Ten Centuries of Polish Literature

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Published with the financial support of The State Committee for Scientific Research (Komitet Badań Naukowych) The book was translated into English with the financial support of Wydawnictwo Ossolineum

© Copyright for the English translation by Daniel Sax © Copyright by Stowarzyszenie “Pro Cultura Litteraria”, Fundacja Akademia Humanistyczna and Instytut Badań Literackich PAN

ISBN 83-89348-36-5 Printed and bound by OPRAWA Sp. z o.o. Łódź, ul. Dowborczyków 18

Contents

JERZY BRZEZIŃSKI Polish Literature – Returning to the European Fold . . . . . . . . . .

5

ADAM KARPIŃSKI The Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

ADAM KARPIŃSKI Rennaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ The European “Republic of Letters” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 JERZY SNOPEK The Polish Literature of Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 ALINA WITKOWSKA Romanticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and Beginning . . . . . . 172 ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 ANNA NASIŁOWSKA Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

JERZY BRZEZIŃSKI

Polish Literature – Returning to the European Fold

Ten Centuries of Polish Literature, the first volume in a series of specialist publications from the “Academy of the Humanities” Foundation, is a book of great import for ensuring that the presence of Polish humanistic thought is indeed felt in Europe – not only at European universities, but especially at the editorial offices of cultural newspapers and journals, as well as at secondary school libraries. The synthetic study presented here, written in model fashion by a team of the best Polish researchers and specialists in the consecutive literary epochs, may serve as a guidebook for all those Europeans who are interested in Polish literature specifically as a constituent part of European literature. Let’s also go on to say that without this “constituent part,” no picture of European literature can be complete. Of course, it is not the case that prior to this book European readers did not have access to other studies of a synthetic nature, which strove to portray the whole panorama of European literature. However, a fundamental flaw of such studies – from the Polish standpoint – was that Polish literature was either absent from their pages entirely, or appeared there only in trace amounts or “in the shadow” of Russian literature. What it is that binds, let’s say, German, French, Italian and also Polish literature together is a common cultural heritage, common roots, belonging to a single tradition. And so, we might view the literary history of every European country (thus that of Poland) through

JERZY BRZEZIŃSKI the prism of the universal European values that emerged under the influence of ancient Greek and Roman achievements, the great religions and reform movements. Within this Mediterranean cultural domain radiating to Europe’s far northern frontiers, various national literatures developed, yet regardless of the language they employed they always drew upon this universal canon of values. Polish literature, too, has for centuries been associated with this same domain of common values. Yet while absorbing them, Polish literature has itself enriched European literature by contributing new elements characteristic of the Polish milieu – a fact that has not always been adequately underscored in synthetic European studies. Kochanowski, Rej, Krasicki, Potocki, Krasiński, Słowacki, Mickiewicz, Norwid, Prus, Wyspiański, Witkacy, Schulz, Gombrowicz, Miłosz, Borowski, Szymborska, Mrożek, Lem, Herbert – these are authors who just simply cannot be left out of any synthesis of European literature. While remaining citizens of Europe, they brought new elements to Europe. Unfortunately, in many studies of the history of European literature, the Polish novel, Polish poetry, and Polish drama have been present to a marginal extent, if at all. It seems that there is nowadays a particularly profound need for such a portrayal of the history of Polish literature, broken down into the traditional time periods, yet viewed from a perspective that readers from France, Germany, Italy, or Spain will find familiar – the perspective of those values that constitute the “European spirit.” Today’s Europe, which is working to retrace its cultural foundations, drafting a new constitutional treaty, and striving to reunite what did once constitute a unity of common experience, yet became divided, this Europe engrossed in learning about its own “new” citizens is greatly in need of just such original studies, written with it specifically in mind. This book’s great virtue indeed lies in the fact that it is not some sort of popular work already published in Poland, but rather a study planned and written with European readers firmly in mind – readers who want to learn about the European fiber of Polish literature, yet also about its originality.

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ADAM KARPIŃSKI

The Middle Ages

According to historical sources, the state founded by Mieszko consisted of extensive lands in the Oder and Vistula river basins. Its natural border was formed to the south by the chains of the Carpathian and Sudeten mountains, while to the west the realm ended in the marshy areas of the Oder forests. To the north it stretched to the Baltic Sea, extending along the coast from the mouth of the Oder to that of the Vistula. To the east, the lower Vistula formed a line separating the state from Prussia, while the central course of the Bug and the San river basin, with the Czerwień strongholds, separated it from Kievan Rus. At the core of the state lay the strongholds of Wielkopolska (Great Poland), including Gniezno, the central seat of power. Encompassing some 250,000 km2 and with ca. 1 million inhabitants, Mieszko’s realm represented the outcome of a decades-long process whereby Slavic tribes had been united by his forebears: his great-grandfather Siemowit, grandfather Lestek, and father Siemomysł. Mieszko drew these lands into the fold of Christian Europe, by adopting Christianity in 966 and instituting state structures modeled after those found there. These achievements would be further consolidated by the most outstanding representative of the Piast dynasty, Bolesław Chrobry (Boleslaus the Brave), who took power upon Mieszko’s death in 992. Within a few years thereafter, Bolesław Chrobry had managed to have an archbishopric established in Poznań, directly subordinate to the Apostolic See, plus bishoprics in Kołobrzeg, Wrocław, and Kraków. He was aided in this by the

ADAM KARPIŃSKI martyrdom of St. Adalbert (Wojciech) during a mission to Prussia in 997: as a result Poland gained its own martyr, recognized by Rome as a saint. The cult of St. Adalbert was one of the circumstances that set the stage for a conference held in Gniezno in the year 1000, at which Holy Roman Emperor Otto III confirmed the significance of Bolesław and his state within Christian Europe. It was only in 1025, however, that Bolesław obtained a crown, thanks to which the Polish ruler joined the ranks of Europe’s leading monarchs. Subsequent Polish tradition would remember Bolesław Chrobry as a symbol of national greatness and ambition, although it is also true that this monarch’s ruthless reign – likewise evident in his imposition of Christianity and his embroilment in wars with all of Poland’s neighbors, Bohemia, Rus, and the Holy Roman Empire under Henry II – plunged the state into a lasting crisis after his death in 1025. This crisis saw internal revolts, a danger that the state would disintegrate and that the ruling Piast dynasty’s power would be undermined, the loss of the crown by Bolesław’s son Mieszko II, and invasions by neighboring states. The Polish state would later be restored, this time with its center of gravity shifted towards Małopolska (Lesser Poland) and Kraków, the new capital of Poland, at the hands of subsequent rulers: Kazimierz Odnowiciel (Casimir the Restorer) and his son Bolesław II Śmiały (Boleslaus the Bold), crowned king of Poland in 1076. Bolesław Śmiały soon lost power, however, owing to a dramatic clash with the bishop of Kraków, Stanisław of Szczepanów, who was denounced by the king, tried and killed in 1079, but who was recognized as a martyr by church and national tradition and would be canonized in 1253. Bolesław Śmiały was succeeded by his brother Władysław I Herman (Ladislaus Herman), and next by Bolesław III Krzywousty (Boleslaus the Wry-mouthed), during whose reign the tendencies undermining state unity were successfully averted and Poland’s international standing was bolstered, although he did not succeed in regaining the crown. Owing to an act of succession that parceled out power among his five sons, Bolesław III’s death ushered in an almost 200-year period known in Polish history as the time of “regional fragmentation.” This was an age fraught with conflict and struggles to secure control over the senior Kraków province, which oftentimes gave merely an illusion of primacy over the remaining prin—— 8 ——

The Middle Ages cipalities. Noteworthy among events of international significance was the appearance of the German Order of the Hospital of the Virgin Mary (the Teutonic Knights) on Poland’s northeastern frontiers in 1226, invited in by Prince Konrad Mazowiecki (Conrad of Masovia) for the mission of Christianizing the Prussians. The Knights would eventually come to occupy all of Pomorze (Pomerania), and out of the Prussian lands they conquered they set up a powerful state that threatened both Poland and Lithuania. Another important event was Poland’s and Europe’s encounter with the Tatars, who first conquered Kievan Rus and then advanced all the way to Central Europe, crushing the Christian knights led by the Silesian Prince Henryk Pobożny (Henry the Pious) at the battle of Legnica (1241). Despite the wane in Poland’s role as a state during the time of regional fragmentation, this period did also bring fundamental social and cultural transformations that served to unite the Polish lands with Europe – via the princes’ courts, which harbored great political and cultural ambitions, and via the activities of the Church, especially of the newly-founded Franciscan and Dominican orders. Repeated attempts at politically reunifying the state would only be successful for Władysław Łokietek (Ladislaus the Elbow-High), prince of Kujawy, who was crowned King of Poland in 1320. The country returned to its former glory under his son, Kazimierz Wielki (Casimir the Great), the last monarch in the Piast dynasty. The Poland Kazimierz Wielki left behind was a strong political and economic entity, of primary importance in this part of Europe. Following his death (1370), the succession fell to his nephew, the Hungarian King Louis d’Anjou, and next to the latter’s underage daughter Jadwiga. The magnates of Małopolska deemed the pagan ruler of Lithuania to be a suitable husband for her. After his acceptance of baptism, which thus Christianized Lithuania, he became king of Poland (1386) as Władysław II Jagiełło, and founder of the new Jagiellonian dynasty. This Christianization of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian bond tipped the balance of political forces in this eastern part of Europe, due to the quite rapid emergence of a powerful Polish-Lithuanian state, encompassing vast areas of Poland, Lithuania, and Lithuanian-held Ruthenia, and commanding great economic and military potential. Władysław Jagiełło scored a military and political success in his war —— 9 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI against the Teutonic Order, sealed at the great Battle of Grunwald in 1410, thanks to which the aggressive expansion of the Order was curbed. After his death in 1534, the throne fell to his eldest son Władysław Wareńczyk (Ladislaus of Varna), who was also appointed king of Hungary. While fighting in Pope Eugene IV’s crusade against the Turks, Władysław died at the battle of Varna (1444). He was succeeded on the throne in Kraków by Kazimierz Jagiellończyk (Casimir the Jagiellonian), whose nearly half-century of reign constituted a golden age of the Polish medieval period. Kazimierz also enjoyed political success in his victory over the Teutonic Order, thanks to which a part of Prussia including the mouth of the Vistula, called Royal Prussia, was incorporated into the lands of the Polish Crown, while the remainder became a Polish fiefdom. These times left a lasting mark upon the history of culture, whose development was closely tied to the University in Kraków – an institution that had been functioning since the days of Kazimierz Wielki, and was recognized in the second half of the 15th century as one of the most prominent learning institutions in Europe.

I. Poland and Christian Europe Poland’s adoption of Christianity in 966 marks the most important event in the history of the modern Polish state and Polish culture. It was then that Prince Mieszko, from the Piast dynasty of Wielkopolska, drew Poland into the Christian world. Gradually, at first encountering the kind of difficulties naturally entailed by the clash of two cultures (pagan Slavic vs. western Christian culture), but subsequently at an increasing pace, the Piast state permeated Christian Europe and became part of it. This is how history begins. Five centuries later, towards the end of the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Poland would be a powerful European country, extending all the way into the territory of Orthodox Rus, and through its personal union with the newly Christianized Lithuania, Jagiellonian Poland would itself become a nexus of European cultural expansion to the east. Opening up an avenue to Europe, meant at the same time opening up an avenue to Poland for Europe. Mieszko’s state became fused —— 10 ——

The Middle Ages into the Christian world region, and Europe, via its representatives (clergymen and monks), entered Poland’s territory; in addition to their faith they brought the achievements of modern civilization: a universal language, writing and art, which enabled not just the absorption, but also the material consolidation of culture. Through them, a kind of imitation of the mature Christian world, a mirror image, developed here, in this young world they were taming for their own purposes. Slowly, however, within this reflected or imitation landscape certain prominent works did begin to stand out; they started to illuminate the landscape with their own sort of light, a light drawn from the source of the specific nature of national history, or from the specific value of the works themselves, i.e. their uniqueness for Polish and European literature.

II. The Past Chronicles: Gallus and Vincent The first great literary work would arrive only after a wait of 150 years. During the reign of Bolesław Krzywousty, in 1113-1117, a work was written that would later be called the Polish Chronicle (Kronika polska). Its author’s name is unknown, but he was a Benedictine friar educated in France, who had probably also spent time in Hungary. In the 16th century the historian Marcin Kromer dubbed him “Gallus Anonymous,” and it is by this name that he remains known today in Polish literature, as the country’s first chronicler and historian – although it would be more apt to speak of him as a historical writer. Gallus’ work was not a chronicle in the full sense of the word, but rather a description of the life and deeds of Prince Bolesław. Thus it would be more apt to describe it using the European literary term “gesta,” which the author himself frequently employed, referring to his task as portraying the Polish ruler’s deeds: Bolesław was to be the hero, and his deeds were to be extolled by Gallus’ pen. Gallus Anonymous’ gesta consist of three volumes. The first offers a kind of extensive introduction, in which the author intended to describe the memorable deeds of Prince Bolesław’s forebears, leading up until the moment the hero himself is conceived at the intercession of St. Giles. The second volume speaks of the prince’s youth, his —— 11 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI first victories as an independent ruler prior to 1109, chiefly his campaign against the Pomeranians. The third volume relates Bolesław’s deeds during the four years leading up to 1113. The compositional structure of the work is much more complex. Each volume is preceded by the author’s letters and poetic summaries (epilogues) of the contents to follow, and each contains one hymn. The first contains the 30-line Lament at the Death of Bolesław the Brave (Żal po śmierci Bolesława Chrobrego), a planctus sung by widowed Poland, the second a cantelina sung by knights conquering Pomerania, and the third a song sung by German knights about the intrepid leader Bolesław. The artistry of the work’s construction is coupled with the artistry of its prose style, frequently rhymed in accordance with the prevailing ars dictandi of the day. Gallus’ artistic diligence and stylistic skillfulness manifest links to French models of the historical epic, and at the same time blend with the way the author consciously portrays himself as an artist with the power to preserve the deeds and glory of his protagonists. Through the author, the hero – a prince reigning on the fringes of Christian Europe – approaches immortality, much like the knights and kings of the historical medieval epoch. The schemas of secular and hagiographic biography, which undoubtedly inform this image, when filled with Polish substance gain a freshness befitting this new and literarily virginal world. Gallus Anonymous’ gesta have the advantage of being this world’s first initiation, marking a rite of passage in Polish literature. They bring the first hero, the first versified tests about Polish reality, the first hymn about the state and fatherland, which is referred to with the Latin word patria. The initial chapters of the first volume even provide something more: a history of this fatherland, a closer look at kings and princes that are known from other written documents, but yet even a bit more than this – history as preserved in legends about the Piast dynasty. During the course of the 12th century, the state experienced a definite eastward shift, and Kraków, the capital of the senior province, became the chief center of the fragmented country. It was here, too, in the heart of Małopolska, that the second Polish chronicle, perhaps the greatest literary work of the Polish Middle Ages, was —— 12 ——

The Middle Ages written. Its author was Master Vincent, latter called Kadłubek, an enlightened individual who had been educated in France. He penned his work in the years 1190-1205, presumably at the request of Prince Kazimierz II Sprawiedliwy (Casimir the Just). Unlike Gallus’ work, Vincent’s interest is focused upon the state itself – the res publica – or upon the history of the nation. This perspective of state and nation, predominant in Vincent’s Chronicle, enable us to comprehend his attempt at reconstructing a specifically Polish mythology, weaving the Poles of antiquity into history at large. Hence his tales of the Dacians and Gauls, of a certain Gracchus (Krak) who founded the state, of Wanda, the Lekhs, and Alexander the Great, of Lestek and Julia – Julius Caesar’s sister. Superimposed thereupon is the cycle of Piast legends familiar from Gallus Anonymous’ Chronicles, which enable the work to make a seamless transition into the history of Poland, starting with Mieszko I and leading through the first years of the 13th century. In setting forth such a vision of the state, stretching back into the farthest reaches of antiquity, what Vincent produced was neither a history, nor a saga of the Piast line as Gallus Anonymous had written. Rather, his work is a historical treatise with a moral agenda espousing the need for order, law, justice, and order-abiding virtues on the part of rulers and citizens. This is why Gracchus, the legendary founder of Kraków and likewise the source of the law in force in these lands, is such an important figure. Kings and princes are judged from this standpoint. A clearly parenetic aim inspired the fourth volume’s portrayal of Prince Kazimierz II Sprawiedliwy, the writer’s protector and perhaps the inspirer of the work itself. While viewing Vincent’s Chronicle as a historico-moral treatise, we call attention to its literary form: the firework display of the author’s artistry. The first three volumes are written as a dialog between two church dignitaries, a format that facilitates erudite deliberation of various points of view, and layered excursions and commentaries. The fourth volume, written more dynamically and with a publicist’s devotion to current affairs, presents the period Vincent himself knew firsthand: the power struggles over the senior Kraków throne. Both the dialog and the narrative are embellished with poetic —— 13 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI interpolations, either drawn from classical poetry – here the author proves himself to be exceptionally erudite – or representing original compositions. Vincent’s work thus contains the psalm, the panegyric, as well as lesser forms: the song and the fable, as well as an extensive versified dialog between anthropomorphized concepts, incorporated into the last volume – a kind of allegoric poem of encoded political content, referring to the situation that ensued after Prince Kazimierz’s death. The vagueness of the dialog’s message is at the same time just one of many examples of the use of the northern French style of “difficult ornamentation,” which preferred roundabout phrasings, difficult and refined tropes and rhetorical figures. Vincent’s erudition, style, the nature of his examples and the elements of his moral message all enable us to pinpoint quite precisely the kind of works and authors the Polish writer drew upon, and among which his Polish Chronicle should be placed on the library shelf. This is a shelf richly stocked with works by the masters of Chartres, manuscripts by such authorities as John of Salisbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Alan of Lille, and tomes by the Cistercians, especially St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who were the most akin to Vincent.

III. The Chivalrous Epic: The Hymn of Maurus The works of Gallus Anonymous and Master Vincent are not the only texts that lead us to relate 12th-century Polish writing to French pre-Renaissance culture, then dominant in Europe. A certain epic poem in Latin, dealing with the tragic fate of Piotr Włostowic (d. 1153), Wrocław’s comes palatinus from the house of Łabędź, a vassal of Prince Władysław Wygnaniec (Ladislaus the Exile), was still extant and being read as late as in the first half of the 16th century. In this poem, the knight is wrongly accused of treason by the prince’s wife and cruelly punished. The original story, whose roots lie in the power struggle that took place after Bolesław Krzywousty’s death, was fashioned into a chivalrous epic story by the monk Maurus from the Benedictine monastery in Wrocław. Unfortunately the original has not survived, and its 16th-century reworking into prose can only attest to the former existence of chivalrous epics, a genre so —— 14 ——

The Middle Ages sorely lacking in our modern-day picture of Polish medieval literature. As a curiosity, we can note a reconstruction attempted in the 20th century by R. Ganszyniec, based on preserved fragments and summaries. Also worthy of note is the tradition of this medieval story, further cultivated in later centuries.

IV. A Pole’s Journey from Rome to the Tatars On the fringes of medieval historiography there is one more work that does not belong to history-writing per se, and constitutes an entirely unique phenomenon in the Polish Middle Ages. In the mid13th century (1245-1247), Pope Innocent IV’s great legation to the Tatar Khan included a Franciscan from Wrocław known as Benedict the Pole. We owe two of the three accounts of this journey to this friar. One of then was taken down in Cologne on the basis of his oral account, while the other, entitled Historia Tartarorum (History of the Tatars), the friar penned himself. This travelogue includes one part devoted to the history of the Tatar state, plus another, geographicalethnographic portion, more closely tied to the traveler’s experiences and teeming with extremely interesting descriptions of the prevailing customs in a world that was foreign to the culture of Western Europe. This is an important work that anticipates later travelogues and fascination with the orient.

V. Saints The most extensive avenue of exchange between the young state of the Piasts and the wider Christian world was their common faith, as confirmed by the commonly recognized saints of the Church. This was why so much import was vested in the cult of St. Wojciech (Adalbert), which developed beginning in the 10th century. St. Wojciech was considered a saint of Piast-ruled Poland – even though he himself had been a Czech, and his first biographer, Bruno of Querfurt, a German. The Life of St. Adalbert, traditionally viewed as marking the outset of literature in the Polish lands, was accompanied by The Life of Five Martyred Brothers and The Life of St. Zoeradus (Świerad). —— 15 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI A true age of hagiography came in the 13th century, proliferating the cult of Stanisław of Szczepanów (d. 1079, canonized 200 years later). The list of domestic saints and beatified individuals grew longer: Jadwiga (Hedwiga), the wife of Silesian Prince Henry the Bearded; Kinga (Cunegundes) the wife of Boleslaus the Shameful, his sister Salomea, and the Dominican friar Jacek (Hyacinth) Odrowąż. The hagiographic works that retold their life stories rose to the rank of an important phenomenon in Polish culture and literature, in a way analogous to the situation throughout Europe. Names of authors began to appear, among which we should highlight Vincent of Kielcza, the author of The Life of St. Stanislaus and also the hymn Gaude, mater Polonia.

VI. First texts written in Polish Latin, the language of all known works of early Polish medieval literature, long reigned supreme as the written idiom. The first sentences written in the Polish language only appeared in documents from the 13th century. And it is from the end of the same century, or the outset of the next, that the Polish sermons called the Holy Cross Sermons (Kazaniami świętokrzyskimi) date. A 14th-century parchment copy of this work was discovered to have been preserved in strips of binding material that was subsequently used by a 15th-century bookbinder to reinforce the cover of a theological code of little import today. The strips of parchment extracted from this binding now represent one of the greatest treasures of Polish literature, containing extensive fragments of the oldest work written in the Polish language. They consist of five fragments of sermons, and one complete sermon for St. Catherine’s day. Their most astounding aspect, however, lies in the conclusions to be drawn from an analysis of their content, theological message, argumentation, style, and language. These sermons turn out not to have been intended for the commoners of a simple parish. Rather, they attest to intellectual and artistic maturity on the part of both their author and their intended listeners, who were able to appreciate the preacher’s level and skill. This presumably demonstrates that within the circle of secular courtiers, or per—— 16 ——

The Middle Ages haps within the female cloisters associated with the powerful elite, a community of individuals had already then emerged that required Polish texts displaying a high caliber of organized thought and language. The Holy Cross Sermons thus shatter the simple scheme which envisions Latin as having been the language of the elite, while Polish was the language of simple parishioners.

VII. The Bogurodzica This simple scheme is likewise incongruous with another work that arose at approximately the same time, i.e. at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries: the first religious hymn written in Polish, the Bogurodzica (a title which means “she who gave birth to God”). The two oldest attestations of this song date from the beginning of the 15th century, when it was written down in manuscripts that come from two different locations, near Gniezno and Kraków, attesting that the hymn was popular in those times. This popularity is further confirmed by several more attestations from the second half of the 15th century and from the 16th century, by its printing in the Statutes of Jan Łaski from 1506, as well as by a fact recorded in Jan Długosz’s Chronicle that it had been sung by Polish knights at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. The hymn changed shape over the course of these two centuries, and the number of stanzas grew as new parts of various provenance were added. The original, archaic portion of the Bogurodzica consists of two stanzas. This is the form it displays in one of the oldest above attestations, where soon after 1407 the song was noted down together with musical notation on the end paper of a volume of Latin sermons. Research on the Bogurodzica has revealed its exceptional artistry. Its stanzaic form indicates that it arose as a trope on the acclamation Kyrie eleison. What is probably most important, however, is the assertion that the work is wholly original. No Latin source has been uncovered, a fact that is even more noteworthy since the hymn demonstrates an almost perfect formal structure, a cohesive construction evincing the author’s exceptional sense of beauty, manifest in its perfect symmetry and veritably mathematical precision. —— 17 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI The work’s symmetrical structure, almost faultless rhymes, and parallelisms underscored by rhyme draw our attention to its perfection of form, the perfection of this appeal addressed to Mary and via her intercession to Christ, the Son and God. A detailed analysis of this prayer, wherein an entreaty is first made of the Mother of God, while the second stanza speaks of the intercession of John the Baptist, allows us to discern the schema of the iconographic theme of deesis (Greek for “entreaty” or “prayer”), cultivated in Byzantine culture and assimilated by the culture of Roman Europe in the 11th13th centuries. In deesis, as in our prayer, the central figure is Christ the Majesty, with Mary standing on the right and St. John the Baptist on the left. The Bogurodzica is undoubtedly the greatest artistic achievement in Piast-epoch Polish literature. Its very appearance, the fact that a work of this sort was written in the national language, opens up a new chapter in the Polish Middle Ages, an epoch Henryk Samsonowicz, the Polish historian, has dubbed the “golden autumn” of medieval Poland.

VIII. The Jagiellonian period Studies of later Polish medieval literature require different methods than the earlier period. The end of the 14th century, and especially the 15th century with its flowering of Polish culture under the Jagiellonians, gave rise to copious works that now encompassed all dimensions of social affairs (political and occasional literature, publicist commentary, chronicle-keeping) and spiritual life (eschatological verses, religious songs), written in both Latin and Polish. Over the course of the four centuries that had transpired since Mieszko I’s adoption of Christianity, fundamental changes had taken place within the sphere of the state. When the Piast dynasty came to its end, the realm of Kazimierz Wielki comprised an internally closeknit entity with a solid economic foundation and great political significance, which maintained clear sovereignty with respect to the two chief authorities of the Western Christian world. Due to the connection with the house of Anjou and then the Jagiellonians’ expansion in —— 18 ——

The Middle Ages Central Europe, Kraków became one of the centers of the Christian world – in 1364, the second university in this part of Europe (after Charles University in Prague) was set up in the city. In the 15th century, the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, combined by personal union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, became a power capable of influencing the fate of Europe. Keeping pace with historical events, literature furthered the rich tradition of chronicle-writing. Successive works appeared: the chronicle of Dzierzwa from the beginning of the 14th century, the chronicle of Janko of Czarnków from the end of the same century, and finally the monumental Annals or Chronicles of the Glorious Polish State (Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae) by Jan Długosz (1415-1480). Although these chronicles are modern in their own way – adhering to the annals format, they aspire to treat sources critically and attempt to follow the example set by Livy – it is nevertheless hard to view them as a work of literature, and they do not live up to the 13th-century chronicles in this respect.

IX. History and Literature One novelty that appeared in Polish literature of the late medieval period was a considerable number of poetic works inspired by historical events. Foremost among these is a 14th-century Latin hymn, De quodam advocato Cracoviensi Alberto, about an unsuccessful revolt by the Kraków leader Albert, bloodily repressed by Władysław Łokietek; next in line are poems about the victorious battle against the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald, and about the demise of King Władysław at Varna in 1444. Latin, as usual, surpasses Polish. A whole host of poets now appeared, working in hexameter in imitation of Virgil and writing occasional and panegyric literature. Worthy of note is the funerary poetry, such as the splendid epitaph to the knight Zawisza Czarny written by Adam Świnka, or an anonymous poem written in memory of Andrzej Odrowąż. Within the circle of Władysław Jagiełło’s court, a song in praise of Kraków was written by Stanisław Ciołek. The royal court, the Kraków Academy, and the courts of church dignitaries, places that brought together concentra—— 19 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI tions of educated individuals, become receptive to literary novelties emanating from 15th-century Italy. It was also natural that these elites, as yet not fully recognized, could appreciate the dialog that was written in the wake of chancellor Zbigniew Oleśnicki’s death in the middle of the century, which can be considered the first work written in an already Renaissance style. Where history and literature intersected, certain works written in the Polish language did rarely appear. They are all the more noteworthy since they bear traces of the Hussite movement, filtering in from the Czech lands. Hussitism did not encounter any resonance in Poland to correspond to the dynamic movement it set in motion in the homeland of Jan Hus, who was burnt at the stake in 1415. Attempts to undertake more extensive action were suppressed by armed force in 1439. One very interesting figure in this regard was Jędrzej Gałka of Dobczyn, a “master” of the University in Kraków, who was accused of harboring Hussite sympathies and popularizing the works of John Wycliffe, the intellectual patron of Hussitism. Among the writings of Jędrzej, who saved his skin by fleeing to Silesia, is Pieśń o Wiklifie (Song on Wycliffe), an apology of the English philosopher, containing an exposition of his teachings, set to a popular melody. The most interesting aspect of this small work of propaganda is its attempt at communicating the precise philosophical terminology of Wycliffe’s works in simple Polish language – quite possibly the first attempt of this sort in Polish literature. While mentioning Song of Wycliffe, we should point out the custom of writing verses in Polish that referred to current affairs and events, set to melodies and intended to be popularly sung and circulated. We can only surmise that many such works were written, and that the ones we are nowadays familiar with represent but a coincidentally preserved vestige – such as the Song on the Assassination of Andrzej Tęczyński (Pieśń o zabiciu Andrzeja Tęczyńskiego), which tells the tale of a nobleman beheaded by Kraków burghers, and the severe punishment meted out as a result. We should presumably treat poems of manners, a mere sample of which is provided by the verses of a certain Słota about what table manners should be observed during feasts, as likewise representing fragments of the same body of popular songs. —— 20 ——

The Middle Ages

X. “New” religious hymns and Władysław of Gielnów The most interesting, most valuable and artistic, and most mature works of late medieval Polish literature were written in the realm of religious poetry. Hymns were written in the 14th and 15th centuries, most frequently by fashioning tropes around fixed fragments of liturgy, which like the Bogurodzica gained popularity as church calendar songs. The resurrection hymn For Us God’s Son Rose From the Dead (Nas dla wstał z martwych Syn Boży) was recorded as a continuation of the Bogurodzica. Most of the hymns are translations of Latin tropes, such as Christ from the Dead is Risen (Krystus zmartwych wstał je), A Joyful Day Has Come Unto Us (Wesoły nam dzień nastał), or hymns such as Oh Holy Cross, Be Praised (O krzyżu naświetszy, bądź pozdrowion). From the perspective of the subsequent history of the religious hymn, we should note the songs intended for the occasion of Christmas, which later (as early as in the 17th century) grew into popular carols. The oldest preserved carol is considered to be song Be Hailed, King of Angels (Zdrów bądź, królu anjelski), known from a copy from 1424. The Christmas carol The Angel Said Unto the Shepherds (Anioł pasterzom mowił), still sung to this day, also dates back to the 15th century. The most intriguing phenomenon against this backdrop is that of extra-liturgical poetry, which grew out the fervent religiosity cultivated by monastic circles. The role of inspirer and moderator in this regard is chiefly ascribed to reformed Franciscan monasteries. After being reformed according to the principle of St. Bernardine of Siena, the order officially abolished the appellation “Observants,” and in Poland they came to be called “Bernardines.” Thanks to this order, there appear new depictions of the old hymn themes, new interpretations of the Passion that particularly highlight the motif of Mary’s “compassion” (compassio), new analyses of the Nativity that assimilate and expand upon apocryphal motifs. This body of works gains in significance when read in the context of the Italian “lauds”, the Franciscan hymns of such outstanding poets as Jacopone da Todi and Bianco da Siena. One such Bernardine friar was Władysław of Gielniów (ca. 14401505), the first Polish poet writing in the Polish language whom we —— 21 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI can identify by name, and whose oeuvre we can successfully pin down today. In his quite abundant, albeit scattered legacy, we can clearly discern the dominance of new topics and new interpretations. The motif of Mary’s compassion is clearly manifest in the Passion hymn Judas Sold Jesus for Paltry Money (Jezusa Judasz przedał za pieniądze nędzne), while the hymn When Augustus Was Caesar (Augustus kiedy królował) is undoubtedly an example of a new construal of the Bethlehem story. The verses of Władysław of Gielniów and certain other anonymous 15th-century songs preserved in hymn books comprise a clear corpus of religious poems that are termed “new hymns,” which are characterized by a type of late medieval religiousness and spirituality, yet also contribute to forming a certain model of religious culture – encompassing topics, motifs, symbolism, and phraseology – that would long remain alive in old Polish culture.

XI. Lament of the Mother of God at the Foot of the Cross Among such “new hymns,” the most outstanding work of medieval Polish lyric poetry, known as Holy Cross Lament or Lament of the Mother of God at the Foot of the Cross (Lament świętokrzyski or Żale Matki Boskiej pod krzyżem), makes for probably the best reading. It belongs among the “planctus” genre (Latin for “lament”), then widespread in Europe – the most famous of which is Jacopone da Todi’s Latin sequence Stabat Mater dolorosa, which presents a scene, couched in lyric monolog, of the Mother beneath the cross, mourning the death of her Son. The Polish lament is a wholly original work, even though it is woven of a fabric of themes known from the apocryphal tradition, motifs conventionally affiliated with the planctus genre. Its novelty lies in the fact that it presents a dramatic frame (a kind of theatrical prologue), that seemingly draws the reader (listener) into the Golgotha scene. The lament proper, which begins only from the third stanza onward, is a true display of the nameless poet’s artistic skill. The subsequent five stanzas of the monolog pivot around a central stanza, expressing in several simple sentences the Mother’s inability to give assistance to her Son, as he hangs too far above her. All the tragedy and pain are concentrated in this simplicity and help—— 22 ——

The Middle Ages lessness. The preceding and succeeding stanzas seemingly encircle the central pivot. They address the theme of watching suffering (stanzas 3 and 7) and of wounded motherhood (stanzas 4 and 6), and are woven of themes that are well-known, but reworked in an intensified and subtle interpretation. The artistry of the song thus manifests itself on the one hand in the exceptional emotional intensity of Mary’s monolog, which is concise and devoid of any superfluous words, and on the other in the subtle portrayal and analysis of the Mother’s tragedy, experienced in the here-and-now but yet augured in the past, a tragedy that plays out in the divine dimension, but yet is experienced in the human one.

XII. Apocryphal narratives The apocryphal themes of religious hymns point us towards one more important sphere of medieval writing in Poland, i.e. longer “histories” describing the life of Jesus and his agony, written in prose. These are compiled works, which draw upon various Latin sources popular during the epoch, but also rest on the groundwork of earlier stories based on the gospels and apocrypha. This type of work, described as apocryphal or apocryphally-themed literature, is chiefly represented by two voluminous works that have come to be called “meditations.” The first is entitled Meditations on the Life of Jesus (Rozmyślanie o żywocie Pana Jezusa) or Przemyśl Meditations (Rozmyślanie przemyskie) after where the manuscript was found, while the second come to be called Dominican Meditations (Rozmyślanie dominikańskie) after their presumed place of origin, at the Kraków monastery of the Dominicans. The Przemyśł Meditations, which unfortunately lack both a beginning and an end, encompass the entire gospel story from the heralding to Anna of Christ’s birth, all the way until the torment, where it breaks off at the scene of Christ’s conversation with Pilate. The story is divided into volumes, and further subdivided into small “celebrations” corresponding to individual biographical episodes taken from Latin models. The Dominican Meditations, on the other hand, are of a different nature, recorded in a manuscript decorated with miniatures that comprise a graphic cycle —— 23 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI running in parallel to the narration. The story here concentrates only on the Passion. Despite their likewise compiled nature, one can clearly discern within these meditations a method of relating Jesus’ torment that is specific to the late medieval period. By relying on naturalism and detailed descriptive passages, this method speaks to the sensory imagination of the reader and listener, by stressing the physical suffering it refers to the Dolorism typical of the time, and by stressing the role of Mary and her compassion it appeals to contemplative spirituality and religiousness – the very same that produced The Lament of the Mother of God at the Foot of the Cross.

XIII. The persistence of the Middle Ages One characteristic aspect of medieval culture and literature in Poland is that it did not come to an end in tandem with the close of the 15th century and the emergence of the new, humanistic movement. European medieval literature continued to be reprocessed, and would provide inspiration for the egalitarian culture of Renaissance times. Two editions of the Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Żywota Pana Jezu Krysta) composed by Baltazar Opec on the basis of the 14th-century Meditationes vitae Christi ascribed to St. Bonaventure, appeared in print in 1522. Various types of “histories” with sources in medieval tales of the Gesta Romanorum type were printed. Only in the 16th century did the morality play appear in its full glory, while the first Polish medieval Passion play, The History of the Glorious Resurrection of Our Lord (Historyja o chwalebnym zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim) written by Mikołaj from Wilkowiecko, a Paulite friar from Częstochowa, appeared in print in the 1680s. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that we still discern a clear echo of the medieval tradition in the religious poets of the early 17th century, such as Stanisław Grochowski or Kasper Miaskowski.

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The Middle Ages

Bibliographical Notes Jelicz, A., Toć jest dziwne a nowe. Antologia literatury polskiego średniowiecza, Warszawa 1987. Krzyżanowski, J., A History of Polish Literature, Warszawa 1978. Medieval Literature of Poland an Antology, translated by M.J. Mikoś, New York, London 1992. Michałowska, T., Średniowiecze, Warszawa 1995. Miłosz Cz., The History of Polish Literature, London, 1969. Samsonowicz H., Złota jesień polskiego średniowiecza, Warszawa 1971. Słownik literatury staropolskiej, red. T. Michałowska, Wrocław 1998. Storia della letteratura polacca, a cura di L. Marinelli, Torino 2004. Witczak, T., Literatura średniowiecza, Warszawa 1990. Wydra, W., Rzepka, W., Chrestomatia staropolska. Teksty do roku 1543, Wrocław 1995.

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ADAM KARPIŃSKI

ADAM KARPIŃSKI

Rennaissance

The Renaissance period in Poland coincides with the reign of the Jagiellonian dynasty. The period saw its beginnings during the times of Kazimierz Jagiellończyk (Casimir the Jagiellonian), but the true flowering came after the short reigns of Jan Olbracht and Aleksander, once the throne was ascended by Kazimierz’s last son, Zygmunt I Stary (Sigismund the Elder). The “Zygmunt age” – as the times of the last two Jagiellonians, Zygmunt Stary and his successor Zygmunt August (Sigismund Augustus, d. 1672), are usually termed – was a golden age of Polish culture. This was to a considerable degree a result of particularly strong cultural ties to Italy: Zygmunt Stary’s second wife, Bona of the Sforza family, was Italian. These times left their mark on Wawel Castle in Kraków, which was rebuilt in the new Renaissance style, with the “Zygmunt Chapel,” a gem of this style. The kingdom’s relatively stable relations with its neighbors, cautious foreign policy, and sense of its own real power and security promoted its internal consolidation and spurred economic growth. The most important political events of this period brought changes in the structure of the state, especially the emergence of the noble democracy, with a democratically elected Sejm (Diet), an elected king, and a Senate consisting of secular and church oligarchs. This system emerged via a long-term process, important stages of which were marked by the famous Nihil Novi statute in 1506, which granted great powers to the noble estate, and next by the decades-long internal battle over the so-called “execution of rights,” ending in the —— 26 ——

Rennaissance resolutions of the “executionist” Sejms of 1563-1567. Another no less crucial process was the consolidation of the multiethnic state entity, which culminated in the Polish-Lithuanian union signed by the Sejm in Lublin in 1569, giving rise to the “Republic of the Two Nations” (Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów), a uniform state sharing a common ruler, Sejm, Senate, and currency, and pursing a single foreign and military policy. This Union of Lublin, enacted on the eve of the Jagiellonian dynasty’s extinction, was of fundamental significance for the further history of Poland, as it established a federative state with no equal in Europe at that time. Relations between the state and religion were a third factor that shaped the Republic. Unlike other countries, Poland managed to avoid the excesses of religious wars sparked by the Reformation. While remaining a Catholic country, it did not pose resistance to the spread of the reformed churches, Lutheranism and Calvinism. The latter gave rise in the Polish lands to the radical movement of the Arians, called the “Polish brethren.” The fullest expression of irenic tendencies in this sphere was the “Warsaw confederacy” signed at the Sejm in 1573, guaranteeing “eternal peace” between those who differed in terms of faith, maintaining that every nobleman had the right to religious freedom. The Warsaw confederacy was signed by the Sejm after the death of Zygmunt August, the last of the Jagiellonian line, when the Polish and Lithuanian nobility, mindful of their rights, proceeded to choose a new ruler. The first such elected king was Henry Valois, the son of French King Henry II and Catherine de Médici. His mere half-year of reign, which ended with his flight to France upon receiving the news that the French throne had been vacated, made its mark in Polish history chiefly in terms of the “Henrician Articles,” in which the gentry, fearing that absolutism might be instated, set forth the most important principles of the polity of the Republic. Both Henry and all successive royal electees were forced to swear by these articles and uphold them. After Valois’s departure, Transylvanian prince Stefan Batory was elected king. His ambitious political plans led the Republic to a victorious war against Moscow under Ivan IV the Terrible, resulting in the acquisition of Polotsk and the recovery of Inflanty (Livonia). Stefan’s death in 1586 interrupted plans for further eastward expansion and postponed a clash with the rising Ottoman empire. The next —— 27 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI king was to be Zygmunt August’s nephew, the Swedish Prince Zygmunt of the Vasa dynasty. His long reign (1587-1632) was preceded by a civil war between the backers of Vasa and those of Maximilian Habsburg, concluded at the battle of Byczna when Jan Zamoyski took the Austrian claimant captive and cleared Zygmunt’s path to the Polish throne. The approaching turn of the century portended the arrival of times of war and internal unrest.

I. The birth of an epoch – Elites The Renaissance epoch in Polish literature begins when the ideas and literature of the Western European (chiefly Italian) Renaissance and humanism begin to filter in to the Polish lands. This was a longterm process that evidenced itself in the intellectual and literary life of the latter half of the 1400s, during a half-century that can be considered the developmental apogee of late medieval culture in Poland. One of the fundamental conditions necessary for the appearance of such new ideas was the emergence of an intellectual community capable of accepting and nurturing these ideas. The formation of such an intellectual elite receptive to the ideas of humanism lasted until the beginning of the 16th century. This process was spurred by direct contact with Rome and Italian universities, and was also reinforced by close ties to the nascent humanistic movement to the south, chiefly in Hungary. The hallmark of this emerging elite, acting as a kind of visa to the Renaissance world of Europe, was humanistic Latin – the Latin language as resuscitated by the humanists, in the form that it had been used in the works of Cicero, Ovid, Virgil, and Horace. Acquiring and using this tongue represented part of the Renaissance concept, which was also construed as a rebirth of classical culture. Only Latin facilitated a link between the classical world and the contemporary one, a link that involved the creative imitation of models. The Latin language was also the foremost instrument for expressing the notions, experiences, and artistic endeavors of the new epoch, as it offered the fullest range of lexical, phraseological, and syntactic capabilities for expressing this new age, which did not want to be inferior to —— 28 ——

Rennaissance ancient times. And so it is natural that the Latin language completely dominated the beginnings of Renaissance literature in Poland. Only achievements in this direction could subsequently encourage the accelerated development of the Polish literary language in the 16th century, especially in its latter half. In Poland under Kazimierz Jagiellończyk, this new, humanistic Latin, shaped according to Roman models, appears as the language of a new elite only just emerging. A great role was played here by the excellently prospering University of Kraków and its professors, such as Jan of Ludzisko (ca.1400-before 1460), who greeted the king arriving to his coronation with his laudatory address to philosophy (Oratio de laudibus et dignitate philosophiae), written in the new style. An important figure whom the new elite rallied around was Cardinal Zbigniew Oleśnicki (1389-1455). Himself an excellent speaker, drawing upon the models of Ciceronian style and maintaining correspondence with Italian humanists that included Enea Silvius Piccolomini (1405-1464), the subsequent Pope Pius II, Oleśnicki brought together enlightened individuals who were receptive to Italian novelties. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the first poem in Poland written in the Renaissance manner, the anonymous Latin work Dialog at the Death of Zbigniew Oleśnicki, written in 1455, was linked to the cardinal. Our list of prominent mid-15th-century precursors of the Renaissance must also include Jan Ostroróg (ca.1430-1501). The style of his writings, bearing clear humanistic traits, is worthy of note, as are the ideas that he propounded in them. Out of the Conciliarist spirit, the idea of strengthening the state by centralizing authority and rendering it autonomous of Rome, came Memorandum on the Organization of the Republic (Monumentum ... pro Reipublicae ordinatione ... congestum – after 1450). Amongst the church and state dignitaries, Grzegorz of Sanok (1407-1477), bishop of Lwów (Lvov), stood out. His court gave refuge to Filippo Buonacorsi (1437-1496) known as Callimachus, an Italian humanist who had been accused, together with other members of the Rome Academy, of plotting against the life of Pope Paul II. Callimachus’ arrival to Kraków in 1470 (or at the end of 1469) is sometimes considered to be a symbolic date marking the onset of —— 29 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI Renaissance literature in Poland. In Dunajów, where the bishop’s seat was located, Callimachus composed a collection of love elegies that were wholly novel in Polish Renaissance literature, both in terms of their metrics and vocabulary, and in terms of their topic. Among them we find the famous elegy To Fannia Sventhoca (Ad Fanniam Sventhocam), containing the poet’s curriculum vitae. Callimachus’ works also included many motifs, such as his description of the harsh Sarmatian winter modeled after Ovid, that would be reproduced in Renaissance poetry written in Latin, and subsequently in Polish. Worthy of special note is his biographical panegyric Life and Morals of Grzegorz of Sanok (Vita et mores Gregorii Sanocei – 1476). And although it is hard nowadays to ascertain how much exaggerated praise there is in this portrayal of the humanist-bishop and epicurean-poet, and how many of the traits are actually drawn from Callimachus’ own views, it remains the first work in the spirit of Renaissance humanism that constructed a parenetic image of a man of the new epoch. No meager contribution to the birth of Polish Renaissance literature was made by intellectuals and poets of various nations, who formed an elite humanist community in this part of Europe – Poland, Germany, the Czech lands and Hungary. The German poet Conradus Celtis spent several years in Kraków (1488-1491), founded the Sodalitas Litteraria Vistulana literary society here, and devoted several of his poems, frequently none too flattering, to frosty and harsh Sarmatia. Lauretnius Corvinus (true name Lorenz Rabe – 1465-1527), a friend of Copernicus and the author of Sapphic Ode on Poland and its Capital, spent a longer time in Kraków. Paweł of Krosno (ca.1470-1517), who was German by birth (with the true surname Procler), called himself a “Ruthenian” by origin, and was closely tied to the Hungarian protectors of humanists Stanisław Thurzon and Gábor Perényi, was a student and lecturer at the Kraków Alma Mater. Among Paweł of Krosno’s abundant writings, which can be generously parceled out for both the Hungarians and Poles to claim, we should note his epitalamium written to commemorate Zygmunt Stary’s wedding to Barbara Zapolya, where he endeavored to sparkle with mythological erudition drawn from Virgil and Ovid. At the event of this ceremony, there was now a retinue of Polish poets that could rival —— 30 ——

Rennaissance each other. Aside from Paweł, verses in honor of the royal couple were also written by Krzycki and Dantyszek, writers belonging to the next generation of humanists.

II. Latin poetry – Christian humanism An intellectual movement termed Christian humanism was very prominent within the North European Renaissance at the outset of the 16th century. This current eschewed idolatrous attachment to the literary tradition of antiquity, and opposed the neo-paganism of the humanists. This movement was patronized by Erasmus of Rotterdam, and included such neo-Latin poets as Crinitus, Mantuanus, Sabellicus, and Sebastian Brant. The generation of Paweł of Krosno’s pupils, which included Jan of Wiślica, Jan Dantyszek, and their contemporary Mikołaj Hussowczyk, grew up within an atmosphere of Christian humanism. Jan of Wiślica (ca.1458-1520) made his mark in the history of poetry as the author of the first attempt at creating a historical epic. His Prussian War (Bellum prutenum) was conceived as a poem about Władysław Jagiełło’s war against the Teutonic Knights. And although the initial intention grew blurred amongst panegyric praise of the Jagiellonians, this work set the stage for the development of old Polish epic poetry, which confined itself, after the model of Lucan’s Pharsalia, to versified relations of historical events. In Jan of Wiślica’s Christian laudation of the dynasty, mythological gods are replaced by St. Stanislaus, the patron saint of the Jagiellonians, while the invocation to the muses is replaced by an entreaty to the Virgin Mother. An even stronger break with pagan traditions, programmatically and ostentatiously rejecting all mythological ornaments, was made by Mikołaj Hussowczyk (ca.1475/1485 - after 1533) in a poem entitled Song on the Appearance, Savagery and Hunting of the Bison (Carmen de statura, feritate ac venatione bisontis). This work arose when the poet was in Rome with the court of Erazmus Ciołek, bishop of Płock, who decided to make Pope Leo X, one of the most illustrious patrons of Renaissance culture, the gift of a stuffed bison plus an accompanying poem. Nevertheless, the poem would ultimately be —— 31 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI addressed to Queen Bona, since both Leo X and Bishop Ciołek would die in the interim prior to its completion in 1523. The undoubtedly political message of the work, intended to lend support the papacy’s anti-Turkish policy, is overshadowed by its exceptionally graphic and suggestive portrayal of the primeval Lithuanian forest in the wintertime, of the European bison itself, and of the culminating scene in which the beast is put to death. Mikołaj, doubtlessly drawing upon the late classical hunting poems just then being discovered, managed to write a work that surpassed these models in many regards; the Polish author imbued the work with rich detail and dynamic images, which were both realistic and approached an almost Baroque sensualism. Neither does the song lack personal threads and tones, such as the prayer to the Virgin Mother that closes the work, one of the most beautiful such supplications in old Polish religious poetry. Nevertheless, Christian humanism would have its most outstanding Polish champion in the Gdańsk native Jan Dantyszek (1485-1548) – although this is not the only context for his work, nor a sufficient one. Dantyszek was a man of the world, a European humanist, who dabbled at the profession of diplomat in the service of Jan Olbracht and Zygmunt Stary. As a result of his diplomatic missions, including to the courts of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and Charles V, and the years he spent at the Spanish court, he maintained contacts, both in person and through correspondence, with most of the prominent figures of his times, such as Thomas More, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Ferdinand Cortez, Baldassare Castiglione, Martin Luther, and Philipp Melanchthon. Dantyszek’s huge body of correspondence, which has only partially been published, should be recognized as one of the most outstanding monuments of the Polish Renaissance. His elegy To Grinea (Ad Grineam), to a lover he left behind in Vienna, was written in an earlier period, prior to the author’s conclusive return to the country in 1532, still in the manner of mythological erudition. Yet his body of work closes with an elegiac curriculum vitae, entitled The Life of Jan Dantyszek (Vitae Ioannis de Curiis Dantisci), the poet’s final reckoning with the world at large, which is already devoid of antiqueness, written at the end of his life, expressing the hope of eternal life with Christ. The final years of Dantyszek’s life, which he —— 32 ——

Rennaissance spent surrounded by books in Lidzbark as bishop of Warmia, produced a collection of passion hymns Hymni aliquot ecclesiastici published in 1548, which programmatically rejected the diction of learned humanist poetry. In his poem to the reader (Ad lectorem) he explains that “the holy marks of the bleeding wounds of Christ” should replace the Hippocrene source of the muses. This ostentatious reversion to medieval Passion hymns provides perhaps the strongest indicator of the overthrow, in the name of tradition, of the imitatio antiquorum principle that heralded the forthcoming times of Church reform.

III. Latin poets: individualists As a result of humanism, at the beginning of the Polish Renaissance there was already a trend towards expressing concrete human fortunes and individual experiences, thereby confirming the role that the Renaissance epoch ascribed to mankind in the universe, underscoring man’s dignity and exceptionality. This is evidenced by Renaissance biography, portrait painting, and above all poetry. The poetic work becomes to a significant extent a personal document of the writer’s fate, an attestation of his sensibilities and internal experience. The works of the two undoubtedly most outstanding poets of Latin literature in the Polish Renaissance, Andrzej Krzycki and Klemens Janicius, are expressions of such trends, which can be termed Renaissance individualism. The biographies of these two writers differed vastly. The life of Andrzej Krzycki (1482-1537) was a model of a successful career. He was abetted by his kinship with Piotr Tomicki, a bishop, chancellor, and minister under Zygmunt Stary. After studying in Bologna, he quickly climbed the rungs of a courtly and clerical career, becoming bishop of Przemyśł in 1522, of Płock in 1527, and archbishop of Gniezno and primate of Poland in 1535. Klemens Janicius (1516-1542), in turn, belongs to a younger generation. His father was a peasant from the Wielkopolska village of Januszkowo, who sent his son to be educated first in Żnin, and later in the Poznań college founded by Bishop Lubrański. Due to his humanistic interests and —— 33 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI early manifested talent, Janicius ended up at Krzycki’s court. Unfortunately, Krzycki died a year later, but the poet found his next safe haven at the court of Kraków voivode Piotr Kmita. It was Kmita who in 1538 enabled Janicius to travel to Padua – a target of peregrinations for several generations of Poles. Studying at the philosophical faculty there, breathing in the atmosphere of Italy, maintaining contacts with the circle of Padua humanists, led by Pietro Bembo himself, and engaging in friendship with Lazzaro Bonamico – all of this was interrupted by the onset of a grave illness that augured speedy death. Owing to help from his friends he was awarded the doctor of philosophy degree at an expedited pace, and also received his poetic laurels. In autumn 1540 he returned to Poland, but no longer enjoyed the support of his former sponsor. He spent the last two years of his life in a rectory near Olkusz, trying to put his poetic works into order and publish them. The publication of Janicius’ Book of Laments and other verses (Tristium liber I, Variarum elegiarum liber I, Epigrammatum liber I) would coincide with the author’s death in late 1542 (or early 1543). He was then 26 years old. If there is anything that the works of two writers with such different biographies might have in common, it is chiefly the fact that they poured their own selves into their works. Everything that is most valuable in their works bears the distinctive mark of each of the authors, it constitutes a record of their personalities, which were otherwise wholly different. In Krzycki’s case this is an extraverted record, with clear emotional reactions to the world. Things are the reverse for Janicius, who is concentrated upon himself, treating the world around him as an element of his own story. Krzycki is absorbed in his courtly, state, and church career. As a courtier, he recorded events and people. He wrote epithalamia for the wedding celebrations of Zygmunt I, demonstrating his inborn talents: wit, brilliance, skill at paying compliments. This is the first poet in Polish literature who knew how to be, with such suppleness, a dexterous panegyrist, a subtle connoisseur of women, music, and wine, as well as a ruthless scoffer; always on a level that proved him to be an experienced verbal craftsman, and very frequently an artist. He was a master of the short form, the epigram, which he learned —— 34 ——

Rennaissance from Martial and the Italian poets of the 15th century. His verses are full of mockery, rumors, and even impetuous insults leveled against his secular and clerical political opponents. And so, we encounter the image of Bishop Latalski, from whose nighttime windows a female companion was lowered in a net; we encounter an unctuous epitaph of Bishop Konarski, whose greatest achievement was allegedly the fact that he had stepped down from the Kraków bishopric; we encounter a whole gallery of fools and hypocrites – yet above all we encounter Krzycki, somewhat as a cynical opportunist casting blows both left and right, somewhat as a wise man brandishing a copy of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Praise of Folly instead of a breviary. Krzycki’s oeuvre is not devoid of love poems, some refined and elegant, others simply obscene. He wrote love verses in imitation of the Italian Petrarchists, but he also gave us a verse in praise of womanly beauty that represents a travesty (perhaps even a parody) of a hymn to the Virgin Mother. Krzycki accustoms us to unexpected clashes both in his thematic development and in his employment of poetic tradition. Alongside Hymn of the Drunkard Brothers at Corybut’s Funeral (Hymnus fratrum geneae in funere Corybuti), which parodies the songs of medieval canticles and is written – to the horror of the purists of the time – in rhymed medieval Latin, we find a poem in praise of music (In laudem musicae) couched in elegant distiches, revealing the poet to be a subtle connoisseur of art. What is most interesting in Krzycki’s extensive work is what we would recognize as a kind of demonstration, in a manifold sense. It is a demonstration of poetic skill, of freedom of movement within the medium of Latin and its literary tradition, considered to be the natural, not just learned language of poetry. It is a demonstration of an open attitude towards all that is human. And finally, it is a demonstration of the independence and individualism of a professional man of letters, conscious of the fact that he might be remembered by posterity not as a bishop, but rather as a poet. After perusing the poems of Krzycki, who modified themes with characteristic irreverence and felt at home gliding his way through literary tradition, the works of Janicius might seem monotonous, especially since they were essentially all composed in elegiac distich. Like —— 35 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI Ovid’s elegies written in exile in Tomi, Janicius’ verses most often take the form of letters to his friends or sponsor; the most frequent subject in both cases is the poet’s own condition: the former pining in exile, while the later is as if suspended between life and death. This pertains in particular to 10 elegies which Janicius himself collected into the cycle called Book of Laments. This selection did not include the elegies he wrote in Padua, registering his joyful sojourn in the land of the “great Maros,” where time passes “in the service of the sweet arts.” The world of Book of Laments is suspended between two imperatives: engrossing oneself in humanist culture, and facing inevitable, imminent death. Life in the cultural realm encompasses both the past – the distant antique past, as well as the proximate Padua past – and the creative present. Janicius maintains a sense of being constantly present within this realm, but at the same is aware of growing distant from it, in pace with the escalating attacks of his mortal disease. The background of Book of Laments is seemingly filled with a tumult of political events, but this world is in fact filled with the author’s autobiography. The topic of illness appears almost as a leitmotif, described with unprecedented realism in Elegy II. Of particular significance in the cycle is Elegy VII, called Elegy on Myself for Posterity (Elegia o sobie samym do potomności), where Janicius presents his curriculum vitae, without pathos or stylistic effects, seemingly confining himself to the artistic refinement of the elegiac distich itself. He maintains a distance to his own story; consciously and methodologically sharing his privacy with readers, those both close at hand and temporally distant. This is a manifestation of a mature poet aware of his own worth, who understands the role of poetry as a source of glory and immortality.

