Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/106

 94 was impossible. I could only express my meaning by characterising in expressions as general as possible mental conditions after great public misfortunes "such as famine, floods, or unsuccessful revolution." It was equally impossible in commenting on Slowacki's famous poem, Król Duck, to say directly: "The cruelty which is here described was actually perpetrated by Ivan the Terrible." I chose this circumlocution: "When in Król Duch the principal character narrates how with his sword he nailed the foot of the old minstrel to the earth, and how the latter continued to deliver his message unperturbed, it recalls an anecdote of the court of Ivan the Terrible." In this form the sentence passed the censor for the lecture, and the censor for its publication as a feuilleton in the Gazeta Polska, but it was, however, struck out later by another censor from the printed book.

In Mickiewicz's Dziady, in Conrad's improvisation, there is a passage where the hero in despair complains to God of the indifference with which He lets him suffer; the most effective line in it is this: Thou art not the father of the world, but its—Tzar! I required this line in my lecture, and wanted to suggest it. To analyse the work was impossible, even to name it difficult. On the other hand, it seemed feasible to mention Conrad's name without saying in which play he appeared, and to quote the passage with a slight change. I could certainly depend on an exceedingly slight knowledge of Polish literature in the censor.

I chose, therefore, to speak of the different attitudes of Polish authors as to the problem of cognition, and insinuated this in connection therewith. "And as the savages of antiquity, when they were angry with their gods, discharged an arrow into the vault of the heavens, so Conrad flings this taunt out into the universe, which he says shall resound from generation to generation: Thou God! Thou art not the Father of the world, but its . . ."

Here I made a pause of some seconds, during which a shudder literally ran through the closely packed hall. Then came the word tyrant, and they drew breath and looked at one another. No one moved a hand. After such passages a deathly silence prevails in order not to