Polish Literature a Lecture

8/14/2019 Polish Literature a Lecture

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LIBRARYUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

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OLISH LITERATUREA LECTURE

BY

NEVILL FORBES, M.A., PH.D.READER IN RUSSIAN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Price One Shilling net

HENRY FROWDEOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,ONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE


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POLISH LITERATUREA LECTURE

BY

NEVILLL FORBES, M.A., PH.D.READER IN RUSSIAN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

HENRY FROWDEOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE


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COrV AODr'D3JNALTQBERETAINED

NOTEAIDS TO THE PRONUNCIATION OF POLISH WORDS :

c = ts in English itscz = ch churchsz = sh shallw = v loveo = oo n bootie = ye yetdzi) _di \-~- dy d>u^ }= tty " " Luttyens

ch = ch lochj =r y i, you'I = j French jour

All Polish names are acc'eri'texf on the penultimate syllable*". J !/6.gJ M4Gtipwjcz\= Mitskyevich' Potocki" ''^"Potdtski


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111 IPOLISH LITERATURE

THAT so little attention has been given in England toPolish literature is unjust, but intelligible. The languageitself has

always been a barrier ; difficult to acquire andpronounce, essential neither in commerce nor in travel,there are few foreigners who master it sufficiently toappreciate the literature, still fewer who are capable oftranslating from it adequately into English. And yet thetreasures of this literature are so ample, its attractions somanifold, that any one who has surmounted the initialdifficulties of language need never spend another dullmoment ; for a knowledge of Polish opens the doors toa civilization whose history and characteristics offer asgreat a contrast to the plodding consistency that hasmade Germany the type of perfect organization, as tothe impulsive expression of primitive forces to whichRussia owes her flashes of triumph, her intermittentparalysis.

Unlike Germany, where centuries of incubation wereneeded before the federated State was born, Poland earlyacquired political unity, which, however elastic andloosely knit, enabled the country for many years topresent a solid front to its enemies abroad, and actuateda continuous, cohesive and prolific intellectual develop-ment at home.

Unlike Russia, where, after centuries of fruitlesstumult, power gradually became centralized in an auto-cracy, which reduced the colossal realm to unquestion-ing submission, Poland, from being in its early yearsa despotism, became, partly by accident, partly byarrangement, a non plus ultra of decentralization, a sort

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* C: (V:< ; f POLISH LITERATUREc*. ^ ^ ." ,, t t * fc, t C * O *of wild-garden of individualism, where the personalcaprice of nobles and squires ran riot like brambles,choking the seeds of progress ; political evolution wasfrustrated, but artistic talent could branch forth unques-tioned and undisturbed.The most vital moment, or rather succession of

moments, in the early history of Poland was the intro-duction of Christianity in the tenth century. Thoughthe influence of the missionary brothers Cyril and Me-thodius of Salonica, disseminating far from their homethe tenets of Eastern orthodoxy, is credited with havingreached the Vistula, the glory of gathering Poland intothe true fold and holding her there, to this day a patientand profitable convert, belongs to Rome. Now a fewyears later the Princes of Kiev accepted for themselvesand their people the Eastern faith, so when, in 1054, theChurch of Rome was divorced from that of Byzantiuma definition of confessional spheres of influence was in-volved ; into this business the prudent directors of thetwo faiths entered with a zeal that betrayed anxiety fortemporal as well as for spiritual aggrandizement, and inits course that rift was made which immediately rent theSlavonic world into two halves and prevents their recon-ciliation to-day. It is the difference of confession, morethan anything else, that is at the bottom of all thecankerous trouble between Russians and Poles, troublethat, exploited by others, has weakened both.The influences of Byzantium and Rome on theirrespective Slavonic flocks have been various. TheEastern empire, in the eleventh century already fast de-clining, was not equal to the conquest or assimilation ofits new converts, though its civilization exerted on them,till its fall, a considerable if ungenial influence. Thebudding autocrats of Servia, Bulgaria, and Russia con-solidated their despotisms on Byzantine lines, fledglingeaglets were soon to appear in unfriendly rivalry ontheir standards, the Church became in their countries anappendage of the State, a political institution, as it was


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POLISH LITERATURE 5in Constantinople, and Byzantine culture, temporarilysuperior to that of Rome, began to spread amongst themits ossifying roots. Monasteries and seminaries spranginto being with mushroom rapidity, dispensaries of thejejune educational ideals of the metropolis.The position of those Western Slavs who were fasci-nated by the Roman orbit was different ; the Latin hier-archy, independent of the State, undermined monarchicalpower, and Roman culture, inferior for the moment tothat of Byzantium, too remote to stir the intellects of theCzechs and Poles, was made more inaccessible to themby the fact that the Latin monks were ignorant of Sla-vonic dialects, the use ofwhich amongst their neophytesfor religious purposes those of the East had the fore-sight not only to sanction but to encourage. Thus theadvantages, it is clear, -were to begin with on the side ofthe Southern and Eastern Slavs, but the tables weresoon turned ; between the Turks and the Tatars therewas before long not much left of their political indepen-dence; while the overthrow of their Byzantine light-house, whose rays, bright in the Balkans, pale by thetime they reached Russia, had for long past been dark-ened by the approach of Islam, left them in completeintellectual obscurity.

