
 spirit of music and enthusiasm, mutual affection and frater- 
 nity was diffused in the hall. The air was fragrant with 
 happiness while we were together. 
 
 When I got out of the carriage, which had brought 
 me from the hotel at Cracow to the railway station, I was 
 received by a little party of men, the chief participants in 
 the festival of the evening before, who, with the old painter 
 Kossak at their head, had appeared to take leave of me. 
 But after the exchange of a few words, I saw with astonish- 
 ment some familiar figures from Warsaw, whom I had cer- 
 tainly not expected to meet with, hurrying down the high 
 broad staircase from the station. 
 
 They were Falad, the renowned painter, the poet Maryan 
 Gawalewicz, and my intimate friends and entertainers during 
 my different sojourns in Russian Poland Jan and Madame 
 Jozefa. "You here?" I exclaimed, surprised. "We are 
 going with you," replied Jan. Falad had only come down 
 to make arrangements about a portrait, which could not be 
 painted on account of my hurried departure. Gawalewicz 
 embraced me, Madame Jozefa shook hands with me. 
 
 In the train our intimate conversation soon became 
 difficult. People walked along the corridor to see the man 
 expected at Lemberg. While we were at table in the dining- 
 car at one of the stations an old gentleman came in, and, 
 with touching courtesy, handed me a volume of poetry. At 
 Przemysl a reporter entered, a little, good-natured, but neces- 
 sarily intrusive fellow, who was commissioned to interview 
 me for a Lemberg paper. One of my friends was kind 
 enough to answer on my behalf. 
 
 There was a swarm of people at the station when we 
 arrived in the evening. How strange is it to arrive thus, and 
 to be greeted by perfect strangers ! One is surrounded, 
 saluted, shaken hands with, and is scarcely able to discern 
 the faces or catch the names hastily mentioned. In the 
 waiting-room I was welcomed by the chairman of the Literary
 
 170 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 and Artistic Union ; then the brilliant vice-president of the 
 Journalists' Union addressed me ; and then Professor August 
 Balasits and M. Antony Wereszczynski drove me to the hotel, 
 where I found a grand apartment on the first floor at my 
 disposal. On the tables were lying invitations for several 
 days, visiting-cards with my address in Lemberg, and many 
 letters. 
 
 At a long supper-table in the restaurant, Madame Jozefa, 
 handsome, large-eyed, and bashful as a young girl, presided 
 as the only lady. Members of the Sobieski Festival Com- 
 mittee dropped in, and the little reporter from the train also 
 sat down to take notes. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The next day I made the acquaintance of most of the 
 persons whom I was to meet so often later the Mayor of 
 Lemberg, Dr. Godzimir Malachowski, who had invited me, 
 an amiable, cultured lawyer, elected to his position by the 
 suffrages of his fellow-townsmen, and well worthy of re- 
 election ; the Governor of Galicia, Count Leon Peninsky, 
 formerly Professor of History at the University, a man of 
 science, who some years ago was requested to assume the 
 duties of governor, none being better fitted for them by social 
 position, fortune, and commanding qualities ; and the great 
 Marshal, Count Stanislaw Badeni, a quiet, satirical man of 
 the world. He is the brother of the former Austrian Prime 
 Minister, who excited so much discontent among the German 
 population of Austria by his regulations decreeing equal 
 rights to all languages spoken in the Emperor's dominions. 
 Like his brother, he is pronouncedly Polish in type. 
 
 Among many others whom I visited the first day, I must 
 mention one of the best men of Poland, whose name 
 is everywhere pronounced with veneration, Prince Adam 
 Tapiecha ; in his mingled simplicity, refinement, and geniality 
 he is the typical grand seigneur. During the course of my 
 conversation with him, I first learned on what bad terms the 
 Poles and Ruthenians of Galicia live together. The great
 
 GALICIAN NOBLES 171 
 
 people of Poland often complain of the fact that young 
 Ruthenians, whom they support and place, as soon as they 
 achieve independence, become hostile to the Poles and ally 
 themselves with the Russians. This is very astonishing, 
 because in Russia itself the Little Russian language is so 
 utterly repressed that nowhere within the frontiers of the 
 country are books allowed to be published in it. I was 
 soon to learn, however, on the other hand, what depths of 
 bitterness the Ruthenians nourish against the Poles. 
 
 Another aristocrat I became acquainted with, who has 
 devoted his whole life to patriotic objects, was the old Count 
 Dzieduszycki, now an invalid, almost completely paralysed, 
 and a prisoner to his couch. He has, at his own expense, 
 erected a national museum of another kind, but of equal 
 importance with the Czartoryski Museum at Cracow. It 
 contains specimens of the whole flora and fauna of Poland, 
 and is, besides, ethnographic, illustrating the customs, in- 
 dustries, and costumes of Poland, in every province and at 
 all periods. 
 
 I also paid a visit to another gentleman, less wealthy, 
 but no less refined and cultured. M. Wladislaw Lozinski 
 has made a very valuable collection of weapons ; he pos- 
 sessed many mementoes of the great period of Poland ; 
 they may not all be quite genuine, perhaps, but at any rate 
 many of them are relics. He and his wife who, though 
 no longer young, has preserved that charm which is the 
 secret of the Polish women have one of the most hand- 
 somely furnished homes in Lemberg, half dwelling and half 
 museum. 
 
 IV 
 
 During my stay several commemorative festivals were 
 held in honour of Sobieski (King Jan III. as he is called in 
 Polish), whose equestrian statue was to be unveiled. At the 
 function held the evening before this event my hosts sang, 
 as an attention to their guest, the Danish song : Why is the 
 Vistula swelling? Music and words are by Danes. The
 
 172 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 words had been translated, and the song was now given 
 for the first time. It was most beautifully sung by a male 
 choir. Immediately after the choir struck up the national 
 anthem by Ujejski : Z dymen pozasow, which was undeniably 
 better understood and better known ; every one listened 
 standing. I am bound to say that the Danish song by 
 Gade, though much better executed, did not please the 
 Polish public very much. Their taste is rather for the slow 
 and monotonous. 
 
 It was a beautiful sunshiny day when the Sobieski festival 
 was inaugurated by Divine service in the cathedral. The 
 church was crowded, and the whole " Szlachta " had made 
 their appearance in their national costume, which outside 
 Russian Poland is worn on all solemn occasions. 
 
 The Governor, as representative of the Government, was 
 the only person in the costume of our own days. This 
 masquerade is in harmony with the love of ancient times 
 and things proper to the Poles ; and it was surprising to see 
 how becoming the magnificent old costumes were to the 
 handsome, vigorous, manly figures, whose regular features 
 preserve the hereditary stamp of the race. 
 
 A Jesuit priest delivered the historico-national speech in 
 memory of Sobieski. Then we walked in procession from 
 the church to the square, where the statue was waiting in its 
 coverings. The sun was shining, the enormous square was 
 crowded with people ; all balconies and windows were also 
 occupied. With lofty and masterly eloquence he empha- 
 sised the importance of the fact that the capital of Galicia 
 had erected a monument of the most beloved King of 
 Poland on Polish ground. 
 
 At the morning festival in the town hall a dejeuner 
 was given ; only a dozen people, specially invited, were 
 seated. I had the curious honour of finding myself at 
 the same table with three archbishops, a complement not to 
 be met with anywhere out of Rome, save in Lemberg. Un-
 
 GALICIAN SAVANTS 173 
 
 doubtedly they were most holy men, but if so, their exterior 
 was deceptive and they ate ! One might have supposed 
 they had fasted for a week before. 
 
 The other members of the clergy I met were much more 
 refined. The Jesuit who had spoken in the church sought me 
 out in the evening at the Mayor's reception, and thanked me 
 for refuting the vulgar prejudices that exist against the Jesuits, 
 for whom I have always had a weakness. 
 
 I was specially touched when Father Gnatowski, one of 
 the most influential of the Galician clergy, spoke to me with 
 warmth and kindness. In one of the best houses of the 
 town he made me a speech, concluding with this expression 
 thrice repeated : " / bless you." As a proof of how perfectly the 
 Catholic clergy is informed of all that even remotely con- 
 cerns the Church, I must mention that Father Gnatowski 
 was thoroughly acquainted with some remarks I had several 
 years ago addressed to Pere Lange, after having corrected 
 some particulars in a lecture delivered by him at the Danish 
 Students' Club. Father Gnatowski was further familiar with 
 an article published by me in a Danish paper, in connection 
 with the conversion of a Danish lady. 
 
 VI 
 
 Here, as in Russian Poland, I made friends with some 
 of the best specimens of the scientific Poles, well-informed, 
 sensible men, refined, discreet, and brimming over with 
 cordiality. The amiable and intelligent Balasitz, who 
 during my stay here devoted as much of his time to me 
 as I wished ; the fine animated old Dr. Antoni Malecki, 
 famous for his labours as the historian of Polish literature ; 
 and the cultivated professor of medicine, Dr. Ziembiecki, 
 who has studied in France, and who wears the red 
 ribbon of the Legion of Honour as a token of his sojourn 
 there. I also met with much learning and intelligence in 
 Galicia among unknown people. A young man, who had 
 never been in Denmark, had taught himself Danish, and pos- 
 sessed a copy of Danish Popular Songs, by Svend Gruntvig, with
 
 174 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 which he was thoroughly conversant, and which he greatly 
 admired. 
 
 Among the artists I was most attracted by Jan Styka, 
 who has decorated the great reception-room of the town 
 hall with an enormous painting, the subject a kind of vast 
 synthesis of Polish history. He had just exhibited in Lem- 
 berg his excellent panorama of the battle of Raclavice, 
 painted m conjunction with the younger Kossak. It 
 represents the action in which Tadeusz Kosciuszko, on the 
 4th of April 1794, beat the Russian troops with his little 
 army ; the militia of Cracow, peasants, only armed with 
 scythes, decided the day by an assault upon the Russian 
 artillery and the capture of their guns. I share Styka's 
 enthusiasm for this dictator of Poland, who was certainly one 
 of the greatest and most simple-minded men in whom a 
 people has seen itself personified at its best. What a part 
 he has played even in the imagination of foreign nations 
 we may learn from such a book as that of Robert Arnold on 
 Kosciuszko in German literature, which contains an over- 
 whelming bibliography of German works alone dealing with 
 Kosciuszko. It makes a strange impression to see youthful 
 drawings by him in the Czartoryski Museum in Cracow, 
 executed in the most careful and elegant eighteenth-century 
 style, among them a symbolical drawing of the dominions of 
 his protector, the then Prince Czartoryski, entitled Le Fleuve 
 du Tendre, and one of the Temple of Honour. For the rest, 
 he certainly had in him the sacred fire which of all his 
 other countrymen perhaps Mickiewicz alone possessed. 
 
 Styka's studio was very interesting, and his artistic talent 
 manifests itself best in his surroundings, which reflect his 
 own generous, ardent, and enthusiastic nature. 
 
 Among journalists, I met of course with all types, from 
 the highest to the lowest. The cool, patronising, intrusive, 
 calmly insolent, eternally inquisitive journalist is always an 
 odious personage, and perhaps especially so in Poland, 
 where he becomes the more intolerable, that he bears an 
 ancient name, is admitted into aristocratic circles, and knows 
 how to make himself dreaded by the men, and indispensable 
 to the women, whom he supplies with news and scandal.
 
 RUTHENIAN HOSTILITY 175 
 
 But others I met were cultivated, conscientious men of the 
 highest breeding, as, for instance, the excellent staff of 
 collaborators of Slowo Polsie. A few have a surprising gift 
 for the instantaneous rendering of a personality or a situa- 
 tion, an accomplishment which no Danish journalist pos- 
 sesses to the same degree. The accuracy of Galician 
 journalism is also extraordinary. The press as a whole 
 does its very utmost to obtain genuine and original informa- 
 tion. Thus one day I was much surprised to see in one 
 of the papers here a perfectly accurate account of a speech 
 which I had made at a torchlight procession in the year 
 1891. 
 
 Only a single section of the press became unfavourably 
 disposed towards me, the Ruthenian. It happened thus : 
 A long time before my arrival I had received an invitation 
 from the Ruthenians in Lemberg to an entertainment they 
 proposed to give. One day a deputation of three Ruthenians 
 appeared, of whom Professor Michael Hruxhevski was the 
 spokesman, while another, who now and then put in a word, 
 was the well-known agitator and journalist, Jan Franco. These 
 gentlemen asked me to attend a lecture on Little Russian 
 Literature at their club, and be present at the ensuing festi- 
 vity. I thanked them and accepted. But when in the course 
 of the day I mentioned this invitation to my Polish friends, 
 I discovered that I had made a mistake. They exclaimed 
 that it was impossible I could so far disregard their feelings 
 as to associate with these men, who were their worst enemies, 
 and the sworn foes of the Polish nationality. Though 
 Hruxhevski had been placed by the Poles at their University, 
 he had turned against them immediately after his appoint- 
 ment. The next day an article in a Ruthenian paper was 
 read to me, in which Jan Franco eagerly made use of me 
 against the Poles, making the statement that 7 had been the 
 first person to describe Mickiewicz as the poet of treason 
 (a description he had merely repeated), and hinting that the 
 Poles as a nation approved of treachery. He gave a garbled 
 version of my words, lending them a meaning exactly the 
 reverse of what I had intended, in order to carry his point. 
 I at once sent a letter to the Ruthenians, couched in the
 
 176 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 most polite and cautious terms, in which I explained that, 
 knowing nothing of the merits of the case, I sided with 
 neither party in the controversies between Poles and 
 Ruthenians. I did not allow myself to judge in the matter, 
 but as I had been invited to Galicia by the Poles and 
 received by them, and as they had given me to understand 
 that they would consider it a kind of treachery if I attended 
 the Ruthenian meeting, I was obliged to beg to be excused. 
 I would not, I hinted in conclusion, risk the appearance of 
 sympathising with treason. Henceforward Franco attacked 
 me every day, and he is not yet weary of this work, for a 
 long time after he reprinted his Ruthenian articles against 
 me in German in Austrian periodicals, and quoted with 
 exultation some disconnected observations of an unfavour- 
 able kind, made by certain Galician landowners on one of 
 the types in a book of mine. 
 
 It remains to say a few words of the ladies in Lemberg, 
 to whom I owe such a debt of gratitude. Even before my 
 arrival they had prepared the splendid framed address, 
 which was handed me at the Sobieski Festival, with 
 2000 signatures. It seemed to me that they appeared 
 less in society than was the case in Warsaw. Most of the 
 entertainments to which I had been invited were men's 
 parties. The town being smaller than Warsaw, a more 
 rigorous conventionality reigns there. The social differences 
 are more marked. The ladies of rank are addressed with 
 their titles, which, in my opinion, is opposed to good taste, 
 and always sounds rather provincial. Perhaps some of these 
 grandes dames showed a certain lack of consideration for 
 others in their speech. Not that I personally had the least 
 reason to complain ; all showed me the most exquisite 
 courtesy. But sometimes I heard sharp remarks flung in 
 the faces of men, who were obliged to listen smiling, because 
 everything is allowed to the great lady. 
 
 For the young unmarried women the rules of society are 
 as severe as in France. The young girl is never allowed to 
 go out alone by day or by night, and I heard more than 
 one passionately envy the girls of the North, of whose 
 independence they had heard.
 
 GYMNASTIC ASSOCIATIONS 177 
 
 The feminine type in Galicia is very attractive, if not so 
 beautiful as in Russian Poland ; the race is decidedly less 
 pure. But here as everywhere on Polish ground now and 
 then one meets a young woman so charming, that one feels 
 a kind of sadness at the thought of never seeing her again. 
 
 Among the ladies I met, several showed a surprising 
 knowledge of art ; a few even knew all the less famous 
 painters and paintings of value in the Italian towns that are 
 rarely visited by the ordinary traveller. Others, less travelled, 
 were nevertheless keenly interested in all manifestations of 
 art. I should like to mention Madame Mlodnicka, once the 
 betrothed of the famous dead painter, Grottger, and her 
 daughter, Madame Maryla Wolska, one of the most accom- 
 plished women I ever met, with a surprising talent for sculp- 
 ture as well as for music and poetry. In a Polish family, 
 that after 1863 lived long in Syria and Mesopotamia, 
 because the father, a highly accomplished man, had been 
 obliged to emigrate after the revolt, I noted in the beautiful 
 daughters a most attractive mingling of Polish and exotic 
 characteristics. The young girls spoke Arabic together as 
 fluently as they spoke Polish and French. 
 
 VII 
 
 
 An invitation, which I had great pleasure in accepting, 
 
 was to attend an ordinary lesson in the afternoon in the 
 Lemberg section of the gymnastic society, Sokol. This 
 society is one of the most original of Polish institutions. 
 Sokol includes all Polish towns outside Russian Poland, 
 and all towns in the new as well as in the old world 
 (Chicago as well as Berlin), where a large number of 
 Poles are living. In Galicia alone the union has 18,000 
 members, who are considered by all Poles the flower of 
 the national army of the future. With so much enthu- 
 siasm are gymnastics practised here, that youths and men of 
 sixty perform their exercises side by side from the most 
 elementary to the most difficult, such as with us are only 
 attempted by professionals. For instance, they were able to 
 
 M
 
 1 78 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 remain suspended by their heels on a trapeze and swing 
 round in the air. In the large hall all sorts of exercises, 
 hygienic and athletic, were performed at the same time by 
 different groups. 
 
 An elderly gentleman came to greet me ; he had been 
 twenty years in Siberia after 1863. "It is a calumniated 
 land," he said, smiling. 
 
 The speech addressed to me when I entered the hall, by 
 the President of the Sokol of Lemberg, Dr. Dzizelzielewicz, 
 I am able to quote ; it is the only one of which a copy was 
 handed to me. It is interesting, I think, on account of the 
 manly spirit by which it is inspired : 
 
 " Friendship in prosperity is an easy thing, in adversity a 
 most rare one. Only men with their hearts in the right 
 place have a sincere sympathy with the feeble, and boldly 
 side with them. 
 
 " I pronounced a word which ought not to be heard within 
 these walls. We are weak this day, it is true, but if we only 
 deserved compassion, a man so clear-sighted, truthful, and 
 far-seeing as our guest, familiar as he is with our aims, would 
 not have shown the deep interest in us that he has manifested. 
 He looked for and probably found in us something more 
 than an unhappy people worthy of his pity. He sought 
 and found those, who, in their misfortune and in spite of 
 their misfortune, bear in mind their national dignity, and 
 whose aim it is to throw off their weakness as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 " His visit to us to-day proves this. He comes to us not 
 in order to listen to words of gratitude, not to attend a 
 festivity, but to see our daily work, to know and to judge of 
 this work. 
 
 "Your purpose in coming here makes our welcome doubly 
 warm and affectionate. I greet you in the name of the 
 oldest Gymnastic Union. Among our people, once so rich 
 in health and energy, bodily vigour has of late been a 
 plant slow to take root and to develop. All the more is it 
 essential to cherish this health and energy of the people, to 
 cultivate and develop the body as carefully as we tend, 
 culivate, and develop the mind.
 
 SOKOL 
 
 179 
 
 " After long and toilsome work of almost thirty years, the 
 history of which is outside the scope of my present remarks, 
 we have advanced so far that our unions number about one 
 hundred ; seventeen of them have their own gymnasia, and 
 we consider this the most important point of all all 
 these unions are branches of one parent guild, which 
 forms an independent superior union having its seat in 
 Lemberg, and its rules sanctioned by the Austrian Ministry 
 of the Interior. Such a society also exists in the German 
 Empire and in the United States. The aim of this fellow- 
 ship is the homogeneity and firmness of our organisation, 
 and we look to it to ensure the exact fulfilment of our aims. 
 
 " I may be allowed perhaps to say a few words about 
 these aims. Every nation, and more especially a nation 
 such as ours, needs for its development health, ability, per- 
 severance, unity, and discipline. Our efforts must rest on a 
 national basis, though they have nothing to do with politics, 
 and do not involve enmity towards other nations. We want 
 to be a sound and able people, that we may be able to 
 hold fast our privileges, and fulfil our social duties. Natural 
 as this is, there are many who do not choose to understand 
 it, and many who deliberately misrepresent it in order to 
 injure our cause. 
 
 " You, most honoured master, who have come with a 
 sincere wish to learn the truth, will be able to form a just 
 and impartial notion of our efforts. We hope that you will 
 make the truth known wherever it may be necessary." 
 
 Listening to this speech, I was deeply impressed by the 
 eagerness the enemies of the Poles have shown to see in this 
 extensive organisation of men of a strong and capable race 
 from early youth to old age, a preparation for rebellion. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Most fatiguing was life in Lemberg ! The day before I 
 had given a lecture in the town hall in aid of a proposed 
 statue of Mickiewicz, and it had given me great pleasure, 
 partly because on this occasion I met Prince Czartoryski
 
 i8o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 and I had never before spoken with a Czartoryski partly 
 because I was able to present the town with a handsome 
 sum of money, as all the tickets were sold at high prices. 
 
 Early in the morning I was obliged to submit to be 
 interviewed for the Petersburg journal, Kraj t and to do my 
 best to give evasive answers to adroit questions. During 
 the interview the young author arrived who was to introduce 
 me to no less than three clubs of young people, two of men 
 and one of women. I had unfortunately promised to meet 
 them on another occasion, and had forgotten the invitation. 
 
 Even now, I was rather late, but they had been patiently 
 waiting. All the ladies were seated, and the young men 
 were standing in groups around. There was hardly room 
 to pass, and here as elsewhere in Lemberg, even in the 
 town hall, the ventilation was very bad. 
 
 It was one of the most remarkable meetings I have 
 attended in Poland. Only on a few memorable occasions 
 in Warsaw have I ever seen so many young people 
 assembled. It was a representative audience of the in- 
 tellectual and advanced youth of the nation ; the men almost 
 all socialists, revolutionists, or anarchists not a few had 
 suffered political imprisonment in Russian Poland. The 
 young women were all intellectual workers and thinkers 
 of the emancipated type. 
 
 They had invited me partly to show their good-will, and 
 partly to have the opportunity of explaining that I had 
 wronged the advanced youth of Poland by some conserva- 
 tive notions in a book of mine. 
 
 There were certainly not less than eight speakers, repre- 
 sentatives of the different groups, and all spoke well, clearly, 
 and instructively, with ideal youthful fervour and conviction. 
 Most impressive and attractive to me among the speakers 
 was a young lady, a beautiful Jewess, Madame Emma 
 Lilienowa, whose simple and logical speech I followed with 
 interest and admiration, though it told against me ; but in- 
 wardly I was delighted at being rebuked as too conservative, 
 not so much because the situation was new to me, 
 but because if these good people could have known me 
 thoroughly, they would have been perfectly content with
 
 SOCIALIST GRIEVANCES 181 
 
 me. If there be a point on which I have a clear con- 
 science, it is this : that no one can reproach me with having 
 too much respect for the existing state of things. 
 
 Of course I meant, and mean none the less to maintain, 
 what I asserted in my book as to its being unpractical to 
 be a socialist in Russian Poland. I certainly did not urge 
 that it would be meaningless to be a socialist in Austrian 
 Poland. When in 1885 I stated that the Jews were not 
 ill-used in Poland, I did not deny the possibility that an 
 intense hatred of the Jews might arise in Galicia ten years 
 later. If I had pleaded the cause of the Catholic Church 
 in Poland, in so far as I asserted it to be the chief factor 
 of resistance to the Russianising of the country, I did not 
 claim for it any exclusive privileges either here or else- 
 where. Very reasonably they pointed out the injustice 
 meted out to the Ruthenians and Jews, and the unfair treat- 
 ment of the free-thinking students at the University of 
 Cracow, urging that the Poles in positions of authority seem 
 hardly to realise the nature of that liberty for which they 
 themselves are struggling. I heard a great many things 
 that saddened and shocked me, things I could hardly have 
 thought possible. I will give an instance : According to 
 law the Jew is allowed, like any other citizen, to possess 
 land, but last year, when a rich Jewish family bought a 
 Polish property, all the people of the district were greatly 
 agitated, and not only the inhabitants of the district, but the 
 well-known conservative and clerical professor, Tarnowski, 
 summed up the general exasperation elegantly in these 
 words : " The Poles are not anti-Semites, they do not at 
 all hate the Jews, but they object to seeing sacred Polish 
 land in the hands of Jews." The owners of the estate were 
 threatened with death, and were obliged to cancel the 
 bargain. That this harmonises ill with the ideal of freedom 
 is but too true. It is not surprising, therefore, that Zionism 
 has many adherents among the Jewish inhabitants of Galicia. 
 The persecution to which a student known to be a free- 
 thinker is often subjected is hardly less deplorable than the 
 want of toleration shown to the Jews. But no one with the 
 slightest knowledge of human nature could be supposed to
 
 182 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 have asserted that the Poles were exceptional. The national 
 cause is no less holy because of this. The main point of 
 the ensuing debate, however, as far as I was concerned, was 
 my attempt to show my audience that I advocated a con- 
 servative policy in Russian Poland purely on strategic 
 grounds. It took time to make myself understood. Un- 
 fortunately for Poland, Macchiavelli was no Pole, and has 
 had no disciples among the leading men of Poland. 
 
 I had scarcely returned to the hotel when I had to step 
 into the carriage waiting to take me to the Union of Veterans, 
 the survivors of those who had taken part in the insurrection 
 of 1863. M. Tadeuz Czapelski, the intimate friend of my 
 Warsaw friends, came to fetch me. He was a member of 
 the Union, though he had taken no part in the actual rising, 
 being at the time a boy of fourteen, who had been kept 
 busily at work casting bullets. When we approached the 
 house we caught sight of the old men standing on the bal- 
 conies waiting for us. Kagetan Ivanowski, the President of 
 the Society of 1863, formerly Secretary of State under the 
 national government, and renowned for his bravery, received 
 me at the entrance, introduced me, and made a speech, 
 which was followed by numerous others. All these men 
 had served as soldiers or officers during the heroic struggle 
 against the Russian power. One among them, still vigorous 
 though past eighty, had been an officer in the revolt of 1830. 
 Every Sunday forenoon these men assemble at their club to 
 partake of a Spartan meal, consisting of national dishes, a meal 
 such as soldiers share in camp. I cannot describe the feeling 
 which came over me when all these old men formed a circle 
 around me and, with great enthusiasm, sang Jeszeze Polska. 
 I had to answer all the speeches, but at last tears came 
 into my eyes and I could not speak for emotion I, who 
 never weep. Czapelski and I took leave amidst songs and 
 acclamations. From the carriage we saw the veterans 
 waving farewell to us till we turned the corner of the street. 
 At the hotel we joined our friends for lunch. It was com- 
 puted that I had made eleven French and three German 
 speeches that morning. Jan and Madame Jozefa were to 
 return to Warsaw immediately after lunch. A crowd of
 
 A MODERN FAUSTUS 183 
 
 friends accompanied them in carriages to the station, where 
 they, moreover, had the opportunity of taking leave of the 
 governor of Galicia, who had to go to Cracow in his official 
 capacity, and who left his carriage to greet them. 
 
 After having returned to the hotel I had to write some 
 friendly parting words on more than fifty visiting-cards to 
 send off in the town. 
 
 Then I was expected by a man, who had been repeatedly 
 mentioned to me even in Copenhagen as the discoverer of 
 a new and unknown force, the engineer Rychnowski. But, 
 ignorant as I am of chemistry and electro-biology, I was 
 incapable of forming any opinion as to the real worth of his 
 presumed discovery. 
 
 I was conducted across a court to the little entrance of 
 a side building where the laboratory was. It was dark, and 
 we had a difficulty in finding our way. A door was opened, 
 and we stood face to face with the strange magus, a stout 
 man of fifty with a greyish beard. His face was that of a 
 thinker, but also bore the stamp of mystery often seen in the 
 countenances of the half educated or the half crazy. He 
 received us most politely, and introduced us into his apart- 
 ment. It might have been Faust's studio, and suggested the 
 alchemists of the Middle Ages to me. The force he had 
 discovered was a motor power, stronger than any other 
 hitherto known ; besides, it was the vital power ! If he 
 brought it to bear upon himself, he would renew his youth, 
 his strength would increase, and he would be able to endure 
 bodily and mental fatigues to an unheard-of extent. On the 
 day of my arrival I had promised the old poet Bezazowski, 
 whom I had met at a public entertainment, that I would pay 
 him a visit. But my time had been so much taken up that 
 I had literally not had a single minute to fulfil my promise. 
 Now I drove in a hurry from Rychnowsky to his house. 
 
 He was certainly worth meeting, this venerable old man. 
 He had passed the last half of his life as a consul in the 
 East, and had familiarised himself with Oriental manners 
 and customs as few Europeans are able to do. Neverthe- 
 less, he had remained an enthusiastic Polish patriot. As 
 a poet he enjoys great favour among his countrymen.
 
 1 84 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Unfortunately, I could not stay more than half-an-hour 
 with him, it being already late. I had not done my packing, 
 and the train was to start at eleven o'clock. We returned 
 at full speed to the hotel, where the mayor presently came 
 to fetch me, and for the second time this day off we went 
 to the station, where, in spite of the late hour, a group of 
 friends had assembled. With my foot on the carriage-step 
 I pressed the hand of old Siberiak, who had greeted me 
 in the Sokol gymnasium. 
 
 And the evening came on, and night fell on the last 
 day of my stay in Lemberg.
 
 THE ROMANTIC LITERATURE OF 
 
 POLAND IN THE NINETEENTH 
 
 CENTURY 
 
 1886
 
 POINTS OF CONTACT IN POLISH AND 
 DANISH LITERATURE 
 
 THERE are few points of contact in the literatures of Poland 
 and Denmark. 
 
 In the Polish world of books we find a small but very 
 instructive contribution to the history of warfare and cul- 
 ture in Denmark in the seventeenth century, namely, Jan 
 Chrysostom Pasek's Recollections. As leader of a division of 
 the Polish army, which came to the help of the Danes 
 against Charles Gustavus of Sweden, this nobleman was in 
 Denmark in 1658 and 1659 ; took part in the memorable 
 conquest of the island of Als by cavalrymen, who swam 
 across the Alssund with their pistols behind their collars and 
 their powder-horns on their necks, and was present at the 
 storming of Koldinghus and the capture of Fridericia. He 
 observes and describes the manners and customs of the 
 peasants ; falls in love with the daughter of a Danish landed 
 proprietor, who cherishes a burning love for him, but he 
 tears himself away from his sweetheart, returns to his 
 fatherland and introduces two things, hitherto unknown in 
 Poland : Danish wooden shoes and long Danish cavalry 
 boots. 
 
 He describes the Danes as well formed ; the women as 
 beautiful, but too blonde. As regards the arrangements of 
 the houses, it strikes him as strange that the places for sleep- 
 ing are often mere cupboards in the walls. As to manners 
 and customs, he is astonished that every one, including the 
 women, sleep stark naked, and that no one regards it as 
 indelicate to dress and undress in the presence of others. 
 When the Poles criticised this as indecorous the women 
 replied that they had no reason to be ashamed of their 
 limbs, which were created by God. As regards living, he is 
 
 disgusted at all the sausage meat, which is eaten as a 
 
 187
 
 1 88 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 delicacy, and as regards dress this peculiarity has become 
 fixed in his memory, that the women, who in other respects 
 dress with taste, wear wooden shoes, not only in the country, 
 but in the cities, " with which they make such a noise on 
 the stone pavements that one can hardly hear his neighbour 
 speak." 
 
 Of the Danish women in general he remarks that they 
 are not so reserved in their affections as the Polish. " For 
 although in the beginning they are extremely shy, they fall in 
 love in a single meeting so extremely and passionately that 
 they cannot conceal their feelings, but are ready to leave their 
 parents and rich surroundings and go out into the wide world 
 with their lovers." He quotes from a letter from his sweet- 
 heart, which as a specimen of composition is not uninterest- 
 ing. It runs as follows : 
 
 " High, well-born, gracious Sir ; Persons, who are dear 
 to our hearts, we wish to honour with words and see 
 with our eyes. In how high a degree my father has conceived 
 love for thy renowned people and thy knightly brothers-in- 
 arms, he shows by often speaking thy name. It is his 
 earnest wish to look upon thee not only as an adopted but 
 an actual son. But if my father loves thee, then his 
 daughter, in whose heart an unchanging love for thee will 
 continually blossom, loves thee not less. Oh, couldst thou 
 read in my heart the force of my emotions ! I confess now 
 openly what I have so long kept secret, that my heart will 
 never beat for any other man but thee. ... I am going 
 where fate and my heart lead me. My family may claim 
 equality with the oldest in Poland. If my character is not 
 free from fault, thou hast praised it. My religion does me 
 no dishonour ; I believe in the holy Trinity. My father's 
 declaration that he will not let his fortune go to a foreign 
 land, is no impediment. My father lays down the law, but 
 thou wilt be able to interpret it freely, thou wilt be able 
 to assume control over his fortune. It is thy duty to com- 
 mand and mine to obey," &c. 
 
 For a time Pasek, kindled by the young lady's passion, 
 was tempted to stay with her in Denmark, but a double 
 fear of becoming as one dead to his relatives in Poland and
 
 DANISH WRITERS ON POLAND 189 
 
 of losing his eternal salvation, in case he allowed himself to 
 be made a Lutheran, moved him to march home with the 
 rest of the Polish troops. He became the favourite of two 
 kings in his native land and at last died in old age in 1700. 
 It was not till 1836 that his admirable memoirs were found 
 and published. 
 
