Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/319

Rh in the picture, there the tragic hemisphere in poetry must necessarily lack the supplement which the comic hemisphere supplies.

Perhaps, nevertheless, what is most wanting in this epoch of Polish literature is, as was to be expected, the expression of the peaceful pleasures of life. It contains much love, but no contentment. It is a great exception when a character appears who now and then breathes fully and freely. Still, what this epoch possesses is rich and abundant; an earnestness so great, that no other literature in Europe is so intensely earnest, a pathos so deep, that only the greatest tragic authors of Greece and England speak in such a strain, and an enthusiasm so lofty and pure, that it is only occasionally manifested in other countries. Nowhere else do we see a whole generation carried away as here by it.

As a form of art Romanticism is dead, a thing of the past. Its heroes and heroines, its spirits and witches, in part even its language and style are antiquated. Nevertheless, there is a Romanticism which outlives forms of art and schools of art, and which still preserves its vitality and worth. It is the element of healthy enthusiasm, which every strong human emotion can assume when it is refined and intensified beyond the average. Without any background whatsoever of superstition, and without relation to anything supernatural, our feelings for nature, for the woods and fields, the sea and the heavens, may assume this form of romantic ecstasy, and in even higher degree emotions like love, friendship, love between parents and children, love of language and native land, and common memories may take a like form.

In few literatures has this abiding Romanticism attained to an expression of such beauty as in the Polish.