Byzantine culture found an asylum in Italy, where theliterary treasures of the classical world, for centurieswarehoused by the tight-laced and inappreciative theo-logians of the Bosphorus, were enthusiastically wel-comed, shook off their dust, and emerged in all theirpristine splendour. The anti-monarchical policy of Rome,again, had surprising benefits in store for the WesternSlavs, since it weakened the temporal power of theGerman emperors and simultaneously allowed the Polesand the Czechs to reassert their political independence,which, however, never assumed proportions formidableenough to excite the jealousy of the Holy See. Harm-less while faithful to Rome, the Teutons, as soon astheir vitality had been regenerated by the Reformation,


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6 POLISH LITERATUREbecame dangerous to Poland, and from that time onwardthe Poles were menaced on both sides by peoples whosehostility, originating in variety of race, was accentuatedby difference of confession, by the Germans in the Westand the Russians in the East.To the North their neighbours were the Lithuanians,a gentle and bucolic people, who, united to the Poles bya political accident, were destined from amongst theranks of their polonized aristocracy to lend to the rollof Polish letters some of its brightest names. Theirsouthern neighbours were the Slovaks, early over-shadowed by the Magyars, fresh from Asia, but withthese the Poles had comparatively little intercourse,divided from them as they were by the Carpathians,their one natural boundary. For us in England, withour one panacea, the North Sea and English Channel,it is difficult to appreciate the horror of having frontierson all sides open to attack, for the Poles early lost con-trol of what little coast they originally had, retaininghold only on Danzig, allowing the Teutonic Knights totake firm root in East Prussia, where their power, oftenquelled, but never extinguished, smouldered on, a con-stant menace to its neighbours, destined to bring abouttheir final ruin. The Poles found no difficulty in admin-istering, from time to time, severe blows at these adven-titious neighbours, but always happy-go-lucky anddebonair, they could never bring themselves to crush oroust them. In those days the immense importance ofhaving untrammelled access to the ocean was not fullyunderstood, and given one port on the coast, Danzig,and free communication down the Vistula to it, thePoles, thus enabled to export their surplus cereals andin so doing amass facile and unexpected fortunes, askedno more. They seem not to have realized that withPrussians to the east of it and Prussians to the west ofit, the control of their unique harbour was qualifiedand incomplete.

Besides leaving the Teutons on their borders un-


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POLISH LITERATURE 7disturbed, the Poles encouraged them to overrun thecountry, and the Germanization of the Polish towns,which began in the thirteenth century, acquired pro-portions such that Polish was not to be heard spokenin the streets of Cracow. The reason of this peacefulinvasion was the fact that the Poles, people of pre-eminently rural pursuits, frequenting the towns onlyfor political or social gatherings, were unable of them-selves to cope with the demands for material improve-ment and to take part in the increasing industrial activitywhich even in so agricultural a country as Poland werein course of time inevitable; to fulfil these necessaryfunctions there were none more proper than the thriftyand tidy Germans.Although there was at that time no racial animosityon the part either of the new-comers or on that of their

hosts, the growing danger of a permanently establishedexotic bourgeoisie became apparent even to the non-chalant Poles, who, after the severe defeat inflicted bythem on the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in EastPrussia in 1410, and the temporary eclipse of Prussianpower thereby entailed, realized that steps to deal withthese anomalous urban conditions must be initiatedwithout further delay. When it came to the point, thePoles found they had been making mountains out ofmole-hills, and the assimilation of the Germans, whosenationality has never been wider than their own frontiers,was accomplished with rapidity and ease.But the strength of the German element in Polandduring the two centuries of its unrestricted developmentcan be gauged by the influence of the language of thesealien citizens on that of their foster-country; Polish,namely, has borrowed from German the words fornumberless articles of commerce, the appellations ofmunicipal offices, besides the expressions for a wholeseries of abstract conceptions, such as: condition,direction, relation, computation, salvation, representation,which might, it would have seemed, in view of the


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8 POLISH LITERATUREimmense influence in the country of Latin, the languageofChurch and State, have been, as they were in England,introduced from that source.The fact, however, that the Poles so early appropriated

a number of abstract expressions from their Germanneighbours, neither from Latin, which held the monopolyof culture, nor as other of the Slavonic nations havesince done, coining words in etymological imitation ofLatin, often in the process violating their own language,under the misapprehension they were ennobling it, thisfact is an interesting illustration of Polish receptivityand broad-mindedness, of the capability of the languageto digest and assimilate foreign mouthfuls ; these oldGerman words too lend an archaic and not unpleasantcolour to the language, besides affording the opportunityof creating doublets at will from Latin, for the sake ofhumour or style, as occasion may demand.The Jews, too, from early times formed a large partof the urban population in Poland, but, unlike the Ger-mans, they have never been assimilated to any extent.Encouraged to come to the country by its rulers forthe promotion of trade, they were granted facilitiesdenied them at that time in all other European lands,but it must be admitted that in Poland's hour of needthey have not stood by her. Important to the socialand economic history of the country, they play no rolein its literature, nor has their speech affected Polish.As for Lithuania and Russia, with both of whichcountries Poland was always in uninterrupted contact,the languages of neither of them have influenced Polish,which, on the contrary, wherever it was politicallysupreme, and that was for many centuries over the wholeof Western Russia, for all purposes of social and officialintercourse ousted the vernacular, in proportion as thearistocracy in those lands became polonized or yieldedbefore the immigrant nobility of the suzerain power.

Czech, too, though there was, in the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries, a certain exchange of intellectual


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POLISH LITERATURE 9ware between Poland and Bohemia, has left little markon the Polish language.

Poland, territorially shapeless and ungainly, withboundaries perpetually fluid, open to both peaceful andarmed invasion on a dozen fronts, harbouring immensequantities of resident foreigners, and weakened by thechronic if stifled discontent of the peasants against thepeers, yet possessed extraordinary national vitality,which was symbolized then, as it is to-day, in thelanguage.

