82 ROSSIYA
a sharp mind indeed that could penetrate such overpowering ignorance and
complacency, and see through the calm surface of Russia's Polish provinces to
the underlying layers of frustration, contempt, and hatred. Alexander Blok, that
most Russian of Russian poets, author of The Scythians and The Twelve, was
one of the few to acquaint himself with Poland and to gain some sort of under-
standing. The poet's father, Alexander Lvovich Blok, was Professor of Public
Law at Warsaw's Russian University, and when he died in November 1909, the
son dutifully travelled from Moscow to attend the funeral. This winter journey
to 'Russia's back-yard', this 'God-forsaken and lacerated country' 'burdened by
insults and forced beneath the yoke of insolent violence' made a lasting impres-
sion, and supplied the direct inspiration for his poem Voz'mediye (Retribution).
Gendarmes, Railway tracks, Gas lamps,
Jargon, and old-fangled side curls—
Just look in the rays of a sickly dawn
How all that was, and all that is,
Is inflated by a vengeful chimera.
Even Copernicus, clutching a hollow globe
Cries vengeance from his pedestal.
Revenge! Revenge! it echoes
Round Warsaw with the ring of cold iron.^14
Less than six years after Blok's visit, Warsaw was captured by the German
army. The Russian Partition was destroyed not by Polish vengeance, but by
international war.