IV. Popular literature – The medieval tradition There is no question that all the important roles on the main Renaissance stage in Poland in the first half of the 16th century were occupied by devotees of the Latin muse – by intellectuals who felt at home within the diction imposed by Italian, and later North European humanism. But in this theater of verbal art we call the Renais—— 36 ——

Rennaissance sance, there was also a secondary stage, smaller and more modest from our perspective, yet enthusiastically frequented by the 16thcentury audience, especially by those for whom Latin was an inaccessible language. This native scene had to draw upon a repertoire that was familiar and dear to readers fond of tradition. The roots of this movement that developed alongside humanism – which was dominant as an intellectual movement, but remained consistently elitist – stretched back to the medieval literary tradition, from which genres were adopted and artistic substance were drawn. Even antiquity was referenced via the impressions of it that had been cultivated in medieval times. One relict of the Middle Ages present in the literary culture of the 16th century involved pseudo-historical “histories” or fictional tales that had arisen as far back as in the first millennium AD, had since been repeatedly transfigured, and were now being printed as popular stories intended for a wide audience. Such stories with traditions stretching back many centuries include tales about Alexander of Macedonia, which had already been known in Poland during the times of Vincent Kadłubek, and were now being printed as Story of the Life and Illustrious Deeds of Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia (Historyja o żywocie i znamienitych sprawach Aleksandra Wielkiego, króla Macedońskiego – 1550), or tales woven around the Trojan myth that had long been circulating Europe, the Polish compilation of which (1563) was given the title The Very Beautiful Story... of the Ruin and Destruction of the Famous and Illustrious City and State of Troy (Historyja barzo piękna... o zburzeniu a zniszczeniu onego sławnego a znamienitego miasta i państwa trojańskiego). Published even earlier, for example, were Various Stories Selected from Roman and Other Sources (Historyje rozmaite z rzymskich i z innych dziejów wybrane – we now know an edition from 1544, which is presumably not the first one), which was a translation of a collection called Gesta Romanorum of moralist stories, fables, and anecdotes that had been passed around Europe. The popularity of stories of medieval provenience swelled further in the second half of the 16th century. Also derived from the Gesta Romanorum was A True Story that Occurred in the German Town of —— 37 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI Land, With Separate Lessons, Rendered in the Polish Language (Historyja prawdziwa, która się stała w Landzie miejście niemieckim, z osobnymi naukami, polskim językiem wyprawiona – 1563), a story sometimes ascribed to Rej, that develops the old-man motif known from Shakespeare’s King Lear. The affinities to German literature are also worth stressing here in particular; a whole slew of French medieval stories were assimilated via this avenue. These include the 13thcentury Story of the Emperor Otto (Historyja o cesarzu Otonie – pub. 1569), the 14th-century tale of a man who married a water-sprite that was fashioned into Polish by Marcin Siennik as the Story of Melusine (Historyja o Meluzynie – pub. 1569), and the 15th-century Story of Magielona (Historyja o Magielonie – 1570), relating the adventure-filled tale of a love affair between the knight Piotr and the Neapolitan queen Magielona. A late-medieval German story from the early 16th century relating the adventures of a young Cypriot in possession of a magic purse and cap, was translated as the Story of Fortunatus (Historyja o Fortunacie – pub. ca. 1570). A separate category of medieval tales that enjoyed stunning success in Renaissance times consists of knavish tales, or perhaps more aptly the “life stories” of boorish jokesters. The first such scapegrace to appear seems to have been Marchołt, in a work translated from Latin by Jan of Koszyczki first published in 1521 (and subsequently in 1526 and 1536). Immediately thereafter followed Aesop; probably in 1522 Biernat of Lublin (ca.1465-ca.1529) translated his “life story”. The third such protagonist to appear, in 1540, was Dyl Sowizdrzał, assimilated into Polish literature by a unknown translator. Jan of Koszyczki’s work, the full title of which was Conversations Wise King Solomon Had With Marchołt, the Coarse and Vulgar, Yet, So They Say, Very Well-Spoken, With Very Amusing Figures and Riddles (Rozmowy, które miał król Salomon mądry z Marchołtem grubym a sprosnym, a wszakoż, jako o niem powiedają, barzo zwymownym, z figurami i zgadkami śmiesznymi), is a translation of one of the many versions of this story, whose roots stretch back to apocryphal Jewish literature, and which flowered in the 12th century as a humorous dialog between the biblical wise man and a simpleton. Jan of Koszyczki was one of few writers of his times able to differentiate the state—— 38 ——

Rennaissance ments of his protagonists stylistically, and he demonstrated exceptional lexical inventiveness in his description and portrayal of Marchołt’s physical ugliness. In this stressing of the ugly, we can perceive an undoubted aesthetical provocation. The figure of Aesop, whom Polish readers could encounter thanks to the versified translation by Biernat of Lublin, is constructed based on the same principle. The Life of Aesop the Phrygian, A Virtuous Sage, Together With His Fables, and Also With Certain Peculiar, Very Amusing, and Also Facetious Examples From Other Famous Wise Men, etc. (Żywot Ezopa Fryga, mędrca obyczajnego, i z przypowieściami jego, z niektórymi też inych sławnych mędrców przykłady osobliwymi a bardzo śmiesznymi i też krotochwilnymi, etc.), as Biernat’s work was titled, was probably first published in 1522, although the earliest surviving edition is from 1578. This work of impressive length (with 3,144 lines of The Life of Aesop plus 210 fables, encompassing a total of 5,678 lines) on the one hand holds a place among such popular jokester stories, yet on the other it marks the onset of the fable in Polish literature. Indeed, this is something more than just the tale of a knave. The essence of Aesop’s biography lies in debunking false appearances, stupidity concealed under the guise of authority, and the habit of judging people by their outward traits. There is an element of intellectual and aesthetic provocation in this, as well as a diagnosis of the world’s shallowness and cruelty. Unlike Marchołt and Aesop, who could boast ancient genealogies, Dyl Sowizdrzał was a child of the late Middle Ages, and his adventures were first described in the 15th century (originally as the German “Till Eulenspiegel,” eventually to become known as “Owl-Glass” in English). Although the Polish “Sowizdrzał” first appeared in print in Poland in the years 1530-1540, the oldest preserved printed copy, bearing the title Owl-Glass the Facetious and Amusing; His Birth, Life, Misdeeds, and Strange Feats (Sowiźrzał krotofilny i śmieszny, urodzenie, żywot, postępki i dokonanie jego dziwne) unfortunately only dates from the first half of the 17th century, as earlier editions had simply been wiped out by such frequent reading – a fact that attests to the popularity of this Polish version of Owl-Glass the dandy and scoundrel, wandering about German towns and playing pranks. —— 39 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI At the root of such “histories,” which became the prime Polishlanguage reading material in the 16th century, lay the traditional treatment of all stories as presenting morally useful examples. This was coupled with the characteristically late-medieval passion of collecting examples of this sort, as well as all other information about people, objects, events, a tendency that is sometimes referred to as medieval encyclopedism. One characteristic product of this fondness in Polish literature is to be found in the works of Marcin Bielski. In 1535, he published the impressively-sized Lives of the Philosophers (Żywoty filozofów), followed soon thereafter, in 1551, by an even more ambitious work: Chronicle of the Whole World (Kronika wszytkiego świata). His Lives of the Philosophers, based on a compendium from the beginning of the 14th century, is a kind of biographical dictionary, encompassing the “life stories” of ancient and medieval philosophers and writers, composed as examples of Christian ethical values. Such examples are also dominant in Chronicle of the Whole World, a work that is just as impressive in terms of its volume as it is surprising in its hybrid nature, comprising retellings of facts, legends, anecdotes about particular individuals and events – in short, everything that could be included within a depiction treated as a “history of the world,” from Creation until the year 1550. It makes no sense to underscore Bielski’s lack of any sort of criticism. A similar sort of pseudo-historic creativity in the Polish language is to be found in the later heraldic compendia of Bartłomiej Paprocki (ca.1543-1614): The Squire (Panosza – 1575), Nest of Virtue (Gniazdo cnoty – 1578) and Coats-of-Arms of Polish Knights (Herby rycerstwa polskiego – 1584). His melding of heraldic legends with common fictional motifs, the histories of noble families with anecdote and facetiae, was not far removed from Bielski’s writing methods, but it did portend new phenomena associated with the nascent Sarmatian mentality. The morality play, which was one of the chief genres of drama in northern Europe in the 15th century, and is indeed still being successfully developed, appeared in Polish literature only after a delay, in the 1540s. The vitality of the genre’s convention and its moral molding of the world portrayed are best evident in the first works of Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569), widely hailed as the father of Polish litera—— 40 ——

Rennaissance ture. The Life of Joseph of the Jewish Tribe, Son of Jacob, Composed in Dialogs, Expressing Many Virtues and Good Morals (Żywot Józefa z pokolenia żydowskiego, syna Jakubowego, rozdzielony w rozmowach person, który w sobie wiele cnót i dobrych obyczajów zamyka) appeared in 1545, followed in 1549 by The Merchant, or the Nature and Likeness of the Last Judgment (Kupiec, to jest Kstałt a podobieństwo Sądu Bożego ostatecznego). The former work is very difficult to pin down definitively in terms of its genre. The biblical story of Joseph is presented here in a dialogdrama, which makes use of the medieval simultaneous-scene technique characteristic of mystery plays and modern humanist pedagogical drama. The overarching compositional principles, for both plot and character portrayal, nevertheless derive from the morality play, and the story of Joseph is above all an example of how “virtue struggles against non-virtue.” The same combination of the antipodes of learned humanist literature is more clearly evident in the second work, which is undoubtedly a morality play, with the Everyman hero that typifies the genre. Rej adapted a Latin work Mercator seu iudicium by a German Lutheran, Thomas Naogeorg (Kirchmeyer), and adopted its antiCatholic, Reformational message. The drama is centered around Judgment Day, to which Christ summons a Priest, a Bishop, a Monk, and a typical sinner: Merkator the Merchant. Of course, the Merchant alone proves to be worthy of salvation, “expectorating” all the prayers, chaplets, and indulgences advised by the Catholic Priest. Under Rej’s pen, the individual episodes take on such a dose of genre and playfulness that it disrupts the rigors of the morality play, transforming the drama of moral arguments into sharp satire, into comic scenes immersed in actual 16th-century reality. Where Naogeorg produces moderation and reflection befitting the topic, Rej bursts out with his typical unrestrained element of blunt, frequently crude language. Due to its genre nature, due to scenes borrowed from the real customs and language familiar to both the author and the reader, the Latin tragoedia docta not only ceased to be a docta under Rej’s pen, it also bulged from 3,000 to 9,000 lines. Rej’s fondness for large compositions based on the structure of morality play and allegory manifested itself once again in A Faithful —— 41 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI Image of an Honest Man (Wizerunek własny żywota człowieka poczciwego), published in 1558. The concept for this work was drawn from Zodiacus vitae, whose author, Pietro Angelo Manzoli a.k.a. Palingenius, a prominent Italian humanist and an authority in the field of philosophy, expounded various ethical concepts in 12 chapters named after the signs of the zodiac. In Rej’s work, however, instead of an elegant treatise we find an allegorical poem of some 12,000 lines, the most voluminous in all of 16th-century Polish poetry. Rej chose as his hero a young man (the morality play’s Everyman) who wanders from philosopher to philosopher and comes to know the “traits of the mad world.” In each of the chapters, the protagonist experiences something, sees something, and in each such case someone appears (most often a philosopher) who instructs him as to the true significance of what he has encountered. And so, in the third chapter entitled “Epicurus,” the young man meets this philosopher (a negative character), and with him visits the Garden of Delight. Immediately thereafter, however, he encounters Minerva, the “goddess of reason,” who in a lengthy commentary “deduced harmful things into delight.” In the eleventh chapter, entitled Solon, the young protagonist wanders to Hell, where his guide is the condemned braggart Abioron, and he learns “about the nature and power of the devil’s God-granted power” from the “philosopher Solon.” In the final chapter, entitled “Aristotle,” the protagonist makes his way to Paradise, where his guide is the prophet Elijah, who “instructed him even more amply about the immortality of souls and how we should endeavor to ensure we can achieve such joys.” Composed in this way, a poem about the adventures of a young man, a “decent person,” becomes a multilevel construction. The places and images that form the allegorical plot are overlaid with moral commentary that constitutes allegoresis – a lesson in and explanation of allegory. We can recognize this as one of the key characteristics of the work, linking it with the magnificent tradition of medieval allegorical poems, from Roman de la Rose to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Rej’s work alludes to many of them (such as Jean de Hauteville’s well-known 12th-century poem Architrenius) and these allusions were indeed legible to his contemporaries – seeing as Andrzej Trzecieski, in a Latin verse attached to —— 42 ——

Rennaissance the Faithful Image and situated under a woodcut portrait of Rej, wrote: “Noster hic est Dantes” – this is our Dante.

V. Disputes: religion and state Mikołaj Rej made his appearance in 16th-century literature with A Short Conversation Between Three Persons, a Squire, a Bailiff and a Priest (Krótka rozprawa między trzema osobami, Panem, Wójtem i Plebanem), produced by the Szarfenberg printing house in 1543. It takes the form of a dialog, a genre frequently cultivated in politically and religiously oriented writings. Rej’s Short Conversation is a political dialog addressing the dominant topic of the day, the so-called “execution of rights.” This slogan served as the front for a movement initiated and pursued by the nobility in the years 1520-1578, initially aimed against Zygmunt I’s domestic policy and against the secular and clerical oligarchy represented by the Senate. Rej’s dialog voices the postulates of the nobility camp, and from this standpoint it attacks the clergy, state officials, the taxation and justice systems, as well as the way the military was organized and financed. This is complimented by Rej’s grumbling about the nobility’s depraved morals, which makes up the fourth part of the dialog. Rej inserts these topics into the mouths of the Squire, Bailiff, and Priest, members of three estates, who here serve more frequently as masks for the author himself than as representatives of the antagonized sides in the dispute. Only the initial passages of the dialog, devoted to criticism of the parochial clergy, can be considered a kind of polemic clash between the Priest and the other two figures. Aside from this, it is rare that concrete arguments are leveled against each other, instead leaving space for longer tirades of a patently satiric nature, evincing Rej’s way of viewing the affairs of the world and the state. What does this view involve? First and foremost, a method of portrayal that could be called the perspective of a noble landowner, who sketches genre scenes almost from first-hand experience, be it an image of a parish church fęte, or an episode depicting the “gamrat,” meaning freeloaders, poor noble youths living at others’ expense. The things that Rej – a landowner, but also a socially active nobleman, as well as —— 43 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI a delegate to the Sejm with great experience in public affairs – set forth with satirical panache were chiefly what he had personally had occasion to observe. We can at the same time assert with full conviction that as an observer he had an ingenious memory for detail and skill at reconstructing situations through language. The style of the Short Conversation, its linguistic fabric, nowadays presents the most difficult barrier to understanding the work and evaluating it artistically. In the rhythm of irregular octameter, Rej captured the vivid, colloquial language of the mid-16th century. The utterances of the three debaters consist in large part of colloquialisms, phraseological combinations, proverbial expressions, and proverbs then in use. A key feature is how they blur the borders – something characteristic of live speech – between narration and citation, between direct and reported speech. This is coupled with the brevity, bluntness, and vividness typical of colloquial language, through which the humor and irony inseparable from Rej’s style shine. Mikołaj Rej’s Short Conversation can be read as a statement in the disputes then underway over the political shape of the Republic. The greatest Polish publicist who championed a reform agenda in this regard was Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1505-1572). His chief work, entitled Meditations on Reform of the Republic in Five Volumes (Commentariorum de Republica emendanda libri quinque), appeared in print only after some difficulty. Due to preventative censorship, the title page of its first issue (produced in 1551 at the Kraków printing house of Łazarz Andrysowic) promises five volumes, but only contains three: “On Mores,” “On Laws,” and “On War.” The fourth and fifth volumes, “On the Church” and “On Schools”, were withheld by the censors, and the work would only appear in full in 1554 in Basel. It also gained considerable prominence in humanistic Europe, as is evidenced by the renewal of the Basel edition (1559) and its translation into several languages, including a Polish translation produced amongst the Arian movement (1577, without the “On the Church” volume). Frycz Modrzewski’s difficulty in publishing his Meditations on Reform might come as a surprise, given the authentic freedom to express one’s religious convictions under the latter Jagiellonian rulers. —— 44 ——

Rennaissance The problem was, however, that his work was written with a profound sense of belonging to the Catholic Church, and responsibility for this Church. And as such, it could not be approved by the Church. It was especially the author’s independence that could not be approved, as the earlier independence of Erasmus of Rotterdam could not. The volumes of the Meditations on Reform comprise a close-knit and coherent composition, in terms of both content and artistic form. The whole of the work is underlain by the first volume, “On Mores.” Here we encounter a moralist author who subjects the morality of specific social groups to harsh judgment, complains about the degradation of morals, and proposes oftentimes drastic punishment and scrupulous scrutiny of behavior. More important, however, are his views about the overall notion of morals, and their significance for society. It was in such ethical deliberations that Modrzewski couched a general outline of his concept of the state, the prosperity of which depends on the morality of its citizens. This morality stems not just from the observance of laws, but also from the kindness of human nature, which he perceives and emphasizes in opposition to the concepts professed by Martin Luther and by Machiavelli, who related human nature to a lust for possessions and power. Yet on the other hand, the state “is a human agglomeration and commonwealth bound by law..., established for a good life.” Such a republic, or res publica, “a thing common to all,” is what he set as the target of reform. “The good and dignity of the Republic,” he asserted, “seem to rest upon three things: honesty of morals, harshness of judgment, and military art.” The volumes “On Law” and “On War,” which expand upon this very notion, present a kind of continuation of the first volume’s deliberations. The law set forth in regulations is a necessary condition for preserving the morality and good of the Republic, as well as justice – as confirmed by the Divine Word, not as implemented in the laws of the Republic. Just as the law and the related constraints are the result of society’s ethical imperfection, wars are the result of imperfection in the relations between countries. Like Erasmus of Rotterdam, Modrzewski is an opponent of wars, but nonetheless draws a distinction between unjust warfare and just warfare in defense of one’s borders. He considers the latter to be the only permissible kind, —— 45 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI and devotes his detailed deliberations of the system of state defense to it. The volumes “On the Church” and “On Schools” constitute a supplement to the previously expounded theory of social life. Frycz Modrzewski’s deliberations about the Church stem from the role that he ascribed to religion: by propounding the principle of love for one’s neighbor, religion stands guard over morality and plays an important role in state life. And so, these are not deliberations of dogmatic issues. Frycz, declaring that he belonged to the Catholic Church, seeks ways of achieving accord for the sake of the unity of the Christian world. This irenic tone, appealing for compromise, is the keystone of Modrzewski’s project, but was nevertheless not adopted by the Ecumenical Council of Trent, then in session. Rather, it was treated as a statement against the institutions of the Church. His “conciliatrist” views, ascribing the paramount role within the organization of the Church to a general synod rather than to the Pope, were unacceptable. Also hard to accept was his proposal, maintained in this concilatrist spirit, of setting up a national Church to support the quest for religious concord within the state. Frycz portrays his proposed organizational structure of the Church in detail, as a republican and democratic arrangement, in today’s sense. Priests should be promoted in their clerical careers not by right of their bloodlines, but rather their virtue and knowledge. Bishops should be chosen by the community of the Church, including secular electors that would include representatives of all the “estates,” the upper and medium nobility, the burgers and peasants, on equal footing. Similarly, the pope should be selected by electors representing all of the faithful. This notion of the estates’ equality is also perceptible in the deliberations “On Schools”, calling for equal access to knowledge and effective organization of education, to be overseen by the state but financed with Church revenue (a notion that could not fail to spark protest from the Church). Modrzewski’s adversary and antithesis was Stanisław Orzechowski (1513-1566), initially a zealous opponent of the Roman Church who later came out even more zealously against the heretics. Orzechowski was a writer who did not eschew conflicts, who was gifted with an —— 46 ——

Rennaissance exceptional sense of readers’ needs and of the current political situation, and the author of dialogues that constitute, in their ideological layer, a kind of inverse of Frycz’s concepts. In 1563 he printed Conversation or Dialog on the Execution of the Law of the Polish Crown (Rozmowa albo Dyjalog około egzekucyjej Polskiej Korony), followed one year later by Quincunx, or a Design for the Polish Crown Arranged in a Pyramid (Quincunx, to jest wzór Korony Polskiej na cynku wystawiony). These two dialogs, plus an unfinished treatise meant to compliment them, The Polity of the Polish Kingdom Portrayed in the Image of Aristotelian Politics (Policyja Królestwa Polskiego na kształt Arystotelesowych Polityk wypisana), championed the arguments of the Catholic camp and of the author himself, who came out violently against the “executionist” program, while at the same time propounding Orzechowski’s own almost theocratic agenda for reforming the Republic. The “quinqunx” of his second work’s title is a geometric figure denoted by the five corner points of a pyramid, representing the ideal state. The four points of king, priest, altar, and faith form the foundation of the pyramid, while the fifth, the summit raised above them, is the Catholic Church. “The Kingdom of Poland is the sole state in Sarmatia; subject, at God’s grace via the priest, to its own king; vouchsafed by the altar of the Cross; enlightened by Christian faith from God; and contained and enclosed within the sole, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” In this Kingdom, there is a place for free Poles, among whom, thanks to their nobility, “the highest is equal to the lowest in Poland” and everyone enjoys “freedom equal to his king,” “without owing the king, his superior lord, anything more than this: ensured support for the succession, two pennies from the feud, and the en mass levy.” (“nie będąc nic królowi, panu swemu zwierzchniemu, innego winien, jedno to: tytuł na pozwie, dwa grosza z łanu a pospolitą wojnę”). By advocating a model of a religious state, a model upon which the myth of noble Poland as a nation chosen by God would later be built, Orzechowski at the same time drafted a plan for the noble liberties that would become the norm beginning in the 17th century. In so doing, he was not sparing in presenting catastrophic visions of the demise of the heresy-ridden Republic. His prophetic tone was coupled with his conviction of his own role as a writer and oracle. —— 47 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI The Sejms convened 1561-1562 and 1563-1564, and the disputes then unfolding over the shape of the Republic, provoked Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584), younger by an entire generation, to speak out. At the outset of his career Kochanowski came into contact with various circles, although he associated himself more strongly for a certain duration with the leaders of the Reformation in Poland and Lithuania, Jan Firlej and Mikołaj Czarny Radziwiłł. His penchant for religious novelties, most evident in his early works, nevertheless subsided after his decision to attach himself to high-ranking church and state dignitaries, deputy chancellor Filip Padniewski and his future successor Piotr Myszkowski. In his Latin elegy to Padniewski (“Elegy V” from volume III), Kochanowski included a sentence that excellently illustrates the poet’s stance in this time of political and religious ferment: “Because peace is the work of God, and all discord comes to man from hell.” The poet expressed these words via the personified Vistula River, and such poetics would become his favorite method of speaking about socially important issues. He applied a similar technique in Harmony (Zgoda – 1564), where the entity speaking is the prosopopeial Harmony, alluding to the quereles (after Latin querela – compliant) popular during the Renaissance, the most famous of which was probably Complaint of Peace (Querela Pacis) by Erasmus of Rotterdam. Analogously constructed was Kochanowski’s The Satyr or the Wild Man (Satyr albo Dziki mąż – 1564), a work in which the eponymous Satyr delivers a speech reminiscent of parliamentary address in the Sejm. Here it is noteworthy that The Satyr gave rise to genre that was extremely popular in Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries, useful in political discussions and disputes, called the “satyr poem.” Kochanowski was not original in the views he professed. He was neither a learned publicist like Frycz Modrzewski, nor even less so a very fervent combatant, of Orzechowski’s ilk. He was a poet that spoke in favor of accord within the state, on behalf of harmony, which should penetrate the “domestic quandaries,” following the design of universal harmony. He appealed in Harmony to all sides of the dispute, he rebuked both the Catholic clergy and the heretics, and the politically-minded nobility, who had forgotten the chivalrous tradi—— 48 ——

Rennaissance tions of their forebears. His Satyr addressed the nobility in a similar spirit, although it must be admitted that some of the Satyr’s statements, such as his negative view of foreign study or disdainful assessment of rafting grain down the Vistula, fly in the face of the views we know from other sources the poet himself actually held, and we can surmise that Kochanowski composed the figure of the Satyr – part Greek god, part figure from village folklore, but with ties to the tradition of Plato and Erasmus – slightly ironically, from a critical distance. Yet the Satyr does speak entirely seriously, and without Kochanowski’s characteristic irony, when he addresses bitter words to the political elite, whom he reminds – citing the authority of Chiron, Achilles’ teacher – of what virtue and wisdom entail for those who wield power. Such admonishments are also strongly involved in the ideological message of The Dismissal of the Grecian Envoys (Odprawa posłów greckich), a tragedy that was probably written soon after The Satyr, although it was performed on the stage and issued in print only in 1578. The Dismissal, the plot of which draws upon an episode in the Trojan War and abides by the formal characteristics of regular classical tragedy, is a wholly original drama. Within the rigorous framework imposed by tradition, Kochanowski created a specific type of tragedy, which might be termed a “tragedy of arguments,” of political arguments determining the destiny of the kingdom. This is a work about responsibility for the state, about the clash between private ambitions and wise concern for the common good. The chief notion is illustrated by a moving hymn sung by a chorus of Trojan maidens, who appeal to those who “govern the public thing,” i.e. the res publica, the Republic.

VI. Models – Parenetic literature Within the din of religious polemics and political disputes that fomented noble society under the reign of Zygmunt August (d. 1572), two works can stake a claim to being the greatest achievements of Polish prose during the Renaissance of the Jagiellonian era. The first of these is The Life of an Honest Man (1568) by Mikołaj Rej, while the second is The Polish Courtier (Dworzanin Polski – 1566) by Łukasz Górnicki (1527-1603). —— 49 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI The two appeared in print almost simultaneously, from the same printing house of Maciej Wirzbięta, but they occupied different slots within the biographies of their authors. The Life of an Honest Man, written by Mikołaj Rej towards the close of his life, was the culminating work of nearly 30 years of creativity, while The Polish Courtier represented a belated debut by Górnicki, a man a generation younger who had already successfully climbed the rungs of a courtly career, leading to his ennoblement (1561) and his installment in the post of trusted royal librarian. Zygmunt August’s library, gathered in Wilno (Vilnius) and later in Tykocin, was among the most eminent book collections in 16th-century Poland and formed an excellent intellectual resource base for Górnicki the educated humanist. The two books also differed in terms of their domain of inspiration. The Life of an Honest Man is an original work, which draws copiously on the writer’s life experiences and the reality of the Polish landowner lifestyle, and is deeply rooted in the traditional system of values in place within the society of the 16th-century Republic. The Polish Courtier, on the other hand, was an adaptation of an Italian original: the dialog Il Cortegiano written by the prominent writer and humanist Baldassare Castiglione and published in 1528. Rooted in the culture of the late Italian Renaissance, his Courtier portrayed, within the Polish reality, an image of the intellectual elite emerging in the middle of the century, and was intended for this very elite. But if these two different works share anything, it is the fact that they can be included into the voluminous chapter of European writing called parenetic literature (from Latin pareneo, I recommend), literature that recommends and propagates personal models. And in such a classification, these two works should also be accompanied by Wawrzyniec Goślicki’s treatise The Accomplished Senator (De optimo senatore, 1568). The Polish Renaissance mirrors of Rej and Górnicki appeal to different layers of the tradition of parenetic writings, and do so in distinct ways. The Life of an Honest Man, following the model of medieval “histories,” begins with the creation of the world and stories about Adam and Eve, and then incorporates the biography of an “honest man,” a virtuous and simple nobleman, into this universal and —— 50 ——

Rennaissance holy order. The story’s structure is designed with pedantic scrupulousness, spread across three volumes that relate the three stages of a man’s life: youth, maturity, and advanced age. Each volume consists of chapters dubbed capitula, after the Latin, within which the story’s substance has been broken down into points and particularly highlighted in notes in the margins. The reader was also aided in navigating the extensive material by a detailed table of contents. Such concern for order is coupled with Rej’s truly encyclopedic endeavor, characteristic of his works, to encompass all of human experience. The first volume is dominated by the topic this “young man’s” education, at every moment embellished with various remarks: now about Biblical history, now astrology combined with the science of temperaments, now theological deliberations associated with religious education. Rej strives not to leave anything out. And so, in the first volume of The Life of an Honest Man we find guidelines for the hygiene and nutrition of children, as well as a capitulum devoted to the nature of military service – although the author does not praise “soldiering,” he does consider it worth portraying at the point the young man faces his choice of path in life. A similar encyclopedic digressiveness characterizes the remaining volumes. The main topics of the second volume are marriage and founding a family, and enjoying a “moderate and devout household” in the countryside. Aside from this, we find extensive remarks on the issue of political life and civil duties, especially those for members of the Sejm and Senate, plus moral and ethical deliberations drawing upon the Bible, ancient history, and current philosophical views. Relatively speaking, the greatest uniformity is displayed by the three volumes that concentrate on the topic of old age and death. Into this parenetic image of the “honest man” bearing old age with dignity and calmly awaiting his own end, the author incorporated capitula containing moral teachings aiming to stave off fear and aid the reader to comprehend the eschatological dimension and the “duty of death.” The best fragments of The Life of an Honest Man, and the ones most frequently cited today, are those where the image of human life portrayed by the moralist evolves into an image of a Małopolska nobleman from the second half of the 16th century, rich in close-ups de—— 51 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI picted not so much by a realist painter, as by verbal artist able to name and portray concrete experiences, generously spreading details encountered firsthand throughout the entire work. The description of manor-house chores and pleasures during the four seasons of the year contained in capitulum XVI of the second volume are a true display of artistry. This natural view of the landowner’s world from the perspective of nature’s cyclical changes makes enables Rej to seek a natural explanation for why human life must expire. There is a kind of harmony in seeing nature subordinate to man, but yet man surrendering to nature, whereby Rej’s work maintains the same distance to the fragility and fleetingness of worldly life, as to placing man at the center of the universe. The world as seen through the eyes of Rej, who does not probe the subtleties of philosophical discourses, never becomes a stage of dramatic destinies and difficult choices. It is like a book that delights with rich detail, that provides examples and models useful for the honest man. The author’s greatest merit, perhaps, is that when reading this book to us, he from time to time “forgot” about his calling as a moralist, as if enchanted and astounded at the diversity and copiousness of the world. The reality of 16th-century Poland manifested itself entirely differently in Łukasz Górnicki’s Polish Courtier, a paraphrase of one of the most important literary works of the late Italian Renaissance. The original was a treatise in the form of a dialog, consisting of four volumes successively devoted to: the physical and moral virtues of an ideal courtier, his behavior at court, women and their role in the life of the court, and the issue of the ruler’s behavior, combined with a lecture on the Platonic theory of love. All of these topics were discussed in the original by prominent personages gathered together at the court of Prince Guidobaldo in Urbino – a gem of Renaissance architecture. Górnicki’s Polish Courtier is not a translation, but rather an extensive paraphrase. The author explained his reasons for rendering it in Polish and the manner in which he did so in his introduction to the first volume, which acts as a foreword to the reader and represents one of the most important statements about old-Polish translation —— 52 ——

Rennaissance practice and theory. In it, Górnicki speaks of the need to transplant the action of the dialog to Polish reality, to choose Polish protagonists to take part in the discussion, and also to exclude women: “As it was not fitting for me to include them into the Polish dialog, since neither are our Polish women as learned as the Italian ones, nor could their ears bear other things that are included.” Górnicki also explains why he omitted many topics. Among other themes, he left out the deliberations on imitation, “as this wise discourse will do service but to the educated Pole,” as well as ponderings over which art is “finer”: painting or sculpture. He justifies the need for such changes by citing cultural difference: “In our land, people do not woo at the window. In our land, neither comedies nor tragedies are to be had, of the sort for Poles to be able to know... what histrio [actor] denotes. In our land, the custom of masquerade processions is not practiced. In our land, the nobility do not play the violin or reed-pipes, or if someone does, it is very rarely.” The translator frequently emphasizes his compliance with morals, using this to justify his prudish attitude as a censor: “Let quite everyone know that I, writing for Poles, wanted to indulge Poles; for this reason I left out many a thing which either did not suit Poland, or might have complicated matters and offended decent ears. Especially in the third volume, where he mentions the problem of why the ladies are commonly gracious to those who deprive them of their florem virginitatis [flower of virginity]...” Górnicki offers similar justification for his restrictions and omissions where the substance of the debate, such as in the fourth volume, entered more subtle avenues of philosophy and aesthetics, where the Polish language, still poor in its conceptual apparatus, proved to be an insurmountable barrier. This limitation of the issues under discussion becomes more understandable once we notice the extent to which Górnicki did introduce Polish reality into the work. As the location for the conversational game, Górnicki chose the Renaissance villa of Bishop Bernard Maciejowski in Prądnik, in the vicinity of Kraków. Like Castiglione, he set the action at an earlier time, at the very outset of Zygmunt August’s reign. He reduced the number of participants to nine, and selected them carefully, noting that such a group could —— 53 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI never really have convened at such a place and time. The leader of this distinguished gathering is the bishop’s brother, Lublin castellan Stanisław Maciejowski, accompanied by Stanisław Wapowski and Wojciech Kryski, who performs the chief function in the conversational game, and as the most educated individual plays inter alia the role assigned in the original to the scholar Bembo. Aleksander Myszkowski and Andrzej Kostka, cast as a particular authority as regards the fair sex, are also men of the world. Górnicki assigned the role of humorists and jokers to the gentlemen Derśniak and Bojanowski, while the last of those present, the majordomo Lupa Podlodowski – who, incidentally, was Jan Kochanowski’s father-inlaw – was portrayed as a representative of the “domestic” nobility, opposed to Italian novelties. These diverse and quite expressive portrayals of the individuals involved in the conversation are set against a backdrop of Polish reality, especially in terms of the anecdotal material, which was in large part changed from the original, as a result of which The Polish Courtier is an exceptionally rich source of old Polish facetiae. However, the “Polishness” of Górnicki’s work is not just limited to this at any rate outward tableau. The rationale behind his transplantation of Il Cortegiano becomes most readily apparent where the Polish humanist has his interlocutors deliberate matters of Polish substance. The best example of this is provided by the first volume, by its discourse about language – a defense of the Polish tongue and its purity, the first of its kind in Polish literature, essentially almost a tractate on the origin, nature, and enrichment of language, about the oral style that befits a courtier and will protect him from excessive affectation (rendered in Polish as “wydwarzanie”). The remarks about the Polish language voiced by the gentleman Kryski in The Polish Courtier stemmed from a wider, foregrounded problem of humanist aesthetics: the notion of grace (the Italian grazia) promoted by Castiglione, which should be accompanied by an outward nonchalance (Italian sprezzatura) concealing any effort. Górnicki renders such grace in Polish with the term “przystałość,” and quite deftly coins the word “nizaczmienie” to cope with the Italian sprezzatura. And so, this parenetic work intended as “just” a portrayal of the courtier be—— 54 ——

Rennaissance came one of the most important texts that led our literature to the doctrine of Renaissance Classicism.

VII. Renaissance Classicism Beginning in the 1560s, at the appearance of works by Jan Kochanowski, which were received as a kind of common national heritage from the outset, the formerly sharp contrast between highbrow literature written in Latin and vernacular literature intended for the so-called general reader began to vanish. One of the most difficult tasks faced by today’s literary historian is to explain the phenomenon and universality of Kochanowski’s poetry, which soared to artistic heights pioneered by the ancient tradition and Renaissance poetics, yet was at the same time received by readers-at-large as “their own.” There is no question that upon his appearance Kochanowski was a poet shaped by the ideas of Renaissance humanism, with its philological and inquiring attitude towards the ancient tradition. Neither is there any question that his philological studies, the works he read, and his initial poetic attempts pointed him in the direction of models and aesthetic choices encompassed within the scope of Classicist doctrine – a natural consequence of Italian humanism, a doctrine that had many fathers, such as Alberti, Bembo, and Castiglione, where the notion of harmony (concinnitas) was key. One undoubted manifestation of Kochanowski’s Renaissance Classicism is the hymn What Wilt Thou, O Lord, in Return for Your Bounteous Gifts (Czego chcesz od nas, Panie, za Twe hojne dary) written in 1560, a laudation of God the creator and artist, the maker of allpervasive harmony. The prayer’s image of God, the world, and man cultivated in this spirit and its religious optimism were expressed through the stylistics of moderation and regularity, which offered no room for anything that might disrupt the clarity of the message. The elegance of the tropes and the refined simplicity of the work superbly manifested the “nizaczmienie” (nonchalance or sprezzatura) so desired by the Classicists. Both the poet’s early Latin works, collected in Elegiarum libri duo, and his philological research into classical tragedy that gave rise in —— 55 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI the 1560s to The Dismissal of the Grecian Envoys should likewise be read from the standpoint of Classicist aesthetics. Kochanowski’s choice of the Horatian model for the characteristic meter of lyric poetry written in the vernacular language was an aesthetic decision of fundamental significance for all of Renaissance and later Polish poetry. The adoption of this model entailed not just the form and stylistics of Horatian hymns, but also the philosophy of life propounded by the Roman poet. One consequence the adatation of this philosophy was the decision the poet made about 1570 to retreat to the “calm village” of Czarnolas, a decision that symbolized the ideas of Cicero’s Tusculum or Horace’s Sabinum transferred to Małopolska. Worthy of attention is the rich poetic “documentation” of this decision, recorded in the verse Marshal (Marszałek), in Trifles (Fraszki), such as in “On My House of Czarnolas” (“Na dom w Czarnolesie”), in the Latin elegies of Elegiarum libri IV (elegies III,2; III,14; and III,15), and in hymns, especially the Horatian “Song of Maiden XII” in Song of St John’s Eve About Sobótka (Pieśnia świętojańska o Sobótce). The latter, like the above-cited hymn What Wilt Thou, O Lord..., can be considered a manifesto of a philosophy of life and an esthetic attitude. Kochanowski’s Classicism gave Polish poetry two great works that had an impact on its history: Songs (Pieśni) and David’s Psalter (Psałterz Dawidów). Both collections were written over the course of many years, and were composed in parallel, although they were published at different times. The first in print was the Psalter (1579), while the editing of Songs was interrupted by the poet’s death, and they only appeared in print in 1586. The two collections’ distinct natures stem from certain differences: Songs was composed under the patronage of Horace, although it was not to the slightest degree a translation of Horace’s collection, but rather an emulative imitation of it. Work on the Psalter, on the other hand, required the skill of a translator, who had to navigate the tradeoffs between the necessity of remaining faithful to holy writ and the creative act of the poet-creator. Kochanowski described this dilemma in a letter to Fogelweder as a struggle between two goddesses: Necessitas and Poetica. To live up to both David and Horace – such an agenda could only have been conceived by a writer conscious of his own greatness and the value of his skill. —— 56 ——

Rennaissance The task of today’s historian of literature must above all be to portray the Psalter as a work of huge significance for Polish Renaissance poetry, a pioneering work for the development of Polish lyrical language, a model that shaped Renaissance Classicism. We should accept without question the view that the Psalter is the most outstanding work of Renaissance lyric poetry in the Polish language. No other work can compare with it in terms of its multiplicity of poetic personae, the scale of the emotions and emotional tonalities it expresses. We should also precisely scrutinize the scope of the “Czarnolas poet’s” innovations with regards to the Biblical original and its Renaissance paraphrases (chiefly its reworking by the Scottish humanist George Buchanan): the persona of God and the persona of David the poet, the supra-denominational ideological nature of the psalms, Kochanowski’s artistic invention that enabled the harmonious coexistence of both richness and simplicity of artistic means, in keeping with the spirit of Classicism. Another task of equal importance involves identifying the crucial characteristics of Kochanowski’s Horatianism. The author of Songs managed to draw upon the very principles whereby Carmina were composed. Armed with this knowledge, the Renaissance poet was able to imitate the topical diversity (varietas), and above all to rework and generalize the individual experiences; he was able to build a collection with an analogous level of relations between what is individual and what is general, within an absolute harmony of topic and style. Nowadays it is impossible to sort the songs into chronological order of composition date. It is likewise not easy to divide them up topically, although certain groups of works can be distinguished, ones we might classify as civil-patriotic, love, or philosophical-reflective songs, as well as those that address the topic of poetry and the poet. Among the latter group there of course appeared the Horatian motif of the permanence and immortality of poetry; another manifestation of the poet’s creative self-awareness can be found in the last song in the collection, “Endowed with a pinion that is mighty and rave...” (“Niezwykłym i nie leda piórem opatrzony...”), which reiterates the motif of poetic flight, the dual nature of the artist that enables him to rise above what is corporal and worldly. The —— 57 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI Songs also portray an image of a poet striving to gain his bearings in a world governed by capacious Fortune, strenuously seeking a way whereby man might retain his independence, dignity, and happiness. Like Horace, Kochanowski finds a moral support in the principle of moderation (mediocritas) and the ability to be satisfied with little. He included a manifesto of such a lifestyle, among other works, in the cycle The Song of St John’s Eve. Printed together with Songs, it consists of songs sung by 12 maidens. The song of Maiden XII (“Beatus ille qui procul negotiis”), imitating Horace’s Epode II, is sung in praise of life in the countryside, in full harmony with the surrounding world. In juxtaposition to David’s Psalter and the two volumes of the Songs are Kochanowski’s collections of Latin Foricoenia and Polish Trifles, written without the adhesive agent of a single model. Their ostentatious stylistic plurality and topical diversity, harking back to the classical epigram and the Greek Anthology, plus the author’s simultaneous willingness to register biographical and social events, cause historians of literature considerable difficulties in identifying a single formula, a single heading, under which the trifles could be classified. At the same time, everyone concurs on the issue of not relegating these works to the fringes of the poet’s oeuvre, something he seems to encourage by employing the term “trifles” (Polish “fraszki,” after the Italian frasca), signifying something of little worth. It can be easily noted, after all, that amongst these trifles, amongst these casual rhymes, there are indeed verses of exceptional weighty genre, setting forth the poet’s stance towards God, the world, man, and finally towards himself. Upon closer reading, the trifles prove to be a kind of camouflage concealing the Proteus-poet and the Chiron-poet, another persona, like in the Psalter and the Songs, but this time one that does not lend itself easily to description. The only acceptable generalization here seems to be a poetics of keeping one’s distance towards the world in each instance, a distance that is already evident in the very word “trifle,” because “trifles are everything we do.” When twice writing a trifle-poem about man, “God’s plaything,” and portraying an image of a laughing God, Kochanowski must have noticed the analogy that suggests itself here, an analogy between God and a poet who is toying with what he himself has wrought. —— 58 ——

Rennaissance

VIII. Threnodies – the breakdown of Renaissance Classicism The last chord of Renaissance Classicism was struck by the editions of the three main Polish collections of Kochanowski’s work: David’s Psalter, Trifles, and Songs, plus his Latin Foricoenia, elegies and lyrics. This poetic “harvest,” partially completed after the poet’s death in 1884, was preceded by his publication of Threnodies (1580) – a work that cannot fit within an optimistic, harmonious vision of the world. While the poet dedicated this cycle of 19 threnodies to his deceased daughter Urszula, in essence it constitutes a philosophical poem that calls into doubt the system of values professed by Kochanowski the Renaissance humanist. The Threnodies have no equivalent in European literature. Compared to Petrarch’s Sonnets and Ronsard’s cycle Sur la mort de Marie, they are outstanding in terms of the content of the compositional arrangement, reminiscent of the classical and Renaissance epicedium. Yet they are only reminiscent, because in essence they constitute a single great philosophical monologue in parts, written against, or perhaps above the rules of poetics. The threnodies address the topic of the death of a child, but their hero is the poet himself, who as a result of this death loses his faith in the purposefulness and order of the world. The harmonious beauty of the world we encounter in the hymn What Wilt Thou, O Lord... is juxtaposed against the image of an olive sapling cut down by the “zealous gardener.” Death that runs counter to the laws of nature transforms harmony into chaos and disorder. Nonetheless, this crisis chiefly affects the poet’s faith in the power of man himself, in his ability to resist suffering. The stoic ethic’s credibility is undermined; stoic virtue loses its power when smitten with suffering, faith in wisdom turns out to be vainglorious. Can a defense be put up against such chaos; is it possible to revive one’s lost faith in the harmony of the world? This is the fundamental question the Threnodies pose. An answer lies in the final, conciliatory threnody, when Kochanowski’s deceased mother appears to him bearing Urszula in her arms, an Urszula happy in heaven, which offers eternal peace. The mother shores up his lost faith, reminds him of man’s eternal fate, which is subject to “many sorts of lots.” In her —— 59 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI admonishment: “Bear the fate of man like a man! Just one Lord is the source of grief and joy,” contains a formula and signpost, meant to renew the lost order. But is this really a conclusive answer that draws the problem to a close? Kochanowski’s last works are perhaps the epitaphs published in the posthumous Fragments (Fragmenty), the so-called “Radziwiłł Fragments.” This is evidenced by their kinship to Threnodies, especially to the conciliatory Threnody XIX. However, these poems do not contain an iota of optimism; the fate of man is determined by divine verdict, while man himself ceases to be an active entity with regards to the “eternal divine word.” Perhaps these epitaphs demonstrate that the response to the existential crisis, the response contained in the consolation of the Threnodies, does not signify that it is overcome. The world of Renaissance harmony is now but a recollection, and the poet remains alone with the most difficult questions.

IX. Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński When Jan Kochanowski, a known and recognized poet, was ostentatiously settling down in the village of Czarnolas in the late 1560s or early 1570s, the unusual talent of Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński was just flowering outside of Lwów. Sęp-Szarzyński’s biography, like his work, is full of puzzles. He was born sometime between 1545 and 1550. While he did study at Wittenburg, there is nothing else to indicate he was of the Protestant confession, although the hypothesis that he converted to Catholicism does have many advocates. He died in 1581, and the world would probably have forgotten him if it were not for a little tome entitled Rhythms (Rytmy), published 20 years after his death through his brother’s efforts, a book that has indeed only been preserved in a single copy. In addition to this, there are also manuscripts bearing a collection of love poems, which we are now inclined to ascribe to the same poet. They constitute an exceptional phenomenon in Polish Renaissance poetry, which the wave of Petrarchism, together with its penchant for poetical analysis of the internal experience of love, had passed by. Sęp-Szarzyński’s guide is the Roman po—— 60 ——

Rennaissance etry of Catullus and Ovid, love for him is an affliction, torment, an overwhelming awareness of dangers lurking on all sides. Love poems addressed to Kasia, Zosia, and Anusia represent a kind of record of “difficult love” such as we cannot find in the poetry of the Polish Renaissance, a record that is more legible against the backdrop of European love poetry. In terms of their subtlety of analysis and above all their anxiety in the stylistic layer, these poems exceed the bounds of shallow convention, as is evidenced by the superb verse “To Kasia” (“Do Kasie”), which draws upon the tragic story of Narcissus and the nymph Echo. But it is hard to believe that these love poems were composed at the same time as the lyrics of Czarnolas, from which they differ fundamentally. Even more different from Kochanowski are Sęp-Szarzyński’s known verses from Rhythms. The anxiety of the love poems was only a signal of the dramatic existentialist discourse recorded in his psalm paraphrases, songs and sonnets. It might seem that Sęp-Szarzyński, choosing George Buchanan as the patron of his psalms, or drawing upon Horace, traveled paths similar to Kochanowski’s. But this is only on the surface. Cited phrases, well-known topoi, and ostensibly evident references to tradition merely constitute Sęp-Szarzyński’s raw materials for building a completely new text, enmeshing the reader in a kind of game, in which he is constantly surprised at the multiplicity of meanings, forced to be intellectually active and to react to the complicated structure of the verse, which is full of apparent meanings and conceals sense in inversions, enjambments, and homonyms. Concealed behind this poetic skill, refined and virtuosic, is the drama of a man attempting in this world full of illusory values to find a direction towards the true values: God and salvation. The religious verses that set the tone of Rhymes pose the most important questions: about man’s relationship to God, and subsequently about the nature of man, the boundaries of human freedom, and the capabilities of cognition. There is a fundamental contradiction between the stylistically composed discourse, and the simplicity of the truth this discourse unveils. Truth lies in God and love; God is “true happiness,” while love is the “true course of our existence.” Truth emerges from the stylistic chaos in almost the same way as it emerges from the complex tangle —— 61 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI of life’s paths and the chaos of the world, where “the turning spheres and swift Titan rush the fleeting seasons.” For years there has been dispute over whether Mikołaj SępSzarzyński should be interpreted in the context of the Renaissance or Baroque epoch, or whether the esthetics of literary mannerism can be discerned in his poetry. While the verses of Rhymes are undoubtedly precursors to the esthetics and anthropology of the 17th century, they were engendered by the ferment of Renaissance times, the crisis of values man faced in this epoch, the need for absolute norms and values fundamentally different from the voluntarism of humanist religiosity, the same need that caused people to follow Louis of Granada or Ignatius of Loyola.

X. The Jesuits The closing stage of the epoch belonged to the Jesuits. Brought to Poland by Cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz (Hosius), they took their battle for people’s souls to the field of literature as well. Among the first generation of Polish Jesuits, there was no lack of illustrious individuals who left a lasting mark on the culture of the late Renaissance. These undoubtedly included Jakub Wujek (1541-1597). As a religious polemicist, he published collections of sermons in 1573-1580 (Postilla cathholica), intended to knock heretical books out of readers’ hands. At the request of the order’s superiors, he undertook a translation of the whole of the Scriptures. His New Testament appeared in 1593, followed by David’s Psalter in 1594, while the whole of his Bible was printed in 1599, after his death and after modifications were made by a monastic commission appointed for this purpose. Wujek’s translation displaced the earlier Catholic translation into Polish called the Leopolita Bible (Biblia Leopolity) in 1561, and could firmly compete with the Protestant translations: the Calvinist Brest Bible (Biblia brzeska), Lutheran Gdańsk Bible (Biblia gdańska) and the Arian movement’s Nieśwież Bible (Biblia nieświeska). The text produced by Wujek remained in constant use until the appearance of the 20thcentury Millennium Bible (Biblia tysiąclecia), and its impact on Polish language and literature cannot be overestimated. —— 62 ——

Rennaissance The second great Jesuit of those times, Piotr Skarga (1536-1612), also made a permanent place for himself in culture. He participated in public and religious life to a much greater degree than Wujek, supporting the activities of the Catholic Church with his pen, and probably considered his greatest success to have been the establishment of the Greek Catholic Church, otherwise known as the Uniate Church, confirmed at the synod of Ruthenian bishops in Brześć (Brest) in 1596 (the Union of Brest). In the history of literature, he is known for two works. The first of these is Lives of the Saints (Żywoty świętych), first published in Wilno (Vilnius) in 1579, and further supplemented in subsequent traditions, of which there were at least 7 during the author’s lifetime. This monumental work, the first Polish hagiographic collection of its size, became for a long time the most well-read book in Polish, remaining obligatory reading in Catholic homes until the end of the 19th century. In the time of Romanticism, no less fame was gained by Skarga’s collection of eight sermons entitled Sermons to the Diet (Kazania sejmowe), which appeared in print for the first time in 1597 as a supplement to Sermons for Sunday and Feast-Days (Kazania na niedziele i święta). In it, Skarga presented a political and social agenda that appealed to the earlier writings of Stanisław Orzechowski. The author’s ideal is a strong state under a Catholic monarch. Not far away from professing absolutist concepts, Skarga argues against the recent achievements of the “executionist movement,” routs the noble estate as being responsible for anarchy, and in a lofty tone adopted from the prophetic books of the Old Testament he augurs the downfall of the Republic as a consequence of leniency toward heretics and deviations from the true faith. The stylistics of these sermons, their prophetic tone that fits in well with the convention already known from Orzechowski but here implemented in a masterful way, would later, during the age of lost independence, contribute to the legend of Skargathe-prophet, as preserved in a 19th-century painting by Jan Matejko.

XI. Towards the Baroque The Renaissance epoch in Polish literature did not draw to a close at death of Kochanowski in 1584; the final years of the 16th century and —— 63 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI the first years of the next century did manifest a continuity with the artistic culture and worldview that developed during the times of the Renaissance flowering of literature. Among the generation of writers born after 1540, i.e. the contemporaries of Jakub Wujek and Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński, we find some such as Sebastian Grabowiecki (15401607), Stanisław Grochowski (1542-1612), and Kasper Miaskowski (ca.1550-1622), whose works fit within the oncoming Baroque epoch, as well as some such as Sebastian Fabian Klonowic (1542-1602), or the significantly younger Jan Rybiński (ca.1560-after 1608) and Andrzej Zbylitowski (ca.1665-ca.1608), who remain within the realm of Renaissance tradition. One can assemble an entire procession of writers from the end of the 16th century who treat their own, native Renaissance literature on equal terms with classical literature; the former becomes a common heritage that could be drawn upon liberally. The aforementioned Klonowic was a Lublin burgher, and among his works, which are highly varied and frequently continue Rej’s type of moralizing, we should mention his descriptive poems: The Raftsman (Flis), whose Sapphic stanzas in Polish portray the rafting of grain down the Vistula river, and his Latin poem Roxolania about the lands of Ruthenia. A different sort of literature was practiced by Rybiński, a poet who worked in the bourgeois environment of Gdańsk and Toruń, and who, in his lyric collection entitled Rhyming Zither (Gęśle różnorymne) felt himself to be heir to Jan Kochanowski’s Horatian muse. Zbylitowski, in turn, was above all a nobleman, the author of verses extolling the ideals of burgher life. Among the writers of the transitional period, one worthy of distinction was Szymon Szymonowic (1558-1629), a Lwów-born poet associated with the chancellor Jan Zamoyski, who eagerly acted as a patron of the humanists. For his contemporaries, Szymonowic was chiefly a Latin poet. Most highly valued were two of his poems: the first being a cycle of 19 odes published in 1588 as Flagellum Livoris, devoted to Zamoyski’s victories over the Austrian Prince Maximilian, a claimant to the Polish crown, while the second is Aelinopean, written a year later and appealing in terms of style to the Greek poet Pindar, portraying Zamoyski defending the Republic under threat from the Turks. If we mention these two works here, it is not by right —— 64 ——

Rennaissance of their panegyric tone, nor out of regard for their addressee, but rather in order to identify Szymonowic as the last outstanding Latin poet in the Polish Renaissance – as well as an exceptional poet in every regard, one who understood poetry in large part as the consequence of philological searching, who surpassed his contemporaries in philological erudition, and in his work tried to complement Kochanowski’s achievements. Such a high appraisal of Szymonowic’s Latin works is confirmed by the dramas he wrote, today almost forgotten: Castus Ioseph (1587), based on the Biblical story of Joseph, and Penthesilea (1618), a tragedy about the queen of the Amazonians fighting at Troy. For the history of literature, however, it was not Szymonowic’s Latin muse that made him the greatest poet of Renaissance humanism after Kochanowski. His chief work is Idylls (Sielanki), written in Polish, was published only in 1614. It was this work that disseminated the word “sielanka” (derived from “village girl”) as the term for this genre in the Polish language, replacing earlier words derived from the classical terms “eclogue,” “bucolic,” and “idyll.” In his dedication to this collection of 20 poems, Szymonowic declared himself to be an imitator of Theocritus, but in actuality, with the finesse of an erudite humanist, he drew upon the entire tradition of pastoral poetry: from antiquity, through Sannazaro, all the way to Kochanowski. The Polish poet also skillfully managed to combine various conventions, availing himself of both classical accessories and the reality of the noble world and peasant culture – an example of which can be found in the idyll “The Harvesters” (“Żeńcy”), which composes a genre scene of harvesters in the field. This idyll, without question the best work in the entire collection, can be interpreted as a reversal and repudiation of the optimism expressed by Maiden XII in The Song of St John’s Eve, and it also differs from the Czarnolas poetry in the vision it manifests of the world, a world in which harmony is now but a recollection. By introducing the genre of the idyll into the repertoire of Polish poetry, Szymonowic brought to completion the plan initiated by Kochanowski, of generating models and conventions of poetic expression that would be employed by successive generations of poets. And indeed, Idylls ushered in the history of a genre that would flower —— 65 ——

ADAM KARPIŃSKI exceptionally lushly in the 17th century. Still, this does not mean that the ambitions of the Polish humanist poets were fully satisfied. They were not successful, despite attempts made by Kochanowski and others, at establishing a model of the épopée in the Polish language. This task would be left to the writers of the Baroque age. Four years after Szymonowic’s Idylls were published, an already fully Baroque Polish version of Torquato Tasso’s chivalrous epic would appear in print, translated by Piotr Kochanowski (1566-1620), the nephew of Jan, as Godfrej or Jerusalem Delivered (Gofred abo Jeruzalem wyzwolona).