Still it was many years before this admirable mediumof expression was appreciated and turned to account ;for all literary purposes it was long obscured by Latin,which was considered the only decent language for theconveyance of serious information. This error, prevalentall over Roman Catholic Europe in the early middleages, assumed exaggerated proportions in Poland andHungary. The Poles cannot be blamed for falling intothis mistake; it was only natural they should try toemulate their co-religionists in other more advancedcountries, but it is no less astonishing than it is un-fortunate that such an illusion should have mesmerizedthem for so long. With one or two notable exceptions,all Polish authors, if they wished to write anythingimpressive, if they wished to create anything whichthey hoped would have permanent value, anything, infact, except that which they considered ephemeral andtrivial personal satires, facetious tales, epigrams, andnovelettes wrote in Latin, while works of grave importsuch as histories, political and philosophical disquisitions,even memoirs, theycontinued to compose in that languagetill the middle of the eighteenth century.For long inaccessible to and insurmountable by them,owing to its remoteness and strangeness, Latin, onceestablished, fascinated the Poles, and for centuries heldthem in its inflexible grip ; their early distaste for it andarduous apprenticeship in it they redeemed later byassiduous and intensive cultivation of its standard works,

B


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io POLISH LITERATUREand, though inexpert in prosody (the Poles used to quotein self-mockery the doggerel line: 'nos Poloni noncuramus quantitatem syllabarum' [sic]), they pridedthemselves in imitating the methods and continuing thetraditions of the best authors, making up for want ofindividuality by elaboration of style.Yet the Church, through whose agency Latin had beenintroduced, the hierarchy, to whose ranks almost ex-clusively what men of letters there then were belonged,found this language was too cold and severe to appealto the masses, especially to the women-folk of all classes,on whom the success of the new religion so muchdepended. Therefore in the thirteenth century, whenthe country was distracted by dynastic quarrels withinand terrorized by Tatar incursions without, and thedemand for spiritual reinforcement rose to its height,the Church perceived and seized its opportunity ; stepswere taken in high ecclesiastical quarters to interpolatemore popular episodes in the order of the liturgy, and,to the delight of the people, the arid latinity of the Massbecame interspersed with refreshing hymns, psalms,prayers, and sermons in the vernacular. It is to thisaccident that is due the existence of those few specimensof Polish as it was spoken in the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies that have survived.

In this respect Polish literature is immeasurablypoorer than Russian, which possesses vast quantities oftraditional folk-epics, folk-tales, ceremonial songs, formingan inexhaustible mine of material for ethnographers andphilologists. No doubt there must also have been inPoland similar productions of the popular imagination,anonymous creations handed on from generation togeneration, elaborated and embellished by each inturn ; but whether because they were less fostered andcherished by the people themselves than in Russia,or, which is more likely, because they fell an easierprey to the jealous and prudish censoriousness of thehierarchy, able to keep their flocks in stricter control


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POLISH LITERATURE nthan were their colleagues in the limitless expanses ofMuscovy, be the reason what it may, they have notcome down to us; those examples of early Polishthat are extant are not the spontaneous expression ofimmemorial beliefs and fancies, but artificial workswhose composition was dictated by the interests of theChurch.The fourteenth century began with the accession to

the Polish throne of the Czech, Prince Wenceslas, andfor a short time the influence of Bohemia, more civilizedthan Poland, in close touch with Western Europe andalready possessing a university in Prague, becamepredominant. It ended with the marriage of thedaughter and heiress of King Louis of Hungary andPoland to Ladislas Jagiello, Prince of Lithuania; asa result of this desirable and convenient match, Polandpeacefully and economically acquired not only a newdynasty, but also a vast accession of territory, wealth,and power, and became a determining factor in Europeancalculations.

It was during the fifteenth century that the politicalpower of Poland reached its height. The territorialunion of Lithuania with Poland, symbolized in thematrimonial junction of their reigning families, crownedwith the successful repulse of the nation's enemies,had trebled the size of the country, lent greater andmore dignified proportions to the whole organizationof the State, and facilitated a more rapid and consistentdevelopment of material and intellectual resources.But simultaneously began that increase in the powerof the nobles and squires, that multiplication of privi-leges, that premature development of parliamentaryinstitutions to the detriment of the central authority,which eventually proved the ruin of the country.For the moment, however, its position was one ofunprecedented and unequalled prosperity; in theintellectual life of the people this was symbolized bythe establishment and efflorescence of the University


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12 POLISH LITERATUREof Cracow. Tentatively mooted by Casimir the Greatin 1364, it was founded and confirmed in 1400 owing tothe initiative and energy of Queen Jadwiga, who didnot live to see the realization of her project.This seat of learning rendered invaluable service tothe cause of civilization and enlightenment in Poland ;it provided a most important contribution to Polishliterature in the person of its alumnus Jan (John)Dlugosz, the first Polish historian and most conspicuousauthor in the fifteenth century. A dignitary of theChurch, and tutor of the royal children, he was alwaystrue to the ultra-conservative maxims of those circlesin which he moved; deeply religious and an uncom-promising patriot, his chronicle was a work of immenseand conscientious labour, an idealization of the time inwhich he lived and of the institutions that had made hiscountry what it was.

Refreshingly subjective, he would omit facts whichdiscorded with his theories, yet was averse fromdistortion of the truth. An easy-going critic, he lackedthe sense of historical perspective, a faculty of laterdate, and it is by his patriotism and devotion, by hisassiduity, by the proportions of his labour, the in-credible variety of sources from which he commandedhis information, that he impresses us now. Unfortu-nately, obedient to the order of the day, he wroteexclusively in Latin ; so did another prominent writerof the fifteenth century, John Ostrorog, the first authorfrom the ranks of the lay aristocracy.A pupil of Western Europe, he composed, on return-ing to his country, a pamphlet full of the bitterestcriticisms of the domestic abuses and ecclesiasticalpretensions, to which his eyes were wide open, thoseof Dlugosz half-closed.This pamphlet was the first breath of the fresh airof humanism, about to dispel the chilling mists ofasceticism and scholasticism in which the Polish literaryworld was becoming more and more impenetrably


