Poland: A Study of the Land People and Literature

Front matter

POLAND

By the same Author

MAIN CURRENTS IN

Chapter I

I

JOURNEY FROM VIENNA TO WARSAW—THE FRONTIER—CUSTOM-HOUSE INSPECTION

At 11 o'clock in the forenoon on the 3rd of February the train left the city of Hans Makart and Johann Strauss, and thoughts and memories of Vienna long continued to revolve in my brain; cheerful thoughts and bright memories of captivating friendliness, of cordiality, of warmth of feeling, of the ardour of the moment; of the well-turned speeches of journalists and ex-ministers, the improvisations of young poets, the smiles of elegant women, the jokes and laughter of beautiful soubrettes, the importunities of ladies athirst for literature and autographs; of the pompous marble halls of Theophilus Hansen, the slovenly splendour of the Makart Exhibition, and the cosy room where the King of the Waltz gives his recitals of works, which it is true are only very small works of art, but still genuine art; and for a time I still inhaled the atmosphere of peaceful extravagance, of reckless but kindly joy of life, of amiable second-rate happiness, which fills one's lungs in the great witches' cauldron called Vienna.

Vienna is a city of freedom from restraint. How bright are words, hues, and music there!

If the inhabitants of Berlin have appropriated to themselves the dignity of Schiller's Anmuth und Würde, grace has become the inheritance of the Viennese. For this is a city by itself, which everything becomes, for it has sound sense enough not to do anything but what is becoming. How rich in recollections and picturesque is it, how rich in strong traditions in comparison with modern regular Berlin! And how beautiful is the vicinity, how full of character is the peasants' costume here in the region which we are going through, the long white cloaks with red borders, and how well they know how to wear their clothes in comparison with the North German peasants in their stiff, ugly costume!

Austria is a rich land in a comparatively peaceful state of dissolution, where there are many kinds of men, but no Austrians. It is true we must except the imperial family and one or two antiquities of the old Constitutionalists. Besides these there are only Germans in Vienna, as outside Vienna there are only Hungarians, Czechs, &c.

The train rushes on. A little Polish servant, accompanying a traveller, calls my attention to a young Russian, who now and then spoke French to him. "He knows very well that I understand Russian, but still he speaks French to me; that is the way with them all; they are at heart ashamed of being Russians," an extremely naïve but very significant expression of Polish national hatred.

To profit by the daylight while it lasts, I read Sienkiewicz's "Bartek Vainqueur" in the Nouvelle Revue. . . .

The train stopped at Granica, the frontier station. Passports have to be inspected and baggage examined. A blond Russian police soldier, in his becoming uniform, a long grey coat, a cap without a vizor, a sabre at his side, entered, demanded the passports and carried them away.

Then we received permission and orders to alight. When a traveller suggested that we could leave our rugs, overcoats, and articles of that kind in the carriage, since we were to return to the same train in an hour, the little Pole informed him of his mistake: "Everything must be taken out; even an umbrella left behind excites suspicion, and if a coat is left, the lining is examined."

The first things found in my travelling-bag were the two numbers of the Nouvelle Revue, which I had been reading in the carriage.

"What is this?" asked the chief of the uniformed custom-house officers in German.

"What is it?" I answered. "It is the Nouvelle Revue."

"Yes, but what is that?"—"A French periodical."—"What does it contain?"—"Do you understand French?" I asked.—"No."—"Is there any one here who understands French?"—"No."—"There are all sorts of things in it; there are two numbers and there are ten articles in each number. It is impossible to tell in a word what they contain."—"Then we shall take it and send it to the censor in Warsaw."—"Is this periodical forbidden?"—"Everything is forbidden that I do not know, and I do not know this book." He then began to flutter among the leaves, forwards and backwards, and seemed to look for papers concealed in the sheets that had not been cut. I was reminded of the old lithograph which represents a monkey rifling the handbag of a traveller and fumbling in his books.

