The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864

THE SACRIFICE

 
The blood that flows for freedom is God's blood!
Who dies for man's redemption, dies with Christ!
The plan of expiation is unchanged:
And, as One died, supremely good, for all,
So one dies still, that many more may live.
 
 
So fall our saviours on the bloody field,
In deadly swamps, along the foul lagoons,
On the long march, in crowded hospitals,
Of wounds, of weariness, of pain and thirst,
Of wasting fevers and of sudden plagues,
Of pestilence, that lurks within the camp,
Of long home-sickness, and of hope deferred,
Of languishing, in hostile prisons chained—
And, with their blood, they wash the nation clean,
And furnish expiation for the sin
That those who slay them have been guilty of.
 
 
So God selects the noblest of the land:
He culls the qualities that are His own—
Our courage, patience, love of human kind,
Our strong devotion to the cause of Right,
Our noblest aspirations for the time
When every man shall stand erect and free,
Self-elevated, God-appointed king!
Knowing no equals, save his brother men;
Ruling no lieges, save his own desires;
The undisputed sovereign of himself,
Owning no higher sovereignty but God.
 
 
God culls these qualities, that are Himself—
These sparks of Deity that live in man—
And, in man's person, offers up Himself,
A long, perpetual sacrifice for sin.
 
 
This is the plan—the changeless plan of Heav'n:
The good die, that the evil may be purged;
The noble perish, that the base may live;
The free are bound, that slaves may break their bonds;
Those who have happy homes are self-exiled,
That other exiles may have happy homes;
The bravest sons of Freedom's land are slain,
That the oppressed of tyrant realms may live;
The guilty land is washed in innocent blood;
And slavery is atoned for by the free.
 
 
Oh! desolate mother, wailing for thy son,
Be comforted. He was a chosen one.
The Lord selected him from other men,
Because the Eternal Eye discerned in him
Some noble attribute, some spark divine,
Some unseen quality, that was from God,
And is a part of God, howe'er obscured
By human weakness, or by human sin—
Something deemed worthy for the sacrifice
That shall redeem a nation. Weep no more;
For thou art blessed among womankind!
 

STRECK-VERSE

 
The heart freezes upon the snowcapped summit of a mountain of learning.
Lead heads will not answer as plummets to fathom the depths of the Infinite.
Charitable views are enlarged by tear mists.
Thorns form footholds by which to reach the rose.
Looking up to the sun, the sad behold rainbows through their tears.
 

THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.—A POLISH DRAMA.
Dedicated to Mary

'To be, or not to be, that is the question.'

'To the accumulated errors of their ancestors, they added others unknown to their predecessors Doubt and Fear;—therefore it came to pass that they vanished from the face of the earth, and a deep silence shrouded them forever.'

—Koran il. 18.

In offering to the public a translation of the great drama of Count Sigismund Krasinski, a statesman and poet of Poland, it is not the intention of the translator to enter upon any detailed analysis of this widely and justly celebrated work. Such a dissection would diminish the interest of the reader in the development of the plot, and moreover pertains properly to the critics, to whom 'The Undivine Comedy' is especially commended. It is so full of original and subtile thoughts, of profound truths, of metaphysical deductions and psychological divinations, that it cannot fail to repay any consideration they may bestow upon it. A few general remarks, however, seem necessary to introduce it, in its proper light, to the reader.

It was published in 1834, and, although it appeared anonymously, it at once succeeded in attracting the attention of the readers and thinkers of Poland, Russia, France, and Germany. Its author is now known to have been Count Sigismund Krasinski, a member of one of the most ancient and distinguished families of Poland. He was equally eminent as poet, patriot, and statesman. He took an active and important part in the social and political questions of his day, many of which are ably discussed in this drama; questions which have so long disturbed the peace of Europe, and whose solution is perhaps to be finally given in our land of equality and freedom.

'The Undivine Comedy' was not intended for the stage, and, as if to sever it as widely as possible from all scenic associations, Count Krasinski makes no use of the terms 'scenes' or 'acts.' This omission gives a somewhat singular appearance to what is, in fact, a drama; the translator has, however, remained faithful throughout to the original form. As the hero, the count, is styled 'The Man' throughout the original, the name has been preserved, in spite of its awkward appearance in English: the spirit of a poetic work, full of mystic symbolism, evaporates so readily in the process of translation, that no sacrifice of the literal meaning has been made to grace or elegance.

