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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2017
A Hundred Years ago the main tendencies of European poetry before 1848 were summed up in a Polish poem published under the title “Before Dawn.” It was written in the Polish language (Przedświt). There is hardly any poem in any language in which the belief in national renaissance and national freedom has found a stronger expression. The poem appeared at a time when the elite of the European Continent was struggling against the rule of Metternich, and when the elite of Polish youth had again been forced, for more than a decade, to wander through Europe and the world in order to preach the gospel of Poland's approaching leadership.
But there is one feature which signally distinguishes this poem from other prophetic or pseudo-prophetic hymns of its own time and, still more, of future times. It is the respect which its author has for the creative power of the spirit. He even identifies this respect with his very delight in life. The sorrows of a man who has lost his country are transmuted into the sorrows of a whole nation. These sorrows, however, lose their sting because their spiritualization, with the help of love, has led the author to experiencing the preciousness of a future order in a real and happy Europe, which is guided by spirit and not by power.
1 This article represents an attempt to show the precocious greatness of the twenty-one-year-old thinker-poet Krasiñski by contrasting his masterpiece with that child of the first World War which was baptized “expressionism” by noble and ignoble revolutionaries; men who considered themselves pioneers without knowing that a Polish count, born a century earlier, was their common ancestor. The article was written during the last war, in 1944, and sent to the editor of this journal two years later. After the death of Samuel Cross, Waclaw Lednicki suggested some notes. In this way I got to know his Life and Culture of Poland (New York: Roy, 1944), which contains an extensive chapter on the Undivine Comedy. It is clear from this penetrating chapter that the Undivine Comedy deserves a separate monograph, not only because nearly every European poet-thinker, whether Slav or not, is unconsciously indebted to him, but also because of the part the Comedy plays in Krasiñski's own life: Juljusz Kleiner, in his work of 1912 (Zygmunt Krasiñski, Dzieje myśli) and in that of 1925 (Mesjanism narodowy w systemie Krasiñskiego) could not yet use Krasinki's letters to the Countess Delphine Potocki (Listy do Delfiny Potockiej; 3 vols., ed. by Adam Zóltowski [Poznañ, 1930–39]). In outlining the “Past and Future of Modern Language Studies,” I have mentioned the problems which are important for the understanding of Polish literature also (A. M. Wagner, “A Century of Research on Lessing,” Modern Languages, XXV [1943] 5–19), and published an article in the meantime (Die Tat, Vol. XXV [1947]), which tries to sketch the development from Carlyle and Kierkegaard to Rilke and Sartre, in whichK rasiñski is dealt with as a central figure
2 K. G. (1809–66), intimate friend of Krasiñski. Listy K. do K.G., cd. by J. I. Kraszewski (Lwów, 1882).
3 The English translation of Nieboska Komedja from the pen of Lord Lytton is hardly better than Bartonicki's German translation (1841); a recent one by E. Kennedy and Zofia Umiñski (London and Warsaw, 1927), is not known to me.
4 Ernst Toller (1893–1939), is the most genuine among the “expressionistic” revolutionary dramatists, and his first play, “set in Europe before the dawn of the new birth,” is or should be a reminder that those who in the first years after the first World War cried, “Oh, man!” from the depth of their poetical intuition, not because it was fashionable, are still alive in the first years after the second World War. However, the German poet of whom we have to speak in connection with Krasiñski in the first place, is Ernst Barlach (1870–1935); in his plays, particularly in Der arme Vetter (1918) and Die Sündflut (1924), is that mixture of poetry and social philosophy which is so significant for the author of the Undivine Comedy.
5 Neue Sachlichkeit means the attempt to counteract the high-flown style of expressionism. Strindberg's historical plays had been, as it were, discovered when the Strindberg of Damascus gradually vanished into the background.
