Józef Witlin, one of Poland's contemporary writers and literary critics, wrote that, “To the world at large Polish literature is known as an unknown literature.”¹ This seems to be especially true in regard to the literature of the romantic period, which is considered to be the richest in Poland's history.

The lack of popularity among foreign readers of Polish romantic literature could probably be attributed to its deeply rooted, and seemingly excessive, nationalism. It is an accepted fact that all European romantic writers of the nineteenth century were idealistic, having been influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution and by the intellectual atmosphere it created. The Polish romantic poets, however, had yet another, more immediate source for their romantic idealism—the loss of their own political independence and the newly completed partition of Poland by Russia, Austria, and Prussia.

In their age-old history of oppression, the Poles once again were facing occupation by foreign powers and a life of submission on their native soil. No wonder, then, that they were especially receptive to the revolutionary ideals of the times and that they were determined to apply them in the fight for their own national cause. These ideals soon pervaded every aspect of Polish national life, and they found their strongest expression in the nation's literature.

Adam Mickiewicz was Poland's outstanding romantic poet. His literary romanticism was synonymous with his deeply-felt patriotism. He devoted his life to the expression, in poetry and in prose, of the high ideals that combined love of his country with the love for man and humankind.

Mickiewicz's literary creativity spanned his entire lifetime—from the youthful period of lyrical odes and ballads to the historical, philosophical, mystical, and epic works of his mature years. The poetry of Adam Mickiewicz contains all elements of romantic literature—love motifs, folk-fantasy, religious and philosophical contemplations, mystical visions, and revolutionary slogans. His canon comprises short lyrical poems, love poems and oriental sonnets, satires, historical and idyllic poetry, and allegorical dramatic poems—all basically expressing the longings and the feelings of any romantic poet, regardless of his nationality.

The only difference perhaps between Mickiewicz of Poland and Byron of England or Schiller of Germany is that the Polish poet's national situation and circumstances demanded his total commitment and his dedication to the problems of his country, whereas the European romantics were free to address themselves in their works primarily to the world of the individual and his place in the society.

Mickiewicz's fame as Poland's national poet is well deserved. As Ernest J. Simmons comments:

Romanticism is the keynote of Mickiewicz's poetry, and of his whole poetic temperament, and romanticism in a sense has likewise been ceaseless inspiration of his people despite the harsh realities of their age-old struggle. Consequently, it is little wonder that the Poles find Mickiewicz, with his lyrical flights of passionate patriotism, his bitter satire on the enemies of his country, and his mystical vision of Poland's glorious future, a great spiritual leader who has captured in bright deathless verse the full image and ultimate aspirations of his people.²

Just as in 1798 in England the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth heralded a new era in English literature, so did the appearance of Adam Mickiewicz's Ballads and Romances (Ballady i Romanse), in 1822, mark the beginning of the romantic movement in Polish literary history. Included in the first volume was one of the poet's earliest and most significant poems, “Ode to Youth,” (Oda do Mlodosci), which Mickiewicz wrote as a student at the University of Wilno, prior to his arrest by the Russians for “subversive” activities in an academic organization, the “Philomaths.”

The “Ode to Youth” is one of the most refreshing and one of the most progressive poems of the times. Full of optimism and enthusiasm, it generated inspiration and hope, and it established Mickiewicz as a revolutionary poet. The call for courage and sacrifice, for solidarity and unity, and for selfless dedication to the common cause breathed into the young generation a refreshing hope and a promise of victory:

Bez serc, bez ducha—to szkieletów ludy:
Mlodości! podaj mi skrzydła.
Niech nad martwym wzlecę światem
W rajską dziedzine ułudy,
Kędy zapał tworzy cudy,
Nowości potrząsa kwiatem,
I obleka nadzieje w złote malowidła!

(11.1-17)

Razem młodzi przyjaciele!
W szcześciu wszystkiego są wszystkich cele.
Jednością silni; rozumni szałem,
Razem młodzi przyjaciele!—
I ten szczęśliwy, kto padł wśród zawodu
Jeźeli poległym ciałem
Dał innym szczebel do sławy grodu.