'The Undivine Comedy,' so called in contradistinction to 'The Divine Comedy' of Dante, is the first purely prophetic play occurring in the world of art. Its scenes are indeed all laid in the time to come; its persons, actions, and events are yet to be. The struggle of the dying Past with the vigorous but immature Future, forms the groundwork of the drama. The coloring is not local, nor characteristic of any country in particular, because the truths to be illustrated are of universal application, and are evolving their own solutions in all parts of the civilized world.

The soul of the hero, 'The Man,' is great and vigorous; he is by nature a poet. Belonging to the Future by the very essence of his being, he yet becomes disgusted by the debasing materialism into which its living exponents, the 'New Men, have fallen, he loses all hope in the possible progress of humanity, and is presented to us as the champion of the dying but poetic Past. But in this he finds no rest, and is involved in perpetual struggles and contradictions. Baffled in a consuming desire to solve the perplexing religious and social problems of the day by the force of his own intellect; longing for, yet despairing of, human progress; discerning the impracticability and chicanery of most of the modern plans for social amelioration—he determines to throw himself into common life, to bind himself to his race by stringent laws and duties. The drama opens when he is about to contract marriage.

His Guardian Angel, anxious to save him, tries to lead him, through the accomplishment of human duties, safely into that mystic Future, which he had already vainly tried to find through the power of his own intellect. The Angel chants to him:

'Peace be to men of good will. Blessed is the man who has still a heart; he may yet be saved!

'Pure and true wife, reveal thyself to him; and a child be born to their house!'

Thus the words once heard by the shepherds, and which then announced a new epoch to humanity, open the drama. It is indeed only 'men of good will,' men who sincerely seek the truth, who, in great or new epochs, are able to comprehend it, or willing to receive it. And the number of those who have preserved a heart during the excitement and passions of such eras, is always very small, and without it they cannot be saved, for love and self-abnegation are the essence of Christianity.

To instil new life and hope into the wearied 'Man,' the Angel ordains that a pure and good woman shall join her fate with his; that innocent young souls shall descend and dwell with them. Domestic love and quiet bliss are the counsel of the heavenly visitant.

Immediately after the simple chant of the Guardian Angel, the voice of the Evil Spirit is heard seducing 'The Man' from the quiet path of humble human duties. The glories of the ideal realm are spread before him; Nature is invoked with all her entrancing charms; ambitious desires of terrestrial greatness are awakened in his soul; he is filled with vague hopes of paradisiacal happiness, which the Demon whispers him it is quite possible to establish on earth. In the temptations so cunningly set before him by the Father of Lies, three widely-spread metaphysical systems are shadowed forth: the ideal or poetic; the pantheistic; and the anthropotheistic (Comte's), which deifies man. The vast symbolism of this original drama is especially recommended to the attention of the critic.

Abiding by the counsel of the Angel, our hero marries, thus involving another in his fate. He makes a solemn vow to be faithful, in the keeping of which vow he takes upon himself the responsibility of the happiness of one of God's creatures, a pure and trusting woman, who loves him well. A husband and a father, he breaks his oath. Tempted by the phantom of a long-lost love, the Ideal under the form of a 'Maiden,' he deserts the real duties he has assumed to pursue this Ideal, personated indeed by Lucifer himself, and which becomes—true and fearful lesson for those who seek the infinite in the human!—a loathsome skeleton as soon as grasped. From the false and disappointing search into which he had been enticed by the demon, he returns to find the innocent wife, whom he had deserted, in a madhouse. False to human duties, his punishment came fast upon the heels of crime.

In the scene which occurs in Bedlam we find the key which admits us to much of the symbolism of this drama. We are conducted into the madhouse to visit the broken-hearted wife, and are there introduced into our still-existing society, formal, monotonous, cold, and about to be dissolved. Our hero had himself married the Past, a good and devout woman, but not the realization of his poetic dreams, which nothing could have satisfied save the infinite. In the midst of this scene of strange suffering, we hear the cries of the Future, and all is terror and tumult. This Future, with its turbulence, blood, and demonism, is represented as existing in its germs among the maniacs. Like the springs of a volcanic mountain, which are always disturbed before an eruption of fire, their cries break upon us; the broken words and shrill shrieks of the madmen are the clouds of murky smoke which burst from the explosive craters before the lava pours its burning flood. Voices from the right, from the left, from above, from below, represent the conflicting religious opinions and warring political parties of this dawning Future, already hurtling against those of the dissolving Present.

