Traces of Romanticism in Polish Culture Today
The era of Romanticism ended over 150 years ago, yet traces of Romantic culture continue to influence Poland today. From scaling mountains and fighting monsters to reinterpreting classic texts as hip-hop hits, we explore some of the ways Romanticism endures in contemporary Polish culture.
It is not shocking that the big names of Polish Romanticism are still remembered today. In an era when Poland had been wiped from the map of Europe by a series of partitions, figures like Adam Mickiewicz, Fryderyk Chopin, and Juliusz Słowacki played an important role in preserving the spirit of Poland in their art and providing a vision for the future. What is perhaps surprising is the degree to which their work and ideals have continued to shape elements of Polish culture across generations. Not confined to dusty libraries and museums, traces of Polish Romanticism can be found across Polish culture today as it continues to inform the nation it once helped preserve.
Always seeking new heights
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Morskie Oko, photo: Grzegorz Momot / PAP
Romantic poets loved the mountains. A few climbed them; many wrote about them. The English Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley famously reflected on the power of the mountain and the human mind in his 1816 ode Mont Blanc. A decade later, Adam Mickiewicz wrote his own mountain-inspired verse in The Crimean Sonnets. This series of 18 sonnets recounts the poet’s travels through Crimea and features several passages on the majesty of mountains. In the poem Tschatir Dagh (The Pilgrim), Mickiewicz considers the experience of looking out over the world:
Below me half a world I see outspread;
Above, blue heaven; around, peaks of snow;
And yet the happy pulse of life is slow,
I dream of distant places, pleasures dead.
From ‘Sonnets from the Crimea’ by Adam Mickiewicz, trans. Edna Worthley Underwood
In The Crimean Sonnets, as in so much Romantic verse about the mountains, scaling new heights is both a physical and philosophical journey. The mountaineer’s ascent thus becomes a parallel to the poet’s artistic striving for inspiration and transcendence. Though not all Romantic poets were necessarily trekking up mountains, the promise of freedom and revelation to be found at new heights made its way into their verse and sparked an enduring love of the Polish mountains.
The Polish Romantics’ interest in the mountains has persisted amongst both writers and climbers. Poland’s mountain ranges have served as subject, backdrop, and inspiration for many great works of literature. The 19th-century poet Adam Asnyk, for example, not only climbed Poland’s highest mountains, but also wrote a sonnet cycle dedicated to Morskie Oko, the deepest lake in the Tatra Mountains. The Tatras also called to the poet Władysław Broniewski (1897-1962), who sought out undiscovered trails through the mountains and dedicated a number of works to the natural beauty he observed. The contemporary author Andrzej Stasiuk has continued this tradition of living in and writing about the mountains. He has made a home in the Low Beskids and the landscape is often depicted in his works.
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Wanda Rutkiewicz in the Pyrenees, 1969, photo: Photo Collection of the Museum of Sport and Tourism
While everyone can experience the majesty of the mountains in these literary works, a select group of Polish mountaineers has felt the thrill of looking down on the world from its highest peaks. Having grown up exploring the Tatras, Polish climbers reached new heights and blazed new trails in the Himalayas throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Wanda Rutkiewicz was the first Pole (and only the third woman) to reach the summit of Mt. Everest when she climbed it in 1979, and in 1986 she became the first woman to climb K2. In 1980, Andrzej Zawada led the first winter ascent of Mt. Everest. Seven years later, Jerzy Kukuczka became only the second person to climb all fourteen peaks that stand over 8,000 metres above sea-level. Kukuczka also navigated the ‘Polish Line’ on K2, a route so difficult no one has since repeated it.
Although this ‘golden age’ of Polish Himalayan climbers has waned, Polish mountaineers remain committed to daring ascents. Krzysztof Wielicki, who was one of the first people to reach the summit of Mt. Everest in winter as a member of Zawada’s historic 1980 expedition, has continued to push the limits of mountain climbing. In 2013 he led the first expedition to successfully summit Broad Peak in winter. In 2018, at the age of 68, he attempted to summit K2 in winter.
While a select few risk their lives on the highest peaks on Earth, many Poles are content to explore the (somewhat more manageable) mountains of Poland. Climbing remains a popular pastime, and one does not have to travel far from Poland’s major cities to find a taste of adventure. The Będkowska Valley is around 25 km from Kraków and is home to one of the most popular peaks in Poland, with climbing routes at a variety of difficulty levels. Reflecting on what motivated the daring Polish climbers of the 1980s and 1990s, Bernadette McDonald suggests that Polish climbers were inspired by their nation’s past. Their ‘fortitude and sense of pride’, she writes in Freedom Climbers, comes from Poland’s history:
Text
Fighting for independence. A continuous state of awareness. Readiness. Courage. Strength. But now the castles and marauders were gone, replaced by mountains. Swords had become ice axes.