(11.32-38)

Tam sięgaj, gdzie wzrok nie sięga;
Łam czego rozum nie złamie,
Młodości! orła twych lotów potęga,
Jak piorun twoje ramie!(3)

(11.48-52)

The “Ode” appears in every anthology or survey of Polish literature, and it has been translated into English “by various hands,” and edited by George Rapall Noyes. However, the difficulty in translation from Polish into English leads, unfortunately, to a near-distortion of the original poem—of its meaning and its impact. This is how the above lines look and sound in the English literary translation⁴:

Here, heartless, spiritless, throng skeleton in sorry
          plight!
Youth, give me wings, that I may rise
Above this dead world, curst and bare,
Into the realms of dream and light
For ardor brings forth marvels there,
Strews each new dream with blossoms rare,
And dresses each golden hope's fair guise.
Young friends, together heed my call!
The aims of all are in the joy of all.
Strong our unity, mad yet discreet.
On! On! young friends, nor fear to fall!
He too knows joy and gladness, he who fell,
If his prone body at their feet
Aided his friends to mount Fame's citadel.
Brave youth, reach outward far beyond thy sight,
Crush what mere human reason cannot harm!
For like an eagle's is thy lofty flight
The strength of thunderbolts is in thine arm.(5)

In an effort to approximate the poem's actual language and its intended impact, a literal translation, without attention to rhythm or rhyme, is quoted below:

Without heart and spirits—we're a nation of corpses / Youth, lend me your wings! / Let me rise above the dead world / Into the paradise of dreams / Where ardor creates miracles, / Shakes the blossom of a new adventure / And weaves hope into golden images. … Together Young Friends! / In common happiness are the aims of all. / Strong in unity, sober in madness / Together we stand. / The one who fell is happy too, / For, by his sacrifice, / He helped attain his country's fame. … Reach where youth does not reach, / Break what your reason cannot crush. / Youth! thine is an eagle's might / And as a thunderbolt is thy arm.

(Translation mine.)

One must agree with the statement by Professor Weintraub that,

The poem [in the original] is full of exclamations, of short energetic sentences, appeals and orders. Its energetic rhythms and conciseness of expression admirably convey the idea of a tremendous release of spiritual force in spite of the fact that some of the images seem conventional, or have a rhetorical flavor. That is why it is so difficult to preserve the character of the poem in translation, in which the conventional images tend to stand out, and in which the whole poem may easily acquire the character of a rhetorical extravaganza; whereas in the original it impresses us as something fresh and genuine.⁶

Therefore, among the greatest obstacles and difficulties in understanding Mickiewicz are not only his fanatical patriotism, which cannot be as deeply felt by the non-Polish reader, but also lack of an adequate translation of his poetry.

The period immediately following the publication of Mickiewicz's first volume of poems was the time of his spiritual maturation. The discovery of the German poets, Goethe and Schiller, strengthened Mickiewicz's romantic convictions; he gained great admiration for Goethe and redeveloped a kinship with Goethe's young Werther. In Schiller, Mickiewicz found a kindred soul whose idealism he echoes in the early lyrical poems and ballads.

If Mickiewicz admired the German poets, he saved his highest praise for the English Byron: “He had moved in his poetry all essential moral and philosophical questions, had wrestled with all perplexing dogmas and traditions. … It can be said that he alone stopped and reversed the flow of the intellectual movement leaning so heavily towards sophistry.”⁷ Mickiewicz's deep admiration for the English poet led to his translation into Polish of several of Byron's poems, and to his use of the Byronic hero in a unique interpretation to suit his own mystical and visionary poems.

One of Mickiewicz's most admired works is Forefathers' Eve (Dziady.) It consists of Parts II, III, and IV, of which Parts II and IV were written immediately following the publication of his first volume of works. Parts II and IV of Forefathers' Eve appeared in 1823 as the second volume of Mickiewicz's works.