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POLISH LITERATURE 13enveloped; it was at the same time the first politicalbrochure, a form of literature which acquired immensevogue in subsequent centuries, in which Poles alwaysdelighted to vent their aptitude for satire, give play totheir ready wit, and indulge in the favourite pastime ofpolemics.This first half of the sixteenth century witnessed thecontinued ascendancy of Latin as the literary languageand the growing discredit and degradation of thevernacular ; this in spite of the fact that Polish wasmaking headway amongst the upper classes in thenewly-acquired territories to the East, whither familiesmigrated in numbers from Poland proper and whereby their urbanity and sociability they converted to theirlanguage, if not to their faith, those Lithuanian andRussian nobles who had till then been faithful to thesocial traditions of Muscovy.Yet while in the fifteenth century the use of Latinfor all purposes of literature, and indeed for any kindof writing, was confined almost exclusively to eccle-siastical circles, because authorship amongst the laitywas still uncommon, in the first half of the sixteenthcentury, with the growth of education and of the desireto communicate with each other amongst the landedaristocracy, Latin became the language of society. Towrite any one a letter in Polish implied that the recipientwas deficient in elementary education, and could notbe done without preliminary justification. Recordseven exist, of the year 1534, of formal prohibitions toprint in Polish having been issued by the hierarchy,prohibitions that called forth praiseworthy remon-strance.

What little was written in Polish during this timewas to satisfy the just demands of the ladies, weary ofhomilies and liturgies, and inexpert in Latin ; theywere accordingly supplied with translations of edifyingtales and fables, the most talented purveyor of whichwas a doctor and citizen of Lublin, by name Biernat,


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14 POLISH LITERATUREwho rendered his literature an additional service byseasoning his adaptations with a sprinkling of homelyPolish proverbs. That these translations were destinedchiefly for the use of women is evident from theprefaces, which e.g. chaff their readers with innatecuriosity inherited from Eve. One translator hazardedthe admission that it was owing to their fear of thesharper wits of women-folk that men by the use ofLatin excluded them from the fields of science. Thegeneral awakening to the importance of their ownlanguage came when, in the interests of propagating theReformation amongst the people, it was found that anylanguage but the vernacular was useless.The second half of the sixteenth century, the age ofthe Reformation, a little belated in Poland, is known asthe golden age of Polish literature, and was brilliantlyinaugurated by the poet Nicholas Rey, who publishedhis first work in 1543, and, ignorant of Latin, was ablewith fruit of his fertile wit, by his invention andoriginality to lay firm the foundations of the nationalliterature. Up to his time what had been written inPolish was mostly translated from other languages forthe benefit of lady-readers; Rey's pithy joviality, hissearching satire were directed against the public atlarge, and won him wide popularity, especially amongstthe supporters of the reformed religion, of which he wasa stanch adherent.The progress of the Reformation into Poland from

Prussia was at first slow, the conservatism of the peopleand the indifference of the nobility were against it ; butthe new religion made considerable strides amongst thecitizens, and when the nobles understood that con-version to it would free them from what little controlover them the Church and State still claimed, many ofthem embraced it. The University of Cracow, no longerat the apex of its fame, once more meandering in themaze of scholasticism, which it tried to exploit in theservices of counter-propaganda, offered passive and


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POLISH LITERATURE 15short-sighted resistance to the new faith by shutting itsdoors to all heretics.But Poland, as a whole always honourably dis-

tinguished for perhaps excessive tolerance, could notbe roused, in spite of papal fulminations, to take activesteps against the progress of the new religion, which itmay almost be said to have killed with kindness. Theconfessional history of Poland is complacent and edify-ing compared with that of its Eastern and Westernneighbours. The Inquisition never developed morethan academic activity in Poland, where mutual toler-ance was a watchword at a time when the policy of theChurch in other countries was the reverse of Christian.The Reformation certainly seemed at one moment to becarrying all before it, but several causes contributed toa decay of the new faith which was as unexpected ashad been its success. Lutheranism failed to appeal tothe peasants, who resented the abolition of hagiolatryand preferred having to conciliate numberless interven-ing saints to what struck them as the almost shockingdirectness of the new religion ; besides they were acuteenough to perceive that the landlords, once rid of allecclesiastical control, would become more relentlesstaskmasters than ever. Again, the want of unanimityamongst the reformed, the fissiparous multiplication oftheir sects, their mutual jealousies, bewildered and dis-couraged those whom they might otherwise haveattracted. Finally, the appearance at this juncture ofthe Jesuits, who tactfully adapted their formulae tothe needs of the situation and the character of theirpublic, turned the scales, and Poland speedily re-lapsed into her pristine devotion to Rome, tranquil andprofound.Thanks to his heresy, the poet Rey suffered almosttotal eclipse for many years ; Poland, counter-reformedby the Jesuits, was no longer as tolerant as before, andhis complete rehabilitation is largely due to the effortsof his countryman Professor Bruckner, the talented and


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16 POLISH LITERATUREdistinguished exponent of Slavonic philology in theUniversity of Berlin.The Reformation, however volatile its confessionalinfluence, was the direct cause of the permanent recog-nition of Polish as a literary language, and by thus dis-crediting Latin, which was preparing for a series offresh triumphs, fruit of the humanistic movement, rathertook the wind out of the sails of the Renaissance.But the influences of humanism had already been atwork in Poland, and were betrayed by the elegance ofform and diction, as well as by the nobility of thought,which the authors of the golden age of Polish literature

displayed when they came to write in the vernacular.Rey wrote a number of didactic and satiric poems, inthe form of conversations between members of differentclasses of society, or under such titles as ' mirror ' and' true representation ' of contemporary morals, of whichthey give a vivid and invaluable picture. These poemsare full of the practical philosophy of the time, whichthey sugared with an exquisite coating of language,rhyme, and rhythm, and seasoned with generous dolesof the racy national humour. A gifted musician andsinger, an inveterate huntsman, an indefatigable bon-viveur, he was able to enjoy to the full that personalpopularity which these bents assured him amongst hiscountrymen, devotees of sociability and sport.An adept in mundane accomplishments, Rey had alsoa more serious side to his nature ; his homilies andadaptations of the New Testament, written to furtherthe propaganda of the Reformation, were very widelyread, while their style was so admirable that Rey couldclaim to be the founder of Polish prose, no less than thefirst writer of original Polish verse.The greatest poetical talent of the golden age wasthat of Kochanowski, the first Polish lyrist, and themost gifted poet of independent Poland. A traveller inItaly and France, he had come under the influence ofAriosto and Ronsard, and was stimulated by their


