- 1 - Lecture 6: From the Enlightenment to Romanticism. Polish Literature between 1750 and the middle of the Nineteenth Century 1. Introduction To understand the evolution of Polish life since 1750 it is crucial to have a good knowledge of Polish literature. For much of this period, Poland was under foreign domination. Literature became the embodiment of the national idea and the way that ideas about how a free Poland should be organized were expressed. The best single account of this issue is to be found in the standard account by the Nobel prize-winning poet, Czesław Miłosz, A History of Polish Literature, London, 1969. What I want to do today is briefly to analyze the literature of the Polish Enlightenment and then to examine how the rationalist ideals of the ‘Age of Reason’ were supplanted in Poland by an extreme version of European romanticism, which, as I explained in my introductory lecture, became the dominant intellectual force shaping the Polish mentality in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Many of the works I discuss are available in English translations. II. The Literature of the Polish Enlightenment There is no space here to give a complete picture of the literature of the Polish Enlightenment, which transformed both the Polish language and the nature of Polish - 2 - literature and without which the events of the period between 1764 and 1795 are incomprehensible. I should like briefly to mention four areas of importance: 1. The theatre 2. Prose writing 3. Poetry 4. Political reformers – the ‘Forge’ (Kuźnica) group 1. The Theatre Theatre was widely used to advance the goals of the Camp of Reform. This was done mostly through comedy. The realistic comedies of Franciszek Bohomolec, modeled upon Moliere, castigated both ‘Sarmatism’ and the foppish aping of everything French. Bohomolec found an ally in the person of the king, Stanisław August Poniatowski. At Poniatowski’s inspiration, a magazine, Monitor (The Monitor), was founded in 1765, and from that moment, stage and press worked hand in hand. Like his predecessors, the King maintained an Italian opera troupe and performances were given by French and Italian actors for the public at large. The precedent for such a practice had been set by the Saxon kings, August II and August III, but Stanislaw August gave orders to create, in addition, a team of professional Polish actors; the history of the Polish professional theater begins in 1765 with the first performance of that troupe before a paying audience. For several years the King retained ownership of that company, but after many financial complications, the question was debated in the Diet, and the Warsaw Theatre was reorganized as a national enterprise. - 3 - Bohomolec, the editor of and a frequent contributor to Monitor, introduced on its pages comic figures for satirical purposes. He used these same figures in his comedies. In one of his comedies, entitled Monitor, therefore, he applied a curious ( almost Pirandello- like ) procedure: we see a tavern in a little town where various Bohomolec characters, familiar to the viewers, have gathered upon hearing that the Monitor has come to town. Imagining it to be a person, they decide to take vengeance. Some are for cutting of his fingers, while others advocate more lawful methods. Finally, a man enters who says he is pleased that they take him for the Monitor, but he is only one of its contributors. The man, an alter-ego of Bohomolec, gently disarms his enemies. He tells the character who incarnates drunkenness, for example, that drunkenness in general was being castigated in his satirical articles and he hopes no one recognizes himself in such a picture. To which he receives the reply: ‘Of course I drink, but I’m not a drunkard.’ In the same way a superstitious character does not concede that he is superstitious, etc. Thus, the author is saved, thanks to the blindness of his antagonists. Extremely prolific, with a talent for satire, Franciszek Zabłocki (1754-1821) wrote some sixty comedies and aimed his invective at representatives of ‘Sarmatian’ mentality. He borrowed plots from various foreign authors – from Beaumarchais, Diderot, Romagnesi – but he possessed a rare gift for creating purely native types. This is the greatest merit of his best-known comedies in verse, such as Sarmatism and the Fop- Suitor (Fircyk w zalotach). Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (1757-1841) had a long literary career, During the Reform period, he strongly supported the principles of the Enlightenment and as a deputy to the Four-Year Diet, emerged as one of the most vigorous leaders of the Camp - 4 - of the Reform. In 1791, he wrote a comedy entitled The Return of the Deputy (Powrót posła ). The action takes place on the country manor of an average gentry family. The hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain, are treated cordially by the author. They represent the reasonable element of the old generation of nobility, not hostile toward the changing world. Their son, Walery, is a progressive deputy to the Diet; he is in love with Teresa, who is a guest of the Chamberlains along with her parents. The latter are the target of the author’s malice. In Mr. Gadulski (Mr.Talkative), a portrait of a Sarmatian Pole, the audience recognized those deputies to the Four-Year Diet who employed a filibuster tactic to oppose any changes. Torrents of words pour from Gadulski’s mouth; he discusses everything- international politics, laws, strategy – but he is a complete ignoramus. On the other hand, Mrs. Gadulski lives in the world of sentimental literature and weeps over Rousseau’s Nouvelle Heloise and over a Polish translation of Edward Young’s Nights. She injects French words into every other sentence, scorns her prosaic husband, and takes advantage of his stupidity by terrorizing him with swooning fits. Because sadness is fashionable, she forces herself into gloomy moods by recalling her first husband. Her stepdaughter, Teresa, has been promised by her to a fop, Mr. Szarmantcki (Mr. Charmer), who dresses in the French manner, takes no interest in public affairs, being preoccupied only with fashionable carriages, hunting, and women. Not long ago he was in France, and when Walery, the deputy, pronounces a speech praising the French Revolution, Szarmantcki answers that he left France precisely because of the disorders. When the deputy expresses his admiration for the English parliamentary system, Szarmantcki replies that he observed their horses, not their system. Unfortunately for himself Szarmantcki unmasks the real - 5 - motive behind his sentimental facade ( so dear to Mrs. Gadulski) – his greed for a dowry. Thus, Teresa and the young deputy, who are in love with each other, are able to marry and all ends well. Wojciech Boguslawski (1757-1829) is possibly the most important of the playwrights of this period. He belonged to the political conspiracy which prepared the insurrection of 1794 and he wrote and staged that year an original play in the form of a vaudeville or a comic opera, called A Supposed Miracle, or Krakovians and Mountaineers (Cud mniemany czyli Krakowiacy i Gorale). At that moment, the insurrection under the command of Kościuszko was spreading northward from Krakow, and the spectacle itself became a revolutionary event. The plot is simple. A constant quarrel has marred the relations between a village near Krakow and the mountain folk from the Tatras. The two groups fight each other over a trifle: a love affair which offends the dignity of the mountaineers. They are reconciled thanks to a ‘miracle’ which is nothing but the work of a student who makes use of his knowledge of electricity. For the audience both the Krakovian peasants and the mountaineers represented popular forces and untapped national reserves exactly at the moment Kościuszko was forming his peasant militia and arming it with scythes. 2. Prose Writers Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801) was, in many respects, a typical man of the Enlightenment. As a man who believed natural religion to be in accord with that most human of attributes, Reason, he had words of praise for all religions and from his literary - 6 - work it would be difficult to guess that he was a priest and became a bishop. He had a large literary output, This included two mock-heroic poems. The Mouse-iad (Myszeidos, 1775) which describes a war between cats and mice which takes place in a remote time under the rule of the legendary King Popiel, who, because of his misdeeds, was devoured by mice and Monachomachia, or the War of the Monks (Monachomachia albo wojna mnichów, 1778) which is a satirical portrait of monastic life. He is perhaps best known for his shorter poems, His Satires (Satyry, 1779) show him to be an observer and psychologist of human folly, which is presented in the form of human types: drunkards, fops, wives crazy about the latest fashions and so on. Many details of everyday life, revealed through dialogue, verge on the grotesque, and much that is effective in the presentation of various patterns of social behaviour is achieved through the device of parody. The most durable among Krasicki’s poems are those in his Fables and Parables (Bajki i Przypowieści, 1779). Krasicki’s philosophy is dry and sober. His is a world where the strong win and the weak lose in a sort of immutable order recognized as such without protest. A certain cynicism seems to be an ingredient of eighteenth-century thinking and some fables are even cruel. Reason is exalted as the human equivalent of animal strength: the wise survive, the stupid perish. To give a few samples of Krasicki’s fables: The Wagon Driver and the Butterfly A wagon got stuck in the mud and couldn’t move.