“Forefathers' Eve” is the name of a pagan festival celebrated in memory of the departed forefathers. Modernized by Christianity, it was observed in recent times on All Souls' Day with ceremonial songs, feasts, and superstitious rites. Mickiewicz's own description provides the best explanation, and it substantiates the use of the festival for a romantic poem:

The solemn purpose of this festival, the solitary spot, the night time, and the fantastic rites used to appeal strongly to my imagination; I often heard tales, stories, and songs of how the departed would return with pleadings or with warnings; and in each horrible fancy I would perceive certain moral aspirations and certain teachings, represented to the senses in a common form. The present poem presents its pictures in a similar spirit; the ceremonial songs, spells, and incantations are for the most part faithfully, and sometimes literally taken from the original folk poetry.⁸

(Translation mine.)

Forefathers' Eve, Part II, is a series of connected ballads artistically united by an invisible thread of satire. The idea of suffering on earth pervades the poem and gives it an atmosphere of importance and gravity; we find an ill society composed of suffering innocent children, a ruthless village lord, an unhappy virgin, and an unfortunate lover whose life ends with suicide. Mickiewicz's satire is more subtle and covert than Byron's. Don Juan is quite direct in his accusation: “Society itself, which should create / Kindness, destroys what little we had got: / To feel for none is the true social art / Of the world's stoics—men without heart.”⁹ Mickiewicz, for fear of Russian censorship, speaks his biting words in a song by a Chorus that, in a Greek fashion, chants its wisdom: “who knows no mercy, tears the bodies into pieces; so that only bare bones remain?”¹⁰

Part IV of Forefathers' Eve consists of a long monologue in which Gustaw, the unfortunate lover, pours out his soul. Mickiewicz's hero is not just an individual suffering from an unrequited love. Like Goethe's Werther, he carries the burden of “Weltschmerz” but, in addition, he suffers from what may be called “Vaterlandschmerz”—a “Schmerz” unknown to Gustaw's German or English counterparts, but always an integral part of the total suffering by a Pole.

The compounded suffering by man, wronged in his personal and in his “national” love, produced an intensity of feeling in Mickiewicz never before expressed in Polish literature. As his prototype Mickiewicz used the Byronic lover—erotic, passionate, almost insane. Manfred Kridl remarks that, “It may easily be said that this was the first time in Polish literature that the feeling of love was expressed with such force and artistic truth in such tremendous intensity, with such great, almost metaphysical loftiness, and at the same time with such deeply human accents.”¹¹

The year of publication of Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve, Parts II and IV, also saw his arrest by the Russian authorities. Imprisoned in late 1823, he was released after six months of confinement, under the condition that he would never return to his homeland. Mickiewicz was never to see Poland again; he remained an exile the rest of his life.

A sudden change in his sentiments, coupled with his trip to the south of Russia, produced a cycle of beautiful oriental sonnets. The “Crimean Sonnets” display a Byronic love for the oriental and the exotic; a skillful use of images taken from Persian and Arabian mythologies; an awe for beauty and oriental nature; and the utter loneliness of a wronged exile. As Julian Krzyzanowski comments, “His Crimean Sonnets have much to tell us about the author's feelings and thoughts, about his anxieties and hopes for the future. His homesickness and feeling of abandonment, his inner struggles, his feigned calmness and Byronic solitude, found fine expression in this cycle.”¹²

The year 1825 brought the ill-fated December Uprising in Russia. Many of Mickiewicz's friends had been arrested, among them the famous Russian poet Aleksander Pushkin. Mickiewicz's reaction to the new wave of oppression came in the form of his patriotic poem Konrad Wallenrod. Written in Byronic style, the poem is permeated with the despairing romantic atmosphere to which the poet is forced to return after a temporary departure.

