# Poland: A Study of the Land People and Literature/Part 2/Chapter 2

II
THE MEN POLISH IDEALS, VIRTUES AND VICES
The men are well-grown, often thin; most frequently with clear-cut faces and long, thick, pendant moustaches. This type may be traced from peasant to aristocrat. A frequent variation is the heavy, childishly frank country noble, who greets his friends at meeting and parting with a kiss, and has his heart on his lips, but who, nevertheless, has a manly bearing and much natural dignity; this is the type which Mickiewicz has immortalised in several instances in Pan Tadeusz.
Political qualities are universally wanting. While the German generally feels as if he had found his destiny when he is harnessed to the chariot of state, even if he thereby loses some of the best of his nature, the Pole is without any talent as a politician. The economic as well as the political sense is but slightly developed in Russian Poland.
Therefore there was in the old kingdom of Poland (just as in Greece) a high civilisation without the material foundation which could secure its continuance, and on that account a development of personal freedom took place here (as in Judaea) at the expense of the power of the kingdom in its relation to foreign countries.
There are two Polish national songs, which together give a complete picture of the national character of the Poles: one is Wibicki's Jeszcze Polska of 1797, a poem famous throughout the world as "Poland is not yet lost;" the other is Ujejski's Zdymen Pozarow of 1846, written after the Galician massacres. The Metternich Government, which got the idea of using the peasants against their masters from Archduke Ferdinand, persuaded the peasantry in Galicia that the ​emperor had granted them freedom from military service and had given them the soil for partition, but that the nobility prevented the carrying out of this imperial regulation. When the young nobles then sought to win over the peasants to a national revolt, the fury of the latter turned against the Polish nobility; in three days two thousand men, women, and children of noble rank were exterminated, some being burned alive, others flogged to death, and others cut to pieces.
Ujejski's song is the expression of the despair of the younger race at seeing the hopes of Poland thus brought to naught by the Poles themselves, as Wibicki's song is the expression of the bright hopes of the old race, even after the blow of the third partition had fallen. The first is a hymn which resembles a psalm, the second a march which approaches a mazurka.
The two sides of the character of the people, the whole Polish spirit, are reflected herein. In Ujejski's hymn there is the lofty, burning earnestness, the love of country as a religion: " Our lamentation mounts up to Thee, O Lord, with the smoke of fire and the steam of our brother's blood!"
Jeszcze Polska, which is generally believed to be pathetic, because it has played the same part in the national life of Poland as the Marseillaise in that of France, is an extremely careless, merry song, the ballad of heroic thoughtlessness. Its argument is: No fear. Poland endures still. March, march, Dombrowski! It is joy to live, to sing, to fight.
The virtue which has gradually made its way in Europe in modern times as the chief civic virtue is that of working, and loving work for its own sake. The conception on which it is based is very rare in Poland. Its children have cultivated the earth and cultivated their minds for centuries, but they have at the same time obstinately regarded work merely for money as a low, degrading thing. They have nourished the inherited aristocratic contempt for the merchant and the manufacturer, to say nothing of the shopkeeper and the mechanic. They have collected great fortunes, but they have spent them. Money was a means; very seldom an end: work a semi-disgraceful resource; never its own reward.
​They wished to enjoy life, not earn bread, and above all, to live lavishly and carelessly.
In this country the useful has always been given the second place, often the third.
Not that their highest interest lay in an ideal reproduction of life, as did that of Italy during the Renaissance, when it was absorbed by its eternal art. No; the end here was to make life itself a festival which a great lord, a really grand seigneur, gave to other gentlemen, great and small, and their ladies.
Hospitality is a more essential feature in Polish life than in that of any other country. Elsewhere people are hospitable only when they are bored: here they are hospitable without being bored; to shrink from showing hospitality here is accounted snobbery; to shrink from accepting hospitality, even on a grand scale, is also snobbery, for it shows that you value it in money.
In ancient Poland even war was festive. In war the Polish knights wore large wings on their cuirasses, real ostrich wings on their saddles, and, as a matter of course, plumes in rich variety.
