KRASIŃSKI, ZYGMUNT. - Polish poet, b. in Paris on 18 February 1812, d. there on 23 February 1859, he was one of the three greatest Romantics of his nation. His life was unhappy from his earliest youth, torn by the inner struggle between filial devotion and patriotic feeling: his father, a Napoleonic general who had entered the service of Russia, was a legitimist; Z., on the other hand, suffered deeply from all the misfortunes caused to Poland by tsarist oppression. Forced at the age of seventeen to leave Warsaw because of the hostility of his university companions, he went abroad, nor did his father permit him to return to his homeland when the insurrection of 1830 broke out.
What the renunciation of action cost the young man is expressed in a letter, in which he implores the mercy of Christ, who alone can understand him. Yet he did not rebel; he lived in exile in France, Germany and Italy. He married, by the inflexible will of his father, Isabella Branicka, while his heart was full of love for Delfina Potocka, and this saddened even more deeply his life, undermined as it was by fragile health. K.'s work, which he published under the pseudonym of «anonymous poet of Poland», reflects his tragic inner experiences in the conflict between his feelings as a Christian and as a Pole. At a time when hatreds and bloody struggles were seething along with national aspirations, and everywhere lofty ends contrasted with the brutal means that K. abhorred, he painfully sought his path, rising from the desolation of darkness to the light of faith and love. In Nieboska Komedja he describes with prophetic spirit the social struggles that were only just beginning to take shape; in Iridjon («Iridion») the Greek hater of Rome, who has conspired in vain to destroy its power, abandons his soul to the prince of darkness so that he may be granted to see it one day in ruin; when, after six centuries, he awakens, he understands that it is not hatred, but the love of the Christians of the catacombs who lived by prayer and martyrdom that has triumphed over that power which seemed invincible; through the intercession of a Christian virgin his soul too will be saved, and Iridion will be reborn in Poland. A light of hope for the world oppressed by sorrow shines in Przedświt («The Dawn»), a poem among the most perfect in Polish literature, in Trzy mylły H. Ligenzy («Three thoughts of E. Ligenza»), in the Psalmy przyszłości (« Psalms of the future »), and generally in his lyric poems. K.'s work is vast and also includes other youthful poems and novels. The Niedoholszowy poemat (« Unfinished Poem ») was published posthumously; and so were the Listy (« Letters »), of great beauty. K.'s writings, by turns dramatic, lyrical, symbolic, have a strong philosophical content inspired by the Hegelian Cieszkowski, who explained the history of humanity in a great commentary on the Pater.
Bibliography3 works
Marina Bersano Begey