Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/321

Rh that is to see with your own eyes, with your own hands to grasp the complete destruction of that for which you live — and yet to go on living and believing in it.

Again and again we return to the thought; How symbolical this Poland is! For in this period, what other lot than that of the Pole has every one had, who has loved freedom and wished it well? What else has he experienced but defeat? When has he seen a gleam of sunlight? When has he heard a signal of advance? Everywhere, everywhere the fanfare of the violent, or the organ peal of the bold-faced hypocrite! And everywhere stupidity as bodyguard of the lie, and everywhere veneration for that which is paltry, and everywhere the same vulgar disdain for the only thing which is holy.

Yes, Poland, thou art the great symbol. The symbol of pinioned freedom, whose neck is trodden upon, symbol of those who lack any outlook, yet hope against all probability, in spite of all.

When the foreigner sees thee covered with thy mantle of snow in the winter time, then it seems to him as if the cold and the snow, and the eternally gloomy heavens, were so in harmony with thy being that he can hardly imagine these bare trees covered with leaves, these streets and roads free from snow, these heavens pure and warm, this land without winter.

But if he comes to Warsaw on a summer day when the sun glimmers through the thick foliage in the Saxon park, when the Green Square (Zielony Plac) deserves its name, and Lazienki lies, smiling and elegant, bordered by its group of trees, reflected in its park, then he feels that sunshine and the warmth of summer are also at home here. Wilanow allures him, Sobieski's beautiful country seat, which he has hitherto seen only in the light of a cold spring day, and he finds the palace surrounded by a luxuriant, fragrant flora, by tall trees, which Sobieski planted himself, or caused to be planted.

Never has he seen such tall, such magnificent poplars, tall as the cypresses in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, proud like them, melancholy and yet solemn like them.