And how beautiful and rich was the Polish costume in peace! It can scarcely be maintained that their mode of dress was ever practical, but what glittering luxury it displayed! What wonderful splendour in sashes, with their gold and silver embroidery, which were wound many times about the waist! What a delicate and superior sense of beauty in their silk embroideries! The man who wore such a sash about his waist had a constant impression of happiness, fulness of life, prosperity. This was not tinsel, like so much of the French finery of those days, but solid and enduring splendour.
The individual mighty man of this people did not live for himself alone, was not reserved, and the whole race was like him. We have only to consider two such incidents as these: that Poland opened its doors to the Jews in the Middle Ages, and that John Sobieski liberated Vienna from the Turks; two rare incidents in the history of Europe of religious liberality and political chivalry.
​But ideals, disinterested ideals, are a luxury, which bring their own punishment on a people almost as national vices do. The nations which attain to new religious ideals in the emotional life, or in their contemplative life raise themselves to new heights, or which follow aristocratic ideals in their conduct, are always weak as makers of states; frequently they have been compelled to pay for more exalted qualities by the loss of their political existence, but a race like the Poles is placed in a more difficult position than ever in a period so uniformly civic and martial as our own.
Especially does the old-time aristocratic contempt for work prove fatal. No one works who does not need to, and many who should, do not. Society in Warsaw is perhaps more exclusive than anywhere else. The prejudice against work is impressed upon the young by the old. A distinguished old lady made this significant remark: "What company they invited me to meet! It was made up of workmen, advocates whom we pay, manufacturers who sell goods, doctors, into whose hands three rubles are slipped for a visit!" The wife of Don Ranudo would not speak otherwise.
But how does a whole class get money in our time without work? some one will ask. That is exactly the crux; the money of the Polish aristocracy is coming to an end; those who still have land are frequently obliged to live wholly on their estates.
But we must not believe that any one troubles himself much about this. A Polish proverb runs: " I suppose it will settle itself," a saying characteristic of the land of disorder. A poor paymaster, or one who lives on credit, is judged less severely here than anywhere. About families who are in debt to everybody it is said indulgently: " They were forced to run into debt." They are not despised on that account, hardly even when extravagance has amounted to folly, as when the head of a family gambles and loses a fortune in play. But just in such cases the bright and the shady sides of the Polish character are seen in close proximity.
Of two brothers, one lost 200,000 rubles in play and fled from the country. The other brother assumed the debt, ​betook himself into the country, lived on his estate like the humblest workman, toiled like the poorest peasant, and during his whole life was paying off his brother's debt. Exaggerated, heroic self-sacrifice flourishes alongside of crazy, criminal recklessness.
The propensity to vain love of display, to extravagance, generates in low and bad natures that disorder in all money affairs and that lust for wealth which determine the peculiar Polish form of rascality, that which makes swindlers in private life and traitors in political life. Probably in every well-marked nationality rascality in money matters has its peculiar, favourite form. The two following incidents show it in its Polish extravagance.
A young man of good family ran in debt to the amount of 80,000 rubles, borrowed of all his relatives, impoverished them at last, and carried it so far that he borrowed of every one he met, of strange ladies, of ladies of his own country whom he met abroad in a hotel; he did not despise even a loan of five or ten rubles. Finally, when he had not a copeck left, he entered a monastery in Paris as a novice. There was general edification in his family. A short time after, he writes home to a pious old aunt, explains to her that each of the other brothers has given the monastery a sum of money, and begs her urgently to advance him a small sum, only 6000 rubles, so that the other monks should not despise him. As soon as he receives the money, he leaves the monastery, travels at full speed to America, spends the sum to the last penny, returns to France, becomes a monk again, and is to-day one of the most popular father-confessors in Paris.
The following incident from real life shows a variation on the same type, and illustrates at the same time peculiarities of Polish character of an entirely different kind.
