Chapter 42

POLISH LITERATURE

At an Early Date Western Influence sufficiently Potent. Sixteenth Century Brilliant; Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries highly Cultured; Nineteenth Century Notably Original.

WESTERN INFLUENCE--Widely different from Russian literature, much more Western, based more on Greek and Latin culture, Polish literature holds high rank in the histories of European literature. Christians from the tenth century, the Poles knew from this epoch religious songs written by monks, in the vulgar tongue. To this is due the possession of the _Bogarodzica_, a religious and bellicose song dedicated to the Virgin mother of God, which is even now comprehensible, so little has the Polish language changed. All through the Middle Ages, literary historians can only find chronicles written sometimes in Latin, sometimes in the native language. Under the influence of the universities, and also of the parliamentary rule, the language acquired alike more consistency and more authority in the fifteenth century, whilst the sixteenth was the golden literary epoch of the Poles. There were poets, and even great poets, as well as orators and historians. Such was Kochanowski, very much a Western, who lived some time in Italy, also seven years in France, and was a friend of Ronsard. His writings were epical, lyrical, tragical, satirical, and especially elegiacal. He is a classic in Poland. Grochowski left a volume of diversified poems, hymns on various texts of Thomas à Kempis, _The Nights_ of Thorn, etc. Martin Bielski, who was an historian too, but in Latin, left two political satires on the condition of Poland, and his son Joachim wrote a history of his native land in Polish.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.--Though somewhat less brilliant than the preceding, the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is not unfavourable to Poland. Then may be enumerated the satirical Opalinski, the lyrical Kochanowski, the dramatist Bogulawski, manager of the theatre at Warsaw, who not only translated plays from the French, English, and Spanish, but himself wrote several comedies, of which _The Lover, Author, and Servant_ has remained the most celebrated. Rzewuski was a dramatic author with such national plays as _Wladislas at Varna_ and _Zolkewishi_, and comedies as _The Vexations_ and _The Capricious_, and he also was historian, orator, literary critic, and theorist.

Potocki was a literary and theoretical critic and founder of a sort of Polish academy (society for the perfection of the tongue and of style). Prince Czartoryski showed himself an excellent moralist in his _Letters to Doswiadryski_. Niemcewicz extended his great literary talent into a mass of diversified efforts. He wrote odes held in esteem, tragedies, comedies, fables, and tales, historical novels, and he translated the poems of Pope and the _Athalie_ of Racine.

LITERARY RENAISSANCE.--Losing her national independence, Poland experienced a veritable literary renaissance, which offered but slender compensation. She applied herself to explore her origins, to regain the ancient spirit, and to live nationally in her literature. Hence her great works of patriotic erudition. Czacki with his _Laws of Poland and of Lithuania_, Kollontay with his _Essay on the Heredity of the Throne of Poland_, and his _Letters of an Anonymous to Stanislas Malachowski_, etc., Bentkowski with his _History of Polish Literature_ and his _Introduction to General Literature_, etc. Thence came the revival of imaginative literature, Felinski, on the one hand translator of Crébillon, Delille and Alfieri on the other, he was the personally distinguished author of the drama _Barbe Radzivill_; Bernatowicz, author of highly remarkable historical novels, among which _Poïata_ gives a picture of the triumph of Christianity in Lithuania in the fourteenth century; Karpinski, dramatist, author of _Judith_, a tragedy; _Alcestis_, an opera; _Cens_, a comedy, etc.; Mickiewicz, scholar, poet, and novelist, who, exiled from his own land, was professor of literature at Lausanne, then in Paris, at the College of France, extremely popular in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, the friend of Goethe, Lamennais, Cousin, Michelet, and of all the French youth. He was the author of fine poems, of a great historical novel, _Conrade Vattenrod_, of _The People and the Polish Pilgrims_, of a _Lesson on the Slav States_.

MODERN EPOCH.--At the time of writing, Poland continues to be a literary nation well worthy of attention. She presents an example to the races which incur the risk of perishing as nations because of their political incapacity; by preserving their tongue and by sanctifying it with a worthy literature they guard their country and, like the Greeks and Italians, hope to reconquer it some day through the sudden turns of fortune shown in history.