 When to this description of the Denmark of that period 
 we add that Lelewel wrote a book on Edda Skandinawska, 
 and that in several of the romantic poems of Poland, as for 
 instance in Krasinski's Irydion, there are here and there fan- 
 tastic descriptions of Denmark in heathen days, in " King " 
 Odin's time, we shall have summed up the impressions of 
 Denmark to be found in the culture and intellectual life of 
 Poland. 
 
 But the existence of Poland has made a deeper impres- 
 sion upon Danish literature. This is more especially true of 
 the critical periods in the history of Poland in this century, 
 the revolutions of 1830 and 1831 and of 1863, which at- 
 tracted attention to the country and aroused sympathy, a 
 fleeting sympathy certainly, but genuine. 
 
 Between the years 1830 and 1840 there appeared in 
 Denmark, as elsewhere, beautiful and emotional lyric poems 
 on Polish subjects (such as Paludan-Miiller's Call to Poland, 
 Aarestrup's A Polish Mother}, and in the fifties appeared 
 Hauch's great and famous novel, A Polish Family, with its 
 beautiful songs, one of which, Hvorfor svulmer Weichselfloden, 
 is one of the best lyrics of our literature. 
 
 This novel is interesting as the one great attempt of a 
 Dane to identify himself with the spiritual and social life of 
 the Poles. Nevertheless, as a novel it is a work of the second 
 rank, the description of character being weak and abstract. 
 It was quite in accordance with the spirit of his time, that 
 Hauch made no attempt to write from his own knowledge. 
 He never travelled in Poland, never even made any efforts 
 to study one or two Polish families before he so elabor- 
 ately presented one ; but he had studied the Polish ballads, 
 which had been translated with great diligence, reproducing 
 or paraphrasing many of them in Danish, and thus in the 
 tones of sadness, despair, love of country and Catholic piety,
 
 i 9 o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 which ring through the romance, an occasional chord is 
 struck which sounds like a Polish chord. 
 
 Even the renowned song, which in a certain sense is the 
 spirit of the whole book, condensed into the smallest possible 
 space (it is sung at a dance in one of the principal scenes 
 in the book), is built upon motives from Polish ballads, still 
 sung during the Cracovian dance. 
 
 The ballads always consist of two-line verses, the first 
 of which gives an image and the second a parallel or an 
 explanation of it. 
 For instance : 
 
 " Yonder by the high walls of Cracow the Vistula flows, 
 All the sons of Poland pass away in long lines." 
 Hauch expresses it thus : 
 
 " The floods of the Vistula wind slowly under the walls of 
 Cracow, Strong hosts march to break the eagle's dungeons." 
 Or again : 
 
 " They all march out with smiles and do not return, There- 
 fore woods, meadows, and women all mourn deeply." 
 Hauch : 
 
 " Sword and scythe flashed in smoke and fog on the plain, 
 Not a warrior comes back from the wild fight, Therefore 
 field and meadow mourn, And Poland's daughters have lost 
 their merry smile." 
 
 The composition of Hauch's poem as a whole is far above 
 the scattered lines of the ballads in effect, but the Polish 
 diction is shorter, it has more emphasis and force. 
 
 Although the events of 1863 gave rise to several more 
 or less eloquent and well-considered articles in the Danish 
 press, they called forth nothing else of literary value save 
 four or five fine poems by Snoilsky, which first appeared in a 
 Danish newspaper. Since then the people of Denmark have 
 not given much thought to Poland ; the last uprising has 
 been called the death battle of the Poles, and the Polish 
 nation is regarded as dead. 
 
 But " it is not yet all over with Poland," although this 
 poor Poland resembles an elegant and defenceless woman 
 upon whom all have fallen and trampled. Even in the 
 thirties the friends of Poland regarded its history as closed.
 
 HUNGARIAN SYMPATHY 191 
 
 In 1831 the Hungarians in an address to the Emperor of 
 Austria offered to fit out at their own cost an army of a 
 hundred thousand men to aid the fighting Poles. The offer 
 was naturally declined ; but in 1832, when all was over, a 
 member of the Hungarian Parliament, Polocsy, uttered these 
 words : " If kings and emperors regard themselves as members 
 of one great family, and wear mourning when one among 
 them dies, then with far greater reason ought the destruction 
 of a nation to cause all the other nations to mourn ; but the 
 mourning which kings wear on their hats or arms, these 
 nations wear in their hearts." These are fine words, but 
 Poland was no more a corpse in the thirties, than she is now 
 to be regarded as blotted out of the number of nations.
 
 I 
 
 TENDENCIES COMMON TO ALL EUROPEAN LITERA- 
 TURES PECULIAR FEATURES RETROSPECT 
 KOCHANOWSKI SK ARGA JESUITISM FRENCH 
 PHILOSOPHY RATIONALISM 
 
 THE Polish literature of this century presents the same 
 picture of changing elemental tendencies as the other 
 European literatures with which I am familiar. The setting 
 is everywhere the same. At the beginning of the century 
 an antiquated classicism and soon cast aside, a romanti- 
 cism absorbing the largest part of the century, and in the 
 seventies and eighties a dawning realism. 
 
 This is common to Europe. But in every nation these 
 tendencies assume a different character, according to its 
 historic theories and historic relations. The Polish litera- 
 ture of this century bears a peculiar stamp, apart from the 
 peculiarities issuing from the national character, in this 
 respect, that it developed in a country which had recently 
 ceased to exist as an independent state. The literature, and 
 especially the poetry, came on this account to supply, as it 
 were, the place of all the organs of a national life which 
 were lost at the partition of the State. It gains thereby in 
 spiritual exaltation, but necessarily loses in variety. 
 
 A brief retrospect of the history of development in the 
 last few centuries is necessary to the understanding of the 
 poetry of the present century. 
 
 The upheavals which the Reformation caused in the 
 principal countries of Europe left Poland comparatively 
 undisturbed. While kindred Bohemia, under the desire 
 for a great social and ecclesiastical reform, wore itself 
 out in the Hussite War through the whole of two 
 
 centuries, from the death of Huss to the battle at the White 
 
 192
 
 THE RENAISSANCE IN POLAND 193 
 
 Mountain (1620), and for two hundred years more seemed 
 as if it had actually slipped out of history, under the stress 
 of its superhuman exertions, the Roman Catholic Church 
 stood comparatively unassailed in Poland, and the country 
 was spared any very radical religious discord. 
 
 The period which is generally described as the Renais- 
 sance was for Poland her time of greatness, and introduced 
 her first golden age of poetic literature. Its greatest figure 
 was Jan Kochanovski (1530-84), a worshipper of Horace 
 and Virgil, a contemporary and acquaintance of Ronsard, 
 who made his debut as a poet in the Latin language, but 
 soon adopted the Polish, becoming its greatest master of 
 those days. Imbued with the spirit of antiquity and of 
 the Renaissance, cool towards Christianity, warm towards 
 the republic, a pagan theist, he tried his hand at all sorts 
 of poetry, and in all gave evidence of manliness, liberality, 
 and humanity. His Treny, a series of delightfully simple 
 and touching elegies on the death of a beloved daughter, 
 are of such excellence that they are not even surpassed 
 by the admirable poems on the same subject, written by 
 Victor Hugo so many years after. 
 
 The two principal poetic forms which flourished in 
 this period are the idyll and the satire the idyll because 
 the sympathies of certain poets break through that ring 
 which the " Szlachta," the Polish nobility which is every- 
 thing in the republic, has drawn about itself, and approach 
 the common, suppressed people, who are glorified in 
 bucolics ; the satire, because the sharp critical sense of other 
 poets turns against the ruling caste of nobility, and attacks 
 the idea that nobility is an accidental privilege of birth. 
 Just then, about the year 1600, the "Szlachta" became 
 decidedly hostile to progress, clinging desperately to the 
 privileges of its powerful position. 
 
 The social movement in those times, which in Germany 
 was broken by the suppression of the rebellion of the 
 peasants, and the extermination of the Anabaptists, was 
 overcome by the Polish nobility during the war with the 
 Cossacks, by the most tremendous efforts. The intellectual 
 regeneration which, in Germany, when humanism was 
 
 N
 
 194 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 absorbed by Lutheranism, halted at the mediocrity of a civic 
 and ecclesiastic intermediate form, broad and strong enough 
 to resist for long the pressure of the times, became stunted 
 at once in its growth in Poland, because in contrast to the 
 movement of the Reformation, it was absorbed by a humanism 
 to which only the most cultured of the highest classes were 
 susceptible, and which was therefore overcome with ease, 
 as soon as the religious counter-revolution, with Jesuitism at 
 its head, attacked it. 
 
 Polish Protestantism assumed the form of a heretical 
 philosophy, which rejected the teaching of the Church, and 
 at the same time its morality, without being able to formulate 
 any independent positive morality. It seemed mainly in- 
 spired by a polemical tendency to approve all that had been 
 the subject of earlier prohibitions (marriage between blood 
 relations, as well as free relations between the sexes), and 
 by the dogma that the confiscation of the property of the 
 Church was essential. In the meantime, since the Pro- 
 testant nobility needed religion to keep the common people 
 in check, its own humanism being incomprehensible to the 
 masses, and since, trembling for its privileges, it was 
 necessarily apprehensive of the principle of free investiga- 
 tion, which lies at the bottom of all Protestantism, the 
 appearance and agitation of individuals of talent in the 
 aristocratic and clerical party was alone required to make 
 this Protestant nobility fall off, and one by one return to 
 the motherly bosom of the Catholic Church. Such an 
 oratorical genius was Orzechowski (1515-66), who showed 
 the nobility that the clergy alone were able to strike the 
 king with terror of breaking the oath, which he was 
 always obliged to swear to the " Szlachta " promising to 
 preserve its privileges. 
 
 He was succeeded by a man of even greater and more 
 celebrated oratorical talent, the priest Skarga (1536-1612), 
 a Jesuit, who was an ardent Polish patriot, a regenerator 
 of fallen Catholicism, who foresaw all the dangers of the 
 anarchy of the nobility, and in one of his sermons to the 
 diet, even foretold the partition of Poland. Let us quote 
 his words:
 
 INFLUENCE OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHY 195 
 
 "A foreign enemy will come upon you, will take 
 advantage of your internal discord, and say : * Your hearts 
 have become divided, now you will be ruined.' These in- 
 ternal strifes will bring you into a captivity, in which all 
 your freedom will be lost, and abased. Great countries 
 and principalities, which had become united with the crown, 
 will fall off and be torn away, and you, who once ruled 
 other races, will, like an abandoned widow, become a 
 mockery and sport for your enemies. You lay waste your 
 people and your language, the only free people among all 
 the Slav races, you destroy what there is left of this 
 ancient and far-reaching people, and will be swallowed up 
 by other races who hate you." (Third sermon.) 
 
 It is in the act of delivering this sermon to the diet that 
 Skarga is represented in the well-known painting by Matejko. 
 
 From his time until the middle of the eighteenth century 
 Jesuitism was predominant in Poland and determined its in- 
 tellectual life. It was for ecclesiastical even more than for 
 political reasons that Sobieski undertook his campaign to 
 Vienna against the Turks in 1683 ; it was zeal for the pre- 
 servation of the Catholic faith that led the Polish clergy to 
 summon the order of the Jesuits, and by degrees place the 
 whole province of instruction in their hands. The only 
 intellectual product which flourished under this rule was 
 eloquence, which attained an extraordinary height in Latin as 
 well as in Polish. It even became the custom of the times 
 to mix the two languages into a macaronic medley which 
 only false taste could approve. 
 
 This Jesuitical movement was finally dissolved by the 
 current which emanated from the philosophical ideas of 
 the eighteenth century in France. In so far as these ideas 
 were reformatory in political matters, they first began to 
 influence minds only when an incurable breach had already 
 been made in the Polish State. The conservative caste of 
 nobility had long succeeded in branding every attempt at 
 reform as reactionary that is to say, as an injury to their 
 precious personal freedom, that freedom which through the 
 liberum veto had led to anarchy, and the sale of the crown 
 to the highest bidder. Now the young Poles travelled to
 
 196 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 France to get advice from its most celebrated thinkers as 
 to a new constitution for their fatherland threatened with 
 dissolution. Wielhorski addressed himself to Rousseau as 
 author of the Contrat Social, and received from him Con- 
 siderations sur le Gouvernement de la Pologne, to the Abbe 
 Mably, and procured from him De la situation politique de la 
 Pologne. So in our own days have Japanese envoys applied 
 to Professor Gneist in Berlin, requesting him to draw up a 
 constitution for their country. 
 
 Rousseau considered the question in a purely a priori 
 manner. His dislike of absolute power led him to recom- 
 mend the division of the powers of the State, to advise a 
 confederate government, to adhere to the elective king, and 
 even to retain the liberum veto, only limiting its use. He 
 advocated democracy in forms quite unsuitable to Poland ; 
 his ideas served as a pretext to the later anarchists, the 
 traitors of the confederation of Targowice, who were 
 protected by Russia. Mably, who showed more political 
 sense, advised the introduction of a hereditary constitutional 
 monarchy. 
 
 The first partition of Poland in 1772 put an end to these 
 consultations with foreigners, but after 1778 the Poles of the 
 national party took the most energetic counsel with each 
 other as to the foundation of a new form of government, 
 finally agreeing upon the excellent constitution of the 3rd 
 of May, 1791, which has been called Poland's patent of 
 nobility among the nations of Europe. It was followed by 
 the second partition, and after the insurrection of Kosciuszko 
 by the third. 
 
 One of the most eminent men of these times, the leader of 
 the rationalistic classicists, Jan Sniadecki, whose narrowness 
 in relation to the budding romanticism did not exclude broad 
 and clear views in other domains, gave pertinent expression 
 to the spirit of these times, when he said that after the dis- 
 appearance of their fatherland as a State the Poles felt 
 themselves as it were condemned to suppress and ex- 
 terminate all the mental emotions in themselves which were 
 engendered by education, habit, and the desire of seeing the 
 public weal advanced, emotions which had been the soul of
 
 POLISH SYMPATHY WITH FRANCE 197 
 
 all their intellectual powers and qualities. " Now," he says, 
 " the Poles must outlive themselves, must create for them- 
 selves a new soul, and enclose their emotions within the 
 narrower boundaries of private life." It is therefore no 
 wonder that a pause of several years in the manifestation 
 of general intellectual development appears between the end 
 of the kingdom and the dawn of the new romantic literary 
 movements. 
 
 During this pause the revolutionary period and Napoleon's 
 metamorphosis of European conditions took place. 
 
 Immediately after the massacre at Praga, the con- 
 querors imprisoned a number of the leading men of Poland ; 
 many of them disappeared in the fortresses of Prussia and 
 Austria ; others were sent to Siberia ; nay, certain Polish 
 generals were carried as far as Kamschatka. Those who 
 escaped emigrated to France, Italy, or Turkey. 
 
 It was natural that the Poles, whose republic had just 
 succumbed in a contest with three hereditary monarchies, 
 should sympathise with the French Republic during its wars, 
 and in the hope that it would take up their cause, their 
 legions fought by the side of the French troops. Again 
 and again the Republic and Bonaparte deceived them in 
 their hopes ; again and again Napoleon gave them promises 
 he never thought of keeping ; again and again the Poles shed 
 their blood for him in crowds, nay, in hosts. In his solitary 
 sledge journey on the retreat from Russia, he was accom- 
 panied from Smorgoni, the temperature being thirty degrees 
 below zero centigrade, by a hundred Polish lancers, who 
 voluntarily offered their escort in the evening, and of whom 
 only thirty-six survived the next morning. 
 
 Kosciusko did not believe in Napoleon ; he refused in 
 the most determined manner to induce his countrymen to 
 fight under him. "And if you were made to do so by 
 force ? " asked the Duke of Otranto in the capacity of 
 negotiator. " Then I should declare plainly and loudly that 
 I was not free and that my sympathies were not with you." 
 "Very well, we can do without you," answered Fouche". 
 They could to a certain point, because the Poles were carried 
 away by the idea that Napoleon, as the founder of a new
 
 198 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 dynasty, would be compelled to wage war against the old 
 royal families that had partitioned Poland. And yet, as 
 already stated, before his Russian campaign Napoleon did 
 not disdain to issue a proclamation to the Poles in 
 Kosciusko's name, in which he speaks of himself with the 
 most profound admiration. It begins thus : " Amid the 
 din of arms with which Poland resounds, Kosciusko ad- 
 dresses himself to you. Thus has Napoleon's high destiny 
 willed, he who destroys and creates kings, who strikes down 
 hostile nations with his lightning, . . . the man of fate turns 
 his eyes and thoughts on you." 
 
 Upon all occasions Napoleon abused, sacrificed, and 
 deceived Poland. But this people, who since the dissolution 
 of the State seemed doomed to hope against hope, did not 
 abandon him on that account. On the contrary. Im- 
 mediately after the Emperor's fall, as we shall see, a 
 Napoleon-cult sprang up in Poland, in comparison with 
 which that in other countries and other literatures is in- 
 considerable. 
 
 Alexander I. in his first period was mildly disposed to- 
 wards Poland. In the short interval between the year 1815, 
 with the good constitution it brought, and the time when 
 Alexander's reactionary efforts began, the intellectual de- 
 velopment proceeded smoothly and freely, undisturbed by 
 political contests. At this period the Franco-classical pro- 
 duction of the time of Stanislaus Augustus was rejected as 
 mere drawing-room literature. There was a struggle here 
 as elsewhere, but of short duration, between the classicists 
 and the romanticists ; then the different provinces enter in 
 turn upon the scene, with their new brood of poets ; first 
 Ukrainia, then Lithuania, then the others, were all permeated 
 by the feeling that it was time to leave the hot air of 
 luxurious rooms for contact with the people at large under 
 the open heavens.
 
 II 
 
 POLISH ROMANTICISM DETERMINED BY THE CHARACTER OF 
 THE PEOPLE, BY EUROPEAN ROMANTICISM AND THE POLI- 
 TICAL SITUATION SPECIAL POINTS OF VIEW FOR THE ANTI- 
 THESIS OF CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC WORSHIP OF NAPOLEON 
 AND BYRON RELATION TO SHAKESPEARE AND DANTE 
 INFLUENCE OF EMIGRANT LIFE ON THE SENTIMENT OF 
 WRITERS 
 
 THE period 18201850 was the richest and most important 
 as regards poetry. And in this period the three funda- 
 mental factors which determined the literature were evidently 
 these : the national character, European romanticism, and 
 the exceptional political situation. 
 
 The national character, as it had been developed down 
 to this period, was specially adapted for the influences of 
 romanticism. It was intelligent and magnanimous, splen- 
 dour-loving and visionary, with a propensity to chivalrous 
 virtues and religious aspirations. Then as now it lacked 
 the ballast which the Germanic nations have in their native 
 phlegm, and the Latin races in their native logic. It was 
 akin to the French in its fickleness, different from it in the 
 nature of its capriciousness ; for the Frenchman is capricious 
 when his native rationalism leads him to shatter his historic 
 heritage, the Pole when temperament or enthusiasm carries 
 him away. It was akin to the Italian in its idolatry and 
 its vivacity, but differed from it in its want of shrewd 
 political sense, and of that plastic tendency which has made 
 the inhabitants of Italy pagans under all forms of religion. 
 
 When European Romanticism reached this nation, it did 
 not fare as in Germany, where it was engendered in the 
 non-political societies of provincial towns, and allied itself 
 to the indefinite idealism, the want of social feeling, and the 
 aversion to reality, which had laid hold of the minds of 
 thinking men nor as in England, where Romanticism found
 
 200 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 itself in direct antagonism with the ingrained bias of the 
 people for the useful and the practical, and where it allied 
 itself with the old Norse tendency to an indomitable inde- 
 pendence and defiance in the free individual, even towards 
 his fatherland nor as in France or Italy, where a Latin 
 and classical element, essentially foreign to Romanticism, 
 prevented its conquest of the intellectual heart of the people, 
 and limited it to a purely artistic intoxication of short 
 duration. 
 
 In Poland, where the national character was peculiarly 
 adapted to assimilate Romanticism, the common national 
 misfortune had moreover given a romantic bias to minds. 
 Romanticism, therefore, did not isolate souls either in 
 egotism, as in Germany, or in wild independence, as in 
 England, but bound them together in a visionary feeling of 
 compatriotism. Neither was it contingent upon a dislike to 
 reality, but upon the sense that the fatherland was already 
 an unreality, something which must be believed in, and could 
 not be seen with the bodily eye. Finally, the Latin element, 
 even if stronger than in any other non-Latin country, was 
 but an importation, and made no serious resistance. 
 
 Here, with far greater force than elsewhere, romantic 
 enthusiasm swept away all barriers, spread out in far wider 
 circles because of the national character, which is not 
 rational, but fantastically heroic and harmonised far more 
 thoroughly than elsewhere with existing times and con- 
 ditions because of the national fate, which occupies all 
 thoughts, and round which all day-dreams revolve. 
 
 We shall recognise this peculiarity most plainly if we 
 turn our attention to countries and literatures where the 
 political situation was akin to that of Poland. It is true 
 that a counterpart is nowhere to be found, but there are 
 analogies more or less strong. 
 
 Let us consider, for instance, the Flemish literature, 
 which arose in Belgium about 1830. It resorts to great 
 historical romance in the style of Walter Scott, in order 
 to excite Flemish national feeling. Henry Conscience's 
 romance, The Lion of Flanders, is the leading work, a book 
 of the same kind as Rzewuski's Memoirs of Soplica. This
 
 MICKIEWICZ 201 
 
 literature is strongest in the pure lyric. But it is the pro- 
 duct of a peaceful nation, a nation not prone to exaltation. 
 It is a literature of the common people, which clings to the 
 earth, not like the Polish, a soaring and flaming poetry, 
 which throws its light over the whole horizon, and loses 
 itself in the clouds. 
 
 Or let us consider Finland, with her Runeberg, who 
 has analogies with Mickiewicz. Fanrick Stals Sdgner, which 
 treats of the contest for Finland in the year 1810, is cer- 
 tainly the nearest European counterpart to Pan Tadeusz. 
 The author describes the Finnish national character, as it 
 appeared during the war, just as Pan Tadeusz presents the 
 Polish national character of the same time. There is no 
 national hatred in any of these poems. The only Russian 
 officer who figures in the Finnish poetic cycle, Kulneff, is 
 the type of a noble enemy, high-minded and gentle; the 
 only Russian officer who figures in the Polish epic, Rykow, 
 is an honourable man, incorruptible, faithful, and brave. 
 
 What is lacking in Runeberg is the lofty national self- 
 criticism, which distinguishes Mickiewicz, and the poets 
 of Poland as a whole. His Finns are heroes, heroes " in 
 winter dress," heroes in tatters sometimes, but always heroes. 
 They have almost no faults. In spite of all their glowing 
 love for their countrymen, the poets of Poland are far more 
 synthetic, painting the frail as well as the strong side of 
 the inherited character of their nation. To be sure they 
 have had a far richer material at their command ; they 
 were not an undeveloped people like the Finns, whose lan- 
 guage even lacked all literary form and polish, but a people 
 with the lights and shadows of a thousand years of civilisa- 
 tion. 
 
 The peculiar situation of Poland necessarily modifies 
 the points of view from which we contrast Classicism and 
 Romanticism elsewhere. 
 
 When we read Mickiewicz's poem, Romanticism, with its 
 dogma that the superstitions of the people are worth more 
 than classical rationalism, we note in this enthusiasm for a 
 belief in ghosts, and this hatred for cold acumen, which 
 observes through the microscope, something which is
 
 202 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 common to Romanticism in all countries, nay, something 
 wearisomely romantic. The romanticists everywhere feel a 
 satisfaction in leading the swelling currents of new emotion 
 into spiritual beliefs and popular superstition. Everywhere 
 also there is a connection between the advent of Romanti- 
 cism in literature, and the great religious reaction of the 
 nineteenth century against the indifference to all dogma of 
 the eighteenth. 
 
 But there are two circumstances which nevertheless give 
 Polish Romanticism a peculiar character. Firstly, the 
 opposing catholic tendency had not the mediaeval feudal 
 stamp as elsewhere. Secondly, the double contrast of 
 Classicism and Romanticism, Liberalism and Conservatism, 
 did not obtain here as in so many other countries. In France, 
 for instance, Romanticism from the beginning was suspected 
 not only as hostile to enlightenment but as legitimist. Victor 
 Hugo's first odes and ballads were both anti-Voltairean and 
 loyal. The most distinguished opponent of the Romanticists 
 was the celebrated liberal, Armand Carrel, the recognised 
 leader of the French republicans. In Poland, on the con- 
 trary, the opponents of Romanticism (men like Sniadecki, 
 Beku, Osinski) were usually officials, and conservative in 
 their political convictions, while from the very first Romanti- 
 cism was rightly regarded as oppositional. 
 
 As the recognised laureate of a whole nation in the first 
 half of the nineteenth century Mickiewicz occupies a 
 position, which finds a parallel in that of Oehlenschlaeger 
 and Tegnr. But apart from all other dissimilarities, 
 there is this difference between Mickiewicz and the two 
 Norse poets, that when the latter employed their talents to 
 glorify their nation, they chose the material of its legendary 
 world or worked out themes from its antiquity, its middle 
 ages, or even a more distant past, substantially without 
 ever describing the life they themselves had had the oppor- 
 tunity of observing, while Mickiewicz, especially where he 
 is at his best (as in Pan Tadeusz and certain parts of 
 Dziady) reproduces a life he has seen with his own eyes, or 
 a life the memory of which still hovers in the air about 
 him.
 
 ROMANTIC POETS OF POLAND 203 
 
 This is the secret of his superiority over a whole army 
 of contemporary national poets ; it is this which gives his 
 Romanticism and that of several of his contemporaries 
 in Poland a comparatively modern stamp. At that time 
 they did not yet feel in Europe that the poet must be 
 the offspring of his age as a rule ; they were too strongly 
 attracted by distant times or foreign countries. The results 
 in their descriptions of mankind, oftener than not, were 
 beings who never existed and never could exist, beings 
 whose spiritual life was created by the subtraction of a great 
 many qualities which only modern men can have, and by the 
 mechanical addition of qualities which the poet's reading 
 had taught him were found in the past. Not in consequence 
 of a correct theory, but by virtue of a sound instinct, 
 Mickiewicz resorted to an old subject or a distant period only 
 when political considerations made it easier for him to express 
 what he had at heart, when the fundamental thought con- 
 cealed itself behind an allegory, as is the case in Grazyna and 
 Wallenrod. 
 
 Throughout the romantic literature of Poland, we find 
 here and there traits so realistic that they do not seem to 
 belong to the period. In some of the poets the observ- 
 ance of reality is carried so far, that they even introduce 
 living or recently deceased persons into their poems. But 
 that which is peculiarly Polish, is that hand in hand with 
 the hankering after reality and futurity there is an uncon- 
 querable tendency to abstraction, allegory, and superstition. 
 They are at once realists and spiritualists. 
 
 Two circumstances united to make their poems abstract 
 and allegorical : first, the propensity to mysticism which lay 
 in the inmost recesses of their souls and which, after having 
 slumbered for a while, was easily awakened in them all, since 
 they had been educated as Catholics from the first ; in the 
 next place, the political oppression, the consideration of the 
 censorship which compelled them to describe their thoughts 
 by circumlocution, and etherealise the outlines of the beings 
 whom they painted. 
 
 There were, in particular, two great persons, at that time 
 recently deceased, who had set the forces of imagination
 
 204 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 in motion all over Europe, but who aroused greater enthus- 
 iasm here than in any other country outside of their native 
 lands : Napoleon and Byron. 
 
 It was the period when the cult of Napoleon was spread- 
 ing over Europe. The real being was forgotten ; genuine 
 historical research had not yet begun. Napoleon had 
 become a legend, which had deeply affected Henry Beyle, of 
 which Victor Hugo, B6ranger, and Heinrich Heine, each in 
 his own way, made themselves priests, and which Thiers 
 unfolded as a great epopee, accessible to the crowd. How- 
 ever little cause the Poles had to thank Napoleon, they had 
 attached such great hopes to him, that after the desolation 
 of the last years of his life and his impressive death had 
 cast a transfiguring light over his life, they continued to pay 
 honour to his shade as their liberator and saviour. 
 
 As the years passed by after his fall, he became the 
 superhuman, supernatural man to the popular fancy. To 
 the Romanticists he became an enigma. In those days 
 the eighteenth century was regarded as the time of 
 frivolous exposition. Here was a phenomenon which 
 could not be judged by ordinary standards of intellectual 
 observation. This awakened anew the quality of admira- 
 tion, which had been lost in the preceding century. They 
 thought that the prosaic English hated him because 
 he was incomprehensible to them. No human being had 
 been able to strike him down, nor any general but General 
 Frost and General Hunger. In the preface to Dawn 
 (Przedswit) Krasinski dates a new epoch from Napoleon. 
 He says : 
 
 " The age of Caesar has returned in that of Napoleon. 
 And the Christian Caesar, who is superior to his prede- 
 cessor by the achievement of nineteen centuries, and who 
 was perfectly clear as to himself and the object for which the 
 divine spirit, which leads the course of history, had sent 
 him dying, said on his rock of exile : ' The beginning of 
 a new period will be reckoned from me.' These words 
 contain a complete revelation concerning him and the 
 future." Mickiewicz in his mystic period reveres Napoleon 
 as a demi-god. He was no Gaul, he had no esprit, no wit,
 
 NAPOLEON AND BYRON 205 
 
 he felt himself drawn to the East. " Like all the greatest 
 men," says Mickiewicz with a turn which foreshadows 
 Disraeli, " Napoleon felt himself mysteriously at home 
 in the East." His life demonstrated to Mickiewicz the 
 existence of the invisible and mystic world. He believed in 
 omens, and acted on them ; he had direct intuition. There- 
 fore he is the man of the Slav race ; for the Slavs are a 
 people of intuition. And thus for Mickiewicz he becomes 
 the source of everything which the Polish people of that 
 time admire. 
 
 Again and again Mickiewicz contends that Napoleon 
 created Byron, and that Byron's life and glory had awakened 
 Pushkin, so that Napoleon had also indirectly engendered 
 the latter. 
 
 Since poetry, according to Mickiewicz's definition, is 
 action, Napoleon's life becomes the loftiest poetry. Nay, 
 even more ; his mission was to liberate nations and there- 
 by the whole world. (Preface to LlLglise et le Messianisme.) 
 And while St. Helena comes near to being a place of 
 suffering like Golgotha, a glimmer of the Passion of Christ 
 falls over the life and death of Napoleon. 
 
 The same propensity to uncritical transports, the same 
 enthusiasm for the dazzling, is brought to light in the 
 relations of these Slav poets to Byron. Thus poets so diverse 
 as Mickiewicz and Slowacki meet on common ground for 
 years in their Byronism. As Washington had made no 
 impression on them while Napoleon fascinated them, so not 
 one of them cared for Shelley, while Byron was on every- 
 body's lips. They believed in all seriousness that Byron was 
 the greatest lyric poet of England. 
 
 To make Byron's intellectual descent from Napoleon 
 more obvious, Mickiewicz, who had evidently no knowledge 
 of Wordsworth, or Coleridge, or Keats, or Shelley, wrote : 
 " I regard it as certain that the flash which kindled the fire 
 of the English poet came from the soul of Napoleon. How 
 could we otherwise explain this man's existence in the midst 
 of the jejune English literature of his day, a survival of the 
 former century ? . . . Byron's English contemporaries, in 
 spite of the example of his genius and the influence eman-
 
 206 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 ating therefrom, produced nothing which can be compared 
 therewith ; and after the death of the poet, English literature 
 sank back to the level of that of the past century." 
 
 Every sentence here is a blunder. Every one of the 
 contemporaries of Byron named above, so far as poetry is 
 concerned, several times reached his level, and in some 
 respects even excelled him. But undeniably no one of them 
 was so dazzling as he ; they were neither dandies and 
 poseurs in youth, nor theatrically heroic as men. Even he 
 who would by no means rob Byron of his undying honour 
 as a poet, and of his never-to-be-forgotten services as a 
 friend of freedom, must feel that in Poland he is estimated 
 as much by his false prestige as by his real greatness. 
 
 Nevertheless Napoleon and Byron have this merit in 
 common, that they drew the Poles out of their purely 
 national absorption. Polish literature had been national in 
 the sixteenth century, but it had lacked the stamp of common 
 humanity which makes a literature accessible to Europe 
 at large ; in the eighteenth century it had been cosmopolitan, 
 but in such a fashion that it ended in the French imitation of 
 classical culture without the deeper national stamp, which 
 makes a literature interesting to Europe. Sniadecki was a 
 friend and admirer of Delille, Bogomolec imitated the plays 
 of Moliere in a conventional and foreign style. This litera- 
 ture had become petrified in its slavish reverence for rules. 
 Now all barriers were broken down. A time of national 
 wandering had returned. The material boundaries were no 
 longer fixed, and the intellectual boundaries widened at the 
 same time. The Poles fought under Napoleon in the most 
 diverse countries, and Napoleon's hosts brought troops of 
 the most diverse races through Poland. So, too, in the 
 intellectual world, when the nations mingled intellectually, 
 the Poles found in the poetry of Byron the common 
 European despair and thirst for liberty, supplemented them 
 with their national peculiarities, and introduced them after 
 the manner of Byron to their countrymen. 
 
