On Several Polish Poems from 1829•Fi1870 with Venice in the Background
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Czytanie Literatury https://doi.org/10.18778/2299-7458.09.05 Łódzkie Studia Literaturoznawcze 9/2020 ISSN 2299–7458 MARIA BeRKAN-JABŁoŃSKA e-ISSN 2449–8386 University of Lodz 0000-0002-7137-6094 101 ON SEVERALON POLISH POEMS… On Several Polish Poems From 1829–1870 with Venice in the Background SUMMARY The subject of the article is a review of images of Venice recorded in Polish poetry between the years 1829–1870. The paper deliberately stops in the 1870s in the selec- tion of the literary material to be analysed, focusing on the Romantic and post-Ro- mantic tradition. Due to the different artistic value of the works, the author adopted the formula of a historical and literary “catalogue” ordered chronologically and partly problematicised according to the functions which Venetian scenery or cul- ture perform in them. Attention is drawn to the fact that Venetian motifs present in the poetry of Polish artists tend to be related to particular phenomena and topics, such as Byronism, Gothicism, political and national camouflage, love and existen- tial masks, conflict between people and power. The authors referred to in the pa- per include, among others, Adam Mickiewicz, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Zygmunt Krasiński, Edward Dembowski, Edmund Chojecki, Karol Baliński, Mieczysław Gwalbert Pawlikowski, Teofil Lenartowicz, Feliks Wicherski, Teofil Nowosielski, Aleksander Michaux and Wiktor Gomulicki. Keywords Venice, Polish and Italian affinities, 19th century poetry, Bridge of Sighs, political camouflage Over the centuries, Polish-Venetian relations have been reflected in var- ious literary forms. The Nobles’ Republic was modelled on the structure of the Venetian government, seeing it as the foundation of civil order and a guarantee of security, in particular for the upper classes. Even some eigh- teenth-century accounts of journeys to Venice contain numerous expres- sions of admiration for La Serenissima’s well-functioning system of power, worthy of imitation in the country’s increasingly dysfunctional reality.1 Writing about “Wyjątek mojej podróży do Włoch” [An Excerpt to My Trip 102 to Italy] by Henryk Rzewuski (1846), Iwona Węgrzyn referred to the name of Gasparo Contarini, whose work titled De magistratibus et Republica Vene- 2 MARIA B MARIA torum was immensely popular among Old Polish political writers. In turn, “Wenecja” [Venice], a well-known poem by Krzysztof Warszewicki (1572), e proved that an analysis of the political system of the Republic of Venice in RKAN-JABŁ the context of its wars with Turkey was a starting point for a programme of similar activities conducted in Poland. In the nineteenth century, Venice be- came a surprising centre of the first political emigration of Poles in the wake o ŃSKA of the Kościuszko Uprising and the Third Partition. Grzegorz Kaczyński re- minds us that “it was only at the turn of 1795 and 1796 that 150 Polish immi- grants passed through Venice.”3 Although, on the one hand, the Republic of Venice did not condemn the partitions, maintaining a far-reaching neutral- ity, and on the other, many Poles strengthened Bonaparte’s army occupying the “pearl of the Adriatic,” the mutual relations in the nineteenth century still remained, in principle, quite friendly, which does not mean that they were uncritical. According to researchers, Polish immigrants (...) met with solidarity and support through an anal- ogous political and social situation (similar sources and nature of social inequality as well as the same invader, Austria4), due to convergent po- 1 Cf. e.g.: Stanisław Kot, Venezia vista dai Polacchi nel corso dei secoli (Venezia: Montuoro, 1947); Diana Kozińska-Donderi, I viaggi dei Polacchi in Italia attraverso i secoli (Moncalieri: Cirvi, 2006); La porta d’Italia. Diari e viaggiatori polacchi in Friuli-Venezia Giulia dal XVI al. XIX secolo, eds. Lucia Burello, Andrzej Litwornia (Udine: Forum Edizioni, 2000). 2 Iwona Węgrzyn, W świecie powieści Henryka Rzewuskiego (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Uni- wersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2012), 340–341. Cf. also: Bronisław Biliński, ”Viaggiatori polacchi a Venezia nei secoli XVII-XIX,” in Venezia e la Polonia nei secoli XVII–XIX, ed. Luigi Cini (Ve- nice–Rome: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1965), 341–417; Danuta Quirini-Popławska, Mit czy rzeczywistość późnośredniowiecznej Wenecji?: urbs populosissima, opulentissima, liberalis- sima (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 1997); Krzysztof Pomian, Wenecja w kulturze europejskiej (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2000); Mieczysław Brahmer, Powinowactwa polsko-włoskie (Warsaw: PWN, 1980). [Unless indicated otherwise, quotations in English were translated from Polish.] 