Page:Undivine Comedy - Zygmunt Krasiński, tr. Martha Walker Cook.djvu/47



[In this very remarkable work, by Adam Mickiewicz, written in French, and which, by some strange oversight, has not yet appeared in English, no less than four lectures are devoted to a criticism upon "The Undivine (or Infernal) Comedy." The Essay of Julian Klaczko has been found so long and exhaustive, that it is the intention of the Translator to give but a few condensed extracts from the analysis of Mickiewicz. The whole course of Lectures is recommended to the reader, as full of information not elsewhere to be found; and, although in the latter portion somewhat blemished by the elaboration of certain futile theories, containing a mine of brilliant, deep, and highly original thoughts.—.]

The word "Undivine" is used in preference to "Infernal" (the term employed in the French translation) as better expressing the relation of the drama to the "Divine Comedy" of Dante. The word is so appropriate that its coinage may be pardoned.—.

It is my intention now to place before you the analysis of a very remarkable work which appeared in 1834, entitled "The Undivine or Infernal Comedy."

I will not call this work a fantastic Drama, although it is now customary to give this name to all compositions in which the characters and scenes are not immediately derived from the world of prosaic reality. Utility and Reality are indeed the boast of our century; but what can be more variable, more contingent, than what we choose to call solid reality,—that visible and material world which is ever on the wing, which is always yet to be, and which has no Present? It is through the soul alone that we are able to seize the connections and 41