"Have you any more of this sort?"—"Yes, my trunk is half-full of books." They were going to open it, when I heard from another officer the expression, revolver, which I understood, as the word is cosmopolitan. They had found a pistol in my hand-bag. It circulated among them and was examined. "Was it loaded?"—"Yes, with six balls."—"Would I be kind enough to take them out?" I declined decidedly to be kind enough. "Then we must." They extracted the balls and afterwards found in the bottom of my trunk a little box of balls, which was put with the pistol.

Then began the examination proper. Every book, every pamphlet was dug out and laid aside; every newspaper, even the newspapers in which my shoes were wrapped, were taken out, smoothed, and laid in a pile. They asked in what language the books were and what was in them. As my explanation was not found fully satisfactory, they took the whole from me, giving me a receipt for 15 pounds of literature. At the same time they demanded three rubles for the transportation of this same literature to Warsaw. I should have attempted bribery, if Poles had not previously told me that above all things, bribery must not be tried in the wrong place. I should run the risk of their taking the attempt as a proof of evil intentions. It was in vain that I urged that I needed the books which they took from me for my work in Warsaw. It was in vain that I called their attention to the fact that they might safely leave me the Danish books and newspapers, since no harm could be done with them in Poland, where no one understands Danish. "In the censor's office they understand all languages," was the answer.—"Grant that that is true, although I have my doubts; but the government censor, who is Russian, I cannot corrupt, and the other people do not understand Danish, do they?"—"That is true from your point of view," was the answer, and, acting from their point of view, they kept the books. There was a Danish-French dictionary in the heap; I showed them that it was a dictionary, that the words were arranged in columns. They racked their brains over it. At last, after mature reflection they gave me the first part, A—L, but with very serious looks replaced part M—Z among the literature which the censor was to examine.

"When and how can I get all this again?"—"So far as the books are concerned you can ask for them at the censor's office; you have a receipt for them. You will get no receipt for the pistol. But you may address a petition—on a whole sheet of paper—to the Governor-General for permission to carry it, then, if he thinks fit, he can give an order to the custom-house officer in Warsaw to deliver it to you on your application there."

Thus on the very frontier itself we got the feeling that from this point we were outside the precincts of real European civilisation.

In such a trifling matter as the custom-house examination the two distinguishing marks of the bulk of Russian prudential regulations can be traced: the oppressive and the inconsequent. If I had known of the prohibition against having a pistol in my travelling bag, all I needed to do was to put it into my pocket; for the pockets are not searched. If I had known that it was forbidden to carry foreign books, I might have sent them from Vienna to a bookseller in Warsaw, and I should have received them without any delay.

The government regulations are not strict enough, and yet so strict that, for fear of dismissal, the subordinate officials are compelled to carry out their duty brutally as well as injudiciously. The absurdities which met me on the frontier, continually meet the foreigner and sometimes the native born. A few years ago, on the Prusso-Russian frontier, one of my friends, who had prepared himself for the medical examination in Warsaw at the time when the University was still Polish, but who was compelled to submit to the examination after it had become Russian, had a Russian grammar, written in Russian, taken from him because the custom-house official did not know the book.

The Russian rule is not like the Prussian, prudent and uniform; it is incoherent, absurd, and often entrusted to clumsy hands. The pressure upon Russian Poland is so great that it could not be borne for a month if many of the regulations were not chaotic and meaningless, others too trivial to be executed, others easily avoided by bribery, others entrusted to instruments of so little keenness that their effect is destroyed, and others again to such intelligent and cultivated men that they are not put into practice.