Konrad has definite characteristics of a Byronic hero. Indeed, Mickiewicz's Konrad shows close resemblance to Byron's Conrad in “The Corsair,” a poem Mickiewicz later translated into Polish. In the preface to the translation of another of Byron's poems, Mickiewicz describes the Byronic hero in terms of a man of conscience: “Byron's heroes are men of conscience … they know that they are guilty and must suffer; pride only forbids them to ask forgiveness … they all die too soon.”¹³ And these are also the characteristics with which Mickiewicz endowed the hero in Konrad Wallenrod.

The effect political slavery had on its victims becomes clear in the tragedy of the hero who consciously performs evil deeds for the good of his country: “they know they are guilty and must suffer.” This created an important moral conflict, a clash in the driven man between the forces of good and evil, a contradiction the hero cannot solve.

The poetic tale of Konrad Wallenrod is told against the background of the cruelty inflicted by a Teutonic Order on Poles and Lithuanians at the turn of the fifteenth century. The strange story of the hero, Konrad Wallenrod, is a human story of one man who is at the same time a patriot and a traitor, a devoted Christian and a heretic, a loving husband who must choose to forsake his wife. Konrad is a kidnapped Lithuanian boy brought up by a German noble. Devoted to his country, he must betray his benefactor. Fate offers him no choice, and he sacrifices his personal happiness to achieve a higher aim.

Here, again, Mickiewicz presents the reader with a “moral conflict … entirely foreign to the happy nations that have never known servitude and alien oppression. It concerns Poland in her relationship to her enemies. … Mickiewicz seeks for liberty and for means to restore it. … Mickiewicz may be charged with teaching treason as a method of fighting for Liberty.”¹⁴ His hero must be a superior man; he is definitely the most Byronic of all of Mickiewicz's heroes—brave and daring, but lonely and brooding, mysterious yet dependable—a “man of conscience.” Fully conscious of the consequences to his personal fate, Konrad performs the necessary evil deeds for the good of his country, and then dies a self-inflicted death.

The intention of the poem was to stimulate national imagination and to issue a call to action, which in fact resulted in the later aborted November Uprising of 1830. The poet's task was clear, “If only I could pour out my fire / into my hearers' breasts / … so that they might be lifted up, as free and bold / As were their fathers who lived and died long ago.”¹⁵ Now Mickiewicz's position among Poles was not only that of a national poet but of a political leader as well.

Mickiewicz felt himself responsible for the failure of the rebellion. Inspired by the martyrdom of Polish youth, he was determined to continue his fight and prepared to deliver his greatest dramatic work, Forefathers' Eve, Part III.

Forefathers' Eve, Part III, is unique in its mystical and realistic qualities. Conceived as a continuation of the earlier work, it bears no resemblance to Parts II and IV. It merely makes a reference to the earlier hero and, at the end, it returns to the rites of the festival itself. Gustaw, the hero of Part IV, is the one we meet at the beginning. He realizes the insignificance of his personal suffering in comparison to the greater suffering of his nation. The hero undergoes a metamorphosis, and the weak Gustaw of Part IV transforms into the stronger man who is Konrad of Konrad Wallenrod. The change is sealed in an ominous, Faust-like setting with an inscription: “Gustavus obiit—hic natus est Conradus.”

The man with personal sorrow dies; the larger man is born. He becomes a chosen leader, an individual whose life will be designed to answer the needs of his country. Konrad appears only in the visionary scene where he enters into a battle with God over the happiness and the destiny of his country. The realistic scenes where real people appear (many still living and named by their real names), provide the necessary background for the major theme of the poem.

Konrad, the protagonist of the drama, is the poet himself. In a number of symbolic and visionary episodes, he becomes the Polish Prometheus who argues with a Christian God for the salvation and resurrection of Poland. Amidst a medieval setting of good and evil spirits, the shaping of a realistic world of human actions takes place. A supernatural world influences this action and a union between an earthly and unearthly world takes place.