Bibliographical Notes Fiszman S. (ed.), The Polish Renaissance in Its European Context, Bloomington 1988. Krzyżanowski J., A History of Polish Literature, Warszawa 1978. Mikoś M.J., Polish Renaissance an Antology, Columbus, Ohio 1995. Miłosz Cz., The History of Polish Literature, London, 1969. Pelc J., Europejskość i polskość literatury naszego renesansu, Warszawa 1984. Pelc J., Kochanowski. Szczyt renesansu w literaturze polskiej, Warszawa 2001. Słownik literatury staropolskiej, red. T. Michałowska, Wrocław 1998. Sokołowska J., Patrząc na rozmaite świata tego sprawy. Antologia polskiej poezji renesansowej, Warszawa 1984. Storia della letteratura polacca, a cura di L. Marinelli, Torino 2004. Ziomek J., Literatura Odrodzenia, Warszawa 1989. Ziomek J., Renesans, Warszawa 1995.

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KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque

After the last representative of the Jagiellonian dynasty, Zygmunt August (Sigismund Augustus), died without an heir, subsequent rulers would be successively appointed to the throne by the nobility. One of the first kings to be elected though such “free elections” was Zygmunt III Waza (Sigismund III Vasa), son of the king of Sweden and Catharine of the Jagiellonian line. Because of Zygmunt III’s claim to the Swedish throne, he engendered a long-term conflict between Poland and its Baltic Sea neighbor to the north. Marked by many wars, this dispute reached its apogee with the so-called “Swedish deluge,” a term used to refer to the invasion of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by the forces of King Karol Gustav, followed by a nationwide rebellion launched against the Swedes. The most famous episode of this period was the siege of the fortified monastery at Częstochowa, the religious site of the revered Black Madonna (a celebrated victory that would take on proverbial significance for Poles, universally viewed as a miraculous turn in this otherwise badly lost war). Expansive Polish policy in the eastern borderlands led to draining clashes with Moscow. During the first stage of these wars, Polish regiments occupied the Kremlin, and the Commonwealth was close to taking over the Russian throne. Later, Polish policy was limited more to defensive action in the east, as a result of the Commonwealth’s ceaseless clashes with powerful Turkey, then posing a real threat to Chris-

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ tian Europe (at the battles of Cecora and Chocim – 1620 and 1621), due to the spread of political anarchy (the so-called «rokosz» revolts staged by certain nobles against the ruling authorities, i.e. the so-called Zebrzydowski Rebellion and Lubomirski Rebellion – 1608 and 1621), and because of domestic strife (a Cossack uprising in Ukraine led by Bohdan Chmielnicki – 1648/1654). The gradual breakdown of the extant state system (so-called “noble democracy”), which was manifest in constant legislative deadlock at the Sejm (the old right of liberum veto, which made it possible for a single nobleman to block the passage of any resolution, was exercised to abort a session of the Sejm, for the first of many times, during the reign of Jan Kazimierz Waza in 1652), and subsequently in absolutely lawless behavior on the part of the gentry, caused the Commonwealth’s stature in the international arena to wane. This political crisis coincided with the collapse of the religious tolerance that had been a Polish tradition (representatives of the most radical group of the European reformation, the Polish Bretheren, also called “Arians,” were driven out of the country in 1658). The situation was improved for a short time by one of the most outstanding strategists and commanders of the 17th century, King Jan III Sobieski, who switched the orientation of the Commonwealth’s European policy from pro-French to pro-Habsburg. This ruler scored his greatest successes with spectacular victories over the Turkish power at Chocim (1673) and at the great European battle of Vienna (1683). After Sobieski’s death, the Commonwealth gradually became a weakwilled object of the policy pursued by the surrounding countries. These were the times of the Saxon dynasty (August II the Strong, and August III), which embroiled the Commonwealth in a catastrophic northern war (1700-1721) and exacerbated the political anarchy within the noble state (as a proverbial turn of phrase then held: “Under the Saxon king, eat, drink, and loosen your belt!”). Overall, the final historical outcome of the Baroque age was tragic for Poland: the country lost one-quarter of its territory, and its population shrank by close to 40%. What was once a European power had become God’s playground.

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Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque

I. Europeans 1. Poles in Europe, Europeans in Poland The early appearance of Baroque trends in Polish literature (in the 1570s) stemmed chiefly from renewed cultural ties between the Polish-Lithuanian Republic and Europe. “Since Poles began to voyage to Italy, our Republic has taken on a different mold,” noted Łukasz Górnicki, a writer of the mature Renaissance. Indeed, from the second half of the 16th century onwards, those who had the means to do so began to seek knowledge and refinement abroad. Voyages southwards and westwards were taken both by wealthy magnates (such as the Radziwiłł, Lubomirski and Leszczyński families) and by members of the poor nobility (such as Daniel Naborowski). The most favored destination for such trips was Italy, although Poles were also present in Leipzig, Wittenberg, Strasbourg, Basel, and Leide. During this period, a special role was played by Padua University, which educated thousands of young Poles over the years 1592-1745. Upon returning to the country, these travelers brought back a passion for Italian culture and for various artistic and literary novelties (there was no dearth of Italophiles in Poland, such as Grand Marshal of the Crown Zygmunt Myszkowski, one of the last in a famous lordly line, who was adopted by the Italian Duke Gonzaga). Numerous Italian artists, such as the painters Tommaso Dalabella and Michelangelo Palloni, the sculptors Sebastian Sala, Francesco Rossi, and Baltazar Fontana, and the architects Giovanni Battista Gisleni, Andrea dell’Aqua, and Lorenzo Muretto de Sant (known in Polish as Wawrzyniec Senes) found employment in Poland. King Władysław IV (Ladislaus IV), an impassioned opera aficionado, attracted Italian musicians (such as Marco Scacchi), authors (Virgilio Puccitelli), interior designers and performers to Poland. He even engaged in correspondence with Claudio Monteverdi, urging him to come work at the Polish royal court. Warsaw boasted the first continuously operational opera stage in Europe (1635-1648). Extravagantly staged performances, couched in Baroque poetics, influenced domestic literature and inspired local artists (such as Samuel Twardowski). —— 69 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ Dutch cultural influence was also evident in the north (Gdańsk) and east (Lwów), becoming increasingly more visible throughout the Republic during the second half of the 17th century. An important role in promoting the new art was played by the Jesuit order. The first Jesuit college was founded in Poland in 1594. This came soon after the end of the Ecumenical Council of Trent, where no small role had been played by the Polish Church (Stanisław Hosius). In the 17th century, schools run by friars of the Societatis Jesu dominated the education of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic.

2. Europeans: metaphysical poetry It is probably to the Jesuits that we owe the appearance of metaphysical poetry in Poland. It was based on the Jesuit art of meditation, a concentration of all the human capacities onto a kind of pious pondering. Metaphysical poetry addressed difficult philosophical problems, expressing them in a learned fashion that abounded in numerous conceits. Just like the art of meditation recognized no nonmeditative subjects (for Jesuit teachers, every object could be related to events from Christ’s life), metaphysical poetry recognized no nonpoetic topics. Verses began to address complex philosophical, theological, and scientific issues, and poets boldly drew upon new idioms (such as the language of science, philosophy, theology). The sacred intermingled with the profane, the lofty with the laughable. a. Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński (ca. 1550-1581)

This provincial writer who worked in the southeastern borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic was among the European avant-garde of the Baroque epoch. A Protestant in his youth, he studied at Wittenberg and Leipzig. He knew Italian and presumably traveled to Italy. After converting to Catholicism (probably in the late 1560s) he came under the influence of Jesuits, who probably guided his work. Sęp-Szarzyński is a poet of paroxysmal faith. His single poetic volume, the posthumous Rhymes, or Polish Verses (Rytmy abo wiersze polskie —— 70 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque – 1601), is filled almost entirely with religious poetry. Set in a cosmic landscape (some inconceivable, madly-spinning heavenly expanses), a dramatic race between man and implacable death plays out. The knight of Christ (the poet employs Jesuit symbolism) is doomed to lose the race unless he receives God’s grace. Sęp-Szarzyński’s God is strange, implacable and terrible. He demands praise and love from man, gifts that only he himself can endow. In a ceaseless struggle against Satan, the world, and his own body, the hero of Sęp-Szarzyński’s verses begins to long for death, appeals for it, like the brave knights Fridrusz and Struś, to whom the author dedicated heroic songs. Both Jesuit heroism and a Protestant disbelief in man can be discerned in Sęp-Szarzyński verses. His Rhymes anticipate the most important topics of Polish Baroque poetry. This is above all a conflict between sensuality and spirituality, expressed in a convention of two sorts of love: a good love (for God) and a bad one (for material things). An elaboration of this opposition can also be found in a set of Petrarchan erotic poems preserved in the “Zamoyski Manuscript,” whose authorship has also been ascribed to Sęp-Szarzyński. The author’s poetry bears distinctive testimony to his search for a new model of creativity and a new aesthetics (perhaps under the influence of the Italian Cinquecento). He prefers difficult forms, and is a master of the meditative sonnet with an unparalleled logical structure (his verses are reminiscent of syllogisms). Sęp-Szarzyński’s language – abstract, complicated, and bestrewn with philosophical and theological phrases (St. Tomas, Boethius, Louis of Grenada, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) – poses a true challenge to the reader. The poet’s style is sententious, uneasy, elliptical; it is highly saturated with rhetorical figures. Sęp-Szarzyński seems to be pursing, in model fashion, the principles of Jesuit poetry, according to which “the more difficult the truth, the more beautiful it is” (Baltasar Gracián). b. Sebastian Grabowiecki (1543-1607)

Sebastian Grabowiecki, a royal secretary, politician, and later a clergyman, a Catholic polemicist and religious poet, was also under the influence of Italian culture. His Spiritual Rhymes (Rymy —— 71 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ duchowne), published in 1590, were composed within the inspirational domain of religious Petrarchism. The title of the work itself was borrowed from Gabriel Fiamma’s Rime spirituali, and among the recognizable models we also find Bernardo Tasso. These Rhymes, consisting of two segments of 100 verses each, are Petrarchizing religious lyrics, distinguished by their meditative inquisitiveness, logical construction, and virtuosic form. Grabowiecki divulges the paradoxes of human existence (yearning for God yet fearing him, loving God yet loving the world), seeking comfort in divine mercy. Particularly noteworthy are the sonnets in this collection, based chiefly upon the works of Gabriel Fiamma.

3. Europeans: Marinists The fame of Giovan Battista Marino reached Poland quite rapidly, and prevailed without interruption throughout the entire 17th century. In the 1680s, Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski gave Marinus pride of place amongst those who wrote in vulgari. The first Polish attempts at adapting the Neapolitan master’s works date to the 1620s and 1630s, and were penned by amateurs (Piotr Kostka, 1622; Mikołaj Grodziński, 1630). An exceptionally important moment in the development of Polish Marinism came with an anonymous attempt at translating the whole of Marino’s masterpiece, L’Adone. This was its first translation in Europe, and the only one of such length (16,000 lines of the original’s 41,000). It was probably composed in the years 16251647. The Polish Adona is distinguished by incredibly faithful translation, on both the level of meanings and that of style. The anonymous translator is wonderfully able to carry across the most refined fragments of the original poem, although shortcomings in his poetic craft do prevent him from reproducing Marino’s refined octave. a. Daniel Naborowski (1573-1640)

Naborowski did not translate Marino, but certain phenomena analogous to Marinism can indeed be perceived in his poetry. The poet spent most of his life traveling throughout Europe. A physician —— 72 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque by education (in Basel), he also studied in Wittenberg, Orleans, and Strasbourg. In Padua he took private lessons from Galileo. He was a diplomatic agent for the Radziwiłł princes for almost 30 years. Naborowski’s extensive correspondence gives us a sense of what the atmosphere in Europe was like during the Thirty Years’ War. His letters also address cultural issues (such as the first evidence in Polish literature of the reception of François Rabelais). Naborowski translated from French (Laugier de Porchères, Du Bartas), Italian (Petrarch), German (Lobwasser), and Latin (Sarbiewski). He did not publish his poems, partially as a result of Catholic censorship (he was a Calvinist), partially as a result of his lack of a sponsor (the Radiwiłłs viewed him as more of a courtly official than a poet). Naborowski is a poet of refinement. His verses (panegyrics are predominant) are impressive in their refined concettism and perfection of form. Naborowski’s subject of interest is language. He studies the anatomy of the word, traces the richness and fleetingness of its meanings. The poet writes pervasive, ambiguous monographs on words. He is not interested in the world, in material reality. Naborowski, like Marino, is a fisherman plying the sea of literature and culture. His profoundly allusive verses, rich in recherché erudition, capriciously combine politics, science, mythology, and poetry with commonplace jokes. At times the poet is close to authors of the metaphysical current, but he is chiefly distinguished by his formal virtuosity. Like the Marinists, Naborowski is able to play with language and composes complicated poetic figures. He is a master of acoustic instrumentation, which frequently takes on an almost geometric form in his verses (with the same order of sounds appearing before and after the caesura). Certain of his verses appear to be Marinist paraphrases – for example, Naborowski’s The Rose (Róża) vs. Marino’s famous laudation of the rose from the third song in L’Adone. b. Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1621-1693)

The most outstanding Polish Marinist, Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, also enjoyed a courtly career. A favorite courtier of Marie-Louise Gon—— 73 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ zaga, the wife of two Polish kings (Władysław IV and Jan Kazimierz), he rose to the highest state positions, becoming grand under-treasurer of the crown, i.e. the treasury minister of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic. Morsztyn was politically tied to France. When King Jan III Sobieski changed orientation and joined the Hapsburg camp, the poet ended up in opposition. He spent his latter years in France. Morsztyn can be called Poland’s very own Marino. In an early collection of verses, entitled Dog-Days (Kanikuła – 1647), he clearly showed a fascination with the Neapolitan master’s work. However, Morsztyn did not translate Marino. Rather, the Polish poet simply emulated the unattainable model set by the European man of letters, thereby demonstrating that the stylistic miracles Marino was famed for were also possible in the Polish language. Morsztyn’s poetic program calls to mind the Marianist strategy of literary plunder. He composes his poems by drawing upon texts by various authors (chiefly Marino). Such a composition is evident, for example, in his reworking of the song IV of L’Adone, entitled Psyche, reminiscent of a complicated literary palimpsest (with references to Apuleius, Marino, and Ercole Udine). Morsztyn’s works, always masterful in terms of form, attempt at the same time to adapt the Marinist poetics of fabulousness to the literary tastes of the Polish audience. They are more literal and coarse, less artistic and adroit than their prototypes. Both Dog-Days and the later Lute (Lutnia – 1661) are monothematic collections. Morsztyn, like his literary master, is a poet of sensual love. In his verses one can observe the crisis of values that had seized the intellectual elite of Europe in the 17th century. Nothing is certain in Morsztyn’s world; moral categories like good and evil do not exist. Ethics are supplanted by aesthetics. Beauty is worthy of desire, ugliness is deserving only of revulsion and disdain. The protagonist of Morsztyn’s verses knows, however, that man’s senses deceive him, and that beauty may be but a mask for monstrosity. Love, therefore, becomes an escape from the problems of reality, a realm of absolute human freedom. ”Nature engenders none but a single rule: / whatev’r thou desirest, that shall rightly do” (Jedno natura prawo w sobie rodzi:/ czegoć —— 74 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque pragniesz, toć się godzi), Morsztyn repeats after Tasso in his reworking of the famous idyll Amintas. But for Morsztyn, like for Marino, love is linked to an obsessive thought of death – a fear of passing on, always present for this freethinking poet. Morsztyn’s libertine leanings are demonstrated by his attitude towards religion, evident both in his life (in pursuit of his career, the poet converted his faith twice) and in his works (Morsztyn’s pseudoreligious verses are no more than a Marinist game of conceits, or a mercantile bargaining with God, whereby sin is the greatest commodity). Aside from numerous verses preserved chiefly in manuscript, Jan Andrzej Morsztyn is also the author of a superb translation of Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid (see also the heading “Classicism” below).

3. Europeans: Arians The term “Arians” was used scornfully to refer to a radical faction of the Polish Reformation that derived from Calvinism under the influence of Italian theologians (Blandrata, Ochino, Sozzini). They adopted the name “Polish Brethren.” Their doctrine was characterized by great rationalism; the Polish Brethren rejected anything that could not be reconciled with reason. They criticized in particular the dogma of the Holy Trinity (hence their superficial tie to the adherents of the ancient heresy of Arius). In Arian schools, the most famous of which was located in Pińczów, the natural sciences were prominently highlighted. The Polish Brethren also imported philosophical novelties to Poland (for example, the Austrian Johann Ludwig Wolzogen, an Arian teacher, polemicized with Descartes in 1656). Rejected by all other denominations due to their doctrinal and social radicalism, the Arians nevertheless enjoyed the freedom to profess their faith in Poland for close to 100 years. In the wake of the Swedish invasion (1655), they were accused of treason and subsequently banished from the country. The works of the Polish Brethren began to appear in emigration in the Netherlands (as Bibliotheca fratrum polonorum), and in the view of some researchers they had an impact upon the early stage of European Enlightenment. —— 75 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ a. Samuel Przypkowski (ca.1592-1670)

Called by 17th-century writers “the beacon of Poland and the world,” Przypkowski was impressive in terms of both his education (in Altdorf, Leide, London, and Paris) and his literary refinement. He gained prominence with his treatise De pace et concordia Ecclesiae, which championed the idea of religious tolerance at a time when Europe was in the throes of religious wars. This work came out in several editions (Amsterdam 1628 and 1630, London 1653 and 1708), and may perhaps have been read by John Locke, the author of the famous letter about tolerance. Przypkowski was also a poet, writing in Polish and Latin. His verses are characterized by intellectual reserve and abstract language. The Arian writer also knew how to compose startling concetto comparisons, which are astonishing in terms of the Baroque boldness of their associations and their almost scientific precision. b. Zbigniew Morsztyn (ca.1627/9-1689)

The poet Zbigniew Morsztyn, a relative of the aforementioned Jan Andrzej Morsztyn and a soldier who had taken part in many wars that played out in the arena of 17th-century Poland, is remarkable on the one hand for his intellectual precision (which at times brings him closer to the metaphysical poets), and on the other for a kind of sensual sensitivity typical of the Baroque. Like no other Polish writer, Zbigniew Morsztyn was able to capture the experiences of the “fire and sword” era in his verses – chiefly collected in the manuscript volume Domestic Muse (Muza domowa). His soldierly poetry strikingly evinces the coolness of a reporter, and a complete absence of heroic motifs (such as the poem Camp Cozeners – Kostyrowie obozowi). In view of his faith (certain radical Polish Brethren, renouncing violence, carried wooden swords), war represented a source of great moral anxiety for him. The issue of whether killing others could be justified appears, for example, in his wellknown work entitled Votum (the term for a programmatic address delivered in the Sejm). Here Morsztyn presents a gloomy vision of —— 76 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque war, which for him represents a return to primordial chaos, a negation of all human values. ’Tis a certainty, no matter what they say, He who knoweth, let him yield to reason’s sway And confess: has any soldier among us indeed been righteous? Bo to rzecz pewna, niech kto, co chce, mówi, Kto wiadom, niech da miejsce rozumowi i przyzna, jeśli który żołnierz żywy był sprawiedliwy?

These words sound particularly bitter coming from an experienced warrior who had spent almost 10 years in the saddle, and was very familiar with the turmoil and mayhem of battle. At the same time, Zbigniew Morsztyn was a surprisingly modern poet, sensitive to ideas coming in from various quarters. Reality as presented in his poetry is a world in transformation, a cosmos in which everything is moving, shifting, changing, the Baroque “natura naturans.” This can be seen, for example, in the superb work Emblemata, in which the poet described the soul’s longing for God, based on the prints from the collection by the Capuchin monk, then well-known in Europe. A very important role in the mystical experiences that comprise this collection (of 113 poems) is played by the language of the elements (water, fire, earth, and air), which — set into motion by divine will — change into one another, in a ceaseless chain of frantic metamorphoses.

II. Sarmatians a. The Phenomenon of Sarmatism

Myth. The term “Sarmatism” refers to the ideology and culture of the Polish nobility from the end of the 16th century until the twilight of the 18th century. The starting point for Sarmatism came from a legend about the origins of the Slavs written by Renaissance historians (Marcin Bielski, Marcin Kromer), based on ancient and medieval sources. According to Pliny, early Central and Eastern Europe had been inhabited by a hardened people called the Sarmatians. In the —— 77 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ 16th century they came to be identified with the ancestors of the Poles. Poland was therefore “Sarmatia,” and its inhabitants were held to be “Sarmatians.” Ideology. Around this legend of ethnogenesis, an ideology gradually began to form, underscoring the special traits of the Polish nobility and their exceptional mission in the history of Europe. A Sarmatian was above all a warrior, who “inherits first the saber, before the land” (“wprzód w szabli niźli w zagonach dziedziczy” – Potocki). In popular 16th- and 17th-century works such as Descriptio gentium, the Pole is chiefly presented as a knight (while the German is a merchant, the Frenchman a lover). Freedom is the highest value he recognizes; he is even prepared to sacrifice his life for it. In the 17th century, Sarmatian ideology underwent considerable change. In the epoch of wars and unrest, the Sarmatians increasingly stressed the value of the landowning life, only taking upon themselves the role of Cincinnatus as a last resort. The defense of freedom turned into the defense of noble privileges (Poland was then a country in which the nobility enjoyed the greatest political liberties), which subsequently engendered the abuse of rights (the first Sejm based on the famous liberum veto law was convened in 1651) and aversion to any state reforms. Since the noble democracy had, in the opinion of most citizens, achieved a state of perfection, why should any changes be made? In the latter half of the 17th century, Sarmatism began to be characterized by national pride (at times approaching megalomania), which showed up as a belief in the superiority of the Polish polity and Polish law, Polish customs and language, and Polish culture on the whole. The priest Wojciech Dębołecki maintained that Adam and Eve spoke to God in Polish. This was but one step away from xenophobia, which rapidly supplanted the tolerance and openness to the world that had typified Polish culture. Faith in the value of one’s own nation took on a religious dimension. Poles were supposed to be a new God-chosen nation, whose historical mission was to defend the European cross from the Asian crescent. This peculiar Sarmatian messianism was summed up in the catchphrase antemurale christianitatis, or the “bulwark of Christianity.” —— 78 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque Customs. Sarmatian culture developed during the age when the Baroque was triumphing in Poland. Certain historians (such as Janusz Tazbir) even see Sarmatism as being a specific Polish variety of this style. This is particularly evident in the field of customs. All of the foreign travelers who then visited Poland were astonished by the Sarmatian tendency for exaggerated gestures, behaviors, attire and rituals. We can even speak of a grand theatricalization of daily life. Polish clothing (including many eastern elements) was reminiscent of theatrical costumes: fabulously colorful (dominated by bright hues – red, amaranth, azure, and yellows), adorned with gold-woven belts, numerous jewels, gem-encrusted buttons, and furs, such attire caused a sensation in Europe (historians noted that at the masquerades then popular in the West, someone usually turned up in Sarmatian attire). Weapons were also richly decorated, and were not suitable for battle (a ceremoniously dressed nobleman was usually followed by a servant carrying his ordinary saber). Emotions were expressed in almost hysterical fashion (in church, for example, nobles might bang their heads off pews or draw their sabers). Bombastic ceremonies were relished. When Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński arrived in Rome in 1633, the event went down in the immortal city’s history: he rode in with a hundred horses and camels decked in fabulously rich harnesses, the nobles sitting atop them in their national attire, escorted by exotic prisoners-of-war from the Polish-Lithuanian Republic’s eastern wars. The horses had been shod with golden horseshoes before entering the city, purposefully affixed so that they should fall off, much to the glee of onlookers on the Roman streets. The noble Polish youths tossed gold coins into the crowed, the wings of the Hussars ruffled, and peacock feathers waved… Not even the royalty who visited the Papal capital in those times made such an grand entry. The Sarmatian funerary rite, also called pompa funebris, was also of exceptional form. Such ceremonies sometimes required long months of preparation. Special scaffolding was built in churches (concealing the altar); the coffin was displayed upon it, along with a portrait of the deceased at its foot. The religious rites were frequently preceded by a procession, led by a rider wearing the deceased person’s armor: —— 79 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ the so-called archimimus, who, like in ancient Rome, acted in the role of the deceased. The procession ended in church; the actor rode in on horseback, only to collapse in a deafening crash and clatter on the floor, thus portraying the symbolic triumph of death over earthly strength and prowess. Such burial ceremonies lasted up to four days, and ended with a wake that hardly reflected the gravity of the occasion, easily reverting into a drinking binge and revelry. Sometimes an entire army of clergy participated in a burial (a certain magnate in the 18th century, for example, was laid to rest by 10 bishops, 60 canons, and 1705 priests!) Art. The Sarmatians usually took a very utilitarian stance toward art. It served as the backdrop to their rich rituals, the frame for bombastic ceremonies. It was also intended to preserve the fame of a noble line, to sing forebears’ praises and to record great events. For this reason, portraits were most highly prized: they portrayed the entire figure in ceremonious garb, against a background of fragmentary architecture (such as a column, symbolizing stability and strength). Of a prominently utilitarian nature was the so-called “coffin portrait,” closely linked to the funeral ceremony. Its shape was adapted to the contours of the coffin, and was affixed at its foot during the church rites. Coffin portraiture was characterized above all by a ghostly realism. The painter’s task was to depict the departed individual in such a way that he looked “almost alive,” and gave the impression that he was watching his mourners. Such painters, generally anonymous, sometimes achieved great formal mastery, employing some very modern means of expression (a bold, almost cubist toying with threedimensional space, with for example a face depicted from the front, but the nose and ear in profile). b. Sarmatism in literature Sarmatians: the art of life, love, and death

Hieronim Morsztyn (ca.1581-ca.1623?) The Sarmatian type of sensibility manifested itself in the poetry of Hieronim Morsztyn, the first in a literary family renowned in the Republic. Enamored of —— 80 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque theatrical effects, the poet did not share the intellectual curiosity of the metaphysical poets, although he frequently addressed the same topics. Morsztyn was not interested by the riddles of the world, but was fascinated by its sensual and impermanent beauty. In the poem Worldly Delight (Światowa rozkosz – 1606), published in several editions in the 17th century, the poet poses the fundamental conflict of the epoch: how should one reconcile the pleasures of the “glorious” world with the destitution of the “unglorious world”? How should one avoid the trap of sensual love for things, and strive to know God? But it is no use looking for any sort of answers to these questions. The poet stops on the level of an allegorical parade of worldly delights (with tiresome lists of dishes, beverages, games, dances, etc.), and then a macabre vision of death and decay. In death, things reveal their true form, but this only adds relish to the momentary pleasure of life: “Who, but for the blind, hasn’t eyed the lovely sights of this world?” (Któż oprócz ślepego nie widał ślicznych świata tego pozornosci?) Such lengthy lists of the boundless riches of sensual reality also form the basis for Hieronim Morsztyn’s fairytale-imbued story in verse, A Diverting Story about the Virtuous Princess Banialuka (Historyja ucieszna o zacnej królewnie Banialuce). Samuel Twardowski (ca.1600-1661). The problem of the clash between love for the sensual world and a yearning for spiritual values was also addressed by Samuel Twardowski, one of the most outstanding epic poets of the 17th century. Twardowski, however, gained his permanent place in the history of Polish literature not by right of his voluminous heroic poems – Ladislaus IV (Władysław IV) and Civil War (Wojna domowa) – but rather through his idylls and stories in verse. Twardowski was a master of sensual description, exceptionally sensitive to colors, shapes, and sounds. In both his dramatized idyll based on the then-popular metamorphosis motif, Daphne Turned Into a Laurel Tree (Dafnis w drzewo bobkowe przemieniła się – 1638), and his romance Fair Pasqualina (Nadobna Paskwalina – 1655) the poet grapples with worldly love. Apollo in love (whom we can perceive as an allegory of reason), crazed with passion, pursues the nymph Daphne in scenes that seem to be lifted wholesale from Baroque opera (per—— 81 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ haps the poet’s inspiration was indeed the musical spectacle that he may have attended in Warsaw in 1635). Twardowski’s subtle octaves (based on the model of Tasso, adapted into Polish by Piotr Kochanowski, the felicitous translator of Jerusalem Delivered) superbly trace the progressive stages of ruinous infatuation. In Fair Pasqualina, Twardowski’s weave of historical, mythological, folklore, and Christian threads, the resourceful and beautiful heroine, after many adventures, destroys the weapon of the god of love and then joins a cloister. Downcast Cupid, deprived of his “cannon,” takes his own life, and the whole world breathes a sigh of relief once sinful, sensual love is no more. Twardowski’s mastery is chiefly evident in the romance’s descriptive passages. The poet finds the beauty of the sensual world in ceaseless changes of hue and shape, in impermanent illusions, in revelations that last but a moment. Reality is for him a tempting illusion, which man should reject. The reader clearly senses, however, a contradiction between the moralistic message of the romance (promoting strict self-restraint), and the great zeal with which the author paints images of the sensual pleasures. Perhaps the quintessence of the conflicts present in the work can be found in the famous scene where the just-a-moment-before lustful satyr (who has been converted, of course, to Christianity), decides to release the naked Pasqualina, who had been tied up, or rather ingeniously outstretched between two young trees. Józef Baka (1707-1780). The Polish Baroque lasted for a long duration, all the way until the latter half of the 18th century. Of course, the motifs and forms of Baroque literature were then already very much worn out. It took great invention, therefore, too breathe just a bit more life back into them. The provincial Jesuit Priest Józef Baka (active in the northeastern frontier lands of the Republic) was a bold experimenter. His means of escaping from the boredom of late Baroque verse was to draw upon popular songs and folk poetry, even children’s chants. Using such a specific, superficially infantile, or even vulgar style, Baka described a grotesque danse macabre in the poem Remarks on Ineluc—— 82 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque table Death (Uwagi o śmierci niechybnej – 1766). The poet lets the reigns of his imagination go, and is startling in his linguistic invention and boldness of associations. The short, tetrasyllabic (or even trisyllabic) verse contrasts with the gloomy theme of the work. The Jesuit poet invites the reader into a mad dance, speaks tenderly on behalf of death, whose language, full of diminutives, regionalisms, and neologisms, is a curious example of the Sarmatian interpretation of mortality. Death, laughing at people, is itself laughable, close, and familiar. In Baka’s work, the great topics of metaphysical poetry are trivialized, simplified, rendered in a sometimes caricaturized form. The poet writes easily (one might say: too easily), allows himself to be carried away by obvious rhymes and the charm of words. His Remarks are not a stern meditation, but rather a ghastly game, a crazy whirling, in which not only the pleasures of the world, but also the fear of inevitably leaving this world are forgotten. Sarmatians: Romans and orators

Krzysztof (1609-1655) and Łukasz Opaliński (1612-1662). References to Roman republicanism are frequently encountered in Sarmatian culture. Poles envisaged “Sarmatia” to be a new Rome, in which the ancient state traditions and legal institutions were being revived. This donning of ancient costumes can be perceived, for example, in the classicizing works of the Opaliński brothers. They came from a well-known magnate family and received extensive education in Western Europe. The elder of the two, Krzysztof, quickly grew averse to politics and in his blank-verse Satires (Satyry – 1650), based on the models of Juvenal and Persius, he expounded an extraordinarily critical vision of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic. The elder brother, a sponsor of the arts and sciences (he supported and protected Jan Ámos Komenský, among other figures) and a guardian and patron of the modern school in little Sieraków, in his courtly retreat devised visions of the demise of morals and the collapse of the Sarmatian republic. At the moment of truth, during the Swedish invasion of Poland (1655), remaining faithful to his own bitter and cynical diag—— 83 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ noses, he surrendered the army he commanded to Karl Gustav (thus Krzysztof Opaliński’s name is synonymous with “traitor” in Polish culture). The younger brother, Łukasz, well-versed in classical languages (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew), devoted almost his entire adult life to politics. He was a true Baroque erudite, and deliberated problems of a systemic, political, philosophical, or artistic nature with equal ease. Opaliński wrote in both Polish and Latin. In his Latin texts, he defended Sarmatia’s good reputation in Europe (Polonia defensa – 1648), while in Polish he experimented with the form of Menippean satire in Something New (Coś nowego – 1651), and devised his own poetical agenda based on classical Roman poetics, in opposition to the Baroque (a versified poetics alluding to Horace’s Epistle to the Pisos, paradoxically termed “the new poet”). Jerzy Ossoliński (1595-1650) The Polish parliamentary chamber, the Sejm (Diet), lay at the heart of Sarmatian culture, and oratory skill was thus highly prized. Speeches delivered at the Sejm and at lower-level “dietines,” and orations presented in celebration of weddings, name days, and funerals were assiduously copied into noble household journals, called silvae rerum (literally “forests of things”) in view of their rich and multifarious content (these ledgers frequently supplanted printed literature; they provided a record of everyday life, faithfully reflecting not just the needs, longings, and problems, but also entertainments of contemporary Poles). Jerzy Ossoliński, a prominent politician, was at the same time among the most superb Polish public speakers of the 17th century. Remarkably educated (chiefly in France and in Italy), he dazzled Rome not just with his ceremonious arrival to the city, but also with his classical Ciceronian Latin, in which he delivered speeches that enchanted the hard-toplease Roman populace. Sarmatians: politicians and philosophers

Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro (ca.1620-1679) Representatives of the magnate families, such as the Opaliński or Ossoliński lines, were —— 84 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque destined for politics. Usually, however, their reflections about the problems of the Polish state system did not exceed beyond popular maxims about the art of governance. One of the exceptions was to be found in Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro, the author of a Latin work entitled Monita politico-moralia (1664) that was widely read in Europe (20 editions within a century, and translations into French, German, and Russian), constituting a collection of guidelines for how to govern in order to earn the respect of those governed. Written in a dense, sententious style, this work stems from the tradition of noble democracy in which the opinions of citizens had to be reckoned with. Fredro’s inclination for aphorisms and maxims, as well as a noble conservatism, can also be discerned in the Polish Proverbs of Common Speech (Przysłowia mów potocznych – 1664), which are at times, it seems with great exaggeration, compared to La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims. Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski (1642-1702). The vast oeuvre of Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski defies clear-cut description. It encompasses Marinist idylls, philosophical Latin emblemata, religious verses and poems, frivolous comedies (based on themes drawn from the Decameron), works in the fields of philosophy and aesthetics. Above all, however, Lubomirski was a politician who achieved the highest dignities in the Republic (he even pursued the crown). These experiences are expressed in his famous Latin dialog, De vanitate consiliorum (1699?), repeatedly printed in the 18th century. This is an extraordinarily pessimistic vision of noble parliamentarism, marked by the bitter reflections of an experienced “statist,” who in vain tried to promote his political plans. The volume Conversations of Artaxes and Evander (Rozmowy Artaksesa i Ewandra), containing essays couched in the form of a dialog, is also not devoid of bitterness and skepticism. Of all the diverse themes taken up in the work (ethics, writing style, religion), political deliberations come to the foreground. Lubomirski shows off the erudition typical of the 17th century (chiefly neo-stoic philosophy), but nothing can conceal the fact that the literary magnate does not believe in people, that he views their obsequious behavior with suspi—— 85 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ cion, and easily sees through their true intentions. The author of these Conversations makes no secret of his disappointment in politics, and seeks an escape from it in the pleasures of private life, full of reading material and free mental pursuits. Sarmatians – in the realm of Sarmatian historiography

Wespazjan Kochowski (1633-1700). War, the fundamental experience of the Poles born in the first half of the 17th century, served to verify Sarmatian attitudes. Wespazjan Kochowski was one of those who had been through the poverty and hardship of a soldier’s life. This Roman-named poet nevertheless sought a higher meaning in the chaos of daily life. In his soldierly verses he recorded the heroic dreams and yearnings of his generation, which frequently sought solace in religion. Kochowski’s religious texts are extreme examples of Baroque concettism. In his collection of verses Virgin’s Garden (Ogród panieński – 1681), devoted to the Virgin Mary, composed in the concetto framework of 16 “flower beds.” Each of these garden plots contains 100 verse-flowers (most frequently distiches), based on Marian metaphors that the poet drew from the Bible, the Patrologia Latina, and the works of philosophers and theologians. Kochowski’s religiosity is also determined by his view of history. The poet sees traces of God’s hand everywhere, he interprets reality by chiefly discerning Divine Providence within it. In his eyes, history becomes gesta Dei per Polonos. The Sarmatians are a new chosen people, and the poet views himself as another David, a Sarmatian psalmist. His Polish Psalmody (Psalmodia polska), published in 1695, is a peculiar manifesto of old Polish messianism. Kochowski interprets domestic history from the perspective of the concealed designs of God, whose plans are being carried out by the gallant knights from the Vistula lands. Against this backdrop, he presents himself as a Sarmatian and a man embroiled in the great drama of history. The pivotal point of the cycle (very nicely imitating the biblical style) portrays the famous victory over the Turks at Vienna, evidence of God’s special guardianship over the Polish nation.

—— 86 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque Wacław Potocki (1621-1696). Potocki was the most eminent poet of the late Baroque in Poland. A great loner, called at times the Polish Diogenes, he was guided in his huge body of works by the Sarmatian system of values, set forth by the Bible and the works of Roman historians and moralists. The peculiarity of this markedly talented writer stemmed from his experience in changing faiths. An Arian by birth and conviction, after an edict was passed banishing his coreligionists (1658) Potocki decided to give up his faith in order to remain in the Republic. However, he never reconciled himself with this unfair law that infringed upon people’s consciences. The poet perceived a true chasm between Sarmatian ideals and Sarmatian reality. This critical diagnosis of the Polish state of affairs was expressed in two huge collections of epigrams, Moralia and Garden of Trifles (Ogród fraszek). Bitter reflection about the downfall of former ideals is also present in his verses about noble emblems and legends, in the large volume Collection of Coats-of-Arms (Poczet herbów – 1696). Despite this, Potocki always believed in the historical mission of the Sarmatians and their superiority over other nations. And so, he took great pains to reconstruct the lost values of noble society. His culminating achievement as a writer is The War of Khotim (Transakcyja wojny chocimskiej), an original combination of epos, discursive poem, and diary in verse, written about 1670; a more precise date cannot be ascertained here because Potocki only submitted his texts for printing very rarely. There is no equally expressive or suggestive vision of war in all of 17th-century European literature. The battle descriptions in Potocki’s poem are marked by Sarmatian experiences (the poet’s own participation in the famous battle against the Cossacks at Beresteczko in 1651), and so are striking in their brutal realism and vivid language. Potocki seemingly “assaults” the reader’s senses and imagination with images that are a far cry from literary conventions. We can safely say that it was not Virgil or Lucan, but rather the poet’s own experiences that dictated to him the most moving pages of The War of Khotim, a poem with exceptionally strong impact, which despite certain compositional imperfections, can easily bear comparison to the greatest European epic masterworks of the 17th century. —— 87 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ Sarmatian self-portraits: diarists and epistolographers

Jan Chryzostom Pasek (ca.1636-1701). One of the most characteristic traits of Sarmatism was a cult of the past, of national and family traditions. Whoever was able to, therefore, put pen to paper in order to leave as much information as possible to posterity about their family and kinship ties, familial history and deeds, and the virtues of famous forebears. The 17th century saw a great flowering of diary-writing in Poland. Most of these journals are nowadays of significance only for historical researchers. One of them, however, represents a true masterpiece, a splendid document of literary value about the views and convictions of the average Polish nobleman: the notes, preserved only in fragments, of Jan Chryzostom Pasek, a pupil of the Jesuits in Rawa Mazowiecka. Pasek, like many of his contemporary Sarmatians, was first and foremost a soldier. Nevertheless, he waged war for the sake of neither fame nor fatherland, but rather for money. This poor nobleman from Mazowsze (Mazovia) saw war as his only chance in life. Pasek portrayed himself as a faithful defender of noble liberties, a gallant soldier (although at times cruel and greedy for loot), a good homesteader and husband. He viewed the world with a naive curiosity. He could not bring himself to criticize his own person or the noble estate, convinced that what was good for the nobility was at the same time good for the Republic. This Sarmatian diarist had the gift of storytelling. He knew how to build tension, compose descriptions, and weave dialogues into them. He wrote in a colorful style, with lively and vivid language, into which he interspersed Latin phrases in order to demonstrate his education. He was also able to adapt his style to the events he describes. In the battle scenes, the sentences are short, frantic, the dialogues are cut short, the language colloquial. Yet in the speeches that Pasek was fond of including into his recollections, the sentences are long, complicated, full of baroque conceits and learned allusions. Discovered in the 19th century, Pasek’s Memoirs (Pamiętniki) had a great impact on subsequent Polish literature, encouraging the development of the noble-tale genre and the appearance of the masterwork of the popular novel: Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy. —— 88 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque Jan III Sobieski (1629-1696) Aside from diary-writing, letter-writing also flourished during the epoch. Or, more aptly, letters were preserved in household archives, and were sometimes copied down into the nobility’s silvae rerum. Outstanding epistolographers included Daniel Naborowski, Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, and Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski. One particularly interesting document of the era, however, consists of the letters of King Jan III Sobieski – soldier and champion of the battle of Vienna (1683), bright with European fame. For decades, this austere leader and strategist wrote letters full of love to his beloved French wife, the Queen Marysieńka (Mariette). The lovers’ correspondence clearly bears the mark of their familiarity with Honoré D’Urfé’s then-popular romance L’Astrée. They call each other by conventionalized names drawn from literature, and also employ a refined cipher of erotic illusions. The Sarmatian king proves to be equally deft whether on the battlefield, putting pen to paper, or in the bedroom. He writes nimbly and volubly, he knows how to relate his military expeditions to his wife, including his most important expedition to Vienna, which he undertook – as was fitting for a Sarmatian – in order to conquer in the name of God, stating: Veni, vidi, Deus vincit.

III. The Polish Baroque – in the domain of styles 1. Mannerism. The first stage of the Polish Baroque was characterized by Mannerist tendencies. The twilight of the Renaissance was already clearly visible in the latter works of the master of Renaissance Classicism, Jan Kochanowski. His Threnodies (Treny – 1580) already clearly manifest anxiety and disbelief, which leave their imprint on the poet’s style. Kochanowski undermines the testimony of the human senses, feverishly grasps for words, is at times unclear, resorts to elliptic constructions, makes bold enjambments, and employs grating phonic effects. A complicated world, after all, requires means of description different than those offered by Classicism. The triumph of literary Mannerism can already be perceived in the works of Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński (who died several years before Kochanowski). On the surface, not much has changed here. Ancient authorities still seem to reign (for example, Sęp-Szarzyński cites Horace —— 89 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ and Anacreon, for example), but a superficial imitation of the “letter” of Classicism is coupled with a complete break with its “spirit.” Attempts are made to express uncertainty, anxiety, and disbelief within classical forms. The order of the cosmos is thus juxtaposed with the chaos of the human world, and universal truth is supplanted by individual experience. The early stage of Polish Mannerism is characterized by intellectualism – extreme intellectualism in the case of SępSzarzyński (his poetry consists in essence of conceptual clashes), moderate in the case of Grabowiecki. The works of these poets appeal to reason, not to emotion. A new type of language finds its way into poetry: that of philosophy, theology, science. Difficult genres (such as the sonnet) become preferred. Style is complicated, refined, one can even speak of a certain “formal affectation” (to employ the description by aesthetics historian Władysław Tatarkiewicz). It is within the domain of international Mannerism that we should also situate the Latin works of the Jesuit Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (known as “Casimire,” 1595-1640). This imitator of Horace (as well as the Jesuit poets then in vogue) skillfully combined antiquity and Christianity in his verses. This brought him European fame and the designation “the Christian Horace.” From today’s perspective, however, his theoretical reflections on poetry are most interesting. In a manuscript treatise De acuto et arguto (presented in 1623 in Rome), Sarbiewski provided a superb definition of the pointe (”acutum”), analyzing thereby the statements of various contemporary theoreticians of poetry. For Sarbiewski, the pointe is an unexpected juxtaposition of two contrary concepts, meaning concors discordia vel discors concordia. It stems from observations of the laws of the world, not from superficial poetical displays. The apex of Mannerism in Polish literature comes during the first half of the century. In the worlds of Daniel Naborowski and Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, we witness a complicated play with literary tradition, an escape from persuasiveness, a poetic toying with language (for example, exploiting the meaning of a single word), bold conceits, and finally exceptional formal virtuosity. The twilight of Mannerist tendencies, in turn, is evidenced by the work of Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski, in which, alongside Man—— 90 ——

Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque nerist linguistic rebuses (such as the Latin emblems of Adverbia moralia) and poetic palimpsests in the spirit of Marino (for example, the religious romance Tobias Delivered – Tobiasz wyzwolony), we also encounter Baroque emotions and religious persuasion (such as Poetry of Holy Lent – Poezyje postu świętego). 2. Baroque. The Baroque style proliferated far and wide in Poland. It dominated practically from the start of the 17th century until the mid-18th century. The intellectual character of Mannerism only ostensibly corresponded to the mood in post-Tridentine Europe (the resolutions of the Council of Trent concerning art were formulated in this spirit). The weakness of this style, of course, lay in its intellectual elitism. Mannerism, with its ostensible ambiguous truths, false poses, and cult of refined form, was simply not suitable as a weapon in the spiritual (and other) disputes underway in Europe throughout almost the entire 17th century. A lighter literature was needed, one that, while reflecting the complicated nature of the world, would at the same time chiefly appeal to the emotions. Hieronim Morsztyn’s poetry was just that: sensual, dazzling, simple and persuasive, clearly distinguishing the truth from falsehood, beauty from ugliness, good from evil. The work of Kasper Twardowski, full of graphic allegories, developed within the domain of the Jesuits’ meditative inspiration. Polish culture’s profound reception of the Baroque was confirmed by the painterly language and style of Samuel Twardowski, and by the pithiness and plasticity of Wespazjan Kochowski and Wacław Potocki, the true masters of Polish Baroque poetry. The works of Zbigniew Morsztyn (who clearly concretizes the subtle conceits of his cousin Jan Andrzej) also maintain the spirit of the Baroque. The final eminent Baroque poets (such as the priest Józef Baka) almost intermingle with the representatives of renewed Classicism in the 18th century. 3. Classicism. Classical trends did not die out in Poland in the 17th century. However, they were marginal with respect to the leading styles of the epoch. It has been repeatedly pointed out that Classicism usually —— 91 ——

KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ flowered during periods of political calm and economic prosperity. In the 17th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Republic was tormented by numerous conflicts and wars. The country grew impoverished and depopulated. These were not, therefore, conditions conducive to a harmonious, ordered vision of the world. Despite this, as if in defiance of the turbulent times, certain authors still appealing to classical ideals of order, simplicity, and clarity did continue to appear. The traditions of Renaissance Classicism were cultivated in the 17th century by Szymon Szymonowic (1558-1629), who in his Idylls (Sielanki – 1614) referred to both ancient authors (Theocritus, Virgil) and modern-age ones (Jacopo Sannazaro). In doing so he was able, although wearing a classical guise, to express his own intimate, oftentimes bitter experiences and his vision of a world steeped in crisis (”all is plunging downwards” – “wszystko na dół się pomyka”). Classical rules of stylistic economy (”as many words as things” – “ile słów, tyle rzeczy”), running counter to the Mannerist/Baroque trends of the epoch, also served as a beacon to the Opaliński brothers, who had their eyes fixed upon Roman models. Also noteworthy is the salient presence of masterpieces of French Classicism within the Polish culture of the period. Jan Andrzej Morsztyn translated Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid (staged 1661), his cousin Stanisław tackled Racine’s Andromache (staged 1696), and Krzysztof Niemirycz published his translation of La Fontaine’s Fables in 1699. Molière’s plays were performed at court stages (The Would-Be Gentleman was staged in 1687). A manuscript translation of The Affected Young Ladies has also survived from the epoch, bearing in Polish the title Parisian Comedy (Komedyja Paryska). It is telling that most of these translation projects were undertaken near the end of the century. With this, 17th-century Classicism paved the way for the flowering of Polish Enlightenment literature.

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Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque

Bibliographical Notes Błoński J., Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński a początki polskiego baroku, Kraków 1967. Cynarski S., Sarmatyzm – ideologia i styl życia, in: Polska XVII w., ed. J. Tazbir, Warszawa 1974. Fischerówna R., Samuel Twardowski jako poeta barokowy, Kraków 1931. Hernas C., Barok, Warszawa 1973. Pelc J., Barok – epoka przeciwieństw, Warszawa 1993. Porębowicz E., Andrzej Morsztyn, przedstawiciel baroku w poezji polskiej, Kraków 1894. Sokołowska J., Spory o barok. W poszukiwaniu modelu epoki, Warszawa 1971

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ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ

The European “Republic of Letters” on the history of literary awareness (15-17th centuries) Conceptual thought about language, literature, and poetry stretches back to the earliest stages of culture. In archaic times, aesthetic deliberations began to filter into both literary works and philosophical discourse. Some of the Greek philosophers (such as Democritus of Abdera in the 5th century BC) were the earliest interpreters and commentators of artistic endeavors. The writings of Plato (427-347 BC) were fundamental for the history of aesthetic and literary awareness; his concepts of the poet’s divine frenzy and imitative art served as an inexhaustible source of theoretical inspiration for his successors. The history of literary awareness proper was ushered in by the Poetics of Aristotle (384322 BC), a work that gave the study of literature an autonomous status, and at the same time set up a conceptual framework in the field that would remain in force for centuries. In the Middle Ages, aesthetic and literary thought would be undertaken as part of encyclopedic studies at the intersection of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. As early as in the 12th and 13th centuries, however, Latin works devoted to the art of poetry and versification began to appear. Such medieval poetriae and artes versificatoriae addressed a combination of linguistic, stylistic, and rhetorical issues. Various authors made certain statements of a meta-poetical nature: the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), in his Divine Comedy, used poetry to discuss poetry itself, as well as art and beauty. Petrarch and Boccaccio were forerunners to a new way of thinking about —— 94 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” poetry and literature. Yet the true breakthrough in the history of aesthetic and literary awareness would come in the epoch of the Renaissance. A new approach to language, oration, literature, poetry, art, and even more widely to culture, became one of the most important foundations upon which Europe’s ideological commonwealth was built. Dozens of treatises and theoretical works attested to the blossoming of aesthetic and literary thought in Europe, which integrated the national cultures in a special way. Polish culture also fell within the orbit of these developments in awareness.

The Ideas of Humanism The 15th-century Italian humanist Giannozzo Manetti, in his On the Dignity and Excellence of Man, recognized the “ingenious and subtle art of speech” as one of the creative human mind’s greatest achievements. Such exaltation of man-the-speaker and man-the-writer should not, however, be credited to Renaissance humanist anthropology – except in that what had at first been perceived as a gift (in tales that still retained a mythological nature) then gradually acquired the traits of a wonderful discovery, an invention made by man himself. Writing, written texts, and books, a motif that had already been present in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, took on particular significance. When Francesco Petrarch mentioned “discourse between spirits, transcending the centuries,” he was above all thinking of a magnificent boon that enabled people not only to contact others living far away and to exchange thoughts in a comprehensive way, but also to leap across temporal barriers, to record past events for posterity, and to substantiate the future as a thing of the present. Gallus Anonymous’ Polish Chronicle contains an enthusiastic praise of writing: “Never would the words and chivalrous deeds of the Romans or Gauls be so widely known throughout the [whole] world if written records had not preserved them for the memory and emulation of their successors. So too vast Troy, even though it lay deserted and in ruin, was passed down to everlasting memory in the works of poets. Walls razed to the earth, towers toppled, spacious and pleasant squares standing empty, and the palaces of kings and princes serving as the —— 95 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ dens and lairs of wild animals – yet Troy and its Pergamum are still famed, through the voice of inanimate letters…”1 In Richard de Bury’s 14th-century work Philobiblion, we encounter not only declarations about the eye-opening value of books, whereby the barriers of time and space can be overcome, but also a kind of apotheosis of writing and reading: “How highly must we estimate the wondrous power of books, since through them we survey the utmost bounds of the world and time, and contemplate the things that are as well as those that are not, as it were in the mirror of eternity.”2 The author further develops his own laudation of books – how much in the humanistic vain already! – asserting: “By the aid of books we remember things that are past, and even prophesy as to the future; and things present, which shift and flow, we perpetuate by committing them to writing.” And he concludes: “occupation with letters or books is the life of man.” Petrarch pays homage to books at a somewhat later date, seemingly in tune with the words of Philobiblion’s author: “Gold, silver, gems, purple raiment, a house of marble, a well-tilled field, paintings, a steed with splendid trappings: things such as these give us only a silent and superficial pleasure. Books delight us profoundly, they speak to us, they give us good counsel, they enter into an intimate companionship with us.”3 It was Petrarch that the Italian humanists of the 15th century saw as marking the beginnings of the great rebirth of antiquity. His role is perceived in a similar way by the modern Renaissance scholar Eugenio Garin, who believes that Petrarch was fully aware of the significance of writing and the need for dialog with the great ancient masters. With time, these early, pre-Renaissance views crystallized ever more distinctly, such as in debate over the place held by the humanistic sciences within the model of culture, then under transformation. For the humanists of the Italian Quattrocento, reflection upon the litterae (literature and scholarship) became a matter of great import, taking on a new character. Eugenio 1

Volume III. Based on a Latin to Polish translation by R. Grodecki.

2

Chapter 15. English translation by E. C. Thomas.

3

Epistolae de rebus familiaribus, III, 18, Letter to Giovanni dell’ Incisa. English translation by W. Calhoun.

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The European “Republic of Letters” Garin writes about this period: “The litterae are about to return with all their fertility, to form whole men, not just scholars. (…) the conversation with the great minds of past ages, to which the studia litterarum lead us, is by no means a form of «vulgar erudition.» It is, on the contrary, a discovery of the common human links and the development of the ideal basis for a commonwealth.”4 It was specifically 15th-century humanism that supplied the stimuli for shaping a particular cultural concept – the world of a spiritual community, transcending the borders of time and space. We do not have many studies that address the history of the concept and term respublica litteraria (or respublica litterarum) in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. It is with all the greater satisfaction, therefore, that we can draw attention to the observations noted in this regard by Juliusz Domański, the author of The Text as Establishing Presence (Tekst jako uobecnienie). He managed to hunt out rare traces marking the presence of the “republic of letters” notion – its precursors in the mid-15th century and its first explanations at the end of the 15th century. Domański writes: “According to what I have managed to find in connection with the «republic of letters» concept (respublica litterarum, respublica litteraria), meaning the society of those who practice writing and literature, of people who write and read, the origin of this new idea should be sought in the writings of the 16th-century Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, who was almost a contemporary of Erasmus of Rotterdam and maintained quite intensive contacts with the latter. (…) There are many indications that the first humanist to employ the Latin term respublica litteraria and who subsequently developed not so much this term as the notion of a community of people who write and read, with all the connotations we have traced in this book, was Erasmus of Rotterdam, already cited so many times here. In his Antibarbari from 1494 he used both this term and its synonym societas or sodalitas litteraria to refer to everyone who supports the antiquae or politiores litterae against the attacks made against them by the «barbarians.»” Juliusz Domański associates the concept of the society of those who write and read 4

Italian Humanism – Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, English translation by P. Munz.