INDEX OF NAMES CITED

A

About Addison Aeschines Aeschylus Aesop Aicard Alarcon Alcasus Alcamo, Ciullo of Aleman Alexander Alfieri Alphonso X Alphonso XI Alvarez Ambrose, St. Amyot Anacreon Anaxagoras Andocides Anne, Queen Annunzio, Gabriel d' Antiphon Antonina Antonius Diogenes Apollonius Appian Apuleius Aratus Arcadius Archilochus Aretino Ariosto Aristophanes Aristotle Arnauld Arrian Asclepiades Athanasius, St. Attius Aubigné, Agrippa d' Augier Augustine, St. Augustus Aulard Aurispa Ausonius Avienus

B

Babrius Bacon, Francis Baldi Balzac, G. de Balzac, H. de Bandello Banville, T. de Barnave Barthari Basil, S. Bataille Batiouchkov Baudelaire Bayle Bazin Beaumarchais Beaumont Beccaria Belisarius Bellay, Joachim du Belleau Bembo Benserade Bentkowski Béranger Bergerac, Cyrano de Bergson Bernard, Tristan Bernardes Bernatowicz Berni Bernstein Bertaut Bielski, Joachim Bielski, Martin Bion Boccaccio Bodmer Boëtie, La Bogulawski Boileau Bojardo Bordeaux Bordello Bossuet Bourdaloue Bourget Boutroux Boylesve Brantôme Brieux Brontë, C. Brontë, E. Browning, E. B. Browning, Robert Brueys, de Brunetière Brunetto Buddha Buffon Bulwer-Lytton Bunyan Bürger Burgundy, Duke of Burns Burton, Robert Byron

C

Caballero Caesar, Julius Calderon Callimachus Callinos Calvin Caminha Camoëns Campistron Campoamor Candamo Cañizares Carducci Carlyle Caro Cassini Cassius Castelar Castro Catherine of Russia Cato Catullus Cellini, Benvenuto Cephalon Cervantes Charles of Orleans Charles II Charles V Chateaubriand Chatterton Chaucer Chénier, André Chénier, Marie-Joseph Chrysippus Chrysostom Cicero Claudian Cleanthes Coleridge Comines Commodian Comnenus Comte Condillac Congreve Constant Copernicus Coppée Corneille Corte-Real Cousin Cowper Crabbe Cratinos Crébillon Cromwell Cyprian, St. Czacki Czartoryski

D

Dancourt Daniel (the abbot) Daniel (the prisoner) Dante Danton Daudet Davenant Davila Defoe Delavigne Delille Demosthenes Descartes Desportes Destouches Diamante Dickens Diderot Dietmar Diogenes Dolce Dostoevsky Dryden Duclos Dufresny Dumas, (_père_) Dumas, (_fils_) Dürer

E

Eberling Echegaray Eliot, George Elisabeth Ennius Epictetus Epicurus Erasmus Ercilla Espinel Espronceda Eudoxia Eupolis Euripides Eusebius Eustathius Evemerus

F

Falcam Fayette, Mme. de la Feijoo Felinski Fénelon Ferreira Fichte Ficino Fielding Filangieri Flaubert Fletcher Florez Fogazzaro Folengo Fontenelle Foscolo Fouillée Fox Frederick II Froissart

G

Galen Galileo Garnier Gautier Gellius Aulus Gerson Gibbon Gilbert Gil Vicente Gioberti Giordani Goethe Gogol Goldoni Goldsmith Goncourt, de Gongora Gorgias Gottsched Gower Gregory, St. Gresset Grimm Grochowski Grün Guarini Guasco Guevara Guicciardini Guittone Guizot Gutierrez Guyot

H

Habington Haller Haraucourt Hartmann Hauptmann Haussonville, d' Hecataeus of Abdera Hegel Heine Heliodorus Henry VI Heraclitus Herbert Herder Herodian Herodotus Herreros Hervieu Hesiod Hilarion Hilarius, St. Hildebrand Hippocrates Homer Horace Huerta Hugo, Victor Hugo of Berzi Hume Hutten Hyperides

I

Iffland Isla Isocrates Ivan Izoulet

J

Jacopone James I Jaurès Jerome, St. Jodelle Johnson, Dr Joinville Jonson, Ben Joseph of Byzantium Jovellanos Julian the Apostate Junius Justinian Juvenal Juvencus

K

Kalidas Kant Kantemir Karpinski Keats Kempis, T. à Klopstock Kochanowski Kollontay Körner Kotzebue Krylov Kürenberg Kutochikine

