Polish Poetry - V. ROMANTICISM
Stanislaw Baranczak
0000-00-00V. ROMANTICISM
Romanticism is a pivotal epoch in Polish literature history. The historic upheavals beginning with the final partition of Poland in 1795 created a sociopolitical situation in which literature, and particularly poetry, became a substitute for other means of shaping the nation's mentality. The term wieszcz (a bard, but also a prophet) came into being to denote the new role of the poet as spiritual leader. However, one of the most conspicuous features of Polish romanticism is the enormous disparity between a few great "bards" and hundreds of minor poets, both for artistic innovation and actual influence. It is also significant that all the giants of Polish romanticism achieved their prominence in exile; their works, of unprecedented value to the cultural survival of the oppressed Polish nation, were written and published mostly in Paris.
The period of greatest achievement in romantic poetry is framed by the dates of two abortive insurrections against Czarist Russia, 1830-1831 and 1863. But the starting point of Polish romanticism in a broader sence is 1822, the year that saw the debut of Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). Mickiewicz began to write as a student at the University of Wilno and immediately becam the central figure of the rapidly emerging romantic movement. His early work still owed a great deal to the spirit of the Enlightenment: Oda do mlodosci (Ode to Youth), for example, is a peculiar combination of Classical rhethoric and the new Sturm und Drang (q.v.) ideology. Well read in Goethe, Schiller, and Byron, Mickiewicz soon developed his own romantic style. His first volume, Ballady i romanse (Ballads and Romances), was an audacious manifestation of a specifically Polish version of early romanticism in which references to native folklore helped to introduce elements of fantasy and the supernatural and to express the "living truths" of the heart. Mickiewicz's debut was hailed as a literary breakthrough by his own generation, but it met with ridicule from his elders the Classicists. The ensuing strife between the romantics and the Classicists was fueled by Mickiewicz's subsequent publications during the 1820s. Two tales in verse, Grazyna (1823) and Konrad Wallenrod (1828), two parts of the poetic drama Dziady (Forefather's Eve, 1823) and the exquisite sequence of Sonety krymskie (Crimean Sonnets, 1826), all offer an entirely new set of values, such as frenetic love, the tragic loneliness of the hero, and individual sacrifice.
Mickiewicz leading role at this stage becomes apparent when contrasted with the output of other early romantics. Antoni Malczewski (1793-1826) left behind only one major work: the Byronic tale in verse, Maria (1826). Bohdan Zaleski (1802-1886) was an author of serene, songlike imitations of folk poetry. Seweryn Goszczynski (1801-1876) gained notoriety as a bard of social protest.
Especially after the 1831 defeat of the November Insurrection, when many Polish intellectuals, including Mickiewicz, settled in France as political refugees, Mickiewicz's position of leadership became indisputable. His theme of patriotic struggle and heroic sacrifice now acquried new, metaphysical dimensions, while in his poetic art he constantly sought new forms of expression. Part 3 of Dziady offered a new vision of Poland's destiny as well as a new step in the development of romantic drama; the work is a masterpiece of innovative construction, style, and versification. Only two years later, Mickiewicz published a completely different book, yet another masterpiece, Pan Tadeusz (1834), a Homeric epos on the poet's homeland, the Polish-Lithuanian province at the time of the Napoleonic wars, in which nostalgia and sorrow mix with warm humor and discreet irony. In the subtlety of its narration (the interplay of the narrator's identification with and distance from the reality presented) and its stylistic richness, Pan Tadeusz remains to this day the crowning achievement of Polish epic poetry. After its publication, Mickiewicz, increasingly absorbed in mystical soul-searching and political activity, lapsed into silence as a poet, interrupted only by the brief sequence of the so-called "Lausanne poems" (written in 1839), purely lyric in character and strikingly innovative in their use of indirect symbolic language.
Mickiewicz's fellow-exile and main rival, Juliusz Slowacki (1809-1849), was less appreciated by his contemporaries. Yet his voluminous output spans a great many genres from lyric poems to poetic dramas to tales in verse and visionary epics, and his plays are a crucial factor in the evolution of Polish romantic poetry as well as theater. Written mostly in verse, they experiment with both versification and dramatic construction; their settings are variously realistic, historical, legendary, dreamlike, or symbolic. In his poems, Slowacki felt equally at ease in epic description or in lyric confession, in complex stanza patterns or in biblical prose. His book-length poem in ottava rima, Beniowski (1841), is a magnificent example of the gentre of the "poem of digressions" and of romantic irony, close in its style to Byron's Don Juan and Pushkin's Evgenij Onegin. The last, "mystical" period in Slowacki's short life yielded an immense (even though unfinished) poem, also in ottava rima, Krol-Duch (King-Spirit, 1847), a mythopoetic vision of Polish destiny shown through consecutive reincarnations of the nation's spirit.Slowacki's significance lies not only in his matchless technical virtuosity but also in that in his last phase he was an early forerunner of modern trends in poetry, including symbolism. Characteristically, his fame grew rapidly in the 1890s and 1900s.
Critical opinions, concerning the other two poets of the 19th-century's "great four" have become diametrically opposed in the 20th century Zygmunt Krasinski (1812-1859), for some time labeled "the third bard," today is admired mostly as an author of fascinating letters and two excellent political plays. Possessing a perspicacious and complex mind, Krasinski nevertheless lacked both Mickiewicz's poetic force and Slowacki's craftsmanship.
The posthumous reputation of the work of Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1883) presents a stark contrast with Krasinski's diminishing appeal. Forgotten and isolated in his lifetime and rediscovered only several decades after his death, today he is considered the philosophic and artistic harbinger of modern Polish poetry. One generation younger than Mickiewicz, Norwid developed his art both under the influence of and as a polemic with Polish romanticism. He replaced the prevalent attitude of nationalistic messianism with his original version of humanistic universalism, a concept of modern man as heir to the great civilizations of the past. From this perspective, Norwid attempted to dissect the most essential problems of contemporary history, politics, and culture. Although he employed a wide variety of genres and forms, he was most successful in his brief lyrics, distinguished by their hihgly intellectual content. In particular, his collection of 100 such poems titled Vade-mecum (written before 1866 and never published in his lifetime) offers an amazingly modern model of semantically dense and ironic poetry.
In contrast to the four great emigrés, among the multitude of "domestic" poets of the 19th century only a few authors achieved some distinction - Kornel Ujejski (1823-1897) with patriotic poems, Ryszard Berwinski (1817-1879) with a call for social revolution and with ironic observations on contemporary morals, Teofil Lenartowicz (1822-93) with lyrics based on stylistic references to folklore, and Wladyslaw Syrokomla (1823-62) with verse tales employing the voice of a peasant speaker.
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