Konrad feels this supernatural power in himself and he must utilize it for his only purpose—to save his nation: “This innate power I have, / I want to expand over human spirits / … Now my country and I are one / I swallowed her soul with my body / My name is Million: for I love and suffer torments for millions.”¹⁶ At the height of his Promethean rise, Konrad becomes blasphemous and challenges God: “Give me the power over the spirits / I've searched for You, but we never met / I can only assume Your existence / Let me, then, meet You and feel Your superiority / … I want the power You possess / And like You, I shall rule over the spirits.”¹⁷ These words were indeed an outrageous manifestation of defiance for a Christian poet of a devotedly Catholic people.

But the reader must understand the pain and the suffering; he is made aware that Konrad's spiritual drama takes place in a prison cell. Konrad becomes a prisoner of his own thoughts, as it were, and his visionary rantings are a mere display of his spiritual pride and his national longings. When humility follows pride, another Messianic vision promises resurrection. Poland's suffering, like the suffering of Konrad, does not appear senseless any more—it is a necessary martyrdom that would eventually lead to Poland's redemption.

George Sand, in her article, “Essay on the Fantastic Drama: Goethe, Byron, Mickiewicz,” observes that the “mingling of the metaphysical world with the exterior world” is handled superbly by Mickiewicz. Using for her comparison Goethe's Faust and Byron's Manfred, the writer states:

Mickiewicz's treatment seems the best. He does not mix background with idea, as Goethe does in Faust. Neither does he separate background from the idea, as Byron has done in Manfred. Real life is itself a vigorous painting, startling and tremendous, and idea lies at its center. The world of fantasy is not outside or above; it is at the bottom of everything, it moves everything, it is the soul of reality, it lives in all facts. … Heavenly rewards are extorted by martyrdom, and it is scenes of martyrdom that the melancholy brush of Mickiewicz makes us witness. Now, these descriptions are of a kind that neither Byron nor Goethe nor Dante could have created. Since the lamentation of the prophets of Zion, no voice has been raised with so much force to sing of an event so stupendous as that of a fall of a nation.¹⁸

In the opinion of many critics, Forefathers' Eve, Part III, by itself, could have assured its poet a place of distinction among the giants of romantic literature. But the Polish romantic had yet another ambition to fulfill—to leave a monument to the future generations of a happy Poland, the homeland he remembered from his happy youth. Mickiewicz summoned all his fond memories, all his deepest feelings, all his personal and national longings and combined them with his extraordinary political skill to create the immortal Polish epic, Master Thaddeus (Pan Tadeusz). Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania, although written in verse, is considered by many a great Polish novel. The poet's intention in writing this work was to create for the Polish people a national heroic epic. Driven by his patriotic idealism, Mickiewicz succeeded in writing what poets of other nations were unable to write—an idyllic epic with a nation as its hero.

Pan Tadeusz presents a drastic change in mood from the gloomy and mystical Forefathers' Eve. The world of the epic is a happy world where old customs and traditions prevail among the people who live in peace and harmony. The poet fell under the spell of the familiar world of childhood, the idyllic world of Lithuanian countryside and the tranquility of Polish rural past. Mickiewicz describes a perfectly believable world—all types and classes are represented here in their modest simplicity and in their national splendor. In a Wordsworthian fashion, he lovingly paints every detail of Polish nature, showing its beauty in a variety of colors under a rising and setting sun, in the calm of a night, and in the storm of an autumn day. Pan Tadeusz is virtually untranslatable, both in contents and form; “It is like trying to explain the contents and meaning of the Holy Mass to someone who has never heard of the New Testament,”¹⁹ says Józef Witlin. To people not familiar with Polish history and tradition, Poland's greatest literary work offers only the charm of Goldsmith's “Deserted Village.” What remains hidden is the poet's perfection in the use of the language, the perfection of form, his attention to the minutest details in one of the richest composites of character sketches, his skillful use of the historical background of the Napoleonic Wars to enrich a study in heroism, and, most importantly, the powerful patriotic message.