I had accepted an invitation to deliver three lectures in French in the town-hall of Warsaw. In regard to these lectures I had many difficulties beforehand. I was compelled to prepare them in time to send the manuscript to Warsaw a month before my arrival, as they were to be submitted to a double censorship, the usual one, and a special one for public lectures. Since it was certain that if they were sent by the ordinary post they would be detained for an indefinite period at the frontier, it was necessary to find a more convenient means of transit. Ambassadorial courtesy enabled me to send them by a special hand to St. Petersburg. Thus they reached their destination without any other delay than that caused by the round-about journey. Two copies were prepared and sent to the different censors, but after they had twice been read through in French, a day or two before my arrival in Warsaw a new difficulty arose. The well-known curator of the education department, Apuchtin—the same person who had his ears boxed by a student a year ago, which created a commotion and tumult in the whole city—at the last moment required that all three lectures should be sent in again in a Russian translation. This and the further examination naturally took time. Nevertheless, to the astonishment of many, not a line was struck out, although the lectures contained not a little which, as it appeared, excited emotion in the listeners. I was told also that the strictness of the censorship was sometimes neutralised by the carelessness or chivalrousness of the examiner; it seems as if the censor stationed in the hall did not always note very exactly if what is said is really identical with what the lecturer has handed in in his manuscript.

It appears here, as in innumerable other cases in Russia, that an order or prohibition in order to be absolutely effective requires a whole system of additional regulations. This is especially so when the prohibition against printing anything has a practical object. In January the celebrated old poet Odyniec died in Warsaw. He was the faithful friend and youthful travelling companion of Mickiewicz, politically a neutral, almost a conservative; but as his name was so intimately associated with memories of the revolt of 1830 and of the period of literary splendour, as, moreover, he had been so close a friend of Mickiewicz, the most celebrated enemy of the Russian authority, they endeavoured by means of the censor to prevent demonstrations at his funeral. Consequently it was forbidden to give any public notice of the time of his interment, not only in the newspapers, but by the placards which are commonly posted in the streets and before the churches. The prohibition was enforced, but in spite of it a procession of 50,000 persons followed Odyniec to his grave.

It is thus that prohibition and censorship only succeed in acquiring a character for ineffectual spite. This is notably the case with the Polish press. It continually happens that an article is forbidden by the censor on a particular day, but a day or two later the author is allowed to make free use of it. The result of this is only that the suspected newspapers are behind their rivals in the discussion of the subjects of the day. It continually happens also that an article is forbidden by the censor in one newspaper and allowed in another.

The passport system has the same character of annoyance without profit as this form of censorship. Without a passport, viséd by the Russian consul in your place of residence, generally speaking, you cannot cross the frontier into Russia. It is called for, as already stated, in the railway carriage, it is examined in a separate room during the time while the baggage is being searched, and they are so concerned to prevent the traveller from handing it over to some offender or the other, that he does not get his passport back till after he has taken his seat in the train, immediately before the last ringing of the bell; a police soldier brings the passports in a case prepared for the purpose with alphabetical letterings. You hardly reach your place of destination before the passport is again called for; it is taken to the police office and kept there during the whole stay of the traveller in the city, and the information there given is supplemented by inquiries of the servants in the house where you reside as to the full names of your parents, whether you are married or unmarried — the unmarried are regarded as the more dangerous — as to several matters. And this passport, which is only given back on the day of departure, is examined again for an hour at the station on the frontier through which you pass on your return journey.

Nevertheless this vigilance also has a gap by which its results are almost wholly destroyed. There is hardly any attempt to ascertain whether the person named in the passport is the same who has presented it. They evidently have no means of knowing whether the name is right, but as the passports are examined en bloc in a separate room from that in which the travellers are collected, they do not attempt to find out if the description corresponds with the person. As nothing is easier than to procure a passport in Germany, Austria, England or France, and then remain at home and let a friend travel with it, the result is wholly out of proportion to the trouble and annoyance—to say nothing of the fact that hundreds who have no passports are daily guided over the frontier on foot by men who are pointed out to every one who needs them.

