The philosophy of the Polish anthem
The international history of the poem written in a Northern Italian city in 1797 was ultimately concluded in 1926 when Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginęła… (in a four-stanza version) was adopted by the Republic of Poland as its national anthem. In the meantime, the song – with its lyrics (as shown above) and melody (which made it into compositions by such composers as Ferenc Liszt, Richard Wagner, Edward Elgar and others) – had gone on a truly global journey.
And yet the mystery of its impact and ongoing influence begs for further explanation. What was so special about this Polish military song from the late 18th century that enabled it to reach global audiences and wield a truly enormous influence on other nations, concentrating the strivings of different groups and communities throughout the European continent and even beyond? Where did its force of attraction lie?
As shown by many scholars before, the Mazurka was written at a time of the greatest national misery and depression – when the dismantling of the Polish state by the partitioning powers loomed large and was seen as equivalent to the ultimate dismantling of the nation, the real death and doom of the Polish nation. Contrary to the zeitgeist and public opinion, the Mazurka offered a truly revolutionary idea, namely: the possibility of the existence of a nation without a state.
Effectively, nothing of the hopelessness and sense of despondency is present in the lyrics of the Mazurka. In fact, its author posits something quite contrary: a truly adamant hope, optimism and confidence in one’s own powers in the face of a seemingly hopeless situation. As Maria Janion put it,
It is thanks to the Mazurka, and Polish romanticism, that our modern history starts not with despair, but hope; not with a sense of ending and collapse, but with a call for bravery and victory. These aspects were then picked up by the posthumous sons of independent Poland: soldiers, conspirators, insurgents.
What’s more, in the face of a seemingly overwhelming and fatal position, the lyrics of the Mazurka posit a powerful active subject, one which has agency and force – namely, the People – that is, a ‘We’ which the Polish poem so emphatically constructs. As Maria Janion argued, this sense of ‘We’, present so powerfully also in other Polish patriotic songs of the period, "allows for the collective subject to recognise itself; and for its audience and ‘performers’ (in the broad sense of the word), it allows them with every new enactment to attain a sense of complete identification with it".
This identification with the homeland – inherently present in the Mazurka – the idea of ‘interiorising it to such an extent that it lives within us’ – was a truly revolutionary idea. It claimed that even the external annihilation of the state was not able to erase its inner existence in people’s hearts. Janion argues:
This feature constituted the style of modern Polish patriotism, a style of emotional identification with the motherland, a style of spiritual existence of the nation […]; as the preserving of the homeland in the spirit of living people was the only way to save it.
As the scholar concludes, the merit of Romanticism in sustaining and consolidating the spiritual existence of the nation, and thus salvaging it, was decisive:
[Polish] Romanticism responded to the challenge of subjugation with a constant pursuit of freedom, which manifested itself instantaneously in Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginęła with a hard and simple call: ‘Enough of this slavery!’ – ever since then it will constantly accompany the 19th-century uprisings.
This philosophy of political action – active participation in history – shaped the Polish path to independence and freedom. In many ways, it still defines the Polish approach to political and moral values.
The myriad of contrapuntal transformations of the Mazurka motif in the Fugue and Coda (1831) by Polish composer Karol Kurpiński (1785-1857) can be an apt metaphor of the myriad metamorphoses of the “Not yet Perished…” theme in European culture: