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Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic by Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

T >> Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson >> Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic




In dividing the early part of the history of the Polish literature
into two periods, we follow the example and authority of Bentkowski;
although it seems to be singular to pretend to give an account of a
literature which did not yet exist. The history of the Polish
literature does not indeed properly begin before the close of the
second period; yet that of the _literary cultivation_ of the nation
commences with the beginning of that period; and a few slight traces
of it are to be found even in the middle of the first. Of the language
itself, nothing is left but the names of places and persons, and some
Polish words scattered through the Latin documents of the time,
written without orthographic rules, and therefore often hardly
intelligible. There exists an ancient Polish war-song, the author of
which is said to have been St. Adalbert, a Bohemian by birth, who was
bishop of Prague at the end of the tenth century;[11] but even
according to Rakowiecki, a philologist who is more disposed than any
other to find traces of an _early_ cultivation of the Slavic nations,
and especially of the Poles, this song, or rather hymn, is, in its
present form, not older than the fourteenth century. All that is
extant from this period is written in Latin. Besides some unimportant
documents and an anonymous biography of Adalbert, there remain several
historical works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Martin Gallus, a Frenchman, who lived in Poland between 1110 and 1135,
is considered as the oldest Polish historian. Other chronicles of
Poland were written by the bishops of Cracow, Matthew Cholewa, and
Vincent, son of Kadlubec, who died in 1223; by Bogufal, bishop of
Posen, some twenty years later; and by Godzislav Baszko, about thirty
years later still. Strzembski wrote towards the middle of the
thirteenth century a history of the popes and Roman emperors. In 1008
duke Boleslav, the son of Miecislav, invited Benedictine monks to
Poland, who founded convents at Sieciechov and Lysagora, with schools
attached to them. This example was followed at a later period by other
orders: and in Poland, longer than in any other country, education was
entirely in the hands of the ecclesiastics. For several hundred years
the natives were excluded from all clerical dignities and privileges,
and the numerous monasteries were filled only with foreign monks. Even
as late as the fifteenth century, foreigners had decidedly the
preference. In the year 1237 Pelka, archbishop of Gnesen, directed the
institution of schools by the priests; but added the recommendation
to the bishops, that they should employ as teachers only Germans who
understood Polish. In A.D. 1285 at the synod of Leczyc, they went a
step further in excluding all foreigners, who were ignorant of the
Polish language, from the places of ecclesiastical teachers and
instructors. But more than eighty years later, it was found necessary
at the synod of Kalish in 1357 to repeat the same decree; and even a
century after this time, in A.D. 1460, John Ostrorog complained that
all the rich convents were occupied by foreign monks.[12] These
ignorant men were wont to throw into the fire the few writings in the
barbarian language, which they could discover; and, as instructors of
the youth, were able to fill the heads of the young nobility with the
most unnatural prejudices against the vernacular tongue of their own
country. Besides the clergy, many other foreigners also settled in
Poland, as mechanics and traders, especially Germans. But as they all
lived merely in the cities of Poland, they and their language had far
less influence on the people, than was the case in Bohemia, where they
mingled with all classes.


SECOND PERIOD.

_From Casimir the Great to Sigismund I. A.D. 1333 to A.D. 1506._

Casimir is one of the few princes, who acquired the name of the Great
not by victories and conquests, but through the real benefits of laws,
national courts of justice, and means of education, which he procured
for his subjects. His father, Vladislaus Lokietek, had resumed the
royal title, which hitherto had been alternately taken and dropped;
and was the first who permanently united Great and Little Poland.
Under Casimir, the present Austrian kingdom of Galicia, which,
together with Lodomeria, the present Russian government Vladimir, was
then called Red Russia, was added by inheritance. Lithuania became
connected with Poland as a Polish fief in the year 1386. when queen
Hedevig, heiress of the crown of Poland, married Jagello, duke of
Lithuania; but was first completely incorporated as a component part
of the kingdom of Poland only so late as the year 1569. Masovia had
been thus united some forty years earlier. At the time of the marriage
of Hedevig and Jagello, the latter caused himself to be baptized, and
introduced Christianity into Lithuania, where he himself in many cases
acted as an apostle.