A rich lady of the Polish aristocracy, very austere and demure in her whole conduct, peacefully and, as it is called, happily, married, who had a worthy husband, a beautiful home, and who had never been in love before, seemed to fall under a spell when she became acquainted with a certain elegant young nobleman. She abandoned husband and ​children, house and home, and allowed herself to be carried off to Paris under a forged passport. The young man was kind to her for about a week, then gradually sold all her articles of value and ornaments, locked her up when he went out to amuse himself with the money, and soon left her so completely in the lurch that, stripped of everything, she was compelled to write to her mother for aid. Her mother brought her home, and her husband declared that he was willing to take her back again on the condition that she first kneeled down at the threshold of the house and asked pardon of all, even of the servants, for the bad example she had given. She submitted, and he has never since said a reproachful word to her, or recalled the past by any allusion.
Just as the rascality in money matters which here manifests itself among the depraved Poles is extreme, so is the horror there is of any intermingling of monetary value in an expression of gratitude to superiors or equals among the better class.
An exiled Pole, who took part in the rebellion of 1863, and who has since earned his bread as a photographer in Christiania, sent back to Charles XV. an expensive pin which the latter had sent him in remembrance of an interview, and of a service he had rendered. Another little incident that occurred in Warsaw last year is even more significant and instructive. A young landed proprietor, Mankowski, won the prize offered for a comedy by a Polish private citizen. He sent a diamond ring as a thank-offering to a popular actor, who had given him great assistance with the stage effects, and had spent a good deal of time upon this. The actor refused to accept the ring. When this was told me, and I suggested: "Can he give his time without compensation?" I received the answer: "He does not need much, you see: he does not take that kind of pay; but also he himself does not pay. People know that he has not much, and therefore regard it as mean to dun him. For instance, he has now occupied a fine apartment for ten years. During this time he has never paid his rent; but when rent day comes, he pays a visit to the landlord in the morning; the ​latter offers him a cup of chocolate, the young actor makes an excuse for his negligence with regard to the rent, laments his want of money, and there is no more said about the matter."—"And his tailor, his shoemaker, does he not pay them either?"—"No; they hope that he will some day make a rich match. On the other hand, he does not receive an invitation to dinner without reciprocating, and when he gives a dinner at the Hôtel d'Europe to Kronenberg (the richest banker in Poland), it is not less magnificent than Kronenberg's own dinners—and then he pays."
According to this way of looking at it, it is only necessary to pay for the unnecessary, the superfluous. Nowhere else indeed does the superfluous stand in so great honour. The young men of the highest class in Poland are products of luxury, extremely engaging, gently affectionate like women, delicate as late off-shoots of old noble stocks. As a rule they do not work; and when by exception they do, without necessity, devote themselves to a study, prepare themselves for a professorship, or something of that sort, they awake general amazement and wonder. They applaud a young man not for working, but because he does the superfluous.
Thus to do the superfluous has always been the characteristic of Polish heroism. The men of the great days of Poland have taken part in the most varied European wars whenever the contest was about an object which had their sympathy. They fought in 1848, and later in the Crimea, in Italy, in Turkey. Thus it was with the old Ordon, sung by Mickiewicz, the hero of 1831, who blew up his redoubt before Warsaw when the Russians entered it, and who was himself saved by a miracle. He had been everywhere where a blow was struck for freedom or against Russia. Until last year this true hero, in whom all that is lofty and rare in the Polish character was combined, lived a quiet life in Florence. Proud and poor as he was and advanced in age, unable to work, in his fear of becoming a burden to others, he put an end to his life by a pistol shot. His courage was that of a knight-errant. And this kind of martial courage is found in spirits of the second rank, as, for instance, the lately deceased Tripplin, who in his accounts ​of his travels has given a sympathetic, idealised description of Denmark. He also took part in the most varied wars for freedom, and was everywhere where there was any righting against Russia.
The following incident of the last rebellion well illustrates the Polish disposition to show a courage which has no regard to the useful. When in 1863 all hope for the cause of Poland was lost, at the last meeting of the national Government its chief announced that he should remain in Warsaw; that he would not run away; the other members of the Government could still save themselves, and he handed them the passports which had been prepared. Then they also determined to remain, and to expose themselves to all the dangers of being taken as leaders of the rebellion, rather than fly before the enemy against whom they had risen.
With such virtues and the vices which have been touched upon, people do not get on in the world in the nineteenth century. They are not even honoured and respected, much less strong and great. The grace of magnanimity and recklessness is badly placed in our time between German prudence and Russian might.