Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/44

32 the French character is entirely absent in the Pole. The algebraic, arithmetical basis of the French manner of thought is wholly wanting in the Pole. The Frenchman is a great writer of prose, the Pole is a poet. On this account the stronghold of the French world of letters is prose, that of the Polish, poetry–verse. In addition nothing can well be less French than the continual and perfect use of a foreign language, the remarkable knowledge of foreign authors, which meet one everywhere in Poland. Young girls of twenty who speak six languages perfectly and without accent are met in Poland, certainly not in France. Almost every young man or woman of the higher classes knows the most important capitals of Europe, and knows the most important literatures to a great extent. The passionate fondness for travel and the versatility of culture resulting therefrom are in the highest degree un-French. The Pole widens his purview and diminishes his brain power by learning four or five foreign languages; the Frenchman as a rule is either ignorant or a specialist.

But the most striking difference assuredly lies in the relations between the sexes. The fundamental trait of the Polish national character is a certain combination of mildness and energy. But what gives Polish character, and especially Polish patriotism in this century, its special stamp, is the preponderance of the feminine elements over the masculine.

That the relations between man and woman are very different in Poland and in France is quickly perceived in daily conversation. While the tone among Frenchmen, whenever conversation turns on women, is always extremely free, sometimes to a foreigner repulsive, and generally lascivious, the Poles as a rule in discussing women manifest warmth, often tenderness or indulgence, but, so far as I could judge, seldom frivolity.

I have found a remark in an Italian author which possibly goes to the root of this. He thinks that while as a rule among the Germanic races the man is more gifted than the woman, and while among the Latin races man and woman on an average stand on the same level as to