As to the influence of Casimir the Great upon the literary cultivation
of his subjects, it was more mediate than immediate. Whilst his
cotemporary and neighbour, Charles IV of Bohemia, loved and patronized
the language of that kindred nation. Casimir paid no attention
whatever to the vernacular tongue of his country; nor was any thing
done under his administration for the development of that rich
dialect. This king indeed, as early as A.D. 1347, laid the foundation
of the high school of Cracow; but the regular organization and
influence of this institution dates only from half a century
later.[13] But by introducing a better order of things, by providing
his subjects with their earliest code of laws, by instituting the
first constitutional diets, by fortifying the cities and protecting
the tillers of the soil against a wild and oppressive nobility, he
established a better tone of moral feeling throughout the nation. A
seed, sown in such ground, necessarily springs up slowly, but surely.

With Casimir the race of the Pjasts expired. His nephew, Louis of
Hungary, a prince of the house of Anjou, was elected king; but his
reign was spent in constant war, and left no trace of care for the
internal cultivation of the country. The limitation of the power of
the sovereign, and the exorbitant privileges of the Polish nobility,
date from the reign of this prince; he resided mostly in Hungary, and
granted to the Poles all their demands, in order to prevent the
alienation of their crown from his house. After his death his second
daughter, Hedevig, was preferred to the emperor Sigismund, who was
married to the eldest, Mary; because this prince refused to subscribe
the conditions demanded by the Polish Estates. Hedevig married Jagello
of Lithuania; and under their descendants the Jagellons, who reigned
nearly two centuries, Poland rose to the summit of its power and
glory. With Siegmund I, the grandson of Jagello, but the fifth king
after him, a new period of the Polish literature begins.

The history of the Polish language, as we have already said, properly
commences only with the close, or at the utmost with the middle of the
present period, when in the year 1488 the first printing office was
erected at Cracow. Of the more ancient times, with a few exceptions,
only weak and scattered traces are left. There was said to have
existed a Polish translation of the Bible, made by order of queen
Hedevig before the year 1390; but no copy had ever been seen; and
there was reason to doubt whether it ever existed. There was extant
however, an old manuscript of a Psalter, which the antiquarian Thadd.
Czacki took to be a fragment of it; and other ancient manuscripts of
portions of a Psalter were found at Saros Patak in Hungary, and seemed
to belong to it. But no one of these codices bore any incontestable
mark of its age. The Psalter of St. Florian, a convent near Linz in
Austria, discovered in 1826 by the librarian Chmel, proved at last to
be in reality the lost treasure. This important document, the origin
of which could be philologically and historically traced back to the
fourteenth century, after having given occasion to a passionate
conflict in the Slavic literary world, was finally published by
Kopitar in a complete and erudite edition, as the most ancient
monument of the Polish language.[14]

All other Polish manuscripts of those times are fragments; documents
relating to suits of law, translations of statutes issued in Latin,
the ten commandments in verse, a translation of one of Wickliffe's
hymns, etc.

The orthography of the language, and especially the adoption of the
Latin alphabet, seems to have troubled the few writers of this period
exceedingly. They appear to have founded their principles alternately
on the Latin, the Bohemian, and the German methods of combining
letters; an inconsistency, which adds greatly to the difficulties of
modern Slavic etymology.[15] In 1828 a remarkable manuscript was
published under the title, _Pamientniki Janozara_, or Memoirs of a
Janissary. It was the journal of a Polish nobleman, who had been
induced by circumstances to enter the Turkish army during the siege
and conquest of Constantinople, an event which took place A.D. 1453.
This interesting document of a language, that is so remarkably poor in
ancient monuments, was no longer intelligible to the common Polish
reader. It was necessary to add a version in modern Polish in order to
make it understood.

Annalists of Polish history, who wrote in Latin, were not wanting in
this period. Sig. Rositzius, Dzierzva,[16] and more especially John
Dlugosz, bishop of Lemberg, wrote histories and chronicles of
Poland; and the work of the latter is still considered as highly
valuable.


THIRD PERIOD.

