Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic

5. Crisis and Rebirth (1831–1832)

chapter five m crisis and rebirth (1831–1832) M ickiewicz left Rome on 19 April 1831 in the company of Sobolevskii, a Russian prince, his Polish wife, their son, their painter, and another Russian. He was “sad” to leave a city that he had come to “love like a second fatherland.” The poet’s immediate destination was Geneva; but beyond that, he was still uncertain. On the eve of his departure, Mickiewicz had said good-bye to Henrietta with a gift of Byron, in which he underlined the poem “Farewell! If Ever Fondest Prayer”: My soul nor deigns nor dares complain Though Grief and Passion there rebel: I only know we loved in vain— I only feel—Farewell!—Farewell! He also went to confession. On emerging, the poet was apparently so moved that he left Rome with a vague “desire to enter the priesthood.”1 1 The Italian countryside must have been tranquil by now, and Mickiewicz and company were certainly in no hurry. This was not a man rushing off to join his embattled brethren, but rather a tourist revisiting favorite places—the ravines around Civita Castellane, the waterfall in Terni, the unfinished Raphael in Folignio, Lake Trasimeno. The journey was punctuated by arguments (usually between Russian husband and Polish wife) about the sense and odds of the uprising; Mickiewicz, for his part, continued to insist on the unsoundness of the former and the slimness of the latter. 160 adam mickiewicz After spending a full three days in Florence, Mickiewicz and Sobolevskii continued on alone to Bologna, where Sobolevskii “found paradise or, at least, one of its houris, in the person of a Miss della Antoni.” Whether his Polish friend, too, found his bit of paradise there, Sobolevskii does not say. On 3 May, some three weeks after having left Rome, the two friends parted in Fiorenzuola, Sobolevskii heading for London and Mickiewicz to Geneva via Turin. That same day in Warsaw, at an assembly marking Polish Constitution Day, the Society of Friends of Learning, the most prestigious scholarly institution in the Congress Kingdom and repository of Poland’s Enlightenment values, chose Mickiewicz as a member. His symbolic presence in an embattled Warsaw made his physical absence all the more salient.2 The Khliustins were still in Geneva. So too was Krasiński, who, having chosen obedience to his loyalist father over his desire to join the uprising, was undergoing his own crisis of conscience. Mickiewicz spent about a week in the Swiss city, making travel arrangements but also tarrying—he was still “undecided.” At one point, while still in Rome, he had planned on going north through Bavaria. His plans changed, it seems, upon hearing that a ship “with a heavy load” (i.e., arms) intended for the insurgents in Lithuania was to set sail for Palanga from London. On 21 May, the poet headed for Paris, with the idea of continuing on from there to England and then, perhaps, to Lithuania.3 2 It was already June—again, a rather leisurely pace—when Mickiewicz arrived in Paris, his first visit to the city where he would eventually settle for the remainder of his life. The capital of France had become an arena for Polish irredentist activity since even before the July Revolution and the November Uprising. The uprising, however, imbued the hopes of the small group of émigrés there with a sense of tangible purpose. Paris was now the node for diplomatic efforts on the part of the Polish insurgent government as well as for propaganda and fundraising on its behalf. Directing these activities was the Polish Legation , headed by Mickiewicz’s acquaintance from Dresden, General Kniaziewicz, which exploited the network already established by, among others, Leonard Chodźko. The poet did not need any letters of introduction. But what, exactly, he hoped to accomplish in Paris remained unclear. As he informed Krasiński at the end of June, “he was still undecided” about the trip to London. For the moment, though, there was enough in the city to distract him. David (still at work on a bust of his Polish friend) took him to meet Charles Nodier, now head librarian of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, where he regularly hosted Victor Hugo, Charles Sainte-Beuve, and Alfred de Vigny, the nucleus of the French romantic movement. Chodźko, for his part, introduced Mickiewicz to the circle around L’Avenir—Alphonse d’Herbelot; Charles de Montalembert, one of Lamennais’s closest collaborators and...