 Of the great poets whom the romantic school in Germany 
 had first revealed to the romanticists in all countries, Shake- 
 speare and Dante made the greatest impression in Poland.
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND DANTE 207 
 
 Slowacki especially appropriates Shakespeare's style and 
 manner of treatment. Nevertheless what made the most 
 impression in Shakespeare were the horrible events, the 
 murders and mutilations, which appear in some of the 
 historical plays and legendary tragedies. The Polish fancy 
 was attracted by that side of Shakespeare which is most 
 strikingly represented in his earlier drama, Titus Andronici4s, 
 with its accumulated horrors. Only rarely is this tempered 
 by the influence of the Shakespearean comedies, as in 
 Ballandyna. 
 
 But perhaps the kinship which the Polish authors of 
 this time felt for the great exiled Italian, whose poem was 
 separated from them by so many centuries, is most 
 significant. They were unhappy and exiled as he was ; 
 like him, they looked on at the political destruction of a 
 state by acts of violence, and sought, as he did, consolation 
 in penal sentences and prophecies. Krasinski especially is 
 under his influence, and through Krasinski, Slowacki. It 
 is the influence of the Inferno which can be most plainly 
 traced. Only rarely, as in some of Krasinski's poems, does 
 a form like that of Beatrice point towards a regenerate world 
 and a happy life. 
 
 Now just as the special fate of the nation determines 
 its receptiveness of foreign influence, it modifies, as we have 
 seen, the point of view in judging of opposing forces like 
 classicalism and romanticism, reaction and progress. It 
 acts on the character of the literature so strongly, because it 
 first acts on that of the writers. 
 
 They have much in common. They are all of aristo- 
 cratic birth, all educated in the Roman Catholic Church, all 
 passionate patriots. But they have this in common especially, 
 that they all left their country between twenty and thirty years 
 of age, and never returned. Even those authors among 
 them who had not taken part in the rebellion of 1830, went 
 away to a foreign land in order to write freely. Therefore 
 they all become emigrants and pilgrims, work as leaders who 
 have no firm connection with their people, and are never 
 sure of a following, and live in a state of hope constantly 
 deferred as to a general revolution in European politics.
 
 2o8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 All this together evoked a political Romanticism of a 
 special kind, very different from the reactionary German and 
 the humanitarian French varieties. 
 
 But what especially interests us in these men is to note 
 the influence of the emigrant's life on the emotional life 
 of the author. 
 
 They are enthusiasts by nature, and as romanticists, 
 enthusiasts by theory. The emigration gives their emotional 
 life something morbid, impatient, meaninglessly restless, be- 
 cause it doubles its exaltation. 
 
 Let us see what forms an elemental emotion like love 
 takes on with them. 
 
 Mickiewicz, who had long been in love with Eva 
 Ankwiczova, had even been religiously affected by her 
 childlike faith, nay, by her visions she had seen him in 
 white robes with a lamb in his arms suddenly leaves Rome 
 just as Eva's father is on the point of giving his consent to 
 their union, which he had for some time forbidden, and 
 never again seeks to see his loved one, th'e memory of whom 
 nevertheless fills his chief work, Pan Tadeusz. 
 
 Krasinski, who had paid homage to his friend, Madam 
 Delphine Potocka, in the most extravagant language as his 
 soul's sister, his muse, &c., as a minor, abandons his loved 
 one in obedience to his father, and marries another lady in 
 accordance with his father's wish. But at the same time he 
 writes to the deserted lady, whom he sings in his poem, The 
 Dawn : " Pray for me, that my eternal love for thee may not 
 drag me down to hell. Pray that I may sometime fight my 
 way to God in heaven to meet thee again ! " 
 
 Slowacki becomes acquainted with Maria Wodzinska, 
 while in Madam Patteg's pension on the lake of Geneva. 
 Both the two young people cherish a strong passion for each 
 other, and Slowacki's delicate and intellectual poem, In 
 Switzerland, survives as a memorial of the happy hours of 
 this love in beautiful surroundings. But the middle-aged 
 daughter of Madam Patteg, Eglantine, who is enamoured 
 of Slowacki, languishes and raves in her jealousy, and makes 
 scenes. This is enough to make the poet draw back from 
 his beloved, and the Wodzinski family depart. Slowacki
 
 TOWIANSKI 209 
 
 moves over to the other side of the lake of Geneva, writes a 
 poem to Eglantine, The Accursed, and then returns to her 
 again. 
 
 The passions, indeed, seem strong, but the characters 
 are weak. These poets leave their loved ones, not to save 
 themselves from the consequences of passion, nor from 
 fear of ties (like Goethe), nor because they have ceased to 
 love, or feel themselves drawn in another direction ; they 
 behave as if they had become a little unhinged. 
 
 As nomads or emigrants they are dependent, not lords 
 of their fate, and far too fantastical to lay out a practical 
 plan of life. They have no abiding place, no home. Their 
 upheaval from their paternal soil affects their characters, 
 makes them unstable, and increases their propensity to a 
 mystic intellectual life. 
 
 When in the beginning of the forties, Towianski, a Polish 
 nationalist visionary, a cross between Pere Enfantin and 
 Cagliostro, suddenly appears among them, most of them 
 fall under his power. And even those who do not follow 
 him, become none the less mystics, at least at some period 
 in their life. They die young, worn out long before old 
 age, either in monastic subjection, like the once indomitably 
 defiant Slowacki, or, like Krasinski, in a mental condition of 
 uninterrupted melancholy, to which he gave expression in 
 the words : " Thy people has been given to other races to 
 eat, for the renewal of their blood." 
 
 They were all religiously inclined or religiously educated. 
 They expected that an object was to be accomplished directly 
 or indirectly in every great event, consequently also in all 
 that most nearly concerned them; they traced a divine plan 
 in what they experienced in life. They did not understand 
 that a nation could be annihilated, blotted out from the 
 number of the living. When these Roman Catholics looked 
 out over human life and history, they could not conceive 
 that the bad and the hard-hearted, the cruel and the ruthless, 
 should prosper so greatly, and that God should make no 
 sign. They thought that the Almighty must have concealed 
 a mysterious meaning in all things, so that at last everything 
 must turn to good. 
 
 O
 
 2IO 
 
 If they believed it possible to decipher this meaning they 
 became preachers, seers, and prophets ; when they despaired 
 of finding this, they held their peace in disconsolate grief. 
 But all their thoughts and dreams revolved about the 
 mysterious significance of the great shipwreck their State 
 had suffered. 
 
 There is something deeply romantic in this. The 
 romantic intellect is (as I have elsewhere said) a kind of 
 atavism. It questions, as men in remote superstitious times 
 did. It asks for the significance of what happens, while 
 the modern intellect asks for its cause. Thus these minds 
 hardly ever seek the causes of Poland's fate, but they seek 
 with anguish, with poetic frenzy, and the added passion 
 of the religious visionary, to penetrate the darkness, to 
 learn the significance of that fate, and phantasy, enthusiasm, 
 and passion give the answer. 
 
 Generally they start from certain historical assertions as 
 dogmas. In the past of their nation we note traits of 
 character, peculiar and important, to be found in no other 
 nation. These traits emanated from pre - historic Slav 
 antiquity, and the future of the nation depended on loyalty 
 to these primitive national institutions (the assemblies of the 
 people, and the Slav communism in property, although the 
 latter is more Russian than Polish). The misfortune of the 
 nation was due to its defection from these. In other words, 
 they fastened on a little group of cognate ideas and principles, 
 which, as Spasovicz has expressed it, being inherent in the 
 nation from its origin should indicate its vocation. The great 
 and learned historian of that time, Lelewel, a writer some- 
 what earlier than the Romantic school, and one who in 
 many respects had a very strong influence on their funda- 
 mental theories, formulated this theory, which for one or two 
 generations was undisputed in Poland. 
 
 It might seem that the poets would have served their 
 people better if they, with their greater insight into the 
 powers which are effective in history, had presented the 
 causes of the disappearance of the nation as a State; their 
 readers would then have gained some insight into the 
 means of withstanding the national decay, and of aiding in
 
 EXALTATION OF POLISH POETRY 211 
 
 a resurrection. But, in reality, their poetry, by its very 
 obscure and prophetic character, has had a greater bearing 
 on the future of the nation than a lucid or even a logical 
 and convincing poetry could have had. Their over- 
 exaltation which explained nothing, but which was in itself 
 so explicable, inspired readers with an enthusiasm which, 
 in the political conditions they were in, was very useful, 
 nay, necessary. It inspired perseverance, self-reliance, firm 
 faith in the future, and obstinate optimism, which were 
 so much the more remarkable, as no country seemed likely 
 to offer a more fruitful soil for pessimism. 
 
 It is as if the poets had felt that their mission was to 
 give the people spiritual nourishment and a spiritual tonic 
 to support them on their way, even if this should lead them 
 on for some hundreds of years. Therefore in their works 
 they concentrated all their thoughts upon their own nation, 
 condensed and compressed patriotism, hope, hatred of 
 treason and wrong, confidence in the final victory of the 
 right, focussiug these emotions round a common centre in 
 a perfectly unique fashion. Hence they are not seekers of 
 truth but soothsayers. 
 
 In this way their poetry acquired a peculiar stamp both 
 religious and artistic. The idea of nationality which per- 
 meates everything with them, was embraced with a religious 
 heartiness in its essence, and the contest for it was accepted 
 as a duty of a religious nature. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that the Polish poetry of the 
 Romantic period, which superficially gives such a defective 
 picture of the condition of the country and of the people, 
 taken as a whole constitutes a sort of modern Bible, an Old 
 Testament with its books of the Judges and the Prophets, 
 with patriarchal descriptions (as we find in Rzewuski or 
 in Pan Tadeusz), with psalms (like Krasinski's), here and 
 there with representations of a Judith, of a struggle of the 
 Maccabees, or of a persecuted Job, and now and then with 
 a hymn of love, more ethereal, but far weaker than that of 
 old Palestine. 
 
 The whole may be regarded as a collection of national 
 books of devotion.
 
 212 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 The literature most distinctly assumes this character 
 from the time (1830) when the Polish nation next con- 
 ceives hopes, rises, and is crushed, and when its young 
 generation is sent to Siberia, and its poets emigrate, so that 
 we get three kinds of Polish literature that of those who 
 were transported, of those who emigrated, and of those who 
 remained at home. 
 
 In the eyes of the Poles the cause of Poland, far from 
 sinking from this moment, becomes for them the holy cause, 
 the country the holy country, the people the martyr people, 
 the people of freedom who suffer for the whole of humanity. 
 The symbolic importance they had once given to Napoleon 
 as the saviour of the nations, Poland itself now assumes, only 
 the picture shines with still more glowing colours. 
 
 Stephen Garczynski writes thus during the cannonade of 
 the redoubts of Warsaw : 
 
 " O my nation ! As the Saviour's wounded head for ever 
 impressed its bloody image upon a veil, so wilt thou, my 
 nation, stamp the bloody image of thy fate upon the whole 
 of this generation. Thou wilt throw this generation into 
 the face of Europe as were it Veronica's veil, and the history 
 of thy suffering will be read thereupon. And the time will 
 come, ye nations of Europe ! when your eyes and thoughts 
 will be fixed as if by enchantment on the bloody image of 
 the crucified nation." 
 
 Thus also cries the Abbot in the second part of Mickie- 
 wicz's Dziady in the great vision scene, which symbolises the 
 attitude of Russia, France, Prussia, and Austria towards 
 Poland. 
 
 " He has risen, the tyrant Herod ! O Lord ! see 
 the whole of young Poland given over into the hands of 
 Herod ! what do I see ? These white streaks are roads 
 which cross one another, roads which are so long that they 
 seem without end ! Through deserts, through drifts of snow 
 they all lead to the North. . . . See this multitude of 
 sleighs, which drive away like clouds, which are driven by 
 the wind, all in the same direction ! O heavens, they are 
 our children. . . . 
 
 " I see the whole of this troop of tyrants and execu-
 
 THE MARTYR NATION 213 
 
 tioners hastening to seize my fettered nation. The whole of 
 Europe mocks at it : To judgment ! The mob drags the 
 innocent to judgment. Beings who are nothing but tongues, 
 without hearts or arms, are their judges. And cries rise from 
 all sides : ' Callus, it is Gallus who shall judge this nation ! 
 Callus has not found it guilty, he washes his hands. But the 
 kings shout : Sentence it, give it to its executioners, the 
 blood be upon us and our children. Release Barabbas. 
 Crucify the Son of Mary, crucify him ! He has scoffed at 
 Caesar ! ' 
 
 " Gallus has delivered up my nation ; it is already bound ; 
 see, they exhibit its innocent face, soiled with blood as it is, 
 with a crown of thorns in derision about the forehead. And 
 the people hurry and Gallus shrieks : ' See, this is the free, 
 independent nation.' 
 
 " O Lord, already I see the cross. How long, how long 
 time yet shall my nation endure it ? Lord, have pity on thy 
 servant, give him strength that he may not fall down and 
 expire on the way. His cross has arms so long that they 
 stretch out over the whole of Europe ; it is made of three 
 nations which are as dried up as three withered trees. 
 
 "They drag my nation away, there it is, there on the 
 throne of sacrifice. The crucified one says : ' I thirst,' and 
 Ragiisa offers him vinegar, and Borus refreshes him with gall, 
 and his mother, Freedom, who stands at the foot of the cross, 
 lifts her head and weeps. . . . And see, the Muscovite 
 soldier runs up and thrusts his spear into his side." 
 
 This is the picture which impresses itself most deeply on 
 the memory, when one has studied the Polish poetry of 
 the first half of the century ; the pale profile of a martyred 
 nation which consoles itself that its suffering is its honour, 
 and that it suffers for the common cause of nations. 
 
 But the value of this romantic literature is not limited 
 to its significance for the people of Poland. Even if 
 European ignorance of the language in which it is written 
 has made it impossible for it to have a wide influence, it 
 yet has influenced the minds of other literatures (as 
 Mickiewicz influenced Pushkin, and as his Book of the 
 Polish Pilgrims was copied by Lamennais in The Word
 
 214 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 of a Believer) ; even now surprises and charms the foreigner 
 by the intensity of its emotional life, by its love for the ideal, 
 and, when it attains its highest level, by its vigorous pictures 
 of nature in Poland, of the steppes of the Ukraine, of the 
 forests of Lithuania, and of the human life in recent and 
 distant times, for which these surroundings form the natural 
 and indispensable background. 
 
 This group of poems showed to foreign countries the 
 presence of a sum of life, whose strength people had begun 
 to doubt, and which they did not know how to value. We 
 must always, in the first instance, demonstrate that we are 
 alive ; for, as Schiller says, the living are right. In the 
 next place, we must know how to show to friends and 
 enemies that we are in no respect behind them, that we 
 dare to measure ourselves against them, and that we have 
 other rights besides the mere right to live, namely, the rights 
 that pertain to culture and to intellectual superiority. 
 
 In both these respects the romantic poets of Poland 
 have demonstrated what it was necessary for them to show 
 to Europe.
 
 Ill 
 
 BRODZINSKI, THE PIONEER OF ROMANTICISM 
 POPULAR BALLADS THE UKRAINIAN POETS: 
 MALCZEWSKI, ZALESKI, GOSZCYNSKI 
 
 THE new literature had a forerunner, who bore the same 
 relation to it as did Herder to the German intellectual 
 revolution, and Steffens to the Danish ; Kasimir Brodzinski, a 
 man of a gentle, genial nature (born in 1791 in a country 
 town in Galicia), who lost his mother early, and who, badly 
 treated by his step-mother, took refuge in the servants' hall 
 and in the cottages of the peasants. He thus became early 
 familiar with the way of living and manner of thought 
 of the common people, and also with the national fairy 
 tales, traditions, and ballads. In other respects his educa- 
 tion was German. As in 1809, a part of Galicia had been 
 united to the grand-duchy of Warsaw, Brodzinski entered 
 the Polish army and took part in Napoleon's Russian cam- 
 paign of 1812. In 1813 he was taken prisoner at the 
 battle of Leipsic ; some years later he settled in Warsaw, 
 where in and after 1822 he delivered admirable lectures at 
 the University on Polish literature, Shakespeare, Goethe, 
 and Schiller, &c., and directed the attention of his hearers 
 to the value and quickening influence of popular national 
 poetry. Most of the members of the Ukrainian school of 
 poets, as well as Mickiewicz, received an impulse from him. 
 
 He had a rival, who, in the eyes of his contemporaries, 
 far eclipsed him, Osinski, also professor of the history of 
 literature in the University, the favourite of society, a 
 fanatical champion of the classical taste, a blind contemner 
 of the rising romantic poetry, and a brilliant speaker. 
 Brodzinski's voice was not strong, and his appearance was 
 simple, but his eloquence was genuine, and his influence on 
 young men very great.
 
 216 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Slightly under the influence of Goethe's Hermann and 
 Dorothea, he wrote the idyll, Wieslaw, a quiet love story, 
 enacted among the peasants of Cracow, which is read to 
 this day. With proud humility he called himself "the 
 modest village sexton, whose only service has been that 
 he awakened literature to its morning devotions before day- 
 break." 
 
 As a teacher he prized naturalness above everything, 
 naturalness in manners, in style, in poetry ; he turned the 
 minds of the young generation from classical localities, 
 " the regions of Arcadia," and exhorted its poets to sing of 
 their own beautiful land, " the soil on which thy youth was 
 passed, for which the sons of Sarmatia have poured out their 
 blood, and where thou shalt sometime lay down thy white 
 head, while the firs grow green over thy grave." 
 
 As an aesthete Brodzinski cannot be called a scientific 
 man ; he was less and more ; less, in so far as he lacked 
 methodical skill ; more, because what is called science in 
 this domain, may exist without originality, without judgment, 
 without the least perception of individuality, while genuine 
 literary production in its billowy life, in the lot and part, 
 which the personality, its mood and its art have in it, ex- 
 cludes direct scientific treatment. In him arose an author 
 who belonged at once to life and to the world of books. 
 He stood half-way between science and art, and above 
 science in the fields where mere science is no art. 
 
 The revolution of 1831 tore him away from his peaceful 
 labours, and threw him into a vortex of national fanaticism 
 which had hitherto been foreign to his being. Like so many 
 others, even of the greatest, he became convinced of the 
 Messianic mission of his fatherland and lost himself in 
 prophecies. In an essay on the nationality of the Poles 
 he wrote this sentence : " The Polish nation is the Coper- 
 nicus of the moral world ; it has discovered the law of 
 the attraction of all races to the central moral point the 
 idea of humanity ; it was granted to this nation to bring 
 the rights of the throne and of the people into equili- 
 brium on scales the beam of which stood fast in Heaven 
 itself."
 
 SLAV BALLAD POETRY 217 
 
 So strongly did the recent and apparently final defeat of 
 Poland affect the clearest and purest intelligences. 
 
 Popular ballads gave the first inspiration to this brood 
 of poets ; for this was the form most remote from the 
 classical. All the Slav nations and the Lithuanians, a race 
 allied to the Poles, possessed national ballads in great abund- 
 ance but of very unequal merit. The best is certainly the 
 Lithuanian ballad (Daino), in which a race far different from 
 the Slavs has incorporated everything poetical which it had 
 at heart. Servia's rich, popular poetry, now known over the 
 whole of Europe by translations and adaptations, had an 
 influence on Runeberg in the North. That of Poland is less 
 plastic, softer and milder, sometimes also lighter and gayer. 
 Finally, the poetry of the steppes and the boldness and 
 melancholy of its inhabitants live in the South Russian ballad, 
 the Duma of the Cossacks. 
 
 While yet a child, Mickiewicz learnt the Polish popular 
 ballads from an old servant. They are known in Denmark 
 only by two or three paraphrases in Hauch's Polish Family. 
 Among these is a long one which begins : 
 
 " Why, O birch tree, dost thou stand so solitary ? 
 On the heath in the winter and wind ? " 
 
 This little song is a paraphrase, in Shakespearean style, of 
 an ancient unrhymed popular ballad of the fifteenth or six- 
 teenth century. 
 
 " Birch tree, birch tree ! Beautiful birch tree ! why art 
 thou so sad ? Does the old white frost make thy sap 
 stiffen, or is it the wicked wind which blows upon thee ? Or 
 is it the brook which washes the earth from thy tender roots ? 
 
 " ' Sister Olga,' says the birch, ' the old white frost, and 
 the wind do not hurt me, neither does the brook. 
 
 " ' But from far, far distant lands came the Tartars, and 
 they broke my boughs and they kindled great fires and trod 
 down the grass, the beautiful green grass, round about me. 
 And where they built the fire, there the grass will never 
 grow any more. And where they rode through the crops 
 they look like the autumn stubble. 
 
 " ' And where their horses waded through the brooks, no
 
 2i8 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 beast will drink, and where their arrows strike, the wound 
 heals only in the grave.' " 
 
 Even before the greatest poet of Poland was inspired by 
 the Polish national ballads, the group of poets, which was 
 directly influenced by Brodzinski, pointed out the way to 
 Mickiewicz, studied the Cossack Duma, and lost them- 
 selves in the broad horizons of the steppes. This group 
 formed the so-called Polish Ukrainian school of poetry, 
 whose three greatest names are Malczewski, Zaleski, and 
 Goszczynski. 
 
 Anton Malczewski, born in 1793 in Wolhynia, died when 
 only thirty-three years old, unappreciated, nay, unknown. 
 He is the author of the most popular poem in Polish 
 literature, and perhaps the one most frequently republished 
 and illustrated, Marja, an Ukrainian Tale, in style recalling 
 Byron's early shorter epics. Malczewski was the son of a 
 Polish general, received the French culture of the fashion- 
 able world, entered the army under Napoleon, was severely 
 wounded, resigned his position as an officer, travelled in 
 foreign countries from 1816 to 1821, took part in the 
 amusements and pleasures of the society of the upper classes 
 till he lost his fortune and health, when he returned to 
 Wolhynia, settled in the country, and was drawn into an 
 intrigue with his cousin, the invalid wife of a neighbouring 
 landed proprietor, whom he restored to health by a magnetic 
 cure. She left her husband, and the two lived together for 
 some years in Warsaw, where Malczewski, who was now 
 very poor, supported himself by a private appointment, 
 until the uneasiness and importunity of his companion she 
 could not endure him to be away from home compelled 
 him to resign his position. Although very neurotic himself 
 and harassed by the exactions of an excessively neurotic 
 woman, he forced himself to the culminating work of his 
 life. Marja appeared in 1825, was unfavourably judged by 
 stupid critics, attracted no attention, and did not sell. 
 Malczewski died under the impression of this failure, and 
 when his death was announced in the newspapers of the 
 classicists, Osinski gave him these parting words : " He is 
 said to have tried his hand at Polish poetry."
 
 BYRON AND MALCZEWSKI 219 
 
 The important event in Malczewski's literary life was that 
 he became personally acquainted with Byron in Venice. 
 Byron was then thirty years old, Malczewski twenty-four, 
 both very fine-looking men. They belonged to the same 
 rank in society, were both melancholy and sensual, but the 
 former had a martial, the latter a sensitive and delicate nature. 
 It was natural that Malczewski should fall under the influence 
 of the great Englishman ; in return he (it is said) gave 
 Byron the idea of his poem Mazeppa. 
 
 The model of the hero of Marja was Felix Potocki, 
 who appears frequently in Polish literature, one of the 
 " fated chieftains " of the confederation of Targowice ; he is 
 here idealised into a handsome and blameless knight under 
 the name of Waclaw. As he had married a young lady of 
 the petty nobility against his father's will, the cruel and 
 artful father, after a pretended reconciliation, sent him and 
 his father-in-law away on an expedition against Crimean 
 brigands, and then caused his bride to be drowned by 
 masked men in the moat of the castle. 
 
 By placing this event in the times of the Tartar con- 
 tests, the poet has enabled himself to treat it in such a way 
 as to give himself the opportunity of playing on all the 
 strings, and using all the powers of which he was master. 
 He described the freedom, wildness, and silence of the steppes 
 of Ukraine, when he sang of the solitary Cossack who rode 
 over the steppes to carry the Wojewode's false message of 
 reconciliation ; dwelt lyrically on the character of the Cossack, 
 freeborn, yet so faithful to his lord ; gave with force and 
 precision the picture of the sortie of the Polish knightly 
 band, with the ring of the trumpets and the clatter of the 
 horses' hoofs under the Gothic portals ; and painted in 
 contrast the portrait of the solitary Marja, the ideal of the 
 gentle devoted Polish woman, the consolation and pride 
 of her father, who, when near him, lives for him, but who 
 ever and always is thinking of her beloved, her husband, 
 consumed by a longing for him, "the world of her soul," 
 whom, in the poem, she only sees for a few hours again 
 before she bids him an eternal farewell. 
 
 The conversations between the lovers are reproduced
 
 220 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 with sentimental enthusiasm, the battle between the Poles 
 and the Tartars is depicted with great impetuosity ; the 
 fundamental traits of the two different races of men stand 
 out sharply, and we are sensible of the significance of the 
 conflict between civilisation and barbarism in those times, 
 when the campaigns of the Poles were directed against 
 perpetrators of violence of the most cruel kind, and their 
 self-defence became the bulwark of Europe. And in the 
 next place the poet has drawn a skilful contrast between 
 the uproar of the masked men at home, and the fury of the 
 battle-field ; the former concerned with the murder of a 
 defenceless woman, and the latter taking place to protect 
 that home which was being destroyed at the same 
 moment. 
 
 The murder of the young woman is not described at 
 all ; we see that the author shrank from it. Hardly anything 
 is made of Waclaw's meeting with the corpse, although his 
 longing for the living woman on the ride home is very 
 strongly emphasised. Where his imaginative power failed 
 him, the poet understood how to conceal the want by 
 setting the reader's fancy in action, while he opens up 
 possibilities, suggests a great deal, leaves a great deal 
 undetermined. 
 
 Malczewski, in his treatment of this theme of his native 
 country, was influenced, as we cannot fail to note, by re- 
 miniscences of his travels. When he opens the second canto 
 (like the first) with a description of the steppes, he draws 
 a parallel between their natural characteristics and those of 
 the beauties of nature in Italy, and declares that the 
 depressed man who would be cured of his melancholy, 
 must hie to the south, since the melancholy uniformity 
 of the steppes only lays bare the wounds of the heart. 
 When the masked men are about to enter into the castle 
 with a song, the author is also full of Italian reminiscences. 
 The carnival at Venice was before his eyes with its gaiety, 
 as a contrast to this horrible mummery, and he has mingled 
 the tones of a dirge with the gay song of the masqueraders, 
 much as Victor Hugo would have done. 
 
 Partly in memory of his association with Byron and his
 
 THE POET ZALESKI 221 
 
 influence, partly as an expression of something Polish and 
 personal, Malczewski introduces a mysterious page, who is 
 present when the preparations are made for the murder, and 
 who later meets Waclaw, and jumps upon his horse behind 
 him, when he rides away for revenge. Of him the poet 
 sings : " Who was he, the young man with the tearful look ? 
 Angel or devil ? Was it the spirit of his misfortune ? Will 
 he add to the pangs of Waclaw ? Share his sorrow ? I 
 know not ! He embraces him and they disappear at a 
 gallop." Elsewhere this young page says of himself : " I am 
 a foreigner in my native land, my fate has left black scars 
 on my breast. That I, so young, was compelled to eat the 
 poisoned bread of the world, it is that which has burdened 
 my heart and set my tears flowing. . . . When I sing a 
 song, the melody is sad." It is plain that in a naive and 
 awkward manner the author here introduced his own per- 
 sonality into the poem, which was to survive him, and make 
 him famous after his death. 
 
 To the Ukrainian group of poets in addition to a series 
 of minor intellects (Padura, who became a wandering ballad 
 singer, and Grabowski, who wrote Ukrainian melodies), 
 belong the two Zaleski and Goszczynski, both greatly 
 influenced by Brodzinski's lectures, with their references to 
 the nature of their own country. 
 
 Bohdan Zaleski (born in 1802), who, after a silence of 
 more than a generation, died two or three years ago in 
 Paris, is not, like Malczewski, the poet of the Polish nobility, 
 but of the Cossacks. Again and again he has praised, in 
 verse, his beloved steppes, his Dnieperland, and in fact he 
 has sung of nothing else. He himself says that for him 
 the carol of the birds, the ditties of the young girls, and the 
 songs of the men in praise of the Attaman, flowed together 
 into a single living song, which he drank in a full draught. 
 Mildly and elegiacally he sings the longing for the steppes, 
 the yearning for the scenery of the Ukraine, the dangerous 
 life and the solitary death that are the lot of the Cossack. 
 Placable and gentle, he passes over the time when Poland 
 harassed and oppressed the Cossacks, who rose in continual 
 conflicts against his native land, and goes back to the peace-
 
 222 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 ful times of the sixteenth century, which again he purges of 
 everything grotesque and brutal. His best known poem, 
 The Holy Family, a somewhat bloodless Christian idyll (which 
 treats of the time after the Passover in Jerusalem, when 
 Christ was a child, describes the uneasiness of the parents 
 until He was found teaching in the temple, and paints with 
 delicate colours the tone within and without this temple), is 
 mainly valuable for the picture of the pilgrims' journey to 
 and from Jerusalem in the fragrant spring, the bivouacs 
 under the open heavens, with the frugal supper obtained 
 from the country village, and the shouts of the children 
 around the camp-fire a picture which is an exact repro- 
 duction of what he had seen on the steppes of his native 
 land, when the South Russian pilgrims went on pilgrimages 
 to their holy places at Easter only that there is not the 
 boldness in the description which the subject demands, but 
 the bland mildness of miniature-painting. 
 
 After the revolt of 1831 was ended, Zaleski emigrated, 
 and soon after, like other greater poets, became in Paris a 
 votary of Towianski's fanaticism. Later, he turned back 
 from mysticism to orthodox Roman Catholicism, and wrote 
 a long, shallow poem, in the ascetic spirit. 
 
 Severin Goszczynski (born in 1803, died in 1876) came 
 from a village in the department of Kief, was educated as a 
 comrade of Padura, Crabowski, and Zaleski, as a young man 
 was mixed up in a conspiracy, took part in the revolt in 
 1830, and afterwards emigrated to Paris, but later came 
 back to Austrian Poland. 
 
 His chief work, The Castle in Kam6w (1828), which 
 treats of a sanguinary revolt of the peasants of the last half 
 of the eighteenth century, is a poem rich in romantic 
 horrors, represented with an undaunted eye and a firm 
 hand. Goszczynski was a gloomy, superstitious, martial 
 being, with great dramatic gifts, who dwells by preference on 
 outbursts of violent passion, scenes of murder, madness, and 
 fire. While Byron's spleen and melancholy gave Malczewski 
 courage to give expression to cognate traits, it was Byron's 
 taste for wildness and violence which appealed to Goszczynski. 
 His soul vibrated at the recollection of the war of exter-
 
 GOSZCZYNSKI 223 
 
 mination waged against each other by the Polish nobility 
 and the Cossacks ; he dwells on the hot desire and cold 
 cruelty of the men, and the ungovernable love of the 
 women, leading them to madness or murder in order to 
 free themselves, and he loses himself, without trembling, in 
 visions of the massacres of that time, of punishments such as 
 impalement, and the red glare of burning castles.
 
 IV 
 
 MICKIEWICZ AND GOETHE PARIS AND THE ODE 
 TO YOUTH YOUTH OF MICKIEWICZ MICKIE- 
 WICZ AND PUSHKIN 
 
 ONE day in August 1829, two young Poles arrived at 
 Weimar, in order, if possible, to make the acquaintance of 
 the great Goethe. They had letters of introduction to his 
 daughter-in-law, Madam Ottilie, whose maiden name was 
 Pogwisch, and to him, also, from a Polish artist of high 
 standing, the court pianist, Madam Szymanowska, of St. 
 Petersburg. 
 
 They were well received, and were remarkably popular, 
 not only in Goethe's house, but also in all the best society 
 of Weimar, and they well deserved it, for they belonged to 
 those persons who amply repay the hospitality shown to 
 them. They were Adam Mickiewicz, at that time thirty 
 years of age, and his twenty-six-year-old friend, Odyniec, 
 the most enthusiastic and amiable Patroclus any Achilles 
 could desire. 
 
 Odyniec's natural and graceful letters from Weimar show 
 us, as in a mirror, what the widely celebrated little city was 
 in the days when Goethe had reached his eightieth year, and, 
 in addition, describe with a delicate gift of observation, even 
 if not without partiality, the contrast between the two 
 greatest poets of Germany and Poland, when one was an 
 old man, and the other in all the vigour of his youth. 
 