Into this pandemonium, by his desertion of her for a vain ideal, our hero has plunged his wife, the woman of the Past, whom he had sworn to make happy. And it is to be observed that she was not necessarily his inferior, but, in the world of heart, superior to himself. A true and pure character, feeling its inferiority and anxious to advance, cannot long remain in the background; it has sufficient stamina to attain the height of self-abnegating greatness. God sometimes deprives men of the strength necessary for action, but He never robs them of the faculty of progress, of spiritual elevation. Head and heart throb with the same pulsation; the brain thinks not aright without the healthful heart. Meanness and grovelling are always voluntary, and their essence is to resist superiority, to struggle against it, to try to degrade it: thus, all the bitter reactions of the Past against the changes truly needed for the development of the Future, spring from a primeval root of baseness.

An admirable picture of an exhausted and dying society is given us in the person of the precocious but decrepit child, the sole fruit of a sad marriage. Destined from its birth, to an early grave, its excitable imagination soon consumes its frail body. Nothing could be more exquisitely tender, more true to nature, than the portraiture of this unfortunate but lovely boy.

After the betrayal of our hero by his Ideal, the Guardian Angel again appears to give him simple but sage counsel:

'Return to thy house, and sin no more!

'Return to thy house, and love thy child!'

But vain this sage advice! As if driven to the desert to be tempted, we again meet our hero in the midst of storm and tempest, wildly communing with Nature, trying to read in her changeful phenomena lessons he should have sought in the depths of his own soul; seeking from her dumb lips oracles only to be found in his fulfilment of sacred duties; for only thus is to be solved the perplexing riddle of human destiny. 'Peace to men of good will!' Roaming through the wilderness, sad and hopeless, and in his despair about to fall into the gloomy and blighting sin of caring for no one but himself, the Angel again appears, and again chants to him the divine lesson that only in self-sacrificing love and lowly duties, can the true path to the Future be found:

'Love the sick, the hungry, the despairing!

'Love thy neighbor, thy poor neighbor, as thyself, and thou wilt be redeemed!'

The reiterated warning is again given in vain. The demon of ambition then appears to him under the form of a gigantic eagle, whose wings stir him like the cannon's roar, the trumpet's call; he yields to the temptation, and the Guardian Angel pleads no more! He determines to become great, renowned, to rule over men: political power is to console him for the domestic ruin he has spread around him, in having preferred the dreams of his own excited imagination, to the love and faith of the simple but tender heart which God had confided to him in the holy bonds of marriage. The love and deification of self in the delusive show of military or political glory, is the lowest and last temptation into which a noble soul can fall, for individual fame is preferred to God's eternal justice, and men are willing to die, if only laurel crowned, with joy and pride even in a bad cause.

In the beginning of the third part of the comedy we are introduced into the 'new world.' The old world, with its customs, prejudices, oppressions, charities, laws, has been almost destroyed. The details of the struggle, which must have been long and dreadful, are not given to us; they are to be divined. Several years are supposed to have passed between the end of the second and the beginning of the third part, and we are called to witness the triumphs of the victors, the tortures of the vanquished. The character of the idol of the people is an admirable conception. All that is negative and destructive in the revolutionary tendencies of European society, is skilfully seized upon, and incarnated in a single individual. His mission is to destroy. He possesses a great intellect, but no heart. He says: "Of the blood we shed to-day, no trace will be left to-morrow." In corroboration of this conception of the character of a modern reformer, it is well known that most of the projected reforms of the last century have proceeded from the brains of logicians and philosophers.

This man of intellect succeeds in grasping power. His appearance speaks his character. His forehead is high and angular, his head entirely bald, his expression cold and impassible, his lips never smile—he is of the same type as many of the revolutionary leaders during the French reign of terror. His name is Pancratius, which name, from the Greek, signifies the union of all material or brutal forces. It is not by chance that he has received this name. The profound truth in which this character is conceived is also manifested in his distrust of himself, in his hesitation. As he is acting from false principles, he cannot deceive himself into that enthusiastic faith with which he would fain inspire his disciples. He confides in Leonard, because he is in possession of this precious quality.

His monologue is very fine; perhaps it stands next in rank to that of Hamlet. It opens to us the strange secrets of the irresolution and vacillation which have always characterized the men who have been called upon by fate alone to undertake vast achievements. In proof of this, it is well known that Cromwell was anxious to conceal the doubts and fears which constantly harassed him. It was these very doubts and fears which led him to see and resee so frequently the dethroned Charles, and which at last drove the conscience-stricken Puritan into the sepulchre of the decapitated king, that he might gaze into the still face of the royal victim, whose death he had himself effected. Did the sad face of the dead calm the fears of the living?