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POLISH LITERATURE 17example to create real poetry in his native language.He was the first of his countrymen to devote himselfwhole-heartedly to his art, to look upon the professionof a man of letters as an honourable calling, and notmerely as a stepping-stone to preferment. Not a genius,he had heart and imagination, and infallible taste; hismind was broad, though not profound, and his artisticsense was highly developed. He was a humorist anda classic, able to invest his own compositions with thegrace and proportion of those of Rome and of theRenaissance. A fervent Christian and faithful Catholic,he was alive to the faults of the hierarchy and preferredthe calm of country life to participation in the con-fessional battles of the day.

Besides writing pastoral poems, idylls of village life,at a time when nature still repelled more than it attracted,he wrote a drama, which, with a classical subject, wasa transparent allegory of the ominous political infirmityof his country. His best works were a verse adaptationof the Psalter, and a series of threnodies, written on thedeath of his little girl, full of pathetic and poignantbeauty, ranging from expressions of utter despair toglimpses of reconciliation with the inevitable.His aesthetic equilibrium, his perfection of form, hiscommand of metaphor, and his freedom from the classicalswathing-bands that trammelled the school of Ronsard,won Kochanowski a shoal of imitators, while main-taining him high above the level any of them everreached.But this age counted a number of other writers who

struck out lines of their own, and each in his wayacquired distinction and fame : such were Bielski thehistorian, who performed, in writing his UniversalHistory in Polish, a feat without precedent, and onenot paralleled till the nineteenth century; Skarga, thegenius of the pulpit and incomparable leader of theJesuits in Poland ; Klonowicz, the citizen poet andmoralist ; Orzechowski, the cultured and gifted polemist,

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i8 POLISH LITERATUREwho became a priest, but conscious that the Churchneeded reform waged stubborn war on, amongst otherthings, the principle of the celibacy of the clergy, hissupreme disregard for which he aptly illustrated bycourageously marrying a wife ; another character of thetime was Count Zamojski, who founded a university onhis own property in the country, surrounded himselfthere with a brilliant coterie of authors and thinkers,and for long eclipsed the seat of learning in the capital.

Quantities of this sixteenth-century literature have beenlost; printing was expensive, fires were common, butfrom what remains it is possible to argue the extra-ordinary spontaneousness of the intellectual develop-ment, the prevalence and high level of culture in Polandat that time; this was due in part, no doubt, to thehumanistic currents which penetrated Poland from Italy,spread on their return to their countryby the innumerablePoles who visited and studied at Padua and at otherItalian universities, due in part too to the Reformationwhich reached Poland from Germany and taught thePoles the value of prose, just as humanism opened theireyes to the beauty of poetry in their own language.Yet credit must be given to the ground on which theseseeds fell, to whose growth Poland lent a charactereminently original. No one could maintain that theliterature of Poland's so-called golden age was a purelynational product; it had produced no real genius, it wasalways overshadowed and influenced by the literarytendencies of other countries. Yet it contained muchthat was eminently characteristic of Poland, much thatcould not have been produced except under the peculiarconditions of Polish life, facts that militate against itssuccessful translation into any foreign language. Oneof its healthiest and most gratifying characteristics wasthe extraordinary sense of corporate civic responsibilitydisplayedbyalmost all its representatives; ardent patriots,anxious to inculcate into their readers their own sense ofduty, they were never weary of exposing the abuses and


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POLISH LITERATURE 19conjuring the defects from which their country suffered.From Kochanowski in his poems to Skarga in hissermons, one and all were conscious that Poland wason the wrong tack, that the ship was already entangledin the Sargasso sea of anarchy from which it was neverto emerge entire; poets and preachers, historians andpamphleteers echoed the one cry: we are perishing.This general sense amongst the intellectual classes ofimpending calamity to the State, of Poland's inevitabledoom, at a time when jeremiads were really premature,when Poland was still compact within and formidablewithout, are in all the more creditable contrast to theblind complacency and criminal optimism characteristicof Polish society throughout the seventeenth and thefirst half of the eighteenth centuries, when the countrywas actually tottering to disruption.By the end of the sixteenth century, it is true, the

extinction of the hereditary dynasty of the Jagiellos hadenabled the team of aristocrats and squires to breakthrough the last traces of royal control which still heldthem in nominal check: the nobles had, by makingkingship elective, robbed it of power ; they had hand-cuffed the peasants to the soil, confined the citizens tothe cities, and made the tenure of any and every officeconditional on ownership of land; they had, with adelicious sense of paradox, made unanimity a sine quanon of all fresh legislation, and so rendered nugatoryevery attempt at reform, for unanimity was the onecondition which the Poles, the most urbane, gregarious,and sociable of people, but always coming to fisticuffswhenever two or three of them were gathered togetherin their country's interest, could never attain.