 We hear the old and the young master talk, and their 
 utterances deal with the life of the moment. The descrip- 
 tion of the first visit to Goethe is delightful, when they were 
 admitted, after having waited for a while, with frightful 
 beatings of the heart. We actually hear the accents of 
 Goethe's enthusiastic exclamation concerning Madam Szy- 
 manowska: " Elle est charmante; comme elle est belle et
 
 MICKIEWICZ AT WEIMAR 225 
 
 gracieuse ; comme elle est charmante ! " And later, the little 
 party at the house of Madam Ottilie, when young Odyniec was 
 so fascinated by the charming Madam Vogel. Goethe asks him 
 the good-natured question : " Nun, wie gefallen denn Ihnen 
 unsere Damen ? " and the young Pole, not yet entirely perfect 
 in the German language, answers, smiling : " Paradiesischen 
 Vogel, Excellenz," meaning to say, " Paradiesvogel." 1 
 
 One day when Odyniec had taken breakfast with the 
 Vogels, and remained so long that he missed the dinner- 
 hour in the hotel, on his return he found Adam at the table 
 from which the cloth had been removed, with two French 
 gentlemen. They wanted him to help them to the name of 
 Poland's greatest poet. But he constantly mentioned names 
 which they rejected as wrong. One of them said : " Non, 
 Non ! ce n'est pas le nom ! Mik . . . Mis . . . Mik . . . 
 Eh ! qui est done votre grand poete ? " Mickiewicz looked 
 significantly at Odyniec and nodded his head gently, then 
 proposed the name of Krasinski, and, during the indig- 
 nation of the Frenchmen at the ignorance of the Poles of 
 their own literature, Adam rose and went to his room. 
 The gentlemen, the elder of whom was the celebrated 
 sculptor, David d' Angers, who had come to Weimar to 
 make a bust of Goethe, now turned to Odyniec, asking if he 
 did not know the name of Poland's greatest poet. " Probably 
 you mean Adam Mickiewicz," he replied. When David 
 broke out : " Exactly, exactly, it is of him that I wished to 
 speak ; " he received the answer : " It is he who just went 
 out of the door." " Oh, how droll, but it is so. I have his 
 picture in a Spanish cloak." 
 
 It was the well-known portrait of Mickiewicz, leaning 
 against the rock Ajudagh. 
 
 David immediately seeks Mickiewicz in his room, and 
 finds this changeable being, who was just now gloomy and 
 indifferent, genial and gay. During the lively conversa- 
 tion according to the enthusiastic description of Odyniec 
 Adam suddenly grows to a giant and shoots forth sparks 
 like a Vulcan, so that David, wholly carried away, begs 
 
 1 " Well, what do you think of our ladies ? " " Paradisaical birds, your Excellence " 
 (for Birds of Paradise). The play on the name Vogel (bird) is lost in translation. TR. 
 
 P
 
 226 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 permission to execute his portrait as a medallion. On a 
 succeeding day he persuades the poet to read aloud to him 
 something of his own in a French prose translation. 
 Mickiewicz reads the poem, which is certainly the best of 
 his short poems, Farts. The strongest part of it is as 
 follows : 
 
 " How happy is the Arab when he lets his horse leap 
 out into the desert from a block of stone ! The horse's feet 
 sink into the sand with a dull sound as when the glowing, 
 red-hot steel is plunged into the water. So he swims away 
 in the golden sea of sand, and parts the dry waves with his 
 breast. 
 
 " Faster, even faster ! Already his hoofs hardly touch 
 the plain of sand. Farther, farther ! He has already vanished 
 in a cloud of dust. 
 
 " He is black, my steed, like a thunder-cloud. A star 
 shines on his forehead. He spreads his withers like an 
 ostrich wing before the wind, and his white hoofs flash 
 lightning. 
 
 " Fly, fly, my brave horse with the white hoofs ! You 
 forests, you mountains, place, place ! 
 
 " The cliffs, the watchmen of the boundaries of the 
 desert, turn their dark faces toward me, repeat the echo 
 of my gallop, and seem to threaten me. It is as if they 
 shouted, Whither does this madman go ? There where he 
 is hastening there are neither any palms with their green 
 crowns, nor any tent with its white breast for shelter against 
 the arrows of the sun. There sleep only the mountains, 
 there only the stars pursue their course. 
 
 " I hasten, hasten. When I turn my head, I see the 
 shamefaced cliffs flying and hiding one behind the other. 
 
 " But a vulture has heard their threats. It is stupid 
 enough to believe that it can make me its prey here in the 
 desert, and it swings down through the air towards me. 
 Three times it sighs around my head and encompasses me 
 as with a black crown. 
 
 " ' I scent,' it croaks, ' the smell of death. O mad knight ! 
 O mad horse ! Does the knight seek a path here ? Here 
 lies only death, here only vultures fly.'
 
 227 
 
 "He shrieked and threatened me with his shining claws. 
 Three times we measured each other with our eyes. Which 
 of us quailed first ? The vulture. I hasten, I hasten, and 
 when I turn my head, I see the vulture far, far away like a 
 black spot on the heavens, at first as large as a sparrow, 
 then as a butterfly, then as a gnat, and then it vanishes in 
 the blue of the heavens. 
 
 " Fly, fly, my brave horse with the white hoofs ! Ye cliffs, 
 ye vultures, place, place. 
 
 " Then I let my eyes run round the circle of sight as if I 
 were the sun himself and I saw no one all around me. Here 
 sleeping nature has never been wakened by man. Here the 
 elements rest peacefully, just as beasts on a newly discovered 
 island do not fear the sight of man. 
 
 " But Allah ! I am not the first, not the only one 
 here. Are they travellers or robbers, who are lying in 
 wait? .How white they are, the horsemen! And their 
 horses are also hideously white. I fly towards them ; they 
 do not move. I shout, they answer not. Allah ! It is 
 death. A caravan long since buried in the sand, from which 
 the storm has now blown the sand away ! On the bony sides 
 of the camels sit skeletons of Arabian men ! Through the 
 holes where eyes once sat, the sand flows out and seems to 
 mumble a threat : The madman ! why does he ride hither ? 
 He will soon meet the hurricane. 
 
 " I hasten, I fly O death, hurricanes ! place, place. 
 
 " But the hurricane comes, the most fearful of Africa's 
 disturbers of peace, which move solitary over the sea of 
 sand ; it seems to me to be far away ; it is surprised, it stops ; 
 it whirls around me as if saying to itself ; What younger 
 brother of mine among the winds is this, which, so feeble 
 in growth and so slow in flight, ventures into my old kingdom 
 of the deserts ? It roars and comes towards me like a 
 pyramid in motion. But when it sees that I am only a 
 man and do not step aside, it stamps, raging, on the ground 
 and leaps over half of Arabia. It seizes me as a kite does 
 a sparrow ; it strikes me with its whirling wings, burns me 
 with its flaming breath, hurls me up into the air and throws 
 me down on the earth. I jump up and fight against it,
 
 228 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 tear apart the gigantic knots of its whirls. I bite it ; crush 
 with my teeth whatever I can get hold of in its body of 
 sand. It would like to slip out of my arms, but it cannot 
 tear itself loose and it grows weak. Its head falls back, 
 dissolved in a shower of dust, and its immense corpse 
 stretches itself out at my feet like the rampart before a 
 city. 
 
 " Then I took breath, lifted up my eyes and looked 
 proudly on the stars, and all the stars looked steadily down 
 on me with their eyes of gold ; for they did not see any- 
 thing but me in the desert. Oh how sweet it is to breathe 
 here, to breathe in and out, in full draught of a full heart ! 
 I breathe freely, fully, deeply. All the air of Arabia is 
 hardly enough air for my lungs. Oh how sweet it is to 
 look around as far as the eye can reach ; my eyes are 
 enlarged, strengthened ; their gaze already pierces through 
 the circle of vision. Oh how sweet it is to stretch one's 
 arms out freely, peacefully, to their full length ! I feel as 
 if I could embrace the whole world from East to West. 
 My thoughts fly like an arrow, higher, higher, higher up 
 yet into the abyss of the heavens. And as the bee entombs 
 his life with the sting with which it pierces, so I hurl and 
 pierce with my thought my whole soul into the vault of 
 heaven." 
 
 David gave a bound in the chair on which he was 
 sitting modelling his medallion with a bit of wood which he 
 had splintered from a stick which lay behind the stove. 
 " How did you hit on that ? " he asked. 
 
 " I like that," answered Mickiewicz ; " there you see 
 the artist who wants to know the conditions under which 
 the work came into existence, and had to come." And 
 he related that while still very young he had read some 
 Oriental poems in a French translation and how one 
 day in St. Petersburg, as he was leaving a gay dinner party 
 and saw that a storm was coming up, he had taken a 
 droshky and said to the driver that he must hurry. And 
 the driver let the horse go as fast as the reins and 
 harness would allow, and this chasing and rattling, the 
 soughing of the blast, the rolling of the thunder, and
 
 THE "ODE TO YOUTH" 229 
 
 more than all this, his delight in the rapid movement, 
 awakened the melody of Farts in his mind, and the poem 
 was completed the same night. 
 
 This poem is admirable not only for its grand fan- 
 tasy but for its vigorous youthful force. There is in it a 
 pride, a self-assurance, which the poet's first readers needed ; 
 it encouraged them not to succumb. There is no Goethe- 
 like self-limitation here, none of Schiller's sense of the dis- 
 tance between the ideal and the reality. It is the apotheosis 
 of endless temerity. 
 
 And it is indeed quite in the same spirit as the cele- 
 brated Ode to Youth, which Mickiewicz completed soon after. 
 This ode has been called his first political poem, although 
 in itself it is entirely unpolitical, but, without any intention 
 on the part of the author, it became the Marseillaise of the 
 Polish youth : 
 
 " He who as a boy has already killed serpents will 
 as a youth be able to strangle centaurs, wrest from hell 
 its spoil, and win laurels in heaven. Mount so high that 
 no eye can follow. Break and demolish what intellect 
 alone does not break. Youth ! thy flight is the flight of 
 the eagle and thy arm leads the lightning. Let us 
 place ourselves arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, and 
 surround the world with a chain, collect our thoughts to 
 a single flame and all our souls to a single hearthstone ! 
 And thus, old world ! out of thy tracks ! we will thrust thee, 
 old earth, out into new paths and peel off thy decayed shell, 
 that the spring of thy youth may blossom on thee ! " 
 
 Reading this lyric, we understand Odyniec's joyful out- 
 burst about his friend, when he says that in the conver- 
 sations with Goethe, Adam's words were glowing metal, 
 Goethe's bright, cold coins. But we also understand the 
 amazement of the conventionally educated young Pole at 
 Goethe's whole manner of thinking and feeling. It is 
 specially when the conversation in Goethe's house turns 
 on the natural sciences that both the Poles have occasion 
 to wonder at Goethe's purely pagan contemplation, while 
 they themselves are all fire and flame, devotion and faith. 
 Goethe at times expresses one simple and weighty thought
 
 230 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 after the other. Odyniec quotes some expressions, taken 
 directly from the lips of the old man : tl La nature a Vattrait 
 et la charme de tinfini. We must be consistent in our in- 
 vestigation, and Nature deceives no one. Nature's treasures 
 are enchanted ; no spade, but a word discloses them to the 
 eye. I have often been at war with Nature, but I have 
 always ended by asking her to forgive me." And many 
 other similar sentences. He writes home to a friend in 
 Poland thus : " If you are already astonished that here 
 the talk is only of Nature, what will you say if I tell you that 
 this term recurred at least two hundred times and that the 
 word 'God' was not mentioned once? As if Nature were 
 one and all, Alpha and Omega, its own creator and deity ! 
 This is, then, the Pantheism, which I have hitherto, God 
 be praised ! only known by report, and which I believed 
 was only proclaimed by people who spoke against their 
 own better convictions, and did not understand what they 
 themselves said. But to-day it was otherwise. Everything 
 that Goethe said, and even everything which he did not 
 say plainly, was clear. And this clearness, this winter-light 
 chilled me with such coldness, that even the radiant glances 
 of my beautiful companion at the table (Madam Vogel) 
 only struck on my heart like the rays of the sun on snow 
 which it cannot melt. I looked inquiringly over to Adam, 
 in order to guess his thoughts ; but he sat gloomy and 
 silent." And Odyniec rejoices that his great friend still be- 
 lieves, as he says in Dziady, that there was some one who 
 hung the weights in the clock of the world, and that the 
 Polish prophet thus distinguishes himself from the German 
 Titans. For him Goethe is the wise man : " who does 
 not know the living truth, sees no miracle," and he applies 
 to himself with reference to Goethe the words of Mickie- 
 wicz's poem, Romanticism : " Emotion and faith speak more 
 strongly to me than the eye and the telescope of a sage." 
 And then follows a criticism of Faust, dismay at the creed, 
 that God is only an emotion, which man draws from nature, 
 and every name a mere sound. What is this Faust ? Satire ? 
 Irony ? Insult ? and against what is it directed ? he asks. 
 Against German scholasticism, or the everlasting moral laws
 
 
 231 
 
 and truths, emotions and ideas, traditions and aims of all 
 humanity. He asks Mickiewicz for counsel, and we see 
 that the latter is content with excusing Geothe : "We must 
 always recognise that he never takes the offensive against 
 religion as the authors of the last century did, but is only in- 
 different to the fundamental religious truths." "Consequently 
 not eighteen, but twenty less two ! " bursts out Odyniec. 
 
 So foreign was Goethe's view of life to Mickiewicz. 
 The nature of the latter shines out in its Polish individuality 
 when we place him by the side of the greatest poetical genius 
 of Germany. 
 
 He was born in 1798 in the little village of Zaosie near 
 Nowogrodek in Lithuania, a descendant of an old noble 
 family. In the spring of 1812, when he was thirteen years 
 old, he saw the armies of Napoleon march through Poland 
 on the campaign against Russia, Poland's white eagle united 
 with the golden eagle of the empire. The King of West- 
 phalia had his headquarters in Mickiewicz's ancestral home at 
 Nowogrodek. The hopeful and martial spirit of the times 
 filled the child's soul and fertilised that of the man. He says 
 in Pan Tadeusz : 
 
 " O Spring ! to have seen thee in our home that great 
 year, thou memorable Spring of War, thou Spring of ferti- 
 lity ! O Spring ! to have seen thee with flowers in masses, 
 with the green of the fields and woods, and the pomp of 
 warriors in battle array, rich in miracles and achievements, 
 and with a thousand hopes in thy lap, memory great and 
 fair, thou fillest me even to-day. Born and bred in thral- 
 dom, as a child an exile in chains, I have never in my life 
 known but one such Spring." 
 
 In 1815 Mickiewicz came to the University of Wilna, 
 began to study philology, and formed an intimate friendship 
 with the afterwards well-known Thomas Zan, the soul of 
 the private society of the Philomathians and of the public 
 society of the Philaretans, both of which recall the Ger- 
 man Tugendbund, non-political associations having the in- 
 tellectual and moral development of the students as their 
 aim, which were, however, soon to be overtaken by the 
 suspicion and persecuting fury of the Russian authorities.
 
 232 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 After having made his first essays in composition in a 
 purely classical style like Oehlenschlaeger and Victor Hugo 
 Mickiewicz turned to the new European romanticism. 
 Here, as in England, it was Burger's Lenore which called 
 forth a new ballad poetry. Itself evoked by old English 
 ballads, the poem had so strong an influence on Walter Scott 
 that he made his debut with a translation of it. A version 
 by the Russian poet Zukowski made so deep an impres- 
 sion on Mickiewicz that he adopted an entirely new style 
 and composed a whole series of ballads, one of which, called 
 The Flight, even treats of the same theme as Lenore. These 
 poems, which are founded upon local popular traditions or 
 Slav superstitions, are now romantic in the tone of popular 
 ballads, now vigorously dramatic like the admirable song of 
 the Wojewode immoral as a poem in prose by Merimee 
 or again humorous, like the description of the terror of the 
 devil at a termagant in Madam Twardowska. 
 
 Mickiewicz had had a first " unhappy love," as it was 
 called, a passion on which the poets of that time (Byron, 
 Heine, and many others) lived poetically for a long time. 
 He had already fallen in love in Nowogrodek with a young 
 girl of good family, Maria Wereszczaka (celebrated in his 
 verse by the name of Marylka), who preferred another to him. 
 In the condition of erotic desperation, which he was now 
 experiencing, Byron became his only reading, and he wrote 
 the oldest parts of Dziady (the Festival of the Dead), which, 
 in connection with an old Lithuanian custom of placing 
 food and drink in the churchyards for the dead on All 
 Souls' Day (the 2nd of November), introduces peasants, 
 shepherds, an exorcist, and a great number of spirits on an 
 imaginary stage. Among these spirits is a suicide, the victim 
 of unhappy love. In other fragments this suicide called 
 Gustavus, after the hero in Madam de Kriidener's sentimental 
 romance Valerie appears as a ghost, who is condemned 
 every year, on the 2nd of November, to suffer his agony of 
 mind again. All these fragments, full of romantic ghosts 
 and overstrained emotion, are without interest to the foreign 
 reader. Werther and Werther's offspring appear on the scene 
 again. Immediately after, however, came the little heroic
 
 IMPRISONMENT OF MICKIEWICZ 233 
 
 poem, Gracyna, which treats in fresh verse an old Lithuanian 
 motive of patriotism and female bravery, and in this there 
 was nothing obscure or mawkish ; the form is clear, and 
 the intellectual impulse vigorous. 
 
 After two or three years' residence in Kowno as a 
 teacher, Mickiewicz returned to Wilna, where events soon 
 revolutionised the calm life he had hitherto led. The murder 
 of Kotzebue by Sand had helped on the reaction in Germany. 
 It was awakened at the same time in the great neighbouring 
 land. 
 
 Alexander's liberal tendencies came to an end with the 
 year 1823. The authorities began to hunt out attempts at 
 rebellion on the part of the students. Nowosilcow, who had 
 fallen into disgrace, after having squandered in excesses what 
 he had scraped together in all sorts of ways, set himself to 
 discover a conspiracy in Poland, and went with his whole staff 
 of spies to Lithuania. All the monasteries in Wilna, eight in 
 number, besides several other public buildings, were made 
 into prisons. At the end of October, 1823, Mickiewicz, Zan, 
 and all their friends were arrested. The young men were 
 confined in cells, but could see each other in the evening in 
 the cloisters. How long they were there they did not rightly 
 know ; they had no almanac and received no letters ; there 
 were wooden shutters on the windows, so that it was diffi- 
 cult to distinguish the morning from the evening. Thomas 
 Zan, who took upon himself all the blame of the innocent 
 meetings of the Philomathians and Philaretans, was treated 
 the most severely, and suffered especially from hunger. He 
 was sent to Orenburg, and was not pardoned until 1837. 
 The long exile changed his views of life ; he, who had 
 been a freethinker and an oppositionist, entered the service 
 of the Russian state as a mystic and ascetic. After ten 
 months of detention, Mickiewicz was sent to St. Petersburg, 
 and, when he was assigned to service in one of the 
 governments of the interior, he chose Odessa. When he 
 came thither there was no vacancy for a teacher. Then 
 (in company with the subsequently celebrated Rzewuski, 
 who tried his hand at authorship at the request of Mickiewicz) 
 he made a journey to the Crimea, and in his case, as with
 
 234 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 many others of the best Slav poets, the first view of the 
 mountain landscape and the southern scenery sharpened 
 his appreciation of nature. What the Caucasus was to 
 be for Pushkin, Lermontow, and Tolstoi, that the grand 
 panorama of the Crimea was for Mickiewicz. His Crimean 
 Sonnets have justly been given a chief place among his poems. 
 
 In Moscow, where he obtained a post in the office 
 of the governor-general, he wrote Wallenrod, as well as 
 Gracyna, taking his subjects from the pagan days of Lithu- 
 ania, and the contest of its princes with the Teutonic Knights. 
 The hero, historically a grand master of the order, who, 
 himself ruined, brought the whole order to ruin, was made 
 a Lithuanian by Mickiewicz ; in order to withstand the 
 national enemy more effectually he insinuates himself into 
 the enemy's camp, pretends to be of his party, becomes a 
 leader of his army, and thus with one blow avenges his 
 countrymen. It is a glorification of dissimulation and 
 treachery in the service of the fatherland a Macchiavellian 
 idea incarnated in a Byronic hero. Interwoven with this 
 fundamental theme there is a sentimental love story in the 
 romantic style. 
 
 The censor, who read the poem without understanding 
 it, allowed it to be printed, and this, in conjunction with the 
 Crimean Sonnets, soon caused the name of Mickiewicz to be 
 in everybody's mouth. The best Russian society was opened 
 to him, not only in Moscow but in St. Petersburg, whither 
 he speedily received permission to travel. It was the 
 Princess Zeneide Wolkonskaya who introduced the poet to 
 the Russian aristocracy, where he became a favourite and 
 was greatly loved and admired. Many ladies took lessons 
 of him in Polish, and the Princess Wolkonskaya became his 
 translator. The Sonnets and Wallenrod were now read as 
 zealously in Russia as in Poland, and the author, somewhat 
 enervated by the amusements of society life and the favour 
 of the ladies, for a long time only wrote trifles. He had a 
 great desire to see foreign countries, and it was the influence 
 of the Princess Wolkonskaya which obtained him a passport 
 for an indefinite time ; with this he left St. Petersburg in 
 May, to see the wide world, by way of Weimar.
 
 MICKIEWICZ AND PUSHKIN 
 
 2 35 
 
 We have seen him in personal contact with the greatest 
 poetical mind of Germany. A year before he sought out 
 Goethe he had entered into personal relations of friendship 
 with the most eminent Russian authors of that period. 
 Mickiewicz and Pushkin were of the same age. They came 
 to occupy parallel positions, each at the head of one of the 
 two great Slav literatures. Both commenced as disciples of 
 Byron, both with advancing years became more and more 
 national. A fundamental difference between them lies in 
 the fact that Pushkin, after the controversial and rebellious 
 attitude of his early youth towards absolute power, allowed 
 himself to be won over by the personal good-will of the 
 Tzar Nicholas, and lost all faith in the ideals of his youth ; 
 while Mickiewicz, to his death, continued faithful to his first 
 political enthusiasms and hopes. 
 
 The memory of their intercourse is preserved in Push- 
 kin's poem, The Bronze Horseman, and in the fourth part of 
 Mickiewicz's poem, St. Petersburg, which bears the sub-title 
 The Monument of Peter the Great. 
 
 Mickiewicz has here preserved the impression of a con- 
 versation which the poets, one day in 1829, the very year 
 before the fates of Russia and Poland were divided, had in 
 St. Petersburg, during a shower, both covered by Mickie- 
 wicz's cloak, at the foot of Falconnet's celebrated monument 
 to the Tzar. The verses are as follows : 
 
 " One afternoon two young men stood hand in hand, 
 seeking shelter from the rain under the same cloak. One 
 of them was a pilgrim who had come from the West, an 
 unknown victim to the power of the Tzar ; the other was 
 the poet of the Russian people, celebrated through the whole 
 North for his songs. They were not old acquaintances, 
 though they knew each other well, and a few days before 
 had become friends. Their souls, which had raised them- 
 selves high above the barriers of the earthly life, resembled 
 two twin mountain peaks in the Alps, which, separated by 
 a furious mountain torrent, are hardly sensible of the roar of 
 the force which separates them, and bend their lofty peaks 
 toward each other. The pilgrim stood lost in deep thought, 
 when the Russian poet, in a low voice, said to him :
 
 236 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 " ' To the first Tzar, who created this magnificent city, 
 the second Tzarina raised this memorial. 1 The Tzar, already 
 cast in bronze of heroic size, sat on the back of his 
 Bucephalus, , and waited till a place should be prepared for 
 him and his horse. But there was not ground enough for 
 him to stand on in the land of his birth. So they sent a 
 messenger over the sea for a pedestal for him. And from 
 Finland's rocky shore a huge granite block was torn away, 
 and, at the bidding of the Tzarina, swam over the waves, 
 sprang on shore, rolled on, until, in the great city, it cast 
 itself down at its ruler's feet. There it lay firmly, and then 
 the bronze Tzar dashed forward, the knoutocratic Tzar in his 
 Roman toga ; he spurred his horse so that with a leap he 
 mounted on the granite block, steadied himself on the edge, 
 and reared up in the air. 
 
 " ' Not thus in old Rome does Marcus Aurelius, that 
 favourite of the people, sit on his horse, he who first made 
 his name famous by driving out spies and accusers, then, 
 after having punished the tormentors at home, chastised the 
 highwaymen on the Rhine, and the barbarians on the Pac- 
 tolus, and peacefully returned to the Capitoline. Beautiful, 
 noble, and gentle is his brow, from which one idea shines, 
 that of the welfare of the kingdom. He raises his right 
 hand majestically, as if to give his blessing to the whole 
 host of his subjects ; the other hand rests on the reins and 
 restrains the ardour of his steed. 
 
 " ' But the Tzar Peter gives his horse the reins ; we see 
 that he has ridden everything down in his way. Now he 
 has sprung up on the upper side of the rock. The fore- 
 leg of the horse already plays in the air ; the Tzar does not 
 hold him back ; he pulls at the bit ; he must fall and be 
 crushed. It has already stood thus for a century without 
 falling. Thus a waterfall issues from a mountain, is caught 
 by the frost and stiffens into ice, hanging over an abyss. 
 
 "' Yet when the sun of freedom rises and a breath from 
 the West warms these frost-bound regions, what will then 
 become of the waterfall and of tyranny ? ' ' 
 
 As various internal signs show, the words are really the 
 
 1 The inscription is : " Pietro primo Catharina secunda."
 
 MICKIEWICZ AND PUSHKIN 237 
 
 words of Mickiewicz, not of the Russian poet into whose 
 mouth he has put them. Pushkin for his part afterwards 
 wrote a poem about this meeting in St. Petersburg, which 
 was not printed till four years after his death in 1841, and 
 which, since at that time it was impossible to mention 
 Mickiewicz's name in Russia, merely bears the superscription 
 "To M." In it is the following passage : 
 
 "He was our guest. Among a race which was foreign 
 to him, he cherished no hatred to us and on our side we 
 loved him. Gentle and as a friend he sat at our table. We 
 exchanged with him pure dreams and poems. He was 
 inspired by heaven and looked down upon life as if from 
 above. He often spoke about the days of a great future, 
 when the nations should forget their dissensions and be 
 united in a single great family. We listened eagerly to his 
 prophecies. Then he passed on to the West and our 
 blessings followed him on the way. But now our peaceful 
 guest has become our enemy ; to flatter the fierce multitude 
 who listen to him, he sings the praise of hatred in his 
 verses. His voice comes to us from afar. O God ! give 
 peace to his embittered heart." 
 
 There is no shadow of any personal ill-humour in this 
 utterance, in which Mickiewicz's later position is judged 
 from a Russian point of view. A still warmer sympathy 
 inspired the article which Mickiewicz published in the French 
 newspaper, Le Globe, on receipt of the news of Pushkin's death. 
 In spite of all the attraction towards each other which they 
 experienced at a certain period of their lives, and in spite of 
 their common descent from Byron, they were and continued 
 to be contrasts in so far as Pushkin in his whole being was 
 an aristocrat, a poet for the few, a scorner of the many, while 
 Mickiewicz, on the other hand, was a spirit wholly given up 
 to his nation. For Pushkin, to be national meant recon- 
 ciliation with the authorities, a rupture with trust in freedom 
 and in the future of Europe. On the other hand, Mickiewicz 
 became national only by emancipation from all connection 
 with official Russia and by an optimistic enthusiasm, which 
 stands in the sharpest contrast to Pushkin's constantly 
 increasing satiety. In his later productions Pushkin con-
 
 238 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 stantly complains that the dreams of his youth have left 
 him, dreams of love, of freedom, of honour. And he ex- 
 claims, " I see no goal before me." 
 
 The strength of Mickiewicz as a productive genius was 
 that he was not for a moment in doubt as to his aim. 
 
 Pushkin was Russian as Mickiewicz was Polish. But as 
 Michelet has somewhere expressed it, if I am not mistaken, 
 at that time Russia was not as yet a nation, only an 
 administration and a whip. The administration was the 
 German and the whip the Cossack. But while Russia was 
 a government without a nation, Poland had the compara- 
 tively better lot of being a nation without a government.
 
 THE POLITICAL SITUATION DETERMINES THE MANNER OF TREAT- 
 ING ALL SUBJECTS, THE POINT OF VIEW FOR LOVE AND 
 HATE, MATERNAL AND FILIAL EMOTIONS, THE RELATION 
 BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE PEOPLE, BETWEEN 
 GENIUS AND THE SURROUNDING WORLD, BETWEEN EMOTION 
 AND REASON, RELATION TO RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 As soon as we have observed how the three factors, national 
 character, Romanticism, and the political situation, determine, 
 develop, exalt, humble or stamp the nature of these poets 
 as men, we easily discover how these same motive powers 
 invariably determine their productions. But since Roman- 
 ticism is the same in all countries, and the national character 
 manifests itself quite differently in different times (for instance 
 quite otherwise now than at that time) it appears that the 
 political situation is the important factor. 
 
 It determines the point of view from which the life of man 
 is beheld, the point of view for all the spiritual problems, 
 which are treated, the character of the masculine and 
 feminine leading persons, and the entire symbolic and 
 allegorical form of the poems. 
 
 The study of Polish literature leaves no doubt that it is 
 the poetico-political dream life, which modifies the spiritual 
 condition and the spiritual questions that are contempo- 
 raneously treated in European poetry, because it brings 
 them within the national angle of vision, wholly excludes 
 some questions and brings forward certain new ones, which 
 are not treated in any other place. 
 
 For instance, let us consider the subjects on which the 
 poetry of Goethe and Heine, Byron and Shelley, Hugo and 
 Musset turns, and see what form and shape they assume 
 here. 
 
 Such subjects are the whole domain of love and hate, 
 
 239
 
 240 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 the description of all the passions in their conflict and battle 
 with duties, the question of the power of the human spirit 
 to penetrate and understand the universe, of the justification 
 and future of religious faith, of the relative right of the 
 different ranks in the war of classes, of the right of genius 
 and its meaning for its nation and for humanity, the 
 different views of life of two generations succeeding each 
 other, &c. 
 
 Take an emotion like love between a man and 
 woman, and see how it is treated by a Polish poet of 
 that period. 
 
 In the narrative and dramatic works it often has a wild 
 and criminal, but never a sensual character. But when the 
 poets either express themselves in their own name or through 
 heroes, behind whose masks we catch a glimpse of their 
 traits, it is amazing how abstract and incorporeal love 
 becomes in their hands. It is always emotion, never desire. 
 It is in unison with this that the sorrow of love and there 
 is more of the sorrow of love than of its joy in their poetry 
 is forced into the background and overcome by other less 
 personal emotions, like political enthusiasm or patriotism. In 
 Mickiewicz's Dziady, the hero, under the impression of such 
 a revulsion of feeling, even gives himself a new name. He 
 designates the day on which he was imprisoned (which 
 corresponds with the day on which the author was im- 
 prisoned) as the day of the death of his old ego, as his new 
 birthday, drops his peaceful name, Gustavus, and assumes 
 the new martial one, Conrad. Gustavus obiit MDCCCXXIII 
 Calendis Novembris. Hie natus est Conradus, &c. That is, 
 the name of the hero of Byron's Corsair replaces that of 
 Madame de Kriidener's emotional romance. The incident is 
 typical. There is generally a Gustavus who dies in order 
 that a Conrad may arise. And it is also in harmony with 
 this that the Polish women in poetry are so unearthly. We 
 can never imagine them engaged in the daily work of life. 
 They are either heroines, who, high on horseback, rush into 
 the tumult of the battle, or they are ethereal phantoms, visions 
 from a better world, angelic manifestations, whose being is 
 pure soul.
 
 IDEALISATION OF WOMAN 
 
 241 
 
 There are in one of Wordsworth's poems these well-known 
 lines about a young woman whom he admires : 
 
 " A creature not too bright or good 
 For human nature's daily food ; 
 For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
 Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 
 
 A being breathing thoughtful breath, 
 A traveller betwixt life and death ; 
 The reason firm, the temperate will, 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill." 
 
 Such an earthly and simple ideal of woman, as it may be 
 called, is never found here, because the national keynote and 
 the secret political thought of the poets demand to see her 
 either in the guise of a patriotic Amazon, or as the personifi- 
 cation of the national genius. 
 
 Thus woman is greatly admired, much glorified, but little 
 observed or studied here. Neither as a sweetheart, nor as 
 a daughter, nor as a sister, nor as a mother does she stand 
 out purely as a human being, with strongly individualised 
 qualities. The picture immediately becomes ideal, and is 
 always kept within the definitions of a species. Love is 
 generally described without any shadows, filial affection is 
 often exalted, as in Slowacki's Lilla Weneda, by all the cruel 
 sufferings which a hostile prince makes the father endure ; 
 and the mother appears as one whose emotions are hardened 
 early, and whose vocation consists in accustoming the son to 
 bear with firmness whatever hard fate life may have in store 
 for him. This is the " note " of Mickiewicz's celebrated poem, 
 To the Polish Mother : " Take thy son in time into a solitary 
 cave, teach him to sleep on rushes, to breathe the damp and 
 vitiated air, and to share his couch with poisonous vermin. 
 There he will learn to make his wrath subterranean, his 
 thought unfathomable, and quietly to poison his words, and 
 give his being the humble aspect of the serpent. Our 
 Redeemer, as a child, played in Nazareth with the cross on 
 which He saved the world. O Polish mother ! In thy 
 place I would give to thy son the toys of his future to 
 play with. Give him early chains on his hands, accustom 
 
 Q
 
 242 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 him to push the convict's dirty wheelbarrow, so that he shall 
 not grow pale before the executioner's axe, nor blush at the 
 sight of the halter. For he will not go on a crusade to 
 Jerusalem, like the olden knights, and plant his banner in 
 the conquered city, nor will he, like the soldier of the tri- 
 colour, be able to plough the field of freedom and water it 
 with his blood. No ! an unknown spy will accuse him ; he 
 must defend himself before a perjured court ; his battle- 
 field will be a dungeon underground, and an all-powerful 
 enemy his judge. The blasted wood of the gallows will be 
 the monument on his grave ; a few woman's tears, soon 
 dried, and the long talks of his countrymen in the night-time, 
 will be his sole honour and memorial after death." 
 
 The masculine leading characters in these poems, like 
 romantic heroes in general, are nationalists, and moreover 
 passionate and martial natures. But there are traits which 
 distinguish them among all others. 
 
 In the North in those days our poets went to antiquity to 
 find heroes. The most celebrated of them, the heroes of 
 Oehlenschlaeger, are types of the most vigorous youth of.those 
 times, light-hearted, eager for battle, fond of travelling, in 
 the main good-natured, not without transitory relations 
 with mermaids and terrestrial women. Tegner's Frithiof is 
 something of the same kind in Swedish, a knight whose 
 relation to the political events of his time is extremely 
 weak, almost nil. 
 
 They do not in any respect resemble the heroes of the 
 contemporary Polish literature. These are all much more 
 weird and all pursue politics. If, for instance, we compare Teg- 
 ner's Axel with Mickiewicz's Gracyna, two poems whose whole 
 form is borrowed from the poetic narratives of Byron, and 
 which further have this in common, that in both a woman 
 fights in the dress of a man, then the difference is especially 
 this, that in Tegner's poem everything is wanting which, 
 even if ever so feebly, could sound like an exhortation or 
 warning to the poet's contemporaries. On the other hand, 
 in Mickiewicz, whose scene is laid in pagan Lithuania, the 
 action is as follows : Prince Litawor, dissatisfied with his 
 father-in-law Witold, called on the Teutonic Knights for help.
 
 MICKIEWICZ'S "GRACYNA" 243 
 
 His wife Gracyna, who has not been able to keep him from 
 this defection, arbitrarily commands that the German mes- 
 senger shall be denied access to Nowogrddek. And when 
 the wrathful allies direct their campaign against Litawor 
 instead of against Witold, Gracyna puts on her husband's 
 armour, passes herself off for him, and goes to battle against 
 the Germans. Although the victory falls to the Lithuanians 
 thanks to Litawor who hastens to the spot at the right 
 time the princess herself is mortally wounded by a shot 
 from a German gun. Her slayer is thrown upon the 
 funeral pyre with her body, and Litawor casts himself into 
 the flames. The lesson which the author seems to wish to 
 teach to his countrymen is therefore this : A wife, in spite 
 of her husband and prince's command, may dare to send 
 away allies, deceive the army, expose the country to danger, 
 carry on war, lose the battle, provided only that she has the 
 national honour in view ; everything is allowed, when the 
 highest object is at stake. 
 
 Or let us take another group of leading masculine char- 
 acters which have their origin in Byron's heroes, the young 
 men of Alfred de Musset. One and all they are placed in 
 this dilemma : the possibility of distinguishing themselves 
 by achievements, now that the Napoleonic era is over, seems 
 to be closed to them. They accordingly throw themselves 
 into debaucheries, and in a life which excites and stupefies 
 the senses, but weakens the energy, they become more or 
 less unfit for political, artistic, or martial action. 
 
 This internal contest between the inclination to amuse- 
 ments and the impulse to action never appears in the Polish 
 poets. Here the conflict is always between the inclination to 
 action on a large scale and some kind of obstacle which 
 lies before the individual, and which he is not in a position 
 to get out of the way. 
 
 Just as little as in Victor Hugo, are the heroes here 
 young representatives of the new stratum of society which, 
 as if inspired by the recollection of the French revolution, 
 rises in bitter contest against the higher classes. The hero 
 here is never a democrat from principle, to say nothing of a 
 republican. In social aspects the whole of this poetry has a
 
 244 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 conservative stamp. Even Slowacki, who passes for the 
 poet of the future, is no serious exception. The only work in 
 which class contests play an important part, Krasinski's God- 
 less Comedy, is so far from showing the advocate of democracy 
 in a heroic light, that he even appears as a figure of a 
 Caliban-like roughness, who is not even fully certain of his 
 rights and convictions. 
 
 And finally if we compare the leading characters in the 
 Polish poets with those of Byron's own poetic youthful 
 narratives, which had such an extraordinary influence upon 
 the Polish poets, we find that there is indeed a certain 
 resemblance in the violence of mind, and the wild and melan- 
 choly despair ; their life is a chain of sufferings, disappoint- 
 ments, passions, crimes, and imprecations, but they never 
 have the trait, which passed from Byron's own nature into 
 that of Childe Harold and Lara, of despising their own 
 countrymen, their own country. When they become 
 traitors to it or fight against it like Litawor, like Wallenrod 
 it is in a transitory fit of passion, which is immediately 
 repented of, or the treachery is feigned for a short time 
 only with the intention when it comes to the point, of 
 serving it the more energetically. Nay, even when, like 
 Slowacki's fantastic king, they subject the nation to suffer- 
 ings and torments without number, it is only from a kind 
 of higher love, which under the mask of cruelty is the 
 motive power of their method of treatment. They would 
 harden the nation as the smith hardens the metal on his 
 anvil, they would by harshness force the nation up to a 
 continually higher plane of development. And the poet's 
 intention is never, like Byron's, to nettle or rebuke a circle 
 of readers, but to arouse a nation, to teach it that a national 
 existence is not too dearly bought by the torture of a 
 whole generation. In order to arouse his nation he would 
 " beat on the heavens as on a brazen shield." 
 
 The schism between the great individual and the nation, 
 which is so characteristic of the life and poetry of Shelley 
 and Byron, never manifests itself here ; this is, indeed, 
 partly because the poets never exalted themselves so high 
 above the average intellectual condition of their people, its
 
 INSPIRED STRAIN IN POLISH POETRY 245 
 
 religious and political daily life, as Shelley, for instance, but 
 also quite as much because of their feeling of homogeneity 
 with the people whose only organs they were. 
 
 And as they felt themselves one with the people, so 
 also they saw the people collectively. This is the reason 
 why they never tried to describe the opposition between 
 two successive generations, a theme which generally supplies 
 such a fruitful material for poetry, and which Kraszewki 
 afterwards made his own. Mickiewicz, indeed, glanced at 
 the subject as a theme of the past in his dramatic frag- 
 ment written only in French, Jacques Jasinski ou Les deux 
 Polognes." In Pan Tadeusz he makes the imitation of foreign 
 customs and the praising of foreign countries the subject 
 of mild derision ; he contrasts therewith the love of the 
 beautiful natural scenery and old usages of his native 
 country, but he never desired to use as a subject any 
 contrast between the methods of thought of two generations. 
 
 And on the feeling of the indissoluble connection of 
 these poets with their people depends also the existing 
 conception of poetic genius. In those times they never 
 conceived of the poet in Poland as an artist, but as a 
 seer. That poetry is above all an art, according to some 
 the first of all arts, that its function is the representation 
 of the life of nature and of man in a perfect and irreproach- 
 able and therefore imperishable form, was seldom suggested. 
 If by exception one of these poets undertook such a peace- 
 ful and comprehensive reproduction, as did Mickiewicz in 
 Pan Tadeusz, he personally valued this work of his very 
 little, and did not even understand its exceptional worth. 
 They conceived of poetry above all as inspiration, as a 
 divine frenzy, which discloses itself in hallucination and 
 improvisation, and as a fact these poets were almost all 
 eminent improvisatores and subject to illusions. In a certain 
 sense it can therefore be said that Conrad's improvisation in 
 Dziady, which gives an intensified conception of Mickiewicz's 
 own improvisation, marks the apogee of the romantic poetry 
 of Poland. 
 
 There is only one among their poets, Krasinski, who is 
 alive to the dangers of the nervous exaltation, which resulted
 
 246 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 from this ideal. In his melodrama, The Godless Comedy, he 
 pointed out vigorously the weakness of character which was 
 its bane. The poet is regarded by the others as the chosen 
 leader of the people, not " myriad-minded " in a general sense 
 as Shakespeare calls the poet, but exclusively representing 
 the millions of men who make up his people. In this sense 
 we must take what Conrad says of himself : " I am called 
 Million, for I love and suffer for millions of men." 
 
 The greatness and beauty of this interpretation of genius 
 depend on its narrowness. Genius here is intensified 
 patriotism, which is thought to make a man inspired and far- 
 seeing, and which by putting in his mouth the words which 
 charm, secures his ascendency over other minds. In the 
 improvisation, Conrad says : 
 
 " My love does not rest on a single being like the 
 insect on a rose ; nor on a family nor on a century. I 
 love the whole nation. I have embraced all its past and 
 coming generations, pressed them to my heart as a friend, 
 a lover, a bridegroom, a father. I would give my father- 
 land life and happiness, make it admired by all the nations 
 of the earth if I could. But the power for that is wanting 
 to me, and I stand here armed with all the might of my 
 thought and also with that power which men do not give, 
 the feeling which burns within me as in a crater and some- 
 times breaks out in words. ... I was born a creator. I 
 have my powers from the same source as Thou, God, hast 
 thine. ... Is it Thou who hast given me my mighty pene- 
 trating gaze, or did I myself take it there where Thou 
 didst take Thine ? In the moments of my full strength, 
 when I lift my eyes towards the driving clouds or the 
 sailing bird of passage, then I only need to will, and with a 
 glance I bring them to a standstill, catch them as in a 
 net . . . only men, corrupt, frail, even if immortal, serve 
 and know me not. . . . But I will lead them, not with 
 weapons, for one weapon protects from another by the 
 feeling which is in me. Let men be for me as the thoughts 
 and words with which, when I will, I construct poems. It 
 is said that it is thus that Thou rulest. ... I would have 
 power. Give it to me or show me the way to it. My soul
 
 POLISH POETS ESSENTIALLY RELIGIOUS 247 
 
 is incarnated in my native land, and in my body I have all 
 the soul of my native land. My country and I are one only. 
 I look on my unhappy country with the same eyes with 
 which a son sees his father broken on a wheel ; I feel the 
 pangs of a whole nation, as a mother feels in herself those of 
 her child." 
 
 This is not the careless northern conception of men of 
 genius as the elect of fortune, who, by a miracle, easily 
 find what inquirers seek for in vain. But Conrad is just 
 as far removed from the brooding heroes, the Manfreds or 
 Fausts, with whom George Sand in her time compared him. 
 For the joys and sorrows of a life of thought are far from 
 occupying the prominent place in the poetry of Poland 
 which they hold in that of Germany or England. The 
 slow and toilsome struggle of human thought for freedom, 
 for strength to cast aside the cerements of prejudice, its 
 attempt to penetrate the secrets of the universe, which is 
 elsewhere described with confidence in thought as the 
 guiding power, and with faith in its final victory all this 
 appears here only as foolhardy exertion, or an outburst of 
 tragic despair. 
 
 For to all these poets the answer which religion gives 
 is the final answer. They sometimes doubt, they never 
 reject. Even when they lose faith in some dogma of 
 Catholicism, even when they make attacks upon the Church 
 and its priests, or show sacred things in a comic light, 
 they do not dissociate themselves from the Christian con- 
 ception of the world. 
 
 Thus we saw from Odyniec's letters during his residence 
 in Weimar, those admirable descriptions of the intercourse 
 between men of genius and talent, and beautiful women, 
 that, however great an admiration the author cherished for 
 Goethe as artist and scientist, he understood nothing what- 
 ever of his philosophy of life, and even if Mickiewicz under- 
 stood this better, it is clear that he did not feel a greater 
 attraction to it. Odyniec's reflections on Faust are as 
 feminine as those of Mme. de Stael in her Germany, and 
 Mickiewicz was not able to see anything in Goethe's 
 nature-worship and natural piety but avowed indifference
 
 248 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 to revealed religion. Krasinski also expresses himself wholly 
 in the same spirit when, in the preface to Dawn, he says 
 that "the phlegmatico-delirious atheism of German philo- 
 sophy has resulted in chaos," and when in the bold 
 anticipatory attempt to give a positive system of funda- 
 mental definitions and laws of the universe, he only sees 
 the negation of a revelation. 
 
 The Polish poets did not share the rationalistic belief of 
 the greatest of Germans, because they vaguely felt that with 
 this belief no firm immovable bounds were prescribed to 
 the human understanding, and that, as a necessary comple- 
 ment, it circumscribed the possibilities of and the capacity 
 for action. They wanted a belief in the energy of youthful 
 enthusiasm as it appears in the Ode to Youth, a belief in 
 miracles of courage and achievement which presupposed 
 belief in miracles as a link in the government of the world, 
 and therefore necessarily regarded reason as a quality of 
 very great limitations. Since they wished to have a right 
 to demand the improbable, the impossible of youth, they 
 had necessarily to secure for themselves an enclosure for 
 the supernatural in space as well as in time. 
 
 Finally, they felt strongly, with regard to Goethe, that the 
 religion they needed was not a religion of contemplation like 
 his, but a religion of action and suffering. Goethe's pan- 
 theism therefore could not compensate for their inherited 
 circle of ideas, which incited to deeds, and surrounded 
 torments with glory. 
 
 Nor could the otherwise predominant influence of 
 Byron's poetry disintegrate this circle of ideas. They 
 encountered in him no opposite convictions, only doubts 
 and questions. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, 
 that Shelley in his lifetime had received the recognition he 
 only obtained half a century after his death ; then the 
 Polish poets would have found in him the combination 
 which nowhere met them Goethe's lofty and sure con- 
 ception of nature in combination with the practical en- 
 thusiasm, the strong hope, and the belief in the miracles 
 of activity, which they themselves required, and which to 
 their sorrow they missed in the old man at Weimar ; for
 
 CONRAD'S MONOLOGUE IN DZIADY " 249 
 
 Shelley was eternally young, and, like them, appealed to the 
 youth of the mind. If they had come under his influence 
 instead of Byron's, the cause of intellectual freedom in 
 Poland would have a less difficult battle to fight now. 
 Without wounding the religious feelings of their readers, 
 they would have been able to transform them so far, that 
 the inevitable schism in the future between the ideas of this 
 century and the emotional life of the nation, would have 
 been less deep. 
 
 It is especially in Conrad's great monologue in Dziady, 
 that Mickiewicz has tried his powers of formulating a theory 
 of the universe. The enormous extent of human suffering 
 has brought Conrad to doubt the existence of God. From 
 the first he feels himself as strong as a god. The poets 
 in those times liked to regard themselves as gods. This is 
 the confusion of ideas which appears in all countries when 
 Romanticism culminates. The poet who, in imagination, can 
 stop the flight of the birds and the course of the stars, can 
 it is argued, really do so, since in this fantasy of his he 
 has a divine power ; for, according to the romantic teaching, 
 imagination is the decisive quality, that which God and man 
 have in common ; the creative power of the divinity is 
 imagination. 
 
 And it is in this feeling of his supposed power over 
 nature that Conrad asks of space if there is a higher power 
 than his own : " Show thyself, and let me be sensible of 
 thy superiority ! " He cannot solve the contradiction that 
 divinity is a quiet spectator of the sufferings of life on 
 earth. " I suffer, I rage ! and contented and secure Thou 
 rulest continually, judgest continually, and it is said that 
 Thou art never wrong. Listen to me, if it be true, that 
 which I learned even in my cradle, and have believed in 
 with childish faith, if it be true that Thou lovest, that Thou 
 lovedst the world, because Thou didst create it, ... if a 
 heart, which feels, is not a freak of nature, which is 
 produced by accident and dies before it comes to 
 maturity ; if in Thy kingdom emotion is not an illegal 
 thing ; if millions of unhappy beings, who call for help, 
 are anything else in Thine eyes than an equation, which it
 
 250 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 is difficult to solve, then . . . Thou art silent ! I have 
 unveiled Thy inmost being with a voice which will resound 
 from generation to generation I cry out into the universe, 
 to the utmost borders of creation, that Thou art not the 
 world's father, . . . but (the voice of the devil) its Tzar." 
 We see that the poet has taken care that the reader should 
 not confound his own way of thinking with that of the 
 hero, for it is the devil who here prompts Conrad, and 
 the irritation under which he speaks is imparted to him by 
 invisible demons, who fill the air about him. 
 
 Thus, but even more distinctly, Krasinski, when in The 
 Godless Comedy he gives expression to doubts, which he him- 
 self had perhaps felt at times, puts them on the lips of 
 distracted men and women. The strongest outburst of 
 doubt which appears in Krasinski's works is uttered in 
 a madhouse. The sick Countess says : " Christ can no 
 longer save us. He has seized His cross with both hands 
 and thrown it down into the abyss. Do you hear this 
 cross, which has been the hope of millions, rebounding in 
 its fall from star to star ? It breaks, it is splintered, and 
 with its dust it obscures the universe." 
 
 So we also see that the only one of the poets who 
 really believed in philosophy, the brave lyrist Stephan 
 Garczynski, the war -poet of the revolution of 1831, the 
 favourite and imitator of Mickiewicz, the writer who, as the 
 disciple of Hegel, seems personally to have separated him- 
 self most widely from the church creed, in his principal 
 work Waclaw, makes his hero, it is true, attack monks and 
 priests with harsh and angry words, but still in such a 
 way as to leave religion undisturbed by the assault. He 
 blames the monks because they destroy the capacity for 
 thought and action by their teaching, but he himself be- 
 lieves and prays ; it is in the name, not of reason but 
 of emotion, that he declares himself to have outgrown 
 ecclesiastical forms. 
 
 Garczynski's hope or wish as man and poet was to 
 bring his world of emotion into harmony with his reason, to 
 reconcile the kingdom of the heart with that of the mind. 
 The fourth canto of his Waclaw, entitled Science, shows that,
 
 POLISH CATHOLICISM 251 
 
 unlike the German teacher, whose disciple he was, he did 
 not see salvation and the highest life in thought and its 
 development in science. The reaction from theory to 
 practice, the enthusiasm which leads from contemplation 
 to action, seem to him to comprise the complete truth of 
 human life. According to his conception, only in the 
 contest for practical ideals does the opposition between 
 emotion and reason cease to be a strife. And the personal 
 preference of the poet, as it appears from the poem and 
 as was to be expected, lay not on the side of rational 
 understanding but on that of enthusiasm. 
 
 Finally, we note the same trait in Slowacki, even when 
 in Beniowski he makes his great and passionate onslaught 
 upon the Jesuits. Here he goes so far as to prefer a father- 
 land without a future to a fatherland under the guardian- 
 ship of the Jesuits. He overwhelms Rome, nay, even the 
 Pope with taunts, but he is so far from calling Christianity 
 itself in question that he cries to Poland, The Cross, that t's 
 thy Pope. 
 
 No outburst could be more significant of the emotional 
 life of those days. In the revolt of 1831, the Polish priest, 
 crucifix in hand, marched at the head of the troops, and 
 was in reality the power which attached the common people 
 to the cause of independence. But this Catholicism was 
 not that of Rome. For when in the same year languishing 
 Poland, praying for help, stretched out her hands to the 
 Pope, he referred the Poles to the Tzar, demanded obedience 
 and submission, and stamped the rising as rebellion. Again 
 there was no opposition from the Pope, when in 1833 the 
 forced conversion of the " United " communities who had 
 joined the Catholic Church took place. Dragoonades of 
 Cossacks were employed on the Russian side ; they sur- 
 rounded the villages and knouted the priests. Then the 
 Russian pope, with his whip in his hand, held a review of 
 his new parishioners, and in military colonies the stubborn 
 were put to death as rebellious soldiers. It was officially 
 stated on the Russian side, as regards this amalgamation of 
 the united congregations with the Greek Church, that it was 
 to be looked upon as a " happy union, which had cost no
 
 252 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 tears ! Only gentleness and persuasion have been used." 
 And the Pope, the one sovereign whose duty it was to do 
 his utmost for Poland, looked on without protest. We 
 can understand how Slowacki, in 1841, could at once 
 express his aversion for the Pope and his confidence in 
 Church and Cross. 
 
 Nevertheless it is very suggestive that, at least until the 
 last, when he was enthralled by Towianski, he was scep- 
 tical and wavering in his faith. The preface to Lambro, with 
 its attack upon the poets of the religious school and its 
 keen sense of the false and artificial in the theories of 
 Friedrich Schlegel, is a proof of this. Neither is it without 
 significance, that in the tragedy of his youth, Mendog, as 
 well as in his poem The Monk, the conversion from paganism 
 or Mohammedanism to Christianity, whether from calcula- 
 tion or belief, is represented as bringing misfortune, calling 
 forth the execration and hatred of the nearest relatives. In 
 any case, this is especially peculiar to Polish Romanticism, 
 that the political defection resulting from the abandon- 
 ment of the old customs of the nation or the community, 
 is described as so unpardonable that no rising to a more 
 lofty religious conception of life can atone therefor.
 
 VI 
 
 THE TWO PRINCIPAL THEMES OF THE LEADING POETS MICKIE- 
 WICZ, SLOWACKI AND KRASINSKI ; THE FIRST TWO, THE 
 POETS OF VENGEANCE, KRASINSKI, THE POET OF LOVE 
 
 AMONG the romantic poets of Poland there are three whose 
 names are written in letters of fire : Adam Mickiewicz, 
 Julius Slowacki, Zygmunt Krasinski. 
 
 If we glance over the collected works of these three 
 great romanticists, we shall find them dwelling especially on 
 two themes : they depict horrors and they sing of hope. 
 
 In other words, a double current flows through the 
 Polish poetry of the years 18201850; it describes suffer- 
 ings which lead to thoughts of revenge, and sufferings 
 which tend to produce spiritual development and purifi- 
 cation. And, whereas in other respects we must generally 
 put Mickiewicz by himself on one side, Slowacki and 
 Krasinski as two united friends on the other, here it is 
 Mickiewicz and Slowacki who come nearest each other 
 in spirit, who willingly and frequently occupy themselves 
 with thoughts of vengeance, while Krasinski stands opposed 
 to them as the advocate of universal brotherhood. 
 
 The inclination to that which is tragical and heart- 
 rending is common to all the poets ; they either hasten 
 towards a bloody catastrophe like Mickiewicz in Gracyna, 
 Slowacki in Hugo, or the whole poem is taken up with 
 scenes of destruction. 
 
 Julius Slowacki, born in 1809 at Krzemieniec, the son of 
 a professor of the history of literature, lost his father while 
 he was a little child, but through his whole life maintained 
 the tenderest and most confidential relations with his mother, 
 who was soon married a second time to the Professor Beku 
 of Wilna, who was assailed in Mickiewicz's Dziady. Spoiled 
 by the daughters of his stepfather, loved by his mother,
 
 254 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 the boy grew up in a life of fancy, which resulted in an 
 exclusively poetic bias and an all-absorbing artistic ambition 
 which became the stimulus and spur of his life. He be- 
 came the typical romanticist, who took it for granted that 
 a romantic life was the true condition for the production 
 of genuine poetry, and who never wasted time or thoughts 
 on giving his planless career a material foundation of 
 work or effort. All deference to the useful was hateful 
 to him. 
 
 His strong imagination was, in its essence, not so much 
 creative as musical, picturesque, and decorative. In fact, his 
 talent was a great gift of language. He impresses by the 
 melody of his verse and his wealth of imagery. 
 
 He was educated at the University of Wilna, which at 
 that time could offer no further nourishment to his mind ; 
 it was already laid waste by reaction. As compensation 
 he imbibed the exalted patriotism of the period, and all the 
 ecstatic sentiments of the romantic frame of mind. Byron 
 laid hold upon him as upon so many other poets, and 
 nowhere did the English poet come upon a better prepared or 
 more congenial spirit. Byron's way of thought and Byron's 
 desperate characters became almost immediately his own. 
 He too, as a youth, experienced an unhappy love for a young 
 girl (a daughter of Andreas Sniadecki), a cultured maiden a 
 good deal older than himself, who would not listen to the 
 story of his flame, and on this account he suffered his first 
 infernal pangs of wounded pride. His stepfather died. 
 Slowacki in 1829 entered the office of the Polish Ministry 
 of Finance in Warsaw as clerk, when the revolt broke out 
 and so took possession of him that he wrote several lyrical 
 poems in the revolutionary spirit. It seems that his enthu- 
 siasm was speedily cooled, and in the year 1831 we find 
 him suddenly leaving Poland under circumstances which 
 made it impossible that he should ever return. He travelled 
 to foreign countries with a passport from the revolutionary 
 government ; at Dresden he was commissioned to carry 
 despatches to London, and journeyed from London to Paris, 
 where in the following year he printed his first volume of 
 poems, containing dramas and narratives in the Byronic style,
 
 MICKIEWICZ AND SLOWACKI 255 
 
 Mickiewicz also soon came to Paris. He was already 
 widely celebrated, and Slowacki, a beginner, consumed with 
 an unsatisfied ambition, full of self-esteem and thirst for 
 recognition, regarded his great rival with mingled feelings. 
 His first poems did not cause any great sensation, yet some 
 lovers of Polish literature after reading his drama, Mary 
 Stuart, recognised in him certain qualities lacking in Mickie- 
 wicz. Half in doubt and half inclined to overestimate 
 himself, he burned to hear the opinion of Mickiewicz. 
 In the preface to the third volume of his poems he wrote : 
 " Neither encouraged by praise, nor disheartened by criticism, 
 I throw this third volume down into the silent abyss which 
 has swallowed the first two." His pride prevented him from 
 seeking Mickiewicz. But common friends brought them 
 together, and then followed a reciprocal exchange of civili- 
 ties and compliments. Soon after Slowacki became a 
 member of the Polish literary society of which Mickie- 
 wicz was president. Their pleasant relations were neverthe- 
 less soon disturbed. Acquaintances carried to Slowacki 
 Mickiewicz's dictum that his poetry resembled a wonderful 
 temple, but that there was no God in it. And to Slo- 
 wacki everything about Mickiewicz soon became disgusting, 
 " from his crumpled shirt to his papistry." He even denied 
 that Mickiewicz had any poetic ability. Then the third part 
 of Dziady appeared, in which the author rises higher than 
 ever before, but in which, unfortunately, Slowacki's step- 
 father Beku, whose memory was dear to him and precious 
 to his mother, was represented as Nowosilcow's lickspittle, 
 struck by lightning as a punishment for his baseness. 
 From this time forth Slowacki hated Mickiewicz. He even 
 thought of challenging him. " O mother ! " he writes, 
 " there is nothing left for me but to encompass thee with 
 such an effulgence of honours that the arrows of others 
 cannot strike thee. God has inspired me. It will be an 
 equal fight with Adam." 
 
 In the first as in the later poems which he publishes, 
 his poetry shows a basis of agony, a frame of mind appa- 
 rently induced by a vision of annihilation. 
 
 Naturally, with him as with other poets his mood depends
 
 256 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 mainly upon the harmony which exists between an artist 
 and his public. Wherever such a sombre seriousness has 
 mastered all minds as that which fell upon the Poles after 
 the unsuccessful revolution, a poet simply to be heard, in 
 order not to be pushed aside as a buffoon who misunder- 
 stands the common temper, must necessarily in his art 
 reflect suffering, discontent, wrath at terrestrial or celestial 
 injustice, and depict numberless unsuccessful attempts to 
 prevent wrong, or at least to avenge outraged right. He 
 does it because generally he is subject to the same influences 
 as his people, receiving all impressions far more keenly 
 and sympathetically. 
 
 This disposition appears in its most abstract form in such 
 works as Slowacki's The Plague in the Desert, which is justly 
 celebrated as a tragic description of a calamity recalling that 
 of Niobe. In 1835 Slowacki made a journey from Paris 
 to Italy by way of Marseilles, later a journey from Naples 
 to the East, which took him to Greece, Egypt, Nubia, 
 Syria, and from which, in 1837, he returned to Italy by 
 way of Cyprus. On the way to Syria, at El Arish, he was 
 compelled to lie in quarantine in the middle of the desert. 
 To this sojourn was due the poem of the plague-stricken 
 family of El Arish, in which an Arab tells in simple, eloquent 
 words how he has seen his four sons, three daughters, and 
 his wife torn away from him by the plague one after the 
 other. This narrative, which, in contrast to several others 
 by the author, has not a line too many, but is characterised 
 by an antique severity and Biblical grandeur, has obtained 
 such high recognition, not only because of its artistic ex- 
 cellence, but because of its harmony with the melancholy of 
 its readers. More than one found the picture of his own 
 trials and losses in the poem. With a vague feeling that 
 there was a certain bond, a certain point of union between 
 the subject and the reader, commentators have endeavoured 
 to give a symbolical explanation of the episode, seeing 
 allusions to the loss of their fatherland, and their grief 
 thereat, only to be arrived at by the most far-fetched inter- 
 pretations. The truth is that without any symbolism 
 whatever, the reader might well see, in the family visited
 
 CRUELTY A POETIC THEME 257 
 
 by the plague, a group of beings whose fate was akin to 
 his own. 
 
 Slowacki's Arab is a poem of the same character. It 
 depicts the abstract mania for annihilation, the Satanic desire 
 to spread death and destruction, and destroy the joy of life, 
 wherever it is found. The being, who from an ambush shot 
 the arrows of the plague against the unfortunate Arab father 
 and his children, might be supposed to have such thoughts. 
 
 Nevertheless there is more here than the mere poetry 
 of suffering. The poetry of cruelty is combined with it, a 
 theme which recurs again and again. Slowacki especially 
 revels in the description of horrible cruelty. It came near 
 home. For these poets had experienced great cruelty in 
 their lives, and fancy is receptive above all things ; it 
 gives out the pictures with which it has been filled. The 
 cruelties with which all Slowacki's dramas and most of his 
 narratives swarm, betray how deep an impression the tortures 
 he experienced in his life, or had heard or read about, made 
 upon his mind. Several of the fiercest traits of cruelty in 
 his poems are founded on actual historical incidents. Ivan 
 the Terrible, like the leading character in Krdl Duch, on one 
 occasion nailed the foot of a messenger to the ground with 
 his sword, without diverting him from the delivery of his 
 message, just as happened with the old bard in the poem. 
 And the prototype of many such traits in Slowacki must be 
 sought for in contemporary events, which made his blood 
 boil and inflamed his fancy. 
 
 All the poets dwell insistently on prison scenes, scenes 
 of banishment, and harsh punishments. Descriptions of 
 sufferings, long speeches that narrate and describe cruelties, 
 take up nearly the whole of the third part of Mickiewicz's 
 Dziady, in which the author has delved so deeply into his 
 own personal experiences and fearlessly brought upon the 
 stage contemporaries under their real names. He has never 
 elsewhere achieved such scorching realism of effect. And 
 strangely enough he thought that this was genuine Roman- 
 ticism. In his poem, Romanticism, he began by rejecting 
 dead truths : " If you would see wonders full of the truth of 
 life," he says, lt have a heart and look into hearts." Shortly 
 
 R
 
 258 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 after he defined the essence of Romanticism thus : "When the 
 romanticists write they have the naked truth before them, 
 while the classicists are content with marionettes ; " here he 
 proclaims distinctly the right of the poet to seek the naked 
 truth in his nearest environment, however lowly and simple 
 it may seem to be. Finally, he upholds the same doctrine 
 distinctly in this poem, in which after the manner of Dante, 
 he praises and condemns his contemporaries without respect 
 of persons. 
 
 The poet describes how a young gentleman relates the 
 story of Chikowski in a drawing-room in Warsaw. He, one 
 of the handsomest, gayest and most spirited young men of 
 Poland, recently married and happy, disappeared one day 
 from his home. It was said that he had committed suicide, 
 no one understood why. The police caused it to be rumoured 
 that his cloak had been found by the Vistula. Years passed 
 by ; one gloomy and rainy evening some prisoners were 
 brought from the Carmelite monastery to the Belvedere. An 
 intrepid young man in the crowd of spectators shouted out : 
 " Prisoners, who are you ? " and among a hundred names 
 the name of Chikowski was shouted back in answer. His 
 wife was informed, and she sent petition after petition to 
 the government, but could learn nothing. Reports floated 
 about Warsaw during the three following years, during 
 which no news of him was received, that he was being 
 tortured, but that he would confess nothing, that he was 
 kept awake at nights, that for whole months he had salt 
 herring to eat without any water to drink, that he was given 
 opium to frighten him with visions and spectres, that he was 
 tickled under his arms and on the soles of his feet, and 
 more until his name was forgotten among the names of 
 the other persons who had disappeared. Then one night 
 there was a ringing at the door of his wife's house ; outside 
 stood an officer, a gendarme, and a prisoner whom they 
 delivered, demanding a receipt. They threatened him with 
 uplifted finger : " If you dare to talk ! " and went away. He 
 was changed, had become stout, but with the unhealthy fat 
 of the prisoner. The wrinkles of half a century were on his 
 forehead. He did not seem to recognise his old friends who
 
 THE STORY OF CHIKOWSKI 259 
 
 came to greet him, but looked at them with an absent 
 gaze. " All that he had suffered in the days when he was 
 tortured, and all that he had thought in the nights when he 
 lay awake, was revealed by his eye in a second. This eye 
 was frightful to look at, it was like the panes of the grated 
 windows of a prison, the colour of which is greyish like a 
 spider's web, but which, seen from the side, has rainbow 
 reflections and in which we discern a bloody rust, mirrored 
 lights and dark spots. They have lost their transparency, but 
 their surface betrays that they have long been exposed to 
 dampness, neglect, dust and darkness." When he was asked 
 a question, imagining himself still in prison, he replied, " I 
 know nothing, I know nothing." 
 