Author
From ‘Freedom Climbers’ by Bernadette McDonald
Whether or not contemporary Polish climbers are indeed driven by the struggles of the past, they certainly are carrying on a tradition of looking to the mountains for inspiration and adventure that stretches back to the era of Romanticism. Like Mickiewicz, they too ‘dream of distant places’.
Replaying mythology
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Still from 'The Witcher', 2019, photo: Netflix
If you ‘dream of distant places’ but also don’t want to go through all the trouble of climbing a mountain, perhaps escaping into the world of The Witcher is more your speed. The Polish video game, based on a book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, is rich with references to both Polish Romanticism and the Slavic mythology that inspired the writers of the era. In the game, Geralt, the titular ‘witcher’, travels the continent fighting monsters and wrestling his own personal demons. Marcin Blacha, the Story Director behind the game, described The Witcher as ‘a tribute to the Polish language and to Polishness in general’.
For those familiar with Polish Romantic literature, the tributes to Polish classics sprinkled throughout the game may be easy to spot. Players might recognise elements from Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki, for example, when Geralt and the bard Dandelion encounter Lady Midday. Lady Midday, whose name was Alina, was killed by her sister in a raspberry patch, but has refused to accept her death and is now wandering the Earth. Geralt and Dandelion are tasked with convincing her she is dead, which Dandelion succeeds in doing by reciting a poem. Though this monster-hunting adventure might not seem a likely place for literary references, the verse that tames the undead Lady Midday is drawn from Mickiewicz’s poem The Ghost. The story of an Alina killed in a raspberry patch should also sound familiar to those who remember a similar murder in Słowacki’s bloody drama Balladyna.
The gestures to Romantic literature are not confined to that episode. Elsewhere in the game, Geralt is invited by a sorcerer to celebrate Forefathers’ Eve. The feast commemorating the dead not only evokes Mickiewicz’s famous drama Forefathers’ Eve, but the sorcerer’s text also moves between directly quoting Mickiewicz and mimicking his metre and style. As players move through the world of the game, traces of Romantic literature continue to emerge.
Even when not directly citing works of the past, The Witcher shares with those Romantic classics an interest in Slavic folklore and mythology. Artists of the Romantic era were interested in ancient myths and folk culture, both of which offered a way to move beyond the rational and imagine a world other than the one in which they found themselves. The works of Mickiewicz, Słowacki, and their peers are full of ghosts, vampires, spirits, and pagan rites. Making these otherworldly legends speak to the present was one of the great gifts of Romantic literature. In utilising many of the same stories to craft a virtual narrative and imagine a world of monsters and heroes, The Witcher reveals the influence of its Romantic predecessors.Reflecting on the influence of Romanticism on the game, Blacha told Piotr Kubiński in a Culture.pl interview:
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The truth is that every time we start creating some monster – like the botchling or a noonwraith – we don’t perceive this monster like pre-Slavic people did, because we have no idea what their perception of the monster was. We have the perception we were taught by the poets of Romanticism. […] Our Polish perception is still very much shaped by Polish Romanticism. The game is a vehicle to disseminate some ideas – so we have to use a universal language of associations, references and clues that is comprehensible. The spirit of Romanticism helps us a lot with this task, as Romanticism is the universal language of our culture and it makes it easier to tell a story.
Author
From ‘Creating The Witcher’s World: An Interview with Marcin Blacha of CD Projekt Red'
Reviving the monster stories of Romanticism, The Witcher spoke not only to Poles, but to audiences around the world. The game is wildly successful and even inspired Netflix to do their own adaptation of Sapkowski’s books. With The Witcher, Romanticism-infused Polish storytelling became a global phenomenon.
An immortal composer
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‘Frederic: Resurrection of Music’, photo: promo materials
Over 150 years before The Witcher became a world-wide success, a very different Polish export was captivating audiences. Fryderyk Chopin, born in Żelazowa Wola in 1810, composed a body of work that not only enchanted the listeners of his day, but remains an enduring soundtrack to Polish life. The Romantic composer’s legacy is not confined to his music – which is everywhere – but also includes a multitude of museums, tours, and products that bear his name and image.
Anyone who has strolled through Poland’s capital city knows how ubiquitous Chopin remains today. Visitors fly into the Warsaw Chopin Airport. Weekly concerts in Łazienki Park find pianists performing his music in front of his statue. There is a museum dedicated to his life, and only a few blocks away, a church that holds his heart. The streets are often literally filled with Chopin, for benches throughout Warsaw are programmed to play the composer’s music.