It is well known, that Danton addressed to himself the most dreadful reproaches. Even, at the epoch of his greatest power, Robespierre was greatly annoyed because he could not convince his cook of the justice and permanence of his authority. Men who are sent by Providence only to destroy, feel within them the worm which gnaws forever: it constantly predicts to them, in vague but gloomy presentiments, their own approaching destruction.

A feeling of this nature urges Pancratius to seek an interview with his most powerful enemy, 'The Man;' he is anxious to gain the confidence of his adversary, because he cannot feel certain of his own course while a single man of intellectual power exists capable of resisting his ideas. In the interview which occurs between the two antagonistic leaders of the Past and Future, the various questions which divide society, literature, religion, philosophy, politics, are discussed. Is it not a profound truth that in the real world also, mental encounters always precede material combats; that men always measure their strength, spirit to spirit, before they meet in external fact, body to body? The idea of bringing two vast systems face to face through living and highly dramatic personifications, is truly great, suggestive, and original.

But as the Truth is neither in the camp of Pancratius nor in the feudal castle of the count, our hero, the victory will profit neither party!

The opening of the last act is exceedingly beautiful. No painter could reproduce on canvas the sublime scenery sketched in its prologue; more gloomy than the pictures of Ruysdael, more sombre than those of Salvator Rosa. Before describing the inundation of the masses, our author naturally recalls the traditions of the Flood. The nobles, the representatives of the Past, with their few surviving adherents, have taken refuge in their last stronghold, the fortress of the Holy Trinity, securely situated upon a high and rocky peak overhanging a deep valley, surrounded and hedged in by steep cliffs and rocky precipices. Through these straits and passes once howled and swept the waters of the deluge. As wild an inundation is now upon them, for the valley is almost filled with the living surges of the myriads of the 'New Men,' who are rolling their millions into its depths. But everything is hidden from view by an ocean of heavy vapor, wrapping the whole landscape in its white, chill, clinging shroud. The last and only banner of the Cross now raised upon the face of the earth, streams from the highest tower of the castle of the Holy Trinity; it alone pierces through and floats above the cold, vague, rayless heart of the sea of mist—nought save the mystic symbol of God's love to man soars into the unclouded blue of the infinite sky!

After frequent defeats, after the loss of all hope, the hero, wishing to embrace for the last time his sick and blind son, sends for the precocious boy, whose death-hour is to strike before his own. I doubt if the scene which then occurs has, in the whole range of fiction and poetry, ever been surpassed. This poor boy, the son of an insane mother and a poet-father, is gifted with supernatural faculties, endowed with second or spiritual sight. Entirely blind, and consequently surrounded by perpetual darkness, it mattered not to him if the light of day or the gloom of midnight was upon the earth; and in his rayless wanderings he had made his way into the dungeons, sepulchres, and vaults, which were lying far below the foundations of the castle, and which had for centuries served as places of torture, punishment, and death to the enemies of his long and noble line. In these secret charnel houses were buried the bodies of the oppressed, while in the haughty tombs around and above them lay the bones of their oppressors. The unfortunate and fragile boy, the last sole scion of a long line of ancestry, had there met the thronging and complaining ghosts of past generations. Burdened with these dreadful secrets, when his vanquished father seeks him to embrace him for the last time, he shudderingly hints to him of fearful knowledge, and induces his parent to accompany him into the subterranean caverns. He then recounts to him the scenes which are passing before his open vision among the dead. The spirits of those who had been chained, tortured, oppressed, or victimized by his ancestors appear before him, complaining of past cruelties. They then form a mystic tribunal to try their old masters and oppressors; the scenes of the dreadful Day of Judgment pass before him; the unhappy and loving boy at last recognizes his own father among the criminals; he is dragged to that fatal bar, he sees him wring his hands in anguish, he hears his dreadful groans as he is given over to the fiends for torture—he hears his mother's voice calling him above, but, unwilling to desert his father in his anguish, he falls to the earth in a deep and long fainting fit, while the wretched father hears his own doom pronounced by that dread but unseen tribunal: 'Because thou hast loved nothing, nor revered aught but thyself and thine own thoughts, thou art damned to all eternity!'

It is true this scene is very brief, but, rapid as the lightning's flash, it lasts long enough to scathe and blast, breaking the darkness but to show the surrounding horror, to deepen into despair the fearful gloom. Although of the most severe simplicity, it is sublime and terrible. It is so concise that our hearts actually long for more, unwilling to believe in the reality of the doom of that ghostly tribunal. It repeats the awful lessons of Holy Writ, and our conscience awakes to our deficiencies, while the marrow freezes in our bones as we read.