3 Grzegorz J. Kaczyński, “Geneza i obraz polskiej emigracji we Włoszech,” in Polacy we Włoszech. Historia, współczesność, zmiany, eds. Karolina Golemo, Bartosz Kaczorowski, Małgo- rzata Stefanowicz (Krakow: Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej, 2014), 41–69. Accessed November 28, 2020. www.academia.edu/14897219/Polacy_we_Włoszech_Historia_współczesność_zmiany_ Poles_in_Italy_History_Contemporaneity_Changes_; Cf. also: Jan Pachoński, “Emigracja polska w Wenecji w latach 1794–1797. Wenecja i jej znaczenie dla emigracji polskiej,” Kwartal- nik Historyczny, no. 4 (1968): 869–893. 4 The Austrians took over Venice from the French in the wake of the peace in Campo Formio on 17 October 1797, and it again briefly passed under Napoleon’s rule eight years later (1805). After the defeat of Bonaparte in 1814, Austria ruled Venice until the formation of the litical goals (the struggle for independence and national unity) as well as historical and cultural closeness between the two countries. (…) The social bond, formed on the basis of revolutionary beliefs of independence, turned out to be stronger than local patriotism.5 Thus, it was due to tradition, history and politics as well as the Roman- tic, post-Byronic fashion that the Venetian theme would return in Polish literature, music, and art in various forms of artistic, journalistic and docu- mentary or scientific expression. This article is aimed at analysing only po- 103 etic works, limited mainly to the inter-insurrectional period since it seems necessary to deal separately with the image of the city developed by Pol- SEVERALON POLISH POEMS… ish lyricism of the last three decades of the nineteenth century, influenced by strong Parnassian, symbolic or – more broadly – modernist movements. This applies, among others, to the “Venetian” poems by Maria Konopnicka, Wiktor Gomulicki, Antoni Lange, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Władysław Karoli, Kazimierz Gliński or Helena Rogozińska that are not mentioned here yet they are indeed extremely interesting. The reading of the earlier lyrics, in turn, arises out of an objection with regard to Olga Płaszczews- ka’s rather minor remark made in an otherwise excellently and competently written monograph titled Wizja Włoch w polskiej i francuskiej literaturze okresu romantyzmu (1800–1850) [A Vision of Italy in Polish and French Literature of the Romantic Period (1800–1850)] in which she argues that “The poetic paths of the Polish Romantics actually bypassed Venice.”6 I thought it was worthwhile to take a closer look at this phenomenon. Byron is the key Of course, it was George Byron that had the greatest influence on the poetic representation of Venice in the first decades of the 19th century. His legend in Poland was co-created by the Romantics through, among others, their translation attempts: Adam Mickiewicz rendered fragments of Childe Har- old’s Pilgrimage, The Giaour and poems such as Darkness or The Dream7; An- toni Edward Odyniec translated The Corsair, The Bride of Abydos and many United Kingdom of Italy in 1866, with a short break for the uprising in 1848. Cf. e.g. John Julius Norwich, Historia Wenecji (Warsaw: W.A.B. 2015); Peter Ackroyd, Wenecja. Biografia (Poznań: Zysk i S-ka, 2015). 5 Kaczyński, “Geneza i obraz polskiej emigracji we Włoszech,” 5. 6 Olga Płaszczewska, Wizja Włoch w polskiej i francuskiej literaturze okresu romantyzmu (1800–1850) (Krakow: Universitas, 2003), 297. 7 It was not only the generation of Romantics that was interested in Byron; the first translations were accomplished by Brunon Kiciński and Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, but young poets were the closest to Byron’s diction and poetic expression, and thus the power of impact, in terms of language and style. Hence, the choice of names proposed here. Zygmunt Dokurno wrote that “For Mickiewicz, the famous English Romantic was not only a great poet, but also an exponent of up-to-date progressive ideas: ‘Only Byron do I read, I throw away a book written in a different spirit for I do not like lies’ – as he confesses in his letter to Malewski.” Cf. Zygmunt Dokurno, “O mickiewiczowskich przekładach z Byrona,” Pamiętnik Literacki, no. 47 (1956): 317–348; also Wanda Krajewska, “Polskie przekłady powieści poetyckich Byrona w okresie romantyzmu,” Pamiętnik Literacki, no. 71/1 (1980): 153–174. other poems; Ignacy Szydłowski and Wanda Małecka rendered Parisina; Julian Korsak translated Lara, A Tale; and Antoni Czajkowski – Beppo; not taking into account some minor translations, for instance, by Aleksander Chodźko, Stefan Garczyński or August Bielowski. As the goal this time is to expose Venetian themes taken from Byron or inspired by his writings, it is worth recalling that for the English artist Venice is a place of extreme contrasts which now, however, mostly belong to the dim and distant past. 104 I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each