 A young lady (the feminine Providence of the emigrants, 
 Claudia Potocka) asks : " Why do you not treat such sub- 
 jects in your poems ? " A count answers : " Old Niemce- 
 wicz may use them in his memoirs." A man of letters 
 exclaims : " That is a frightful story." Another, " Tragic, 
 on my word." A third finally says : " We listen to such 
 things, but who would read them ? It is outrageous to 
 bring eye-witnesses upon the stage instead of mythical 
 persons. And then besides there is an inviolable and holy 
 rule of art. It is that poets must not treat of an incident 
 till . . . till. ..." A young man : " How many years are 
 we to wait till a fresh fact has become as dry as tobacco 
 and as honey sweet as a fig ? " The first : " There are no 
 fixed rules." The second : " A thousand or two thousand 
 years. Besides, you could not say in a poem that he was fed on salt 
 herring." An impression may be obtained from this quota- 
 tion of the force and clearness with which sufferings are 
 depicted here. 
 
 Or read Sobolewski's comment on the twenty kibitkas 
 (sleighs) full of young students and schoolboys of Samo- 
 gitien, which he saw drive away to Siberia to the beating of 
 drums, while the crowd stood like a wall before the prison 
 behind guards with fixed bayonets. Every feature here is 
 full of life. Take for example these lines : " Poor children, 
 you all have shaved heads like recruits, and fetters on 
 your feet. The youngest, who was only ten years old,
 
 260 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 complained he could not lift his chains, and showed his bare 
 and bleeding feet. The police officer asked what he com- 
 plained of, and being a humane person, himself examined his 
 chains. ' Ten pounds ! that is according to the regulation,' 
 he said. Then Janczewski was brought out . . . torture 
 had made ugly, thin, and dark, him who a year ago had 
 been the gayest and handsomest of them all. He looked 
 down from his kibitka like the Tzar from his pedestal of 
 rock. His glance was proud, dry, clear ; he seemed to 
 wish to console his comrades, and his smile seemed to 
 say to the assembled multitude : ' See how little mis- 
 fortune touches me ! ' . . . He noticed that people wept 
 when they beheld his chains, so he lifted them up in the 
 air and shook them to show that they were not too heavy 
 for him. The kibitka set off at a gallop, he waved his 
 hat, crying : ' No ! it is not all over with Poland yet ! ' and 
 the crowd hid him from my sight ; but for a long time 
 his arm could still be seen, raised up against the heavens 
 as a background, and the tattered black felt hat waving 
 like a banner of woe above the smoothly-shaven young 
 head, the proud and spotless head which from afar bore 
 witness to the innocence of the victim and the shame of the 
 executioners." 
 
 Just as colour has its complement, and the chord of the 
 seventh its resolution, so this theme always arouses in 
 Mickiewicz and Slowacki the motive of vengeance. 
 
 We can follow this most clearly in the third part of Dziady 
 throughout the different songs which the prisoners sing. 
 
 First comes Jankowski's song : " In order that I may 
 become a believer, I must first see Jesus and Mary chastise 
 the Tzar who defiles my country. So long as the Tzar lives, 
 and Nowosilcow drinks, and I myself go in fear of Siberia, 
 so long must not any one expect me to say : Jesus! Mary ! " 
 
 Then follow Kalakowski's ironical verses : " What does 
 it matter if I must suffer banishment, hard labour, chains, 
 if only as a faithful subject I am allowed to labour for my 
 Tzar ! when in the mines I have to hammer diligently 
 and skilfully, I say to myself : This grey iron will some 
 day become an axe for the Tzar. If I get out of the
 
 THE POETRY OF VENGEANCE 261 
 
 house of correction, and take a young Tartar woman to 
 wife, I say to her : ' Bear us a Pahlen for the Tzar ! 
 [Pahlen, Paul I.'s murderer.] If they send me out as a 
 colonist, and I become hetman or boyar, then I will sow 
 my field with hemp, only hemp, for the Tzar. Of hemp 
 a halter is made, a grey halter, which can be interwoven 
 with silver ; perhaps an Orloff may throw such a scarf 
 around the neck of the Tzar." [Orloff, murderer of 
 Peter III.] 
 
 Finally Conrad sings : " My spirit was silenced, my song 
 lay in the grave, but my genius smelled blood, and with a 
 shriek it rises like a vampire, eager for blood. It thirsts for 
 blood, for blood. Yea, vengeance, vengeance ! Vengeance 
 on our executioners ! Vengeance, if God will, and whether 
 God wills or not ! " 
 
 We see that the poetry of vengeance has its germ here. 
 If God will not avenge them, then the Poles must avenge 
 themselves. 
 
 Vengeance as here pictured almost always wears a mask, 
 lurks behind dissimulation, strikes unexpectedly, dealing a 
 blow long prepared. The fundamental thought is always 
 that he who is persecuted by God and men is entitled 
 to use all means, and that the salvation of the fatherland 
 is the supreme law. Thus Gracyna is wholly right when 
 in disobedience to her husband and lord she follows the 
 higher call to prevent any false alliance with the hereditary 
 enemy. And Wallenrod contains the same idea in another 
 form : here it is not a false alliance but a feigned one ! 
 Against the foreign enemy hypocrisy and treachery are 
 legitimate weapons. Thus Wallenrod as the Master of 
 the Order prolongs the campaign against the Lithuanians 
 until thousands of Germans perish. When Lithuania is 
 freed, all lost for the Order, and he himself condemned 
 to death by the secret council of the Knights, with proud 
 contempt he throws aside the mask of hypocrisy, tramples 
 the cross of the Grand Master under foot, and jubilantly 
 confesses the sins of his life. 
 
 It was overlooked by Mickiewicz himself, though not by 
 his critical rival Slowacki, that in the doctrine which Wallenrod
 
 262 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 proclaims, a justification might be found for every apostasy. 
 At any rate, misunderstanding and abuse did not frighten 
 him. The ballad Alpujarras, which is sung at the great 
 banquet, certainly gives the clearest expression to his train 
 of thought. Almansor, Prince of the Moors, is forced to 
 surrender Granada, because the plague is raging in the city ; 
 he makes his way through and flies. The Spaniards are 
 sitting at a drinking bout, when the guard announces that 
 a stranger begs admission for an important message which 
 he brings. He is an Arab. " Spaniards," he cries with 
 humble mien ; " your God will I serve, your prophet will I 
 believe in, your vassal will I be." They recognise Almansor. 
 The chief presses him to his heart and gives him the 
 brotherly kiss ; all the leaders embrace him, one after the 
 other. Then he suddenly becomes faint, falls to the ground, 
 twists his turban, and exclaims triumphantly, " I am sick of 
 the plague ! " With his pretended submission he has brought 
 the plague to the Spaniards in his brotherly kiss. 
 
 So we also find Slowacki again and again singing of 
 the curse, which overtakes treachery practised towards 
 fellow-countrymen Jan Bielecki, Waclaw (the same Felix 
 Potocki who appears in Malczewski's Marya and afterwards 
 in Slowacki's Horsztynski) and, varied again and again, a 
 glorification of deceit or surprises practised against the 
 enemy (Lambro, Kordjari). Lambro is the story of a Greek, 
 who becomes a brigand and renegade in order the more 
 safely to strike at the Turkish perpetrators of violence 
 an inhuman figure, the model for which is hardly to be 
 found in life, but in the Oriental poems of Byron. Kord- 
 jan is a Pole, fantastical and nervous, far too refined and 
 delicate for the bloody task he assumes, an attempt to 
 kill the Tzar Nicholas a character who, although inspired 
 by Mickiewicz, is built up on a basis of personal observation. 
 The drama as well as the poem both deal solely with the 
 thought of vengeance. 
 
 It is against this fundamental idea that Zygmunt 
 Krasinski directed his most important works. His birth 
 and his family relations brought him to evolve a less 
 simple doctrine from the spectacle of human suffering.
 
 KRASINSKI'S YOUTH 263 
 
 Zygmunt Krasinski was born in Paris in 1812 of Polish 
 parents, who belonged to the highest aristocracy. His 
 father entered Napoleon's army as a young man, served 
 till he became imperial adjutant, and after Napoleon's abdica- 
 tion brought back the Polish regiments as a general. He 
 became a senator and Woyewode, opened a grand salon for 
 scientists and artists in Warsaw, in which classical thought 
 had one of its strongholds, and soon appeared as one of the 
 most faithful servants of Alexander and Nicholas. He made 
 himself conspicuous in a most sinister manner in 1828 
 as a member of the court of the Diet established to try 
 political offenders in Poland, he alone voting for severe 
 sentences on the conspirators. Just as he was brave in 
 battle, so he showed himself timid, easily flattered and 
 tempted by the Russian Government in time of peace. 
 
 This high public position of the father he succeeded 
 Paskiewicz as Governor in 1856 was a potent factor in the 
 son's life. In spite of his absolute disagreement with his 
 father he felt himself bound to him by inviolable piety, 
 and thus deprived of all freedom, not only in his personal 
 relations but in his literary career. 
 
 When only sixteen years old, he endured an insult for 
 his father's sake which he could never forget. When in 
 1829 one of the popular men of Poland, Bielinski, the 
 President of the Court, was buried, all the students of the 
 University of Warsaw attended the ceremonies in a body, 
 and left the lecture rooms empty. By his father's command, 
 nevertheless, Zygmunt Krasinski was obliged to go to the 
 University as usual, on which account his comrades, on the 
 next day, fell u ^on him and turned him out. The scene 
 is described in V rasinski's Unfinished Poem : " I see the old 
 building, in whose halls a thousand of the same age sit, 
 and the teachers speak from their chairs. I see the stairs 
 which wind about like a serpent. Is it not so ? I was a 
 brave little fellow, although as yet not full grown and not 
 strong. I came from home, went proudly past them all, 
 knowing indeed that they hated me, but not why. They 
 surrounded me and pressed upon me from all sides, and 
 shouted : ' Young noble ! young noble ! ' as if it were a
 
 264 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 disgrace to know where my ancestors are buried. I seized 
 hold of the iron railing, but they pulled me by my hands, 
 my feet, my cloak. . . . Then thou didst manifest thyself 
 to me, my good genius, saying : ' They are unjust. Be thou 
 more than just, forgive them and love them.' " 
 
 Fate had dedicated him to suffering, and he did not see 
 in the injury he had suffered, an invitation to play the part 
 which the injustice of his countrymen and the tempta- 
 tions of the rulers laid in his way. Just as little did it com- 
 mend itself to his refined and temperate nature to make 
 himself the favourite of the mob by a breach with his father. 
 Both as a youth and as a man he paid an exaggerated filial 
 respect to this father, who, as a deserter, was covered 
 with Russian honours and Polish curses. For his sake, 
 during his whole life, he continued to be an anonymous 
 poet, and the consciousness of having a father in the opposite 
 camp made it impossible for him to proclaim the gospel of 
 vengeance in his poems. He thus dared to defy one of the 
 dogmas of his nation, and a fundamental doctrine in the 
 literature of the time, since he proclaimed the impotence 
 of hatred in a nation passionate by temperament, martial 
 by instinct, and besides, so tortured and desperate, that all 
 the products of its imaginative power hitherto had been not 
 only sombre as a clouded heaven, but traversed by the 
 lightning of vindictiveness. Touching the productions of 
 the other poets, he says in Wallenrod: "Murder and fire, 
 that is what you Waidelots [Lithuanian bards] love to sing 
 about, you leave honour and the pangs of death to us. 
 From the cradle your song winds itself like a serpent around 
 the breast of the child, and pours its poison into his soul ; 
 the insane yearning for glory and the insane love of country." 
 But none of them had such a feeling of responsibility as 
 Krasinski. He suffered terribly when he heard of the cruel 
 punishments inflicted on young students for having circulated 
 his forbidden poems. 
 
 Krasinski again describes only sufferings. In Irydion 
 he represents the suffering which a foreign rule actually 
 caused, and gives a picture of ancient Greece some hun- 
 dreds of years after it was conquered by Rome. He depicts
 
 KRASINSKI'S "IRYDION" 265 
 
 the love of the most eminent Greeks for Hellas, as the land 
 to which Europe owes all noble culture, the land which 
 first taught her the significance of political freedom, and 
 portrays the hatred of Rome, the cruel and haughty master 
 of Greece, from whom her half barbaric culture was bor- 
 rowed. The drama shows us the national spirit of Greece, 
 pondering on a great work of revenge, after centuries of 
 oppression and dishonour, at a time when the terrible abuse 
 of power of Caracalla and Heliogabalus had excited the 
 minds of all the better sort of people. 
 
 Irydion is the " Son of Revenge " child of the avenger ; 
 he is the son of the great Greek Amphilochos, who himself 
 belonged to a generation for which revenge did not seem 
 ripe, but who had impressed upon Irydion and his sister, 
 Elsinoe, his two children by a northern woman, hatred of 
 Rome. When he blessed them while they were sleeping as 
 little children, he said to them : " Remember to hate Rome 
 and avenge yourselves ; thou, Irydion, with fire and sword ; 
 thou, Elsinoe, with all a woman's shrewdness and perfidious 
 art." 
 
 And in his palace in Rome Irydion lives solely for the 
 idea of revenge, and in its service unites his charming sister 
 to the weak and miserable boy who is the head of the 
 State. Elsinoe bends Heliogabalus like a reed, and Irydion 
 explains to the emperor that it is not his rival, Alexander 
 Severus, but the city of Rome itself that is his enemy. He 
 should wage that war against the city which Nero began 
 with the conflagration, and then transfer the imperial throne 
 to Byzantium. And Heliogabalus is fascinated by this 
 poetry of annihilation on a vast scale, which captivates him 
 as it has captivated better men than he Polish poets, for 
 example. 
 
 Krasinski justly felt that for most of his countrymen 
 of that time Poland had gradually become only a name, 
 which called for vengeance. He saw the danger to the 
 nation's sense of right, which lay in its having come to 
 believe that everything was allowable as against the 
 oppressor. Even in the poem to the Polish mother, false- 
 hood, hypocrisy, and fraud were painted as virtues. Thus no
 
 266 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 one had regarded it as wrong that the hero of Ostrolenka, 
 General Bern, had professed Mohammedanism simply in 
 order the better to strike at Russia in the Turkish service. 
 So no one at a later period regarded it as wrong in 
 Wielopolski that, in an open letter to Metternich after the 
 massacres in Galicia, he preached the merging of the people 
 in Russia, in the hope that union with the most powerful 
 enemy would procure vengeance on the two other enemies, 
 Austria and Prussia, which a new Attila might then crush. 
 
 Krasinski was alarmed at this national feeling, which 
 lived only in hate, at this patriotism, which was even stronger 
 than death, but always carried death in its mouth. He wrote 
 Irydion to warn his people. 
 
 At the last moment all Irydion's schemes miscarry, 
 because of the distrust he arouses in the Christian bishops. 
 Elsinoe demands the death of Heliogabalus, to avenge 
 herself for what she has suffered by being his mistress ; 
 then she kills herself. Alexander Severus conquers, and 
 becomes emperor. And Irydion would fain die, when Massi- 
 nissa his bad tutelary genius, the Waidelot of Wallenrod 
 on a grander scale, and moreover, a kind of incarnation of 
 the horror of antiquity for the institution of Christianity 
 carries him away in space. In the distance he sees from 
 a height on the coast, Rome, "showing its marble in the 
 sun as the tiger shows its white teeth." And a fear 
 comes upon him that Rome will not be destroyed as his 
 mother had foretold. Massinissa then informs him that the 
 Goths, it is true, will trample Rome into ruins, but that 
 the Christians will then create a new Rome, which will take 
 the warriors of the north in leading strings, and once more 
 rule all the nations of the world. 
 
 Krasinski wished to show his people, in one grand 
 example, that the mere thirst for vengeance produces 
 nothing durable, and that hatred is unfruitful. In addition, 
 perhaps, as Klaczko has keenly observed, he wished to hint 
 that the enemy may find a new lease of life, where it is least 
 to be expected, as Rome found the basis of its second period 
 of greatness in Christianity, the successors of the Teutonic 
 Order a like fundamental force in the Reformation ; it may
 
 KRASINSKI'S ETHICS 267 
 
 be Russia will find it in the civilisation of our century, the 
 very force which would seem to be a threat against Russia. 
 
 The epilogue transports us to the papal Rome of 1830. 
 Irydion wanders with Massinissa over the ruins of old Rome, 
 and among those of its later splendour. The ruling power 
 is represented by two old men in purple mantles, whom some 
 monks salute, and call princes of the Church. They are 
 seated in a carriage with a pair of old black horses, and a 
 servant stands behind with a lantern. These are the suc- 
 cessors of the Caesars ! says Massinissa. Irydion no longer 
 hates Christianity, whose fate now seems to him as sorrowful 
 as formerly did that of Greece. 
 
 At last Irydion hears a voice, which calls to him : " Go 
 north, in the name of Christ, and stop first in the land of 
 graves and crosses. Thou mayst know it by the silence of its 
 warriors, and the melancholy of its little children. Thou 
 mayst know it by the huts of its poor, destroyed by fire, and 
 the palaces of its exiles, which have been laid waste. Go 
 there and dwell among the new brethren whom I give to 
 thee. This shall be thy second trial. For the second time 
 thou shalt see the object of thy love pierced through, and in 
 the death struggle, and the sufferings of thousands of souls 
 shall be contained in thy heart." 
 
 The moral, then, is this : Your task in the land of graves 
 and crosses, as in the land of temples and cypresses, is not 
 the making war upon your enemy by all means, but the 
 conquering him by intellectual and moral superiority. 
 Krasinski's doctrine, proclaimed again and again, is this : 
 Not to expect better times from the evil we may wish to inflict 
 upon our enemies, but from the good we develop in our 
 own minds. What he fears is the poison which thraldom 
 engenders and secretes in the soul. To him, Siberia, the 
 knout, and tortures, are less terrible than to see the national 
 spirit poisoned in the thirst for vengeance. 
 
 Consequently we have this radical contrast : 
 
 On the one hand, the recklessness of despair, which sanc- 
 tions everything, if it only strikes the tyrant : the act of 
 Gracyna, the fraud and treachery of Wallenrod, the plague- 
 kiss of Almansor, Kordjan's attempt at murder.
 
 268 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 On the other, when Paskiewicz is ruler in Warsaw, a 
 voice which warns against unproductive hatred, and which, 
 when it is answered with derision on account of its sup- 
 posed cowardice, is content again and again to point at 
 efforts towards a higher culture, by which to eclipse, and 
 thus to conquer the enemy through intellectual development 
 and purification. 
 
 There are two great leading principles in the battle of 
 life. The one is earthly, and the other spiritual. The former 
 has the more immediate results of an act in view, the latter 
 the more remote. The former is to this effect : Since life is 
 full of horrors, then make thine enemy harmless by annihilat- 
 ing him. For this, all means are lawful. The other is to 
 this effect : Since life is full of horrors, diminish their num- 
 ber by returning hate with love ! Love thine enemy, disarm 
 him by a self-esteem, which only unfolds itself in love, and 
 which, stronger than death, everywhere awakens life ! The 
 former is Conrad's and Kordjan's, the latter is the principle 
 of the great Anonymus. Perhaps they are both equally 
 unpractical, as between nation and nation. The one, be- 
 cause vengeance continually calls forth vengeance anew, 
 the other because love, as the only principle, is inadequate, 
 in a world where the gentleness of the lamb does not protect 
 it against the teeth of the wolf. 
 
 But it is these two principles, both equally romantic, 
 which permeate the romantic literature of Poland. 
 
 There is also a third unromantic and unsentimental prin- 
 ciple ; it teaches neither to exterminate nor to love your 
 enemy, but to work more and better than he. The future 
 belongs neither to the avenger nor to the apostle, but to him 
 who labours with genius.
 
 VII 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF HAMLET IN POLAND THE 
 TYPE OF HAMLET CONCEIVED ON RADICAL 
 LINES BY SLOWACKI, AND ON CONSERVATIVE 
 LINES BY KRASINSKI 
 
 THERE is yet another variety of the avenger, with much 
 of the type of the prophet in it, which has not yet been 
 touched upon, and which must be treated apart. It is 
 that group of figures in the romantic literature of Poland 
 which may be called Hamlet characters. In the literature 
 of the Renaissance there is this one great type from which 
 modern poetry may be dated, Shakespeare's Hamlet, spring- 
 ing originally from the English sense of reality and the 
 scepticism of Montaigne. As Hamlet is the first philoso- 
 phical drama of the more modern times, so also here for 
 the first time the typical modern man appears with his 
 keen sense of the contest between ideals and surroundings, 
 of the disproportion between strength and task, with all his 
 variety of spiritual being, delicate feeling and cruelty, his 
 wit without merriment, his everlasting procrastination and 
 furious impatience. 
 
 Much of the most modern of the poetry of the nineteenth 
 century derives from Hamlet. In Germany Goethe interprets 
 him in Wilhelm Meister, and this remodelled Hamlet calls 
 Faust to mind. When Faust was transplanted to English 
 soil, Byron's Manfred springs up, a new, if remoter, heir of 
 Hamlet. But in Germany the Byronic nature even assumes 
 a new and Hamlet-like (Yorick-like) form in Heine's bitter 
 and fantastic wit, in his hatred and caprice and intellectual 
 superciliousness. The generation to which Alfred de Musset 
 belonged in France, and which he described in his Confessions 
 (fun Enfant du Stick, nervous, inflammable as powder, with 
 
 its wings prematurely clipped, without the field for its thirst 
 
 269
 
 270 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 for action, and without energy in its actual field, forcibly 
 reminds us of the type. And perhaps the best of Musset's 
 masculine characters, Lorenzaccio, becomes the French 
 Hamlet, skilled in dissimulation, languid, brilliant, gentle 
 with women, yet wounding them with harsh words, mor- 
 bidly desirous of remedying the unimportance and foolish- 
 ness of his life by a deed, and acting desperately, uselessly, 
 and too late. 
 
 Hamlet, who centuries ago had been young England, 
 and who to Musset for a long time was young France, 
 afterwards became the name by which the Germany of 
 the fifties christened itself. " Hamlet is Germany," sang 
 Freiligrath. 
 
 In the development of Polish Romanticism there comes 
 a time when its poets are inclined to say : Hamlet is Poland. 
 
 It was the result of kindred political circumstances that 
 the character of Hamlet even at this same time, but still more 
 twenty years after, came to dominate another Slav literature, 
 the Russian, where we can trace it from the productions of 
 Pushkin and Gogol to those of Gontsharof and Tolstoi, while 
 in Tourgenief's works it really occupies the chief place. But 
 we shall see that the peculiar point in the Hamlet conscious- 
 ness, the vocation of vengeance, is wanting here, because all 
 the emphasis is laid on the disagreement between reflection 
 and energy in general. 
 
 On the other hand, we find marked traits of Hamlet's 
 nature in all the Polish political geniuses. From their youth 
 up, they all stand in his position. The world is out of joint, 
 and it is to be set right by their weak arms. High-born and 
 noble-minded as they are, they all feel like Hamlet the in- 
 ward fire and outward impotence of their youth ; conceiving 
 the conditions which surround them as one supreme horror, 
 they are constituted at once for dreaming and for action, for 
 musing and for recklessness. 
 
 Like Hamlet, they have seen their mother, the country 
 to which they owe their lives, dishonoured under the hand 
 of crowned robbers and murderers. The court, access to 
 which is sometimes open to them, frightens them as the 
 court of Claudius frightened the Danish Prince. These
 
 HAMLET A TYPE OF POLAND 271 
 
 descendants of Hamlet are, like him, cruel to their Ophelia, 
 they abandon her when she loves them best ; like him, they 
 suffer themselves to be sent away to foreign lands, and 
 when they speak they dissemble like him, clothe their mean- 
 ing in comparisons and allegories. Finally, what Hamlet says 
 of himself holds good of them : " Yet have I in me some- 
 thing dangerous." The peculiarly Polish feature is, that 
 what weakens them and hinders them is not their self-con- 
 sciousness but their poetry. While the Germans of this type 
 are ruined by self-consciousness, the French by debauchery, 
 the Russians by sloth, self-irony, or self-abandonment, it is 
 imagination which leads the Poles astray, and causes them 
 to live a life at variance with the true life. 
 
 It is true that the Hamlet character has many different 
 sides. Hamlet is the doubter, and, committed to inaction 
 by all sorts of scruples and considerations, is a man of 
 brains, who now acts nervously, now unmanned by nervous- 
 ness does not dare to act ; finally, he is the avenger, the man 
 who dissembles in order to be better able to avenge himself. 
 Every one of these aspects is developed by the Polish poets. 
 
 There is little of Hamlet in the personal character of 
 Mickiewicz, if we except the almost insane transport at an 
 idea which appeared in him at the moment when Towianski 
 entered into his existence. From this time forth the libera- 
 tion of Poland became a religion, a certainty for him. He 
 wanted to write to Nicholas, to convert Rothschild, in 
 order to win them to his cause. The chair of Slav history 
 and literature, which the Monarchy of July had bestowed 
 on him at the College of France, was taken from him, 
 when his lectures came to consist merely of the develop- 
 ment of fantastic patriotic theories (1844). But he pos- 
 sessed energy. In 1848 he tried to form a regiment of Poles 
 in Italy. During the reign of Napoleon III., who, according 
 to his belief, was to realise the Messiah -promises of the 
 great Napoleon, he filled for some years the modest position 
 of librarian at the Arsenal, which the Emperor had given 
 him, but during the Crimean war he travelled to Turkey 
 to raise a Polish legion against Russia. He died there, in 
 the midst of these efforts, in November 1855.
 
 272 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Nevertheless there is a glimpse of something like Hamlet 
 in several of the characters he created Wallenrod, Gus- 
 tavus, Conrad, Robak. Gustavus speaks the language of 
 significant insanity, Conrad loses himself in philosophical 
 reveries, Wallenrod and Robak dissemble or disguise them- 
 selves in the service of vengeance, and the latter, like 
 Hamlet, kills the father of his beloved. 
 
 The Hamlet nature plays a far greater role in the char- 
 acter of Slowacki. He was wild and gentle, unruly and 
 ivy-like, in life clung to his friends, in art to predecessors, 
 lived not with his whole person, but with his head, in his 
 ideas and his fancy. His imagination is richly coloured and 
 melodious, decorative and sonorous, but he is wholly lacking 
 in the plastic sense. It is on this account that Krasinski's 
 advice to him is so excellent : " Put granite under your 
 rainbows." 
 
 Practically, he was greatly influenced by his conscious- 
 ness of rivalry with Mickiewicz. His poetical writings are 
 mainly governed by this. In the history of the Middle Ages 
 we read of anti-popes. Slowacki belongs to the race of 
 anti-popes. His real originality is that of form. So far 
 as characters and fundamental themes are concerned he is 
 almost wholly limited by the models he imitates, and the 
 rivals he strives to outstrip or contradict. Thus we can trace 
 all the more plainly the general tendencies of Polish litera- 
 ture in his receptive nature. 
 
 His drama, Kordjan, written in sight of Mont Blanc, 
 which seemed to Slowacki " a carved statue of Siberia," is 
 founded on the coronation conspiracy against the Tzar 
 Nicholas. The conspirators here hold their meetings in a 
 church at night, and the young Polish nobleman, Kordjan 
 (the man of heart), offers to commit the murder of the Tzar. 
 Nothing could be more Hamlet-like than Kordjan's answer 
 to the President's exclamation, " Thou hast a fever, thine eyes 
 are wild ! " 
 
 " KORDJAN. It is nothing, old man! It is my hair which 
 has become white and consumes my skull. I feel every one 
 of my hairs suffering the pangs of death ; but that amounts
 
 "KORDJAN" 273 
 
 to nothing. . . . Plant two poplars and a rosebush on my 
 grave streams of tears will water them, and I shall have 
 hair on my head again. . . . Hast thou a pen ? I would 
 fain write the names of those who will lament me my 
 father, dead ; my mother, dead ; all my relatives dead ; she, 
 worse than dead. . . . Therefore I shall leave none behind 
 me. They are all with me ! And the gallows will be my 
 monument. 
 
 "THE PRESIDENT. Kordjan ! There is the note thou 
 gavest the conspirators ; take it, burn it, and be free of 
 thy word ! " 
 
 " KORDJAN. One, two, three ! Carry arms ! Sentinel 
 on the castle ! Take care ! What foolish words ! they are 
 to teach one how to walk. Old man : you irritate me with 
 your peaceful countenance : I cannot forget that I shall 
 never be old. If I ever surround thee with my flock of 
 children, then spit on my white hair, I permit it. (The clock 
 strikes eleven.) It is heaven which calls me." (Hastens out.) 
 
 Kord jan's entrance into the castle is now described in 
 a great fantastic scene. He keeps the watch for the night, 
 and, with his carbine on his arm, he goes towards the 
 emperor's bedroom, while the voices of imagination and 
 fear speak to him incessantly. Imagination says : Listen 
 to me ! I speak to thine eyes ! Fear says : Listen to me ! 
 I speak in the beating of my heart, until walls and 
 columns become serpents and sphinxes, the floor lives, the 
 plants have ears, the flowers move, and long funeral pro- 
 cessions wind from the church into the castle ; caskets, 
 sceptres, crowns, corpses, and ever more corpses, while 
 the church bells chime. Kordjan falls down on the floor 
 with his arm around his bayonet. He was not equal to 
 the deed. The Polish tendency to phantasmagoria inter- 
 vened between him and his action. 
 
 Not less Hamlet-like is the earlier, finely worked out 
 scene in Kordjan, in which Kordjan as an emigrant has an 
 audience with the Pope, the same Gregory XVI. who in 
 July, 1832, in a letter to the bishops of Poland, had con- 
 demned the Polish revolution as rebellion against the 
 
 s
 
 274 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 legitimate ruler, and praised the high-minded Tzar who 
 thank God ! had restored order and peace. 
 
 The scene takes place in the Vatican. The Pope is 
 sitting in his chair. On a stool by his side is his tiara. 
 On it a red-breasted parrot. A chamberlain opens the 
 door for Kordjan, and announces in a loud voice : " Count 
 Kordjan, a Polish nobleman." 
 
 " THE POPE. Welcome, descendant of Sobieski." (He 
 extends his foot. Kordjan kneels and kisses it.) " Poland 
 is constantly overwhelmed with benefactions from heaven, 
 is she not ? Daily I thank God in the name of this happy 
 land. For the emperor, who is really like an angel with an 
 olive leaf, ever has the best disposition towards the Catholic 
 religion. We ought to sing hosannas. . . . 
 
 "THE PARROT (shrilly). Miserere. 
 
 " KORDJAN. I bring you here, holy father, a holy relic : 
 it is a handful of the earth, where ten thousand men, children, 
 old people and women were murdered . . . without even 
 the sacrament of the altar beforehand. Treasure it, where 
 you treasure the presents of the Tzars, and in return give me 
 a tear, only a tear. . . . 
 
 " THE PARROT. Lacrymce Christi. 
 
 "THE POPE. . . . To-morrow you shall see me in all 
 my majesty distributing blessings to the city and the world. 
 You shall see whole races on their knees before me. Let 
 the Poles pray to God, reverence the Tzar, and hold fast by 
 their religion. 
 
 " KORDJAN. But this handful of bloody earth, does no 
 one bless that ? what shall I answer to my friends ? 
 
 "THE PARROT. De profundis clamavi, clamavi. 
 
 " THE POPE. . . . My son ! may God lead thee, and 
 grant that thy people may tear the germs of Jacobinism out 
 of their bosom and wholly and entirely devote themselves to 
 honouring God and cultivating the earth, henceforth holding 
 nothing in their hands but psalm-book, hoe, and rake. 
 
 " KORDJAN (throwing his handful of earth into the air). 
 I throw the ashes of the martyrs to all the winds. With a 
 sorrowful soul I return to my native land.
 
 "THE GODLESS COMEDY 
 
 2 75 
 
 "THE POPE. If the Poles be conquered, thou canst be 
 sure that I shall be the first to excommunicate them. May 
 religion increase like an olive tree, and may the people live 
 in peace in its shade. 
 
 " THE PARROT. Halkluja ! " 
 
 And if in Slowacki we find the radically disposed type of 
 Hamlet, the conservative Hamlet meets us in Krasinski, who 
 for so many years was Slowacki's friend and supporter. 
 
 The poet was not able to develop his views of life from 
 within with perfect freedom. A certain reserve was imposed 
 upon him by his position as his father's son and by a heritage 
 of aristocratic tendencies. Often and often his personality 
 was plainly in an inward strife, constantly suppressed, with 
 the doctrine he proclaimed and the view of life he advocated 
 a view of life which has all the advantage of an elevated 
 mode of thought hostile to the mob, but which is never 
 young, not even in the first youth. 
 