Yet, in spite of this premiation of individuality, thisorganized anarchy or rather panarchy, this distortedconception of democracy, in spite of the enormous in-crease of wealth and luxury, the backbone of the nationhad not yet been sapped, victories were reported abroad,intellectual triumphs celebrated at home, while the exist-


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20 .POLISH LITERATUREence of self-criticism, though exaggerated, showed thatthe national mind was healthy, present and alert.The history of Polish literature in the seventeenth andfirst half of the eighteenth centuries is, in spite of theappearance of occasional and meteoric talents, character-ized by stagnation and decay. In contrast to the sixteenthcentury, of which the chief features were variety andoriginality of talent, perfection of language and indepen-dence of style, the seventeenth century, the age in Polandof exaggerated individuality in politics, was one of greyuniformity of intellectual development. The religiouswaywardness of the sixteenth was followed by whole-sale reversion and unbroken fidelity to the mother-Churchin the seventeenth century. The number of people whotook part in literature reached amazing proportions,but few acquired positions of distinction or command.Always gifted orators, the Poles now spent their timein justifying and preserving the disorder by which theircountry was distracted, and in defending the miscon-ceived liberty in which the minority throve, the politicalassemblies were flooded with eloquence, society withendless streams of poetry religious and political, lyricand historical, epic, didactic, romantic, erotic and pas-toral, while the air of the cities was filled with quipsand squibs, lampoons and pasquinades. The growingmania for crests and connections, for heraldry andgenealogy, which grew in importance as great charac-ters became more rare, for baroque panegyrics, whichbecame more voluminous in proportion as there wasless to extol, all pointed to intellectual deterioration.Latin regained ground it had lost, while the habit oflatinizing Polish prose became incurable a style laterdubbed maccaroniism

; linguistic purity was only pre-served in poetry and in the pulpit.The people, bemused with easy living, benumbedwith verse and oratory, were yet startled by occasionaland unexpected triumphs in the field, but the endlesswars with Sweden and Turkey, who should have been


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POLISH LITERATURE 21Poland's best friends, exhausted the scattered forces ofthe country, and prepared the way for the really danger-ous enemies, Russia and Prussia, unappreciated becauseso near at hand, already sharpening their claws in anti-cipation of the feast.During the reigns of the Saxon kings in the first half

of the eighteenth century the culture of Polish societyreached its lowest level. Poland, which had alwaysbeen behind but had in the beginning of the seven-teenth century begun to catch up the rest of Europe,drifted further and further out of the stream of civiliza-tion. Poland had proclaimed religious tolerance in thesixteenth century, when the Christians of the rest ofEurope were torturing one another for their beliefs, butas time went on, became more and more intolerant.The eighteenth century was in Poland characterized byreligious unity and intellectual monotony. Fightingand husbandry occupied the people more than art andliterature, while conviviality and the chase filled theirleisure hours. What literature there was, continued onthe same lines ; the vogue of poetry increased when inthe rest of Europe its place was being taken by prose.Letters became a pastime instead of a profession, littlewas published, so carelessness of style resulted, corre-spondence was carried on in verse, while circumstantialpoems appeared by the hundred and would be occa-sioned by the most trivial events, a divorce or anexecution. Innumerable panegyrics continued to gratifythe morbid love of heraldry and genealogy ; books ofdevotional poetry and of ascetic character multipliedincessantly, while the more prominent position occupiedby women in society manifested itself in the debut ofnumerous authoresses.Meantime the organized political anarchy, symbolizedin the phrase 'A Pole in his castle's as strong as aking', and cunningly guaranteed by the neighbouringpowers, resulted in the luxuriant omnipotence of thegreat nobles, too selfish and jealous of each other to


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22 POLISH LITERATUREpromote or even to permit any reform, in the impoveriza-tion of the towns and the oppression of the peasants.Poland was like a garden where none of the fruit-trees had ever been pruned, whose hundred branches,unable to submit to the curtailment of a single privilege,had passed beyond all control ; their exuberant growthwould ever and again produce splendid attitudes andlines, effects of colour or of shape the more startlinglypicturesque because unorthodox and unprecedented,which, however, not only overshadowed and devitalizedthe rest of the flora, and reduced the gardener to ridiculeand despair, but excited the prejudice and broughtabout the officious interference of the neighbours.These perceived that the continued existence in theirmidst of this seminary of liberty, this democratic wilder-ness, this happy hunting-ground of individual capricewould mar the tidiness of their own spick-and-spanproperties and prevent the consolidation of their harden-ing autocracies, that on the other hand its distributionamongst themselves would be a smart piece of business.So they set to work, their appetite increased as theyate, till by the end of the century the three empires hadmet, and the Polish Commonwealth was no more.To these facts the society of this chevaleresquerepublic awoke when it was too late. With the acces-sion of the last king of Poland, Stanislas AugustusPoniatowski, a man as cultured and sprightly as theSaxon kings had been ponderous and dull, a greatrevival of intellectual activity, inspired by the conscious-ness of imminent ruin, had begun ; but the centre ofpolitical gravity was no longer in Warsaw, it was inBerlin, the realization of the national danger was post-humous, and reform of the State no longer possible athome, because dismemberment had been decided onabroad.

Filled with the sense of this tragedy, the loss ofpolitical independence, all the more bitter because longprepared, Polish society had recourse to education and


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POLISH LITERATURE 23literature to save what it still could. Under the in-fluence of French culture, then predominant in Europe,the complete rehabilitation of the Polish language, inprose as well as in verse, was finally effected. In thefield of history much lost time had to be made good,and the King, genuinely interested in the promotion ofliterature, was especially energetic in his support of thehistorian Naruszewicz. The stage, which had neverbeen a favourite diversion of the Poles, at length be-came relatively popular under the direction of the play-wright Niemcewicz, who took contemporary politicsand morals as the theme of his comedies. The greatestpoet of the age was Krasicki, Bishop of Warmia, thefirst since Rey and Kochanowski, excepting Potocki inthe seventeenth century, to make letters his professionout of love for them and for his country, not from mo-tives of personal interest.The bitterness of his satires he mellowed with modera-tion and indulgence, they were distinguished by objec-tive sense of humour rather than by subjective irony,and in an age of shameless corruption he never becamecynical. His stores of invention and observation werecopious, his wit was recognized by his monarch, whomin his turn he delighted to compliment. Like KingStanislas, he was unconscious of the political necessi-ties of the time, and missed the political moment, butlike him he did his best to enlighten his countrymen,lest political be followed by intellectual captivity. Hislucid thoughts were expressed, except for occasionalrelapses into eighteenth-century rococo, concisely andwith admirable precision of diction, while he was masterboth of style and of form.

