Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic

10. Scission (1846–1848)

chapter ten m scission (1846–1848) M ickiewicz arrived in Paris on 10 April 1846. Four days later—it happened to be the Tuesday after Easter, the fifth since the foundation of the Circle of God’s Cause—Sister Alix Mollard called a meeting of the brethren, during which Brother Adam was to make some sort of restitution. For whatever reason, Sister Alix was not satisfied. She accused the poet of having “introduced Satan into the Circle.” Anyone, she threatened, unwilling to “recognize the Sisters surrounding the Master as Holy” would be “crushed.” Mickiewicz responded by announcing that he was breaking with the Circle.1 “Just like a plant, gathering new strength as it emerges,” Mickiewicz had begun the process of shedding the “old bark.”2 1 Unlike Słowacki or Kamieński, Mickiewicz was not leaving the Circle an isolated dissident , nor, for that matter, did the rupture in any way constitute a rejection of Towiański’s teachings or of the Cause as such. His gesture had the unequivocal support of some twenty brethren—the brothers Chodźko, Aleksander and Michał, Eustachy Januszkiewicz (but not Romuald), Wrotnowski, Zan, among others, and, for the Oedipal touch, Różycki’s own son—who too had had their fill of “matriarchy,” of the “hounding,” “spying and denunciations” with which Sister Gutt and her minions had been “oppressing” the Circle since at least the pandemonium of 1844. Like Mickiewicz, they felt that what had once been a comity marked by “rapture, strength, love, and freedom” had been perverted into “some sort of un-Christian environment”; they too saw themselves “miserably idling away to everyone’s indignation.” And as much as they continued to insist, by any account scission (1846–1848) 357 sincerely, on their abiding faith in Towiański’s teachings, by walking out together with Mickiewicz they also demonstrated that their insistence was, in their eyes, a function of loyalty to the Master’s only true disciple. It was, after all, Brother Adam who had “forti- fied” their faith in Towiański’s mission, “when, on the contrary, all other administrators had...led [them] into temptation in his name.”3 Asthediscontentedbrethrenpouredouttheirgrievancesonpaper,addresseddirectly— and, for greater effect, sent as a single packet—to the Master, Mickiewicz himself chose silence. The words of those who had suffered most at the hands of the Administration were salient enough to at once explain and justify his decision to break with the Circle; in any case, they served only to corroborate what he had told the Master in person during their last encounter. His gesture that April evening could speak for itself. But if his decision was designed to elicit at the very least a moment of self-reflection on the part of those as culpable as he in distorting the work of the Circle, it fell on ears deaf with the indignation of blind belief. Over the next several months “a terrible storm of evil” convulsed the Circle, with no one certain how it would end.4 Unaccountably, Brother Commander Różycki remained in Switzerland, either unwilling or unable to intervene. It was thus left to Sister Mollard and Brother Goszczyński to deal with the crisis. Immediately, however, their predicament was complicated by Brother Pilchowski’s decision to finally “hand himself over to the Russian government...‘in the spirit of God’s Cause, so as to serve the Polish nation.’” Animosities were briefly put on hold as Mickiewicz, still the public face of Towianism in Paris, published a condemnation of the embarrassing apostasy, which had, in any case, been long in the making (and to which he himself had contributed). This notwithstanding, it soon enough became clear to everyone that, despite half-hearted efforts at reconciliation on the part of both factions (a third emerged as well), the rift between those loyal to Mickiewicz and those who out of personal animosity or fear or genuine conviction chose the security of the familiar would not be healed.5 As for Towiański, isolated in his Swiss hideaway, it took some time for him to grasp the extent to which “evil had afflicted [his] community,” and even then he remained in denial. It was only after receiving the packet of letters from the dissenters in late May, registering their dissatisfaction with the state of the Circle and at the same time defending Mickiewicz, that the Master took steps to salvage the integrity of his mission in Paris...