The following are the closing lines of the last Book of Pan Tadeusz in a translation by Watson Kirkconnell:

The sun was setting and the evening air
Was warm and quiet now; while here and there
The circling sky, with tiny cloudlets dressed,
Was blue above but rosy in the west;
The little clouds foretold suspicious weather,
All white and shining—here like sheep together
Asleep upon the lawn, there they congeal
In smaller size, like coveys of young teals.
A cloud lay in the west that bore the shape
Of the transparent curtain-folds that drape
A royal couch, pearl tinted at the peak,
Gilt on the margin, with a purple streak
Across its centre as it glowed and burned
In western gleams; at last it slowly turned
To yellow then to pallid, then to grey;
The sun's head dropped, drawing the cloud its way,
Then sighed a single sigh, profound and deep,
With a warm breath, and softly fell asleep.
But still the gentlefolk to drink went on
And drank to the health of Napoleon,
The General, and Thaddeus, and his bride,
And three betrothal couples in their pride;
A health to all the guests in chorus blends,
To all invited there, to all the friends
That any one alive could still remember
And all the dead whose names still warmed the
          ember.
And I was there among the guests,
And there drank wine and mead;
And what I saw and heard I wrote,
That all of you might read.(20)

Mickiewicz's own nostalgic remarks in the Prologue to the poem best reveal the poet's role and purpose:

Today, for us, the world's unbidden guests,
In all the past's and future's far bequests—
In one sole region can a Pole find joy:
It is the land that knew him as a boy!
That land forever will remain as pure
And holy as first love; unmingled sure
With faults remembered or with hope's distraction
And unchanged by the moving stream of action.(21)

To compare Mickiewicz with the romantic poets of Western Europe would entail an analysis that might prove impossible, since none felt his nationalism as deeply and as fully. The Polish poet, on the other hand, combined all the romantic traits of other poets and wrote in all possible romantic genres. It could be safely said that Mickiewicz possessed the lyricism of Schiller and the mysticism of Goethe; he combined Shelley's love of beauty with Wordsworthian love for nature; he idealized the Byronic hero and, like Byron, he expressed his contempt for social injustice in satire. But to all these characteristics we must add his deepest and most important sentiment, one that pervaded all his works—deep love for his country.

Thus, in order to understand Mickiewicz as a poet one must first try to understand the most peculiar and unique characteristic of his poetry—his Polishness—and what this Polishness represented to him personally and culturally. In the words of Goethe:

Wer den Dichter will verstehen,
Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.

Notes

1. Józef Witlin, “Pan Tadeusz,” in Adam Mickiewicz—Poet of Poland, ed. Manfred Kridl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), p. 66.

2. Adam Mickiewicz—Poet of Poland, ed. Manfred Kridl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), pp. vi-vii.

3. Adam Mickiewicz, Pisma (Chicago: Polish American Book Co., 1953) Vol. I, pp. 171-173.

4. Manfred Kridl, A Survey of Polish Literature and Culture (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1956), p. 221, n.

5. Ibid., p. 221.

6. Wiktor Weintraub, The Poetry of Adam Mickiewicz (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1954), pp. 27-28.

7. Adam Mickiewicz. Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Stanislaw Helsztynski (Warsaw: Polonia Publishing House, 1955), p. 187.

8. Pisma, Vol. III, pp. 27-28.

9. The Complete Poetical Works of Byron, Cambridge Edition (Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, 1933), p. 834, 11.197-200.

10. Pisma, Vol. III, p. 37.

11. Kridl, Op. cit., p. 225.

12. Julian Krzyzanowski, Polish Romantic Literature (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1930), p. 61.

13. Selected Poetry and Prose, p. 186.

14. Krzyzanowski, pp. 66-67.

15. Pisma, Vol. III, pp. 164-165, (my translation).

16. Ibid., pp. 134-137.

17. Ibid., p. 135.

18. George Sand, “Essay on the Fantastic Drama: Goethe, Byron, Mickiewicz,” in Adam Mickiewicz—Poet of Poland, p. 201.

19. Adam Mickiewicz—Poet of Poland, p. 71.

20. Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania, trans. Watson Kirkconnell (New York: The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, 1962), pp. 370-371, 11.1169-1189.

21. Ibid., pp. 2-3, 11.67-74.