_From Sigismund I, to the establishment of the schools of the Jesuits
in Cracow. A.D._. 1505 _to A.D_. 1622.


In northern climates, the bright and glowing days of summer follow in
almost immediate succession a long and gloomy winter, without allowing
to the attentive mind of the lover of nature the enjoyment of
observing, during a transient interval of spring, the gradual
development of the beauty of the earth. Thus the flowers of Polish
literature burst out from their buds with a rapidity unequalled in
literary history, and were ripened into fruit with the same prodigious
celerity.

The university of Cracow had been reinstituted under Jagello in A.D.
1400, and organized after the model of that of Prague. Although the
most flourishing period of this institution was the sixteenth century,
yet it presented during the fifteenth to the Polish nobility a good
opportunity of studying the classics; and it is doubtless through this
preparatory familiarity with the ancient writers, that the phenomenon
to which we have alluded must be principally accounted for. It was
moreover now the epoch, when the genius of Christian Europe made the
most decided efforts to shake off the chains which had fettered the
freedom of thought. The doctrines of the German Reformers, although
the number of their professed disciples was in proportion smaller than
in Bohemia, had nevertheless a decided influence upon the general
direction of the public mind. The wild flame of false religious zeal,
which in Poland also under the sons and immediate successors of
Jagello, had kindled the faggots in which the disciples of the new
doctrines were called to seal the truth of their conviction with their
blood, was extinguished before the milder wisdom of Sigismund I;
although the early part of his reign was not free from religious
persecution. The activity of the inquisition was restrained. But the
new doctrines found a more decided support in Sigismund Augustus.
Poland became, under his administration, the seat of a toleration then
unequalled in the world. Communities of the most different religious
principles formed themselves, at first under the indulgence of the
king and the government, and finally under the protection of the law.
Even the boldest theological skeptics of the age, the two Socini,
found in Poland an asylum.[17]

The Bohemian language, which already possessed so extensive a
literature, acquired during this period a great influence upon the
Polish. The number of clerical writers, however, which in Bohemia was
so great, was comparatively only small in Poland. Indeed it is worthy
of remark, that while in other countries the diffusion of information
and general illumination proceeded from the clergy, not indeed as a
body, but from individuals among the clergy, in Poland it was always
the highest nobility who were at the head of literary enterprises or
institutions for mental cultivation. There are many princely names
among the writers of this period; and there are still so among those
of the present day. This may however be one of the causes, why
education in Poland was entirely confined to the higher classes;
while, even during this brilliant period, the peasantry remained in
the lowest state of degradation, and _nothing_ was done to elevate
their minds or to better their condition. For it is to the clergy,
that the common people have always to look as their natural and
bounden teachers; it is to the clergy, that a low state of cultivation
among the poorer classes is the most dishonourable. During this
period, however, the opportunity was presented to the people of
becoming better acquainted with the Scriptures, through several
translations of them into the Polish language, not only by the
different Protestant denominations, but also by the Romanists
themselves. Indeed, with the exceptions above mentioned, all the
translations of the Bible extant in the Polish language are from the
sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century.[18]

We meet also, among the productions of the literature of this period,
a few catechisms and postillac, written expressly for the instruction
of the common people by some eminent Lutheran and reformed Polish
ministers. But the want of means for acquiring even the most
elementary information, was so great, that only a very few among the
lower classes were able to read them. The doctrines of the Reformers,
which every where else were favoured principally by the middle and
lower classes, in Poland found their chief support among the nobility.
Comparatively few of the people adhered to them. There was a time,
between 1550 and 1650, when half the senate,[19] and even more than
half of the nobility, consisted of Lutherans and Calvinists. In the
year 1570, these two denominations, together with the Bohemian
Brethren, formed a union of their churches by the treaty of Sendomir
for external or political purposes. In 1573, by another treaty known
under the name of _pax dissidentium_, they were acknowledged by the
state and the king, and all the rights of the Catholics were granted
to the members of these three denominations, and also to the Greeks
and Armenians. The want, however, of an accurate determination of
their mutual relation to each other, occasioned repeatedly in the
course of the following century bloody dissensions. The Protestants
succeeded, nevertheless, in maintaining their rights, until the years
1717 and 1718, when their number having gradually yet considerably
diminished, they were deprived of their suffrages in the diet. Their
adversaries went still further; and, after struggling against
oppression of all sorts, the dissidents had at length, in 1736, to be
contented with being acknowledged as _tolerated sects_. After the
accession of Stanislaus Poniatowsky to the throne in 1766, the
dissidents attempted to regain their former rights. In this they were
supported by several Protestant powers; but more especially by Russia,
who thus improved the opportunity of increasing its influence in
Polish affairs. In consequence of this powerful support, the laws
directed against the dissidents were repealed; and in 1775 all their
old privileges were restored to them, except the right of being
eligible to the stations of ministers of state and senators. In more
recent times the Protestants have been admitted to all the rights of
the Catholics; although the Roman Catholic is still the predominant
religion of the kingdom of Poland.