 The hero of The Godless Comedy has more than one trait 
 in common with the most celebrated of all Danes. He has 
 Hamlet's sensitiveness and force of imagination. He strives 
 towards an ideal, but yet stands outside reality, poetising 
 his life. He is punished for the absurd difficulty of his 
 character by the insanity of his wife, just as Hamlet is 
 punished for his pretended madness by the real insanity of 
 Ophelia. But this Hamlet is torn by a more intense inward 
 conflict, and devoured by deeper doubt than the Hamlet 
 of the Renaissance. The latter doubts whether the spirit, 
 whose cause he espouses, is anything more than a phantom. 
 When Count Henry shuts himself up in the Castle of the Holy 
 Trinity he is not sure that the Holy Trinity is more than this. 
 He has no faith, only the need of faith. He is conservative 
 and clerical, not from conviction, but from the fear that the 
 forces that are besieging this castle are only destructive 
 forces. For political reasons he supports a religious system 
 as to which he hears from his coarse antagonist, Pancratius, 
 the democratic leader (a character like Kenan's Caliban), the 
 harshest truths, without being able to refute them. When 
 Pancratius unfolds his Utopias to him, it is of little use that
 
 276 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 he has the answer ready, " You do not yourself believe in 
 them " ; when the latter to his remark about the human race, 
 all being saved through Christ, can retort : " Why then has 
 He not helped men in the two thousand years of misery 
 and wretchedness which have elapsed since His death ? 
 Are you created in the image of man or in that of the 
 nursery ? " 
 
 This pang is peculiar to the Polish Hamlet. 
 
 Krasinski cherished no illusion as to a speedy resurrec- 
 tion of the kingdom of Poland. He regarded the whole of 
 western European civilisation, including that of Poland, as 
 doomed. Nay, even Christianity seemed to him to be dying, 
 although he himself always wrote in a Christian spirit. 
 When he made his appearance as an aristocratic conservative 
 in his poems, it was with the agonising feeling that he was 
 defending the bad for fear of the worse. The adversities 
 of his private life and national misfortunes combined to 
 crush him early. From his thirty-fourth year he was a 
 broken-down old man, afflicted with nervous debility and a 
 disease of the eyes. The thirteen years he had still to live 
 were an uninterrupted struggle with death. 
 
 It has been already stated that Hamlet was, so to speak, 
 introduced at the court of Claudius by him. The episode 
 occurs in his beautiful poem the Temptation, a typical example 
 of the symbolical form of representation in which the 
 political conditions of those days compelled the poets of 
 Poland to express themselves. The poem dwells plainly 
 enough on personal recollections of Krasinski's youthful 
 residence in St. Petersburg, and is, moreover, a fantastic 
 representation of what he would have experienced in life if 
 he had followed his father's example. 
 
 The poem opens mysteriously with an invocation : " O 
 mother, six times pierced, unhappy mother ! " and describes 
 a landscape where on a gentle rising hill a coffin lies under 
 a slender fir tree ; in the coffin is a figure with chains on 
 the hands and a crown on the forehead. Six hills are 
 separated by green furrows, where blood runs like babbling 
 brooks, and weeds sprout over broken weapons. 
 
 Then the poet describes the arrival of a young noble
 
 KRASINSKI'S "TEMPTATION" 277 
 
 at a great city and a great castle, by the stairs of which 
 all ascend as eagerly as if they were going up to heaven. 
 There is the sound of many musical instruments, perfumes 
 surround the new-comer, he sees a throne in the sunlight 
 elevated above the crowd of dancers. On the throne sits 
 the absolute ruler of life and death under a canopy of 
 flags. From one of these flags, which is torn in tatters, 
 drops of blood now and then fall. But no one pays any 
 attention to them except the youth. 
 
 The crowd separates, and the lord of the castle steps 
 down from the throne and goes, erect and vigorous, towards 
 the young man. The youth looks him steadfastly in the 
 eyes ; the ruler knits his brows and says gently : " Come, 
 let us go together, and I will show you the wonders of my 
 castle." And when the youth stands as if lost in a dream, 
 he gives him a kiss on his forehead and leads him away. 
 With his mother's coffin before his eyes the young man 
 walks by the side of the ruler of life and death, and the 
 blood in his arm beats against the hard arm of the usurper. 
 And the latter speaks of the past, even mentions the name 
 of the murdered mother without shuddering, as if her death 
 did not rest upon his conscience. 
 
 They pass through ro\vs of men whose foreheads touch 
 the malachite floor ; then at the other end of the castle 
 marble doors are suddenly opened. The youth looks into 
 an enormous treasury, into mines of endless extent. Foun- 
 tains of flowing gold and silver shine with blended splendour, 
 and amethyst vaults rear themselves in all the colours of the 
 rainbow. But now and then there is also heard as it 
 were a shriek of some one dying, a clanking of chains ; now 
 and then human forms pass by like black cloudlets over the 
 moon ; they raise their hands with a clank, and pray for a 
 drop of water ; then the eyes of the ruler grow blood- red 
 with wrath. 
 
 From this time all show honour to the young man. 
 They wish to kiss the hand which has touched that of the 
 ruler. They offer him goblets full of costly wine, and a 
 beautiful young woman speaks to him of love. 
 
 In the throne-room the lord of life and death has given
 
 278 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 the youth a place at the table by his side under the con- 
 quered flags. Ambassadors from the kings of the East and 
 of the West appear before the ruler, and every general puts 
 at the foot of the throne an urn of pure gold, full of the ashes 
 of those who have fallen in battle for the holy cause in the 
 different quarters of the globe. The ruler asks: "Are they 
 really dead, and will they never rise again ? " The answer 
 comes, " Certainly never," and the urns are ranged on both 
 sides of the hall on black granite columns. Fire is laid in 
 them, and they burn with a bluish flame ; pale clouds of 
 incense convey the odour of the dead to the ruler. 
 
 Directly opposite the young man stands the urn which 
 bears his mother's name and contains the ashes of her sons. 
 As often as he looks on it he forgets his beaker, but the 
 beautiful woman by his side continually offers it to him 
 again. A veil spreads itself over his consciousness. Then 
 the ruler smiles and says : " You are my guest ; it is time 
 that you take the oath of allegiance to me and renounce your 
 old name," and he throws a handful of diamond crosses to him 
 with the words, " Wear them in remembrance of me." A 
 herald steps forward, and out of a black book he reads aloud 
 the formula of the oath to the young man, who repeats it 
 with sunken head, while it becomes dark before his eyes. 
 He has hardly ended when the lord of life and death rises 
 and calls out : " You slave of my slaves ! you shall die by 
 the halter if you break your oath ! " Then he smiles with 
 scorn. But when the youth raises his eyes, he reads on 
 the urn, where his mother's name was written, only the one 
 word Dishonour, and thousands shout dishonour to him, 
 before him, around him. Dishonour resounds in the vaults 
 of the castle from the throne-room to the treasury. 
 
 It was all a dream, from which the youth awakes, and 
 the poem ends as it began, with an enthusiastic invocation 
 of the six times pierced mother. 
 
 As already indicated, the poem is an expression of the 
 Polish Hamlet's horror of the court of Claudius. 
 
 But only a partial representation of the peculiarity and 
 versatility of these Polish writers is given by laying stress 
 upon their analogies with Hamlet. Hamlet's antithesis in
 
 MICKIEWICZ AND KRASINSKI 279 
 
 Shakespeare's tragedy is Fortinbras, the rejuvenating prin- 
 ciple of fresh reality, who inherits the throne and the 
 kingdom when all else is lost and poisoned. There is 
 also a glimmering of the nature of Fortinbras in several of 
 these poets, but the very essence of that which he symboli- 
 cally represents lives in Mickiewicz. 
 
 In Mickiewicz there was a fountain of bubbling, youthful 
 power. There was something in him which was freshness 
 itself, irresistibility itself, a something which is expressed 
 in words in the Ode to Youth and in the immortal poem, 
 Fan's. It is youth which believes in being able to tear 
 the old world out of its groves, and which makes the 
 attempt. It is youth which, like Faris or the Jehu of 
 Scripture " drives furiously." It is before this that birds 
 of prey take flight and hurricanes must yield. This tumultuous 
 force and self-confidence is not to be found so primitively 
 either in Slowacki or Krasinski. It is from this force in 
 Mickiewicz that springs a passion as exalted as that which 
 stretches the bow in the third part of Dziady, and a mas- 
 culine equilibrium of thought such as that which is disclosed 
 in the masterpiece of Polish literature, Pan Tadeusz. 
 
 Such robustness of emotion is not found in any other 
 Polish poet. Mickiewicz alone approached those great 
 names in poetry, which stand in history as above all healthy, 
 far healthier than Byron, healthier even than Shakespeare : 
 Homer and Goethe. 
 
 It is not by the healthfulness of his soul that Krasinski 
 raises himself above his period and belongs to the future. 
 It is by the loftiness of his soul, the sublimity of his outlook, 
 and his mode of thought. His works have not the blush 
 of health, but the purity of colourlessness. There is a defiant 
 independence in his isolated position, a peculiar foresight 
 in his views as to the danger of inciting the people against 
 the Polish nobility those views which Slowacki arrogantly 
 and scornfully ridiculed, but which received an apparently 
 incontrovertible justification when the peasants of Galicia, in 
 1846, were paid by Metternich's agent, Breindl, five gulden 
 for every living and ten for every murdered Polish noble- 
 man. There is finally a depth of understanding in The Godless
 
 2 8o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Comedy, the genius of which surprises us, when we remember 
 that it was composed by a youth of twenty-one. 
 
 It is neither their robustness nor their independence that 
 will enable Slowacki's productions to defy time. It is true 
 that, in religious respects, he is more liberal, in political, 
 more audacious, than his great rivals, but he is so as much 
 from a spirit of contradiction as from conviction. No 
 one is more brilliant than he. He has the genuine Polish 
 love for show and colour, he for whom the divine was 
 symbolised by the plume in the helmet. But if he has the 
 Polish love for pomp, he has, above everything else, the 
 common Slavic faculty for imitation. In almost every one of 
 his works we are distracted in our enjoyment by the 
 recollection of a very definite exemplar. 
 
 The manner in which he appropriates Shakespeare is 
 slavish ; his Balladyna, a blending of Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, King Lear, and Macbeth, in which beautiful single 
 passages and profound scenes are to be found, but in 
 which the elements are inharmoniously adjusted to each 
 other, leaves a painful impression as a whole, in spite of 
 the boldness of certain conceptions. He has utterly ruined 
 his treatment of the tragedy of Beatrice Cenci, supplanting 
 the study of the human soul by a long drawn-out romantic 
 dance of witches, a mere dilution of the witch theme, 
 treated with the judicious reserve of the master in Macbeth. 
 His Cenci is far behind Shelley's much earlier and more 
 admirable version of the same theme, with which Slowacki 
 was evidently not acquainted, otherwise he would have 
 imitated it. His Mary Stuart is more independent and 
 characteristic. It follows, almost act for act, the same 
 portion of the life of the Scottish Queen, afterwards treated 
 by Bjornson and Slowacki's Mary, as a character, is more 
 interesting and more important than Bjornson's, while the 
 treatment as a whole is more lyrical. 
 
 Slowacki was perhaps too much taken up by himself 
 to become properly absorbed in humanity before he described 
 men. He studied human life less than the works of Byron, 
 Shakespeare, Mickiewicz, Krasinski, and finally Calderon. 
 So he drew figures half living, half dream-like ; characters
 
 THE THREE GREAT POLISH POETS 281 
 
 of which some fragments are true, others incorrect, and 
 concealed the weakness of the drawing by throwing the 
 rainbow glow of his diction over it. His style is bold 
 and eloquent but seldom closely knit. Its strength and 
 weakness is its overwhelming richness of colour. 
 
 There is no bird which in strength of wing and power 
 of flight can rival the eagle. Fitly is it called the king of 
 birds. There is no bird which, in unblemished whiteness 
 and quiet dignity of movement can rival the swan. Fitly 
 is it called the symbol of noble purity. The peacock 
 cannot fly like the eagle, nor sail like the swan, but neither 
 of them can come near it in the incomparable splendour 
 of its plumage. 
 
 Mickiewicz is the eagle, Krasinski the swan, Slowacki 
 the peacock among the winged spirits of Poland.
 
 VIII 
 
 PAN T4DEUSZ,THE ONLY EPOPEE OF THE CENTURY 
 MICKIEWICZ AND RZEWUSKI IMPORTANCE OF 
 MICKIEWICZ 
 
 AMONG the works which these poets have produced there 
 is a single book which competent judges at an early day 
 pronounced to be the best poetical work in Polish litera- 
 ture. It is the only work in which one of the three great 
 poets has attempted to give a picture of the many-sided 
 national culture during a period of agitation of which he 
 was himself a witness ; the only work in which we find a 
 broad and rich representation of the natural scenery of 
 Poland ; the only one in which the poet does not think 
 it beneath him to let everyday men appear in large 
 numbers ; finally, the only one in which the keynote is no 
 longer that of tragical or lyrical exaltation, but a quiet 
 humour, from which the passage to satire, tenderness, 
 melancholy, or enthusiasm is easy. 
 
 As we all know, the number of epic poems of real value 
 is small. But certain of these works remain in the litera- 
 ture of the world as essential books, national books, 
 in which a whole nation or race has found its character 
 described, its life embodied in true and living form ; they 
 belong to remote times like the patriarchal books of the Old 
 Testament, like Homer, Ramayana, Firdusi, the Niebelunge- 
 lied. The reason is that the naive consciousness of a nation 
 generally expresses itself for the first time in a genuine epic. 
 It comes into existence when the nation has such a clear 
 understanding of itself that it can enjoy a glorified reflection 
 of its conditions in art, and yet has not become so civil- 
 ised that its religion has stiffened into dogmas and its 
 forms of society into a commonwealth of police or of 
 law. For the conditions are epic that is to say, in the 
 
 282
 
 ESSENTIALS OF EPIC POETRY 283 
 
 broadest sense heroic only when the ruling power does 
 not lie outside of the individual, and has not destroyed inde- 
 pendent activity, as it is destroyed when discipline and com- 
 mand rule in war, and royal power, official force, and 
 even more powerful society standards in time of peace. 
 
 In Homer every single leader is an independent Greek ; 
 even if Agamemnon is the king of kings, the other kings 
 are not under his sceptre. We meet with similar conditions 
 in the epic poems of far later times, as in the Cid of the 
 Spaniards and in the Italians, Ariosto and Tasso, even if the 
 naivete is weaker here, and the Virgilian models, not- 
 ably in Tasso, have a depressing effect. Tasso's Jerusalem 
 could be a genuine national book only in so far as the 
 people delighted in the sound of the verses and in the 
 brilliant adventures. It did not find its own life re- 
 produced therein. 
 
 The attempt to create a national epic failed most 
 conspicuously when Voltaire wrote the Henriade in the 
 eighteenth century. From that time all thinking men began 
 to understand that wholly peculiar conditions are demanded 
 for the production of a national epic poem, and that it could 
 hardly be written in an intellectual age, since it was neither 
 probable that we should be able to find that naivete in a poet, 
 nor that primitive anarchy in a period he knew and could 
 describe, on which the power of the great epics to strike 
 deep into the national consciousness seems hitherto to have 
 depended. 
 
 Since naivete has again come to honour and dignity 
 in this century, and since poets have again become child- 
 like to some extent, and to some extent have simulated 
 simplicity, they have tried to avoid the regularity of 
 modern conditions by laying the scene of their epic 
 essays in grey antiquity. 
 
 It is in the nature of the epic to give a broad picture of 
 the culture of the people, with a detailed description of their 
 entire manner of living, their eating and drinking, their 
 dress and dwelling, manners and customs. In Homer all 
 this still lives. The Homeric man and woman find them- 
 selves again in their surroundings. Odysseus has him-
 
 284 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 self fashioned his bed, the women have themselves woven 
 their apparel, the king's daughters themselves attend to 
 the washing, the men themselves pitch their tents, or build 
 their houses. Nothing of their own is strange to them, 
 nothing, like the dwellings or materials of our own days, is 
 the product of a manufactory or of a machine. The heroes 
 themselves gained their rare weapons, each of which has its 
 own peculiarity, by fighting or as booty. 
 
 When the Scandinavian authors, shrinking from their 
 own organised and regulated age and the tyranny of factory 
 and machine, turned back to antiquity, they produced narra- 
 tive poems like Hrolf Krake, or Frithiof, books of a certain 
 qualified value, but which have no deep intellectual interest, 
 because they have not the slightest resemblance to the period 
 they represent. The only modern poets, who have succeeded 
 in producing anything which has the character of an epic, are 
 Byron, whose Don Juan is a picture of the world, although 
 in its nature it is a bitter, glowingly sensual, wrathful satire, 
 and before him Goethe, who in Hermann and Dorothea repro- 
 duced something of the simplest and best substance of the 
 German people in the old art form of the narrative poem. 
 The types here are plain, of homely grandeur. Hermann 
 and Dorothea stand before the reader's eyes as the German 
 Adam and Eve. But the epic foundation is slender ; family 
 life in a little German town ; pastor and apothecary ; the 
 landlord and landlady of the inn ; the relations between 
 parents and a grown-up son ; but as background we have : 
 the French Revolution, the fugitive emigrants, who bring 
 from the left bank of the Rhine the orphaned, homeless 
 girl, whom Hermann leads to his home and to his parents. 
 The contrast between vagrancy and the cosiness of a pro- 
 vincial town, between upheaval and bourgeois stagnation, is 
 also indicated here. The whole is less an epic than an idyl 
 of family life on an epic background. 
 
 In Pan Tadeusz Poland possesses the only successful epic 
 our century has produced. The good star of Mickiewicz 
 ordained that this time he should not go back to the remote 
 past in order to produce something epic. Here he suc- 
 ceeded in seeing the heroic in his own age.
 
 "PAN TADEUSZ" 285 
 
 Elizabeth Browning in the beautiful and eloquent verse 
 of her Aurora Leigh has a memorable passage as to the 
 possibility of seeing this. She says : 
 
 "... every age, 
 
 Through being beheld too close, is ill discerned 
 By those who have not lived past it, we'll suppose 
 Mount Athos carved, as Alexander schemed, 
 To some colossal statue of a man ; 
 The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear, 
 Had guessed as little as the browsing goats 
 Of form or feature of humanity 
 Up there in fact, had travelled five miles off 
 Or ere the giant image broke on them, 
 Full human profile, nose and chin distinct, 
 Mouth muttering rhythms of silence up the sky." 
 
 Thus the ordinary man and the ordinary poet do not see 
 the contours of the age in which they live. 
 
 Mickiewicz was the rare epic poet in this sense, that he 
 succeeded fully in reproducing not only the origin and 
 source of the customs of his native land, but all the great- 
 ness and all the poetry which the period about the year 
 1812 had in its bosom for Poland. He dared to found a 
 whole epic on his own observation. 
 
 Its genesis is remarkable. It emanated from Mickie- 
 wicz's feeling of despair when the revolution of 1831, in 
 which he had not participated, was crushed. In 1832, after 
 Garczynski's death, he writes : " I am like a Frenchman on 
 the retreat from Russia, demoralised, weak, almost without 
 boots." He became reserved, gloomy, sullen, misanthropic, 
 and negligent in his dress. To escape this despairing dejec- 
 tion, he turned back to the land of his childhood, Lithuania, 
 in which he had seen the light, which he had not visited 
 since the years of his early youth, and which he, the exile, 
 was never to see again. And he, who as a poet, directly 
 or through disguises, had always spoken only in his own 
 name, he who had defied and incited, protested and agitated, 
 became an epic poet of perfect calm and mighty breadth. 
 
 He achieved the epic naivete, which is so rare and so 
 costly, which was denied to all other poets in and out of 
 Poland, for a double reason ; firstly, because of a peculiarity
 
 286 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 in his relation to his subject, and, secondly, because of a 
 peculiarity in the subject itself. 
 
 The other poets lacked naivete. But he, who had only 
 seen his fatherland with the eyes of a child, and never could 
 see it again with the eyes of a mature man, had never had 
 this picture clouded. He received in compensation for this 
 exclusion from the land of his fathers the long lost gift of 
 the epic poet, the naive feeling of growing up with the 
 country, its customs and conditions, as they were when 
 he was a child. 
 
 And then it happened that the subject which presented 
 itself to him had just the characteristics of the old epic sub- 
 jects. Lithuanian life about 1812 was an entirely civilised 
 condition in its way, yet one wholly outside of the mono- 
 tonous cosmopolitan civilisation. Everything in this Szlachta 
 epos was, therefore, as untouched by the culture of western 
 Europe as are the enormous primeval forests of Lithuania 
 by forestry. Here everything is original, from the peculiar 
 food of the country, with its wonderful names, to the varie- 
 gated dress zupan, kontusz, confoderatka. There is a 
 wealth of characteristic customs ; there is even a special 
 costume in which to collect edible sponges. And every 
 weapon, every club, every sabre, every gun, has a history 
 which is told. Originals swarm here ; every other person 
 who appears is an original of the primeval forest. Here 
 there is neither supremacy nor discipline. The relation 
 between the upper classes and the servants is still, as in the 
 Middle Ages, a purely personal relation, not infrequently a 
 passionate attachment. 
 
 Finally, in this aristocratic epopee there is a relation 
 between the nobles such as we see between the princes in 
 Homer. A wild independence blossoms here, in spite of 
 apparent subordination to a king, a state of things unknown 
 elsewhere in Europe. Men do justice for themselves with 
 weapons in their hands ; they acknowledge no superior, 
 carry on war and give battle on a small scale, rend the land 
 with internecine conflicts until the coming of the Russian 
 drives the enemies into each other's arms, and Napoleon's 
 entry into Poland lights the fire of patriotic enthusiasm.
 
 HENRYK RZEWUSKI 287 
 
 But the anarchy of the nobility, which in the world of reality 
 had shown itself so fatal to the existence of Poland, proved, 
 as if in compensation, so admirable an epic subject, that 
 Poland got its only epos by virtue of that very condition 
 which annihilated the country as a State. And Mickiewicz, 
 describing this host of Don Quixotes with love and humour, 
 opened up vistas in the past and the future which explained 
 the glorious past of his people and its present ruin. 
 
 The action lasts from the summer of 1 8 1 1 to the spring 
 of 1812. By choosing this point of time, his hopeful nature 
 found scope in his poem, this epos of a humiliated people, 
 for he could close with a lyric flight, an inspired burst 
 of consolation. He had experienced this popular feeling, 
 when as a boy he saw the entrance of the French bat- 
 talions into Nowogrodek. 
 
 In his travels in the Crimea, Mickiewicz had as fellow- 
 traveller the somewhat older Henryk Rzewuski, the heir of 
 one of the old families of the great nobility of Poland. This 
 intellectual man, an excellent narrator, had been educated 
 in a reactionary, aristocratic circle, which swore by Bonald 
 and De Maistre. In 1812 he had made the personal ac- 
 quaintance of De Maistre in St. Petersburg, and he appeared 
 first in private life, afterwards in literature, as the uncom- 
 promising spokesman of his ma?ter, the greatest champion 
 of authority of the age. Rzewuski abounded in recollections 
 of the life of the Polish nobility of the eighteenth century. 
 He was endowed with a literary talent of which he was not 
 conscious. When Mickiewicz was residing in Rome and 
 passed two winters in company with Rzewuski, the poet 
 urged him to write. He inferred the talent of written de- 
 scription from his gift of oral narrative. When, in response 
 to his suggestion, Rzewuski produced some verses which 
 Mickiewicz pronounced bad, the latter did not on that account 
 mistrust his own judgment ; for he had perceived from the 
 beginning that the talent of Rzewuski could only manifest 
 itself in a prose form. Therefore he earnestly advised him 
 to write prose. Rzewuski followed this advice and succeeded. 
 Strange to say, this prose afterwards had a reflex influence 
 upon Mickiewicz.
 
 288 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Rzewuski wrote a thick volume of memoirs of the previous 
 century in the style of the period. The fictitious author was 
 Severin Soplica, one of the servants and adherents of Prince 
 Charles Radziwill. In these loosely knit memoirs, which give 
 glowing pictures of the time, rich in strong features and with 
 admirable descriptions of character, the leading personage 
 is that Prince Radziwill, so popular in Lithuania, called 
 Paniekochanku, on account of his favourite form of salutation 
 (Dear sir ! Dear friend). The time of the action is about 
 1770. When the book appeared in 1839 ^ was received 
 with great enthusiasm ; it was read as if it were a volume 
 of genuine reminiscences. 
 
 It was completed in 1832, and it is probable that 
 Mickiewicz had received from Rzewuski the incentive to 
 deal with the Poland of the end of the eighteenth century. 
 That his hero also bears the family name of Soplica implies 
 this. At the close of 1832 he began the elaboration of 
 Pan Tadeusz which, in a letter written in December, he 
 characterises as " a rural poem in the style of Hermann and 
 Dorothea" of which he " has altogether scribbled a thousand 
 verses." While he was writing it, he felt as if he were 
 transported to Lithuania. In February 1834 he finished 
 the poem, which for the rest he mentions carelessly, with a 
 certain lack of respect, as " a piece of nonsense," in com- 
 parison to Dziady, which he means to continue in order to 
 finish ll his one work worth reading." Wonderfully enough 
 the public soon judged far more justly than the author him- 
 self in this matter. He did not even appreciate his good 
 fortune, in lighting upon such an untouched subject, such 
 primitive nature, whose poetry he could reproduce with 
 lively fancy, and such a characteristic anarchy regulated by 
 customs, and marked by all the unruly freedom of the indi- 
 dividual, which was in such contrast to the police-ridden 
 uniformity of other European countries. 
 
 And since he was not like Rzewuski merely a gifted 
 narrator, who presented a past in careless fragmentary prose, 
 but a writer who embalmed his recollections, observations, 
 visions, and hopes in a form of entrancing melody, so that 
 no syllable could be taken away from any line without loss,
 
 "PAN TADEUSZ" 289 
 
 he endowed his chief work with such a power of resistance 
 to time, that it will come to later generations in Poland as 
 the great diamond in the national patrimony, the cutting of 
 which has made its value incalculable, and whose hard 
 surface resists all attack. 
 
 It is very suggestive that the contemporaries of Mickiewicz 
 paid particular attention to the descriptions of the past in 
 Pan Tadeusz. They considered the poem in connection 
 with the Recollections of Sopltca, and thus, in the period which 
 immediately followed, that one of the elements of the Polish 
 romanticists became the predominant one, which in the 
 beginning had not been specially prominent, namely, the 
 element of the ancient nobility. In the track of Pan Tadeusz 
 the epopees and romances of the ancient nobility grew so 
 rapidly that even Slowacki in Agamemnon's Tomb was 
 obliged to utter a warning against this continual poison of the 
 past, this Nessus-shirt which the new Poland wore, the red 
 kontusz and golden girdle of the old Szlachta. 
 
 Now we can hardly comprehend that it was that in Pan 
 Tadeusz which suggests Walter Scott, which about 1840 gave 
 this unique poetical work its chief effect. At the present 
 time it is clear that the reason that Mickiewicz, and he alone 
 of the three greater poets, finally succeeded in producing a 
 work at once popular and imperishable, was the circum- 
 stance that he, and he alone, gave a description of realities 
 with no fantastic or mystical elements interwoven, and painted 
 a world which did not lie half-hidden behind the mists of 
 the past, but one which he himself had seen with the clear, 
 wise eyes of childhood before it vanished. 
 
 The sub-title of the poem is " The Last Raid in Lithu- 
 ania," and treats of the old anarchical custom of determining 
 litigation between two noble families thus : one of them with 
 its adherents in a body simply rode out and took possession 
 by force of the object in dispute. Thus it happens here. 
 Between the families Soplica and Horeszko there is an old 
 quarrel about the possession of a ruined castle. The nobility 
 of the district is assembled at Soplicowo to settle the 
 quarrel. There we become acquainted with all the persons 
 who appear ; the leading character, Tadeusz, his uncle, the 
 
 T
 
 2 9 o IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 Judge Soplica ; the opposing party, the foolish Italianate, 
 romantic Count Horeszko, in whom the author seems to 
 have given the portrait of the man who supplanted him 
 in the heart of Marylka ; a handsome and amiable coquette 
 from St. Petersburg, who is no longer young, Telimene ; the 
 young ingenue Sophia of the house of Horeszko, who was 
 brought up in the family of the judge (a young girl, who has 
 some of the traits of Marylka); finally, a swarm of excellently 
 drawn guests. They go on a bear-hunt in the primeval 
 forest, which is described with incomparable power. The 
 hunters come into peril of their lives, but the bear is 
 struck down by Robak, a mystic Bernardine monk, who 
 intervenes on all occasions to help and rescue. The dispute 
 about the bear's head excites Count Horeszko, and leads 
 him on to take forcible possession by " raid " of the castle 
 adjudged to Soplica. This triumph is celebrated by a 
 drinking-bout, at which all the participants become so intoxi- 
 cated that the Russian soldiers passing by are able to over- 
 come them like beasts, and bind them. But against the 
 Russians all the Poles feel as if they were allies. Robak 
 forms a plan to liberate the prisoners and take the Russians 
 by surprise. It conies to a battle, in which indeed he is 
 mortally wounded, but the Poles prevail. Their leaders must 
 now, it is true, escape further pursuit by flight, but they 
 cross the Niemen to the troops of Napoleon, and soon return 
 as officers in the Polish army under Dombrowski, whose 
 banner unites all the former opponents. The marriage of 
 Tadeusz Soplica with Sophia Horeszko is celebrated as a 
 symbol of the reconciliation of the rival houses, and at a 
 great banquet Jankiel plays the history of Poland down to 
 1812, until all ends as in a golden dawn of bright hopes. 
 
 The leading character, Tadeusz, is an amiable and brave 
 young fellow, not more interesting than one of Walter Scott's 
 young heroes, and has no other function than that of hold- 
 ing the story together. His youthful nature is fully described, 
 without hypocrisy or dissimulation ; nevertheless there is 
 nothing in him which fascinates. The real hero is not 
 Tadeusz, but his father Jacek, who conceals his name and his 
 rank under the cowl of the monk Robak.
 
 "PAN TADEUSZ" 
 
 291 
 
 Jacek has formerly killed Sophia's father, the magnate 
 Horeszko, just as he was defending his castle against the 
 Russians. It is true that the great lord had rejected 
 Jacek as a suitor, much as Count Ankwicz, from whom 
 he is painted, had turned away Mickiewicz. Jacek never sees 
 the daughter Eva again (the very name is preserved), and 
 she is forced into the marriage in which Sophia is born. 
 He himself marries afterwards without love, and becomes 
 the father of Tadeusz, does penance for the murder of 
 Horeszko as a Bernardine monk, has Sophia educated, 
 and watches over her and his son like a Providence. As 
 the murderer of Horeszko he acquired the reputation of 
 having been a tool of the Russians ; in reality he is one 
 of the trusted men of the French government, and has been 
 entrusted with the task of arranging a great Polish insur- 
 rection. When he dies in the victorious battle with the 
 Russians, the cross of the Legion of Honour is placed on 
 his grave. 
 
 In Jacek's personality we see as it were Mickiewicz's 
 new poetry grow out of the older. As a murderer through 
 injured pride, as the patient monk, who pays for the untamed 
 wildness of a moment by the renunciation of a life-time, he 
 reminds us of the old Byronic heroes, in his nature closely 
 related to all the romantic and passionate characters of 
 Mickiewicz. In certain ways he is as true a reflection of the 
 personal life, experiences, and sentiments of the author as 
 Gustav and Conrad. But out of the lyrico-romantic kernel 
 of his spiritual life the whole epic wealth bursts forth as a 
 mighty oak grows from an acorn. The fate of the individual 
 man is entirely absorbed in that of the whole nation, whose 
 vices and virtues are unfolded to the reader, as we become 
 acquainted with its quarrelsomeness, party dissensions and 
 inclinations to civil war, but also the enthusiasm, which 
 makes it ready, as soon as the blast from Europe reaches 
 it, to rise as one man and realise its ideal. The blind 
 hatred of the earlier poetry has vanished here. Plut, 
 the born Pole, is put to shame and removed without 
 mercy as a deserter. On the other hand the Russian 
 Rykow is a brave and honest fellow, a little inclined to
 
 292 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 drunkenness like the Poles themselves but incorruptible 
 and good-natured. 
 
 In the main the description of individuals is not at all 
 the most important thing here. The principal subject is the 
 broad description of natural life and of human life as deter- 
 mined by natural surroundings. 
 
 In the description of the bear-hunt there is a passage 
 where the Wojski (a title of honour, tribune) of the district, 
 when the bear is killed, plays a flourish on his horn over the 
 dead bruin. It is as follows : 
 
 "Then our Wojski grasped his horn, which was tied 
 securely to his belt, his buffalo horn, long, with many 
 windings, like a boa carried it to his mouth with both 
 hands. His cheeks are stretched like a pumpkin, bloodshot 
 his eyes burn. 
 
