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ART FROM THE RENASCENCE creative power of his mind, become a series of grand poems reflecting the very soul of the nation in fantastic allegorical symbols of its sufferings and meditations. It is either the whole people's mind and feelings he expresses in strange and uncouth shapes, or, at other times, the solitary struggles of a poor Polish artist with distress and 'dejection, being the fatal effects of the

hard conditions, both material and moral, which the oppressed nation is constantly labouring under. Like Dante, he makes us pass under his guidance through the long Inferno of the Polish nation's political martyrdom. Hope and despair, life and death, valiant strife and passive fortitude, combine to produce a majestic "Soul's Tragedy," striking cruel claws of bitter reality into the