Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/90



to the Polish life, impulsive, pulsating, now weaker, now stronger, stands the Russian system, the heavy Russian force system, working like a machine, the mechanism of eradication and extermination.

It strives not only to cut down all free shoots of nationality and of the culture of the language, but to strike at its growth in its roots, to sap its germs, to blast its seed.

And even this is not enough. The system fears all the germs which are floating in the air, which drift with the wind, swim in the streams. It is afraid of everything which fills the air in the guise of song or laughter or tears, of everything which rises to the lips in words, of everything which captivates the eye as a beloved colour.

Against everything, even things the most airy and spiritual, the system has a prohibition. For the national dress it has given a uniform; for song, silence; for laughter, silence; for wailing, silence; for speech, silence; and for everything which is published at home or abroad, the censor. It has built a wall about this land, and striven to make it so high that no bird can fly over it, and so dense that no breeze can pass through it.

The national dress is forbidden even as a carnival costume, even in historical dramas in the theatre. Poland's colours, Poland's arms are strictly prohibited, must not even remain on the front of an old house, or on the frame of an old painting. The national songs are so strictly forbidden that people are shy of playing them even in a private house, if there is a large company.