The close of the drama is equally sublime. Because the 'Truth' was neither in the camp of Pancratius nor the castle of the count, IT appears in the clouds to confound them both.

After Pancratius has conquered all that opposed him—has triumphantly gloated over his Fourieristic schemes for the material well-being of the race whom he has robbed of all higher faith—he grows agitated at the very name of God when it falls from the lips of his confidant, Leonard: the sound seems to awaken him to a consciousness that he is standing in a sea of blood, which he has himself shed; he feels that he has been nothing but an instrument of destruction, that he has done certain evil for a most uncertain good. All this rushes rapidly upon him, when, on the bosom of a crimson sunset cloud, he perceives a mystic symbol, unseen save by himself: 'the extended arms are lightning flashes, the three nails shine like stars—his eyes die out as he gazes upon it—he falls dead to the earth, crying, in the strange words spoken by the apostate emperor Julian with his parting breath: 'Vicisti Galilee!' Thus this grand and complex drama is really consecrated to the glory of the Galilean!

The intense melancholy characterizing every page of this drama, has its root in the character and intensity of the truths therein developed, and is not manifested in artistic declamation, in highly wrought phrases, or in glowing rhetorical passages proper for citation. It is as bitter as life; as gloomy as death and judgment. The style is one of utter, almost bald, simplicity. The situations are merely indicated, and the characters are to be understood, as are those of the living, rather from a few words in close connection with accompanying facts, than from eloquent utterances, sharp invectives, or bitter complaints. There are no highly wrought amplifications of imaginative passions to be found in its condensed pages, but every word is in itself a drop of gall, reflecting from its sphered surface a world of grief, of agony. The characters pass before us like shadows thrown from a magic lantern, showing only their profiles, and but rarely their entire forms. Flitting rapidly o'er our field of vision, they leave us but a few lines, but so true to nature, so deeply significant, that we are able to produce from these shifting and evanescent shadows a complete and rounded image. Thus we are enabled to form a vivid conception of every character—we know the history of their past, we divine the part they will play in the future. We know the friends, the godfather, the priest, in whom we find an admirable sketch from a decomposed and dying society. He who, in a proper state of things, would have been the representative of living spiritual principles, is a mere supernumerary. He makes signs of the cross, pronounces accustomed formulas, but he never once thinks of examining into the strange and contradictory relations existing between the husband, forced by his very being into the Future, and the wife, fettered by the conventions and chains of the Past. Neither does he study, with an eye enlightened by philanthropy and spirituality, the poor infant, whose mental restlessness began in the cradle, although his character and destiny seem to have been comprehended by the father. The priest, however, remains cold and indifferent throughout, never once seeking to render the two beings, whom he had himself united in a sacramental bond, intelligible to each other, nor to save the unfortunate boy brought to him for baptism, the sole fruit of this unhappy marriage.

Our author also stigmatizes the whole medical art of our day as a science of death and moral torture. While the anguished father tries to penetrate the decrees of Providence, and in his agony demands from God how the innocent and helpless infant can have deserved a punishment so dreadful as the loss of sight, the doctor admires the strength of the nerves and muscles of the blue eyes of the fair child, at the same time announcing to his father that he is struck with total and hopeless blindness. Immediately after the declaration of this fearful sentence, he turns to the distressed parent to ask him if he would like to know the name of this malady, and that in Greek it is called αμαὑρωσις

Indeed, through the whole of this melancholy scene, only one human being manifests any deep moral feeling—a woman, a servant! Falling upon her knees, she prays the Holy Virgin to take her eyes, and place them in the sightless sockets of the young heir, her fragile but beloved charge. Thus it is a woman of the people who, in the midst of the corrupt and dissolving society, alone preserves the sacred traditions of sympathy and self-sacrifice.

The cruel tyranny of Pancratius and the mob, is also full of important lessons. From it we gather that despotism does not consist in the fact of the whole power being vested in the hands of one or many, but in the truth that a government is without love for the governed, whatever may be its constitutional form. One or many, an assembly of legislators or a king, an oligarchy or a mob, may be equally despotic, if love be not the ruling principle.

With these few remarks, some of them necessary for a full comprehension of this subtile and many-sided Polish drama, we leave the reader to the pleasant task of its perusal.

He will find a full and eloquent criticism, in which its faults and beauties are ably discussed, in a course of 'Lectures on Sclavonic Literature,' delivered by the Polish poet Mickiewicz, before the College of France. Most of the above remarks have been condensed from his valuable work.