 " Now he drops his eyelids, then draws in his paunch, 
 and draws breath and wind into his chest with all his might 
 and blows like a stormblast whirls the roar away into the 
 deep thicket, where echo plays with it. Then the huntsmen 
 are dumb with astonishment, fascinated by the melody, 
 purity, force, and fulness of the strong tones. All the art 
 which formerly won him honour, now as an old man he 
 displays once more in the assembly of the huntsmen. He 
 soon wakes the oaks, fills the woods round about, as if he 
 were beginning a hunt, as if the hounds were baying around. 
 For it was the hunt, painted in tones, strong, clear. First 
 it sounds aloud into the world the fanfare of the morning 
 signal. Then whines and howls, the sounds of a pack of 
 hounds. Then it thunders now and then, it is the booming 
 of the guns when they fire. 
 
 " Here he stopped, yet he did not drop the horn. They 
 believed he was still playing, but it was the echo. He blew 
 again, and the horn was as if enchanted, now harsh, now 
 delicate, wholly as the mouth of the Wojski treated it. He 
 imitates the voices of the animals. Just like a wolf's mouth 
 the horn now howls so hideously that all hearts fail. It 
 opens like the throat of a bear and sends out a loud roar. 
 Suddenly, like the roar of the wild ox, they feel it rend 
 the air.
 
 "PAN TADEUSZ" 293 
 
 " Here he stopped, yet the horn did not drop. They 
 believed he was still playing, but it was the echo. 
 
 " For the trees repeated the matchless work of art, and 
 it resounded from beech to beech, from oak to oak. 
 
 " He blew again, as if there were hundreds of horns in 
 his horn. So the wild chase through the grain of the 
 peasant is heard. Shots, baying of hounds, the death rattle 
 of the deer now he raises the mouth of the horn. And 
 the triumphal fanfare strikes with power against the vault of 
 heaven. 
 
 " Here he stopped, but the horn did not drop. They 
 believed he was still playing, but it was the echo. 
 
 " There sounded as many horns as there are trees in 
 the forest, as from choir to choir it sped from tree to tree. 
 And tones rolling wider follow on tones, then they become 
 softer, purer, and more tender till they die away softly some- 
 where on the threshold of heaven." 
 
 What is said here about the playing of the Wojski 
 expresses exactly what Mickiewicz had the power to do. 
 Because he, the exile, dreamed himself back to his childish 
 impressions of nature and human life in a land which lay 
 in a na'ive and motley civilisation, outside of trade, but 
 with a characteristic stamp of handicraft, outside of a 
 state of police, but with a recognised anarchy of established 
 custom, he succeeded in making the ancient old Lithuanian 
 forest speak, was able to conjure up the wild and merry 
 hunt in the country, the natural sounds of the animals, the 
 twitter of the birds, the growling of the bears, the bellow of 
 the wild ox, the choir of all the human voices. He rises 
 from the quiet whispering between beech and beech, oak and 
 oak, until it is as if he had the melody of hundreds of horns 
 in his horn, as if he had the voices of all the deceased 
 generations of the land therein. 
 
 These voices are heard through the poem ever in broader 
 flood, ever in purer tone, giving utterance to the yearnings 
 of the country in love and pain, hope and anger, wildness 
 and folly, mirth and enthusiasm, until it appears as if the 
 whole heaven of Poland were filled by his song. And when
 
 294 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 we have seen how deeply this poem of his even to this 
 day affects the minds of the Poles, we are reminded of the 
 words about the listeners to the Wojski, that it seemed to 
 them that he was still playing when he had longed ceased. 
 So completely does Mickiewicz live in the echo he has 
 evoked.
 
 IX 
 
 DIVISION AMONG THE POETS DISORGANISATION 
 OF ROMANTICISM POLISH LITERATURE OF 
 TO-DAYCRITICAL SUMMARY 
 
 NOT one of the three great romantic poets sang for long. 
 Mickiewicz did not publish any more poems after 1840, 
 though he lived thirteen years longer. And Slowacki, who 
 died in 1849, when only thirty-seven, wrote almost nothing 
 in the last three years of his life. 
 
 Rivalry and difference of opinion separated them widely 
 in the forties. 
 
 The rupture between Mickiewicz and Slowacki was most 
 complete. Slowacki's ill-fortune and his irritable nature, 
 as well as a somewhat unjustifiable coldness on the part 
 of Mickiewicz, had constantly kept the former at a distance 
 from his more fortunate rival in the admiration of his country- 
 men. Nevertheless there was a moment when they met 
 in unison ; some days after the Slav lectures by Mickiewicz 
 at the College of France had been begun during the 
 Christmas of 1840, the Polish emigrants in Paris arranged 
 a dinner for him. At this festivity Slowacki was also 
 present ; Pan Tadeusz had made him forget all his earlier 
 injuries and all his old rancour. He even rose and in 
 improvised verse celebrated the guest of honour as the 
 first singer of their common fatherland. The best of his 
 spiritual life broke through here. He sacrificed none of his 
 dignity ; there was a touch of bitterness in the way in which 
 he alluded to his own fate, and a melancholy pride in the 
 hope he expressed that he also in his way had rendered 
 services his fatherland would value ; but he addressed 
 Mickiewicz with heartiness, and gave him his homage with 
 sincere warmth. He declaimed his improvisation with so 
 much enthusiasm that he won universal applause, except
 
 296 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 from some fanatical admirers of Mickiewicz, who were 
 instantly offended at his comparing his talent and fate with 
 that of the great man. Mickiewicz gave a comparatively 
 friendly answer, also in verse, probably the last verses he 
 ever composed. There was some severity in his criticism 
 of Slowacki's works and character he advised him to 
 control his pride of spirit but he also said flattering things 
 to him, and mentioned that he himself in his day at Wilna 
 had prophesied to Slowacki's mother the coming honour 
 of her son. The two poets embraced each other, the 
 bystanders embraced them with tears in their eyes, and 
 the old enmity seemed to be a thing of the past. 
 
 But soon after, a final breach was brought about by a 
 trifling cause, a silver bowl, which Slowacki was asked to 
 present to Mickiewicz in memory of this festival. Slowacki 
 regarded this request as an insult, an imputation of vassal- 
 age, and when he refused, the new Catholic journals of the 
 emigrants fell upon him and attacked his best poems, and 
 those of his friend Krasinski. He responded by attacking 
 the blind admirers of Mickiewicz, and described their conduct 
 towards him and his friend, after which the papers gave 
 erroneous accounts of what had happened at the festival 
 between the two improvisatores. Slowacki expected that 
 Mickiewicz would now give an account of the actual 
 occurrence, but when he wrapt himself up in a dignified 
 silence, exasperation took such hold upon Slowacki that it 
 inspired him. He published Beniowski, a poem in the style 
 of Byron's Don Juan and Musset's Natnouna, in which the 
 material was only a pretext for lyrical and emotional or 
 scornful and pugnacious digressions from the main subject ; 
 and here he attacked Mickiewicz's adherents, " the Jesuits 
 of the emigrants," as he called them, scourged them with 
 passion and wit, and settled his relation to Mickiewicz, 
 made a brief abstract of his improvisation, and in con- 
 clusion, threw at him this challenge : " We are two gods, 
 each of whom rules upon his own sun. ... I will not go 
 with you on your wild path, but by quite another path, my 
 own, and the people will follow me." 
 
 At this point in Slowacki's literary life, Krasinski came
 
 SOCIALISM AMONG THE EXILES 297 
 
 publicly to his aid ; in a somewhat lengthy article the 
 anonymity of which deceived no one he sought to adjudi- 
 cate between Mickiewicz and him, attributing to each his 
 great qualities, and to each his own sphere. He attributes to 
 Mickiewicz centripetal, to Slowacki centrifugal force ; to the 
 former plastic talent, and to the latter musical, laying stress 
 on Slowacki's extraordinary control of language. With 
 some inordinate and diffuse comparisons, he finally char- 
 acterises Mickiewicz as the Michael Angelo of form, while 
 Slowacki, he says, corresponds to " Correggio and Raphael, 
 or to Beethoven." The intention at least was good enough, 
 and from that time the reputation of Slowacki was on the 
 rise. Thus the faith was justified which led Slowacki in 
 his time to symbolise his relation to Krasinski by that of 
 the twin brothers, Lei and Polel, who, bound together with 
 an iron chain, constitute, as it were, one single person in 
 the contest, the one wielding the sword, the other the shield. 
 
 But soon this bond, apparently so strong, was to break. 
 In the first half of the forties, political life among the 
 Polish emigrants had reached its apogee. They had an 
 instinct that a general European outburst of revolutionary 
 passions was imminent, and they gladly anticipated its 
 coming in the belief that an insurrection was the only 
 means of restoring Poland. Towianski's sect had created 
 a mental ferment, but the most effective group among the 
 emigrants was the Democratic Society which had its seat 
 first at Poitiers, and afterwards at Versailles. It arranged 
 a general revolt, which was to begin in Austrian and 
 Prussian Poland, and since it justly contended that a revolt 
 could not succeed without the help of the peasants, it 
 addressed itself through secret messengers and pamphlets 
 to the common people. In order to win them, it suggested 
 a new partition of the soil, and thus raised a threat against 
 the landed proprietors. Pamphlets, the most important of 
 which were signed with the pseudonym Prawdowski, carried 
 on the revolutionary propaganda by declamations against 
 the part which the aristocracy and clergy had played in the 
 history of Poland. 
 
 His dread of freethinking, and his aversion to demagogues
 
 298 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 and socialists led Krasinski, in 1845, under the pseudonym, 
 Spiridion Prawdzicki, to write against Prawdowski three 
 psalms (of Faith, Hope, and Charity), fascinating in their 
 verbal diction, but mystical in their preaching of prayer and 
 moral self-purification as the only permissible means of con- 
 tending with oppression, unjustly aggressive in their concep- 
 tion of the democrats as bloodhounds. Although he was 
 so full of faith personally in the superior virtues, heroism, 
 chivalry, &c., of the nobility, he did not deny their past sins, 
 but appealed to the men, who, with childlike cruelty, shouted 
 for their blood, " to throw away the knife." 
 
 These psalms so greatly irritated Slowacki that he 
 allowed himself to be drawn into a poetic answer, " To the 
 Author of the three Psalms." With warmth and force, but 
 also with bitter scorn he refutes the doctrine of the right 
 and use of passive resistance, and scoffs at Krasinski as 
 the distinguished son of the nobility, who, tender of the 
 welfare of the privileged class, sees dangers everywhere for 
 the poor nobleman : " Who has threatened you with the 
 knife ? . . . Perhaps the light has penetrated through the 
 red curtains of your windows ; it has seemed to you to 
 look like blood, and you shout, Do not murder the Szlachta. 
 I am humble enough not to curse any intellectual move- 
 ment. Moreover, do not believe that the divine idea only 
 unfolds itself under the direction of angels ; God often 
 allows it to be born in blood, and He sometimes sends 
 it with Mongols." Against Slowacki's wish and design this 
 poem was published. 
 
 The horrors of Galicia, which broke out immediately 
 after, came as if to give the lie to Slowacki. Under the 
 guidance of Austrian agents and liberated galley slaves (like 
 that Szela who caused the whole family of Bohusz, twenty- 
 two persons, to be put to death), in 1846, 8000 Polish 
 soldiers to whom furlough had been given, persuaded the 
 peasants in Galicia to believe that the Tzar had emanci- 
 pated them, but that the nobility prevented their exemption 
 from service in the army, and a new partition of the land. 
 They rose up as one man against their lords in the three 
 bloody days which have been already spoken of.
 
 KRASINSKI AND SLOWACKI 299 
 
 Although it was not the democrats of Poland, but dis- 
 tinguished members of the Austrian Government who were 
 behind these murders, still they showed how easy it was to 
 turn the Polish peasants into madmen. Krasinski's pro- 
 phetic soul was justified, and in the year 1848 he responded 
 to Slowacki's poem with the Psalm of Sadness. 
 
 It is true that a superficial reconciliation between the 
 two former friends was brought about, but still their last 
 literary relation to each other was marked by jarring dis- 
 cord. In Slowacki's posthumous play, The Incorrigibles, 
 Krasinski is caricatured as Count Phantasius Dafnicki, who 
 sets out to marry a fortune ; nay, even his inamorata, 
 Delphine Potocka, is caricatured as the divorced Countess 
 Idalia, who accompanies him everywhere. And in Kra- 
 sinski's great posthumous work, The Unfinished Poem, in 
 the suite of the demagogue Pancratius, Slowacki appears 
 under the name of Julinicz, as the popular prophet, who 
 introduces himself with the outburst : " I am a great man, 
 a prophetic spirit, place, place," proclaiming with unhealthy 
 enthusiasm his contempt for Christianity, and that indiffer- 
 ence for human life which was expressed in his Krdl Duch. 
 
 In 1848 Slowacki laid before his countrymen in Paris 
 his plan for an insurrectionary league among the Poles. 
 He went to Posen to induce the national committee there to 
 adopt it, and take part in the contest. But the revolt was 
 then near its end. The battles of the 29th of April and 
 the 2nd of May prepared the Poles for final defeat. After 
 having seen his mother once more at Breslau, Slowacki 
 turned back to Paris, and died the year after, of a tedious 
 and painful illness. 
 
 In the great revolutionary year, 1848, the Polish emigra- 
 tion had played out its part. Although national movements 
 and efforts in this year had been so vigorous, not a single 
 new State arose on a national foundation, nay, States (like 
 Austria) which the carrying out of the principle of nation- 
 ality would have shattered, came out of the crisis more 
 powerful than ever. But so far as the Poles are concerned 
 this made little impression. The romantic ideals, whose 
 central point was the speedy regeneration of the kingdom,
 
 300 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 still controlled the minds of all ; though after the great 
 poets became silent, Romanticism could no longer take so 
 high a flight. The terrible collapse of 1863 was the first 
 decisive thing which awakened the people out of their 
 dream-life, and showed them the reality as it was. 
 
 From this point in the literature of Poland, history and 
 historical criticism have driven poetry into the background. 
 In opposition to the old ideals and watchwords, a new ideal 
 has arisen, that of the historic truth, and a new watchword, 
 labour, and the most eminent writer and poet of the next 
 succeeding age was the man who has most energetically 
 extolled the importance of labour for his nation, and who 
 has himself set an example in taking his task in literature 
 as that of a workman on the grandest scale. Joseph Ignatius 
 Kraszewski (1812-1886) who, in 1879, on his jubilee as an 
 author, was visited by delegates from all quarters of Poland 
 with gifts and letters of honorary citizenship as the greatest 
 living national author of Poland, had at that time published 
 four hundred and forty volumes, without collaborators, and 
 if articles scattered here and there are included, perhaps six 
 hundred volumes in all. As a writer of romances he pre- 
 vented the higher classes from forgetting their nationality by 
 exclusive reading of foreign books, and taught the nation to 
 know itself, in so much as he assailed the national delusions 
 alternately in journalistic and poetic form, and as an energetic 
 educator of the people showed the Poles what duties their 
 political misfortunes had laid upon them in a higher degree 
 than upon other nations. 
 
 Kraszewski wrote historical romances, modern novels, 
 fables, recollections, poems, comedies, books of travel, 
 published popular books, and books for the young of 
 ethnographical, archaeological, historical, and philosophical 
 import, was a theatrical director, editor of a daily paper, 
 and a political writer, as well as an illustrator, designer, and 
 etcher ; in brief, this one man distributed writings like a 
 Bible Society, and strove in these writings to form a national 
 school for his people. It goes without saying that such 
 fecundity was not combined with that artistic perfection 
 which was the glory of the romantic poems. Nevertheless,
 
 ADAM ASNYK 
 
 301 
 
 romances like Moriluri and Resurrecturi, novels like Ulana, 
 and above all, the extremely interesting Potter Jermoia, 
 are works of real value. 
 
 At the present time Poland has no author of the first 
 rank, although it does not lack eminent talent in different 
 directions. In Adam Asnyk Poland has a graceful lyric poet, 
 in Boleslaw Prus (Alexander Glowacki), a humorous and 
 sensitive novelist. This last author, a self-taught writer, a 
 bold and truth-loving journalist, is one of the men whose 
 influence is most important, and who will prove most instru- 
 mental in forming the new times in Poland. 
 
 Asnyk was born at Kalisz in 1836, the son of a father 
 who had been a captain in the disbanded Polish army. 
 From his nineteenth year he studied medicine at the 
 academy at Warsaw, and later at the Universities of Breslau 
 and Heidelberg, and returned in 1860 to the capital in 
 order to lend his aid to the organisation of the secret 
 military force, which the young people in their resentment 
 and heat intended to direct against the Russian power. He 
 then took his share in the arrangements for the Revolution 
 of 1863, a movement which remains a monument alike to 
 the heroism and the lack of political judgment of its pro- 
 moters. He had already been arrested in 1860 and placed 
 under police surveillance ; he then went to Heidelberg and 
 stayed there until the outbreak of the revolt recalled him, 
 and other Poles studying at foreign universities, to Warsaw. 
 He displayed such vigour and determination that although 
 only twenty-five years old he was placed at the head of the 
 movement, and elected a member of the secret national 
 government, which, under that gentle and loyal hero, 
 Micesyslow Siczicki, issued secret orders, which were obeyed 
 by all Poles, while the commands of the imperial authorities 
 became dead letters. 
 
 After the definitive triumph of the Russians, Siczicki 
 would not leave Warsaw. He was accordingly sent on 
 foot to Siberia, where he remained twenty years. Asnyk 
 fled to Austrian Poland, where he settled, first at Lemberg 
 for a short time, then at Cracow, where every friend of 
 Poland was sure of a welcome at his house. He travelled
 
 302 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 to Switzerland, Holland, England, and Italy, and he has 
 written on subjects suggested by these travels. But his 
 spiritual life has been dominated entirely by the impression 
 left on it by the failure of the revolt of 1863, namely, that 
 all hope of an independent Poland must be abandoned, at 
 least during his lifetime. He lost all faith in historical 
 progress. The anguish he had gone through determined 
 his manner of feeling for the rest of his life, his constant 
 pessimism, his melancholy and doubt. Never again has he 
 seen Russian Poland. But far from charging the calamities 
 upon the comrades of his youth, as many others have done, 
 he continued to communicate with them with Siczicki, 
 with Karol Benni, with all who still frequent Benni's house 
 in Warsaw. They always hold their patriotic, but politically 
 innocent meetings there. He published his poems (a 
 selection of which appeared in a mediocre German transla- 
 tion) under the pseudonym El y, and took an active part 
 in the public life of Galicia. He became a prominent 
 member of the democratic party, and (from a sense of 
 duty, and without any pleasure in his task) editor of 
 a great political paper, finally founding The Society of Public 
 Schools, the efforts of which have been marked by such con- 
 stant success. 
 
 In addition, there are two men of very great ability, 
 both a little over forty years of age, who are the most 
 important representatives of light literature. 
 
 Alexander Swientochowski is of noble birth, but without the 
 aristocratic stamp, the man of modern times, the funda- 
 mental spokesman of free thought, the representative of the 
 advanced culture of Europe ; of strong will and character, 
 possessing a vigorous style and strong in argument, as an 
 author wholly identifying himself with his principles. His 
 dramas are without artistic value, but his novels, Chawa 
 Rubin, Damian Capenko, Karl Krug, apart from their moral 
 endeavour to teach the Poles humanity towards foreigners 
 on the soil of Poland, the Jewess, the Little Russian, the 
 German, have a compact and concentrated form of high 
 artistic merit. The novel Clemens Boruta develops the drama 
 of starvation with poetic force.
 
 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 303 
 
 Henryk Sienkiewicz, Poland's favourite author, presents a 
 sharp contrast to the untiring agitator Swientochowski. He 
 has a patrician nature, with a rich and versatile talent, at once 
 emotional and bitterly satirical. He has reached his highest 
 point, and shown himself a keen realist in the spiritual 
 domain, in his Charcoal Drawings (Szice-weglem), the affect- 
 ing story of how a poor young peasant wife is driven to sell 
 herself in order to free her husband from military service, a 
 masterpiece. He is excellent in the very short story (The 
 Lighthouse, The Angel), picturesque in representation and full 
 of glowing intensity. I am sorry to say that of late years he 
 has been absorbed in the production of endless historical 
 novels, in the style of the elder Dumas, which have made 
 his name widely popular, and produce a large income. 
 
 And yet Pan Tadeusz had already pointed out to later 
 poetry the way towards real life, the peculiar life of the 
 century, and in fact inaugurated the epoch of Polish realism. 
 It cannot be long before the conviction makes its way, that 
 if the authors of Poland of our time would compete with 
 the best authors of Europe, with those like the great prose 
 writers of France and Russia, it is absolutely necessary 
 that they should turn their backs on the distant past, and 
 limit themselves to the one domain, where it is possible for 
 the author wholly to escape convention, and to be not only 
 inspired but true. 
 
 It is only natural that the fancy of Polish writers should 
 have, to an extent unprecedented elsewhere, continued to 
 revolve about the past. Since the Polish people as a people 
 has been condemned to practical inactivity, the past must 
 appear to them as their last most glorious possession, and 
 so, even after the decline of genuine Romanticism, Polish 
 poets long continued to dwell on the memories of the 
 past, which they found in books, instead of reproducing 
 a life fully as interesting which flowed unheeded past them. 
 The strong artistic impulse towards the past, nevertheless, 
 depends in the last instance on the superstition, that the past, 
 or, as it is called, history, alone admits a representation of 
 the ideal. But perhaps we shall see that the historical is as 
 negligible in poetry as the spiritualistic. In the flourishing
 
 304 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 age of Polish Romanticism nothing could be told or repre- 
 sented dramatically in which spirits did not play a part, 
 frequently a chief part. They seemed more poetic and more 
 ideal than men of flesh and blood. They took the place of 
 the gods in the ancient poems, even intruded in contemporary 
 subjects as in Dztacty, and in historic drama, as in Slowacki's 
 Cenci. The conjuring up of the figures of the remote past 
 in Polish romantic literature may be a new, and only a 
 slightly less abstract spiritualism. For these also may often 
 be classified as good and evil spirits. 
 
 There is only one future for Poland's literature, after 
 its days of Romanticism are over, and that is to become a 
 modern, a living expression of the life of our own time. 
 
 The whole intellectual life, the whole literary world of 
 Poland for a long time turned upon the question of its 
 existence. We have seen that this question developed into 
 the question of the reality of the loftiest ideas. But it 
 goes without saying that the literature of a people cannot 
 everlastingly continue to turn upon so abstract a theme. 
 The fundamental emotion, to which the romantic literature 
 of Poland gave expression, is not likely to disappear, but 
 it cannot continue to be predominant without impoverishing 
 her literature. 
 
 The too predominant sensations of feelings of cohesion, 
 of common sufferings and common exertions, the continual 
 playing on a single string, must prevent individuals from 
 coming forward in literature in all their originality. Because 
 they are continually regarded as a link in a whole, 
 sharing pleasures and disappointment with others, they do 
 not reach the depth of the agony of existence. They are 
 not represented as solitary enough. If it is an evil not to see 
 the wood for the trees, then it is also an evil not to see the 
 trees for the wood. No doubt we find here in the youthful 
 works of the poets enough of the half-assumed sensation of 
 loneliness of the Byronic heroes. But the loneliness of the un- 
 complaining man obtains no expression. It is in consonance 
 with this that the characters in this literature, in spite of all 
 the hardships and evils which shower down upon them 
 from without, are not unhappy enough. The misfortunes
 
 LACK OF HUMOUR 
 
 305 
 
 whose stage is the outer world, are found here in abundance. 
 But the greatest tragedy, that of which the human soul may 
 be the theatre, even without any special pursuit of a hostile 
 fate, is not presented to the reader's consciousness in the 
 same degree. These poets have so naturally felt impelled 
 to say a consoling, hopeful word to their readers, that they 
 have not sounded misery to the lowest depth with their 
 imaginative power. And on the other side the romantic 
 literary group of Poland, rich as it is, has this defect, that 
 it has allowed very little scope to the comic elements of 
 existence. Thus it lacks a full grasp of human life, its 
 whole intensity. It seems as if the sense of the comic 
 were not very strong or very widespread among the Polish 
 people. The poets, who like Fredro have had a sharp eye 
 for it, have not used their talent for the comic in the service 
 of the more elevated ideas, and the poets, who, like the 
 romanticists, have laboured in the name of ideas, have 
 shown little skill in the use of laughter either as a weapon 
 or as the expression of cheerfulness. 
 
 There is a gleam of humour diffused throughout Pan 
 Tadeusz, which could not be more delicately beautiful, but 
 it is weak, and the poet has not succeeded in making a 
 really comic impression when he intends to. Thus the 
 Count now and then becomes tedious when he ought to 
 be comic. With a better developed sense of humour 
 Mickiewicz again would not have produced a figure like 
 Gustav in Dziady. He is unintentionally comic when he 
 ought to be most impressive. Neither does Slowacki ever 
 achieve a strong comic effect. His comic secondary char- 
 acters are never observed from real life, but constantly 
 remind us either of a Shakesperean clown or of a Calderonian 
 Gracioso, and at best create a smile, never laughter. He 
 really produces a comic effect only when he does not in- 
 tend to, as in depicting the achievements of his sottish and 
 desperate hero Lambro. Finally, however alien comic 
 effects are to a talent like Krasinski's, still the drawing of the 
 character of the Italian baron in The Unfinished Poem shows 
 that he possessed undeveloped ability in that direction. It 
 is a pity that he did not in the least feel the impulse to use 
 
 u
 
 306 IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 it. There would have been a fine scope for comic effects 
 in The Godless Comedy. Pancratius and his associates would 
 have gained thereby. 
 
 Generally speaking, it may be said that a more widely 
 diffused and more delicate sense of the comic among the 
 leading persons of the nation would have prevented several 
 of the excesses of the romantic heroes, driven the romantic 
 ghosts and witches more into the background, and sharpened 
 the delineation of a crowd of secondary characters. 
 
 The lack of the comic element in this literature has a 
 triple reason ; first, the serious, nay, melancholy temper of 
 the public for whom the poets wrote, secondly, their 
 strenuous conception of their calling, for they regarded 
 themselves as the teachers and leaders of the people, never 
 as their maitres de plaisir; finally, the exaggerated idealism of 
 the Polish intellectual life of this century. 
 
 This idealism, which naturally has engendered no little 
 boldness in expressing an unwelcome conviction or a burning 
 protest, excluded the bold and many-sided conception and 
 description of human nature. Polish Romanticism lacks the 
 strong contrasts which produce the impression of the comic, 
 because it has represented man too exclusively from the 
 intellectual side. That man is first and foremost a being with 
 necessities, not a being with ideas, is here suppressed or glossed 
 over. That strong erotic or political passion is an exception 
 in human life we note as little in this romantic literature as 
 in others. But there is perhaps no literature in which the 
 life of the senses and instincts, which is the foundation of all 
 passions, is so set aside, or where it could not be wholly 
 passed over is so foreshortened and placed in the back- 
 ground. Therefore we shall seek in vain for more sexless 
 love-making than that which is described in the romantic 
 literature of Poland, in Slowacki's In Switzerland, in Kra- 
 sinski's Aurora, &c. We are actually astonished at the note 
 and the key which Telimene puts into the hand of the hero 
 in Pan Tadeusz, and yet this is all that we learn of the relation 
 between the two. But where the whole sensual entity of 
 man, and therewith one of the strongest elements of contrast 
 between spiritual struggles and earthly instincts is omitted
 
 VITAL ELEMENT OF ROMANTICISM 307 
 
 in the picture, there the tragic hemisphere in poetry must 
 necessarily lack the supplement which the comic hemisphere 
 supplies. 
 
 Perhaps, nevertheless, what is most wanting in this epoch 
 of Polish literature is, as was to be expected, the expression 
 of the peaceful pleasures of life. It contains much love, 
 but no contentment. It is a great exception when a char- 
 acter appears who now and then breathes fully and freely. 
 
 Still, what this epoch possesses is rich and abundant ; 
 an earnestness so great, that no other literature in Europe 
 is so intensely earnest, a pathos so deep, that only the 
 greatest tragic authors of Greece and England speak in 
 such a strain, and an enthusiasm so lofty and pure, that it 
 is only occasionally manifested in other countries. Nowhere 
 else do we see a whole generation carried away as here 
 by it. 
 
 As a form of art Romanticism is dead, a thing of the 
 past. Its heroes and heroines, its spirits and witches, in part 
 even its language and style are antiquated. Nevertheless, 
 there is a Romanticism which outlives forms of art and 
 schools of art, and which still preserves its vitality and 
 worth. It is the element of healthy enthusiasm, which every 
 strong human emotion can assume when it is refined and 
 intensified beyond the average. Without any background 
 whatsoever of superstition, and without relation to anything 
 supernatural, our feelings for nature, for the woods and 
 fields, the sea and the heavens, may assume this form of 
 romantic ecstasy, and in even higher degree emotions like 
 love, friendship, love between parents and children, love of 
 language and native land, and common memories may 
 take a like form. 
 
 In few literatures has this abiding Romanticism attained 
 to an expression of such beauty as in the Polish.
 
 X 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 PASSING through the side wing of the great Kremlin palace 
 at Moscow, which contains the armoury (Orusheinaya Palata), 
 we see, in the lower storey, twenty-two marble busts of Polish 
 kings and distinguished Poles ; in the storey above, in the 
 large round hall, the Polish throne, and, near by, the crown 
 worn by the last king of Poland, Stanislaus Augustus ; and 
 finally, in the adjoining room (opposite Charles XI I. 's sedan 
 chair, taken at the battle at Poltawa), sixty Polish banners, 
 captured from 1831 to 1863, with Polish inscriptions, torn by 
 bullets, and to the right of these, on the floor, a beautifully 
 made closed casket. In this casket is deposited the constitu- 
 tion of the 3rd of May 1791. "Poland's patent of nobility 
 among the people of Europe" has become an object in a 
 museum. A Russian who accompanied me to the Kremlin, 
 in spite of his nationality, made the remark : " It makes a 
 melancholy impression to see the banners and the casket 
 here." How strange it must be for a Pole, with any national 
 feeling, to see the great men of his country, the insignia 
 which were the symbols of the dignity of his fatherland as 
 an independent power, its ensigns with the white eagle, nay, 
 even the Magna Charta, which his people, in the most supreme 
 moment of its life, formed for its future, and which was 
 never rightfully displaced, exhibited here in the imperial 
 palace of a foreign capital, as curiosities for the amusement 
 of spectators ! It must be like reading one's own name on 
 a tombstone. 
 
 To be fought against, to be persecuted, to be treated as 
 a criminal, when you are in the right, may be borne ; but 
 to see yourself treated as dead, to see your memories, your 
 pride, your banner, your charter exhibited to the scorn of 
 
 another as his possessions, as trinkets found in a grave, 
 
 308
 
 POLAND THE TYPE OF FREEDOM 309 
 
 that is to see with your own eyes, with your own hands to 
 grasp the complete destruction of that for which you live 
 and yet to go on living and believing in it. 
 
 Again and again we return to the thought : How 
 symbolical this Poland is ! For in this period, what other 
 lot than that of the Pole has every one had, who has loved 
 freedom and wished it well ? What else has he experienced 
 but defeat ? When has he seen a gleam of sunlight ? When 
 has he heard a signal of advance ? Everywhere, everywhere 
 the fanfare of the violent, or the organ peal of the bold- 
 faced hypocrite ! And everywhere stupidity as bodyguard 
 of the lie, and everywhere veneration for that which is paltry, 
 and everywhere the same vulgar disdain for the only thing 
 which is holy. 
 
 Yes, Poland, thou art the great symbol. The symbol of 
 pinioned freedom, whose neck is trodden upon, symbol of 
 those who lack any outlook, yet hope against all probability, 
 in spite of all. 
 
 When the foreigner sees thee covered with thy mantle of 
 snow in the winter time, then it seems to him as if the cold 
 and the snow, and the eternally gloomy heavens, were so in 
 harmony with thy being that he can hardly imagine these 
 bare trees covered with leaves, these streets and roads free 
 from snow, these heavens pure and warm, this land without 
 winter. 
 
 But if he comes to Warsaw on a summer day when the 
 sun glimmers through the thick foliage in the Saxon park, 
 when the Green Square (Zielony Plac) deserves its name, 
 and Lazienki lies, smiling and elegant, bordered by its group 
 of trees, reflected in its park, then he feels that sunshine 
 and the warmth of summer are also at home here. Wila- 
 now allures him, Sobieski's beautiful country seat, which 
 he has hitherto seen only in the light of a cold spring day, 
 and he finds the palace surrounded by a luxuriant, fragrant 
 flora, by tall trees, which Sobieski planted himself, or caused 
 to be planted. 
 
 Never has he seen such tall, such magnificent poplars, 
 tall as the cypresses in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, proud like 
 them, melancholy and yet solemn like them.
 
 3io IMPRESSIONS OF POLAND 
 
 And when, on a summer afternoon, the breezes sigh 
 gently through the tall poplars at Wilanow, and the foreigner 
 walks slowly through the broad avenue they form, while he 
 hears the Polish language about him, and perhaps sees dear 
 beings beside him who live wholly and entirely in their 
 passion for the cause of Poland, as the cause which 
 gives a meaning and a consecration to their lives, and 
 in faith in the future of Poland, as the faith which alone 
 has made them brave, useful men then when the sunset 
 is beautiful, and the flowers exhale their fragrance, and 
 the temperature is mild, and the air a caress, the foreign 
 wanderer feels less hopeless, and he says to himself : Who 
 knows ! Perhaps in spite of all. 
 
 THE END 
 
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