After the declaration of the freedom of the press in1789 the country, which in spite of its ostensible libertyhad never had any newspapers, was inundated withpolitical literature. Economic and political rights werewon for the towns by the eminent publicist Kollontaj.The Education Commission and Society of the Friends


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24 POLISH LITERATUREof Science in Warsaw both developed hectic but invalu-able activity, to which the valorous maintenance ofintellectual independence in the nineteenth century, inspite of calamity on calamity in the field of politics, canbe directly traced. Men of fortune, for the first timealive to the wealth of their own literature, were seizedwith bibliomania, and none too soon ; for much wasalready lost, and little space remained to save what wasleft. To appreciate the meaning of the partition ofPoland it is necessary to imagine America in possessionof Ireland, and Great Britain divided between Franceand Germany, to imagine books and newspapers pub-lished in the South of England prohibited in the rest ofthe kingdom, and all English schools and universitiesNorth of the Trent abolished, in Ireland none butAmericans qualified to buy land, and in Scotland, theNorth and Midlands only Germans allowed to buildhouses. Under these circumstances it would be com-prehensible that all who cared for their country shouldturn their attention to education and literature, the onlymeans of maintaining intellectual independence, and ofkeeping the flame of nationality alive. It is this direneed that inspired the great Polish poets of the nine-teenth century, this consciousness that their literatureoccupies a unique place amongst those of Europe, forwhile in other countries literature is but one of thefactors of the national life, in Poland it and the languagein which it is expressed are the bond that still keeps thedisjected fragments of the people morally united, arethe one sanctuary where expressions of national feelingmay still take refuge and that not always.The extraordinarily spontaneous and prolific revivalwhich took place in the second half of the eighteenthcentury came to a sudden end in 1795 ; what with thecompletion of the partition, the establishment of censor-ships, the French Revolution, the defeat of Austria andGermany by Napoleon, his campaign against Russia,and all the hopes and fears which these kaleidoscopic


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POLISH LITERATURE 25changes generated amongst the Poles, the times weretoo harassing and troublous to permit people readinganything but despatches and gazettes. After Moscowand Waterloo, when the hopes of the resuscitation ofPoland had been disappointed, Warsaw, in the centreof the largest and most prosperous of the three divisionsinto which the country had been cut up, again becamethe national focus, the literary cynosure. Posen wastoo detached and commercial ; Galicia, before Magentaand Solferino, Sadowa and Koeniggraetz had taughtAustria of what she was made, still abandoned to thecaprice of Vienna, was then, in contrast to the presentday, a sort of Polish backwoods. But the revival thattook place in Warsaw was, for the moment, only anaftermath of what had gone before ; the eighteenthcentury and its criteria had vanished from WesternEurope, but continued in Poland to lead a peacefulbackwater existence, with its paraphernalia of powderedshepherdesses, periwigs and minuets.Only one remarkable talent stands out from this

rather monotonous background, that of the comedianCount Fredro. He began his career in Lemberg, butsoon moved to and settled in the more responsiveatmosphere of Warsaw. Careless of his themes andtheir development, he was unsurpassed in his handlingof witty dialogue, and his aphorisms are householdwords to-day wherever Polish is spoken. Besideshighly amusing farces, a historical comedy and melo-dramas, he achieved great success with his character^comedies, in which the Lovelaces and shrews, prigs andxenomaniacs, misers and grumblers, though inspired byforeign models, are all impregnated with downrightPolish spirit, which appears not only in their speech,but in their thoughts and actions, reckless and incon-sequent, good-humoured and urbane, witty and to thepoint, receptive and alert.This period is also characterized by a general seculari-zation and democratization of literature, panegyrics


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26 POLISH LITERATUREbecame obsolete, there was no court, and therefore nocourt poets, the vogue of moralizing and didactic poemshad gone, and literature became a profession instead ofa pastime, from being a distraction became a necessity.And now even the most inveterate classics could nolonger anaesthetize their senses to the vibrations ofromanticism which Scott and Byron, Goethe andSchiller were transmitting over Europe. The stereo-typed repetitions of classical models could no longersatisfy the craving for the novel, the individual, thenational, the supernatural, the romantic. In supplyingthis demand Lithuania was to play to Poland the partof Scotland to England ; Lithuania, like Scotland, hadfurnished the neighbouring country with its dynastyand its territory, a fact which was never allowed to beforgotten, and was now, remoter and wilder than Poland,with a polonized upper but untouched lower class, tosupply not only material for romance, but Poland'sgreatest writer himself, Mickiewicz. A native of BlackRussia, on the borders of Lithuania, he spent a normalchildhood at home and passed through Vilna University.His first poems, a book of ballads and romancespublished in 1822, erotic in character, were partlyoccasioned by a disappointment of the affections, andby their marked vein of personality and introspection,a novelty in Polish letters, at once aroused comment.This was followed by a more ambitious work, ' Dziady '(' The grandfathers '), a fantastic drama in a popularframework, with a background of Lithuanian and WhiteRussian folk-lore, and all the essential adjuncts ofRomanticism, a work which, full of splendid episodes,lacks unity. One of his finest lyrical outbursts is the' Ode to Youth ', a challenge of triumphant youth, all-pervading and all-conquering, to ossifying routine andhumdrum worldliness. His inspiration was sincereand profound, his instinct and taste infallible, his per-sonality passionate and convincing, while his languagewas novel, daring, and polychrome; his facility and