I had abundant opportunity of thinking over this subject, as during the tiresome delay I walked up and down among the tea- and grog-drinking idlers in the dirty waiting-room at Granica, annoyed by intruders anxious to change my Austrian money into rubles, consoled by others who explained to me that the officials were quite within their rights in their treatment of me; that the fact of my books being in Danish was no security; who could vouch for it, that they did not contain accounts of the socialist congress in Copenhagen!

At last I got back what was left in my trunk for my own disposal, and without anything contraband except what I had in my head, I arrived the next morning in Warsaw.

Chapter II

II

WARSAW—PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE CITY—CONDITION OF THE LANGUAGE AND OF THE THEATRE—RUSSIANISATION—BANISHMENTS

Warsaw (Warszawa) is a city of more than 400,000 inhabitants. As is well known, it is situated on the river Vistula (Wisla), a broad river, over which of late years a great iron bridge has been built from the square where the castle is situated to the suburb Praga, so tragically celebrated in the history of Poland. I don't know if it was in consequence of Hauch's beautiful song that the stream in its winter dress, full of grey floating ice, appeared so melancholy.

The city is of great extent, but with its decayed grandeur and the horrible memories it calls up at every turn, it makes a mournful impression. In the last century, next to Paris, it was the most brilliant city in Europe; now it is a Russian provincial town. It then had the character of prodigal splendour; now it is a forlorn, neglected place, which declines more and more every day, not the least thing being done by the authorities for its appearance and improvement. It cuts one to the heart to see the wretchedly paved streets, or the terrible old sandstone figures in the Saxon garden, on coming from a luxurious city like Vienna, or one which has blossomed out with such rapidity as Berlin.

For whereas the capitals of countries elsewhere are generally the object of the rulers' care, almost of their tenderness, and cities elsewhere from mere self-love take heed of beauty and convenience, and strive to provide as great attractions for country folks and for foreigners as possible, Warsaw is the capital of a country whose existence the government does not recognise, and is a city whose pride the government wishes to humble in every way. We must remember that Warsaw has no "home rule," no civic council, and nothing at all like it. Russian Poland is altogether a country where nothing is elected. As there is no parliament, so also there is no municipal government. Only a part of the taxes collected in the city is used for the city itself, the remainder goes to St. Petersburg. Russian self-esteem makes all the arrangements, and Russian covetousness carries them out. The condition of the roads in the vicinity of the city is only to be understood by one who knows the Russian idea in Poland, the rule that when 80,000 rubles are appropriated to a highway, 40,000 must go into the pockets of the officials. No illusion has been left to the inhabitants of the city. As long ago as the 16th of October, 1835, when the Tzar Nicholas visited Warsaw for the first time after the great rising of the people in 1830-31, he said plainly to the deputation which came to greet him, that the castle, which he had caused to be constructed, was built not for the protection of the city, but against it; he threatened the Poles with the misfortunes which awaited them if they did not give up their "dream of a separate nationality, an independent Poland, and all such chimeras," and he concluded with the words: "I have caused this castle to be built, and I declare to you that at the least attempt at insurrection I will have the city blown to pieces, and I will then have it razed to the ground, and depend upon it, it shall not be rebuilt during my reign."

Since the unfortunate revolution of 1863, nothing at all has been undertaken for the cleanliness or well-being of the place, though by reason of a lack of waterworks and sewerage the beautiful city is one of the least healthy in Europe. The bed of the streets is so soft that the paving stones fall away from each other in ridges and holes, but nothing has been done since 1863 to repair them; nay, in all these years, with the exception of the town-hall, which was burned at that date, not a public building has been erected. The whole of the civil and military administration is carried on in confiscated private and public buildings. Time destroys whatever it will without any one seeking to repair the damage. Thorwaldsen's Copernicus, which is so popular in Warsaw that the common people call a statue a Copernicus, is covered with dirt, but is never cleaned. The pedestal is crumbling away under it, but no one restores it. The Copernicus is one of the oldest statues of the city. It was completed and unveiled May 11, 1830, after the distinguished author Stanislaw Staszic (1755-1826), the first great orator of the Polish democracy, who gave all that he possessed to objects for the public good, had made a contribution of 70,000 Polish florins to the national subscription for the erection of the memorial. On the other hand, the monument to Prince Joseph Poniatowski which Thorwaldsen had undertaken during his stay in Warsaw, September-October, 1820, and which in 1829 arrived in the city to be cast in bronze, was indeed unveiled the same day as the Copernicus, but was removed, as soon as the revolt of 1831 was quenched in blood. It is now to be found rebaptized as a St. George, and inaccessible, in the grounds of a Russian private citizen, the Prince of Warsaw, not far from the city.

