Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/28

 22 usurper Dimitri, as well as "Maryna," a tale which he afterwards discarded as unsatisfactory.

The terrible disasters which had convulsed his native land in 1831 awakened in him the deepest sympathy, the most concentrated reflection. He gave words to the thoughts and feelings thus suggested in a marvelous drama, "The Undivine Comedy," the second part of which was written in Vienna, and in which he evinced not only the clearest insight into the perplexed Present, but even tore the blinding veil from the distant Future.

The year 1838 he spent in Italy, where, surrounded by the immortal memories of Rome, he wrote his "Iridion," a work which entitled him to a high rank in the literary world. He also visited Warsaw in 1838, but was not able to remain there for any length of time, for, though a true Pole, he could not bear the rigor of his native air; after a short stay in Karlsbad and Teplitz, he returned to Italy, meeting and associating with many of his beloved compatriots in Rome and Naples.

In 1842, Count Branicki, with his three accomplished daughters, visited Rome. It had long been the wish of Count Vincent Krasinski that his son should seek his life-companion in this family; that wish was now fulfilled. Sigismund sued for the hand of Elizabeth Branicka, celebrated his betrothal, and was married at Dresden. The blessing of the Church gave him a wife richly gifted in body and soul, of an amiable temper, and possessing that ready conception of the sublime and beautiful so calculated to throw over the life of the poet the atmosphere necessary for full poetical development. The young couple spent the first two years of their married life in the land of their fathers, not indeed wholly untroubled, but far from the vexatious turmoil of the world. The malady of his eyes, as well as his general ill health, held him aloof from society, limiting his intercourse to a few trusted friends, among whom was Amilie Zaluska, who had grown up with him, and whom he loved as a sister. His first son, Ladislaus, was born in 1844. He would gladly have continued to reside in his native land, but as this could not be without the most injurious influence upon his health, he was forced to resume his wanderings, tarrying