L

Laberius La Bruyère Lacerda La Chaussée Lactantius La Fontaine Lamartine Lamb, C Lamennais La Motte Lanfranc La Rochefoucauld Lascaris Lavater Lavedan Lavisse Leconte de Lisle Leibnitz Lenau Leonardo da Vinci Leonidas Leopardi Lermontov Le Sage Lessing Libanius Livius Livy Lobo Locke Lomonosov Longus Lope de Vega Lorris, William of Louis, St Louis XI Lucena Lucian Lucilius Lucretius Luther Lycophron Lyly Lysias

M

Mably Macaulay Machiavelli MacPherson Maffei Mairet Maistre, Joseph de Malaspina Malebranche Malherbe Mallarmé Manuel, John Manzinho Manzoni Marcus Aurelius Marini Marivaux Marlowe Marmontel Marot Martial Martinez, Rose de la Mary, Princess Maynard Medici, Catherine de' Medici, Marie de' Melanchthon Meleager Menander Mendès Mendoza Mercier Meredith Mérimée Metastasio Meung, John de Mezeray Michelet Mickiewicz Milton Mirabeau Molière Mommsen Monomaque Montaigne Montalvo Montchrestien Montemayor Montesquieu Monti Montluc Moratin, Leandro Moratin, Nicholas Moschus Mun, de Musseus Musset, A. de

N

Naevius Napoleon Nepos Nerva Newman Newton Nicole Niebuhr Niemcewicz Nietzsche Nonnus

O

Olivares Opalinski Oppian Otway Ovid Ozerov

P

Pacuvius Palaprat Pandolfini Pascal Paulinus, St. Paul I Pellico Pereira Pericles Perron Perseus Peter the Great Petrarch Petronius Philetas Philip III Philostrates Pico della Mirandola Pindar Piron Pisistratus Planudes Plato Platon Plautus Pliny the Elder Pliny the Younger Plutarch Politien Polybius Pompignan Pomponius Pontus Pope Porto-Riche Potocki Prévost, Abbé Prévost, Marcel. Procopius Propertius Protagoras Prudentius Ptolemy Publius Syrus Pulci Pushkin

Q

Quevedo Quinet Quintana Quintilian Quintus Quintus Curtius

R

Rabelais Racan Racine Radistchef Raynal Regnard Régnier, H. de Régnier, M. Renan Retz, Cardinal de Ribeiro Ribot, A. Ribot, T. Richardson Richepin Rivas Robert Robertson Robespierre Rojas Ronsard Rosa Rosa, Salvator Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Dante Rostand Roucher Rouget de Lisle Rousseau, J. B. Rousseau, J. J. Ruskin Rutilius Rzewuski

S

Saa de Miranda Saa e Menezès Saavedra Saint-Amant Saint-Évremond Saint-Gelais Saint-Lambert Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de Saint-Simon Sainte-Beuve Sakyamuni Sallust Sand, George San Phillipo Sannazaro Sappho Sardou Savonarola Scarron Scève, Maurice Schiller Schopenhauer Scipio Scott Scribe Scudéry Sédaine Segrais Seignobos Sénancour Seneca the Philosopher Seneca the Tragic Serao Sévigné Sextus Empiricus Shakespeare Shelley Sheridan Sidney Silius Italicus Simonides Socrates Solis Sophocles Soumarokoff Southey Spenser Staël, Mme. de Statius Stendhal Sterne Sudermann Sully-Prudhomme Swift Swinburne

T

Tacitus Taine Tannhäuser Tansillo Tasso Tassoni Tennyson Terence Tertullian Thackeray Thales Theocritus Theodora Theophrastus Thespis Thibaut Thierry Thiers Thomson Thorn Thucydides Tibullus Tiraboschi Tirso de Molina Tolstoy Torricelli Trajan Trediakowski Treitschke Trueba Turgenev Turgot Tyrtaeus

U

Urfé, Honoré d'

V

Vair, du Valerius Flaccus Valmiki Varro Vaugelas Ventura de la Vega Vergniaud Verlaine Vian, Theophilus de Vico Vignes, Peter of Vigny, Alfred de Villehardouin Villon Vinogradsky Virgil Vizin, von Voiture Voltaire

W

Waller Wieland Wolff Wordsworth Wycherley

X

Xenophon

Y

Young

Z

Zamora Zedlitz Zeno Ziorgi Zola Zorilla Zwingli

End of Project Gutenberg's Initiation into Literature, by Emile Faguet