THE GROWTH OF THE MODERN NATION 29of his short life was spent in expiation. Already in 1825 in a long essay entitled
On the spirit and sources of poetry in Poland, he was arguing that true poetry is
born from 'the infinity of feeling' and that a national literature could only grow
from Romanticism. Between 1827 and 1829, as editor of Kurier Polski, he
attacked the established writers who were still calling for 'classical' restraint. In
1828, his anonymous 'Gtos obywatela z zabranego kraju' (The Voice of a
Citizen from a Captured Country) was judged to have influenced the outcome
of the trial of Lukasinski and his fellow-conspirators from the Patriotic Society.
By this time, his characteristic outlook was firmly set. Deeply absorbed in the
study of German philosophy, and in particular of Schiller and Schlegel, he was
initiated into the preparations of the November Rising. He was wrestling with
the problems of harmonizing literature with the needs of political action and of
giving it a coherent philosophical base. It was no accident that the Preface to his
cardinal work, O literaturze polskiej (On Polish Literature), was composed at a
moment when the fate of the November Rising was uncertain, and when its
management was slipping into the hands of saner, weaker men. 'It is time to stop
writing about art,' he said. 'Now we have something rather different in our
hearts and minds... Our life is already poetry. From now on, our metre will be
the clash of swords and our rhyme the roar of the guns,' Within three years he
was dead. But his writings were remembered as a basic guide for all those who
dabbled in insurrectionary politics and those who might have done so if they
could.^28
Better known to the world at large were Mickiewicz's lectures delivered at the
College de France and published as his Cours des litteratures slaves.
Joachim Lelewel's role in Polish historiography closely matched that of
Mochnacki and Mickiewicz in Polish literature. By idealizing the themes of
Liberty and Democracy in Poland's past, his writings acted as a powerful spur
to attack the Servitude of the present. (See Vol. I, Chapter 1.)
Polish Romanticism and Messianism were built on strong philosophical
foundations. The first figure of note in this regard was Jozef Maria Hoehne-
Wronski (1776-1853), who, having fought in Kosciuszko's Rising, then in the
Russian army, lived thereafter in Paris and published in French. As a onetime
student at Konigsberg, he started from a fulsome admiration of Kant, and later
worked his way to an extreme rationalist position. He attempted to construct a
complete metaphysical system on the basis of a fundamental 'law of creation'
whose dichoto-mous mechanism somewhat resembled Hegelian trichotomy. He
saw his own day and age as a transitory period which would soon give way to
the 'Intellectual Age' where former conflicts would be resolved and Man would
achieve complete fulfilment and immortality. His main works included
Prodrome du Messianisme (1831), Metapolitique messianique (1839), and
Messianisme ou reforme absolue du savoir bumain (1847). The second figure,
Jozef Goluchowski (1797-1858), stayed closer to Polish affairs, and exercised a
greater influence on his literary contemporaries. A disciple of Schelling, at
whose feet he had studied at Erlangen, he was removed from the Chair of