We have permitted ourselves this digression, and anticipation of time;
although we shall have an opportunity of again returning to this
subject. The influence of Protestantism on the literature of Poland
cannot be denied; although its doctrines and their immediate
consequence, the private examination and interpretation of the
Scriptures, have occupied the minds and pens of the Poles less than
those of any other nation among whom they have been received. We now
return to the sixteenth century.

The Polish language acquired during this period such a degree of
refinement, that even on the revival of literature and taste in
modern times, it was necessary to add nothing for its improvement;
although the course of time naturally had occasioned some changes.
Several able men occupied themselves with its systematic culture by
means of grammars and dictionaries. Zaborowski, Statorius, and
Januscowski wrote grammars; Macynski compiled the first dictionary.
The first part of Knapski's _Thesaurus_, an esteemed work even at the
present day, was first published in 1621, and may therefore be
considered as a production of this period. But the practical use,
which so many gifted writers made of the language for a variety of
subjects, contributed still more to its cultivation. The point in
which it acquired less perfection, and which appeared the most
difficult to subject to fixed rules, was that of orthography. That
the Latin alphabet is not fully adapted to express Slavic sounds, is
evident in the Polish language. Indeed the reputed harshness of this
language rests partly on the manner in which they were obliged to
combine several consonants, which to the eye of the occidental
European can only be united by intermediate vowels. On the other
hand, it is just this system of letters which forms a connecting link
between the Polish language and those of western Europe; and although
most Slavic philologists regret that the Latin alphabet ever should
have been adopted for any Slavic language in preference to the
Cyrillic, yet Grimm (with whom we fully agree) thinks that "the
adoption of the former, with appropriate additions corresponding to
the peculiar sounds of each language and dialect, would have been
beneficial to all European languages."[20]

Although the art of printing was introduced into Poland as early as
1488, when the first printing office was established at Cracow, yet
printed books first became generally diffused between the years 1530
and 1540. The first work printed in Poland was a calendar for the year
1490; the first book printed in the Polish language was Bonaventura's
life of Jesus, translated for the queen of Hungary, and published in
1522. In the second half of the sixteenth century nearly every city,
which had a considerable school, had also its printing office.[21] The
schools were unfortunately confined to the cities; nothing was done
for the peasantry, who have remained even to the most recent times in
a state of physical and moral degradation, with which that of the
common people of no other country except Russia can be compared. A
peasant who could read or write, would have been considered as a
prodigy. So much the more, however, was done for the national
education of the nobility. In the year 1579 the university of Wilna
was instituted; in 1594, another university was created at Zamosc in
Little Poland, by a private nobleman, the great chancellor Zamoyski;
which however survived only a few years, and perished in the beginning
of the seventeenth century.[22] Numerous other schools of a less
elevated character were founded at Thorn, Dantzic, Lissa, etc. most of
them for Protestants.