The only public memorials in good condition are: the colossal monument to Paskiewicz in the middle of the main street of the Cracow Suburb (Krakowskie Przedmiescie), erected in gratitude because he, "trusty and active as the knout in the hands of the executioner" (Mickiewicz) in September, 1831, when the last heroic defenders had blown themselves up into the air, conquered the redoubts before Warsaw and entered the city—and the great iron obelisk, commemorating the names of the Poles, who, in 1831, informed against their countrymen, and were hanged or shot on that account as traitors or spies. On the sumptuous granite pedestal rest four metal lions. About the base of the obelisk are horrible-looking heraldic eagles with two heads of supernatural size. The inscription in Russian and Polish over the names reads thus: "The Poles who fell for fidelity to their Sovereign." This obelisk very possibly misses its mark in Warsaw!

The street traffic is by no means inconsiderable; in the markets there is the same life as everywhere else where buying and selling take place in the open air. But it strikes the stranger that in those places where the people are to be seen in large numbers, as on their Sunday promenades in the principal streets, they never have the contented and well-to-do Sunday look common in other large cities, but a melancholy or brooding expression. A merry scene is never witnessed in the street, and a joke is never overheard.

The physiognomy of the city does not, however, lack character. The Circassian regiments (that is to say, in reality Cossacks and Armenians in Circassian costume) with their fur caps, their sabres at their sides, their yataghans in their belts, have a picturesque oriental appearance. Every moment also you meet among the less characteristic Polish carriages a Russian equipage, in which a Russian officer is driven by a coachman in the long black national costume with the blue scarf round the waist.

One of the most noticeable things, so far as externals are concerned, in the streets of Warsaw is, that without exception all the names (even of the streets), all the signs, all the notices are in two languages or two kinds of characters; on the left side the inscriptions are in Polish, on the right in Russian, or above in Russian and below in Polish. It is a little element in the contest which the government keeps up to force the foreign language on the Polish nationality.

Recently the government has even begun to try to introduce the Russian language into the Roman Catholic Church. On account of a refusal to carry out an order of this kind, the Bishop of Wilna, Hryniewiecki, was exiled to Yaraslaw, and some weeks later his substitute, Harasimowicz, to Wologda.

The only place where it is allowed to speak the Polish language publicly is on the stage. As yet it is not forbidden to give Polish theatrical representations, and this circumstance has given to the theatre a preponderance in Polish intellectual life, which is intelligible, but unfortunate, and so much the more harmful and unnatural as the dramatic literature of the country is rather poor. There is something depressing in seeing this seriously constituted and highly endowed people attributing an importance to the theatre which it by no means deserves in a nation without pronounced dramatic qualities. If many of the best literary men have devoted themselves to theatrical criticism, it is because in the guise of examination and analysis of the ideas put forward in the plays, they can say and suggest much which it would be impossible to advance without this opportunity or veil.

The theatre in Warsaw is on the decline at the present moment. It is directed by a courtier who is bitterly hated, and who rules it in a military fashion, without the least artistic insight. It has indeed one important comic actor, but otherwise no men of talent of the very first rank, and no contemporary school of dramatic authors who could place peculiarly national aims before the younger men who frequent it. The greater part of the répertoire consists of French plays, and the style of acting is essentially French. However, in Helen Marcello, the theatre in Warsaw has an actress who fascinates by her beauty and her glow of passion, and only a few years since it had two admirable actresses who would shine on any stage.