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ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ with the concept of «establishing presence» (uobecnienie, a textual bond established between those currently alive and those who have passed away). The 17th century Spanish work Republica literaria by Diego Saavedra de Fajardo (1670) – inspired, it is surmised, by the work of Juan Luis Vives – employs the convention of a dream to discuss the common society of people of the pen and scholarship, the world of writing and reading. This dream vision of a “republic of letters” portrays reality through the poetics of the grotesque, the absurd, and mockery of humanistic daydreams about the “textual presence” of man. Juliusz Domański, in his study, stresses how the earlier notion of the republic of letters, entailing a common presence in texts, transformed into a concept that encompassed the present-day society of writers and readers, without such temporal scope. This respublica litteraria concept, present in humanistic and Renaissance thought, as well as later, in the 17th century, constituted an element of anthropological, cultural, aesthetic, and literary awareness. Initially, as Juliusz Domański notes, the concept was associated with the idea of textual presence transcending time, yet later became the contradiction of this original notion. Regardless of all these modifications, the “republic of letters” in its conceptual form led a very modest existence. It constituted but a trace of an established awareness that recognized the existence of a common society throughout the contemporary world. This community was a real, diverse, and richly-manifested embodiment of the literary and cultural commonwealth, brought into existence by dint of the ideas of humanism, the premises of imitative aesthetics, the rules of rhetoric and poetics, and literary and cultural conventions. The humanist movement (14th-16th centuries) encompassed myriad fields of the intellectual life in European countries. There were a great many ideological threads, which frequently took on dissimilar cultural forms. Nevertheless, this fact did not undermine the internal uniformity of this movement, which was safeguarded by common premises of a most general nature that determined the professed model of culture. The topics of humanistic discussions included both affirming the primacy of philological competence and scholarship – —— 98 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” grammar, rhetoric, poetry, poetics – within contemporary knowledge overall, as well as selecting a single science or art to be ascribed the role of a universal discipline, enabling all of reality to be subsumed. Coluccio Salutati was of the opinion that poetry should be seen as just such a key to all fields of knowledge; Leonardo da Vinci advocated the fine arts, defined as the broadly-interpreted graphic skills (scienza della pittura); still others preferred theology, metaphysics, logic, optics, or mathematics. The anti-dialectical and anti-scholastic attitude represented the negative pole of 15th-century humanistic thinking, while striving to rebuild the traditional edifice of the arts and sciences comprised the positive Pole – although one far from being uniform, torn by many contradictory pursuits. Such polarization constituted only one of the aspects of the rich sphere of phenomena that might be termed the humanistic understanding of culture. The promoters of humanism devoted considerable attention to cultural issues. The model of culture they attempted to create was intended to realize the fullness of humanity; in the words of L. Bruni: “they are called the studia humanitatis because they perfect and adorn man.” Set at the central point of this model were the humanities, which were given priority over natural knowledge. Creative cultural activity should, in the humanists’ view, involve the cultivation of art, literature, (non-scholastic) philosophy, ethics, history, politics, law, rhetoric, grammar, poetry, and poetics. Particular import was vested in language, as an instrument utilized by a range of various disciplines and skills, as a kind of manifestation of the unity among human minds and the bond of society. The humanist movement updated the personal rhetorical ideal of vir bonus dicendi peritus in practice, and in theory expanded its application, applying this convention to man in general, seeing it as a combination of the two threads characteristic of their own ideology: an apology of humanae litterae and an apology of the social nature of true humanity. Many arts and sciences owed their rebirth and development to humanistic inspiration: philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, poetics, antiquarian and mythological studies, pedagogy and psychology, history, art and aesthetics, paroemiography, lexicography, encyclopedias, re—— 99 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ ligious studies, modern-era historiography, and other traditional disciplines, including the natural sciences. The humanists also deserve credit for achieving a kind of integration of the humanities: by stressing the connection between thought and speech, they perceived the presence of rhetorical, grammatical, and poetic problems in philosophy and aesthetics, as well as the presence of ethical and philosophical issues in rhetoric, grammar, and poetics. In the 15th century, patristics and Biblical hermeneutics also fell within the scope of their philological and editorial efforts. The most characteristic trait of humanism lies in its ties to literature, interpreted in a very wide sense – this was a cult of all antique writings, especially the poetic and rhetoric arts that had been bequeathed by antiquity. Among the humanists, two attitudes towards literature could be distinguished: for some it was a vehicle, a key to the wisdom and culture of past ages, an instrument for educating contemporary individuals; for others, literature and studies of it themselves became the goal, both as poetic and rhetorical creation, and as the linguistic perfection of forms of expression and as philosophical and historical knowledge. The former stance was more characteristic of the early stage in the development of humanism, the latter of a later stage: formalist tendencies appeared at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries that led, in poetry, to an excess of mythologized adornments and an overly faithful observance of classical literature’s stylistic means and genre forms, and in rhetoric to a Ciceronian bent. For the humanists, literature represented a guarantee of immortality and a record of history, and it was also, as it were, a “second nature,” an ideal mirror of nature itself – this was why imitating the world and people was considered to be a binding law for writers. The topoi of fame and immortality, adopted from antiquity, became one of the focal points of humanist thought. Esse semper – “to be always,” through everlasting fame – this was a desire that could be fulfilled, the feeling was, in the realm of culture. A prospect of everlasting life opened up before the artist and writer. It was in such a mindset, although far removed from European centers of humanism, that Paweł of Krosno wrote his poem Carmen laudes poeticae artis continens et, quod poemata immortalia sint et incaduca —— 100 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” demonstrans (ca. 1507-1508). This is an extraordinary catalog of the “great immortals” and a profession of faith in the everlasting endurance of poetry: Yet they still endure, are yet bathed in glory, This tribe of poets, this multitude’s story, Is alas too vast for my poor pen to strain To record by name […] Eternally shall the poet’s name be great Throughout the wide world shall it proliferate, Always shall he thwart, through songs of graceful depth, Insatiable death.5

In the second half of the 16th century, the topos of poetry’s immortality was taken up by Jan Kochanowski in his Latin Elegies and his Polish Songs and Muse. In the next century, an original, theoretical interpretation was added by Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (in the treatise De perfecta poesi): “works of poetry are by their very nature immortal and free of all those bonds that arise from circumstances, because they compile concrete events in the light of general truths.”6 In the Renaissance epoch and later, the views of the humanists became the common property of European culture, its unifying stamp. Various topics discussed by the humanists became commonplace themes and traditional plotlines, endowed with new life, forming what in modern studies are called the “humanist topoi.” The cradle of humanism was Italy (L. Bruni, C. Salutati, G. Manetti, L. Valla, A. Poliziano, C. Landino, M. Ficino, G. Pico della Mirandola). At the outset of the 17th century, the humanist movement slowly transformed into a humanist orientation. The ideas of humanism proliferated in the countries of Western and Northern Europe, finding expression not only in programmatic manifestos, but also in art and literature. Here it is worth noting that the countries northward of the Alps forged their own variety of humanism, closer to the medieval Christian traditions. 5

Based on a Latin to Polish translation by G. Żurek.

6

Based on a Latin to Polish translation by M. Plezia.

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ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ In Poland, the first attestations of humanism appeared around the middle of the 15th century (such as Z. Oleśnicki’s correspondence with E. S. Piccolomini, or the academic addresses of Jan of Ludzisko). The consolidation of this intellectual movement was aided by the literary activity of foreign writers from Germany and Italy who had close personal ties to Poland (C. Celtis, F. Buonaccorsi). Beginning at the end of the 15th century, there was a considerable surge in the infiltration of Italian and European humanist thinking in Poland. At the Kraków Academy, the humanae litterae found a place as an element in the didactic program. Humanism bore strongly upon scientific, legal, religious, and political thought, and the age of the full development of Latin humanist literature in Poland began. Humanist ideas also penetrated the burgeoning native literature (the works of Jan Kochanowski). The 16th century was for Poland a period of both full involvement in the humanist movement, and sometimes of its adaptation in line with the needs and possibilities of native culture. Humanism helped define Polish culture, and at the same time safeguarded its bonds to the culture of Renaissance Europe.

Renovatio antiquitatis The 20th-century Italian historian of philosophy and culture Eugenio Garin notes that “the essence of humanism is most clearly defined by its attitude to the civilization of the past.” During the time of rebirth, classical antiquity began to be viewed as a distinct, closed chapter of history, as an epoch that could be studied and contemplated from a distance, its cultural achievements recovered and reconstructed. The revival of antiquity (renovatio Antiquitatis) and the study of antiquity (studium Antiquitatis) became the hallmark phenomena of the Renaissance. Modern studies of the genesis of the Renaissance (as an epoch) and humanism (as an intellectual current) uncover many common circumstances and convergences. Garin asserts: “Both phenomena stemmed from kindred factors of a political, social, and ideological nature. In the historical philosophy of the Renaissance, the genetic kinship of the rebirth and humanism was determined, among other things, by the notion of the Renaissance. (…) —— 102 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” This idea gave rise to a conviction that the cultural achievements of antiquity could and should be subjected to scholarly study and comprehensive restitution and imitation. The process of renovatio antiquitatis was of an exceptionally wide scope, but it chiefly encompassed the phenomena of art and literature. The widely-professed slogans of returning to antique sources (ad fontes), of seeking out and studying antique manuscripts, had already found advocates and implementers among medieval scholars and aficionados of literature (in the 12th and 13th centuries), especially in centers of the so-called French pre-Renaissance. Nevertheless, the undoubted achievement of the Italian humanists of the 14th and 15th centuries lay not only in expanding the resources of known classical works (Latin as well as chiefly Greek), but also in their new study, interpretation, creative reworking and release into the bloodstream of modern culture.” Moreover, the process of renovatio antiquitatis obtains a significantly bolder and more advanced explanation in our modern times. Eugenio Garin is surely right in seeking the reasons for the phenomenon of classical revival in the profound cultural transformations that represented the cause, rather than the consequence, of the return to antiquity. Renaissance humanism reached a scale during this period that was incomparable to all preceding pre-renaissances. As Garin explains: “This then was not about a single author, Plato or Aristotle, or even about a single culture, Greek or Roman. It was about a certain world and a certain time, a certain universum: all of antiquity, not just Greek or Roman, but also Egyptian and Chaldean, Hebrew and Persian. It was about recovering, within a single temporal dimension – classical antiquity – the whole of active culture: poetry and theology, science and philosophy, as well as great historical prose and law, the monuments of architecture and machinery, sculptures and paintings, technology and customs, all the way down to household items – goblets and jewelry.” Commenting on the nature of the process by which antiquity was recollected and recreated, Garin holds that “the discovery of the ancients was not the cause, but rather the effect of a newly emerging culture, it was a response to a question – an answer (…) that is a consequence of this question.” And he concludes: “And so, if we wish to have a fuller grasp of this undoubted turn in —— 103 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ the realm of culture, taking place at a critical moment of profound transformations, we will have to staunchly insist on the assertion that it was not the discovery or reading of the classics that defined the new climate, but rather questions that stemmed from a crisis situation which invoked the ancients to supply answers through a return to sources, triggered by the already evident weaknesses of the period – although it was a great epoch in thought and in art.” Everything that defined the essence of the Renaissance in Europe was also to be found in Poland. The Greco-Roman heritage was reactivated (renovatio), studied (studium), and imitated (imitatio) – and became an integral part of the emerging national culture. Early Polish culture became receptive to ancient philosophy, science, and literature. It also absorbed classical mythology (and its theory). A system of ties to the ancient legacy and a system of references to Greek and Roman tradition were established. Polish literature would see reminiscences and borrowings, citations and hidden references, travesties and paraphrases, and also, ever more frequently and clearly as time passed, what is most difficult for research to capture and describe: creative reworkings of past literary experiences into the new artistic reality. The development of native culture in Renaissance Poland took place via two linguistic media, and things remained so even into the 17th century, even though the native Polish language had already then gained a decisive edge over Latin. The ideal of the national language and the drive to emancipate it coexisted with a cult of classical Latin. Latin was the written language of the earliest humanist poets: Laurentius Corvinus, Paweł of Krosno (who based himself upon 22 classical authors), the “Sarmatian Ovid” – Klemens Janicius, and Andrzej Krzycki. The signals of Renaissance humanism were received most potently in Latin-based poetic work. Beginning in the mid-16th century, the thematic, genre, and artistic image of Neo-Latin poetry in Poland became considerably enriched. Grzegorz of Sambor wrote eclogues replete with meta-poetical issues and literary criticism. Szymon Szymonowic, aside from employing Horatian meters, assimilated Pindar’s poetry (Aelinopean – 1589). In the Polish Latin poetry of the 17th century, there were clearer manifestations of antiquity being adapted to fit Polish culture: there —— 104 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” were stronger and stronger Polonizing endeavors (modifying names, circumstances, motifs), as well as trends (beginning in the early 16th century) to Christianize and ultimately “Sarmatianize” the themes, beliefs, and ideas. The nicknames “the Sarmatian Horace” and “the Christian Horace” given to Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski attest to this trend. Later poets, lyricists (A. Kanon, A. Ines) and epic-writers, likewise wrote with the intention of making their Latin-based poetry part of the national literature; the epics of J. W. Ustrzycki (Sobiesciados – 1686) and J. D. Kaliński (Viennis – 1717) recorded historical events of import for Poland. Neo-Latin prose in 16th- and 17th-century Poland demonstrates that a foreign language, adopted as part of the classical heritage, cultivated and developed after classical models, could serve not only as a means of artistic expression, but also an instrument for scientific discourse (Nicolaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium – 1543), legal treatises (Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski’s De republica emendanda – 1551), historiographic debate (Marcin Kromer’s De origine et rebus gestis Polonorum – 1568), bibliography (Szymon Starowolski’s Scriptorum Polonorum Hecatontas), and contemporary chronicles of historical events (W. Kochowski’s Annales Poloniae – 1683-1698). Polish-language literature drew upon antiquity through the native idiom, but at the same time employing genres of classical, GrecoRoman provenience. There were elegies, eulogies, epicedia, epithalamia, odes, and epigrams. There were paraphrases of antique comedies (Piotr Cieliński’s adaptation of Plautus’ Trinummus, entitled Potrójny z Plauta – 1598) and humanist tragedies, adopting the formal model of Greek tragedy (Jan Kochanowski’s The Dismissal of the Grecian Envoys – Odprawa posłów greckich –1578). In the Baroque epoch, the highest rung in the hierarchy of literary genres was occupied by epic poetry, which at the same time set the norm for all writing – at least, so believed the Polish theoretician (and poet) M. K. Sarbiewski, who elevated the epic poems of Homer and Virgil to the rank of poetic perfection (De perfecta poesi, sive Vergilius et Homerus – 1626). He maintained that the only true poet is a Christian one, who chiefly draws themes, plot elements, and motifs not from any —— 105 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ fantastic mythological tales, but rather from the Bible. The paradox inherent in Sarbiewski’s theory is a foretoken of the subsequent grand dispute over the legacy of classical antiquity that would seize Europe in the 18th century. Within the realm of the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition, prosaic genres developed: oration (including political, parliamentary, school, banquet, and funerary speeches), homilies (which blossomed particularly at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries; i.e. Piotr Skarga’s Sermons to the Sejm – Kazania Sejmowe – 1597), and publicist commentary (a genre that can, in terms of Latin writings, boast the treatises of A. Frycz Modrzewski and S. Orzechowski), which addressed issues of philosophy, religion, and literary criticism (Stanisław Lubomirski’s Conversations of Artaxes and Evander – Rozmowy Artaksesa z Ewandrem – 1683). Polish authors drew upon classical historiography (M. Bielski, Ł. Górnicki, M. Stryjkowski, W. Kochowski), parenetic thought, and philosophy: Sebastian Petrycy of Pilzno translated Aristotle’s Politics (1605) and Nicomachean Ethics (1618), outfitting these translations with extensive commentary. In both the Renaissance and Baroque epochs, Polish (and Latin-Polish) culture and literature harked back to the great repertoire of the antique topoi, to mythological symbolism (especially in Baroque times), to mythological themes, motifs (S. Twardowski’s Daphne), and metaphor, and to stylistic, compositional, and genre conventions. It was thus involved in the great European cultural commonwealth. But it also had its own “flashes” of talent, innovation, originality, and at the same time what might be termed “Polishness.” The Renaissance works of Jan Kochanowski (in both Latin and Polish) constituted just such an original reference to the Greco-Roman tradition: an almost model reference, yet at the same time a native, and also fully individual one.

Classical Discourse on Literary Theory The foundations for the classical systems of poetics and rhetoric were laid in antiquity. It was then that the writing of literary theory discourse began (now stretching back 2,500 years). Such discourse was authored by Plato and Aristotle, by Horace, Cicero and Quintilian, —— 106 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” and by the scholars and writers of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance faced not only the task of recovering the theoretical heritage of antiquity, of renewing and adapting classical poetics and rhetoric; it also had to overcome its chronologically nearest predecessor – medieval theory, which by reworking fragments of the classical legacy in its own way had offered its own interpretation of literary texts. The European medieval heritage was still being referenced in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. There were preserved traces of influence exerted by the works of 12th and 13th century theoreticians (Geoffrey de Vinsauf, John Garland, Eberhard the German, Matthew of Vendôme), and the works of the medieval encyclopedists, metrists, and orators were known. The early humanist study of poetry did not yet have much in common with scholarly poetic inquiry; while it had assimilated certain philosophical and theoretical concepts, it did not yet have either its own conceptual language or its own methodology. It initially constituted part of humanist literature and literary theory, and also multisided discussion about antique and modern poetry. At the end of the 15th century, however, there was a surge in scholarly and theoretical interest in poetry. Scholarly trends also escalated: classical views of poetry and the rules of creation came to be subject to ever more extensive reconstruction and ever more penetrating scrutiny. The circle of wandering humanists (including Italians, Germans and Swiss) produced “arts of versification”, treatises written for the purpose of school teaching, generally small and containing a simplified theory adapted for the needs of teaching youth. Here we should especially mention Ars versificandi et carminum (1486) by Conradus Celtis, Ars versificandi et carminum (1507) by Heinrich Bebel, a student of Corvinus, De versificandi arte opusculum (1515) by the Swiss humanist Valentinus Ecchius, De arte versificandi (given the titled Stichologia by the publisher – 1518) by Ulrich von Hutten, and Scribendorum versuum maxime compendiosa ratio (1531) by Eobanus Hessus. This early humanist study of poetry was later continued by Libri duo ad artem versificatoriam (1534), a little tome by the Polish religious poet and writer Szymon Zacjusz of Proszowice (ca. 1507 – ca. 1591); by Stichologia seu ratio scribendorum versuum (Kraków —— 107 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ 1544), a treatise by Christoph Hegendorph (who was briefly associated with Poland, having taught for some time at the Lubrański Gymnasium in Poznań); and by others. The influence of Horatian and Platonic thought about poetry is visible in this early humanist theory. Also evident is a dependence upon medieval poetic study and upon late classical grammar (as represented by the works of Donatus, Diomedes, and many others). Finally, the impact of humanist linguistic, rhetorical, and versological (prosodic and metrical) studies is likewise recognizable. The restitution of classical theories became at the same time a stimulus for a new way of thinking about poetry. The concepts and rules that comprised classical poetry, discovered and reconstructed by 16th-century scholars, were at the same time expanded upon, variously reworked and extended. The situation was quite different, however, in terms of the legacy of medieval literary theory. In certain fields, it acted as an intermediary in the process of accessing classical theoretical thought, yet to some extent, having been transformed into a medieval tradition, it acted as an element in the wider cultural context which 16th-century theory was being defined in juxtaposition to. At the same time, however, this new poetics was diametrically different, in terms of its substance and quality, as well as its formal shape, from the medieval theory of poetry and the art of poetic creation. The developmental rhythm of European poetics varied depending on when and in which country it emerged. The early 16th century saw initiatives of a more individual nature; the apogee of the development of poetics came from the 1530s to the 1590s. The theory of poetry advanced most rapidly and intensely in Italy, which also boasted the most numerous and profound achievements in this regard. Around the middle of the 16th century, there began to be a revival in literary theory interest in France, in part associated with the activity of the Pléiade group. In Germany, after the appearance of early Renaissance humanists, there was a certain slowdown in literary theory studies, although we cannot omit mentioning the works of such famed scholars as Johann Sturm (although he was more interested in rhetoric), and the achievements of such later theoreticians of poetry (writing in —— 108 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” Latin) as Georgius Fabricius. In England, the earliest significant treatises in poetic theory date from the 1670s. In Spain, the Horatian rhetorical current became prevalent in research on poetry beginning in the mid-16th century; Horace’s Ars poetica appeared in print, together with commentaries. Towards the end of the century, editions of this sort became increasingly more numerous, and larger, more independent works also appeared. In Poland, somewhat more numerous works about poetry would only appear in the subsequent century; here the 16th century was an age of foreign, European poetics, which satisfied the needs of both lecturers and students, as well as a wider circle of experts, aficionados of poetry, and writers themselves. The early humanist treatises did see publication in Poland (Mancinelli, Ecchius, Hutten, Fulvius, Bebel, Hegendorph, Glarean), and references were made to other, imported texts. Laurentius Corvinus Novoforensis – a Silesian who was a pupil of Celtis and the master of Bebel, and whose true name was Lorenz Raabe – published a small treatise in Kraków dedicated to the local young people: Compendiosa et facilis diversorum carminum structura (1496). The work of the aforementioned Szymon Zacjusz of Proszowice, Libri duo ad artem versificatoriam, treating matters of prosody and versification, likewise appeared in Kraków in 1532. Yet compared to the development of poetic studies in Europe, these were quite meager achievements, enriched only to a small extent with points of literary criticism. This meant that the 17th-century Latin treatises by the Polish Jesuit, poet, and scholar Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski would be all the more striking as theoretical phenomenon. Many Renaissance-era studies of poetics (including in the 17th century) were written in Latin. In Italy, works on the theory of poetry were being written both in Italian and in Latin. In France and England, the native tongues were clearly edging out Latin. Germany, on the other hand, only saw its first studies of poetics written in the national language at the outset of the 17th century, while Poland followed even later, in the 18th century. Italian monographic studies worthy of mention include: Dialogo del furore poetico (1581) by G. Frachetta, Del furor poetico (1587) by L. Giacomini, Dialoghi della inventione poetica (1554) by A. Lionardi —— 109 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ and De imitatione libri tres (1541) by B. Ricci. There were also musings on comedy and tragedy, detailed analyses of the concept of “catharsis” through tragedy (for example in the work of L. Giacomini De la purgazione de la tragedia – 1586). Treatises were written about epic and lyric poetry (e.g. Pomponio Torelli’s Trattato della poesia lirica – 1594), about romance (e.g. G. B. Pigna’s I romanzi – 1554) and also novel-writing, which was eagerly included as part of poetic creation, even though, alongside verse, it also employed prosaic form. Works were also written about poetic narration (such as G. M. Verdizotti’s treatise Breve discorso intorno alla narrazione poetica – 1588), as well as essays on poetic language and means of self-expression. Synthetic works, in turn, comprise a separate corpus of texts on the field of poetry. Marco Girolamo Vida (ok. 1485-1566), an Italian humanist and poet, as well as a Church dignitary, produced De arte poetica libri III, one of the first Renaissance studies of poetics (ca. 1520, published 1527), which harks back to Horace in terms of its form (hexameter), title, and its conceptual and normative content, and also draws upon the findings of classical rhetorical theories. Giovan Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550), an Italian writer and poet (as well as a diplomat), wrote in Italian his 6-part La poetica, whose first four parts (which address versological and linguistic/stylistic matters) appeared in 1529, the remaining two in 1562. Francesco Robortello (1516-1567), an Italian scholar, commentator, translator, and publisher of classical works, particularly excelled in the field of poetic theory owing to his interpretations of Aristotle’s Poetics (In librum Aristotelis de arte poetica explicationes – 1548), his notes to Horace’s Ars poetica (Paraphrasis in librum Horatii – 1548) and his monographic studies of various genres (satire, epigram, comedy and elegy). The works of A. Segni and L. Salviati demonstrated a high degree of mature research and complex theoretical substance. The eminent Italian poet of the Renaissance, Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), also made contributions to the field of poetics; he repeatedly made statements on current literary issues, and furthermore wrote Discorsi … dell«Arte Poetica, et in particolare del Poema Heroico (published in 1587) and Discorso del Poema Heroico (published in 1594). Vast and quite eclectic works in —— 110 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” the field of poetic theory were published by Antonio Sebastiano Minturno; the first was De poeta (1559), the second L»Arte poetica (1563), addressing many poetic genres and encompassing works written in Italian. A systematized, textbookish lecture on the chief issues of poetic theory was put together by Iulius Caesar Scaliger (14841558) in the work Poetices libri septem (published 1561). French Renaissance study of poetics was first and foremost represented by: Thomas Sebillet (1512-1589), a lawyer by education, a literature expert and poetic theoretician by passion (the propagator of Italian culture in France), and the author of a little tome Art poétique François, 1548; Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560), a poet (a member of the Pléiade) and scholar, brought forth the treatise La Déffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, 1549; Jacques Peletier (1517-1582), a scholar, translator, and poet, wrote L’Art poétique departi en deus livres, 1555; and the great French poet Pierre de Ronsard (15241585), the leader of the Pléiade, also wrote on literary theory issues, in Abrégé de L’Art poétique François, 1565. The advancement of English awareness of poetry was furthered by the works of: Roger Ascham (1515-1568), author of The Schoolemaster (1570); William Webbe (active in the 1580s), author of A Discourse of English Poetrie (1586); George Puttenham, to whom The Art of English Poesie (1589) is ascribed; Philip Sidney (15541586), a prominent poet and writer, who penned a treatise/essay that discussed the evaluation of poetry and addressed certain theoretical issues – An Apologie for Poetrie, also known as The Defense of Poesie (both editions appeared posthumously, in 1595). In Spain, following the period of translations of and commentaries on Horace’s Ars poetica (beginning in the mid-16th century), towards the end of the century there began to appear greater, more independent treatises on poetics. These included El Arte poética by Miguel Sánchez de Lima, 1580; Arte Poética Espańola by Juan Diaz Rengifo, 1592; and Arte para componer en metro castillano by Jerónimo de Mondragón, 1593. A special and considerable role in proliferating knowledge about poetry was played by works associated with school teaching. These chiefly included Poeticae Institutiones (1594) by Jacobus Pontanus (Jacob Spanmüller). In the 17th century this work was repeatedly —— 111 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ published, refashioned, and utilized in myriad ways by scholars of poetry. Pontanus’ “poetic rules” are a typical school textbook, addressed to a wide audience, with an extensive scholarly base and an broad set of subject and theme-based references. In 16th-century Poland, the classical and medieval heritage in the field of poetic theory were known and drawn upon. Aside from the older tradition, the new tradition was also quite vigorous; European novelties were watched, newly-written works on poetics and rhetoric were imported, read, and commented on. But rarely were more independent attempts made at addressing issues of literary theory. Native initiatives in the field of poetic inquiry appeared sporadically and were marked by a clear dependence upon European studies. Taking a fully comparative perspective leads us inevitably to the conclusion that early Polish theory of poetry (meaning theory as practiced in Poland) only achieved a significant degree of originality at the outset of the 17th century – in the treatises of M. K. Sarbiewski. Other theoretical deliberations did contain certain concepts and judgments that stemmed from independent research efforts (e.g. remarks on the topic of “carmen Polonicum,” which attempted to outline a theory of Polish verse), but these attempts do not enable us to speak of Polish variants of 16th- and 17th-century European poetics. It was only at the outset of the Renaissance epoch that profound transformations took place in Polish literary life, and a clear advancement ensued in native literary criticism, literary theory, and the study of poetry. Equally copious was the legacy of Greek and Roman rhetoric inherited by the countries of Renaissance Europe. This encompassed Aristotle’s Rhetoric, the treatise ascribed to Pseudo-Longinus, the treatise by Hermogenes of Tarsus, the widely-known Rhetoric to Herennius, and the writings of Cicero, among other works. Medieval theory produced many compendia comprised of classical works. This heritage was well-known during the period of the Renaissance and later, and also emerged in a collective edition in Paris: Antiqui rhetores Latini (1599). In the Middle Ages themselves, rhetoric became enhanced to include new directions of study, or even new disciplines: ars praedicandi (the art of the sermon) and ars dictaminis (the art of epistolography and broadly-defined prose). —— 112 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” Contemporary scholars draw attention to the varied developmental tendencies within Renaissance rhetoric. There was a fully humanist attempt at reintegrating classical rhetoric, which had become fragmented in medieval times, in tandem with a simultaneous drive to relate it to social life and to the education of the individual, in the secular and literary spirit of the humanitas. An important basis for this new tack was provided by the discovery of the full texts of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria and Cicero’s De oratore in 1416 and 1421. One longstanding yet partially changed trend involved the continuation of currents of medieval rhetoric that had become fragmented into specializations, with rhetoric’s scope divided up among ars dictaminis, ars praedicandi, and ars metrica, and even, in the current of classical-leaning rhetoric, with invention distinguished from elocution. Within the Polish tradition, examples of a departure from the comprehensive scheme of rhetoric can be found in Callimachus’ Rhetoric, a work inspired by George of Trebizond and encompassing only invention, or in J. Górski’s cycle in separate treatises that discusses only elocution: De periodis (1558), De generibus dicendi (1559), and De figuris (1560). The topics of the rhetoric period were also separately addressed by B. Herbest, polemicizing with Górski. Under such circumstances, the reform of the humaniora carried out at the initiative of the Frenchman P. Ramus did not constitute a breakup of the formerly cohesive rhetorical theory, but rather an attempt at viewing the existing state of affairs in terms of a specific vision of modern-era culture and its needs. Nevertheless, as early as the beginning of the 16th century, especially during its second half, prominent pedagogues and humanists made attempts at consolidating the full rhetorical scheme, chiefly on the basis of the writings of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian (although the influence of Hermogenes was also strong in Reformation schooling). Among the writers that put together a Renaissance model of rhetoric, the greatest impact upon Polish theory in the 16th century was exerted by J. Caesarius, whose 7-part Ciceronian Rhetorica (1534) was published in Kraków in 1538, by next F. Melanchton, whose Rhetoric was likewise published in Kraków in 1547 and 1550, and by —— 113 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ J. Sturm, author of De universa ratione elocutionis (1575) and other works pertaining to rhetorical didactics. The mainstay of Jesuit schooling was C. Suarez’s De arte rhetorica libri tres (1560), based – as the extended title states – upon Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian (even though the Jesuit Ratio studiorum did not recommend the latter). Ambitions at presenting the full scope of rhetoric are evident in Poland in the brief compendia of S. Micanus’ (Mikański) Dialecticae et rhetoricae praecepta (1561), J. Herbest’s Rhetorica (1566) and Rhetoricae compendium (1567), and above all A. Romer’s De informando oratore libri tres (1593). At the beginning of the 17th century, an extensive rhetoric was developed by the Gdańsk professor and systematizer of knowledge B. Keckermann, who advocated an orientation that was alternative to “Ramism,” dubbed “systematism” in logic and “neo-Ciceronianism” in rhetoric (following the terminology and research of W. S. Howell), and had a significant impact upon the development of scholarly views in Germany and England. His Rhetorica specialis (1608) encompassed a full course of rhetoric, and included many polemical and pedagogical remarks by the author concerning the current role of rhetoric in life and in school. Jesuit education in the 17th century, while based upon a uniform program embracing Suarez’s excellent textbook in rhetoric studies, did demonstrate the Jesuits’ characteristic flexibility and liberalism as far as lecture methods and the theories taught were concerned. And so, alongside the consistently used and published textbook by Suarez and the popular work by the French Jesuit N. Caussin De eloquentia sacra et humana (1623), new treatments of rhetoric were produced at the numerous Polish colleges, in print and manuscript form, attesting not only to the writing ambitions of the individual lecturers, but also to a lasting interest in rhetorical theory and in the issues of rhetorical didactics. Judging by the foreign editions of certain works, the “Polish rhetoric school” was of significance in the Europe of the day. Wide prominence was gained by books penned by teachers from the college in Braniewo: M. Radau’s Orator extemporaneus (1640) and Z. Lauxmin’s Praecepta artis rhetorices et praxix oratoria (1648), repeatedly reissued by various, chiefly German publishing houses. Piarist rhetoric of good caliber was to be found —— 114 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” in M. Kraus’ Manuductio institutionum rhetoricarum published in 1687, and, among the publications of Pomeranian schools, in the writings of J. Mochinger, P. Titius, and others. Aside from such comprehensive studies (of which many remained in manuscript form), monographs were also written on specific topics, including M. K. Sarbiewski’s lectures De acuto et arguto and De figuris sententiarum, ca. 1626/27. While the latter treatise was devoted to issues frequently selected beforehand and adapted by the author for schooling purposes, the former was topically innovative, highly timely in Baroque aesthetics and moreover hard to classify against the backdrop of extant rhetorical tradition; some placed it under the heading of invention (such as in Cicero), others under elocution (where the problem of wit was discussed by Aristotle). The issue of conceits was in Baroque rhetorics either a separately discussed topic, or a criterion through which all the parts and functions of the entire system of rhetoric were interpreted. An example of this sort of fundamentally concettist rhetoric is Phoenix rhetorum (1672) by J. Kwiatkiewicz and his Eloquentia reconditior (1689), which dealt with “arcane expression.” This current had its own canon of models in 17th-century European rhetoric. These were the publications of J. Masen, A. Juglaris, E. Tesaur, P. Labbé, and others. In the opinion of the contemporary Polish scholar B. Otwinowska, the fundamental trait of Baroque rhetoric lay in its departure from the full, proportionally balanced structure of theoretical rhetoric, deduced and synthesized from the non-uniform traditions of antiquity and late-Roman educational rhetoric by the scholars of the Renaissance, chiefly on the basis of the works of Quintilian. Above all, however, the 17th century’s works of rhetoric were informed by the material of exemplification. While Renaissance rhetoric had had more scholarly ambitions – unifying and presenting a theory, Baroque rhetoric was clearly oriented towards the practice of self-expression. The theoretical schema, while in many cases very precise and subtle, constituted only a framework to simplify the plan of exercises and the breakdown of material. Rhetoric handbooks turned into copious storehouses of the myriad knowledge public speakers needed to possess about literature, erudition, and the specifics of —— 115 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ social life. They also became similar to the kind of collection that had been previously compiled and published separately, of citations, phraseology, and bookish erudition (copia, elegantiae, etc.), supplemented by information about current society, various lists of noble coats-of-arms (allusiones ad stemmata), secular and religious titles, examples of inscriptions, epitaphs, and miscellaneous formulaic sayings, even including whole speeches, letters, and sermons, real or fictitious, offered as models for emulation. The first author to engage in Polish literary exemplification was M. K. Sarbiewski. The technical means whereby rhetoric textbooks were structured frequently reveal a drive to update and concretize rhetorical theories and prescriptions, to relate them to the needs of society, to local needs, or even to the tastes of a specific circle or literary method. As the eminent expert on rhetoric B. Otwinowska notes, this principle gave rise to a certain aesthetic relativism, even pluralism, and to a clear association between rhetoric and the development of literature, which manifested and propagated the rhetorical trends of the day. While Renaissance and early Baroque rhetoric sought ideal, timeless models of the basis for creative self-expression and prose, Baroque rhetoric attempted to cater to the “tastes of the age” and had a corresponding impact upon didactics. In the classical discourse of rhetoric and poetics, an especially important position was held by the notion of imitation (imitatio). In his Institutio oratoria, the manual that had the greatest impact on the subsequent theory of imitation, Roman theoretician and orator Marcus Fabius Quintilian asserted: “there can be no doubt that in art no small portion of our task lies in imitation.” But at the same time he warned: “no development is possible for those who restrict themselves to imitation.” Finally, he concluded: “the man whose aim is to prove himself better than another, even if he does not surpass him, may hope to equal him. But he can never hope to equal him, if he thinks it his duty merely to tread in his footsteps: for the mere follower must always lag behind.”7 7

Institutio oratoria, Book 10, Chapter 2. English translation by H. E. Butler.

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The European “Republic of Letters” The notion of imitation became for many centuries the foundation of cultural, literary, and also linguistic awareness. In the times of Petrarch, the discoverer and adorer of Cicero (i.e. the 14th century), enthusiasm for the antique ideal did not eclipse faith in original artistic invention. It was under the Ciceronian banner in the 15th century that the notions of the restitution and practical mastery of classical Latin emerged, and an entire set of concepts in literary criticism and criteria for literary assessment developed. In literary criticism, Ciceronianism chiefly boiled down to discussing stylistic issues. Attention was most frequently drawn by two particularly controversial issues: the problem of choosing one’s model for imitation and the problem of choosing one’s imitative approach. Some, such as Paolo Cortesi, chiefly favored Cicero – although not exclusively – as the optimal model for imitation; others like Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola struck a more eclectic stance. Opinions were also divided as to how one should approach the model to be emulated. The ideal of faithful imitation, closely reproducing the prototype, subject to rigors that ruled out deviations, was juxtaposed against the proposal of imitation without such slavish coercion. Within the program of reinstating the classical cultural reality, the idea of emulation played a significant role. Imitation in the wide sense was to be one of the paths that led to the realization of Renaissance dreams of “living antiquity.” The notion of immitation, closely bound up with the Renaissance idea – the rebirth of classical art and literature – belonged to the ideological universum of the newly emerging epoch; as such it existed seemingly outside of literary criticism, being among the factors that stimulated the development of certain trends in the field of such criticism, such as Ciceronianism, Horatianism, or Virgilianism. The same ideological contest that encouraged the development of Ciceronianism and the rhetorical categories of imitation also fostered reflection about imitation in poetry. Only in the 16th century, however, was there a clear revival in discussion about poetic imitation, which simultaneously became a significant component of the Renaissance study of poetry, as well as a perceptible element of poetic practice. —— 117 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ Debate about the models to be emulated embraced the outstanding works of the ancient poets: Homer, the Greek tragedians, Aristophanes, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus, Plautus, Seneca the Younger, and many others. Quintilian highly esteemed Virgil, with whom he began review of Latin poets, as the writer who “had come closest to Homer”; but Quintilian already drew attention to certain intrinsic qualities of Virgil’s creative technique, which began to be glorified in the 16th century: a consistent artistic caliber and “care and diligence” (cura et diligentia) in writing. The cult of Homer, very strong in the 15th century, was still maintained in the next, yet with time the nature of emotional attitudes towards and appraisals of classical poetry became less transparent, and encountered various complications. This involved not so much choosing a model for poetry, as choosing genre models. Moreover, the growing prestige of many classical authors touched off a wave of lesser poetic cults. Ultimately, beginning in the mid-16th century, Virgil, dubbed the “king of poets” by the theoretician and lawmaker of poetic art J. C. Scaliger, would vanquish Homer. Virgil’s Aeneid not only attained the rank of the optimal model for emulation, it was also intended to mediate between writers and natural reality, as theoreticians and poets alike proclaimed it a “second nature.” In Poland, beginning as early as in the 15th century, there was an awareness of the role played by the category of imitation in the humanist literary orientation. This awareness found expression in Ciceronian leanings and in the endeavor to imitate classical, especially lyric poets in Neo-Latin poetry. These experiences would be transplanted to the soil of literature written in the national language a few decades later. Contemporary studies of early Polish imitation (in Poland this chiefly refers to the works of B. Otwinowska) show that theoretical deliberations took on a varied nature. These included sporadic calls for the emulation of ancient authors (especially Cicero), loose assessments of a particular author’s style in terms of how it related to such a model, and methodological guidelines for who to imitate and how to do so – evident first in letter-writing handbooks, later in rhetorical —— 118 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” manuals, more rarely in studies of poetics, and lastly in separate treatises discussing the practice of imitation and the choice of one’s model, such as V. Fabricius’ Disquisitio de formis styli variis (1619), S. H. Lubomirski’s conversation III “On Style” in his Conversations of Artaxes and Evander (1683), and wider discussions in early Polish print or manuscript studies of rhetoric. Mono-imitative, Ciceronian theory was most clearly evident in the letter-writing manuals authored and printed in the first half of the 16th century. Jan Ursyn (Modus epistolandi, published in Poland in 1522) prescribed not just imitating the formulas, phrasings, and composition of Cicero’s letters in the most faithful way, he even sanctioned incorporating whole passages of these letters into one’s own. Such mechanical procedures were supposed to lead the artist to almost ideal imitation of his model. This process was frequently portrayed as “feasting on the nectar” of the emulated writer (the bee topos) or as “feeding on the milk” of the classical model’s “sweet speech” (the mother-and-child topos). Nevertheless, the axiom of even the most faithful imitation did not free the artist from the obligation to “express himself,” to present his own views and assessment of the world. Both Ursyn and other writers frequently equate imitation and emulation, seeking and designating “new” Ciceros, Liviuses, Horaces, Tibulluses, Virgils, and Martials in the native, Polish literature. Monikers of this sort most frequently indicated that a given writer, in the opinion of his contemporaries, approached an ancient model most closely in stylistic terms, or occupied a position analogous to that of the classical authority within the cultural panorama of the times. Imitation in Polish Neo-Latin literature led to the absorption of many genre structures and the establishment of styles that writers later tried to transfer, with greater or lesser modifications, to the literature then being created in the national language. The Ciceronian ideal could be adopted in Polish within the scope of the phraseology, syntax, and composition of Cicero’s speeches, letters, and treatises, without the lexical rigorism that even in the domain of Latin literature was a point of the most intense dispute by humanists who prescribed the imitation of the entire heritage of antiquity. This ideal —— 119 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ could thus foster the establishment of certain literary norms and the more precise specification of the national literary language’s lexicon, in the language of both prose and poetry – as is attested, for example, by an analysis of Kochanowski’s language and conceptual affinities. The 17th century, in turn, revered looser borrowings and preferred a sparkling mosaic of literary references. As B. Otwinowska notes, literary norms that were previously drawn wholesale from classical models were in this century adopted via the rules of rhetoric and genre, relying more upon the author’s own talent than upon the prestige of the old masters. A certain canon of new models was established, both foreign and home-grown. Sarbiewski held up Kochanowski as a classic of Polish poetry, still for the purposes of imitation, but later poets treated Kochanowski, like the poets of antiquity, not as an imitative source but rather as a source of looser borrowings and literary allusions. Moreover, continuing a trend already extent in the previous century, of opposing literature of a classicizing and mythological bent (represented, for example, by Erasmus of Rotterdam, and in Poland by M. Rej), Counterreformation writers looked to the Christian sources of literary reminiscences, i.e. to biblical and hagiographical texts: “From this wellspring / letter keeping / my guide and Muse / doth draw her cues” (“Z tego zdroja / Muza moja / po literze / koncept bierze”) boasted Kochowski in his “Offering Polish Poetry to the Most Holy Virgin Mary” (“Ofiarowanie poesim polskiej N. P. Maryjej”).

The Collapse of the Common Cultural World The theory of imitation was an integral component of the aesthetic program that, as Stanisław Balbus writes, involved “renewing a certain type of artistic models and establishing a certain kind of communication with a specific historical literary realm (…); overt programmatic emulation is particularly favored in literary periods when normative poetics held sway – i.e. in the modern era, during the period from the Renaissance to the end of the Enlightenment, inclusive of the decadent so-called pseudo-Classicism. (…) from the beginning of the Renaissance, a very important role in guaranteeing —— 120 ——

The European “Republic of Letters” the continuity and cohesion of European literature was played by the normative postulate of abiding by artistic rules – which were uniform to a greater or lesser degree, and overbearing to a greater or lesser degree, yet always derived from the normative poetics of antiquity. (…) This would bequeath European literature a communal, Classicistic bond all the way through the beginning of the 19th century. (…) The universal system of artistic rules derived from the rules of classical poetics and the universal models of literary works considered to be classics (and thus authoritative) acted, for at least three centuries, as two guarantees of cultural cohesiveness. For both of them, in turn, values were ultimately guaranteed by antique culture…” The modern Polish scholar’s opinions cited here captured and aptly expressed the essence of literary imitation, its notions and premises, as well as the writing practices that implemented it. “Programmatic imitation,” in Balbus’ opinion, involved the study of the masterpieces of the past, far-off yet assimilated as one’s own; it ensured the continuity of Mediterranean culture, the existence of a community with those who had set the models. The profound changes in the cultural situation that the watershed of Romanticism would bring led to the collapse and end of this Common World of Culture. The end of this world also entailed radical transformations in the realm of literary and cultural communication. The respublica litteraria (respublica litterarum) – i.e. as Juliusz Domański terms it “the society of those who practice writing and literature, of people who write and read” – began to manifest increasing diversification. The symbiosis of Latin and the national languages waned (although in Poland this only occurred at the outset of the 18th century!); the commonality of semiotic systems and worldviews such as Jean Paul Sartre still perceived for the 17th century when he wrote that “the author and reader belong to the same world and have the same views on everything” began to ebb. The European republic of letters lost its traits of unity, in favor of “intellectual conversation” (as S. Balbus writes). One question worth addressing is what impact the changed cultural situation had upon the previously extant community bonds. Without a doubt, the circumstances that had conditioned the existence of the European cultural and literary commonwealth either faded —— 121 ——

ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ or were transformed. The tradition of classical antiquity became the subject of long-enduring disputes and debates (the famous “clash between the ancients and the moderns”). It began to pose a challenge for “people who write and read” to communicate with each other. In the 19th century, common ideas, universal norms and aesthetic rules, widely copied masterworks ceased to act as guarantees of the continuity, the comprehensiveness, and the cohesion of European culture. What remained, however, was a rich repertoire of topoi and symbolism from antiquity as well as from Christian, Judaic, and Biblical tradition. In the translator’s foreword to his Polish rendition of Ernst Robert Curtius’ monumental European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Andrzej Borowski writes: “European literature [therefore] becomes here not so much a distinguishing or discriminating concept with respect to other cultures of world literature, as a proposal for a certain way of looking upon the cultural commonwealth we call Europe.” Curtius himself views European literature – from Homer to Goethe and beyond, all the way to the 20th century – as a continuously enduring world, free of temporal boundaries. We should recall his famous statement: “The «timeless present» which is an essential characteristic of literature means that the literature of the past can always be active in that of the present. So Homer in Virgil, Virgil in Dante, Plutarch and Seneca in Shakespeare, Shakespeare in Goethe’s Gotz von Berlinchingen, Euripides in Racine’s Iphigenia and Goethe’s. Or in our day: (…) the Odyssey in Joyce; Aeschylus, Petronius, Dante, Tristan Corbière and Spanish mysticism in T.S. Eliot. There is here an inexhaustible wealth of possible interrelations.”8 More than 20 years later, Denis de Rougemont, a philosopher and cultural historian of Swiss origin, alluded to Curtius’ statement in his Open Letter to the Europeans (Lettre ouverte aux Européens): “our national literatures arose out of the differentiation (sometimes late) of the common basis that is European literature.” The literary commonwealth of Europe is safeguarded by the heritage of 26 centuries, a treasure-trove of both forms and topics present in our literature. 8

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. English translation by W. R. Trask.

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The European “Republic of Letters” De Rougemont notes: “Of decisive import is the similarity of genres, structures, and rhetorical figures, which we do not perceive because it is too obvious: it confirms the specific nature and fundamental unity of the literary and cultural life of Europe.” Nevertheless, in de Rougemont’s analysis, the unity of 20th-century European culture is not reminiscent of the former cultural union that lasted until Goethe’s times, since this is now a union of pluralistic culture: “it is a community of antinomic values, of greatly varying provenience, combined in greatly varying proportions.” And thus the author of the Open Letter to the Europeans dubs Europe the “homeland of diversity” or even the “homeland of creative discord.” Such a concept of European cultural unity nevertheless stems from common roots and feeds upon the common Mediterranean tradition.

Bibliographical Notes Spingarn J. E., A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, New York 1899. Atkins J. W. H., Literary Criticism in Antiquity, v. I–II, Cambridge 1934. Baldwin Ch. S., Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice, New York 1939. Bolgar R. R., The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries, Cambridge 1954. Weinberg B., A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, t. I-II, Chicago 1961. Domański J., Tekst jako uobecnienie, Warszawa 1992. Otwinowska B., Imitacja. Retoryka. Entries in Słownik Literatury Staropolskiej, edited by T. Michałowska, Wrocław 1993. Garin E., Powrót filozofów starożytnych [The Return of the Ancient Philosophers], Polish edition, Warszawa 1993. Sarnowska-Temeriusz E., Przeszłość poetyki. Od Platona do Giambattisty Vica, Warszawa 1995. Balbus S., Między stylami, Kraków 1996. Źródła wiedzy teoretycznoliterackiej w dawnej Polsce. Średniowiecze – Renesans – Barok. Introduction, selection, and compilation by M. Cytowska and T. Michałowska, Warszawa 1999.

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JERZY SNOPEK

JERZY SNOPEK

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment

In the early stage of the Enlightenment, the Saxon Elector August III Wettin acceded to the Polish throne (1733) owing to Russian military backing. His years of reign brought about progressive anarchy in the life of the country, dominance by the nobility, and paralysis of the central authorities. The first signs of positive change appeared in the field of culture and education (the work of reformer S. Konarski). After August III’s death, Stanisław August Poniatowski became the next and final king of the dual Polish-Lithuanian Republic (in 1764). He, too, acceded to the throne with Moscow’s backing, which again engendered constant Russian meddling in Poland’s internal affairs. This sparked a revolt fomented by the nobility against the king and against Russian influence (the Confederation of Bar,1768-1772). The defeat of this movement led Russia, Austria, and Prussia to carry out the first partition of Poland (1772), whereby the Republic was stripped of 1/3 of its land and made more dependent upon Russia. Under such difficult circumstances the king did make successive attempts at pushing through social reforms, but these were generally torpedoed both by Empress Catherine the Great of Russia and by the conservative faction of the Polish nobility. It was only the Four-Year Sejm (1788-1792) that managed to pass a constitution that enacted numerous progressive reforms (the Constitution of 3 May 1791), which was nevertheless soon repealed, with Russia playing a key role in undermining it. An armed intervention by the Tsarina’s army and a Polish-Russian war ensued, —— 124 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment followed by the second partition of Poland (1793). The Kościuszko Uprising broke out in defense of the country, but despite many acts of heroism and several successful skirmishes, it was ultimately unable to avert the demise of the Polish Commonwealth. With the third partition in 1795, the Polish state ceased to exist and throngs of Poles went into emigration. In 1797, Polish Legions were formed in Italy under the command of J.H. Dąbrowski, with the aim of securing Poland’s independence via an alliance with Napoleon. The Warsaw Principality, an ersatz Polish state, was indeed set up in 1807, and the republican Napoleonic Code was put into force there (from 1808). Nevertheless, Napoleon’s defeat in Russia (1812) led to the downfall of this Warsaw Principality and to a new division of the Polish lands, instituted at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. In Western European syntheses on the Enlightenment, Europe stops at the Elbe River. The perceptual horizon of such studies’ authors (who frequently are otherwise outstanding researchers, such as Paul Hazard) does not even encompass Russia, not to speak of the smaller countries of Central Europe: the Czech lands, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, etc. Such works might sometimes mention an individual from Polish culture of the Enlightenment period – such as Konarski or Krasicki, or most often just the name of the king, Stanisław August Poniatowski – but such passing references only appear on the fringes of the main line of exposition, when the author wants to inform the reader about what was going on over there, ubi leones, meaning outside the boundaries of true European culture. We may find it disheartening that Central European research by such renowned historians of literature as Claude Backvis, Paul Cazin, Jean Fabre, and Sante Graciotti has been of little avail here. Indeed, Cazin in his monograph on Krasicki as well as Backvis in his book on Trembecki, through detailed comparative analysis, laid bare the great artistic value of these authors’ works yet did not manage to incorporate these brilliant representatives of the Polish Enlightenment into the generally-recognized canon of the epoch. And so, the lack of a modern reception, or at least of adequate translations, also seems fraught with unfortunate ramifications. —— 125 ——

JERZY SNOPEK Nevertheless, such attempts do have to be continued – and this is just what we are doing here – since the political and economic integration of our continent must be coupled with a genuine recognition and reassessment of our common cultural tradition. The achievements of Central European literatures (Russia being a distinct problem) are not just a complement to this tradition, they indeed significantly enrich it. Our point of departure here might be misleading. There is no doubt that the culture of the dual Polish-Lithuanian Republic found itself in a historical backwater in the 18th century. There was a clear time lag in the developmental rhythm of Polish literature as compared to Western European literatures. The Enlightenment began in the West, of course, at the outset of the 18th century (or according to some researchers even earlier, around 1685) but the period did not begin in Poland, strictly speaking, until midway through the 18th century. During the preceding period in the West, Baroque culture had blossomed, or – as in France – the tone had been set by a magnificent Classicism. In Poland the great Baroque period had run itself out by the end of the 17th century, to fall into protracted agony over the next half-century, in tandem with the progressive atrophy of artistic taste in literature and the demise of language. The transition to the Enlightenment in the West had been fairly mild; the role of a cultural keystone of sorts, a factor of cultural continuity and continuation, had been played by Classicism, and in the realm of ideas by Cartesianism, by the philosophy of Locke and Hobbes, by English deism and the movements of 17th-century intellectual libertinism. The transition to the Enlightenment in Poland, on the other hand, involved an artistic and “intellectual coup” (a term coined by W. Smoleński). The chronologically closest domestic tradition was a negative one; this pertained in particular to the literary language and artistic forms. In the realm of ideas the situation was more complicated, since Christian heritage played a great role in Poland during the Enlightenment period as well. As a result, this realm was the scene of constant clashes between the old and the new. Such conflicts and polemics, as a result of the necessary compromises, gave rise to new substance. This situation was the result of specific historical, political, social, and cultural conditions that we can merely touch upon here; these included the incommensurately large (for the Enlightenment period) —— 126 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment cultural role played by the clergy, and the undeniably peculiar nature of the governmental system in force in the Polish Republic at that time. How did this system compare against the general European backdrop of the age? Here we might draw upon the classification presented by the outstanding statist of those times, Stanisław Leszczyński (himself earlier king, albeit briefly), who asked: “Is Europe not divided into two types of government?” The answer, one can surmise, was affirmative; these two types being the monarchy and the republic. In such countries as France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sardinia, Denmark, Prussia, Russia, and the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, absolutism prevailed (albeit an enlightened absolutism). In England, Poland, Sweden, Poland, Venice, Genoa, and the Swiss cantons, in turn, there was a republican form of government, according to the definition of those times, which entailed a large parliamentary role. Nonetheless, there was very significant variation amongst the latter countries in terms of the scope of civil rights. Besides, these “republication” countries literally had a monarchy as well – even a hereditary monarchy in some countries, such as England and Sweden. The monarch with the littlest say on political issues was probably the Polish Commonwealth’s enlightened King Stanisław August Poniatowski. Power was de facto in the hands of magnate oligarchies that took advantage of the middle and petty nobility, being themselves oftentimes manipulated by external powers, especially Moscow. AHcertain historical continuity can be perceived in this regard, as such a situation had persisted in Poland essentially since the first free royal election in 1572. The men of the Enlightenment attempted to break this continuity, but did not manage to (perhaps we should say: before it was too late). These conditions had a multifaceted impact upon the shape of the Polish Enlightenment. As historians have shown, absolutism was always coupled with endeavors to subjugate the Church (or Churches) to the state. In Poland such subjugation was out of the question; too powerful were the noble classes that cultivated the old ideal of the Catholic-Pole. At the same time, the burghers, like the bourgeoisie in Western countries, were too weak to propose new models. By the standards of the times, a huge role in shaping Enlightenment culture —— 127 ——

JERZY SNOPEK was played in Poland by the noble elites, forced to come to grips with their own heritage in dramatic fashion, and frequently by the clergy, who had to seek various compromises and a “golden mean.” For this reason the Polish Enlightenment could not be as ideologically radical as the French Enlightenment. But by the same token, owing to this very fact the former could not be a copy of the latter (and indeed was not). The Polish Enlightenment fostered its own salient values. It did of course look for inspiration, especially at the outset, both to its own Renaissance tradition and to contemporary Western European writing. The receptivity and industriousness demonstrated by the writers of the Polish Enlightenment were unprecedented in this regard. The number of translated and travestied works of foreign literature was many times greater than the entire output of Old Polish literature in this field. Moreover, prior to the Enlightenment it was the classical tradition that had most frequently been drawn upon, but now a majority of the works being adapted to Polish culture were from the modern or even the contemporary epoch: adaptations were chiefly being made from 17th-century Classicist works and from Enlightenment literature. This was done with a keen awareness of Poland’s above-mentioned cultural backwardness. Such efforts were aimed at fertilizing and enriching domestic literature, at cultivating the language and rendering it more subtle, at reaching out to the widest possible circles of readers (it was clear, after all, that the elite knew French, plus German to a lesser degree). Due to the time lag in the development of Polish literature, the Enlightenment in Poland (just as throughout Central Europe) was of a somewhat syncretic nature, and a vast role was played in the literature of the region by Classicism, which had seen its apogee significantly earlier in the West.

THE EARLY AND MATURE ENLIGHTENMENT As was already mentioned above, the Enlightenment in Poland, just as in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe lagging several decades behind the West, began in about 1750. The period came to an end at the same point as the Western European Enlightenment, —— 128 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment in 1815, when the treaty of the Congress of Vienna symbolically laid to rest the most important ideas, utopias, and illusions of the epoch. This protracted latter half of the 18th century was exceptionally momentous for all of Western civilization. It led from Diderot’s Encyclopédie and the much-publicized discourses of Rousseau, through daring attempts at social reform and change in the realm of individual ethics (based on a foundation of secular values and rational argumentation), to revolution, which represented both the culmination of the Enlightenment and the source of its crisis and demise. In Poland this was a colorful and diverse period, a time of “hope and disaster.” A cultural revival was achieved during the period, political and social changes aimed at modernizing the country were initiated, but it was also then that the successive partitions of Poland were carried out by the surrounding countries: Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In 1795, Poland would disappear from the map of Europe. The end of the Enlightenment would antedate, therefore, the downfall of the state.