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POLISH LITERATURE 27versatility baffled a thousand imitators, and bewilderedthe criticasters of Warsaw. He visited Petersburg andMoscow, where he imbibed experience and was mademuch of in society; from Odessa, where he was sentto teach, he brought back a series of oriental cameo-sonnets descriptive of land- and sea-scape, wreck andstorm, sunshine and colour, joy and sorrow in theCrimea, that called forth general amazement and ad-miration. Another dramatic poem, ' Konrad Wallen-rod/ celebrated the cunning triumph in the middleages of Lithuanian patriotism over the aggressiveTeutonic Knights, and though of unequal propor-tions, contains numberless details of perfect workman-ship. He went abroad in 1829 and never returned tohis country, which in two years from then was over-taken by the consequences of the ill-judged and fatalrevolution of 1831. What had been left of Polish libertywas swept away, and ten thousand of the flower of thenation went into voluntary exile in France, without lay-ing down their arms, never to return, though none be-lieved but in an imminent restoration of their country'sfortunes. The effect of this wholesale emigration onPoland was disastrous, and it was not till a new genera-tion arose that the country regained full command of allits moral and mental powers. Yet it was under theserestless and unsettled conditions, exiled from theirhomes,in the soul-destroying atmosphere of recrimination andregret, that the three greatest Polish poets, Mickiewicz,Slowacki, and Krasinski, carried out their greatest work.Mickiewicz, conscious not only that he had lost hiscountry for ever, but that the life and society of hiscountry as he had known them were a thing of the past,determined to immortalize them while he could. Hewrote his great national epic, ' Pan Tadeusz ' (' Mr. Thad-deus '), in which he telephotographed his mother-countryLithuania, its forests and the beasts that roamed inthem, the life the people led there in the early nineteenthcentury, had led there for centuries past, their petty


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28 POLISH LITERATUREquarrels about boundaries, resulting in hand-to-hand en-counters, their bouts of hunting and drinking, dancingand talking, love-making and mushroom-gathering, theirpatriarchal etiquette, their splendid hospitality, theirmanners homely yet courteous, their conversation down-right but full of wit, their dress, their cuisine, theirhouses and their habits, their rising and their going tobed. Without idealization and without sentimentality,without hero and without heroine, with a sense of humourremarkable for the age, this epic is unique and greatamongst those of all literatures ; it is of local, national,not of universal Homeric dimensions, but it is historical,vivid, and spontaneous, inspired by profound and sincerepatriotism, by the wish to crystallize for his compatriotsthe life in their patria which he and they had known,which was no more. It is the bitter lament of one whohas lost his country, whose air and water, forests andfields, soil and people he had touched and loved, couldstill see and smell from afar, but never more regain.Combining the fervent earnestness, the stubbornaffection of the sober Lithuanian, with the imaginationand feeling, the verve and mobility, the patriotism anddevotion of the Pole, Mickiewicz is in contrast to thetwo purely Polish poets, Slowacki and Krasinski. Slo-wacki, who spent his whole life in the cause of hisart, a much greater master of language than Mickiewicz,and of much loftier aspirations, was eclipsed duringhis lifetime by the more obvious attractiveness, themore tangible charm of his rival, but his themes ofuniversal, Shakespearian dimensions, his mastery ofform and refinement of language, his wealth of ideasand imagination, have entitled him to a posthumousglory greater than that of Mickiewicz. His romanticlove of the morbid, of accumulating horrors on horror'shead, his want of dramatic feeling and total lack ofhumour, are redeemed by his sincerity and nobility,by his enthusiasm for, and his perfection in his art.Krasinski again had nothing in common with art for


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POLISH LITERATUREart's sake; he commanded his language and conjuredwith it, but he appeared as a prophet and evangelist,rather than as an artist. Reflective and thoughtful, hewas an optimist and idealist, who believed in the regene-ration of mankind and the salvation of the world. Adevout Catholic and stanch conservative, he resistedthe wave of mysticism and spiritualism which hadengulfed Mickiewicz and Slowacki, in which, with allits impedimenta of necromancy, pow-wows and bogey-worship, Polish society in exile sought to drown itsdespair, as society in Russia does to-day.

Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Krasinski, the three giantsof Polish Literature of the first half of the nineteenthcentury, two of whom did all their writing, while thethird, Mickiewicz, composed his greatest work, abroad,overshadowed not only all other writers of the emigra-tion, but also for a long time those who claimed attentionin the home-country.With the unparalleled development and inexhaustible

variety of Polish literature in Poland in the second halfof the nineteenth century, it. is impossible to deal here,for time does not permit. Resigned, though far fromreconciled to fate, the Poles have indemnified themselvesfor their political atrophy by the cultivation of art. Thelife of the people past and present is mirrored, the torchof nationality is kept alive in the historical novels ofKraszewski and Sienkiewicz, the peasant-epics of Konop-nicka and Reymont, while poets, novelists, and dramatistsof the first quality, including Prus,Zeromski, Weysenhoff,Asnyk,' Tetmajer, Kasprowicz, Wyspianski, Przyby-szewski, Szymanski, and Sieroszewski, are almost toonumerous to mention.The sources of inspiration seem never to run dry,the tree of Polish literature ever sends forth new shoots,

to make those of.other lands appear leaderless andunshapely; the Holy Alliance buried Poland, but treesthat bear fruit have sprung from the grave, that flourishlike the talipot-palms of the king of Dahomey, each


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30 POLISH LITERATUREplanted on the body of a victim, that astonish those whofancied Poland dead, while the language, supple andabundant, receptive and retentive, more dignified if lessgo-ahead than Czech, more malleable than Russian ifless melodious, impressive with its solemn rhythmweighing down the penultimate syllable of every word,offers to any who can command it unfailing pleasure,infinite reward.


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Polish Literature a Lecture

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