6 Its author, Karl Zuckmayer, received for it a prize which had the name of Kleist prize!
7 Hoffmann and Polish literature—a subject which is by no means exhausted.
8 Cf. A . M . Wagner, Deutsche und Polnische Romantik, Neue Jahrbücher für das klassiche Altertum, etc. (1917), p. 551.
9 Josef Mane Hoene-Wroñski is the originator of that Messianism which had such influence on Mickiewicz; cf. Prolegomena do Mesjanisma, textes, commentaires et critiques, by François Warrain (Warsaw, 1922); since 1933 in Paris, Count August Cieszkowski is important for the study of the impact Hegel had on Polish writers, but, perhaps, more for the gradual overcoming of Hegelian idealism; Kühne, W., Graf August C. (Berlin, 1938)Google Scholar, is as solid as it is unreadable. Towiañski is the Lithuanian mystic who fought the noble fight for a moral renaissance together with a less noble one for the glorification of the first Napoleon whose ashes were brought from St. Helena to Paris on the very day when Towiañski arrived there twenty-five years after Waterloo and twenty-five years before Bismarck started to complete the work of the third Napoleon.
10 Professor of English in Oxford, died in 1922; cf. A. M. Wagner, “Wissenschaft und Literatentum,” Die Tat (1931); and many other articles.
11 Franz Bopp (1791–1867) is one of the originators of the comparative study of the Indo-Germanic languages; A. F. Pott (1802–87), one of his pupils.
12 Kazimierz Brodziñski (1791–1835), poet and scholar, professor of Polish literature in Warsaw.
13 Kasprowicz (1860–1926), one of the great Polish lyrical poets and master translator of Shakespeare and, particularly, of Shelley. “Selections” were published in London in 941
14 For instance, W. Hauff's “Mann im Mond,” of which it is not certain that it really was a satire as the author claimed.
15 Cf. Wagner, A. M., “Polen und die deutsche Freiheit,” Das neue Deutschhnd (Gotha, 1920)Google Scholar.
16 Karl Jentsch, one of the few independent German journalists at the time of the Kaiser, who continuously attacked the Prussian anti-Polish politics. H. W. Nevinson, who died in 1944, was a courageous fighter for many lost and a few victorious causes whose autobiography is indispensable for the student of contemporary history.
17 Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1928) pp. 35ff.
18 Cf. A. M. Wagner, “Die Wirklichkeit der Universität,” Preussische Jahrbücher, February and March, 1932; “Die deutsche Universität und die Germanistik,” Nass und Wert, November, 1938; “The Cultural Policy of Post War Germany,” Contemporary Review, April, 1939; “Goethe, Carlyle, Nietzsche and the German Middle Class,” Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, University of Wisconsin, May, June, 1939.
19 Geschichte der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft (Göttingen, 1920), Vol. I.
20 Cf. note 5.
21 Paul Kornfeld's (born 1889) theme in his second play, Himmel und Hölle (1918), is that kind of “romantic” world-weariness which is also an element of the Undivine Comedy.
22 Jean Moréas (1856–1910), the French symbolist who claimed to have developed into a classicist. His remarkable “Stances” are, however, the work of a Kornfeld disguised as Malherbe.
23 An important figure of Ibsen's Rosmersholm.
24 Cf. Leonhard, St., Polenlieder deutscher Dichter (Cracow, 1916)Google Scholar. Among the few anti-Polish authors is Fr. A. V. Stägemann, whose wild outbursts anticipate certain sections of early expressionism. The deplorable fact that the first volume of R. F. Arnold's Geschichte der deutschen Polenliteratur never found a sequel is particularly obvious today.
25 The author of Thibauts, one of the few really great novels of our time.
26 Professor of German literature in Strassbourg (1883–1914) and forerunner of lyrical expressionism by his Aufbruch (1914).
27 Franz Werfel (1890–1946), another of the early expressionists who probably had a greater influence on the “school” than any of his fellow poets. Later he wrote novels, among them the important Verdi, and plays which give an illuminating picture of his development from expressionism (Spiegelmensch) to the Neve Sachlichkeit (Maximilian and Juarez).
28 The development of European drama from Krasiñski to Ibsen would deserve a separate treatment.
29 Jules Michelet (1798–1874), author of the fundamental Histoire de France and Histoire de la revolution française, who, like Mickiewicz, lost his Chair at the Collège de France when the third Napoleon took over.
30 1813–1837, great through his fight for German liberty and for a new drama; cf. A. M. Wagner, Modern Philology, May, 1940.
31 J. M. Comte de Maistre (1753–1821), whose Du Pape (1810), with its theocratic state conception, would give a valuable background to a monograph on the Undivine Comedy.
32 R. de Lamenais (1782–1854), who broke with the Church.
33 1891–1916, like Stadler killed in action in France: main work. Der Bettler.