* The years 1750-1764 should be considered the early Enlightenment period in Poland. Then on the throne of the dual PolishLithuanian Republic was the Saxon King August III. Even though the monarch was a foreigner, Poland was dominated by the culture of the domestic nobility, generally termed “Sarmatian culture.” It manifested itself chiefly in the customs and rituals of everyday life, in forms of Catholic religiousness within the framework of late Baroque esthetics. This was a culture of balls and feasts, of hunting and merrymaking, at times embellished with readings of purpose-written poetry and theatrical performances. The years preceding the Polish Enlightenment, as well as its initial stage, are spoken of as the “golden age” of noble democracy, a period of peace and prosperity. Nonetheless, the noble oligarchy’s domination rendered the monarchy powerless and paralyzed state authority, a state of affairs that would only be rectified (although not fully) by Enlightenment ideologists and politicians. For many decades, Jesuit education had led to the ruin—— 129 ——

JERZY SNOPEK ation of language and taste. A lot was written, but these were works devoid of artistic value. Monstrous, terribly conventional poems were written, along with clumsy satires and panegyrics, while the Old and New Testaments were zealously translated into cumbersome versions reminiscent of medieval poetry, but lacking its naive, fresh faith. On the threshold of the new epoch, a prominent role was played by the educational reform championed by the Piarist monk Stanisław Konarski, the “father of the Polish Enlightenment.” He also launched a struggle to perfect the Polish language. Soon, Konarski was joined by more crusaders in the battle to refine the Polish language. Another outstanding figure during this pioneering stage was Franciszek Bohomolec. In the literature of the early Enlightenment, not many names are worthy of note — and even those that are laudable are only of local Polish significance, such as the work of Poland’s first outstanding poetess, Elżbieta Drużbacka (1699-1765), as well as her contemporary poets Józef Epifani Minasowicz and Hetman Wacław Rzewuski. All three strove in their verse for a classical simplicity of expression, while still lingering within the Baroque a esthetic and especially the worldview of the Baroque and Counterreformation. In Drużbacka’s best works – such as The Four Seasons (Cztery pory roku) – such a conflict of contradictory esthetics engendered a more intensive expression. Rzewuski’s verse, in turn, is already dominated by the classical model, as is demonstrated by his didactic poem Lesson for the Verse-Writer (Nauka wierszopiska), which harks back to Horace and Boileau. Consisting of 32 artistically-wrought octaves, the language of this versified poetics is clear, light, and voluble; no comparable work is to be found in the Central European literature of the time. In Poland, Lesson for the Verse-Writer would only be dethroned in the 1780s by Franciszek Ksawery Dmochowski’s Art of Poetry (Sztuka rymotwórcza), a systematic exposition of Classicist poetics itself in the form of a deft poem, not inferior to Boileau’s L’art poetique. Interestingly, Rzewulski’s poetry is devoid of Baroque figures, yet his worldview remained Sarmatian. The hetman was a staunch advocate of the gentry’s liberties, the Counterreformation ideal of the Catholic-Pole, etc. A fuller relapse of the Baroque would be seen in —— 130 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment the grotesque poetry of Józef Baka and the religious lyric poetry of Konstancja Benisławska, written during the first stage of the mature Enlightenment.

* The mature Enlightenment in Poland encompasses the period from King Stanisław August Poniatowski’s accession to the throne of the Republic (1794) until the calamity of the state (1795). Stanisław August is a controversial figure. He had as many supporters as he had opponents, and this remains the case today. In his lifetime he was hated by Sarmatian traditionalists; nowadays he is most often accused of having lacked heroism, of having been submissive to foreign models and especially to foreign powers, Russia in particular. Nevertheless, it is universally accepted that he embodied the ideal of the enlightened ruler. He was superbly educated, demonstrated subtle tastes, and commanded extensive historical and literary erudition. He showed concern for education and culture, including political culture. But the times were not propitious. The king lifted the country out of torpor and backwardness, but in so doing propelled it into the unforgiving embrace of the partitioning powers, who had an interest in ensuring that Poland was weak and acted as a kind of buffer. The king and the royal reform program patronized science, the arts, and literature, which were expected to further the cause of reform, to support and popularize it. One very important institution that arose out of this program was the national theater, inaugurated in 1765 as one of the first in Europe. A huge role in fostering culture was played by Enlightenment-minded journals: Monitor, similar to the English Spectator, and Poland’s first literary journal Pleasant and Useful Entertainment (Zabawy Przyjemne i Pożyteczne). Certain magnate manors acted as literary centers and even fostered literary trends. The most famous of these, the Czartoryski manor in Puławy, generated, inspired, and supported a literary group in the 1780s that was independent of the royal circle. While the monarch’s court was dominated by Classicism, the Puławy manor harbored sentimentalism (with elements of Rococo). —— 131 ——

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* The groundwork from which Enlightenment-era Classicism grew in Polish literature was not so much elements of 17th-century Baroque, but more the entire cultural, social, and political complex that comprised the civilization of the Polish Commonwealth in the period immediately preceding (and even partially overlapping) the Enlightenment. This encompassed a vivid and formidable mix of hedonistic customs for the privileged classes but destitution for the servile masses, chaos and corruption in politics, pomp and circumstance in religious life, plus degenerate language and debauched tastes. Then, the possibility of Classicism appeared on the cultural horizon. This current had survived in the Western European Enlightenment, although it was at that time of lesser significance in the West than it was in Central and Eastern Europe. The strong bourgeoisie in the West gravitated towards realism, rapacious publicist commentary, and sentimental emotionality. In the Polish Republic, Classicism was envisaged as a cure for the ills that plagued the country. It was supposed to purify language, to cultivate speech and thought, and to refine tastes. Stanisław August Poniatowski harnessed Classicism to further the cause of cultural renewal and social reform. All the more significant rules of Classicist esthetics were adopted, but it was a characteristic trait of the Polish Classicism of the Enlightenment that it emphasized the social (i.e. moralizing, patriotic, educational) functions of literary art. Classicism dominated the Polish Enlightenment for long years, although the first heresies and contestations were already appearing in the 1770s. As time passed, the didactic objectives of literature began to be questioned, including against the backdrop of Classicism; the import of individual experience began to be emphasized and the role of passion and emotionality reasserted. Among such alternative trends, the greatest autonomy was achieved by the sentimental current. Sentimentalism developed chiefly in the provinces, above all at the aforementioned Czartoryski manor in Puławy, as a reaction to the Classicism of the royal court and Warsaw. It drew chiefly upon Jean-Jacques Rousseau, especially in terms —— 132 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment of general ideological messages. It was encrusted with elements of Classicism. Of a definitively Rococo nature, on the other hand, were the cultural happenings and events organized at another residence of the very same Czartoryski family, in the Warsaw suburb of Powązki. In the 18th century, as is well known, the natural milieu of the Rococo was formed by the aristocracy, which could already sense a vague premonition that the twilight of its historical role was nigh. It flitted back and forth from basking in life’s pleasures with a devil-may-care spirit, to harboring a covert and sometimes perverse fascination with simplicity, the plebes, and primitive brawn. At times the aristocracy was active within the camp of revolutionaries, social radicals, democrats, freethinkers, and libertines, not always realizing that it was thereby hastening the destruction of its own world. The Rococo man is not concerned with the past, but is subconsciously apprehensive of the future. He professes the classical principle “carpe diem.” He wants to lose himself in enjoyment; he wants to feel delight, chiefly through love. Erotic delights, flirtation, cold scheming with others’ feelings had to be coupled with the pleasures of the table, brisk conversation, and ridicule of sentimental lovers and serious mentors. Everything was guided by the spirit of entertainment, although such enjoyment was reminiscent of an escape: from weariness with one’s own countenance, with one’s own face and one’s own class, an escape through masks, playacting, and masquerades. The “house of pleasure” itself, concentrating perverse excesses hidden inside the guise of an impoverished peasant’s cottage, constituted a hallmark embodiment of the Rococo spirit. But note the duality: a modest, sentimental hut on the outside, yet perverse Rococo excesses on the inside. Rococo within one’s own circle, but outwardly a sentimental and patriotic message to the people. The pre-revolutionary French aristocracy no longer bothered itself in this regard, but in Poland the aristocracy still harbored certain scruples and illusions – and thus the literature that arose within its domain was the least Rococo. Literary Rococo, construed as the unbiased grace and harmony of small forms and pastel colors, as a game of enchanting words, piquant phrasings and glimmering masks, as —— 133 ——

JERZY SNOPEK free beauty without moral tributes or didactic aims, appeared in the Polish Enlightenment quite sporadically, although certain Rococo traits can indeed be found even in the works of such outstanding authors as Krasicki, Kniaźnin, Trembecki, Naruszewicz, Jasiński, Zabłocki and Jan Potocki.

POETRY During this none-too-poetic epoch, it is hard to find a lyrical masterpiece in all of European poetry. Perhaps the closest to making such a claim are the verses of André Chénier and the late works of Mihály Csokonai and Franciszek Dionizy Kniaźnin. Masterpieces were being consistently written, on the other hand, in such Classicist genres as fable and satire. In both of these cases, perhaps the best works of the Enlightenment were penned by Polish poets: Ignacy Krasicki and Stanisław Trembecki. The predecessor of both these poets was Adam Naruszewicz (17331796), whose impact upon the development of Enlightenment poetry in Poland was very great. Naruszewicz still clearly lingered within the Baroque esthetic, but he consciously blazed a path for himself and his successors towards Classicism. Particularly in Naruszewicz’s odes, a kind of clash unfolded between the Baroque and Classicism. Only a few of these odes approach the threshold of excellence. One of these is Balloon (Balon), which in lofty and vivid words sings the glory and power of reason, only to descend in its final stanzas into a quite shallow panegyric addressed to the king. Naruszewicz the poet felt best in the role of a satirist and denouncer than in the garb of the flatterer and eulogist, although he had to (perhaps wanted to?) don the latter garb for almost his entire life. In an astounding poetic work full of polemical verve and virulent sarcasm, Daniel Kalwiński on the Disbanding of the Jesuits (Daniel Kalwiński na zniesienie jezuitów), he did not shrink from making violent attacks against the pope, or even blaspheming certain truths of the faith. All of this ostensibly in defense of the recently disbanded Jesuit order. (He himself was a Jesuit, and later a bishop, although he did not eschew tones that were quite libertine.) In Naruszewicz’s work we have on the one hand a plainly —— 134 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment Baroque sense of the human condition and existence, yet on the other an Enlightenment-age coldness towards Christianity and idolatry of reason! This raging attack against Pope Clement XIV finds its formal compliment in Naruszewicz’s passionate satires, especially in Redoubts (Reduty), Spoiled Age (Wiek zepsuty) and Stupidity (Głupstwo), where he gives a sound thrashing to dandies, fools, and prudes. These works are characterized by pithiness of expression and a plainly Sarmatian truculence. Naruszewicz the satirist lacks the humor, lightness, and finesse of Krasicki (here we anticipate somewhat the conclusion of our argument below), but he does bring a passionate power of sarcasm and clarity of verse. He does not cut to the heart of the matter with a single precise thrust, but rather stuns by means of a thousand blows, through a rain of epithets, images, and comparisons. Within the form of drastic and post-Juvenal satire, but at the same time generalized and impersonal, these works constitute an interesting and to a significant extent original phenomenon in Enlightenment-age Europe. Naruszewicz had many imitators and continuators among Enlightenment poets. The libertine poet Tomasz Kajetan Węgierski, who died young, tried to match him in terms of satirical verve, but Węgierski’s muse was already too toned-down by Classicist moderation, and contained more irony and causticity than impulsive force of expression, such as distinguished Naruszewicz’s satire. Węgierski, the most talented of the more minor poets at the time, was still more distant from the undoubted masterpieces of the genre: the satires of Krasicki.

* Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801) was merely two years younger than Naruszewicz, but relics of the Baroque are not to be found in his work. He appeared before the literary audience as a fully-fledged poet (he was then, admittedly, already 40 years old); leaping into public view like Minerva from Zeus’s head – immediately in full fighting gear. His Satires (Satyry) appeared in the bookshops in 1779, four years after his debut; a second part of the cycle was produced by the Prince Bishop of Warmia five years later (Krasicki was a bishop, after —— 135 ——

JERZY SNOPEK all, and even primate after 1795, although religious fervor is not to be encountered in his works). This literary genre of satire has a magnificent classical tradition (Horace, Persius, Juvenal), and was subsequently practiced by such wellknown authors as Voltaire, Boileau, and Pope; nevertheless Krasicki’s satires represent perhaps the most outstanding artistic achievement in the modern history of the genre. They bear the stamp of masterpiece. Due to the author’s personality traits – gentleness, an excellent sense of humor, irony, and at the same time skepticism and restraint, as an artist he employed more subtle and refined means of criticism than the outright venom and hatred-ridden invectives the anonymous political poetry of the times were rife with. Krasicki was well aware that he would fail to hit home if he were a boring satirist, something that at times befell even his outstanding predecessor Naruszewicz – when the righteous indignation that prompted the latter’s pen with vivid images faltered for but a moment, to be replaced by the moralizing tone of the preacher who knows everything better. In order to educate and instruct, one has to entertain – the Prince Bishop of Warmia always bore this Horatian truth in mind. And, more importantly, he knew how to employ it. All sorts of phenomena from the reality of the time, not just in Poland, fell within his scope of vision: phenomena meriting rebuke, reform, and in certain cases even eradication. He found them chiefly within the milieu that was best known to him, and was at the same time of the most import: the nobility. Krasicki the satirist thus portrays the unquestionable stupidity and ostensible wisdom of trendy tricksters and smart-alecks, the wastefulness and miserliness, the belligerence and gambling, the intrigues of court life and drunkenness. He unfolds before readers a colorful gallery of figures with these vices, looks upon them with humor, but sometimes finds it difficult to refrain from sarcasm; he listens in on their conversations, in order to suddenly change perspective and look philosophically at the whole: at the “depraved world.” He expresses disapproval both for the vices that in the general conviction were all that remained of Sarmatian society, as well as for the social ills that had begun to proliferate as a result of the mindless —— 136 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment aping of novelties from the West. The expansion of superficial, shallow, cosmopolitan pseudo-Enlightenment seems to him so menacing that he himself points society toward the example set by “decent ancestors.” We should integrate with Europe – the Prince Bishop of Warmia says to his countrymen – but in a conscientious and wise way, without disdain for ourselves or for our own culture, because then what shall we contribute to Europe, what shall we build together? He expounded the principles of decent life in detail in the novel Mister Pantler (Pan Podstoli). But did he believe that they could truly be lived by? In his satires he at times demonstrates skepticism. It is telling how often he abandons the position of a narrator and critic who views his characters from above, in order to find himself somehow among them – or even to do no more than listen to what they have to say, as in the superb Drunkenness (Pijaństwo). The cycle contains more dialogic satires than monologic ones, but the latter are also far from the sermon schema. Krasicki offers varying points of perspective, excellently portrayed, typified characters, superb genre scenes, and a varying tone of expression – and all of this shot through with irony. If we also consider the linguistic virtues and impeccability of Krasicki’s verse, we grow closer to comprehending his prominence as a satirist.

* Krasicki’s epigrammatic fables, published in the collection Fables and Parables (Bajki i przypowieści) in 1779, are generally considered to be an even greater artistic achievement than his Satires. Experts do not deny the excellence of his later narrative fables as well (in the style of La Fontaine), but here Krasicki is surpassed by his domestic rival, Trembecki. As an author of epigrammatic fables, however, Krasicki has few equals in all of world literature. He is not inferior to the classical Phaedrus, or to Benserade, the author of French paraphrases of Aesop encapsulated in tetrastich, or even less to Lessing, who wrote wittily and concisely, but in prose. In one of his books, Krasicki wrote: “A fable should be short, clear, and as far as possible assert the truth.” And such are his epigram—— 137 ——

JERZY SNOPEK matic fables: pithy and aimed at portraying as concisely as possible some fundamental truth about mankind and society. They are at the same time exceptionally precisely constructed, and delight readers with a kind of beauty that is conventionally termed “geometric.” Nevertheless, their author had to manage an utterly insuperable task. Each fable had to remain what it essentially was, i.e. a parabolic story, yet its content had to be condensed to the greatest possible extent, thus requiring that descriptive passages, more extensive characterizing of the heroes, etc., all be cast aside. Under such conditions, how can one avoid schematism, retain the impression of lightness and ease, and salvage the excellent balance between the opposing demands of individualization and generalization? Herein lies the secret of Krasicki’s craft, his Classicist artistry! In the miniaturized space of his works he proved himself to be a grand master of form, almost always finding the ideal solution, using symmetrical juxtapositions of parallelisms and contrasts with infallible intuition. In so doing he worked with unstrained wit, and used language that was simple and elegant, but tended towards a colloquial tone. Some literary historians recognize Krasicki’s fables to have been his most lyrical works. Such an evaluation does contain quite a bit of exaggeration, but it is a fact that they do manifest a sort of philosophy of the Prince Bishop of Warmia. Not without good reason, Krasicki maintained that a fable had to strike at the truth in order to achieve its moral objective. It is the world of moral behavior, therefore, that is the subject of cognitive pursuit and contemplative generalization. The ethics of Fables and Parables are of a dual nature: they report as well as postulate. Above all, however, the author portrays the world as it really is. The Italian Slavist Sante Graciotti even attempted to argue that Krasicki’s fables portray real life, while his aforementioned novel Mr. Pantler presents life as it should be. So how did Krasicki see human morality? This (it would seem) cheerful Classicist proves to have had a downright depressing view. In nature (in society), the principle of supremacy by the strongest prevails. As a principle of ethics, this principle is voiced in many old Greek works. We can find it, for example, on the pages of the Iliad and the Odyssey. There, however it is accompanied by the principle —— 138 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment of the repentant heart, which makes room for altruistic attitudes, something we cannot find in Krasicki’s fables. As Paul Cazin wrote: “Krasicki is able to portray horrifying images of the relentless rules of the struggle for existence.” Drawing upon Konstanty Wojciechowski’s opinion that the Prince Bishop’s epigrammatic fables are “little dramas,” he maintains that “they are more an extensive tragedy in 100 almost cruel acts.” Successive experiences, successive observations and conclusions lead to a somewhat minimalist program, the chief theme of which emerges as the (relative) security of the actors appearing in this gloomy “human comedy.” The road to such security, for Krasicki, leads through the Horatian “golden mean.” The aforementioned Cazin made a salient point in his study of the Prince Bishop: “Even if Krasicki had written only his narrative fables, he would have taken a place among the most outstanding fablers of the world. Yet in epigrams he is one-of-a-kind, incomparable.”

* As an author of narrative fables, however, Krasicki is nevertheless surpassed by both Trembecki and La Fontaine. The works of the Prince Bishop of Warmia lack the tenderness and warmth that are so characteristic of the French master, and lack Trembecki’s vividness and force of expression. Stanisław Trembecki (1739-1812) was a very picturesque figure – a Sarmatian adventure-seeker, a libertine, a great reader and erudite, but above all: a poet bordering upon genius. He wrote superb political verses, and in his philosophical and descriptive poems he extolled tolerance and other enlightened noble ideas –as in Polanka, Powązki, but also the tragedy of human existence, the lushness and beauty of nature – as in Sofia’s Garden (Sofijówka), a work we will return to below. When we contrast this poet with Krasicki, we must assert that the smooth and refined poetry of the Prince Bishop of Warmia was wanting of the kind of savagery that imparts color and power to Trembecki’s works. This Classicist did not hesitate to utilize “crude” expressions, archaisms, or regionalisms in his poetry, employing them with infal—— 139 ——

JERZY SNOPEK lible accuracy. He was their “benevolent ruler,” as Mickiewicz, fascinated with Trembecki, phrased it. Trembecki quickly achieved a state of artistic balance: he had a voice that was as if inherently well-toned. And so he possessed what Naruszewicz, with whom he was bound by a kinship of poetic art, forged with great effort. Trembecki was an excellent embodiment of the conjurer-poet; he was able to write excellent verse on any topic and with any ideological spin. He was thus an ideal court poet, despite the fact that he sometimes – fortunately – dropped out of character in this role. He was characterized by original depictions of topics, by a capacity to create superb phrasings, but above all by language that was unique in its beauty, conciseness, and vividness, and by his absolute command of poetic form. Adam Mickiewicz, who incidentally did not hold Enlightenment-age poetry in high regard, expressed the greatest esteem for Trembecki’s masterly skill in his Paris lectures: “The most fluent and most fully-fledged writer that there ever was in Slavic literature (…) he was a true Greek from the times of Pericles, or a Latinist from the epoch of Augustus.” The domain of Trembecki’s artistry lies in the realm of style. This is why there is indeed a bit of truth in Wacław Borowy’s paradoxical statement that this poet’s originaity is evidenced in his translations, adaptations, and paraphrases. In them, Trembecki generally exceeds his own models. This is true in the case of his poetic adaptation of Voltaire’s Prodigal Son, as well as in the case of his paraphrases of La Fontaine’s fables. Almost all of them are masterpieces. They are so vivid and lively that next to Trembecki the great La Fontaine seems somewhat pale and anemic. At the same time they are very harmonious, with a clear pointe. In order to appreciate this writer’s class, it suffices to compare, for example his version of The Wolf and the Lamb with other nevertheless outstanding versions of the fable: those of Krylov and especially La Fontaine.

* Krasicki’s great talent shone in yet another genre of Classicist poetry – in the mock-heroic poem. As is well known, the heroic —— 140 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment genre boasts a very long and beautiful tradition. The most famous manifestations of this genre include the Batrachomyomachia, for centuries ascribed to Homer. Among the famous mock-heroic poems of the modern era we find Tassoni’s Rape of the Bucket and Vide’s Game of Chess. Many similar works were produced during the Enlightenment period, with the most well-known of them being Gresset’s Vert-vert, Boileau’s The Lectern, Pope’s Rape of the Lock, and Voltaire’s Maid of Orleans. Not inferior to them artistically are Krasicki’s mock-heroic poems: The Mouseiad (Myszeis) and especially Monachomachia or The War of the Monks (Monachomachia albo wojna mnichów). The mock-heroic poem is a genre excellently suited to the Prince Bishop’s creative temperament, to both his poetic talents and his personality traits. Krasicki loved to look at the world from a distance. He was at home in the role of the observer, humorously describing the theater of human follies and passions. He perceived the ridiculousness in all pomp and pathos. He was struck by the triviality of matters considered great and important. Not a single pretense in the mask of truth was safe from his gaze. Krasicki loved to hunt out foolishness under the guise of seriousness, being passed off as wisdom, pettiness concealed behind bombastic gestures, grandiloquence trying to imitate competence. We find much of this unmasking passion in the Prince Bishop’s mock-heroic poems, especially Monachomachia. In it, two needs of the author’s artistic nature found an outlet: teaching and entertaining. He expressed this concisely in one of his songs, writing: “Laughter, too, can at times be a lesson.” Nonetheless, here too we encounter a pure laughter, intended only as good entertainment. It resounds predominantly when comedy stems from the parody of the epos. Once we approach the characters, a shade of satire appears and laughter also becomes a lesson. As the poem’s title indicates, its characters are monks. Krasicki nevertheless did not want for his mockery and satire to be associated with the orders that had contributed to the Enlightenment cause in Poland: the Piarists and Jesuits. And so, although the pages of Monachomachia teem with a multifarious and motley bevy of monks, —— 141 ——

JERZY SNOPEK those in the foreground are representatives of two mendicant orders: Franciscan-Observants and Carmelites. These are the chief characters, and the conflict between them is the axis of mock-heroic action. This conflict rapidly degenerates into battle, and ultimately to an accord achieved under grotesque circumstances. Employing irony and ridicule, the author, as if en passant, exposes the vices of monastic society, which are otherwise identical to those of noble society: chiefly ignorance and drunkenness. Monachomachia is superbly written. It is full of concise phrasings that have since become proverbs in the Polish language. It sparkles with humor that illuminates the bitter truths the writer wants to portray to society. It contains no obtrusive moralizing or directly expressed condemnation. Some disapprobation is even perfidiously concealed under the cloak of praise, although entirely transparently (Krasicki utilized this trick superbly in the ingenious satire To the King – Do króla). The overall image is refined by the excellence of Krasicki’s octets (here as in The Mouseiad), which would only be surpassed by the great romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki. Published anonymously in 1778, Monachomachia sparked a scandal – and soon the issue of its authorship became an open secret. There was indignation that such ridicule of monks had in fact been penned by a bishop. Two years passed following the publication of Monachomachia, when Antymonachomachia, the writer’s response to voices of criticism, appeared in the bookseller’s market. Here the author ostensibly agrees with his critics, while in fact confirming and reaffirming all of his tenets and allegations. He does so in a poem with identical form and of the same size. Many other mock-heroic poems were written in Enlightenmentage Poland, but despite many sometimes interesting concepts (in Jakub Jasiński’s Quarrels – Sprzeczki we find the buds of the digressive poem) they do not match either the works of Krasicki or his foreign prototypes. If they are important, it is more within the domestic context. In the wider Central European context, the Hungarian mockheroic by Csokonai, Dorothy or The Triumph of the Ladies at the Carnival (Dorottya vagyis a dámák diadalma a fársángon), is worthy of note. —— 142 ——

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* Great works were not penned by other important poets of the mature Enlightenment, who were admittedly within the realm of Classicism, but who also demonstrated pronounced connections to sentimentalism and Rococo. This primarily refers to Kajetan Węgierski (1756-1787) and Jakub Jasiński (1759-1794). The two both rebelled against social wrongs and injustices; in spirit they were revolutionaries as well as libertines. Jasiński adulated the French revolution and called upon his countrymen to carry out a similar one; Węgierski in turn did not live to see the French revolution. Both were individualists, observing the world from the perspective of the individual: Węgierski to the end, and Jasiński until the Four-Year Sejm and the outbreak of the revolution in France. The latter then died fighting the Russians, not long before the third partition of Poland. Of a rather sentimental nature is the poetic output of both Franciszek Karpiński (1741-1825) and Franciszek Dionizy Kniaźnin (17501807), although Classicist and Baroque elements – and even entire compositions – can be found in the works of both of them, as well as Rococo in Kniaźnin. Karpiński, as a “tender-hearted poet,” was very popular, and Mickiewicz appreciated him as well, but the true pearl of his work is Song on the Birth of Our Lord (Pieśń o narodzeniu Pańskim), to this day one of the most beloved Polish Christmas carols. Kniaźnin was associated with the court of the Czartoryskis, and so he frequently wrote special works to order, which were chiefly patriotic – and fortunately so, because he could write frankly – such as the famous Ode to Whiskers (Oda do wąsów) or the opera Spartan Mother (Matka Spartanka). He also wrote many neat love poems (as did Karpiński), although he brushed upon true greatness in his dramatic works written under the influence of the national catastrophe. After the country’s demise he fell into insanity. The sentimental movement, which both of these poets represented most becomingly, did revive after the demise of the Republic, and set forth Polish poetry’s path of evolution towards Romanticism. It was no coincidence that Mickiewicz combined an admiration for Trembecki with a weakness for Karpiński. —— 143 ——

JERZY SNOPEK

DRAMA The dream of writing a great national tragedy ran through the entire Polish Enlightenment. The bitter paradox is that the nation came up against such a tragedy in real life, before it found one in literature. Several attempts were made, all generally clumsy. The works that were written might be interesting for the researcher as important links in the developmental chain, or as documents of peoples’ consciousness, but they are not of value in and of themselves. Even if they are written in decent verse, they lack what is usually the mainstay of tragedy: pithiness, logical construction, and above all, tragicalness. Things were better in terms of the Polish comedy of the day, chiefly thanks to two writers: Jan Potocki and Franciszek Zabłocki. Potocki, as the author of the Rococo Recueil des Parades (Parades – Parady), belongs to French as well as Polish literature. This is a peak achievement in the history of this sub-genre of drama, vastly superior to the work that served Potocki as a source of inspiration, motifs, and characters, i.e. the parades of Gueueletty. The result is a masterpiece of comedy and the grotesque. Zabłocki, in turn, wrote several dozen comedies. Most, or even all of them have foreign sources. This places a certain blemish on the Polish comedy writer’s great talent, but one should realize that at that time the issue of originality and authorship rights were viewed differently than they are today. Even the greatest writers, Shakespeare not excluded, drew upon others’ ideas and plot schemes (but really whose were they?). Molière, from whom comedy writers in all European countries borrowed, also based himself upon his predecessors: Plautus, Terence, Lope de Vega. The great Diderot has been accused, not without grounds, of having plagiarized Goldoni. The essential point was how much an author took from someone else, and how much original material he added. From this standpoint, most of the Polish adaptations of the Enlightenment period did not exceed beyond vacuous, predominantly hasty and slapdash imitations, although works of outstanding value can be found as well. In the literature of the Polish Enlightenment, perhaps the most eminent work of comedy is Zabłocki’s The Fop-Suitor (Fircyk w —— 144 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment zalotach). This comedy is based on an idea drawn from a play by Romagnesi, which it greatly surpasses. Worthy of note is the excellent verse, energetic and brisk, and the masterfully lively, witty dialog. Nevertheless, the virtues of Zabłocki’s best work are not just limited to the value of its poetic language. The whole is complimented by well-thought-out characters, a simple and logical construction (something Zabłocki had trouble with in his other comedies), and finally intrigue – transparent, but at the same time full of surprises (i.e. the resolution comes not as a result of deus ex machina, but as a consequence of transformations that play out in the minds of the main characters). In Enlightenment Poland, the comedy of manners developed, stage successes were enjoyed by adaptations and original attempts in the field of bourgeois drama, but during the decline of the Republic the greatest success was enjoyed by plays of a political nature: The Return of the Deputy (Powrót posła) by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, but above all A Supposed Miracle, or Cracovians and Mountaineers (Cud mniemany czyli Krakowiacy i górale) and other works by Wojciech Bogusławski, the “father of the Polish theater.”

PROSE The first “modern” novel in Poland is considered to be The Adventures of Nicolas Doświadczyński (Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki, 1776) by Ignacy Krasicki. Both this work and Krasicki’s other novels had a great impact upon the shape of the 18th-century Polish novel. The Adventures of Nicolas Doświadczyński is a novel that adroitly combines various threads – moralist, educational, adventure/travel, and utopian – but it nevertheless cannot equal the best specimens of this genre in the Western European literature of the time. It does hold out well, on the other hand, against 18th-century novels in the remainder of Central Europe. From the perspective of world literature, also very interesting are Krasicki’s essays, Naruszewicz’s History of the Polish Nation (Historia narodu polskiego) and especially the publicist commentaries of Hugo Kołłątaj and Stanisław Staszic. The latter two men contributed to the —— 145 ——

JERZY SNOPEK drafting of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first constitution in Europe (and the second in the world). The Constitution of 3 May significantly expanded the scope of liberties, although it only partially dealt with the matters of peasants and Jews. The reformers had to hold off on certain issues until a more favorable moment, but such a moment never arrived. The partitioning powers looked upon the Constitution with aversion and distrust. Ultimately, in April 1792, the Confederation of Targowica was formed under the aegis of Catherine the Great, overturned the Constitution and summoned Russian forces to enter the country. Kościuszko would still lead an insurrection, the people would rise up under his command, but this uprising would not prevent the catastrophe. The Polish state fell. Nevertheless, the Constitution would remain an expression of the nation’s greatness and vitality, a guarantee of its right to freedom and dignified life, the pride of Polish Enlightenment-age culture.

The Decline of the Enlightenment 1795-1815 The end of the Enlightenment in Poland did not coincide with the demise of the state, but the Polish historical catastrophe did undoubtedly propel Polish literature towards Romanticism. After 1795, it was as if social virtues had been eclipsed by national values. It was difficult to reform society without reforming institutions and laws. Polish society, after all, meaning the collection of all citizens of the Republic, had as such just ceased to exist; it had been torn into three parts, incorporated into the systems of the partitioning states, and subjugated to their laws and institutions. The Polish nation, however, could continue to exist, since it was felt to be independent of state structures to a considerable extent. It lived on in the minds and hearts of Poles. From this, the optimistic conclusion was drawn that as long as the memory of Polishness and Polish culture survived, the nation would still be capable of casting off the yoke and reasserting its statehood. Such is the message of Dąbrowski’s Mazurka (Mazurek Dąbrowskiego) by Józef Wybicki, which soon became the Polish anthem, and of Conversations of the Dead (Rozmów zmarłych) by the aging Krasicki. —— 146 ——

The Polish Literature of the Enlightenment In 1800, the Friends of Science Association was set up in Prussian Warsaw, and worked to uphold national culture. The theater revived, and schooling began to function. Literature did not see as many achievements as in the period of the mature Enlightenment, but it did publish at least two masterworks: Trembecki’s philosophical and descriptive poem Sofia’s Garden (Sofijówka), and Jan Potocki’s Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie), written in French. Also of outstanding artistic value is a dramatic cycle of Napoleonic odes by Kajetan Koźmian. Finally, outstanding although not superb Classicist tragedies were likewise written: Barbara Radziwiłłówna by Alojzy Feliński and Bolesław Śmiały by Antoni Hoffmann, the most prominent such tragedies – alongside the Hungarian Bánk bán by József Katona – in the Central European literature of the time. In the poetry of the late Enlightenment, the strong Classicist trend (prior to its sudden death) was coupled with a sentimental trend of clearly pre-Romantic characteristics, which already dominated in the fictional prose of the time (L. Kropiński, A. Mostowska, M. Wirtemberska).

* In what way did the country’s loss of independence affect attitudes towards the Enlightenment? The calamity undoubtedly led to a revival of religious elements in high culture and a questioning of freethinking and secular trends. At the same time, science and culture, the sanctities of the Enlightenment, after having been saturated with elements of native character, would become a refuge for the national spirit during the period of captivity. And they would remain such a refuge through the period of Romanticism and beyond. They would become an attribute of the age of modernity.

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JERZY SNOPEK

Bibliographical Notes Klimowicz M., Oświecenie, Warszawa 2002. Kostkiewiczowa T., Polski wiek Świateł. Obszary swoistości, Warszawa 2002. Snopek J.,Oświecenie. Szkic do portretu epoki, Warszawa 1999. Słownik literatury polskiego oświecenia, ed. T. Kostkiewiczowa, Wrocław 1991. Miłosz C., History of Polish Literature (various editions, including in other languages). Backvis C., Un grand poète polonais du XVIII siècle: L’étrange carroère de sa vie et de sa grandeur, Paris 1937. Cazin P., Le Prince-Évêque de Varmie. Ignace Krasicki, Paris 1940.

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Romanticism

ALINA WITKOWSKA

Romanticism

The Polish state ceased to exist in 1795. The events that brought this about are usually termed the “partitions of Poland,” as the territory of the Republic was successively divided up, or “partitioned,” by its three neighbors: Russia, Prussia, and Austria. This destruction of the Polish state, which had previously held vast territories in the middle of Europe, encompassing present-day Lithuania, Belarus, and part of Ukraine, had a significant impact on the balance of political forces on the continent, as well as on the legal principles in force in international relations. The partitions of Poland legitimized unlicensed violence and aggression as generally tolerated methods of action. Regardless of its wider ramifications, however, the partitioning of Poland chiefly dealt a mental blow to Poles themselves. This manifested itself in an emotional outpouring, an explosion of desperate feelings, a yearning for what had been lost, and expressions of filial devotion to Poland – viewed as Poles’ wronged, or even murdered, Motherland. Polish culture witnessed a surge in symbolism involving the grave, portraying Poland as a woman in chains or being lowered into the grave, while in the realm of ideas there was an urge to regain independence, one might even say a cult of freedom, concurrent with a desire to exact revenge upon the nation’s enemies. Because the homeland is portrayed as the nation’s “Mother,” all Polish citizens thus become the children of a murdered mother, i.e. orphans bound to avenge her demise. The post-partition ethos of Poles is dominated by notions of free—— 149 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA dom, the obligation to fight for Poland, and filial duty to the homeland. In the 19th century, when the theory of the state and its relations with citizens was developing in Europe, Poles remained quite indifferent to such issues. For them, the concept of “state” symbolized a foreign, imposed force, one that was furthermore – in the case of Russia – based on a despotic system, something Poles had never before known in their thousand-year history. Instead, the concept of “state” became supplanted in Polish culture, in Poles’ mentality and behavior, by the concept of “homeland.” It was the latter that formed the spiritual keystone of national unity and identity. The role of chief guarantor for this community spirit was vested in literature. Moreover, literature had played a special role in shaping Poles’ national awareness, and occupied a prominent place amongst the most authoritative cultural values. The literature of the Romanticism period, indeed, is described in terms of a kind of spiritual dominance. This stemmed from several causes. Firstly, because the literature of the period, especially poetry, was deeply immersed in the contemporary historical era, and thus addressed the fundamental questions that plagued the generation of Poles who grew up in the wake of lost independence: questions about the role of evil in the divine plan of the world, about the struggle between freedom and despotism, as two principles guiding history in the past and future, and about the legitimacy of rebellion against coercion and captivity. Secondly, because Romanticism abounded in such poetic geniuses as Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki, in figures blessed with greatness like Zygmunt Krasiński and Cyprian Norwid, and in many lesser individuals who would have been an asset to any European literature. And thirdly, because Polish literature discovered a realm of liberty, permitting an expressive freedom unconstrained by the repressive system of the public authorities. After 1831, literature came to be divided in two, into works produced in Poland and those penned in emigration, especially in France. It was there that the preeminent Polish writers, Mickiewicz and Słowacki chief among them, would live and work, and despite censorship measures their works would indeed be read in the Polish lands under partition, something that had a fundamental impact on readers’ mentality and sensibilities and on the level of domestic literature. —— 150 ——

Romanticism This year, 1831, marks the date of the first of the great independence-minded uprisings directed against Russia. The cradle and primary area of this uprising, which erupted in autumn of 1830, was the Congress Kingdom of Poland, a quasi-independent statelet that had been called into existence by the Congress of Vienna (1815), when it set forth the political order of Europe after the demise of Napoleon. Having been carved out of the lands of the Russian partition, this statelet was bound to Russia by a personal union (meaning that the Polish crown was held by the Russian tsar), yet it possessed its own army (albeit commanded by the tsar’s ill-reputed brother), a Polish schooling system all the way up to the university level, and – something unheard-of in Europe in those times – a liberal constitution. Paradoxically, it was the considerable liberties granted to the Congress Kingdom of Poland by its Constitution that led to the outbreak of the uprising. They had facilitated a certain freedom of thinking and expression, and stimulated a yearning for rebuilding independent Polish statehood, encompassing at least the lands of the Russian partition. At the same time, the considerable swath of such freedom forced the authorities to encroach drastically upon the civil liberties guaranteed by the constitution, something that generated constant tension between the authorities and the public. In view of the date it erupted (29 November), this rebellion is termed the November Uprising. Its demise led to a great exodus of emigration: some 9,000 military servicemen and civilians, chiefly from the intelligentsia, left the country. This division between the home country and the émigré community would determine the specific nature of Polish history in the 19th century. The period of Romanticism would see two more flare-ups of a social, independence-minded nature. The first was the Springtime of Nations in 1848, affiliated with other revolutionary movements throughout Europe (a phenomenon that did not, however, appear in the Russian partition), while the second was the January Uprising of 1863, again named after the date of its outbreak (22 January). The latter uprising chiefly encompassed the Russian partition, and took a tragic course. Poorly armed civilians waged partisan warfare against regular Russian troops, furthermore in the middle of winter. —— 151 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA The January Uprising and its vast number of victims marked a turning point, away from the philosophy of gaining independence through armed movements. Poles would later return to this idea, drawing upon the ethical code established by Romantic literature, during the more auspicious times of WWI. Yet the Polish émigré community, which was highly active in 1848, less so during the January Uprising, did have one more opportunity to participate in armed activity with the aim of restoring Polish statehood: this was the Crimean War (1853-56), which pitted Turkey against Russia. Many émigrés traveled to the Bosphorus in order to fight on the Turkish side – Adam Mickiewicz among them, somewhat on a diplomatic mission, somewhat in hope of military service. It was there that the poet died on 26 November 1855, for reasons that are not fully clear. Ultimately, however, the Turkish-Russian peace treaty did not address the Polish issue at all. And so, this Polish effort proved to have been in vain. Romanticism was an epoch of crucial significance for the character of Polish literature. It ushered in a revolution in the literary language, imparting it with the maturity to express myriad existential and metaphysical experiences; it enriched the multiplicity of literary genres to include ones that had previously been wholly unknown, such as the novel in verse and the so-called open drama; it forayed into history and turned to face the challenges of the future. This was a national and universal literature, which fostered a spiritual portrait of the Polish “man of the age,” and at the same time reflected upon ideas fundamental to the existence of humanity, such as freedom and the antitheses of freedom to be found in history. Romanticism was also an epoch of literary geniuses, thanks to which poetry in particular attained the highest caliber. Such an era would never come again. In the literature of Romanticism, Poles created a means of expressing the dramatic experience of losing their independence, through which they established a channel of concord with others suffering from a deprivation of liberty. And, more importantly, they participated in European discourse on the notions of freedom, especially political freedom as a right of nations and a binding agent of ethnic —— 152 ——

Romanticism communities. Moreover, to this great European debate they contributed a historical and emotional view of freedom, perceived as a lost gift and a marred collective existence. The most imminent Polish works in the partition era are committed to these ideas. Indeed, the above applies to more than just Romanticism, the beginning of which is traditionally set at the year 1822, with the appearance of Adam Mickiewicz’s Ballads and Romances (Ballady i romansy). In terms of the ideas that informed Polish spirituality in the era of partitioned Poland – such as freedom and above all nationality, the continued existence of ethnic unity despite the loss of statehood – all of literature written after 1795 constitutes a cohesive whole that cannot be separated from Romanticism. This is true despite differences in poetics, despite preferences for specific types and literary genres, and despite the battle roar of aesthetic arguments raised in the struggle between the Romantics and Classicists. This is because the discovery of the notion of “nation” was a defining point of the entire century. It was here, in the concepts of “nation” and “nationality,” that Poland’s status as an active, independent entity was indeed recovered. These notions, which also constituted values, not only cultivated a new spirituality for Poles, they also removed the issues of the state and “etatist” thought from Poles’ field of vision for many years. Instead, such issues were supplanted by the notion of homeland, by spiritual existence, comprised of emotions, desires, and symbols. The ideas of homeland and nationality are tied to the exceptionally strong literary prominence of Sentimentalism in Poland, chiefly underwritten by Kazimierz Brodziński, the most prominent poet and critic of this current. His work and that of many other more mediocre belletrists engendered an image of the Pole as a lover of the countryside, a farmer busy cultivating his land, valuing serenity, order, and the harmony of life. The leading literary genre that sang the praises of these values and models of life was the sielanka (idyll), clearly inspired by both ancient (Theocritus) and contemporary models (chiefly German: Salomon Gessner, Goethe’s Hermann and Dorothea, the theoretical arguments of J. P. Richter), as well as by the Polish traditions of 16th- and 17th-century gentry literature. This made it —— 153 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA possible to seek an indigenous identity and roots, thanks to the continuation of rustic models and ideals, now being enriched by the discovery of plebian culture, especially folklore viewed as a source of indigenous Polishness untainted by foreign influences. Similar ideals and a similar vision of contented life can also be found in the Classicist current of partition-era literature, whose most outstanding achievement is Kajetan Koźmian’s Polish Gentry (Ziemiaństwo polskie), which drew upon the antique, chiefly Virgil’s Gregorics, but also upon the same national gentry literature as Sentimentalism. Generally speaking, both Sentimentalism and Classicism posed the same question, addressing the Pole’s civil and national identity. Who was the Pole? A man of the sword or the plow, of battle or labor? And they definitely promoted labor, above all working the land, the place where they sought the sources of both identity and salvation. The rural dimension of the world, the beating of swords into ploughshares, was supposed to set forth a new identity for Poles, divested of one of the important attributes of national identification – swords. The long-lived prominence of Sentimentalism in Poland, and its close ties to Romanticism, especially to its popular variety, stemmed not only from aesthetic, but also from ideological-political causes. Those affected by calamity found here the language to express their distress – hence the development of such genres as the lament, the threnody, of mourning viewed as a shedding of tears over one’s own fate. We might say that in Sentimentalism, such crying did not befit just women. Waxing melancholy and a lyrical wistfulness became the staple of Polish literature and, more widely, of Polish spirituality. And so, Romanticism availed itself of many of Sentimentalism’s traits and discoveries. Owing to the nurtured ideals of living close to nature, Romantic literature retained a clearly audible idyllic tone and respect for simple forms of life. Rusticity, simplicity, nature, man living in harmony within the natural world, close to the land and to the animals – this was an ethical and aesthetic proposal that combined the traditions of the antique idyll, old-Polish gentry poetry, and the myth of the “good Slav.” Literature of this sort might take on refined artistic forms, such as Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz or fragments of Słowacki’s —— 154 ——

Romanticism King Sprit (Król-Duch), or might also employ the simple lyrical statement, especially the tale of the simple world of good people. This once-overlooked current of Polish Romantic literature deserves attention and recognition for the glimpse it preserves of an irrevocably lost lifestyle, one that is not just Polish. Herein lie the roots of a common European spiritual past, which needs to set a counterbalance to the community of modern technical civilization. Polish Romanticism participated in making the great discoveries of the epoch: Slavs and Slavdom. J. G. Herder had admittedly brought “Slavicness” into focus as a cultural phenomenon, but Polish Romanticism treated this phenomenon in varied aspects, pointing out first and foremost two different entities that gave rise to the concept of Slavdom: Poland and Russia. Mickiewicz’s lectures on Slavic literature at the Collège de France in 1840-1844 constituted the fullest attempt at that time to outline the spiritual distinctiveness of the many entities that comprised the notion of Slavdom, above all Poland and Russia. Mickiewicz held that this distinctiveness was demonstrated by their attitude towards freedom: Russia personified the “tsarist system,” the most extreme form of existence without freedom, while Poland was not just the champion of freedom, it even tied its own autonomous existence to the triumph of liberty in Europe. Both Mickiewicz and a significant portion of Romantic writers took it upon themselves to act as interpreters of Russia, a quite exotic country in the eyes of the West, one that aroused a humble apprehension. Hence the success of Astolphe de Custine’s Letters From Russia, which lifted the veil of secrecy to this little-known but still active power in the East. The literature of Romanticism contributed, in various ways, to the cause of gleaning a better understanding of the tsarist state. Such an understanding was also sought through the factual literature of the time, as we might describe the well-developed memoir writings, chiefly as produced by Poles exiled to Siberia: Józef Kopeć’s Journal of a Journey to Siberia (Dziennik podróży po Kamczatce), Rufin Piotrowski’s Memoirs From Siberia (Pamiętniki z pobytu na Syberii), and others. These memoirs were read not only by Poles, but also by a wide European audience: the Piotrowski’s memoirs had a fundamental impact as a vehicle of discovery and were translated into many —— 155 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA languages (including an English version entitled My Escape From Siberia). Another achievement of Romantic literature, perhaps more important than this informative and window-opening role, lay in its historical and philosophical view of Russia, construed as a study in modern despotism. This type of reflection should be seen as a common contribution, made by Mickiewicz’s lectures at the Collège de France and by other Polish political and historiographic writings, to the European bank of ideas and knowledge about contemporary historical reality. But Slavicness was for the Romantics something more than a set of political ideas concerning Poland and Russia. It also entailed a tribal myth that manifested the spiritual distinctness, the role and destiny of these peoples in the center and east of Europe. The patron of this myth is considered to be J. G. Herder and his Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, read with rapture in Poland (by the poet Kazimierz Brodziński for example), specifically owing to its myth of the good Slav, devoid of aggressive instincts, cherishing calm existence close to nature. For the Romantics, in love as they were with primordial states, with life unbranded by the advance of civilization, this notion of the Slavs became a discovery befitting the great utopias of the age and dreams of an untainted human nature. The Slavs’ junior status in terms of civilization was in fact their advantage. They could offer the West gifts and truths that had become lost in the forward rush of civilization, industry, and the dominance of money. The Slavs were to imbue an arousing energy into the “old” Europe, showing the way to, as it was called, “the Father’s house,” to the common roots of humanity, nature, and God. And thus Russia, Poland, and other Slavic peoples were portrayed as a tribal community of younger brothers, with a great therapeutic mission to perform with respect to the West. Several of the fundamental links in this myth were included by Mickiewicz in his lectures at Collège de France (especially lecture XI dated 21 Feb 1843, XXV dated 27 July 1843, XII dated 3 March 1843, XIV dated 14 March 1843, and many lectures from course IV). This contributed to its proliferation in Europe, especially since Mickiewicz imparted a poetic élan and suggestive visionary power to his statements. —— 156 ——

Romanticism In Romantic literature, the Slavic myth became embodied in a considerable number of works, especially poetic ones, attempting to recover from historical oblivion this lost world of other gods destroyed by Christianity, and people lovingly tied to nature. These were not works of great value – such forging of poetry into myth required a more powerful imagination. Such was the imagination of Juliusz Słowacki, and in his King Spirit the Slavdom of olden days describes itself in a language of true poetry; this work itself can be treated as a Slavic épopée. Polish Romanticism was greatly fascinated by alternative cultures lingering on the fringes, beyond the scope of high culture. Peasant culture, dubbed folk culture, and rusticity were the mainstays of the entire current. This was coupled with an ethnographic passion – a studying of the unknown that sometimes bore fruit in wholly professional collections of folk songs, but above all in the discovery of a new kind of hero: the Polish peasant and his lot, customs, and emotional reactions. This socio-spiritual portrait of the villager drew the attention of many writers, and dominated lyrical forms of expression. The supreme example of this is to be found in Teofil Lenartowicz, the poet-singer of Mazowsze (Mazovia) and of its folk people. This is because rusticity is at the same time regionalism, a perception of common people in their diversity of lands, habits, and traditions. A country as large as Poland, which prior to the partitions had likewise encompassed Lithuania, Belarus, and part of Ukraine, offered great research opportunities for discovering the diversity of regional essence and spiritual culture. Thanks to Mickiewicz and his drama Forefathers’ Eve (Dziady), the folk character of Lithuania and Belarus rose to particular prominence, although it was the Ukraine that beat out all the other regions in quantitative terms. The steppes, horses, wildness, beauty, and freedom all combined into a literary image of the lands along the Dnepr River, and of the sons of these lands – the Cossacks. This seems to have been the cultural realm most thoroughly penetrated by literature, most present in poetry, in popular songs (the dumka songs of the poets of this age are still sung today), in the poetic novel – here there are two outstanding works, A. Malczewski’s Maria (1824) and S. Goszczyński’s The Castle of Kaniów (Zamek kaniowski – 1828), as —— 157 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA well as in prose, chiefly historical prose. The Ukrainian theme even inspired monothematic authors who wrote exclusively about the Ukraine, such as Michał Czajkowski in prose and Bohdan Zaleski in poetry. All the same, the image of Ukraine did not correspond exactly to the traits of the Slavic tribal myth: it could at times be bloody, bleak, and full of cruelty. To a certain extent this was caused by real events in Polish-Ukrainian relations, such as the Cossack rebellions against the Polish gentry. But a considerable role was also played here by the Romantic need for an aesthetics of the atrocious, the frenzied, and the horrendous. Such effects were indeed to be found in the Ukrainian lands, and so it was there that the works of so-called dark Romanticism were set, such as Seweryn Goszczyński’s The Castle of Kaniów and Slowacki’s mystic dramas: Father Mark (Ksiądz Marek – 1843) and The Silver Dream of Salomea (Sen srebrny Salomei – 1844). Through such regionalism, the spectrum of customs and landscapes available to Romanticism expanded impressively, as did the native symbolism: the Kraków inhabitant as a representative of human spryness and charm, the mountaineer as a personification of boldness and the fantasy of the Tatra Mountain highlander, the Cossack as a coupling of the familiar and the unknown, a son of the free expanses of the steppes. As Antoni Malczewski wrote in the poem Maria: “And the steppe, the horse, the Cossack, the darkness – a single wild spirit.” (”A step – koń – kozak – ciemność – jedna dzika dusza”). And so, Romanticism created poetic genres that described the beauty and diversity of the Polish lands, stressing the characteristic aspects of the landscape, the customs, the people. Wincenty Pol’s Song of our Land (Pieśń o ziemi naszej) then enjoyed well-deserved popularity. Romantic literature found a common denominator, arching in a sense across literary genres, in its heroes. Similar to each other in an evident way, such protagonists shared a kinship of ideas and style. Above all, they are young people – an age group that had never before achieved the status of representative heroes. In Romanticism, they became a dominant force. This was a tendency in European culture, but in Poland it was sanctioned first and foremost by Adam Mickiewicz, as the author of the poetic manifesto Ode to Youth (Oda —— 158 ——

Romanticism do młodości – 1820). Despite the varying roles, costumes, and literary masks they donned, such heroes remained youths, at least in terms of their years. The names of some of them – Gustaw, Konrad – became symbolic appellations that carried great currency among society. Gustaw was the name of an ill-starred lover, adopted by Mickiewicz from a romance novel then highly popular, Valérie by the Baroness Krüdener. Konrad, the protagonist of Forefathers’ Eve part III, was a touchstone for rebels and sacrificers alike, with a volcanic heart that harbored mutually contradictory passions. Kordian, the title protagonist from a drama by Słowacki, personified the aching soul, boredom with the world, and a fondness for death – these being traits of Romantic decadentism. The youths of Polish literature were obviously akin to their European predecessors, and had much in common with Goethe’s Werter, Chateaubriand’s René, and above all with the heroes offered by Byron (who become for a certain period a dictator of literary fashions in Europe). In Poland, however, due to the specific nature of historical events, there was a kind of local mutation of world literary models. The patriotic model of the hero appeared and proliferated rapidly and profusely. Such a hero could take on different forms and social roles, while all the time remaining, in the depth of his being, the same emotional romantic with a sensitive conscience and a big heart. Such qualities made him suffer the Polish misery all the more fervently, to absorb the religion of patriotism and to grow up with a dream of exacting revenge, even at the expense of his own life. This protagonist might be a thinker, a conspirer, a rebel, a prisoner, or an exile, but he always sacrificed himself “for the cause,” meaning for the sake of his homeland’s freedom. Such youths thus have literary biographies based on the moral code of the rigorist patriot, and their senses are dulled to the other values, virtues, or charms of the world. From today’s perspective, this imparts these Romantic heroes with – if one might say so – traits of spiritual fundamentalism. This type of hero took hold above all in lyric poetry, one significant trend of which can be termed Tyrtaean poetry, which appealed for armed struggle and the performance of patriotic duties. This current chiefly rose to the fore in popular poetry, in soldier’s songs asso—— 159 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA ciated with the November Uprising, variously praising love for one’s homeland, seen as a higher priority than relations with women. Indeed, women had their only rival in the Polish homeland, as in this anonymous song sung during the November Uprising: “Recall, Polish woman, our land fights for survival // Poland’s independence – here you have your rival.” (“Pamiętaj, żeś Polka, że to za kraj walka, / / Niepodległość Polski to twoja rywalka”). Many noteworthy works were written in this trend of lyric poetry, but the masterpiece of verse that addressed the fate of the Poles, which was marked by suffering and sacrifice and destined young men to do treacherous battle against the enemy, is Mickiewicz’s poem To the Polish Mother (Do matki Polki – 1830), which in fact antedated the historical experience of Poland’s fate in the wake of the November Uprising. At the same time, Mickiewicz is the author of verses that blazed a new path for romantic lyric poetry. These are his religious-moral poems – the so-called Rome and Dresden lyrics, including Reason and Faith (Rozum i wiara), An Evening Talk (Rozmowa wieczorna) and Opinions and Observations (Zdania i uwagi) from 1836 – and above all the Lausanne lyrics. The latter moniker, invented by publishers, encompasses several poems written in 1839-1840 during Mickiewicz’s stay in Lausanne, and which were not published in his lifetime. These include: Spin Love (Snuć miłość), Over the Great, Pure Water (Nad wodą wielką i czystą), My Corpse (Gdy tu mój trup), The Tears Flowed (Polały się łzy) plus two fragments: Oh, in the Family Home at Last (Ach, już i w rodzicielskim domu) and To Flee With My Love to a Leaf (Uciec z duszą na listek). This group of poems is considered to have opened up new prospects in their author’s literary development, at the same time signaling a transformation in Romantic lyric poetry itself. These changes are evidenced by a departure from rhetoric, from descriptiveness, which was strongly audible in Mickiewicz’s lyric poetry as well, and by conciseness – the negation of Romantic verbosity. The means whereby the poet achieves this literary effect include highlighting the functions of the word, as opposed to those of sentence constructions, and expanding the sense of words to include allegorical and symbolic meanings. —— 160 ——