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A Chopin concert in Łazienki Park. Photo: Andrzej Stawiński / Reporter / East News
Alongside the ever-growing collection of performances of Chopin’s classics that echo through Warsaw, Polish musicians have also used the Romantic composer’s music as a starting point for their own unique musical creations. The 1970s saw a number of jazz interpretations of Chopin, including the Novi Singers vocal arrangements on NOVI Sing Chopin and the pianist Mieczysław Kosz’s take on Prelude in C Minor. With the rise of hip-hop, Chopin’s oeuvre became a popular source for samples. The Polish group Klimat, for example, samples the composer’s Funeral March from Sonata No. 2, Op. 35 on their track Portret.
Though his music is omnipresent, Chopin’s place in Polish culture today extends beyond his compositions as contemporary artists grapple with his memory and legacy. Theatrical productions such as Michał Bajer’s Eat the Heart of Your Enemy and Barbara Wysocka and Michał Zadara’s Chopin Without Piano both reflect on the mythologising of Chopin and the politicisation of his memory. The Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights includes a passage recounting the journey of Chopin’s heart back to Poland from France with his sister Ludwika. The Polish video game Frederic: Resurrection of Music imagines a resurrected Chopin on a mission around the world to save music ‘from the soulless dominance of major labels’.
Regardless of whether you are enjoying his music during a peaceful picnic in the park or drinking Chopin Vodka while a jazz musician improvises on his melodies, the Romantic composer’s enduring and evolving place in Polish culture is hard to deny.
Artists for the people
Chopin isn’t the only Romantic artist who has influenced the trajectory of Polish music. Just as Chopin’s compositions have inspired generations of musicians, so too have the words and artistic personae of Poland’s great Romantic poets left their mark on Polish popular music.
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Cyprian Kamil Norwid, 1871, photo: National Library Polona
Though 19th-century poets may seem an odd source of inspiration for 20th-century rock stars and 21st-century rappers, their larger-than-life legacies and powerful verse have proven to stand the test of time. Czesław Niemen, one of the most popular and influential rock musicians in Polish history, felt a special kinship with the Romantic poets. He not only recorded a number of songs based on famous poetic texts (his 1970 take on Cyprian Norwid’s To Bem’s Memory – A Funeral Rhapsody is not to be missed), but also embraced the role of a poet for the people much like the role once held by the Romantic bards. The singer Marek Grechuta, renowned for his sensitive ‘sung poetry’, also was inspired by the works of the nation’s poets. His original compositions often carried on the tradition of reflecting on one’s homeland, while his interpretations of famous verse brought Romantic poetry to new audiences. His 1984 version of Juliusz Słowacki’s Jeżeli Kiedy w Tej Mojej Krainie… (If ever in that, my country) is particularly lovely.
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Adam Mickiewicz in a photo from 1842, photo: Museum of Literature in Warsaw / East News. Juliusz Słowacki, a drawing by Józef Kurowski, 1838, photo: Museum of Literature in Warsaw / East News
Continuing in this proud tradition of claiming the mantle of the national bards, many Polish hip-hop artists have embraced Poland’s Romantic poets as artistic inspirations. Adam Mickiewicz, in particular, is often mentioned as ‘the first Polish rapper’ and fans online fantasise about rap battles between Mickiewicz and Słowacki, with Chopin present to provide the beat. Proving that Mickiewicz could have been ‘a good rhymer’ (as the rapper Dominik ‘Doniu’ Grabowski suggested to The New York Times), several artists have recorded hip-hop versions of Romantic poetry. Ryszard ‘Peja’ Andrzejewski tackled ‘The Great Improvisation’ from Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve, and the group Trzeci Wymiar recorded the lesser-known Mickiewicz poem Reduta Ordona (Ordon’s Redoubt) about the 1831 Battle of Warsaw. The ‘Invocation’ from Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz is a favourite of aspiring rappers who note that rapping the famous text is a good way to memorise it for school.
Whether ascending to new heights on the world’s tallest mountains, escaping into a fantasy world of myth and monsters, or listening to music of and inspired by the Romantic era, one can feel the traces of Romanticism throughout Polish culture. The examples here are certainly not an exhaustive list; and as one explores Polish culture, echoes of the Romantic past continue to emerge. As we identify these echoes, we might also marvel at the innovative ways that contemporary Polish artists are reinterpreting that past and grappling with tradition as they look towards the future.
Written by Alena Aniskiewicz, Aug 2021
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