So early as under Casimir, the son of Jagello, the Polish language
began to be employed as the language of the court. Under his grandson
Sigismund Augustus, the public laws and decrees were promulgated in
the vernacular tongue of the country. But a language which thus issued
from the court, was necessarily also dependent on the changes of the
court. The influence of the French prince, Henry of Valois, successor
of Sigismund Augustus, could not be considerable, as he occupied the
throne only two months. But Stephen Bathory, prince of Transylvania,
the brother-in-law of Sigismund Augustus, who was elected after Henry
of Valois had deserted the country, was as a foreigner in the habit of
interspersing his conversation and writings with Latin words, when the
proper Polish words, of which language he had only an imperfect
knowledge, did not occur to him. It is hardly credible that such a
habit, or rather the imitation of it among his courtiers, could have
had any influence on a language already so well established and
cultivated, as the Polish idiom was at the close of the sixteenth
century. The Polish literary historians, however, ascribe to Bathory's
influence the fashion, which began at this time to prevail, of
debasing the purity of the Polish language by an intermixture of Latin
words and phrases.[23]

Although the Polish literature acquired during this period a kind of
universality, and there were few departments of science, familiar to
that age, which were not to some extent cultivated in it, yet it owes
its principal lustre to the contributions made in it to history,
poetry and rhetoric. The didactic style did not reach the perfection
of the historical; nor did Polish literature acquire any wide domain
in purely scientific productions. In accordance with the national
tendency, the mass of distinguished talents was devoted to those
interests, which yield an immediate profit in life, or which are
themselves rather the results of empirical knowledge, than of abstract
contemplation, viz. to politics, to eloquence, and to poetry, in so
far as this latter is considered not as a creative power, but as the
most appropriate means for expressing and describing the emotions,
passions, and actions of man. There have however always been not a few
gifted Poles, who have cultivated the field of science for its own
sake, without reference to the practical importance of their labours;
and there are more especially at the present time many distinguished
names among the Polish mathematicians, natural philosophers, and
chemists. In Copernicus himself, born indeed of parents of German
extraction, and in a city (Thorn) mostly inhabited by German
colonists, but also born a Polish subject and educated in a Polish
university, Poland and Germany seem to have equal rights.[24]

The principal reason why didactic prose did not acquire the same
degree of cultivation as the historical style, is, that all
scientific works during this period, which was that of the formation
of the language, were written by preference in Latin. Indeed, the
authority of the classical languages did not suffer at all from the
rising of the national literature. It is on the contrary a remarkable
fact, that the cultivation of the vernacular tongue of the country,
and the study of the Latin language in Poland, have ever proceeded
with equal steps. The most eminent writers and orators of this period,
who employed the Polish language, managed also the Latin with the
greatest skill and dexterity. Even for common conversation, Latin and
Polish were used alternately. Sigismund I, when separated from his
first queen, Barbara Zapolska, maintained with her a correspondence in
Latin; his second queen, Bona Sforza, used to employ that language in
their most familiar intercourse.[25] Choisnin, in his Memoirs of the
election of Henry of Valois, observes, that among a hundred Polish
noblemen, there were hardly to be found two, who did not understand
Latin, German, and Italian; and Martin Kromer goes so far as to state,
that perhaps in Latium itself fewer persons had spoken Latin fluently
than in Poland.[26] The reputation of the Latin poet Casimir
Sarbiewski, in Latin Sarbievus, spread through all Europe. Most Polish
poets were equally successful both in Polish and Latin verse. As the
former language first developed itself in poetry, we therefore, in our
enumeration of the principal writers of this time, begin with the
poets.

Here the influence of the classics, and, above all, that of the
Italian literature, is very distinctly perceived. Rey of Naglowic, ob.
1569, is called the father of Polish poetry. Most of his productions
are of the religious kind, chiefly in verse, but also orations and
postillae. His chief work was a translation of the Psalms.[27]

His principal followers were the Kochanowskis, a name of threefold
lustre. John Kochanowski, ob. 1584, by far the most distinguished of
them, published likewise a translation of David's Psalms, which is
still considered as a classical work; in his other poems, Pindar,
Anacreon, and Horace, were alternately his models, without diminishing
the original value of his pieces.[28] Adam Mickiewicz compares him, in
respect to the brevity, conciseness, and terseness of his expression,
with the last named Roman poet; in reference to his treatment of the
classic elements, to Goethe. His brother Andrew translated Virgil's
AEneid; his nephew Peter, with more talent and success, the great epics
of Tasso and Ariosto.

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