Romanticism The writer who brought about the “necessary turn” in lyric poetry was nevertheless Cyprian Norwid, a poet very much aware of the aesthetic goals he was striving to achieve, and equally certain of his negative assessment of Polish Romantic poetry – both patriotic/ martyrological poetry, and lamenting, wistful poetry, expressing awe at the beauties of the Polish landscape. It was in his cycle Vade-mecum that Norwid most fully realized his lyric style, based in large part upon the parable, upon the simplicity of the situations, words and artistic techniques he employed, which radiate hidden senses based upon insinuations and hints that also constitute a system of meaning. This cycle consists of 100 small poetic works that were written at various times, but were set into a composed whole in the years 1865-1866. For many reasons, the poet did not manage to have the cycle published, either then or later, and the organization of the manuscript itself underwent irreversible damage; it is this impaired version that we are familiar with today. Norwid attached great import to the cycle Vade-mecum and felt that it would hold a special place in the development of Polish poetry. In a letter to the novelist J. I. Kraszewski, he wrote unabashedly: “Polish poetry will follow where the main portion of Vade-mecum leads, in terms of its sense, flow, rhyme, and example. Will they want to or not? – it is all the same.” The title Vade-mecum itself (Latin for “go with me”) undoubtedly has more than one meaning, but one of its senses refers to the cycle’s role as a watershed in the history of Polish poetry, calling upon Polish poets to follow. Norwid’s poetic agenda was evident not only in the cycle Vademecum, unknown to readers, but also in the poet’s other verses, which can be said to have participated in the transformation of Polish lyric poetry. Chiefly because they embraced realms of reality previously unknown to Polish poetry; they addressed the historical and ethical problems of the latter half of the 19th century, and above all spoke of the human condition in the era of steam and iron rails, the triumphs of civilization and the poverty of the masses, and the duality of the concept of labor, which represents both Promethean creativity and yet the scourge of slaves. Like no other Polish Romantic, Norwid understood the new industrial spirit of the age and was able to per—— 161 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA ceive the extensive range of its values: from the misery of existence to civilization’s successes pointing the way to the future. This duality in the writer’s stance towards modernity was most fully expressed through irony, which imparted to the image of the world being portrayed a comprehending closeness, yet at the same time a certain distance. Norwid’s great reformist or even iconoclastic plans could not be realized in his contemporary times, due to the minimal awareness of his works amongst the literary audience, and even worse, the scorn for his achievements shown by leading figures of Polish culture. Indeed, we can say that Norwid was rejected by his contemporaries. Why? The poet behaved like an avant-garde artist, pursing his own agenda without reckoning with the so-called real audience, sometimes even expressly going against it. He addressed his works to a virtual, “desired” reader, while his authentic reader was nevertheless poorly prepared for what this innovator had to offer, something that exceeded his perceptual capacity. Norwid would only establish a link of understanding with his “late grandchild,” to cite the author’s own term, i.e. readers and interpreters capable of comprehending his achievements and discovering his artistic uniqueness – this would occur during the Young Poland period, a time of great triumph for Norwid. Among the artistic achievements of Polish Romanticism, we should note certain literary genres that had not previously appeared in our literature, and therefore constitute something of a hallmark of Romanticism and a measure of its innovativeness. These are the gawęda (the “yarn” or chatty tale), and the metaphysical poetic drama. The gawęda was written in both prose and verse. The most outstanding prose implementation is to be found in Henryk Rzewulski’s Memoirs of Mr Seweryn Soplica (Pamiątki imć pana Seweryna Soplicy – 1839). This work marked the start of the genre’s history, and at the same time represents its most magnificent achievement. Amongst the many poetic masters of the gawęda, on the other hand, the greatest popularity was achieved by Władysław Syrokomla, perhaps indeed an overly dexterous versifier. The roots of the gawęda lay in the portrayed world of noble society, its morals and mentality, in the reality of daily and public life. But —— 162 ——

Romanticism above all these roots lay in language, in a means of expression modeled after colloquial chatting or after the vocabularies of professional groups then on the verge of disappearing, such as the noble palestra. Characteristic scenes, good anecdotes, and the noble philosophy of life, whereby revelry in good company constituted a virtue and charm of life, comprise the moral pith and marrow of the gawęda, which the nobility identified with and delighted in. Because most of the gawęda tales were set in the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic’s downfall, they were deemed to be a treasure-trove of tradition and a faithful image of the nobility, as the depositary of national characteristics – although we must admit that a portion of the audience considered this image to be morally compromising. The gawęda style remains an easily recognizable trait of Polish prose to the present day – such as in Witold Gombrowicz’s Trans-Atlantic (Trans-Atlantyk). In close proximity to the gawęda style is the historical novel of the epoch. Novelistic prose was not a strong point of Polish Romanticism, yet it draws attention to itself as an important attestation of Romantic historicism, a penchant for long-gone epochs of the distant past. We might perceive this trend as a desire to return to literary roots, to bury oneself in the national tradition, or as a fondness for the colorful past, in the hues of life and figures, especially ones as characteristic as the Polish nobility during its times of splendor. The undoubted master of the historical novel is the Polish equivalent of England’s Walter Scott: Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, with his In the Times of Sigismund (Zygmuntowskie czasy), Countess Cosel (Hrabina Cosel), and An Old Tale (Stara baśń). A genre that enjoyed great fame, and exerted a great impact upon Polish culture, was the Romantic drama – above all Adam Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve. Parts II and IV appeared in 1823, and part III only in 1833. The first part has survived only as a fragment, and was probably never written in full. The third part is also not a completed whole, as it consists of 9 scenes of a first act. Forefathers’ Eve can be treated as a consciously composed open-ended construction. Following Classicism, which strictly adhered to the rules of dramatic construction, the open form of Forefathers’ Eve constituted an aesthetic provoca—— 163 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA tion, received by some with indignation, by others with rapture, as an innovative characteristic and – let’s add – a distinctive feature of Romantic dramaturgy. It was in Forefathers’ Eve that the aesthetics of the fragment, something very widespread in Romanticism, found encouragement and inspiration. This work was not only fragmentary and violated the principle of chronologically appearing parts, it also completely disregarded the continuity of other construction elements, for example such important aspects as the fates of its protagonists. They are also open to many possibilities of plot. The famous ending of scene 8 of the drama, the culmination of its historical portion, draws to a close with a telling line uttered by a soldier escorting the hero: “let each take his own path” (“każdy w swoję drogę”), which opens up many possibilities for an unclear future, and for the continuation of Konrad’s literary biography. Essentially the only cohesive element linking the almost autonomous parts of this drama is their title, Forefathers’ Eve. This was again something sensational, because it refers to a folk ritual of pagan origin, associated with All Soul’s Day. In part II of Forefathers’ Eve, this rite plays a decisive role, essentially setting forth the build and sense of the work. This is not an ethnographic oddity, but rather a ritual archetype that is as folk-based as it is universal, stretching back to the origins of human culture. This ritual archetype plays out in a shed near a cemetery: the living commune with the spirits of the dead, metaphysics comes into play, the secrets of existence lay open, and out of this intermingling of reality and miracles a new form of Romantic drama is born. The contact between the two dimensions of existence, the real and the metaphysical, is fundamental to all of the parts of Forefathers’ Eve, including those in which the ritualistic rite itself plays a lesser role. In the third part, for example, we have expressively portrayed historical and moral scenes, which can be described as striving for realistic means of expression. But at the same time the author brings the forces of good and evil onto the stage, devils and angels that actively intervene in the course of events, even though they come from a different realm of existence. Because these two dimensions —— 164 ——

Romanticism intermingle, they are present jointly, perceived via signs, supernatural interventions, and their envoys even appear in figural form. The figure of the central hero of the work, Konrad, also fits into this rhythm of eternity and history – being very much a concrete prisoner in a political trial, he is at the same time a figure from the metaphysical realm, where he wages a great dispute with God over the moral order of the world, over the cruelty and vileness he sanctions in it. Konrad is, therefore, a metaphysical rebel, with ambitions as a social renewer. With such moral and philosophical underpinnings, Konrad became an archetypical figure in Polish Romantic culture: a great individualist gifted with poetic genius, who throws down the gauntlet to the highest authority of all – the Creator himself. Depending on one’s choice of worldview, he is also sometimes seen as a personification of moral vice and equally sinful vainglory. Another eminent dramatist, the most universal dramatist of the epoch of Romanticism, was Juliusz Słowacki. Exceptionally sensitive to inspirations from Shakespeare and from Dante’s Divine Comedy, he poured them into his dramas, which were chiefly historical, stretching back into Poland’s tribal history (Balladyna 1834, Lilla Weneda 1840). He thus became the creator of an originally construed origin myth, and at the same time took great liberty with his literary inspirations, combining for example Shakespearean tragedy and the grotesque into a single work – as evidenced in both Balladyna and Lilla Weneda – while Dante’s Inferno served him as inspiration for developing a Romantic aesthetics of the hideous, which accompanied the frenetic descriptions of cruelty, blood, and murders to be found in his dramas. He honed the rules of this “bloody” theater to perfection in works that bear the hallmark of originality and aesthetic boldness –the dramas written by Słowacki following his so-called mystic epiphany, above all Father Mark and The Silver Dream of Salomea, which are aptly termed mystic dramas. The action of both these works is set during the final moments of the Polish state, during the Confederation of Bar and the Cossack rebellion against the Polish nobility, called the Massacre of Humań, i.e. during times that were cruel and bloody by nature. Słowacki found a counterpart to this historical material in —— 165 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA the aesthetics of the Baroque macabre theater, full of harsh means of expression that reflected the death throes of the old world. History is portrayed here as chaos that is bloody, but at the same time mysterious, with a metaphysical depth that shines through “signs,” which are legible to the chosen few. Human reality proves to be a domain of struggle amongst spirits, revealing the existence of a concealed plan for the world, signals of which reach the earthly realm in the form of hard-to-decipher symbols, dreams, and signs. And so, in mystical dramas there is an intense proximity between metaphysics and history, dream and reality; between a person who acts, and one who is acted upon by independent forces. This is a great historical theater, which is at the same time universal. The third pillar upon which Polish Romantic drama rested was Zygmunt Krasiński, above all as the author of The Undivine Comedy (Nie-Boskiej komedii – 1835). This was also a historical and metaphysical work, which was nothing new, but on the other hand the third part of the drama, devoted to earthly manifestations of the idea of social revolution, was a complete innovation. Observations, readings, and the author’s own aristocratic social origins sensitized him to the tragedy of those expelled from the historical arena. This was why he managed in the third part of The Undivine Comedy to capture so effectively the ideas of the 19th century, conveyed through the voices of separate social groups, and to summon to the stage a menacing collective hero, whose presence had been witnessed in the French revolution: the rebellious masses of the hungry and the exploited. In this sense, as a work about an oncoming era of social revolutions, The Undivine Comedy is a wholly innovative work, one unparalleled in any contemporary European literature. Polish Romanticism was characterized by a division into the homeland and the émigré community. No other national culture was then faced with such extreme conditions of existence. This division was a consequence of the national uprising against Russia in 1830-1831, called the November Uprising. This insurrection, sometimes treated as a Polish-Russian war in light of the existence of Polish military forces then involved in the insurgent movement, ended in disaster. Repressive measures were imposed in the territory of the Russian-ruled King—— 166 ——

Romanticism dom of Poland, and those who had participated in the uprising faced military courts and harsh sentences, including the death penalty. For many insurrectionists, leaving the country therefore meant a way of avoiding punishment. But an equally important cause for such emigration lay in the emigrants’ psychological inability to reconcile themselves to the loss of liberty and to the return of the Russian yoke, now a hundred times more severe. People who had “breathed the air of freedom,” as it was said, for the nine months the uprising had lasted, were unable to consent to an existence politically reduced to a minimum, with attenuated civil and national rights. For people of this sort, emigration proved to be the only possible way out of historical oppression. Émigrés chiefly traveled to France, which opened up its borders to Polish refugees, as well as to England and other European countries, and even to North America. Historians believe that 9,000 individuals left Poland following the November Uprising – a figure that does not seem great, yet this group was in large part comprised of the country’s elite and of young men who had frequently received higher education. These facts bore upon the character of this wave of emigration, later termed the Great Emigration. Its greatness was also determined by the fact that all the most imminent Polish poets were among the émigrés: Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Zygmunt Krasiński, Cyprian Norwid, Bohdan Zaleski, and Seweryn Goszczyński. The great Polish era of Romanticism, therefore, took shape abroad. It was there, too, under natural conditions ensuring freedom of speech, that publicist writing flourished, especially on social and political affairs, as well as such genres of publicist expression as the worldview debate, the political essay, the pamphlet, etc. It was also in emigration that modern political organizations arose, and where their characteristic language of expression and style of action emerged. The Polish Democratic Society and the camp of Prince Adam Czartoryski laid the foundations for the traditions of the modern left wing and of enlightened conservatism. Unfortunately, the émigré community also entailed relations based on hypertrophic discussion and wordy battles, easy slander, judgments and allegations, envy and hatred. Such was the unfortu—— 167 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA nate legacy of the self-destructive energies that emigration had instilled into the Polish mentality and style of public affairs. But emigration also brought modern experiences, such as labor. Émigrés experienced a shock of déclasement. Almost no one managed to retain the social position they had held in Poland. Many of them had to take up poorly paid employment, others to learn practical professions that were not practiced in Poland. This experience had its social and mental dimensions, but it also found reflection in literature, especially in the work of Cyprian Norwid, sometimes called a writer of the mercantile and industrial age. The phenomenon known as messianism, important for and characteristic of Polish Romanticism, is also chiefly associated with the émigré community. This was a philosophical and moral attitude whose roots lay in the concept of nation, and of Poland as a nation chosen to perform a historical mission – a mission of salvation not only with regards to the Polish people itself, but also with regards to other peoples of Europe. This mission chiefly envisaged freedom as the most highly prized commodity in the historical world, and was thus of a universal nature, encompassing all the national communities of the age. Poland had been chosen for such a role in light of the course its history had taken, marked by suffering and sacrifices to freedom – as the November Uprising had clearly evidenced. Freedom was understood not only in terms of the Polish lands, but also as freedom of the “peoples of Europe.” In this way messianism made an apology of certain attitudes and behaviors, but at the same time transformed the national calamity into a moral victory (something Poles would repeatedly practice later); it rendered suffering sacred, and imparted a holy and eternal sense to sacrifice. It was able to do so by right of a bold analogy drawn between Poland and the torment of Christ. Voluntary sacrifice and suffering on the part of the innocent represented more than just a symbolic link between such different entities as Christ and Poland, it derived a redemptive significance from this analogy. Poland would redeem the sins of the world, and save it by giving nations back their freedom. In short, these ideas were concisely expressed in the slogan of Poland as “the Christ of nations.” —— 168 ——

Romanticism Messianism and its vision of Poland’s role is chiefly associated with Mickiewicz and two of his greatly famed works: The Books of the Polish Nation and of the Polish Pilgrimage (Księgi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa polskiego – 1832) and Forefathers’ Eve part III (1833). The former work, written in stylized biblical prose and swiftly translated into the leading European languages (a French translation by Charles Montalambert coming in 1833), not only bolstered Mickiewicz’s literary stature, it also popularized biblical stylization as a form of artistic expression, as well as the ideological message of the work itself. Evidence of this can be found in Les paroles d´un croyent by Félicité Lamennais, which was indeed found by the Church to be in violation of Catholic orthodoxy. Messianism, defending the universalism of liberty and the commonality of European peoples, was nevertheless not devoid of an apology of the nation that had been chosen to be the bearer of these ideas, to be a spiritual leader in the historical world. Such was the role messianism ascribed to Poland, which could lead to national idolatry and sow the seeds for later nationalism. Of the great works of Romanticism, such allegations are chiefly leveled against The Books of the Polish Nation and of the Polish Pilgrimage. The sense of mission harbored by the émigré community towards the homeland itself was more of a historical nature than it was rooted in the philosophy of history or metaphysics. The émigrés deemed themselves to be representatives of the nation as a whole, and thus harbored leadership ambitions with respect to the country. Such ambitions were not limited to a kind of “spiritual leadership,” but rather involved very concrete political decisions, such as plots, conspiracies, and new insurgent movements – which as a rule ended in further disasters, and to which the domestic population, maltreated by repression, was opposed. As time passed, the country came to increasingly question such émigré patronage, formed its own decision-making centers and brought forth its own conspirator political figures, who supplanted the emissaries sent in from abroad. The next great independence movement, the uprising of 1863, called the January Uprising, was chiefly a sovereign decision by those in the Polish lands themselves, —— 169 ——

ALINA WITKOWSKA involving chiefly their own forces and means, as meager as they were. The struggle took on a partisan character, the combatants being poorly armed – as underscored by the poetic line “to battle went our men unarmed” (”poszli nasi w bój bez broni”) – and the uprising would indeed end in yet another calamity, followed by especially cruel repression by the Russian authorities. These involved not just executing leaders and expelling individuals to Siberia, but also the largescale confiscation of property, dealing a serious blow to the estates of the nobility and aristocracy. The January Uprising left a traumatic mark upon the awareness and emotional state of society. The experience of this calamity affected both the graphic imaginations of painters, such as Artur Grottger, and the literary imagination of writers, including Stefan Żeromski. The uprising itself, in turn, is considered to be the most romantic independence movement in the history of Poland, inspired by the models and values of Romanticism literature: an absolutist notion of homeland and a maximalist concept of patriotic duty, chiefly involving sacrifice “for the cause,” even including the sacrifice of one’s own life. To a certain extent this historical event of great import marks the end of Romanticism’s dominance in Polish culture. Among the many reasons for the subsequent change in cultural models, social ideas, and philosophy of existence, one of the most important was a protest against the dominance of Romanticism and the destructive consequences it wrought. Because Romanticism was, in a certain sense, an era of insurgencies, within which – as Norwid poetically expressed it in Five Outlines (Pięć zarysów) – successive generations grew up “among bluish blood, as in cornflower field: from former events, to those only just now sealed” “wśród sinej krwi, jak wśród bławatków: od ostatnich do tylko co zaszłych wypadków”. Out of this questioning of Romanticism’s dominance, Positivism would emerge. This does not mean, however, that Romanticism had no continuation in Polish literature and art. It did indeed, and its lingering was quite intense, stoked by historical events such as the two World Wars, the Warsaw uprising, and the Solidarity movement that overthrew the Socialist system in Poland. Polish spiritual culture, especially its popular varieties, has rested upon the symbolism of —— 170 ——

Romanticism Romanticism and the models of patriotic action then developed. Elite art and the social perception of great romantics manifest a direct link to the vitality of Romanticism, which has not allowed itself to be relegated as a phenomenon known from chapters of history now closed.

Bibliographical Notes Witkowska A., Przybylski R., Romantyzm, Warszawa 1997. Witkowska A., Literatura romantyzmu, Warszawa 1986 (or subsequent editions). Janion M., Żmigrodzka M., Romantyzm i historia, Warszawa 1978. Rymkiewicz J.M., Siwicka D., Witkowska A., Zielińska M., Mickiewicz. Encyklopedia, Warszawa 2001. Słownik literatury polskiej XIX wieku, ed. J. Bachórz, A. Kowalczykowa, Wrocław– –Warszawa–Kraków 1991. Literatura krajowa w okresie romantyzmu 1831-1863, Kraków–Warszawa 1975-1992, t. 1-2.

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GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning

The years 1864-1914 mark an important period in the history of both Poland and Europe. A Polish insurrection was launched in January 1863 against the authorities in the Russian partition. But despite the heroism and sacrifice shown, and despite the impressive efforts made by the underground National Government bodies, this January Uprising faltered one year later, having failed to secure wider public support. Yet again, Polish independence-minded aspirations were undermined by the still unsettled issue of peasant rights (a failure to adopt a clear stance on land ownership reform) and by internal disputes among various political groups. This abortive and bloodily repressed uprising did much to alter the Polish mindset. The Romantic model of political action was rejected once and for all – no one would any longer vest the nation’s hopes in winning independence through armed action, by staging plots or revolts. Another model of action was necessitated, one aimed at making systematic efforts to promote civilizational development and modernization, which would in turn – the leading figures of the new epoch believed – help to foster independence-minded aspirations. Nonetheless, such a spontaneous upsurge was hampered by the repressive policy pursued by the distrustful authorities in the Russian partition, who imposed restrictions on free economic activity, and above all reigned in Poles’ freedom of speech, press, and beliefs, as well as the use of the Polish language. Faced with such circumstances Poles developed an —— 172 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning elaborate system of methods for sidestepping restrictive governmental bans. Such phenomena were at times quite valuable and even constitutive for Polish culture (e.g. the development of figurative speech, including Aesopian language), at times very theatrical (e.g. specific vogues or social boycotts). The situation in the Prussian partition was not any better: here the authorities imposed increasingly repressive measures on Poles, not just limiting their civil liberties, but also resorting to such extreme measures as deportations (dubbed “rugi”). In multinational Galicia, in turn, the political autonomy that had been won during the Springtime of Nations was by no means absolute, and functioned only within Austria-Hungary’s wobbly and inefficient system of parliamentary monarchy. Yet the Polish problems were not just caused by the authorities in the three partitions; they also stemmed from various social issues that escalated with unprecedented force in the latter half of the 19th century: the socialist and workers’ movements, the issues of Jews’ and women’s rights, and the awakening of national awareness among the Belarusians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians. The holistic vision of society as an efficiently functioning organism was crumbling, and newly emerging conflicts demanded urgent resolution. The political order in Europe and in the world was tottering as well. The agreement sealed at the Congress of Vienna by Europe’s most powerful countries ceased to correspond to the new distribution of political forces, particularly to Germany’s aspirations. Russia’s defeat in its war against Japan gave rise to hopes that the old balance could be revamped, and the atmosphere of WWI gradually crystallized. Poles harbored their own hopes, yet faced equally serious dilemmas: where did their future lie, whom should they rally behind, and would Poland succeed in regaining its freedom? 1. “Polish Literature in 1864-1914”? Is there any rationale behind selecting such a period for study? Can we actually treat the literature of these years as constituting some kind of whole? This is a complex issue. On the one hand, a very appealing perspective has been developed in both traditional studies (Antoni Potocki, Wilhelm Feldman, Kazimierz Czachowski) and more contemporary —— 173 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA (Polish) academic research, which takes the literary works of the latter half of the 19th century and of the “Young Poland” period together, treating them as proximate – yet not identical – literary periods that sprung from common intellectual sources. Arguments in favor of such a depiction can be found, for example, in the analysis of Young Poland literature propounded by contemporary historian Kazimierz Wyka and in the periodization proposed by Jerzy Ziomek. Yet on the other hand, there is an equally strong conviction that a chasm separates the two epochs (the latter half of the 19th century vs. “Modernism” or “Young Poland”), one even wider than the divide between Romanticism and the new literary concepts that emerged in the mid-19th century. Many researchers, such as Ryszard Nycz, perceive a kind of twofold caesura falling at the end of the century – i.e. a turning point between literary movements, coinciding with a higher-order, inter-era watershed – separating not only the literature of the latter half of the 19th century (also termed “Positivism” or “Realism”) from that of the subsequent Modernism period, but also the entire 19th-century era from the broadly-defined modernist era, covering almost the entire span of the 20th century. It seems to me that neither of these approaches should be discounted. Only taken together do they reflect the inner dynamism of the artistic and consciousness-arousing processes that typified the five decades under analysis here. I propose that we should view the literature of both these periods as manifesting features characteristic of both the 19th and the 20th centuries, and as being oriented in two directions: towards the past, which this literature tries to preserve, question, syncretize or surpass, as well as towards modernity, variously expressed through unprecedented reflection on culture, language, the duties incurred by a writer, or the complications of the human psyche. What unites all the literature of the period in question, therefore, is this duality: often expressed in an oblique and pseudonymous fashion, becoming lucid only when considered in retrospect and with the wisdom of hindsight. It is seemingly of secondary importance that Young Poland literature gravitates conspicuously towards modernity, while writers one generation older tend to identify more strongly —— 174 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning with the 19th-century span. Still, the heart of the matter remains unchanged: the literature of both epochs commits itself to two cultural models, albeit to a different extent in either case. The 19thcentury model stems from the specific Polish condition and revolves mainly around the question of how to survive in a state of subjugation, how to cope with the restrictions imposed by history and nature. The 20th-century model moves beyond this condition and poses questions about the limits of art’s autonomy, about the rules for social communication, about the relations between the cognitive horizon and artistic language, and about the very essence of the expressibility/ inexpressibility of extralinguistic phenomena. Even though independence remained only a postulate all the way until 1918, and even though the Young Poland generation did manifest patriotic sensibilities as well, the issue of political sovereignty became subordinate to artistic endeavors. To conclude these introductory notes, it will be useful to note that elements of both models did in many cases appear within the oeuvre of the selfsame author, but whether such dualism is discerned hinges upon the competence of the reader or researcher. 2. The January Uprising (1863-1864) was the last in a series of national insurgencies incited by Poles in the 19th century, and was just as bloody and abortive as the previous ones (the November Uprising in 1830-1831, the Springtime of Nations in 1848). It did, however, effect one important change: even though the insurrectionists were widely revered and even though the partitioning powers still instilled hatred, it became clear that plans of gaining independence through armed action could no longer be taken into consideration. It was not sensible to encourage people to stage yet another uprising; indeed, very few Poles would have responded to such an appeal. The Romantic model of behavior was defunct, once and for all. Other paths of social action would be necessitated. This change resulted not only from a feeling of defeat. It was also related to an overall endeavor of setting Polish culture on a new course: instead of developing a wide conspiratorial network, building overt public institutions was prioritized. Consequently, the center of attention shifted from the émigré community to the home country, and —— 175 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA there was increasing debate about the need to lay solid foundations for erecting an edifice of high culture. These foundations would consist of social prosperity, material resources, buoyant industry, a stable economy, and universal education. The framework of this program had already been put together prior to the January Uprising, yet it was not until after 1864 that this way of thinking began to attract broader interest. Nevertheless, the realization of this modernization program proceeded with difficulty, if not to say in hopeless fashion. Firstly, it was not abetted by the official authorities – while they may have differed in each of the three partitions, they were on the whole reluctant to allow Poles to gain too much autonomy. The censorship restrictions in the Prussian and particularly the Russian partition even made it impossible to fully air one’s true opinions and attitudes. That is why “Aesopian” language was employed, meaning a variety of figurative speech that required its addressees to know how to read between the lines and grasp the actual meaning of the symbols, euphemisms, and allegories used. The autonomy enjoyed by the lands under the Austrian partition, however, had a rather soporific effect on the Poles there. The greater freedom of speech was not seized upon to present truly new ideas for the future. Secondly, the modernization program did not meet with the approval of a considerable segment of the public: although they did not proffer any counterproposal, such individuals feared that openness to the West, changes in the set of national values, the ostentatious abandonment of Romantic ideals, interest in the material aspects of life (previously present, yet not put on public display), and finally radical endeavors to enfranchise the peasant strata of society would shatter the image of Polish society and the social order they held dear. The clash between these two stances, these two informal political camps, dominated Polish public life mainly during the 1870s. However, it did not die down in later periods, continuing to divide writers, journalists, and the social circles that sympathized with them. This division cannot be automatically equated with the conflict between liberals and conservatives present in other European countries. Under Polish circumstances, the clash between these two stances in—— 176 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning volved an additional, national component. Polish supporters of modernization, who advocated that independence-minded aspirations, being unattainable, should be reigned in, risked being accused of treachery, recreance, apostasy and Russophilia. Those who supported tradition, in turn, were accused of intellectual shallowness, shortsightedness, superficial religiousness and “facile patriotism,” which boiled down to a cult of the past kept within the family circle, or to extolling the Polish landscapes in newspapers. The modernization camp, particularly strong in the Russian partition, where its organ Przegląd Tygodniowy was published, was especially active in the 1870s. The proponents of modernization, who were frequently and mockingly called “Positivists,” proposed a model of action that would transform Poles into enlightened and autonomous citizens of Europe and of the world (obviously, within the bounds of possibility). This was to be achieved through universal education, which would also encompass the poorest strata, through social action aimed at helping others, through efficient and well-organized economic activity, through greater rights for women and Jews, and through the idea of mutual aid. Independence-related issues receded perforce into the background, yet never faded from sight. I believe that the Positivists were wrongly accused of being servile and loyalist. They perceived independence as a long-term goal to be achieved by means of a drawn-out process of self-advancement, and as the fruit of civilizational development, not armed action. The traditionalists were particularly afraid of change. They believed that a nation affected by such a disaster as losing its independence should have no objective more urgent than evoking history. Religious beliefs were yet another issue of paramount importance. Catholicism ranked among the major determinants of national identity, especially in the Russian partition, where it contrasted against the Orthodoxy of the authorities. This pronounced social conservatism was motivated not only by angst over what the future would bring, but also by a specific view that social order should be based on patriarchal relations between lords and peasants. The traditionalists were reluctant to accept newfangled philosophical ideas, viewing materialism and Darwinism as confirming the verdicts of history. In —— 177 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA both these philosophies, the laws of development seemed inescapable. It was rightly pointed out, however, that blind worship at the altar of monism and materialism deprived both life and art of one of their greatest values, namely the ability to arouse metaphysical and esthetic feelings. Historians of literature mainly direct their attention to the pro-modernization camp. There is indeed a certain rationale behind this, in that the stance of the modernization supporters formed a characteristic signum temporis. It was they who formulated a truly new program, offering a serious alternative to political Romanticism. Still, I myself would advocate restoring the inner proportions of the post-uprising period, i.e. taking both its wings, positivist and conservative, into consideration. The least complicated way of doing so involves abandoning political divisions in favor of deliberating the individual authors. There are two strong arguments in support of this. Firstly, the positivist program did not win many supporters or imitators: the agenda was excessively difficult, and entailed coming into conflict with the national tradition. Until its very end, it remained an ideology of the social elite. Popularity and social trust continued to be garnered by the so-called middle-of-the-road writers, such as Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812-1887), a sagacious journalist and the author of much sought-after historical novels, who extolled both the Polish and the Lithuanian past, or Teofil Lenartowicz (1822-1893), one of the creators of the folklore idiom in Polish literature. Secondly, the literary figures of the period defy categorical classification into either of the two conflicting groups, especially when the entire epoch is taken into consideration, not just its outset. Rather, it is possible to discuss characteristic conversions and shifts motivated by different factors: a desire to win public acclaim, inner transformations, or a process of maturity. All these shifts were occasioned not only by the passage of time; they were also a function of the increasing seriousness with which the role of the writer and of literature were being viewed. 3. Ideological formulas cannot even be found to successfully encapsulate the works of Aleksander Świętochowski (1849-1938), the most politicized writer of the epoch, the only liberal amongst the advocates of modernization. In his superb journalistic commentaries, —— 178 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning published first in Przegląd Tygodniowy and Nowiny, and after 1881 in Prawda, a publication he himself founded, Świętochowski above all defended his own independence and right to propound the most controversial views. No external considerations, such as the perceived need to remain silent on issues that might undermine public solidarity, posed any serious obstacle to him. He wrote critically about Polish tradition, the Polish uprisings, and the Polish historical calamity. In his political calculations, he stuck to a realist tack: not perceiving any chance for armed resistance, he encouraged the kind of social activity that would turn Poland into a post-feudal, modern European state, founded upon law, prosperity, and knowledge. Of course, he realized that given the increasingly more restrictive policy being pursued by Russia and Prussia, this program could only be partially implemented. Yet these inconveniences did not stop him from speaking out in the official press, and when the principle of acting overtly temporarily failed, he also engaged in underground action. He wrote over long decades, including in the time of independent Poland, which he, the Nestor of Positivism, lived to see. Aside from a short episode in the 1920s, when he became associated with the right-wing press, he stood by his liberal principles, and also demonstrated an exceptional sensitivity to social issues. It seems that Świętochowski can be aptly labeled an “aristocratic liberal,” meaning someone who, in defending the principles of liberty, recognizes the primacy of intellect over ignorance, of the elite over the mob, and of talent over mediocrity. In this he is reminiscent of John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville and Jacob Burckhardt. Świętochowski was not, however, as modern a writer as he was a public commentator. In his dramas – Antea (1876), the trilogy Immortal Souls (Nieśmiertelne dusze – 1876-1889), as well as in his novellas – the cycle Fairytales (Bajki), he depicted the pressure of social norms that constrain the liberty of the individual, but his literary works grew old quickly. His publicist writings, however, remained a superb example of autonomous political and social thought which can be compared in many regards to later statements by Brzozowski and Irzykowski. Further support for this comparison can be found in the influence of Nietzschean thought, important in all three cases. —— 179 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA Świętochowski’s last novels are surprising, especially Twinko (1936), in which he underscored the internal, spiritual dimension, shaped by experiences of sacrifice and suffering, clearly drawing upon Romantic thinking. And another thing about Świętochowski is surprising: an anti-Semitic bent which appears at the turn of the century and lasts through the 1920s. What can this change be put down to: to the writer losing his way, to the solitude of a doctrinaire? Bolesław Prus (1847-1912), whose true name was Aleksander Głowacki, poses a kind of riddle for scholars. Our knowledge about him is meager: he was an orphan, was wounded in the January Uprising, and spent a short time in prison. He was a publicist in Warsaw newspapers, a would-be graduate of the university, and an enthusiast of the hard sciences. He debuted by writing none-too-brilliant humoresques, yet unexpectedly matured into the most eminent writer of his age. He was modest, spoke of his private life infrequently, and was concealed behind the label of an ordinary journalist. There are many indications that this enigmatic nature constituted an element of a broader philosophy of life, not necessarily identical with the later Lebensphilosophie of Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Stirner or Georg Simmel, although not unlike them. In the ideologicallycharged and troublesome ambiance of the post-uprising epoch, Prus foremost valued the phenomenon of life. Of course, this included Polish life, a specific sort of life linked to these times, but it above all encompassed life in general, viewed as a disorderly, superficially chaotic phenomenon of enduring, existing, and passing on. This was of fundamental value for the writer, even when it involved the most ordinary beings, the commonplace people who move through the world unnoticed – as in the novella Shadows (Cienie – 1885). In his latter essays he wished to identify the principles of leading a fortuitous life – as in Some Very General Ideals of Life (Najogólniejsze ideały życiowe – 1901). It irked him that people could sometimes ruin their own lives or those of others by following rigid rules, stereotypes, and prejudices – e.g. Souls in Bondage (Dusze w niewoli – 1877). Prus’ philosophy of life chiefly bore upon his mature stories: The Outpost (Placówka – 1886), a study of post-enfranchisement villagers, dramatic despite its coarseness; and above all The Doll (Lalka – —— 180 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning 1890), the masterpiece of the epoch, the best Polish novel, not just of the 19th century. The Doll is a multifaceted work, with a complex topical and narrative structure. It portrays a panoramic picture of society in the late 1870s. It offers insight into the social processes then underway (the consolidation of the Polish middle class, the emergence of the socialist movement, economic relations with Russia). It also provides modern psychological analysis, which does not always rationalize the mechanisms that determine the behavior of individuals, leaving some room for the subconscious. In order to portray the chaos of life, Prus created a riskily openended form of novel: the narrator’s assertiveness is weakened, and his knowledge is not complete. Readers have to reconstruct the course of events themselves, to compare information derived from different sources. The essence of these techniques was not initially understood, and the novel met with a critical reception. Prus was thought to have written in a haste and failed to keep control of the huge material of the novel. Perhaps he was not fully understood on purpose: Prus was as far removed as he could be from the Romantic stereotypes. He presented the main character’s involvement in the uprising as a negative experience, and his later business dealings and Russian friendships as something permissible. For The Doll’s Wokulski, life was the same thing as it was for Prus: a realm of personal choices, surprising situations, and not fully rationalized steps. By appreciating the various forms of existence, Prus was an ally to the time of maturation. His novella Sins of Childhood (Grzechy dzieciństwa – 1883) demonstrates a child’s helplessness with respect to the phenomenon of maturity, the mystery of gender, and power. Throughout his works, Prus paid special attention to two phenomena: ordinariness and distinctness. He himself liked to wear the mask of an average Warsaw journalist, who took an interest in everything: sewage systems, orphanages, hackney coaches, etc. (reflected in his excellent Chronicles, written over the course of many decades). Only once, provoked by an article of Świętochowski’s, did he admit that he realized his own greatness. Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841-1910), on the contrary, was a writer with many complexes. In her excellent correspondence (Collected Let—— 181 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA ters / Listy zebrane), she repeatedly betrayed a sense of dissatisfaction that her colleague writers (particularly Sienkiewicz) were earning more and were more highly esteemed among publishers and readers. In truth, however, she had no reason to complain: her writing career was a great victory of the spirit over matter. Orzeszkowa managed to emerge unharmed from all of her life’s oppressions (involvement in the January Uprising, a divorce, and a period spent in Grodno, a small town in the eastern borderlands of the former Republic of Poland), to consciously choose the writing profession and achieve success. Her first works are not very well-written and may only be of interest as testimony to the author’s sympathy for the trends of modernization, although certain ambitious exceptions can be found among them: The Memoirs of Wacława (Pamiętnik Wacławy – 1871), Mr Graba (Pan Graba –1872), The Brochwicz Family (Rodzina Brochwiczów – 1876). Marta, her 1873 novel promoting the emancipation of women, was almost immediately translated into many languages and became the bible of German feminist movements. However, Orzeszkowa would only achieve true artistry in her novel Meir Ezofowicz (1878, published in English as The Forsaken), a statement on the condition of the Jews. Here she couched a concrete social problem within a mythical structure, the age-old conflict of good and evil, love and hatred, lightness and darkness. This method of rendering reality in a discretely exalted fashion would thenceforth be inextricably tied to her creative work. The writer availed herself of it above all in On the Banks of the Niemen (Nad Niemnem – 1888), a great national epic, presenting the condition of Polish society 25 years after the failure of the last uprising. The author relates the disintegration of social bonds and the crisis of a multiple-generation family to a state of forgetting, effacing the events of the heroic past in the minds of the characters. Her restoration of national symbols, chiefly from the period of the January Uprising, which Orzeszkowa had participated in as a courier for the dictator Romuald Traugutt, aims not only to pay respect to history, but also to foster social consolidation. On the Banks of the Niemen marks the outset of Orzeszkowa’s period of maturity. The writer did not break with the program of —— 182 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning the Warsaw Positivists; she continued to value knowledge, labor, technology and democracy; yet she grasped the limits of the modernization ideology, especially under Polish circumstances. And so, she expanded her point of view to include the historical perspective, and augmented her realistic narrative with forceful symbols that enabled her to say exactly what she had to say, even under censorship bans. Aside from people and history, On the Banks of the Niemen also has another protagonist that would accompany the author in all her work thenceforth: the natural world. Orzeszkowa imbues her descriptions of nature with all the poetry words can offer. Nevertheless, nature does not merely serve an ornamental function; it is not exclusively an accompaniment or a witness to human activity. Her sensitivity to the beauty of nature is associated with a departure from the anthropocentric dimension of the world. Mankind is not lord of creation, but rather only an element in the great unfathomable whole that that God created. In Orzeszkowa’s work, rapture at nature is a form of religious expression. The stature ascribed to nature also leads us to other lines of inquiry. The young Orzeszkowa always recalled her father with deference, although she could not have known him; her relations with her mother, on the other hand, were difficult – the two women were in some sense disappointed by one another. The complex of being a “bad” daughter and a luckless lover taught Orzeszkowa to treat femininity with reserve. In the epoch’s discourse on emancipation, her voice resounded firmly and austerely – A Few Words About Women (Kilka słów o kobietach, 1870). I do not believe that it will be excessive to assert that the revalorization of her attitude towards the natural world reconciled Orzeszkowa with her own gender. Her later essays invoke the image of Mother Earth. This not just a rhetorical mannerism, the use of a lexicalized expression. In her dissertation The Countenance of the Mother (Oblicze matki – 1899), the author clearly remarks that close contact with nature, e.g. contact not underpinned by any pragmatic need, can only be achieved by a special sort of being: a child or a woman. By taking rapture in nature, Orzeszkowa also achieves self-identification. —— 183 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA In the 1880s, the writer experimented with forms of naturalist narration in The Underdogs (Niziny – 1885), The Dziurdzia Family (Dziurdziowie – 1886). In the novel The Boor (Cham – 1888), she managed an impressive feat of fusion: a study on the psychology of a promiscuous woman, perhaps modeled after the Goncourt brothers’ Germinie Lacerteux, combined with an evangelical story, as rigid in its ethical message as the biographies of the saints. It would seem that this confrontation of realism with the need to idealize had to end in fiasco. But it did not: The Boor is, alongside On the Banks of the Niemen, Orzeszkowa’s best novel. The success of the experiment was determined by the topic, rarely taken up by a female writer. The Boor holds its own as a story about love, understood as a bond that links that which is different. Intentionally or no, Orzeszkowa was a writer of the eastern borderlands; she was excellently aware of this patch of land’s multiethnic and multicultural milieu. She was interested in language and culture, both Belarusian and Lithuanian, as well as Ukrainian and Jewish. She learned the Ukrainian (Ruthenian) tongue as an adult, but was familiar with Belarusian from her childhood, and the dialogs of her rural novels are replete in calques from the latter language. The writer also drew upon the local folklore, which, like everything else in these environs, was multiethnic, a Polish and Belarusian amalgam. Thus Orzeszkowa helped create the specific phenomenon of borderland culture: like the inter-uprising poet Władysław Syrokomla, like Jan Niesłuchowski, she belongs not only to Polish, but also to Belarusian culture. She is identified by Belarusians as “their” writer, like Adam Mickiewicz or the aforementioned Kraszewski are seen as writers belonging in some sense to Lithuanian culture as well. The determining factor in this classification is not language: only Niesłuchowski was essentially bilingual (producing Belarusian poetry under the pseudonym Janka Łuczyna). The other writers mentioned here knew the languages of their co-compatriots to a limited extent, and cannot be said to have written in Belarusian or Lithuanian. The fact that they were within the orbit of a literature other than Polish stems from the inspirational role that they played for their “younger” brothers, from their sanctification of these lands of coexistence. —— 184 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning This phenomenon does have a mirror image, although perhaps it is not entirely symmetrical: many writers professing a specific national identity (Lithuanian or Belarusian) encountered Polish literature closely, and wrote in Polish, or began by writing in Polish. An example can be found in Karolina Proniewska (Praniauskaitë), who began by writing poems in Polish but in time became a writer in the Lithuanian language; another in the sisters Maria and Zofia Iwanowska, who entered Lithuanian literature under the pseudonym Lazdynu Peleda (Maria wrote in Polish; Zofia translated her works into Lithuanian). The most eminent Lithuanian writer of the period, Žemaitë, also began writing in Polish. This special overlapping of the Polish, Lithuanian, and Belarusian perspectives (with various additional components) constitutes the phenomenon of borderland culture. Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) was always more problematic for critics than for readers. The public, which gave good receptions to his journalistic accounts – Portrait of Ameryka (Listy z podróży do Ameryki – 1876-1878), Letters From Africa (Listy z Afryki – 18911892) – began to harbor true worship for the writer following the publication of successive parts of his Trilogy, a boldly written cycle set in 17th-century Polish history: With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i mieczem – 1884), The Deluge (Potop – 1886), and Pan Michael (Pan Wołodyjowski – 1888). Critics, on the other hand, raised various objections about the historical and ideological substance of his works. Years later, Sienkiewicz’s literary output, his both historical and modern novels – among which we should chiefly make mention of Quo vadis? (1896), The Teutonic Knights (Krzyżacy – 1900) in the former category, and Without Dogma (Bez dogmatu – 1891) and The Połaniecki Family (Rodzina Połanieckich – 1895, rendered in English as Children of the Soil) in the latter – were the subject of sharp dispute among representatives of the young generation of writers and journalistic commentators, such as Brzozowski and Nałkowski. The writer stood accused of intellectual shallowness, corner-cutting, superficiality, and catering to coarse tastes. This opinion was later supported by the outstanding Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, who dubbed Sienkiewicz a first-rate second-rate writer, the Homer of the B category. And so, on the one hand we have a bronze statue of Sienkiewicz —— 185 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA the Nobel laureate (1905), statesman, diplomat, and patriot, in command of the Polish national imagination, and on the other hand an image of a crafter of clever swashbuckling novels, at best of the caliber of Alexandre Dumas. This discrepancy is fascinating and inspires reflection. We can say, beyond all doubt, that Sienkiewicz is a master of plot, that he possessed a vivid imagination cinematographers find so alluring (most of his novels have been filmed: the Trilogy directed by Jerzy Hoffman; Quo vadis? in its latest adaptation by Jerzy Kawalerowicz in 2001; The Połaniecki Family), an exceptional linguistic ear grounded in erudition and able to faultlessly find an idiom of archaisms, which nevertheless differed from the authentic sound of 17th-century Polish. The formula applied to Sienkiewicz of “writing to make a splash,” although still not the full story, now does seem to be the aptest description of this writer’s magical work. 4. Sensibilities of a different sort were addressed by naturalistic inspiration, something that writers of both epochs clearly had in common. This Polish naturalism can be interpreted broadly or narrowly. In the narrow interpretation, it was an interesting albeit marginal phenomenon, chiefly limited to the social milieu novel, concentrated on the life of a closed community, although not necessarily a human community (the novels of Adolf Dygasiński, 1839-1902, Artur Gruszecki, 1852-1929). In the wider view, this was a movement for the autonomy of art, drawing upon the concepts of Flaubert and others, as well as an endeavor to implement Zola’s formula of literature as a “human document.” Aside from Gruszecki, a campaign to liberate art from obligations external to it was waged by two prominent critics, publicists, and writers: Antoni Sygietyński (1850-1923) and Stanisław Witkiewicz (1851-1915). In their studies and sketches they demanded that the artist demonstrate courage in depicting nature in an unpretentious way, free of stereotypes, and that the critic manifest competence and knowledge about the rules of the creative process. They postulated that the greatness of a work of art should be determined not by its theme, even the most dignified, but rather by the professionalism of its artistic rendering. They rejected tendentious art: the message of a work of art should flow from its construction; all ideological or —— 186 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning moral commentaries were unacceptable. Thus Sygietyński held up as a model the writings of Flaubert, free of direct interventions by the author; Witkiewicz in turn did not hesitate to challenge the authority of painter Jan Matejko and his universally-acclaimed historical canvasses of scenes from Poland’s great historical past, to argue that what should matter in art is not just theme, but also artistic perfection: perspective, the means of depicting space, color, and contour. The naturalistic campaign was of huge import in Poland; this was the first time clear artistic aims and the postulate of autonomous art were formulated, paving the way for modernist appeals and all later 20th century trends viewing works of art as auto-telic. New tasks were also ascribed to critics for the first time; they were to be guardians of an artistic rather than ideological canon. We should add that both these commentators demonstrated great social and patriotic sensitivity. In their judgment, taking a professional approach to artistic endeavors did not clash with a national attitude. On the contrary, it aided it, enriching it with social experiences of a new caliber. Zola’s inspiration in Polish literature must be understood in twofold fashion: it may involve the conscious application of this writer’s concepts, or an involuntary, intuitive attempt at shifting the boundaries of art towards drastic phenomena of life. This attempt was not always associated with a familiarity with Zola’s works; it stemmed from the atmosphere, was in the air. This path of entry to the group of naturalists can be seen as applying to many writers and their works, sometimes very prominent. Closest to Zola’s concept of literature as a “human document” are the novellas of Maria Konopnicka (18421910), those in which the writer gave the floor to her protagonists (e.g. “Miss Florentyna” from the volume Novellas – 1897), while not concealing her own cultural distinctness, her surprise at their biographies. The approach of delving into the guts of life, as experienced first-hand, was also postulated by Gabriela Zapolska (1857-1921), the author of the superb novels Kaśka Kariatyda (1886), A Foretaste of Hell (Przedpiekle – 1889), and Love in the Season (Sezonowa miłość – 1904), as well as dramas that continue to be staged: Tootsie (Żabusia – 1897); Mrs. Dulska’s Morality (Moralność pani Dulskiej – 1906); and The Four of Them (Ich czworo – 1907). —— 187 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA Zapolska was exceptionally sensitive to deciphering the social and biological subjugation of women. Interestingly, this was not coupled with any emancipation-minded reflection. The writer was averse to both patriarchic institutions and feminism. This stance is not clearcut and is in need of research. It seems that the model of womanhood in force at the time did not enable Zaposka to reconcile her artistic ambitions with her personal ones. She desired freedom, yet at the same time longed for sweet submissiveness to her lover. She desired men, yet at the same time, repeatedly shoved away and deceived, she scorned them. She found herself in a trap that she repeatedly depicted. Writing did not bring Zapolska satisfying liberation. Writing out of first-hand experience, in drastic fashion, without sparing the reader, forms the basis for the works of Władysław Stanisław Reymont (1867-1925), including The Bitch (Suka – 1893), Death (Śmierć – 1894), which are shocking tales of rural life; The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana – 1899, screen adaptation by Andrzej Wajda, 1975, reedited 2000), a brilliant epic portraying the birth of an industrial city in the late 1800s; and The Peasants (Chłopi – 19041909, screen adaptation by Jan Rybkowski, 1973), a novel that earned Reymont a Nobel Prize in 1924. Reymont imbued the narrative of The Peasants with a strong lyrical element; his language is no longer an implementation of general Polish norms, but clearly bears an artistic stamp imparted by stylization techniques of various sorts. This form altered the status of the world he portrayed; it belongs to two orders: the real and the mythical, the social and the cosmic. Lyrical narration frequently taking the perspective of the protagonist was practiced by Stefan Żeromski (1864-1925), an exceptional example in Polish literature of a writer with a wide range of emotions: amatory, patriotic, and social. He was not always able to keep them under control, and those works in which emotional tensions were subjected to disciplining techniques have best passed the test of time. This chiefly means Sisyphean Labors (Syzyfowe prace – 1897), drawing upon the author’s own youth and the repression he experienced at a Russian school; Homeless People (Ludzie bezdomni – 1899), portraying the loneliness of an intellectual with a social mission; the historical narrative Ashes (Popioły – 1904), and the magnificent, caustic —— 188 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning Early Spring (Przedwiośnie – 1924, screen adaptation by Filip Bajon, 2000), in which the writer accused the powerful elite in free Poland of betraying social ideals. The Zolaist ideal of literature as a “human document” would develop along its own path in the interwar and postwar period: the psychologically and lyrically charged depiction of the world produced by the Young Poland writers faded. The model of narration prevalent in the work of the authentists, the writers from the “Przedmieście” group set up in the 1930s, the masters of Polish reportage (from Zbigniew Uniłowski to Ryszard Kapuściński), involved and still involves a more or less reserved model of narration, concentrated on the subject, free of the sin of entering the protagonist’s minds and dissecting their emotions. One thing has remained unchanged: the desire to depict marginalized, subjugated strata, those deprived of a voice. 5. The poetry of the second half of the 19th century did not generate any new concept of language (if we do not count Norwid – see the Romanticism chapter); it did not produce writers of Mickiewicz or Słowacki’s caliber. Nevertheless, lyric poetry cannot be omitted from the final tally of the 1864-1914 epoch. Firstly because, contrary to the established hierarchy of genres, the leading poets won huge public respect and popularity, and secondly because their works, especially the later ones, constitute a plane of convergence between Positivism and Young Poland. These remarks hold for both Konopnicka and for Adam Asnyk (1838-1897). After her unfortunate, freethinking debut, Konopnicka made herself guardian of the cultural canon, in which an important role was played by the models of Romantic poetry, biblical stylization, allusions to eastern exoticisms and Provençal poetry, and also, most originally, attempts at establishing a model for folk poetry. The collection Voices of Silence (Głosy ciszy – 1906), plus projects known to have been planned by the poet but which remained unfulfilled, attest to her interest in Słowacki, chiefly in his mystical period. Konopnicka shared this interest with many writers of Young Poland, above all with Antoni Lange (1861-1929) as the author of Meditations (Rozmyślania – 1906). The direction of borrowings (if we can —— 189 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA speak of them) is clear here: Konopnicka was first. I stress these facts in order to demonstrate how close the bonds were between the two epochs of literature on the verge of the 1900s. The work of Asnyk also fits within this field of similarities. Living in the shadow of the failed January Uprising and in the shadow of prophetic Romantic poetry, the poet learned to speak with a lowered voice. Despair, close to the experiences of the decadents, took the form of melancholy in his poetry, and it is these nostalgic poems, speaking clearly about being maladjusted to the world, of living in the wrong age and missing one’s true ideals (including ideals of love), that constitute the vivid portion of Asnyk’s work. Somewhat different was the fate met by Felicjan Faleński (18251910), the son of an infamous father disgraced by his servility towards the partitioning authorities, a loner and eccentric. Perhaps it was Faleński’s isolation, his falling outside the aesthetic ruts of both epochs, Romanticism and Positivism, that gave his writing such an autonomous character. A certain philosophical intuition is important here, which forced the poet to question the essence of being and to draw attention to the multiformity of existence, the fluidity of the boundaries between life and death, existence and nothingness. In the plane of ideas, Faleński is a philosophical-existential poet, availing himself of various intuitions, including Schopenhauerism, to construct a dynamic order of existence. His poetic technique is equally interesting; this broadly educated writer, well-read in world literature, drew upon the classical model, tempered and refined by Parnassian experiences. 6. It seems that the literature of the Positivist epoch, encompassing the years 1864-1890, can be most easily characterized by pointing out the various self-restrictions that were consciously or unconsciously adopted. Firstly, the subjective perspective was avoided; as literary historian Antoni Potocki says, a “cult of collectiveness” then prevailed. The value of a hero was measured in terms of his attitudes on public issues. Secondly, the “ethic of obligation” towered over the “ethic of love.” Private, amatory matters took a back seat to issues of a social nature. Thirdly, the Positivists rarely ascribed art an autonomous value. Much more highly prized were common sense and adherence to the —— 190 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning general rules of development. Fourthly, forms of depiction that would violate the realist mimesis were avoided. The dynamics of the postuprising epoch were such, however, that these restrictions ebbed. Prus in The Doll and Orzeszkowa in The Boor ascribed fundamental significance to individual existence. The fantastic visions in Prus’ stories broke the monopoly of realism – including Jakub’s Dream (Sen Jakuba – 1875), Reformed (Nawrócony – 1881), The Mold of the World (Pleśń świata – 1884), The Dream (Sen – 1890); Vision (Widzenie – 1900), War and Work (Wojna i praca – 1903), Revenge (Zemsta – 1908), and Apparition (Widziadła 1911). Naturalism posed questions about the autonomy of art. The old generation reaffirmed its stance, while the young one turned towards the repertoire of common readings and philosophical inspirations. New masters appeared, such as Maurice Maeterlinck, Ola Hansson, and Oscar Wilde, although the writings of Ernest Haeckel, Herbert Spencer, Arthur Schopenhauer, Charles Robert Darwin, and Ernest Renan continued to be widely read. Both generations sought inspiration in Immanuel Kant, and both, to varying degrees, were fascinated by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Stirner, and Marie-Jean Guyau. Both generations worked to make up the distance separating Poles from Western Europe. Translation activity flourished, oriented more towards works of science and prose in the 1870s-80s, but devoted chiefly to translations of poetry in later years (including Alphonse Lamartine, José-Maria de Heredia, Jean Arthur Rimbaud, Theodore de Banville, Stephane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine). There is an approximation here, but no similarity – wrote historian Stanisław Tarnowski when comparing the later work of Konopnicka to the verses of Young Poland poets Lucjan Rydel (1870-1918) and Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer (1865-1940). The same thing could in essence be said about other comparisons: of Prus to Żeromski or Orzeszkowa to Żeromski; of Świętochowski to Brzozowski or Świętochowski to Irzykowski. Without violating the protocol of divergences between these pairs of writers, we can speak of their proximate attitudes, and thus of a mild, gradual shift from realistic (Positivist) literature to that of Young Poland. An important element in this evolution is the need that writers of both generations shared to refer to —— 191 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA Romanticism, understood not only just an artistic epoch, but chiefly as the domain that shaped all of Polish 19th-century experience. This mild transition, however, does not exhaust the relations between Positivism and Young Poland. The epoch of modernism also spawned artistic proposals that exceeded beyond 19th-century thinking, and which would only gain currency in the 20th century. A few words should be devoted to such proposals here. In the field of colloquial language, such proposals comprise more than just the theory of symbolism, understood as replacing description with indirect expression, appealing to emotions that only act as an equivalent of utterly inexpressible content. Symbols viewed as such are an inseparable element of literature, and as Lange – the most persistent advocate of reconciling the stances of the Positivist and modernist generations – wrote, the natural environment also employs symbols, meaning signs to be read and interpreted. The modernist breakthrough, therefore, consisted not in just exploiting symbols and symbolism interpreted in this or that way, but rather in intensifying linguistic reflection, in heightening language awareness, in showing the relations between the nature of languages and the boundaries of cognition, and finally in questioning the metaphysical content of literary symbolism. The most acute and at the same time the most momentous experience of Young Poland involved demonstrating that symbols are empty, that they do not refer to any transcendence, that the moral and artistic order is an attack of free will, not a realization of the existing order of the world. A good example of the vitality of modernist proposals is to be found in the work of Leopold Staff (1878-1957). The poet puts up a heroic and Nietzschean defense against the feeling of metaphysical emptiness, not just in his young collections Dreams of Power (Sny o potędze– 1901), Day of the Soul (Dzień duszy – 1903). A disturbing definition of reality also appears in subsequent volumes, frequently read as examples of classical harmony: “What will remain after everything is gone” (the poem “Reality”/”Rzeczywistość”, from the volume Tall Trees / Wysokie drzewa, 1932) and a faith, articulated in colloquial language, in the existence of the world’s “other side” takes on an ironic tenor (the poem “Bow,” “Ukłon” in the same volume). —— 192 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning In his postwar collections of verse Dull Weather (Martwa pogoda – 1946), Osiers (Wiklina – 1954), and Nine Muses (Dziewięć muz – 1958), Staff grows even more distinctly closer to colloquial Polish, articulating the experiences of internal disorder and disharmony. He admitted that yearning for a higher world is not a key that opens any sort of door. In his skepticism and self-restraint he was akin to modern poets such as Herbert and Różewicz. The proposal of Bolesław Leśmian (1877-1937) headed in a different direction. Born in Warsaw but raised in the Ukraine, he bequeathed Polish literature his memories of the exceptional beauty of the Dnieper basin and splendid knowledge of Russian poetry and culture. In his youth he wrote in Russian, and his work in Polish retained certain traces of Russian verse – melodiousness, the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes. As an artistic theoretician and practitioner, Leśmian contrasted poetry to prose and ordinary speech. Only when freed of the obligation to communicate specific content or ideas, of the accepted means of expression, can words be truly poetic. The poetic word is subordinated to rhyme, to a pre-established melody, which rules the internal structure of verse and determines its buoyancy and beauty; it is a magical word, set dancing and singing, capable of receiving “communion with the cosmos.” In Leśmian’s theoretical concepts, one can perceive the influence of Nietzsche, Bergson and Solovyov, as well as precursory articulations of elements of avant-garde thought, which would in truth push aside the issues of musicality, but would stress the autonomy of poetic language and the semantics of inter-lexical space. Further collections of poetry also offered original artistic proposals, drawing in a creative and unconventional fashion upon turn-ofthe-century symbolism, yet at the same time transcending this perspective. As early as in the volume Orchard at the Crossroads (Sad rozstajny – 1912), metaphysical desires grounded the poet in the palpable and the concrete, evidencing an attachment to the earthly domain (the verses “Metaphysics,” “Song on the Bird and on Shade”). The 1920 volume Meadow contains a superb cycle of ballads and erotic poems (”In the Raspberry Thicket”/”W malinowym —— 193 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA chruśniaku”). Here we see the crystallization of Leśmian’s philosophy, closely bound up with innovation in both language and versification: a desire for an integral union with nature, understood not as natura naturata, but as natura naturans; an accusatory tone struck in his dialog with God, frequently through adopting the perspective of a hero or heroine who has met with injustice; the desacralization of the metaphysical realm; and a sensuality rarely encountered in Polish poetry. In his latter volumes, A Drink of Shadows (Napój cienisty – 1936) and Forest Happenings (Dziejba leśna – 1938), Leśmian builds his own philosophy of being. Existence and nonexistence form a continuum, filled with various incarnations of the will to live, to move, and to love. Death is also a form of being; and so we can speak of an afterlife and a “manifested otherworld.” This characteristic expansion of the philosophical and existential perspective would not be so intriguing if it were not accompanied by countless neologisms and lexical inventions. The poet calls a world of his own into being, and does so by means of original, concrete language, full of neologisms, negated constructions, verbs recast as nouns. The absolute in Leśmian’s poetry is motion, desire, lust, love. The absolute is from this world. Ukrainian roots also had an impact upon the work of another modernist writer: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1894-1980). Debuting in 1919, Iwaszkiewicz was part of the interwar poetic group “Skamander,” and indeed, his sensibilities, tastes, and literary models were informed by modernist culture and its cult of beauty, sublimation of erotic instincts, and metaphysical longings. The exceptionally artistic poems in his premiere collection, Octostichs (Oktostychy – 1919), conceal a metaphysical void. Symbols are defunct, they cannot be resuscitated by any absolute, by any other-worldly content. An attempt at balancing the void against the greatness of art, following Oscar Wilde’s model, will not cut off the metaphysical sapping. In his next volumes, Dionysiacs (Dionizje – 1921) and Cassidas Ending With Seven Verses (Kasydy zakończone siedmioma wierszami – 1925), Iwaszkiewicz shifts his field of interest to a realm closer to daily life. This day-to-day existence, however, is very special, perceived in Rimbaudian fashion, as a nexus of sensual images and pure visionariness. —— 194 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning In subsequent poetic tomes, Return to Europe (Powrót do Europy – 1931) and Summer 1932 (Lato 1932 – 1933), which include a fascination with German culture in its Romantic and modern embodiments, Iwaszkiewicz achieves his peak form. He would ascend to it yet again in his last volume of poetry, Weather Map (Mapa pogody – 1977). His verses become a masterful expression of the inexpressible – the tedious and fascinating duality of being, which contains everything: life, love, fear, and death. Iwaszkiewicz’s world is unfathomable. Individual experience exceeds beyond the reality of sensations, but the opening to metaphysics that so ensues manifests itself in a sense of anxiety and uncertainty. It does not bring any fulfillment, any knowledge or any comfort. Iwaszkiewicz’s poems are related to the birth of apophatic metaphysics, where the concept of sacredness and religiousness rests not upon faith, but upon vague anxiety, upon a wearisome yearning for the unknown. Modernism developed modern artistic projects not only within the field of poetry, but also in the realm of prose. Here we can speak of two important proposals. The first of them involves the polyphonic novel, understood as an epic form maximally liberated from the narrator’s function to regulate and assess, a form open to the words of the characters, to their mutual dialog. This narrative technique was employed by Wacław Berent (1873-1940) in Rotten Wood (Próchno – 1903), a novel that presents the mental history and types of modernist artists, and Winter Corn (Oziminy – 1911), depicting the state of mind among Polish society in the late partition period. Berent was also the author of historical novels: Living Stones (Żywych kamieni – 1918), set in the late Middle Ages and addressing the role of the artist in a time of transition, and the three volumes of innovative sketches The Current (Nurt – 1934), Diogenes in a Nobleman’s Coat (Diogenes w kontuszu – 1937), and Twilight of the Commanders (Zmierzch wodzów – 1939). It was these sketches, called biographical stories at the author’s suggestion, that institute a completely new formula of historical narrative, close in essence to the polyphonic novel. Berent does not retell history and does not philosophize about it, rather, almost before readers’ very eyes, he attempts to reconstruct it out of documentary fragments, out of statements made by charac—— 195 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA ters, further adding to this polyphony with the distinctly different voice of the narrator. The writer is interested in a particular period of Polish history, running from the final years prior to the loss of independence up to the November Uprising (1790-1830); he appreciates not only the ingenuity and heroism of outstanding individuals that comprised the Polish homeland’s first generation of “rescuers,” but also the civil empowerment of all of society that occurred by dint of their effort. Berent’s inspiration, which involved demonstrating that historical narrative is not a ready-made whole, but rather a subjective kind of creation, drawing upon documentary forms, autobiographical accounts, family memory, and of course plot, would become an important element of contemporary historical works by Teodor Parnicki, Hanna Malewska, Marian Brandys, and Władysław Terlecki. The second important modernistic project in the field of prose is comprised of novels that centered their cognitive and philosophical inquiry around the category of gender. This project was furthered by the prose and poetic works of Maria Komornicka (1876-1949), for whom the question of her own sexual identity gave rise to artistic and existential searches, and determined her very ability or inability to speak. The category of gender should not be exclusively placed within the scope of theme, as we are not just concerned with works that gave eroticism a thematic prominence. For both Stanisław Przybyszewski (1868-1927) and Zofia Nałkowska (1884-1954), sexuality was a fundamental category that concealed not only the riddle of life, but also the secret of creativity. Przybyszewski, a graduate of a German gymnasium and a student of a Berlin university, was one of the most intriguing figures of not only the Polish but also the European Moderna. His unconventional, frenzied life, and above all his bilingual German and Polish output, were conducive to contacts with eminent modernist writers and artists: August Strindberg, Richard Dehmel, Edvard Munch. Numerous admirers and opponents clustered around Przybyszewski in Poland as well, in both Kraków and Warsaw. The language of Przybyzewski’s novels and essays bear the stamp of the epoch, with its pathos and penchant for expressiveness, emotional effusiveness, and verbosity, but the deeper structure of these —— 196 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning works fits in well with modern psychoanalytical theories (Z. Freud, J. Lacan) and the themes explored by feminist criticism (B. Johnson). In his demonic characters, selectively endowed with single-gender sexuality, as in the German Totenmesse (1893, Polish version Requiem aeternam – 1904), By the Sea (Nad morzem – 1899), and Androgyne (1900), Przybyszewski perceives the tragedy of people doomed to endure not only eternally unquenched erotic desire, but also an unsatisfied metaphysical need to embrace the whole. The young Nałkowska attempted to treat womanhood as the sexual category that binds a being to the spirit of the world, through its closeness to nature. She quickly perceived, however, what Przybyszewski also discerned: that gender is a flaw, a rift, an unhealed wound, that it is hard to shed this stamp, and even harder if one is not a man. Her early novels Women (Kobiety – 1906), Contemporaries (Rówieśnice – 1909), Narcissa (Narcyza – 1910), and also her later The Romance of Teresa Hennert (Romans Teresy Hennert – 1924), A Bad Love (Niedobra miłość – 1928), and the drama House of Women (Dom kobiet – 1930), portray female characters at a loss when facing various existential situations (a lack of love, betrayal, old age), as well as their heroic efforts to bring chaos under control and to build a solid bond with the world, transcending their own misfortune – as in Boundary Line (Granica – 1935). Nałkowska put her art to the test with respect to her own life. This is evidenced by her work of a lifetime – her magnificent, inexhaustible Journals, kept from 1899 until her death in 1954. This was the place where the chaos of biography and history changed into the order of style. We should not expect, however, that the problem of form was an exclusively aesthetic problem for Nałkowska. To the contrary, form was also an ethical duty, and entailed the adoption of a certain discipline and rigor. This becomes most clear when we read her journal entries from the WWII period. Nałkowska spent the period of German occupation in Warsaw, earning a living by selling cigarettes in a small shop she ran together with her sister, a sculptor. Unaccustomed to physical effort, hungry and frequently ill, facing at least the same danger as other Poles, she remained firm in her resolve of systematic work, solidarity with others, and internal elegance. The —— 197 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA modernist experience of uncertainty and danger – although admittedly encountered under other, seemingly incomparable conditions, i.e. those of the gender struggle – prepared her for taking on the wartime ordeal. Among many very prominent modernist critics, at least two names deserve more thorough discussion. Stanisław Brzozowski (1878-1911), a philosopher, writer, and publicist, possessed both vast knowledge (philosophy, the history of European literature, sociology) and expansive ambitions to create a cultural project that would engender a transformation of Polish reality. Regardless of all his changes and his critical assessment of the authorities he successively embraced, then abandoned (Nietzsche, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georges Sorel, Karl Marx), Brzozowski consistently strove to move beyond the 19thcentury model of culture, encompassing the heroism of Romantic protagonists, the prudence of the Positivists, and the individualism of the Moderna. In numerous sketches and treatises, he passed a harsh, although not always unambiguously negative, judgment upon the past – Ideas (Idee – 1910), Voices in the Night (Głosy wśród nocy – 1911), The Legend of Young Poland (Legenda Młodej Polski – 1911). Nevertheless, he repeatedly returned to the philosophy of Polish Romanticism, frequently understood very broadly, as a synthesis of 19th-century cultural and social activity. Seeing Poland’s civilizational backwardness, he understood modernity as a mission aimed at transforming every human action (not just artistic or intellectual activity) into a deed that enriches the social fabric. Brzozowski was not an excessively consistent writer; he began his journalistic writings with ideas not far removed from late Positivism, yet ended, prematurely, with a glorification of Catholicism and the concept of nation. He was not only a critic and philosopher, he was an cultural ideologue, practicing the model of publicist commentary that the 20th century would further develop. Karol Irzykowski (1873-1944), a writer, critic, and publicist, raised at a Galician school on Hebbel and German literature, shared Brzozowski’s maximalist approach, although Irzykowski’s was of a different sort: oriented towards diagnosing culture, rather than setting forth its design. Irzykowski understood the tasks of the critic in —— 198 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning uncompromising fashion: as an obligation to analyze and call into question all of vital cultural activity. This did not just entail being disagreeable and skeptical, although these were indeed traits Irzykowski did not lack. Rather, it involved ruthlessly unmasking myths and stereotypes, getting to the bottom of the true, not falsified motivation that drives the creators and recipients of culture (this problem also appears in Irzykowski’s innovative novel, The Hag (Pałuba – 1903). Nevertheless, without objecting to the current way of thinking, Irzykowski would never have written his most outstanding critical books: in the collection Deed and Word (Czyn i słowo – 1913), he opposed the military wave and heroic bent, drawing attention to the autonomy of culture. He continued to defend art’s independence in the interwar years, adopting a stance akin to Julien Benda’s “clericism.” Struggling to ensure the autonomy of culture did not mean abandoning its social functions. Irzykowski identified these functions with the dictate of communicativeness, circumvented by many avant-garde artists, with the author’s responsibility for his words and the public reception of a work of art – e.g. The Battle for Content (Walka o treść – 1929), Bull in a China Shop (Słoń wśród porcelany – 1934). He himself did not shrink from intellectually exploring marginal or new terrain. He wrote about popular literature, and authored one of the world’s first monographs on film and cinema, Tenth Muse (Dziesiąta Muza – 1924). Irzykowski’s critical campaigns caused a true intellectual ferment in interwar Poland. The author himself did not profit from this – he lived in conditions that were not even modest, and was seriously ill of heart. His critical passion, however, did not go to waste: these debates crystallized the postulate of art as an discipline that is autonomous, yet at the same time sensitive to social context, that is free of ideology, myth-building, and the direct interference of the authorities, and woven into the communicative order and the social fabric. Finally, we should mention the Great Reform of the theater, which in the Polish context was realized by the work of Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907), a playwright, poet, and painter. Wyspiański cast off the tradition of veristic theater, and inspired by the works of Richard Wagner and Nietzsche he resurrected a visionary Romantic theater, —— 199 ——

GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA infusing its elements with new concepts, both in stagecraft (the combined interaction of acting, scenography, lighting, movement) and in historical interpretation, which takes on mythical underpinnings – such as in November Night (Noc listopadowa – 1904), where Elysian myth cited alongside historical scenes from the November Uprising constitutes a prediction of the homeland’s rebirth. Wyspiański also monumentalized contemporary events; in Judges (Sędziowie – 1907) he imparted the haughtiness of Greek tragedy to a bleak story read in a newspaper (about the murder of a young boy). In another instance, a social gathering, the wedding of the poet Lucjan Rydel, a friend of Wyspiański’s, to a young village girl from nearby Kraków, Jadwiga Mikołajczykówna, served as the pretext for composing The Wedding (Wesele – 1901). This play was an entrancing reckoning with current times and history; it depicted both the state of mind of the fin-desiècle Galician intelligentsia, as well as the partially squandered hopes of resurrecting great Poland. In Wyspiański’s analysis, this goal faced the obstacles posed by the still-unforgotten injustices committed by the nobility, the memory of the bloody revenge exacted by the Galician peasants in 1846 (not without provocation by the Austrian authorities), and the political immaturity of all the social strata. The readings of The Wedding do not, however, end with the political layer. Wyspiański plunges deeper, into the fabric of mythical beliefs that personify Poland’s past, as well as into the subconscious of his characters, who dodge taking action or historical responsibility. The drama unfolds at a fantastic pace, the mythical layer (recalling, for example, the figure of the prophet Wernyhora) becomes divested of the monumentality so characteristic of Wyspiański. The appearance of fantastic figures can be explained by the intoxicated revelry of the guests. Historiographical diagnoses intermingle with “common sense” interpretations, just like the language of myth and prophesy (as in a national mystery-play) mixes here with the crude language of ordinary life (akin to a nativity-play). Wyspiański’s drama served as a ready-made film script, which Andrzej Wajda filmed in 1963. The director took advantage of the strengths of the original: he showed how important the questions posed by Wyspiański are (does Poland have the strength to be reborn?), as well as how he gives them a modern form. —— 200 ——

Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and a Beginning 7. I do not believe that the Polish historical (cultural) experience is of a hermetic (untranslatable) nature. It suffices to be aware that the Polish lands were partitioned amongst three foreign powers, that an insurgent spirit lay dormant in Poles, and that injustices had been committed against the peasants, who were granted land rights by foreign authorities rather than by the native nobility, for one to be able to comprehendingly follow narrative about 19th-century Polish culture. The issue always lies in choosing a language, meaning a way of delivering this narrative, that is capable of intriguing a modern-day reader, especially a foreign one. It seems that this involves striking a sensible balance between Polish culture’s ties to the European context, and its distinctness.

Bibliographical Notes Feldman W., Współczesna literatura polska ( 1st ed.: Piśmiennictwo polskie w ostatnich latach dwudziestu), Warszawa 1902. Potocki A., Polska literatura współczesna, Warszawa 1911. Czachowski K., Obraz współczesnej literatury polskiej lat 1884-1933, Lwów 19341936. Głowiński M., Powieść młodopolska. Studium z poetyki historycznej, Wrocław 1969. Podraza-Kwiatkowska M., Młodopolskie harmonie i dysonanse, Warszawa 1969. ——, Symbolizm i symbolika w poezji Młodej Polski. Teoria i praktyka, Kraków 1975. Wyka K., Młoda polska, Kraków 1977. Markiewicz H., Pozytywizm, Warszawa 1978 (or subsequent editions). Ziomek J., Epoki i formacje w dziejach literatury polskiej, in: Pisma ostatnie. Literatura i nauka o literaturze, Warszawa 1994. Borkowska G., Pozytywiści i inni, Warszawa 1996 (or subsequent editions). Nycz R., Język modernizmu. Prolegomena historycznoliterackie, Wrocław 1997.

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ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939

Having been parceled up among the three neighboring powers and erased from the map of Europe in 1795, Poland only regained its independence as a result of peace treaties signed at the end of WWI. On 11 November 1918, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, a legendary underground hero and the leader of Polish military detachments during the war, came to power in a newly-reestablished Polish state. The initial years following the end of WWI brought neither peace nor stabilization to this state, set up within new borders, on territory carved out between Germany and Russia. The war had taken a huge toll of human life, and left devastation in its wake (despite rapid industrial development, in percentage terms production in 1939 had still not regained the level seen before 1914). For two years following the country’s liberation, its eastern borders remained under threat; the Polish-Russian War was waged (the Bolshevik army even managed to approach Warsaw in 1920), battles were fought in Ukraine and Lithuania, and the affiliation of non ethnically uniform areas was determined by plebiscites. The democratic Second Republic of Poland had to be rebuilt from the ground up – in an atmosphere of constant conflict, exacerbated by economic difficulties, raging inflation, and nationality issues. Political friction culminated in the assassination of the first Polish president, Gabriel Narutowicz, followed soon thereafter by Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s contemptuous withdrawal from power (1923). —— 202 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 In May 1926, backed by the military, Piłsudski again seized power. A few prosperous years ensued, but ended with the European economic crisis of 1929. The territory-hungry policies of the two rising totalitarian powers, Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Communist Russia, posed a growing threat to the sovereignty of Poland, tucked as it was between them. Józef Piłsudski died in 1935. The new constitution enacted prior to his death veered away from the democratic system and bolstered state authority. Protests were raised by opposition groups, the stances staked out by political parties became alarmingly polarized, and rising public unrest was further fanned by renewed economic trouble and mounting unemployment. The international situation became increasingly more foreboding. Germany’s unpunished seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland made it clear that Nazi expansion would turn next to Poland. In the face of impending war, domestic political disputes faded in significance and all available measures were taken to reinforce the army – yet without much consequence. Nazi forces invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. England and France declared war on Germany on 3 September, but this did not halt the Nazi invasion. The Red Army next invaded Poland from the east on 17 September. Poland’s defensive efforts lasted one month. On 30 September, President Ignacy Mościcki conferred power onto the Polish government-in-exile then being formed. The Second Republic of Poland thus ceased to exist. Writers under the new conditions after 1918. Post-WWI literature developed differently in Poland than in the countries of Western Europe. Tragic wartime events found reflection in works written during the war itself and in later retrospective prose, but for Poles, unlike for many nations of Western Europe, the end of the war marked the thrilling start to the task of setting up the framework of a newlyformed state. There was no place or time for the settling of intellectual scores with the recent past, as was so important in France and Germany; it was not wartime grudges but rather the thought of the future that imparted shape to new artistic agendas. —— 203 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA In art and literature, there was almost no place for the brutality of European postwar Expressionism, and the pacifist trend developed poorly in Poland – a meager reflection of it can be found in Józef Wittlin’s Hymns (Hymny – 1920), in his sketches War, Peace, and the Poet’s Soul (Wojna, pokój i dusza poety 1925) and in the short stories of Kazimierz Wierzyński collected as The Boundaries of the World (Granice świata – 1933). Alongside memories of the horrors of war, a sentimental image of legionary soldiers or Uhlans, the heroic defenders of the Polish homeland, took root in Polish culture. Polish post-WWI literature developed under the influence of convictions deeply rooted in Polish tradition, of literature’s moral and social mission. Writers, especially older ones, set themselves the task of coming to better understand the nation’s situation and cultivating a forward-thinking vision of its future. Such tasks could not be relegated to publicist writings. Rather, writers drew upon the novel, which imparted a wider temporal perspective to current problems, and also possessed more profound and longer-term persuasive force. Important political novels were written. The most outstanding works of this current are General Barcz (Generał Barcz – 1923) by Juliusz Kaden Bandrowski (1995-1944) and Early Spring (Przedwiośnie – 1924) by Stefan Żeromski (1864-1925). Both authors sought an overall reckoning of contemporary times, on behalf of faithfulness to old ideals rooted in the patriotic tradition, which had dwindled in confrontation with the mundane reality of establishing a functioning Polish state. Such political novels combined a censorious tone with deliberation about the potential for state reform, and their final-tally diagnosis of the situation was propped up by an image of the elite’s moral turpitude. This was a diagnosis, not a prognosis; instead of a vision of the future, these political novels espoused pronounced hierarchies of values which should constitute the foundation for the state system then being developed. For Kaden this was a system of strong authority, while Żeromski propounded a state whose overarching value would be respect for the rights of the individual. Following the traditionally-rooted novel schema, whereby action centers on the trials and tribulations of the main character, the plots —— 204 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 of both works were secondary to the contrasted ideological arguments that emerge in the descriptions and dialogues. General Barcz is made more intriguing by references to authentic, publicly shocking events and by allusions enabling the characters to be identified as depicting real politicians. Although developed as a roman à clef, the characters’ guise was imprecise enough to prevent their referents from being unambiguously identified; this protected the book from turning into a political pasquinade, yet its scathing reference to current events was nevertheless clear. Żeromski appealed to a patriotic ethos, confronted with the menacing danger of Communist ideology to the east. The denunciatory manner of such prose was reinforced by traits of style, in which realistic descriptions were colored with a naturalist bluntness in Early Spring, or with the expressionist brutality of the behavior and language of the characters in General Barcz. The apotheosis of strong authority required the consistent imposition of lines circumscribing state institutions, and the inviolate boundaries of political freedom. The path towards dictatorship is portrayed in Kaden’s novel as something necessitated by the moral turpitude of the elite, who thwarted the ideals that were supposed to be enshrined in the independent Polish state. The novel’s title character, modeled in large part after Józef Piłsudski, is developed against this backdrop, as a leader personifying strength and ruthless authority. At the other ideological extreme is Stefan Żeromski’s Early Spring, the “most eminent political novel of the entire period” (according to Tomasz Burek). The hierarchy of values and the model system portrayed here differ from those in General Barcz: the form of the state should chiefly take account of the rights and good of the individual. Hence, Żeromski concentrates his attention not so much on the problem of power, as on the mechanisms that govern the collective mindset; under this concept the future is determined not by those who are at the helm, but rather by the attitudes of the entire intelligentsia stratum of society. And so – to employ the terminology coined by Michał Głowiński – the style in which ideological arguments are presented in Early Spring can be described as engaging in a democratic discourse: they emerge from behind the ostensibly objective portrayal of the —— 205 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA views professed by various sides in the political disputes. Żeromski’s scathing denunciation is leveled most harshly against Bolshevism/ Communism, yet Socialist ideals closer to the author’s views are also subjected to criticism and portrayed through parody, as anachronistic traditions of the nobility. The unresolved end of the novel, which cuts off at the culminating moment, harks back to Romantic schemas, and provokes the reader to seek answers to the unsettled questions posed in the book. There is no heartwarming prospect whatsoever for the future here; the only remedy seems to lie in the utopian postulate of a universal return to moral principles as the basis for political activity. An authentic danger to the sovereign existence of the Polish homeland is posed by the Bolshevik ideology encroaching from the east, which the intellectual elites, weak and passive or plunged into internal dispute, will not be capable of halting. Polish political novels of this period – be it General Barcz, Early Spring, or works by other authors (above all Zofia Nałkowska and Andrzej Strug) – took a denunciatory tack and deftly unmasked the human and systemic weaknesses of the Polish state then being established. At the same time, the genre voiced a certain conviction deeply rooted in Polish tradition: that the edifice of the new polity had to rest firmly upon a reinterpretation of old patriotic ideals within the new system. This made it significantly more difficult to accept the “normal” state then emerging, which was glorious and represented a long-cherished dream, yet was not devoid of the weaknesses that typify periods of transformation. Under such conditions, the writer was ascribed a role as guardian of the national conscience. Kaden continued the trend of reckoning with current affairs, but shifted the center of gravity towards social issues; his two novels from the Black Wings cycle (Lenora 1928, Tadeusz 1929) are set in the center of conflict at that time, i.e. Silesia. Kaden referred to the hopes and disappointments experienced during the recovered Polish state’s first pre-WWI years as “the euphoria of the liberated rubbish dump.” This ironically apt description, which became a popular stock phrase, nevertheless narrowed and trivialized the scope of the phenomenon, boiling it down to such —— 206 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 simple concepts as elation and coming to terms with recovered statehood. In fact this mental turning point would have lasting consequences; it would determine public attitudes, the public approach to art and literature, and the hierarchies of values through the entire interwar period. One particular novelty in postwar Polish literature was the pursuit of historical themes. When the Polish lands had been under partition, censors had prevented topics pertaining to the history of Poland from appearing in print (the harshest restrictions were imposed in the Russian partition). After 1918, therefore, work was done to make up for this lost time, and historians acted as seconds to writers. Works chiefly addressed historical themes from the modern era – such as Zofia Kossak-Szczucka’s Conflagration (Pożoga, published in English as The Blaze), an account of the Polish-Russian war based on her own experiences, and Stefan Żeromski’s drama I Shall Become Whiter Than Snow… (Ponad śnieg bielszym się stanę… ) – but writers also aimed to reinterpret the national tradition and fashion it anew. They advocated the need to return to the roots of the national language, to long-professed cultural values, so as to defend Polish culture from revolutionary and futuristic savagery (Stefan Żeromski’s Snobbery and Progress – Snobizm i postęp – 1923), and sought confirmation in history for modern-day territorial claims (Żeromski again, in his stylized 1923 novel The Wind From the Sea – Wiatr od morza, portraying the brutality of 1,000 years of German rule in Pomerania). Nevertheless, the 1925 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded not to Stefan Żeromski, who exercised the strongest influence upon the attitudes of the Polish intelligentsia, but rather to Władysław Reymont (cf. the previous chapter), for his epic novel The Peasants (Chłopi – 1899-1909), composed at the turn of the century. Young poetry. Writers of the older generation, especially Żeromski, espoused a view of the writer’s role that still lingered in the Romantic spirit: someone who pointed the way for the nation and shaped minds. Young artists making their debut won the public over by euphorically hailing Poland’s regained independence, by joyfully accepting the day-to-day reality of the polity then under construction. War—— 207 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA saw and Kraków were the sites of their early appearances. One group of writers formed around the student journal Pro Arte in Warsaw, constituting the embryo of the subsequent poetic group called “Skamander” (Julian Tuwim, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Kazimierz Wierzyński, Jan Lechoń, Antoni Słonimski). The movement of futurism was represented in Kraków by Bruno Jasieński, Tytus Czyżewski and Stanisław Młodożeniec, and in Warsaw by Anatol Stern and Aleksander Wat. Both these groups, even though the first took a traditionalist tack and the later an avant-garde approach, shared an enthusiasm at statebuilding. They also had in common a complete transformation of poetic strategy: a new kind of art, intended to accompany the normalization of life in an independent country, was supposed to reach wide masses of addressees, and was modeled after such an intended audience. This was a turning point in highbrow culture – or, to put it differently, an attempt to elevate the day-to-day. In thematic terms this meant the apotheosis of modern civilization and interest in the “ordinary” person, and in terms of language it entailed communicativeness and stylized spontaneous emotionality. Skamander. A group of poets with an active civic stance, gathered around the journal Skamander, created a new model of poetry that found immediate approval with readers. The “Skamandrites” ostentatiously rejected Romanticism’s model of the messianist and Tyrtaean tradition, in favor of an apotheosis of contemporary times. The ordinary intellectual was their adressee, their hero, and the subject of their works. Professing the credo of freedom for art and for the artist, they did not produce programmatic manifestos, yet the model of their creativity was coherent and easily recognizable. Lyrical sentimentalism mingled with ridicule in their verses, a tone of Dionysian madness blended with a satirical passion, but they also wrote exalted and lofty texts such as Jan Lechoń’s Piłsudski. Composed in honor of the hero who had became head of state after returning from captivity only several days previously, this work was recited in the “poets’ café” betwixt a joke and a political satire, and moved listeners to tears. And it was perhaps the best embodiment of the Skamandrite model of —— 208 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 poetry: even when brought down to level of current events, it remains true to elevated poetry; it becomingly upholds the stature of art and the artist within the newly emerging world. Such was the aim of the Skamandrites’ apology of talent, something they viewed as distinguishing the poet from among the crowd, and also of their ostentatious harking back to the roots of Polish tradition, albeit a tradition treated somewhat eclectically. The Skamandrite model of poetry found its fullest expression in the works of Julian Tuwim (1894-1953). In his poems, the everyday world and ordinary colloquial language became a new source of lyricism. Poetry came to know a new protagonist, one who is sentimental and joyous, and rapaciously affirms life. New themes appeared: marginalized people, horrible city suburbs and their horrible residents – and alongside them, likewise within urban scenery, there is the crazed and tender happiness of the poet in love. Julian Tuwim’s experiments in coining words (as in a volume of verses with the title The Czarnolas Matter – Rzecz czarnoleska alluding to the poetry of Jan Kochanowski), plus the wit that was characteristic of the Skamandtites’ work, their penchant for the absurd and the grotesque, and their rapid reactions to current events – all these virtues ensured the Skamandrites a lasting place at the center of cultural life. Later they would each go their separate ways, even though after their superb common debut critics and readers continued to view them as a close-knit literary group throughout the two interwar decades. Julian Tuwim gained fame as the author of lyrical verses, satirical works and cabarets. Jan Lechoń made a dazzling poetic debut with A Crimson Poem (Karmazynowy poemat), but would only publish one more volume before falling silent; he would return to poetry only during WWII. Kazimierz Wierzyński consistently worked to earn the position of leading poet of the moderate right; the verses in his Tragic Freedom (Wolność tragiczna), written after the death of Marshal Józef Piłsudski, represented the culmination of his prewar work. Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, an intellectual immersed in European culture, poetry, and music from Ukraine to Italy, wrote prose as well as poetry, was the author of avant-garde novels and excellent novellas. Antoni Słonimski became the leading publicist of the times, as the —— 209 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA author of feuilletons, the outstanding Weekly Chronicles (Kroniki tygodniowe – 1927-1939) and theatrical reviews. The Polish Futurists drew upon the manifestoes of both Italian and Russian artists. Nevertheless, the programmatic credos which endeavored to bring about a breakthrough in the field of social life and art in those societies did not find substantial validation in Poland. The weight of the past was not overpowering here. There was no excess of historical relics (as was being protested in Italy); to the contrary, the substance of national culture had been terribly devastated by the war. The issue of rejecting the national tradition served young writers as a touchstone of demonstrative innovativeness, yet – aside from the poetics of provocative declarations – this was not sensed as something necessary (as it was in post-revolutionary Russia). Polish futurism was therefore devoid of even the seeds of political rapaciousness, being more of a provocation and entertainment undertaken to shock the public, not very distant from a cabaret version of dadaism. It was a kind of entertainment, but with important consequences in terms of shattering stereotypical thinking about art. In the Young Poland era, art had been set atop a high pedestal only accessible to the intellectual elite; the futurists brutally knocked it down from these heights, together with the “stale mummies of the Mickiewiczes and Słowackis” (”ńeświeże mumie mickiewiczuw i słowackih” – in the irregular orthography of their manifesto). They professed that art should play a part in liberating mankind from pressure of all kinds: tradition, custom, and aesthetic conventions. The Polish futurists’ chief achievements lay not in their poetic output – which was rather meager – but rather in the brutal poetics of their artistic manifestos and scandalous behavior. Polish futurism was short-lived, drawing to a close in 1922. Bruno Jasieński became a stanch Communist, producing the poem Song on Jakub Szela (Słowo o Jakubie Szeli) and the novel I Burn Paris (Palę Paryż). His political activities led to his emigration to Soviet Russia, where after enjoying a stunning career for a few years he was arrested in 1937 and was killed as a traitor in the Stalinist purges. Another Communist-leaning author was Aleksander Wat – imprisoned in Rus—— 210 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 sia during WWII, he would die in Paris in 1967 as a respected poet and the author of works including his final-tally memoirs My Century (Mój wiek) and anti-Soviet sketches. Anatol Stern became associated with film. Two artistic disciplines, poetry and painting, were practiced within the futurist movement by Stanisław Młodożeniec and by the long under-appreciated formist painter Tytus Czyżewski (the same combination of disciplines was similarly practiced by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and later by Bruno Schulz). Czyżewski introduced the principles of formism, drawn from painting, into his poetry: he gave his poems “formist” graphical layouts, and linked the two disciplines thematically. For example, the metaphors in his poem “sun in metamorphosis” (”słońce w metamorfozie”) seem close to the concept behind his painting “Nude with a Cat” (”Akt z kotem”). The painter Henryk Berlewi (who spent most of his life in France) engaged in joint artistic, advertising, and publishing ventures with the Warsaw group in the 1920s. They initiated an artistic phenomenon that was later continued by avant-garde groups throughout the interwar years, one which is highly interesting but has yet to be sufficiently studied: the relations between poetry and the fine arts, marked by bonds of friendship and cooperation that extended across Poland’s borders. Another more innovative experiment is associated with the name of the futurist Aleksander Wat (1901-1967): the first trace of surrealism. His little volume of poetic prose entitled I From One Side and I From the Other Side of My Pug-Iron Stove (Ja z jednej i ja z drugiej strony mego mopsożelaznego piecyka – 1920) was written concurrently and independently of André Breton’s first surrealist experiments, published in France one year later; Wat nevertheless did not furnish his volume with the theoretical program that was so important for the French movement. Wat’s work, which the author insisted he had written with a high flu-induced fever, introduced important elements of style that were close to later surrealism: linguistic stylization that parodied the language of modernism, images arising in the imagination, based on absurd associations of objects stripped of their natural context – among them constantly recurring bizarre self-portraits: “I as beautiful as the blue beauty of cracked antiquity (…)” —— 211 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA (”Ja piękny jak niebieskie piękno pękniętego antyku”). Against the background of Polish poetry, this volume was something so different that it went almost unnoticed, and its author himself did not then ascribe it much significance. Hopes of a utopian bent similar to those of the surrealists in the West were coupled in Poland with great imaginative power by the poets of the Kraków Vanguard – whose programmatic manifestos were composed by Tadeusz Peiper, and whose poetic model was set forth by the works of Julian Przyboś (1901-1970). They, too, were convinced that the way to effect the necessary change in mindset was to make a breakthrough in people’s imagination. Nevertheless, their concepts concerning the methods and objectives of stimulating the imagination were diametrically different and closer to the precepts of abstract painting than to surrealism, as were their concrete artistic postulates and achievements – so innovative that painter Władysław Strzemiński could cite Peiper as the precursor to his theory of constructivism. The highly interesting ties between the Polish Vanguard of the interwar decades and European and Polish avant-garde art seem to have been established early. Somewhat later, the Kraków Vanguard’s theoretical precepts (and poetic practice) seem to be obviously related to such concepts as Kandinsky’s abstractionism, Mondrian’s geometric abstraction, or even Malevich’s suprematism. They might not have actually seen the paintings; here it was the theoretical publications that were important. Some of this material had presumably been read by Peiper, who spent the years of WWI in Western Europe. The poets themselves were also certainly aware of it later, if not directly than via the Polish constructivists Henryk Stażewski and Władysław Strzemiński. And so, group appearances by painters, sculptors, and poets took place in the mid-1920s, united by the common ideas of rejecting imitative and “decorative” art, of treating construction as creation, of producing art that responded to the logic of modern civilization – these were, in succession: Blok (1924), Praesens (1927), the Communistleaning Dźwignia (influenced by the Soviet Lef), and a.r. (standing for “artyści rewolucyjni” or “revolutionary artists,” 1929), as well as —— 212 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 L’Art contemporain, a periodical published in Paris by Jan Brzękowski. Within the crucible of such ties, there were also closer contacts with foreign artists from France and Germany, including Fernand Leger, Hans Arp, and Max Ernst – which in turn led to the establishment, from their donations, of the modern painting collection at the Art Museum in Łódź. In these two domains of art – the fine arts and poetry – there was an endeavor to move in the same, abstract and constructivist direction. The cult montage of concepts in Peiper’s manifesto “Metropolis. Mass. Machine.” (”Miasto. Masa. Maszyna.”) expressed an apology of modern technical civilization – and hence the postulate of a profound transformation in art, which was intended to take part in shaping this new world. Poetry was thus supposed to liberate the word from the meanings and duties traditionally ascribed to it, to abstract away and to create new linguistic bonds, not to name or to describe reality, but rather to shape reality by heaping metaphor upon metaphor. The very same words placed in new arrangements will evince new meanings; construction becomes creation. This was not far removed from the theory of abstract painting posited by Wassily Kandinsky: it expressed a faith that freeing oneself from objects, perceiving the changing system of tensions between swooping lines, intensified by color contrasts, would impart dynamism to a work of art, as well as to the world. Peiper’s theory was even closer to the geometrical abstraction of Piet Mondrian and to the Polish constructivist painters. But consistently rendering poetic creativity subservient to the principles of structure, channeling its energy into the process of building verse and boiling the artist’s tasks down to the maximal simplification of this structure, all led to the same pitfalls as were encountered by Malevich’s suprematism and blurred-background paintings, or by Strzemiński’s unism. Next, the free flow of associations guided by the artist’s perception of the world, a poetic escape from excessive rigor of abstraction, such as that of Mondrian, seems to lead to the theories of Kandinsky, to his concepts of energetic connections between beams running in different directions and swooping lines – a bit like the deceptiveness —— 213 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA of directions in Julian Przyboś’s Notre Dame (”Who conceived of this abyss and cast it upward” – “Kto pomyślił tę przepaść i odrzucił ją w górę”). Imagination did take the dominant role in Przyboś’s theoretical precepts and poetry, but it was intended to be bridled and subservient to the rigors of structure. Creativity grew closer to realizing artistic theories, authenticity and flashes of creative individuality were to exist only in the act of perception, suddenly revealing phenomena in a new countenance. Such inspiration drawn from the modern world, from the city and civilization, also lead us to think of the Polish avant-gardists in the context of Le Corbusier and his projects to practically adapt art to meet the needs of modern man. The genesis was similar – although for Julian Przyboś and similar writers, their fascination with machines and labor did not translate directly into poetry written for the “man of labor.” Metamorphoses of imagination. Bolesław Leśmian (see previous chapter), the Vanguard, Witkacy, Czechowicz, and then Bruno Schulz – these are writers whose artistic agendas ascribe a dominant role to imagination, albeit functionalized differently by each of them. The avant-gardists desired to keep imagination ancillary to the act of creating the world, stipulating that it should evolve after the model (in other words: within the domain) of the advance of technical civilization. Other outstanding figures of the epoch, on the other hand, pinned high hopes on letting imagination take free flight. Foremost amongst the latter was Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (known as Witkacy – 1885-1939). The state-building quandaries dealt with by both the Skamandrites and the avant-gardists were alien to him; his aesthetic theories stemmed from a catastrophic conviction that the world was rushing headlong towards annihilation, caused by both the atavist impetuousness of the masses (which Witkacy knew from his own experience, having spent the years of the war and Bolshevik revolution in Russia), and the blind advance of technological civilization. The aim of art was to assuage man’s intellectual anxiety; it should arouse “metaphysical feelings” and clarify the Secret of Existence. —— 214 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 Art, therefore, had a particularly important role to play, as an instrument of cognition enabling one to draw nearer to this Secret, by cracking the shells of false appearances, shattering the conventional order, and reaching the authenticity inherent in situations and in mankind. The shattering of forms was supposed to lead to the emergence of a new Pure Form, stimulating the mind and imagination, suggesting new, unexpected meanings. Witkacy explicated and pursued his aesthetic theory in various forms of art concurrently: in painting, literature, and theatrical experiments. Of key significance here was the development of tension between a work of art and mankind. On the one hand, by thwarting old habits, by seemingly introducing chaos and chance, by shocking, provoking, and undermining patent truths, art attacks its addressees, forces them to revise their beliefs, and offers an opportunity to experience “metaphysical feelings.” On the other hand, by shattering the established order, art should reveal what lies hidden behind external form: the truth. The absoluteness of these two actions require that brutal measures be employed: the language of irony, parody, the absurd and the grotesque – generating a style that offers the possibility of maximally strong expression. In his own literary work, Witkacy frequently betrayed the tenets of his own artistic program, overextending his characters’ dialogs and overly verbalizing their intellectual dilemmas; the necessary logic of deduction could work together with a brutalization of form, but it prevented form from being shattered. And so, the “metaphysical anxiety” in his dramas was sometimes introduced by less radical means: for example, by undermining the sense of a rational interpretation of the world. The drama Country House (W małym dworku), replete with perverse charm, questions the entire system of customary truths: the inviolable diving lines between life and death and between body and soul, all recognized conventions and moral stereotypes, including the gravity with which such ultimate matters are considered. In 1925 Witkacy founded his own Portrait Company, which was intended to generate income but also became a workshop for the graphic externalization of human instincts and passions. The artist —— 215 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA drew his portraits in strong, fitful black lines, and stressed the subordinate nature of the space filling the canvass by sustaining it in uniform, monotonous hues. Deformations of the model’s appearance served to expose his or her internal experiences (similar ideas guided the painting of such German expressionists as Otto Dix and George Grosz), to capture the authenticity of his or her instincts and passions, concealed under the mask of convention and falsity. Witkacy demonstrated the sense of such measures in the painting “A Woman’s Falsehood” (”Fałsz kobiety”), containing an image within an image – a beautiful, conventional portrait is contrasted with a grotesque beast, the truth emerging from a mirror. In order to stimulate the imagination, one must – according to the artist – first reach authenticity: to strip things bare and to perceive what has been revealed. Witkacy would thus act scandalously, provoking strange and embarrassing situations, removing all masks in but a moment, and revealing people’s true countenances. As the artist’s metaphysical anxiety grew, so the expressionistic style of his works evolved – from absurd and surrealist painting compositions and the poetics of the drama Country House, his style came to be dominated by a harsh grotesque, reaching the brutal poetics of The Shoemakers (Szewcy), shocking in sensuality, perversity, and refined vulgarisms. Witkacy’s novels – Farewell to Autumn (Pożegnanie jesieni, 1927), Insatiability (Nienasycenie, 1930) – express catastrophic visions of the future, composed in the convention of a grotesque vision of the world. Criticism of modern civilization, the breakdown of social bonds, lead Witkacy to the conviction that inevitable doom awaited the world of individualistic culture, which would be swept away by oncoming tyranny. In Farewell to Autumn, the protagonist’s death symbolizes the annihilation of all higher values by the victorious mob; the hero of Insatiability, intentionally experiencing extremely strong impressions ranging from drugs to sexual debauchery and murder, becomes a symbol of the disappearance of values, leading the world to its ruin. The most full-blown form of negating modernity is to be found the parodistic and grotesque play The Shoemakers (completed in —— 216 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 1934), described as a “theater of great political metaphor” (Jerzy Kwiatkowski). It is set in an unidentified (although not far-off) future time, after the ultimate triumph of mechanical civilization and the complete stupefaction of mindlessly laboring humans – even the perverse Duchess comes to be afflicted with a shoemaker-like zeal for work. Fascist and revolutionary coups only hasten this flight towards annihilation. In this play Witkacy realized the theory of theater he had conceived of more than a decade earlier, as an art that reduces the world to the shape of Pure Form: it can ignore laws of probability, deform psychological truth, espouse a theory of coincidences, and thwart schemes of composition based on the likelihood of the events portrayed. All of this taken together disrupts the order of things and spurs the imagination. Yet unlike for Peiper/Przyboś, this is not for constructivist purposes, but rather for the moment of revelation, cognition, the evocation of “metaphysical feelings.” Like most of Witkacy’s novels and plays, the drama The Shoemakers was never published or staged during the author’s lifetime. The fate met by his works, flagrantly underrated during his lifetime yet raised to the highest level of the Polish Parnassus not two decades later, serves as the best evidence of the thorough transformation taking place in the hierarchization of art in those years. Psychological prose, chiefly the domain of women writers, was an avenue for expressing a commitment to public affairs in the early post-WWI years akin to the political novels. Social themes were most prominently treated by Zofia Nałkowska (1884-1954) in the novels The Romance of Teresa Hennert (Romans Teresy Hennert), whose heroine, lost in the new reality and ensnared in political affairs in spite of herself, dies tragically, and Boundary Line (Granica – 1935), about a girl from the lowlands who is seduced and brought to suicide. Maria Dąbrowska (1889-1965), in her volume of excellently composed novellas about the lives of poor villagers, Folks From Over Yonder (Ludzie stamtąd), was able to depict the extent of their humanity, manifest in existential situations common to everyone, in love, unhappiness, and oncoming death. These works were written within the domain of socialist ideology, which was important to both au—— 217 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA thors: Nałkowska encountered it within her family home, while Dąbrowska was associated with the circle of philosopher and cooperative theorist Edward Abramowski from her university days and through her husband. It was these two women writers, plus Maria Kuncewiczowa (1895-1989), who were at the forefront of women’s literature in the two interwar decades. All three were talented, and worked with determination towards a literary career. And they achieved it, choosing the paths of social themes (Nałkowska), the roman-fleuve of family history (Dąbrowska), and psychological prose (Kuncewiczowa). Their novels shared an analogous depiction of the world, in which the heroines live in the shadow of men and are entirely dependent upon their presence – or are alienated from their environs. The writers drew inspiration and stylistic novelties from the works of Freud, Joyce, and Proust. But the way in which they treated the problems they addressed did not diverge from traditional convention; the authors did not incorprate their own life experiences into their work and did not externalize their own internal world. The process of emancipation, spurred by the war, had a weak impact upon literary prose; heroines lingered in the same traditional realm of unfulfilled psychological and erotic desires, suffered personal defeats, fell victim to men and to social injustice, and paid the price of neurosis – as in Maria Kuncewiczowa’s most eminent novel The Stranger (Cudzoziemka) – for their maladjustment. Quiet, modest, and selfless, adhering to the anachronistic model of the traditional Polish mother, they assumed the roles imposed upon them, at most making a timid attempt at shattering this stereotype – such as Maria Dąbrowska’s autobiographical persona, Agnieszka from Nights and Days (Nocy i Dnie). These stories were considered a reflection not just of the views, but also of the personalities of their authors, especially since autobiographical leads were discovered in them: the emotional trials and tribulations in Nałkowska’s prose and Dąbrowska’s own family history in her work, while Kuncewiczowa left an autobiographical trace behind by allowing settings and events to be identified. This had an impact on how biographers interpreted the life story and even personality of the novelists themselves. —— 218 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 The works of Maria Dąbrowska and Zofia Nałkowska are excellently complemented by the intimate journals they kept. Comparing these two types of writings – personality as reflected in the persona of their novelistic heroines and in the first-person persona of their diaries – provide superb material for a study of Polish feminism during that age, not only in its literary incarnation. What is most striking in the self-portraits of Maria Dąbrowska and Zofia Nałkowska that emerge from these diary entries is their profound pondering of their own sexuality; their view of the world and of themselves is determined by sexual matters (this, according to the assessments of modern criticism, enables the journals to be classified as feminist works). These journals seemingly consist of two layers of text; the first is a self-portrait addressed to an audience that will read the work someday – pursuant to Maria Dąbrowska’s own will, these writings first appeared as fragments, followed by the entire journal contents only 50 years after her death. This careful self-depiction portrays a woman concerned about the world and unable to cope with day-to-day matters, needing a strong masculine arm to lean on. A woman sensitive to public affairs yet careful to guard her privacy, and thus prone to painful dilemmas when choosing between following her desire to express support and refusing to take a stand on current issues. A woman who is caring towards her own – quite tedious – family. All the volumes of this journal emanate a strong conviction on the part of their author, waxing more powerful as the years passed, about the high caliber of her own writing ability, to which she must make her own life and environs subservient. Hence her incessant torment – torn between the scale of expectations in this regard, and a fear that meeting them is an impossible task. And hence her grievances towards critics (described by Grażyna Borkowska), that they dealt with her work too superfluously and were unable to judge it. “I have revealed to people a spring of beauty they never suspected, but instead of drinking from it, they pee in it,” she wrote about Nights and Days. In order to prevent similar misunderstandings, Dąbrowska even made attempts at writing her interpretation of her own works. Creative torment and a fear of not coping with the challenges she sets for herself, traits incorporated in —— 219 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA the autobiographical persona, mingle here with a struggle for acknowledgement, with career-minded rivalry. A growing distance from other writers led to a painful awareness of alienation. At times it may seem that the chief addressee of Dąbrowska’s journals are the author herself, that they are clearly written to herself. Yet in their most intimate confessions the diary entries seem to slip out of control; they introduce elements into the persona that shatter this assiduously constructed image. For example, when the writer contemplates her own body in the looking-glass, when she is fascinated by her own sensuality, and when her sexuality (which gives her a sense of dominance, of life satisfaction) or aesthetic disgust even undermines her traditional loyalty to her partner. Such dominant sexuality yields completely different effects in Zofia Nałkowska’s journals. From her first novel, sensual desires were the most crucial issue for her heroines, and were the subject of the young writer’s penetration and analysis. And so, there is no gulf between her novelistic personas in her prose and her own persona in her journals; here the first-person “I” seems to be liberated, in full acceptance of life, including as manifested in the description of relations with nature; it is coupled with an acceptation of sensuality as the dominant characteristic of her image. If one were to define the phenomenon of feminism based on Nałkowska’s journals, it would be an all-encompassing, voracious, possessive, and suffering-laden kind of self-realization (exhibiting the torment of infidelity, rejection – and satiating happiness). For Nałkowska, self-acceptance determines the nature of how her relations with the world develop – tending toward extraversion, easily made friendships, but also sympathetic acceptation. It is telling that the young Witold Gombrowicz detected and particularly appreciated the author’s vein of “egoism and egotism” even in the novel Boundary Line. Despite the huge differences between the female autobiographical personas evidenced in the journals of Maria Dąbrowska and Zofia Nałkowska, they do have much in common. Above all, the final image that ultimately emerges from them, that of a woman who is feminine and seeks support from close men as before, yet in reality no longer needs such support. But autonomously making all crucial de—— 220 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 cisions, autonomously guiding their partners’ decisions as well – seemingly premature in light of the mindset of the age – nevertheless gives the authors a deepening sense of solitude over the years. In Maria Kuncewiczowa’s psychological novels, music brings solace for the sadness of solitude. Immersion in the world of art becomes an alternative to the real world, and it leads, in The Stranger as well as in many other of her works, to an acceptance of alienated distance, recognized as evidence of dwelling in a world of higher aesthetic values. The 1930s also saw the peak prose achievements of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, the author of several psychological novels. Influenced in his youth by the philosophy and aesthetics of modernism, he maintained a convention of realism in his mature works. He published superb short stories – The Maidens of Wilk (Panny z Wilka), Birch Grove (Brzezina), The Mill on the Utrata (Młyn nad Utratą) – in which a sensual perception of the beauty of nature and art stands in contrast to somber experiences, approaching death, and the inevitability of the fate awaiting the protagonist. The 1930s – transformations and new debuts. The political situation in the 1930s, the threat entailed by the European economic crisis and rapidly rising totalitarianisms (Nazism to Poland’s west and Communism to its east), Hitler’s rise to power and the Stalinist purges all cast a shadow of doubt and apprehension, which also had an impact on the mold of literature. This found expression in the radicalization of ideological stances. Interest in sociopolitical issues led to the development of reportage and factual literature (the Communist-leaning “Literary Monthly” journal (Miesięcznik Literacki – 1929-1931), and later to the appearance of the “City Outskirts” literary group (Przedmieście) founded in 1933 by Helena Boguszewska and Jerzy Kornacki; its members included Zofia Nałkowska and Bruno Schulz. The program called for writers and scientists to work jointly to study the condition of the proletariat and national minorities, for their life to be registered and described in journalistic fashion. The radicalization of attitudes found reflection above all in publicist writing. Antoni Słonimski’s Weekly Chronicles became a school —— 221 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA of astute thought for the young generation, evidencing the need and sense of a writer’s personal intervention in the matters of politics and ideology. The outstanding poet of the late 1920s and the subsequent decade was Józef Czechowicz (1903-1939). A visionary poet, for whom verse was a matter of imagination, a kind of play with the consonances of words, dreamy associations, music and painterly vision, he wrote: “The poetry of imagination is a waking dream.” Czechowicz’s background lay in futurism, he was an avant-garde poet, but his concept of poetry and style were diametrically different from the avant-gardism of Pieper and Przyboś’s trend. Forging his own artistic path, set forth in the small volume day like any other (dzień jak codzień – 1930), he strove towards a pure poetry. He drew upon the Romantic and modernist tradition, departing from realism towards a visionary poetics. Jerzy Kwiatkowski, the most illustrious expert on the literature of the interwar years, drew attention to the exceptional conception of Czechowicz’s poetic language: “It can be described as symbolic and magical. Symbolic: because the word is supposed to mean more here than it does in the dictionary, it refers to hidden content, strives to capture that which is «unnamable, unclear.» Magical: because the word plays the role of a spell here, a formula that transforms reality, with the power to destroy and to create.” Czechowicz was a poet of the city, of provincial towns – as in his cycle of verses province night (prowincja noc) – whose landscapes he deformed through unusual, lyrical metaphor. The supernatural character of this world is augmented by personifications, encompassing nature and elements of the landscape. The village or small town, rendered unreal, the contours of walls emerging from the murkiness, saturated with emotionality of metaphor – all of this creates a magic, fairytale world. Czechowicz’s eschewal of punctuation and capital letters further enhances the atmosphere of ambiguity and mystery, the meaning and mood of his works. Czechowicz accentuated his striking harmonious musicality through phonetic instrumentation, onomatopoeia, and sonorous neologisms (Wisława Szymborska took delight, for example, in his replacement of the dumb-sounding “bim bam bom” conventionally used to de—— 222 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 scribe the ringing of a bell in Polish with the metallic-sounding “ang ang ang”) and through his selection of originally harmonious rare rhymes and assonances. The lyrical tones of Czechowicz’s poems underwent a startling collapse in the mid-1930s: the gentle musicality vanishes, ominous words appear, and harsh contrasts disturb the harmony of the portrayed world. In the volume the music of man (nuta człowiecza – 1939), a catastrophic, prophetic vision of the oncoming apocalypse appears, of the “harvest-time of the boom and the flash,” (”żniwa huku i blasku”) and he envisages himself “struck by a bomb” – such was the death he truly met on 9 September 1939. The work of a new generation of excellent debuts, marked by the atmosphere of impending catostrophism, showed a countenance that was different to that seen in the post-WWI period. These poets’ beginnings lay in the “Żagary” group formed in Wilno (Vilnius) in 1931 by Czesław Miłosz, Jerzy Zagórski, Teodor Bujnicki and Aleksander Rymkiewicz. The dialectical word “żagary” refers to dry twigs for lighting a fire, and the program they composed had just such fiery passion, although their poetic works deviated from it. Social credos were overshadowed by catastrophic visions of the future. The most outstanding poet of this group was later Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz (b. 1911). Prior to 1939 he published two small volumes of poetry, A Poem on Time Frozen (Poemat o czasie zastygłym – 1933) and Three Winters (Trzy zimy – 1936). The Żagary group’s catastrophism was described by Kazimierz Wyka as a phenomenon involving “a symbolic and Classicist presentation, at times with hints of surrealism or expressionism, of themes that suggested and augured an inevitable historical and moral catastrophe.” These characteristics can be observed, for example, in Miłosz’s poem “Assizes” (”Roki”). The dramatic nature of its theme – conflict between the pleasant present and impending disaster – stands in contrast to its Classicizing, well-ordered and harmonious structure and linguistic organization. The work is further dramatized by the prominently highlighted dialogic nature (”I” vs. “you”), and by its transparent reference to the —— 223 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA vision of the Revelation of St. John. Already then one can notice a later characteristic of Miłosz, his proclivity for biblical reflection and tones, calming catastrophic apprehensions and leading towards a stoic acceptance of the inevitable. Another artist to debut at the same time was Bruno Schulz (18921942, debut 1933), a prose writer, painter, and drawer (his paintings did not survive the war). He died several years after his debut, shot in the ghetto by a Nazi officer. A poor Jewish merchant family in a small town – such are the boundaries that circumscribe the world of Schulz’s childhood, a world of Jewish culture and the spirit of The Book. He published two volumes of stories, Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy cynamonowe) and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium pod klepsydrą), which are written in the first person and set in realities drawn from the author’s biography, from the mythologized time of his childhood, when rationality had not yet stifled inspired visions: “I stood with limbs outstretched, in rapture; with extended and elongated fingers I pointed, I pointed in anger, in fierce excitement, tense like a signpost and trembling in extasy.” Schulz records an oneiric reality prone to incessant, fascinating transformations. The house of his childhood forms a fantasy space, dark and awe-inspiring; the members of this household metamorphose, becoming monstrous or sprouting wings, like the father who transforms into a bird before his son’s very eyes. Time is not bound to flow in linear fashion in Schulz’s works; either it is the mythical time of The Book, or it is suspended as if in a street snapshot, with everyone frozen in unnatural, fleeting poses. The world portrayed in his works is unsightly, at times repulsive; imaginative phantasmagorias lead to confusion, to disintegration. Murkily, strangely, and menacingly, a silhouette of modern civilization emerges. This gloomy feyness, forebodingly disfiguring, seems to reveal a path that leads towards knowledge about the secrets of existence. Despite this, Schultz’s visions are fascinating, they draw the reader’s imagination into this extraordinary, mythologized world. Creating myth (following the model of God’s creation of The Book) seems to be the only means of penetrating the sense of existence. —— 224 ——

The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 Witold Gombrowicz, a brilliant prose-writer who also debuted in the 1930s, the author of the novels Possessed (Opętani) and Ferdydurke and the drama Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, all published prior to WWII, rationalized his catastrophic fears in a fashion all his own. Under the degenerating form of the modern world, he discovered a universal structure of interpersonal relations, within the framework of which we all exist, and which is also inscribed in the current and future course of history. Gombrowicz succeeded in reaching what Witkacy had at best come close to in his moments of metaphysical revelation: he discovered that what is laid bare when form breaks down is not chaos, but rather an overarching structure for mankind – meaning something cognizable, clearly depicted in Ferdydurke and Ivona, Princess of Burgundia. Seeing the mechanism of this structure for what it is does not make it easier to accept, nor offers any possibility of influencing how it develops. Individuality, ever more ruthlessly incapacitated, vanishes as an independent entity. The intellectual problems of Ferdydurke seem closely akin to Witkacy’s apprehensions: fear of assimilation, the product of modern civilization, fear of the mob. But while for Witkacy the finale brings the inevitable death of the intellectual longing for this lost freedom, for Gombrowicz the tragedy consists in the fact that the individual, whether he or she submits or struggles, will still ultimately fit into the structure and function well within its reifying fold. While for Witkacy the world is annihilated by an invasion of blind chaos, for Gombrowicz such annihilation is brought about by the perfection of universal structure. For the former the grotesque was a reflection of chaos, for the latter it resides within the general order; it stems from man’s voluntary flight away from unstable form, away from freedom, into the illusory order of totalitarian structure. This image of the world develops a conception of humanity that ostentatiously thwarts the idealist stereotypes cultivated by Polish tradition, chiefly by the Romantic cradle of heroic and noble models. Gombrowicz treats them derisively and parodies them, ridiculing anachronistic attitudes and language that is artificial in its pathos. Already at the outset of Ferdydurke, when the main character appears, his identity undergoes rapid distortion: he was a mature man, —— 225 ——

ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA but he becomes a 17-year-old, not because of some sort of fancied transformations, but rather because of having come face-to-face with a collective mass that constitutes a cohesive whole. Treated like a schoolboy, thrust into the role of a schoolboy, he experiences a transformation of his own mindset, emotions, and behavior; he occupies the place that is allotted to him, as if by a higher authority. When confronted with the world of the new ideology, freedom turns out to be problematic, and relinquishing it defends one from existential apprehensions, enables one to find the meaning of life in communal existence, in a common subjugation to schemas. The protagonist’s battle to retain his own identity ceases to be important at all, once he comes to know the rules, once he begins to manipulate them himself, to play the game imposed upon him by the system. An individual example exposes the principles by which the whole functions. The individual comes to fit within the framework of the system, performing the assigned functions. Gombrowicz portrayed this mechanism even more lucidly in the drama Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, published several years after Ferdydurke. Here the situation is reduced to the simple schema of a conclusively well-ordered and functioning mechanism, which itself disposes of the element that disturbs it. All the characters in the drama, like puppets, play their roles excellently: the queen follows the stereotypical image of the queen, the chamberlain that of the chamberlain, and young lads behave entirely in keeping with expectations. Iwona, an unattractive girl brought into this well-ordered world by chance, does not conform to convention, to form, and this threatens the existence of the whole: she is ousted, and the puppet world regains its balance. Witold Gombrowicz’s philosophical diagnosis of history, precursory and prophetic, caused an extraordinary sensation in interwar Poland. The fact that it came in the shape of fiction was even more extraordinary, and shocked the imagination. Owing to this, Gombrowicz’s concept was not a merely theoretical utopia, cut off from reality, but instead found support in its discourse with tradition and in the sphere of individual and social human psychology.

