Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/46

 40 to their introduction into the morals and life of his nation. The mere singer of the beautiful, the worshiper of the Muses, is elevated by him into sterner regions; he uses the poetic powers to enforce moral convictions, profound thoughts, and conscientious patriotism. In other circumstances, and under another government than that to which Poland is subjected, he would not have strung the lyre, but would have mounted the rostrum, and become the centre of political action. But neither rostrum nor political life was possible for him upon his native soil. Through poetry alone could he popularize his conceptions by preserving their precision in the frame of an exquisite, imperishable, and easily-retained form: poetry is also the delight of the nation, whose woes are cradled in its magic, and whose soul palpitates in its divine accents, its lyric enchantment. Therefore he bowed his genius to the exactions of rhyme and rhythm. And never had he to complain that he had so done, for not only did he attain the proposed political aim, but he won a brilliant literary glory, only surpassed by that of Mickiewicz.

Before closing this preface, one point remains to be glanced at, which would furnish material for a long development, a profound examination. The Anonymous Poet is ranked in Poland among her Catholic writers. It would be far more conformable with the truth to say that he possessed a religious soul, for, with regard to the doctrines revealed in his works, it is very evident that there are wide gaps to fill and important theses to be cut off, before it would be possible reasonably to include them in any defined limits of the dogmas of the Church. At all events, a commentary would be required to establish their exact meaning and bearing. But if the judgment of the public upon this point is erroneous, it is because that public is more logical than the author himself. Without following him into his theosophic ideas, obscure even for those accustomed to such studies, his readers became imbued with the moral side of his work, and seized upon its spirit,—a spirit which was soon to find its final form in Catholicity, to which the author definitely returned toward the close of his life.

This said, let the reader read and judge!