One, Madam Popiel-Svienska, whom I saw play at a performance for a charity in Pailleron's "L'Étincelle," was a roguish and delicately emotional ingenue; a chubby little figure, youthful in her movements, with a delicate face, which shone with goodness of heart, its shadows dimples and its sunbeams smiles. When this lady married an elderly man of high rank, he demanded (like the egoist in Musset's Bettine) that she should retire from the stage, and she complied with his humour, although the public in Warsaw even now constantly embraces every opportunity to protest against this determination. At the passage in "L'Étincelle" where she says something to this effect: "I must play comedy again," by a previous agreement among the spectators hundreds upon hundreds of bouquets were thrown upon the stage, so that the play was interrupted for several minutes.

The second and far greater actress Poland has produced, who now enjoys a world-wide reputation, since of late years she has played chiefly in English, in London and North America, and only for six weeks in each year appears at the theatre in Warsaw, is generally known by her first husband's name, as Mme. Modrzejewska. The Poles are justly proud of her; she is one of the wonders of the nation. When in 1879 a national greeting was to be given to Kraszewski on his fiftieth anniversary as an author, Helena Modrzejewska was asked to come to Cracow and take part in the play at the festival in honour of the prolific author. Her appearance, like her art, is of the grand style. She has a brilliant beauty, is now (1888) over forty years old, but her figure is still slender and elegant without meagreness, and her face, with its regular features, large dark eyes, pure strong lines of the mouth, and the Asiatic grace of her smile can never lose its beauty. I have seen her in "Dalila," by Feuillet, in Sardou's "Odette," and in "L'Étincelle," and I have never in my life seen better art than hers, when as Odette during a visit to her daughter she has to suppress the maternal feelings which overpower her. One of Mme. Modrzejewska's best roles is Nora in Ibsen's "Doll's House"; I had a great wish to see her in it, and she was almost equally eager to play it for a countryman of the author; but we did not count on the despotism of the director of the theatre, who withdrew his consent at the last moment, from pure spite.

Mme. Modrzejewska prefers to play Shakespere, and her English répertoire consists almost wholly of Shakesperian rôles. She is indebted to her present husband, an extremely artistic man of the world, Karol Chlapowski, for her taste for English poetry, as well as for her higher development as an artist generally. Naturally enough, she felt the need of a broader sphere for her talents than that offered by the Polish language. But there is great danger that the life of travel as a star, which she has led of late years, will compel her to restrict her art to its coarser effects.

While the stage, as I have just said, is still Polish, the Polish language is absolutely forbidden in the University. All lectures, no matter whether they are delivered by men of Russian or Polish birth, must be in Russian. Not even the history of Polish literature may be taught in the language of the country. Nay, even in the corridors of the University the students are forbidden to speak Polish with each other.

Even more dangerous to Polish nationality is that provision of the law which requires that all instruction in the schools shall be in Russian. Even the scanty instruction in the Polish language is given in Russian. And so strict is the prohibition against speaking Polish in playtime, or generally in the school-grounds, that a boy of twelve years old was recently shut up for twenty-four hours in the dark because coming out of school, he said to a comrade in Polish: "Let us go home together." But the régime to which the schools are subjected with regard to the suppression of the national peculiarities is not confined to the domain of language. In a family which I was invited to visit the following incident happened. The son of the family, a boy of sixteen, the only son of a widow, one evening in the theatre had thrown a wreath to Helena Modrzejewska on behalf of his comrades. A few days after, in obedience to an order from the Minister of Education, the principal of the school called him up, and told him that he must not only leave the school, but that all future admission to any other school whatever was forbidden him; it was the punishment for having been guilty of a Polish demonstration. The boy went home and put a bullet through his head.