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The Interwar Years – 1918-1939

Biblographical Notes Kwiatkowski J., Dwudziestolecie międzywojenne, Warszawa 2002. Miłosz C., The History of Polish Literature, London, New York, 1969; Berkeley 1983. Dąbrowska M., Nächte und Tage, trans. by L. Lasiński, Berlin 1956, 1958, 1960. Gombrowicz W., Ferdydurke, trans. by E. Mosbacher, London 1961,1965, 1979, New York 1961, 1968, 1978. Gombrowicz W., Princess Ivona, trans. by K. Griffith-Jones and C. Robins, London 1969, 1997 Kuncewiczowa M., The Stranger, trans. B.W.A. Massey, London 1944, New York 1947. Leśmian B., Selected Poems, trans. by S. Celt, S. Point: A.R. Poray Book, 1992 Schulz B., Cinnamon Shops and Other Stories, trans. by C. Wieniewska, London 1963. Schulz B., Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, trans. by C. Wieniewska, New York 1978, Canada 1978 with intro. by J. Updike, London 1979, 1980 Schulz B., The Collected Works, ed. by J. Ficowski, London 1998. Schulz B., Letters and Drawings; With Selected Prose ed. by J. Ficowski, trans. by Walter Arndt with Vivtoria Nelson, New York 1990. Tuwim J., The Dancing Socrates and Other Poems trans. by A. Gillon, New York 1968. Wat A., Lucifer Unemployed, trans. by Lillian Vallee, fore. by C. Miłosz and L. Nathan, Evanston 1990. Wat A., My Century, [ 2003] Wierzyński K., Selected Poems, New York 1959. Witkiewicz St. I., Country House trans. and intro. by D. Gerould, Amsterdam 1997. Witkiewicz St. I., Insatiability: A Novel, trans. by L. Iribarne, Evanston 1998. Witkiewicz St. I., The Mother and Other Unsavory Plays, including The Shoemakers and They, trans. by D. Gerould and C. S. Durer, New York 1993. Witkiewicz St. I., The Witkiewicz Reader, trans. by D. Gerould, Evanston 1992 (Selected plays, essays and stories). Żeromski S., Ashes, trans. by H. Stankiewicz-Zand, New York 1928. Żeromski S., The Faithful River, trans. by B. Johnston, Evanston 1999.

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ANNA NASIŁOWSKA

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues

Historical outline: Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1930 marked the start of WWII. As the German forces gradually overran the country from the west, the Red Army invaded from the eastern side on 17 September, in keeping with the secret protocol of an agreement forged between Nazi Germany and the USSR (the so-called MolotovRibbentrop pact). The Polish public was gravely disappointed in the forthcoming reaction from France and Great Britain, which was limited to diplomatic protests. Some representatives of the Polish government and the political elite managed to flee Poland. Under an agreement forged among representatives of Polish political parties, a Polish governmentin-exile was set up in London. In areas that temporarily came under Soviet control, political terror ensued: officers of the defeated Polish Army were taken prisoner and executed (the ill-famed Katyń crime), the civilian population was deported to far-flung regions of the USSR, and even prewar Polish Communists were treated as a political threat, with the exception of those individuals who were utterly subservient. In the German-occupied areas a resistance movement started to spontaneously develop, and gradually began to establish the institutions of an underground state, which cooperated with the government in London. The determination to resist the occupations was only hardened by absolute terror, the gradual extermination of Jews in the Polish lands, and the establishment of labor and death camps to which Jews were brought from many occupied countries in Europe. Unlike in many other occu—— 228 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues pied European states, Nazi policy in Poland did not provide for any collaborative government or any other form of political cooperation; the Polish lands were treated as a pool of cheap labor and territory for future settlement. In April 1943, near the end of the operation to eliminate the closed Jewish quarter in Warsaw, a Ghetto Uprising was launched by a group of desperate individuals who realized how bleak the ghetto’s prospects truly were. The later insurgency organized by the Polish underground on 1 August 1944, called the Warsaw Uprising, involved different circumstances: given that the Red Army was approaching from the east, it was decided that Warsaw should liberate itself. This was part of Operation Tempest, aimed at liberating Poland using the nation’s own forces. If successful, this would have brought about a different political situation than waiting for the Soviet Union to liberate the country. Nevertheless, conferences held among the great powers (first in Yalta, later in Teheran) placed the Polish lands within the future zone of Soviet influence. The Warsaw Uprising died out in October 1944, and the Red Army would only enter Warsaw, a completely ruined and empty city, in early January 1945. The policy of political subjugation pursued by the new postwar authorities acting under Soviet patronage included: repressions against those who had been involved in the underground wartime resistance movement, even including death sentences passed against its heroes; political terror against all political opponents; the nationalization of industry and strict control over the entire economic realm, the imposition of censorship, and Communist ideological pressure when the outward pretenses of legal and democratic legitimacy were being established. The terror gradually abated after Stalin’s death (1953), yet this economic system based on full state management and Communist party control of the economic domain would remain unchanged all the way until 1989. The inefficacity of this political and economic system sparked numerous crises (1956, 1958, 1970), which usually involved the mobilization of society. One of the most profound crises, which demonstrated that Communist ideology had already become completely defunct, came during the period of the first Solidarity movement (19801981), which saw the establishment of free trade unions intended as an alternative to the official bodies of authority. The decision taken by —— 229 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA General Jaruzelski to impose martial law on 13 December 1981, fearing an intervention by Soviet forces (as had been carried out in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968), blocked further change and plunged the country into stagnation. Only in 1989, when the entire Eastern Bloc crumbled, did it become possible to change the system that had been sustained in Poland only owing to Soviet domination in this region of Europe.

Literature and Wartime Experiences The experiences of WWII left a very profound mark upon Polish culture, and would also have an impact upon later generations. The image of the war cultivated by literature remains part of tradition, which of course has a national dimension but consistently exceeds beyond this national scope – forcing one to ponder questions that address the root of evil, human nature, and the mechanisms of terror and extermination. The whole set of WWII-related issues is not uniform and consists of various components that are etched deeply in Polish culture. The first issue of strictly national significance is the immediate revival of the Romantic tradition, in response to the threat posed to liberty. In the 19th century, Polish literature had been treated as a spiritual manifestation of the nation’s existence, even more important than possessing a Polish state. In the face of the renewed wartime threat, this former tradition immediately revived. Inspirational poems began to appear just before the outbreak of war. Inciting Poles to fight the enemy, sustaining their determination to pose resistance, expressing approval for military action – such were the objectives of many poetic works written during WWII which remain well-known to this very day, since their linguistic mold and congruity with tradition ensured them a special place in the history of literature. They most frequently draw upon the model of Tyrtaean poetry that had been cultivated in the era of Romanticism. Here, the poet assumes the role of an expresser of collective emotions, sets forth the goals and personally identifies with them very strongly, restricting his own individualism. This model was followed by numerous works written both in occupied Poland and abroad, everywhere there were large —— 230 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues concentrations of Polish refugees. It will not be extreme to assert that this tradition also constituted an important political factor that influenced Poles’ behavior, boosting their determination to take armed action and also to collaborate with the country’s allies. The slogan “for your freedom and ours” served as inspiration for Polish regiments that cooperated with the Allies and took part in the Battle of Britain, the liberation of Italy, and the deliverance of Europe. A second element of the wartime experience that cannot be belittled is the generation of young Warsaw writers born in the 1920s, who were actively involved during the war in the various deeply divided groups within the overall resistance movement. An underground university, the continuation of Warsaw University, also functioned in occupied Warsaw, in secrecy from the Nazi authorities. Lectures were given in private apartments by prewar professors, and students utilized their private book collections in light of the fact that libraries were closed. There was also an underground Polish schooling system on the high school level, and the education so gained was also recognized after the war. Such forms of education could not, naturally, encompass a wide circle of young people, but the elite were nevertheless successfully gathered together in the underground program of Polish literature studies in Warsaw. There was also a kind of underground cultural life: there were journals that were reproduced by household methods; volumes of poetry were published in the same way; and literary meetings were also organized. Young poets had contact with somewhat older ones who had debuted in the 1930s; one prominent figure among the latter was Czesław Miłosz, future laureate of the Nobel Prize in literature. This was a generation that had made their debuts marked by premonitions of war, in an ambience of mounting danger, waiting for tragic predictions to come to fruition. This attitude was termed catastrophism, and justification for it was found in the works of many thinkers, such as Oswald Spengler, or domestically Witkacy, who augured the coming of an epoch of cultural decay. While the writers of the 1930s had managed to overcome catastrophism before the outbreak of war, deeming it to be a fatalist attitude that led one to passively succumb to evil, for the wartime po—— 231 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA ets it represented something self-evident. The most important traits of their works included extensive metaphor, vague images of the most tragic prophesies coming true, and topoi borrowed from the Apocalypse, portraying their own generation as people lost and doomed, internally paralyzed by the enormity of the unpreventable evil going on around them. The leading representatives of this generation, in keeping with their own premonitions, perished as young underground activists or died guns-in-hand during the Warsaw Uprising. Their work, coupled with their legendary biographies, is still remembered, not only as evidence of heroism. It above all appeals very strongly to young people, who are sensitive to any inconsistencies between a person’s biography and the views he or she professes. In the case of such poets as Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, the testimony of his life, work, and death are all in harmony, and his legend bears clearly Romantic traits. However, disputes over how to judge his generation constantly reemerge: shouldn’t artists refrain from endangering their lives in an underground movement? By recognizing love to be one of the few surviving values, did they manage to create an alternative to the image of all-encompassing evil? Finally, isn’t the cult of strength, characteristic of a certain group among them, evidence of their being contaminated by evil and their unconscious adoption of Nazi inspiration? From the outset, Czesław Miłosz maintained a great distance to the radicalism of the young poets. During the war, for example, Miłosz translated Eliot’s The Waste Land, seeking a springboard for wartime reality. His verses from this period evidence lyricism, as well as a search for historical analogies in European culture. In the poem Campo di Fiori, when writing about those perishing alone behind the ghetto wall, unnoticed by the city populace lost in amusement, Miłosz evokes Giordano Bruno and the image of a Roman marketplace teeming with life, which resounds with myriad voices but a moment after the stake at which the philosopher was burned has died out. He asks questions about the moral obligations that bind those who have witnessed tragedy, he is worried by the indifference of the mob, but he does not pose allegations. He does believe, however, that it is possible to draw upon historical analogies, and so the continuity of European culture has not been disrupted, since the experiences of different epochs do serve to —— 232 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues explain each other. The artist’s most important task is to compose a calm statement in which he does not succumb to hysteria, and rebuilds the faith that he can find an expression for his own times without succumbing to them, while rescuing his own faith in the order of values.

Literature and Totalitarianism This problem was viewed in an entirely different way by young writers after the end of the war – above all by Tadeusz Borowski, one of Warsaw’s catastrophist poets, the author of the well-known Auschwitz stories, and by the poet Tadeusz Różewicz. For both writers, living through the war was a kind of extreme experience that forced them to rethink the nature of artistry. Forms of expression that art had employed for centuries were rejected and gave way to simpler solutions, to stories in which the two writers indict themselves as bearing mutual guilt, as being burnt-out inside and contaminated by death. In their opinion, anyone who witnesses a crime bears part of the guilt for it – and as long as survivors fail to admit this, no credible account is possible. For Tadeusz Borowski, the camp in Auschwitz represents a miniature of a horrible future society, wherein the human will to live is turned against other individuals. SS officers rarely appear in Borowski’s stories; the camp is a hierarchically arranged structure, in which victims cannot oppose their tormenters. Survival was only possible if someone stole food, was savvy enough to have less debilitating work assigned, made use of things brought by Jews sent straight to the crematorium, etc. Tadeusz Różewicz, in the poems of Anxiety (Niepokój – 1947), addresses the commonplace and universal nature of evil, and sees the world in the wake of the war as being stripped of beauty, faith, and hope. Both writers want to purge themselves of illusions, including those that seem to them to be the heritage of many centuries of European culture. They prefer to be scoffers rather than idealists, to be atheists rather than the inheritors of a naive faith. They are impassioned accusers, who likewise perceive themselves in the shadow of the crematorium. Their moral sensitivities force them to doubt the heritage of European culture, seeing as what their genera—— 233 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA tion underwent was possible. Tadeusz Różewicz himself and critics writing about him both frequently refer to the dramatic conundrum raised by Theodor W. Adorno: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” This issue has profound artistic consequences for Różewicz – it forces him to refrain from poetic adornment, to reject all aesthetic utopias. All of subsequent literature pertaining to the death camps and the Holocaust, which continues to be enriched with new stories, relates to the questions these authors raised about the credibility of witnesses and the moral right to accuse. André Malraux’s coinage “days of contempt” takes on a concrete meaning in Borowski’s stories. The depiction of the Auschwitz camp in Tadeusz Borowski’s stories bears comparison to Gustaw Herling-Grudziński’s account of a Soviet gulag. Obviously, such an account could only have been written in emigration – the book World Apart (Inny Świat) first saw publication in English translation in London in 1951, and until 1989 was known in Poland only owing to a small number of copies smuggled in from the West. The most important elements of Herling’s reportage lie in his analysis of how interpersonal relations change under the influence of hunger, his depiction of the absurdity of totalitarian society, and his attempt at demonstrating that cruelty is the dark side of human nature. This work complements and concurrently polemicizes with Borowski’s stories. The prison camp experience is treated by the author as the key to understanding the 20th century – not a byway of history in which the camps were but an episode, but rather the essence of the process whereby totalitarian systems deprive individuals of their rights. In his gulag account, in the diaries he kept for many years, and in the stories he wrote in Italy, Herling-Grudziński tries to offset his bitter view of history with his faith in the capacity of solitary human beings to retain their dignity and to make choices that are moral.

Under Political Pressure The new state system established after WWII tried to bring the realm of culture under its subjugation. After 1949, the doctrine of —— 234 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues Socialist Realism, based on models drawn from the USSR, became compulsory. In poetry, pompous tones were used to extol the labor of workers, to sing the praises of the new system and to exalt the Soviet Union. In prose, optimistic images of the lives of workers were composed according to party directives, and the nobleness of the working class was juxtaposed against the behavior of individuals from the politically dubious intelligentsia. After Stalin’s death, a process of change began with the USSR itself. Writers themselves also became increasingly sharply aware of the absurdity of tendentious and panegyric writing, especially since no work of poetry or prose could manage to satisfy the incited ideologues: whoever did not abandon their ambitions and creative quests quickly had the charge of “formalism” leveled against them, but copying tradition evoked a wave of criticism against “traditionalism,” and appealing to patriotic feelings and arguments was criticized as “nationalism.” It proved to be impossible to closely imitate Soviet models under Poland’s different conditions without unwittingly becoming the butt of ridicule. “Socrealizm” remained dominant for a relatively short period, and after the turning point in 1956 even the Communist party (which was called the worker’s party in Poland) officially distanced itself from what was euphemistically termed the “period of errors and distortions.” The problem of ideology’s impact on literature, however, does not end together with Socialist Realism. All the way through 1989, all of domestic Polish literature developed under strong pressure exerted by the political conditions. Freedom of expression was curtailed by censorship, but this was not the only means whereby control was exercised and political pressure exerted. An artificial division was also maintained between domestic literary society and Polish émigrés. Indeed, works of foreign literature were also subject to political control, and statements made by foreign authors about current affairs could lead to all of their translated works being banned throughout the entire Eastern Bloc. Nowadays, in the age of the Internet and the rapid exchange of information, it is hard to even imagine bans of this sort. Society’s hunger for “forbidden fruit” could only be partially satisfied by the influx of smuggled émigré publications and – after —— 235 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA 1976 and the emergence of a political opposition – by the appearance of illegal works produced domestically using better and better printing techniques (from handwritten copies to duplication machines). Distributing literature of this sort was a prosecuted crime, but certain habits that stretched back to the wartime occupation remained extent, and samizdat publications were quite widely available, especially after 1980. Under such conditions, the art of allusions, wordplay, and beatingaround-the-bush also flourished. Emigration also served as a kind of springboard. A huge political and cultural role was especially played by the community in Paris (or more precisely in the nearby MaisonsLafitte), where the monthly journal Kultura and books were published. Whereas the London community, where the Polish government-in-exile was still functioning after the end of the war, saw its role in forming a political alternative to what was going on in the country, the group associated with Kultura was interested in influencing the intellectual elite in Poland, in backing the opposition and free thinkers, and in promoting avant-garde writing. The Paris émigré community played a prominent role with regards to many writers, Czesław Miłosz and Witold Gombrowicz among them.

Social Forms and Gombrowicz The work of Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) is distinct in terms of his independence from the traditional interpretation of “Polishness” and his skill at looking upon all stereotypes from a philosophical standpoint, as conventionalized forms of interpersonal communication. As young writer – then the author of a few prose works, the most outstanding of which was Ferdydurke (1937) – Gombrowicz set off on a voyage to South America in August 1939. After having settled in Argentina he established friendships with young people and formed his own circle, such as he had maintained in the cafes of prewar Warsaw. This new situation was expedient to the writer in a certain sense, by delivering him from the pressure of gentry society, to which he had family ties, and from the traditional forms of Polish culture. —— 236 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues In Ferdydurke, Gombrowicz had already outlined the fundamental philosophical issues that he would deal with consistently throughout his later work: the issue of form, as something that cramps the individual, imposes itself upon him in every situation, and yet is impossible to evade, and the issue of the relations between a freedom-seeking individual and his environs. This second issue rose to the fore in the two most important works written by Gombrowicz in Argentina – the novel Trans-Atlantyk and the play The Marriage (Ślub), published together in Paris in 1953. Both works pursue an in-depth analysis of their protagonists’ relations with Polish culture, which imprisons them and imposes itself upon them through the power of stereotype, yet is hard to evade. Trans-Atlantyk takes the author’s own arrival to Argentina as its point of departure. The Polish émigré community cultivates traditional customs without noticing their anachronism; behind this façade a force of passion and youth is in operation, and the hero becomes imprisoned between the “fatherland” and the “syntheland,” between the patriotism of fathers and the endeavors of the millionaire Gonzala, who wants to beguile the young Ignacy, between platitudes that turn grotesque and earnestness. The novel ends in a liberating burst of laughter and the mutual annihilation of forms. The theme of The Marriage is based around the dream of a Polish solder who longs to return home, but upon his arrival there finds his manor changed into a tavern; his parents have become innkeepers and his fiancée a whore. Henryk, the soldier in question, decides to impose his own order here, yet struggles against drunkards, who symbolize the forces of destruction, and against his own father, whose authority he must overthrow. If he does manage to do so, however, then who will perform his marriage ceremony? Only an interpersonal understanding can make a symbolic change possible, yet this is undermined by chaos. Henryk vacillates between engaging in intrigue forced upon him by his jealousy for a woman, and following his desire to proclaim himself king. This dream-world, a great psychomachia, is rife with motifs that are significant psychoanalytically (power and paternal dominance) and philosophically. The Marriage presents the drama of the lone individual, faced with the death of God and the decay of traditional forms of coexistence. Henryk becomes embroiled —— 237 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA in contradictory arguments: he is dependent upon others, since the disappearance of faith in transcendence means that the only sanction is to be found in the “church of humanity,” meaning the community, but he is unable either to subjugate himself to the community, or to impose his own laws. These themes, further developed in Gombrowicz’s subsequent works (the novels Pornografia, Cosmos (Kosmos), and the drama Operetta (Operetka), written after the writer moved to Europe, are given an interpretation by the author in his three-volume Diary (Dziennik). Gombrowicz is said to have himself developed an analysis of his own works and forced it upon his readers, and there is much truth in this. Gombrowicz successfully commented on his works by planting them firmly within the realm of Sartresque existentialism and structuralism that then dominated the European elite, yet his thinking, portrayed against this backdrop, retained at the same time its originality. His Diaries, which present a mix personal journal entries, reflections, and polemics, represent the fruit of Gombrowicz’s affiliation with the small but politically significant émigré monthly Kultura – they were printed in serial form in this publication, and the very concept of writing them had originated with Kultura’s editor-in-chief, Jerzy Giedroyc. Gombrowicz’s close ties to Kultura essentially precluded any chance of his works being published in Poland – this was facilitated when an interview he gave in 1963 was put to use as propaganda, after which the press railed against him, accusing him of a lack of patriotism. Yet despite Gombrowicz’s émigré status, Operetta and The Marriage did appear in Polish theaters, staged by leading directors. Here Gombrowicz’s dramaturgy came into contact with stagings of Sławomir Mrożek’s plays, creative interpretations of Romantic-era dramas, and the repertoires of European stages, which played home to the theater of the absurd in the 1960s and 70s. Tadeusz Kantor’s theater “Cricot 2” grew out of avant-garde experiments in the fine arts. The director Jerzy Grotowski proposed a new anthropological view of the spectator and of the work of the actor, which took him beyond the bounds of theater. Despite many restrictions, Polish theater was a very artistically fertile terrain. —— 238 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues

Society Under Conversion One of the leading motifs of Polish postwar dramaturgy must be recognized as the topic of mankind when faced with the catastrophic breakdown of established social forms and norms and the destruction of stable points of reference. Society in postwar Poland was subjected to an incredible social experiment: all stable grounds for the existence of traditional classes were destroyed, and this process did not take place gradually and in evolutionary fashion, whereby certain adjustments and adaptations are possible, but rather suddenly (and in revolutionary fashion). The topic of social forms therefore holds great potential, of both a historical-philosophical and existential-philosophical nature. Gombrowicz’s The Marriage can be read as the drama of an individual longing both to liberate himself from Form, and to reinstate Form. Sławomir Mrożek’s Tango contrasts the generation of iconoclastic artists to the generation of their successors, who long to revert to fixed norms. Tango draws upon the marriage ceremony and wedding reception motif, a theme that repeatedly resurfaces in Polish literature. In Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz, a wedding provides an occasion for a reconciliation of old enemies and a promise that order will continue to prevail. In Wyspiański’s The Wedding, reconciliation between the peasant and noble estates, joining them in a united national effort, proves impossible. Postwar invocations of the wedding motif, in turn, treat it as a kind of convention addressing the possibility of restituting norms, and the ceremony itself most frequently fails to come to fruition. Such is the case, for example, in Jerzy Andrzejewski’s novel Pulp (Miazga). This writer passed through a very complicated chain of ideological shifts, from Catholic modernism in the 1930s, through a shortlived fascination with Socialist Realism in the 1950s, to an involvement in the dissident movement. He was the author of two novels, Darkness Covers the Earth (Ciemności kryją ziemię – 1957, published in English as The Inquisitors) and The Gates of Paradise (Bramy raju – 1960), with plots set in the times of the Spanish inquisition and the Crusades, he most thoroughly analyzed the mechanism by which —— 239 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA a person succumbs to the power of ideology and subjugates his or her freedom of thought to a doctrine that offers the illusion of infallibility, of acting in the name of higher truths. These two works constitute the most profound reckoning of the “period of errors and distortions,” and in the years when the freedom of speech was restricted, similar historical guises became the most favored means employed in Polish prose to evade censorship (a historical milieu is also treated as a model of modern times by Andrzej Szczypiorski in the novel Mass for the City of Arras (Msza za miasto Arras) and Jacek Bocheński in the novel The Divine Julius (Boski Juliusz). With time, however, the use of historical parable, although very artistically fruitful, ceased to suffice. Andrzejewski’s huge novel Pulp, begun in the early 1960s and published outside of censorship as an underground samizdat publication in 1979, constituted a critique of the intellectual elite and party circles. The plot is spun around preparations for the marriage and wedding reception of a prominent actor and the daughter of a party politician, which is meant to symbolically unite and assimilate the artistic world and the party “crème de la crème.” This of course harks back to Wyspiański’s The Wedding (1900), where the marriage of a nobleman to a peasant girl is meant to lay new groundwork for societal accord. In Andrzejewski’s novel, the wedding ceremony does not ultimately take place – not as a result of a lack of love (from the outset, emotional issues are not of much import here), but because of societal chaos, which means that such assimilation of the “estates” doesn’t make any sense. Having been subjected to the experiment of eradicating all traditional structure, society has been reduced to a “pulp,” and can only be navigated by means of corrupt dealings. The wedlock between party authorities and the intellectual upper crust proves to be of no advantage to anyone – the open form of Andrzejewski’s novel, in which there is a diary of a writer that in the metatextual domain represents the impossibility of drawing the plot to a conclusion, likewise portrays the process of decay, society’s plunge into ever deeper chaos. The wedding symbol, treated as a type of test for the ability to form lasting social ties, is also present in Sławomir Mrożek’s Tango. This play ends in victory for Edek, who is primitive yet has strength, —— 240 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues unlike the intellectuals engaged in perpetual discussion. And so, this is a precautionary warning against the domination of a new class of “boors,” who prefer kitsch to art and fisticuffs to arguments. Sławomir Mrożek (b. 1930), a playwright, prose writer, and drawer, was from the outset a vigilant observer, hunting out the absurdities of Polish life under the new system. He moved to Italy in 1963, and his protest against the aggression by Warsaw Pact troops against Czechoslovakia sealed his status as an émigré, which remained in force until the downfall of Communism. During this time the writer became known chiefly as the author of many highly esteemed plays, which couple a comic element with bitter political reflection and observations on the state of culture. He lived in many countries, including France and Mexico. In the 1970s his plays were nevertheless staged in Poland. Tango, written in the early 1970s, demonstrated how the progressive intelligentsia’s drive for freedom and anarchy could lead to a yearning for dictatorship and open up a path for a new class, which is not afraid to use force and would be eager to revert to a totalitarian system. In The Émigrés (Emigranty – 1974), an intellectual and a boor meet in a small room in some Western country – both equally at a loss, but different in terms of their understanding and reactions. For Mrożek, the comic element is always an ambiguous force, and that which is laughable is concurrently painful. Reality in a state of decay is also portrayed by the poet Tadeusz Różewicz in The Card-File (Kartoteka – 1960). The author revisited this work in the early 1990s, augmenting the already open structure by including a depiction of the chaos present during the period of regime change in Poland. One of Różewicz’s plays coined a symbolic description of the 1960s as the “little stabilization,” a term that reflects the ambivalent attitude most people took towards this epoch in which all endeavors had been curtailed a priori, and life in the “new system” began to take on aspects of middle-class stabilization, yet on a low level, without prosperity. To this day, Różewicz’s most controversial play remains “Dead and Buried” (”Do piachu” – 1979), and war veteran organizations usually protest against its being staged. Here the plot is centered on a partisan unit holding a trial of the mentally —— 241 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA handicapped Waluś, who took part in a robbery against a rectory, during which half a pig carcass was stolen and the priest’s housekeeper was raped. The remaining perpetrators of the escapade fled, but Waluś, too stupid to have run away, is supposed to be put to the firing squad. Anticipating execution, animal fear, and banal conversations (Waluś speaks in regional dialect) stand in contrast to stereotypical patriotic beliefs and ultimately with the scene of the firingsquad death. Tadeusz Różewicz also depicted a clash of behavioral models in his stories, but above all in his poetry, which after 1989 derisively depicts the civilization of consumption and self-gratification. One surprise was the career enjoyed by the New York based Janusz Głowacki, who earned a reputation as a brilliant ironist, as the author of columns and mocking stories depicting the artistic community in Warsaw, and lastly as a playwright. He was in London when martial law was declared in Poland in 1981, but soon thereafter he came to live in New York. The characters of his play “Antigone in New York” (”Antygona w Nowym Jorku”) are immigrants from the peripheries of the free world. No one believes as fervently in the possibility of living the American dream as immigrants do, and no one has become as disillusioned as the small group of homeless individuals in the play. The world offers them only a spot on the park bench and trash to eat, and the world even treats them like “human trash.” A poor Portuguese woman (the titular Antigone) therefore decides to salvage at least the myth of love, perhaps a false love but one that is precious to her as evidence of what human beings are entitled to. The play appeared in English and Polish versions (the former the earlier of the two, the latter the author’s own reworking), and since the regime change Głowacki has himself been dividing his time between New York and Warsaw. The status of émigrés and the problem of emigration are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

The Poetic Myth of Europe – Classicizing Trends In various literatures, 20th-century Classicism encompasses two stances: one turned against the avant-garde, an attempt to revert to —— 242 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues the past, and the other stance evincing moderate tendencies (especially in the English-speaking realm), an expression of modernism. The work of Thomas Stearns Eliot, considered a 20th-century Classicist, also inspired Polish poets, although they drew upon him in differing ways. His poems make multi-tiered, complicated reference to various cultural motifs, and he also sought to move beyond subjectivism in his poetry. What the Polish poets found most captivating, however, was his individualism and how he incorporated his work within the unbroken sequence of tradition. The problem of the new Classicism emerged at the outset of the 20th century in Poland, in the poetry of Leopold Staff. Aside from Staff ’s work, during the interwar period the poetry of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (due to his aesthetism and cult of art) was also placed under the rubric of Classicism, especially after his publication of the volume Return to Europe (Powrót do Europy); such trends were likewise noted in the works of Czesław Miłosz, after he overcame his catastrophism in the volume Three Winters (Trzy Zimy – 1936). In the interwar years, therefore, Classicism was still defined not in terms of form, but rather in terms of the values professed, such as a sense of cultural continuity, emotional balance and distance, and the supremacy of the intellect over emotions. In all of Polish postwar literature, however, the problem of cultivating ties to European culture – which above all entails maintaining continuity in the language of cultural symbols and values – becomes a matter of particular import, since this is a realm that faces particular threat as a result of social instability and political isolation from the West. From the outset, after all, Polish culture has developed within the orbit of the Latin milieu, and separation from it is considered to be the greatest threat. Isolation can only spell disaster. Barriers were erected between Poland and Europe during WWII, but the end of the war did not lead to their removal. Quite the contrary, Poland was cut off from Europe by an “iron curtain,” and ascribed to the eastern political bloc. Under such circumstances, the myth of Europe has been very frequently cultivated in Poland, and yearnings and sentiments have appeared which are not always equally strong in the West. —— 243 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA The poets who were already associated with Classicism before the war – Staff, Iwaszkiewicz, Miłosz – remained active afterwards. Each of them is an authority, but it was not they who established the program of postwar Classicism, but rather younger writers like Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz. Ryszard Przybylski, a critic who came out firmly in support of Classicism in the book This Is Classicism (To jest klasycyzm –1978) considers the Classicist writers to include Zbigniew Herbert. Herbert is a modern poet, for whom references to Greco-Roman antiquity play a large role. He is also a poet that adopts the avant-garde slogan of “modesty of emotions.” His poems, therefore, fit within the scope of values professed by the Classicists, although at the same time they represent a continuation of the avant-garde. Yet what is Classicism? It seems that so many answers exist to this question, that we have to conclude: a Classicist is anyone who desires to bear the name.

Moral Choices and Tradition After he had only published his first volume String of Light (Struna światła – 1956), Zbigniew Herbert was already hailed as one of the most important Polish poets. From the outset, Herbert’s poems evinced a yearning for the old harmony of the Mediterranean world, and so he was perceived to be a poet of culture, a representative of modern Classicism. His fondness for the past is nevertheless coupled with a sense that modern man lives among uncertain values, since 20thcentury history has upset their traditional order, making it impossible to simply revert to the past. Many of Herbert’s poems manifest a conviction that history has disrupted the natural order that enables people to fully experience their condition. This condition consists in the discovery of secrets, above all within daily life, in communication with machinery, among the rhythm of ordinary activities. Art, in particular poetry, should restore such sensibility. God is inaccessible; man is, by necessity, a rationalist full of anxiety and conscious of his own imperfection. Art, therefore, is an important part of self-awareness. —— 244 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues In 1974, Herbert published the volume Mr. Cogito (Pan Cogito). The protagonist of these poems, Mr. Cogito, draws upon the Cartesian tradition of subjectivity and rationalism. He is also an alter ego of the author, and at the same time a persona treated with a slight ironic distance. The poem “The Envoy of Mr. Cogito” (”Przesłanie Pana Cogito”) is the most serious declaration of the values professed in this poetry: one has to bear witness to the truth, even though this does not ensure success, but indeed to the contrary, it renders one susceptible to hardship, sometimes even death. Remaining faithful to the values one professes even when they stand no chance of realization – such is the fundamental ethical principle of this poetry. One might conclude that Herbert thus lingers within the milieu of the values harbored by the wartime generation, who valued honor and remained faithful, to the very end, to the model set by Joseph Conrad’s characters. Referring to Conrad made it possible, in the years when freedom of speech was restricted in Poland, to discuss the Warsaw Uprising and the moral obligations that had not ceased to be binding for all those who sensed a moral connection to the Home Army generation. Herbert’s poem “The Envoy of Mr. Cogito” is also closely associated with the political atmosphere of the 1970s and the emergence of a conscious political opposition, which did not expect its goals to be quickly achieved. Dissention made moral sense, as a way of bearing witness to the truth, sometimes requiring personal sacrifice or even heroism. Soon, Herbert’s poem gained great popularity among the circles of the democratic opposition, with which the poet had always sympathized. His volume Report From the Besieged City (Raport z oblężonego miasta – 1983) constitutes a poetic reaction to martial law. A conscious cultivation of ties to European culture is also patently evident in Zbigniew Herbert’s volumes of essays. Barbarian in the Garden (Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie – 1962) is an account of his travels to France and Italy in search of the traces of Mediterranean culture, and the title purposefully contrasts between the idyllic garden and the intruder. Yet this is no irascible barbarian who desires to plunder and destroy; to the contrary, he only deserves to be called a barbarian due to his incomplete knowledge, and the fact that he hails from distant —— 245 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA lands. He is more of a humble pilgrim that comes in search of education, longs to experience rapture, to understand and describe the richness of the true “cultural paradise” from which he has been unjustly ousted. This volume’s continuation devoted to Greece, Labyrinth on the Sea (Labirynt nad morzem), only appeared in 2000, after the author’s death. Still Life With a Bridle (Martwa natura z wędzidłem), from 1993, is a collection of sketches written by the author over many years about Dutch painting, which he particularly cherished for its cult of details, sense of the secrets of life, and reverence for the day-to-day world. For Herbert, Mediterranean culture is above all an undisturbed continuity of development, whereby the achievements of many centuries can accumulate. The contributions of Greek and Roman antiquity, the Italian renaissance, and Dutch art are equally tangible within it. One can sense the voices of artists who knew how to speak about matters both large and small.

Other “Classicists” Julia Hartwig (b.1921) is a poet usually mentioned among representatives of Classicism. However, the aspects of her work that could be considered to represent a Classicist attitude – a reckoning with reality and concern for clarity – plainly stemmed from her affinity for the French avant-garde tradition. The poet has translated Max Jacob, written an esteemed biography of Apollinaire, and also translated poems by many contemporary American poets. She considers formal discipline to be a very important trait of modern poetry, although it manifests a different nature in free verse and poetic prose. It was the avantgarde that dealt with the issue of economy of means, and decried verbosity. Classicism cannot signify an attempt to revert to the past, but rather a departure from purely personal expression and an attempt at objectification, at perceiving the human condition. In essence, this is close to the intellectualism of Wiesława Szymborska. A considerable role in Julia Hartwig’s poetry is played by dreams, reveries, and visions. Discipline does not, therefore, entail a rejection of intuitions. The poet quite frequently writes in the poème en prose genre – a fairly rare form in Poland, linked to the French tradition. —— 246 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues Here, even though formally written as prose, a text can be poetry by dint of precise wording and vividness. In the works of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1984-1980), one can perceive a vacillation between calm aesthetism and Dionysian frenzy. Also perceptible is a kind of tension between the East and the West, which is uncommon in Polish culture. As the author of ambiance stories he is close to the tradition of Russian novel-writing. As a poet, Iwaszkiewicz spent a long time searching for his own form in the postwar years. He experimented with free verse (for example in the volume Italian Songbook – Śpiewnik włoski – 1974), but it was only his last two collections, Weather Map (Mapa pogody – 1977) and Music in the Evening (Muzyka wieczorem – 1980), that bore witness to his discovery of his own forms of expression and at the same time to exceptional poetic flights; here Iwaszkiewicz avails himself of all the possibilities that tradition and modernity have to offer. His poems are unusually varied in formal terms, and the poet feels free in many styles. The dominant topics of these verses address the theme of passing on, the ephemeral nature of beauty, and the tragedy of leaving life behind. Iwaszkiewicz sees man against the backdrop of nature, portrays variability as a principle of the world, and depicts the need to reconcile oneself with death. Another poet who sought ties to the Mediterranean tradition was Aleksander Wat. He made his debut as a futurist. In his later works, he drew upon the biblical tradition (as well as his Jewish roots), and in highly visionary verses he sought contemporary signs that could be interpreted as belonging to the metaphysical plane. Classicism was understood in yet another way by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz. In his early programmatic essays, he related the use of the symbolism of Mediterranean culture to Jungian archetypes, which constitute a permanent element of both art and the human psyche. Artistically, however, he was closest to the Polish Baroque tradition. In the novels Polish Conversations in the Summer of 1983 (Rozmowy polskie latem 1983 roku) and Umschlagplatz, Rymkiewicz did not shy away from political issues, and in his later poetic works the Polish tradition of the Baroque merges with the sensibilities of a reader of modern philosophers: Husserl and Heidegger. —— 247 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA

Czesław Miłosz Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) decided to leave Poland soon after the war. Initially, he initially went abroad as an envoy of the official Polish diplomatic services. In 1951, facing the threat of losing his passport, he asked for political asylum in France. After several difficult years he moved to the United States, where he was employed as a professor of Slavic literatures at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1980 he won the Nobel Prize for his poetic works, and only then could his poems, long banned in his home country, reach Polish readers directly. Previously Miłosz’s poetry – written before the war, just after the war (the volume Rescue – Ocalenie), and in later years – had only been known among to an elite circle, but was very highly esteemed. Because the name “Miłosz” could not be mentioned in the censored press, the poet was sometimes referred to with characteristic paraphrases, such as “the author of Three Winters.” In the 1990s, owing to the political changes, the elderly Miłosz was able to settle in Kraków. Miłosz’s first poetic collection published in emigration was the volume Daylight (Światło dzienne – Paris 1953). Although a considerable segment of the old émigré community gave him an adverse reception, he became associated with the circle of the monthly journal Kultura, where he published articles. His books were likewise printed by the publishing house associated with this circle. A certain portion of Miłosz’s prose work comprises a critique of the Communist system and an analysis of the way in which power was wielded in the satellite states of the USSR. Here we should chiefly make mention of his collection of essays entitled Captive Mind (Zniewolony umysł – 1953), an analysis of the stances taken by Polish writers and intellectuals towards the Communist system. This book contains penetrating portraits of various important literary figures (including Andrzejewski and Borowski, of the writers mentioned above), described under easyto-decipher pseudonyms. Nevertheless, Miłosz’s chief focus of interest and analysis rests on not personal judgments, but rather on the mechanism of dependency upon the system. Miłosz believes that certain intellectuals construe unctuous intellectual theories in order to justify their servility, for example following Hegel in recognizing his—— 248 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues torical necessity as a general principle, to which the individual should acquiesce. Political themes, however, do not dominate Miłosz’s essayistic or poetic works. In his poems one can find statements of a moral nature, reflection on the passage of time, and rapture at the beauty of the visible world. Miłosz endeavors to carry across his own worldview and his own vision of mankind. His intellectual pursuits gave rise to the volumes of essays Visions From San Francisco Bay (Widzenia nad zatoka San Francisco – 1969), Private Obligations (Prywatne obowiązki – 1972) and many others. The comprehensive essay Land of Urlo (Ziemia Ulro – 1977) can be treated as holding the key to Miłosz’s mature poetic works: here he portrays modernity as an epoch in which mankind has become deprived of its inheritance, not only because of totalitarianism, but because of a lack of metaphysical sensitivity and a simplification of worldviews, stemming from the fact that scientific truth and religion have diverged. And so there must be a restoration – not so much of institutional faith as of sensitivity – and the fractured vision of the world must be reconjoined. Here Miłosz cites Witkacy and Mickiewicz, the religious visionaries Blake and Swedenborg, as well as his own distant relative Oskar Miłosz, a poet from Lithuania writing in France, a continuator of symbolism. Miłosz devoted a considerable portion of his prose work to the issue of tradition. However, he understands tradition not as the Mediterranean canon (a term he does not even use), but chiefly as a bond to one’s own birthplace. Miłosz was raised in Lithuania, terrain that was divided up in the interwar period between the Lithuanian and Polish states – with the latter successfully claiming Wilno (Vilnius). He inherited the traditions of the Lithuanian nobility, who were tied to Polish language and culture, yet open to the ethnic traditions of many peoples. The convention of the former “Republic of the Two Nations” appeals to him, and he sees it as the antithesis of nationalism, against which he consistently polemicizes. Europe, in his view, consists in exactly such a multiplicity of local traditions and their creative coexistence, in a continuity of development, and in living bonds to distant past and to the native landscape. The poet also treated these problems in the partially autobiographical novel Issa Valley —— 249 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA (Dolina Issy – 1955) and the volume of essays Native Realm (Rodzinna Europa – 1959). Nevertheless, Miłosz is predominantly a poet. The description “Classicism” already appeared in criticism of his interwar work, especially after Miłosz abandoned the visionary tone characteristic of the “Żagary” group (where he got his start), and the poet’s attitude towards history and the tragic events of WWII began to manifest an emotional distance and a quest for a wider perspective. The poet, however, never considered himself to be a representative of Classicism – his postwar poetry began to manifest diverse quests, clearly extending beyond the canon of emotional restraint and formal perfection. His treatises – A Moral Treatise (Traktat moralny – 1953) and A Poetic Treatise (Traktat poetycki – 1967), joined in 2001 by A Theological Treatise (Traktat teologiczny) – are versified polemic works, immersed in current debates, expressing the poet’s attitude and views in the form of digressions, recollections, and polemics. Miłosz is considered a metaphysical poet. He also took an interest in the diverse traditions of remote religious cults, which for example gave rise to Hymn of the Pearl (Hymn o Perle – 1983), a reworking of a symbolic poem about seeking a secret from the early centuries of Christianity. Miłosz devoted a particularly great amount of space in his work to the Manichean sect. He was intrigued by the sharp division into the corporal and spiritual, he does not trust nature, and he constructs his worldview around the truths of faith, enveloping them in Christian mythology, which does not always fit within Catholic orthodoxy. In his verses, which are momentary records of experience, Miłosz strives to detect the presence of another dimension, asks questions about the human condition, and seeks out latent philosophical meanings. Miłosz is, therefore, a philosophical and religious poet. He is also far removed from the mode of aesthetism. The poet does not consider beauty to be the ultimate goal of art, and stresses the importance of moral and intellectual problems. One can find regular forms among his works, but also, for example, verse modeled after the Biblical sentence. He also maintained his distance to the avant-garde, although he did not opt for traditionalism. —— 250 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues

Intellectualism and Irony – Wisława Szymborska Born in 1923, Szymborska is among those writers that came into adulthood just after WWII. Her first two volumes appeared in 1952 and 1954, and although they do include works that were clearly inspired by Socialist Realism, the poet has from the outset been characterized by a tone of contrariness, searching, and objection to linguistic schemas. Szymborska’s true debut is considered to be the collection A Cry to Yeti (Wołanie do Yeti) from 1957. Szymborska’s work has nevertheless not undergone many changes since that time, even though the poet published new volumes; her style is exceptionally pronounced and has for many years been considered among the most superb. Several selections of her poems have appeared, as well as the volumes Salt (Sól – 1962), A Hundred Consolations (Sto pociech – 1967), A Great Number (Wielka liczba – 1976), People on the Bridge (Ludzie na moście – 1986), Moment (Chwila – 2002). In 1996, Wisława Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1996. Szymborska’s technique is quite diversified – in the 1970s she employed both free verse and various forms of regular verse. For example, the rhymed poem “Nothing Twice” (”Nic dwa razy”) was used as the lyrics for a popular song, but it seems that its form and even banality signals a certain distance to the topic and to simply formulated judgments. Szymborska’s later work comes to be dominated by free verse. The poet’s most distinctive trait is her quest in search of the paradoxes inherent in the human condition, demonstrating that many of the truths considered to be obvious are in fact only superficially so. She contrasts the universal and subjective perspectives, demonstrates how the fate of the individual is subject to the general rules that pertain to all of humanity. The poet generally shuns very personal expression, and an intellectual attitude dominates her lyricism. However, philosophical subtlety does not require complicated language or erudition; Szymborska’s verse sounds very natural. Owing to this, Szymborska was able to address such difficult themes as protesting against the war in Vietnam, or attempting to answer the question of how the 20th century should be summed up, in a way that is far removed from the language of publicist commentary or politics, outside of the schemas they employ. Sober scrutiny, —— 251 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA rationalism, and a lack of Romanticism might seem exceptional in Polish literature – but this is not in fact the case. Szymborska’s tone stems from the interwar avant-garde; after 1956 it similarly shapes the voices of most Polish poets, including the young ones. After the war, Romanticism is a realm of tradition that is not called to mind every day, although it is indeed remembered. Szymborska’s work is a kind of playing with varying ways of looking at the same theme, a search for unexpected meanings, and an attempt at identifying the modern human condition. Szymborska represents the intellectual current of Polish poetry. Previously the chief peculiarity of women’s work was considered to be erotism, seeing expression for love-related experiences. The topic of relations between a man and a woman does appear in Szymborska’s work as well, but not as a direct expression of feelings. Love is above all a close bond with another person. But how close? How does this emotional bond relate to the existential loneliness of each individual? Here lies the theme of many poems. The poet never juxtaposes feelings and the intellect, never abandons her contemplativeness – her eroticism is characterized by emotional discretion. Neither is this an exceptional topic; a similar vision of human fate appears in all of Szymborska’s poems. Man cannot escape suffering, even if the constant passage of time and the world’s changing nature have to provoke reflection. Expanded awareness is also a source of disquiet. Many poems address the struggle against chance, fate, and determinative factors (such as those of a biological or historical nature). The fate of man is, at one and the same time, open-ended and planned in advance. However, this is not a tragic vision. Szymborska’s irony does sometimes take the form of a subtle joke; the constant motion of meanings in this poetry enables one to enjoy discovering unknown facets of the human fate. Quite frequently, Szymborska refers to well-known paintings by the masters – by interpreting an image from the past, she incorporates it into the modern situation of the individual. Szymborska also authored various feuilletons published under the general rubric “Non-Required Reading” (”Lektury nadobowiązkowe”) as well as humorous poems, which have been appearing in various publications for years. —— 252 ——

Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues

Since the regime change The two Nobel Prizes in literature won by Polish poets are a telling indication of Polish poetry’s high stature. Polish prose is quite frequently believed to be of a lower caliber, yet it is in fact prose that shapes the way in which the contemporary world is perceived, that depicts daily life, marks out problems, and reacts to tensions. Freedom has finally come to prevail in Polish culture since 1989, but for Polish literature this is not entirely a watershed date. Even before the formal restrictions were lifted, literature was already admirably working towards reclaiming the zone of freedom. And so, the topics and depictions that are now dominant in our literature were already being developed earlier. The liveliest of these in recent years have included: – Root-seeking prose, which registers the diversity of biographies and complicated traditions, and demonstrates the interplay of various cultures, especially in the multicultural milieu of the “kresy” (the former Polish territories to the east) and in places where Polish and German culture intermingle. Of great import here is depicting local diversity, which allows unification, an element of conscious social policy prior to 1989, to be turned away from (for example Stefan Chwin). – Holocaust-related prose, which documents memories and gathers recollections. This literary current is still alive despite the passage of time (Hanna Krall). – Postmodernism, which encompasses very different modes, ranging from an analysis of language and play, to elements of mythology and fantasy (Magdalena Tulli, Olga Tokarczyk). Yet regardless of all discussion, Polish literature remains lastingly bound to Europe. The adoption of Christianity from the West in 966 and the choice of the Latin alphabet were decisive in establishing close ties between Polish culture and the West. On the other hand, the Slavic nature of the Polish language and to a large extent our history situate us closer to the East. Polish culture has been a constant meeting-ground for various trends; it strives to harmoniously combine openness to all outside influences and stimuli with a strong sense —— 253 ——

ANNA NASIŁOWSKA of its own identity. Many historical processes that have played out in the Polish lands took a particularly dramatic course. Polish literature has always been characterized by a sense of obligation to rise to such historical challenges. This means that it remains, especially in the 20th century, a very important part of the common European experience, in which there is a place for warnings against totalitarianism, for the passionate quest for freedom, as well as for the appreciation of beauty. In tandem with the greater ease and prevalence of communication, the 20th century will surely bring even greater openness to other cultures, and therefore also augment the will to overcome divisive factors, as well as entail a need to comprehend extant differences.

Bibliographical Notes Synthetic studies: Burkot S., Literatura polska w latach 1939-1999, Warszawa 2002. Czapliński P., Śliwiński P., Literatura polska 1976-1998, Przewodnik po prozie i poezji Kraków 1999. Drewnowski T., Próba scalenia. Obiegi, wzorce, style, Warszawa 1997, Kraków 2004. Jarosiński Z., Literatura polska lat 1945 – 1975, series: Mała Historia Literatury Polskiej, Warszawa 1996. Nasiłowska A., Trzydziestolecie 1914-1944, series: Mała Historia Literatury Polskiej, Warszawa 1995. Święch J., Literatura polska w latach II wojny światowej, Warszawa 1997.

—— 254 ——

Contents

JERZY BRZEZIŃSKI Polish Literature – Returning to the European Fold . . . . . . . . . .

5

ADAM KARPIŃSKI The Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

ADAM KARPIŃSKI Rennaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 KRZYSZTOF MROWCEWICZ Europeans and Sarmatians – Polish Baroque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 ELŻBIETA SARNOWSKA-TEMERIUSZ The European “Republic of Letters” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 JERZY SNOPEK The Polish Literature of Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 ALINA WITKOWSKA Romanticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 GRAŻYNA BORKOWSKA Polish Literature in 1864-1914 – an End and Beginning . . . . . . 172 ALINA KOWALCZYKOWA The Interwar Years – 1918-1939 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 ANNA NASIŁOWSKA Polish Literature 1939-2000 – Selected Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228