1. Key Dates:

1795 Third and Final Partition of Poland-Lithuania between Russia, Prussia and Austria

(earlier partitions: 1772-73; 1793)

1798 Establishment of Polish Legion in Italy under French command.

1806 Napoleon defeats Austria and Prussia, negotiates with Russia to set up

1807 (-1813) Duchy of Warsaw

1812 Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Moscow brings Russia into Central/Western Europe

1814-15 CONGRESS OF VIENNA establishes

1816 KINGDOM OF POLAND. Semi-independent state under the Russian Tsar, who is crowned King of Poland, on swearing oath to observe Polish constitution.

1830 NOVEMBER UPRISING against Russian rule ended by overwhelming Russian military force in September 1831. Crackdown on Poles, esp. nobility, involved in insurrection.

1831-32 GREAT EMIGRATION. Polish cultural and intellectual elites move abroad, chiefly to Paris. Crackdown on Poles in other partitions, which is lifted in Prussian Poland during the decade

1840-1850 Increasing significance of ORGANIC WORK

1848 SPRING OF NATIONS sees uprisings against the old order created at Congress of Vienna. Poles involved in Hungarian revolt against Austrian rule. Mickiewicz tries to raise a Legion in Rome.

1853-56 CRIMEAN WAR ends in Russian defeat and reforms in Russia, including liberalisation of regime in Poland and

1861 Emancipation of the peasantry.

1863 JANUARY UPRISING fought as guerilla war until terminated in summer 1864. More severe Russian crackdown than after 1831 brings to an end the Kingdom’s separate status in Russian Empire. Intensive Russification follows, especially in last two decades of 19^th century.

1866 Austrian defeat in short war against Prussia leads to

1867 AUSGLEICH, creation of a dual monarchy: Austro-Hungary, with greater freedoms for Hungarians as well as Poles. The Austrian partition subsequently proves most liberal area for Polish activity up to WWI.

1871 Foundation of GERMAN EMPIRE under Prussian rule, following Prussian defeat of France in 1870-71 War. Poles represented in imperial parliament. However, Chancellor Bismarck initiates KULTURKAMPF, against Catholic Germans in south, but particularly the Poles. Results in Germanization, colonization of Polish territories by German farmers, restrictions on teaching in Polish.

1904-5 FIRST REVOLUTION produces constitutional reforms in Russian Empire, including

1906 First Russian DUMA, or parliament, with Polish representation.

1914-18 WORLD WAR I, which ultimately destroys Russian, Prussian and Austrian empires and thus liberates Poles, who set up an independent Poland in November 1918.

3. Romanticism in Polish Culture, 1818-1864

1. When the debates first begin (Kazimierz Brodziński, On Classicism and Romanticism, 1818; Jan Śniadecki, On Classical and Romantic Writings, 1819), there is no such thing as Romanticism in Poland. Theoreticians argue principally on the basis of its manifestations elsewhere in Europe, and the initial literary model (e.g. Brodziński’s own Wiesław, 1820) is rather that of Sentimentalism, a softening of the doctrinaire Neo-Classicism which prevailed in Polish literature.
2. Adam Mickiewicz’s first volume of poetry, Ballads and Romances (1822), launches Romanticism, with its characteristic concerns of native folk culture, the other-worldly (to which the poet, as seer or ‘wieszcz’ has special access), simplification of language or rather, moving it closer to natural speech. In this respect, Polish Romanticism is close to the European models. This is borne out by Mickiewicz’s own later publications, the Scott-like historical poetic tales, Grażyna (1823) and Konrad Wallenrod (St Petersburg, 1828), as well as Antoni Malczewski’s Maria (1826), an example of the so-called Ukrainian School in Polish Romanticism. Mickiewicz’s cycle, Crimean Sonnets (1826), written during his exile in Russia, strikes a further blow against Neo-Classicism, with their positive introduction of foreign words and the exotic world of the East into Polish literature. Essentially, in Romanticism, the literary periphery (Lithuania/Ukraine) defines the centre (Warsaw).
3. Romanticism develops away from European models (e.g. the especially popular Byronic opposition to contemporary society undergoing industrialization) because of Polish oppression under the partitioning powers. Polish Romantics take on the fundamentally Classicist idea of literature serving society, but will later give it a further twist. The dichotomy – poet versus society – is replaced by that of poet - spokesman for his society against the foreign oppressor. In this respect, the Romantics, and supremely Mickiewicz, set the trend for the rest of the century: literature has as its loftiest vocation and primary task, the representation of the Polish cause to the rest of the world. Literature serves therefore as a surrogate political forum, inter alia. Konrad Wallenrod is taken as a political manifesto, advising Poles on appropriate action in a situation where they do not have their own state.
4. In exile, after the collapse of the 1830 Uprising, Romanticism, under Mickiewicz (Books of the Polish Pilgrimage and Nation, 1832), develops a philosophy of consolation. Romantic poets promote an apocalyptic MESSIANISM, the notion of Poland as the ‘Christ of Nations’, doomed to suffer because of political injustice in Europe. Consequently, they strive to introduce morality into political life. This philosophy becomes increasingly mystical and abstruse under the influence of the mystic Andrzej Towiański (1799-1878), whom Mickiewicz encounters in Paris for the first time in 1842.
5. Ultimately, however, Romanticism develops a philosophy of ACTION, again exemplified by Mickiewicz, who tries on a number of occasions to organize armed units to fight in Poland against the Russians (1848-49 and 1855, in Constantinople). The WORD (SŁOWO) has to be realized in the DEED (CZYN), thus ruling out political quietism. This sanctions the adoption of violent resistance (OPÓR) to foreign oppression, a stance that culminates in the second, ultimately calamitous uprising of January 1863. Thereafter, the stance of political and literary REALISM comes to dominate, whose representatives argue that 50 years of Romanticism have engendered utterly irresponsible attitudes in Polish society and have contributed in fact to a worsening of the Poles’ situation under partition. Accordingly, a strategy of working towards gradual, legal change is advocated, promoting a stance of CONCILIATION (UGODA).

1. Select Bibliography

Eile, S Literature and Nationalism in Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918. (London, 2000).