Avenger, Traitor, Hero: The Improbable Posthumous Life of Konrad Wallenrod

59431185.jpg, default, Drawing from Adam Mickiewicz's Konrad Wallenrod, published in Paris in 1851; illustrated by Jean Tysiewicz. Source: Polona.pl, Avenger, Traitor, Hero: The Improbable Posthumous Life of Konrad Wallenrod, The book’s magnetic influence on generations of Polish readers across centuries is undisputed, so why did Mickiewicz want to burn it?

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A look at one of the most ambiguous books in the history of Polish literature which also turned out to be one of the most influential, shaping Polish history, societal attitudes and individual biographies, in Poland and beyond.

If there ever was one most influential literary work in Polish history it must be Konrad Wallenrod by Adam Mickiewicz. The book, whose impact has been called ‘magnetic’ or ‘electric’, helped to ignite national uprisings and to forge a whole tradition of underground conspiratorial resistance movements in Poland. Raising questions and controversies as to its ethical ramifications for close to the next two centuries, it spawned debates about the Polish national character and about legitimate ways of fighting for freedom. Its ultimate impact – as well as its many paradoxes – are probably best illustrated by the fact that its author at one point considered burning all copies of the book.

Here’s the global story of Adam Mickiewicz’s Konrad Wallenrod – its impact on Polish history and literature, as well as on generations of Poles (and not only Poles), some of whom would come to embody the Wallenrodian ideals.

The Report…

Senator Nikolay Novosiltsev, one of the earliest readers of Konrad Wallenrod. Portrait by Stepan Shchukin. Photo: Wikimedia

On 10 April 1828 Nikolay Novolsiltsev, a Russian imperial commissar at the Council of State in the Congress Kingdom of Poland, penned a truly odd report. The report (No 582) was addressed to his superior the Grand Duke Constantine (the reigning Tsar’s brother) in Warsaw and constituted a review (of sorts) of a book published in the Russian Empire earlier that year. In his report Novosiltsev denounced the book as a work fomenting “the unreasonable Polish patriotism”, and “teaching how to harbor hidden enmity, feigned fidelity" and how to “plot for one’s fellow inhabitants the most insidious betrayal". The commissar considered the work harmful and even vicious, suggesting that it should be forbidden throughout the Empire.

The combination of a review and a denunciation was nothing new for Novosiltsev who, as a former curator of the Vilnius Governorate’s science and education, headed the persecution of the Philomaths circle some five years earlier. The persecution, which can be seen as the first truly brutal and concentrated repressive action against Poles after the ultimate partitioning of the country in the late 18th century, ended in trials along with a massive crackdown on Polish youth with prison sentences handed out and deportations deep into the Russian Empire carried out – the latter happened also to be Adam Mickiewicz’s lot.

But in many ways, Novosiltsev’s current denunciation was too little too late. The book was already published and in circulation – its lightning path to readers had started irreversibly, launching a reading history which scholar Maria Janion would call “magnetic’ and ‘hypnotic’, and setting in motion one of the most amazing stories of influence and reception, which would be characterised by a truly fascinating feedback loop between life and literature – one for which the Novosiltsev’s report would become only one of a myriad footnotes.

The Masked Masterpiece

The cover and Illustration from the 1st edition of Konrad Wallenrod, published in Petersburg in 1828. Photo: Polona.pl

What was so terrifying and ‘vicious’ about that poetic work that it alarmed the high commissar of the Russian Empire and prompted such a determined response? And how could it be that such work was published in the very heart of the Russian Empire, having passed unnoticed by the Petersburg censorship?

Konrad Wallenrod. An Historical poem from Lithuanian and Prussian Past (1828) by Adam Mickiewicz is a book-length poem, written to a great extent in the style of Lord Byron, whom Mickiewicz highly admired. Set in Medieval Lithuania (14th century) during its existential struggle with the Teutonic Order, it tells the story of a man who was kidnapped from his village as a child, then baptised (he is named Walter Alf) and raised by the Teutonic Knights as one of their own. Subjected to the influence of the Lithuanian bard and his mentor Halban, who imbues in the boy the patriotic feelings as well as the highly controversial methods, he decides to flee at the first opportunity. He starts a new life with his Lithuanian folks, marries and is on the path to happiness, only to leave once again. He now disappears for many years, only to return as the Teutonic knight Konrad Wallenrod, in what is likely a case of a stolen identity (one which potentially also involved a murder). As count Wallenrod, he rises to the highest ranks in the Order with the hidden aim of bringing doom onto the Teutonic state. In the poem’s finale Wallenrod provokes an open battle with the Lithuanians, dispersing and annihilating his own army, thus fulfilling his life-time patriotic goal of vengeance. In the battle’s aftermath, exposed by the Teutonic tribunal, Wallenrod acknowledges of his role as traitor and commits suicide.

Framed in this way, Mickiewicz’s tale may seem like a truly sensational plot, not atypical of the popular Romantic Gothic tales of mystery. (Admittedly, the piece also featured a staple Romantic element of sentimental love between Walter/Konrad and Aldona, isolated in the castle’s tower). However, Mickiewicz’s poem was also very far from any trite conventionality. In fact, it was anything but trite and stereotypical. With its fragmentary construction, the Romantic poetics of mystery (à la Walter Scott), the overall vagueness of the plot and the general chaos of masked and doubled identities (one can’t stop but asking ‘who’s who’ throughout the poem), the book constituted a true enigma and a challenge for readers. The readers for their part – in quite a modern way – were encouraged to fill in the gaps of the plot and connect the dots: a powerful conspirator, a bloody revenge, and a vision of a powerful state brought down on its knees. All of which led to a truly subversive political message.

Outsmarting the censor

The note of the censor's office on the 1st edition of Konrad Wallenrod. Photo: Polona.pl

The complicated and demanding literary form of Konrad Wallenrod wasn’t pure playfulness or extravagance on Mickiewicz’s part. Mickiewicz was writing Wallenrod during his forced stay in Russia (the punishment for his role in the Philomath circle), in the stifling imperial reality of Tsar Nicholas’ oppressive reign, piqued by the shock and trauma of the Decembrist revolt (1825). One of its vital elements being a preventive censorship on high alert, which meant that any book or press publication had to be reviewed and accepted by the censor before going to print.

The placing of the plot in a distant historical era (Middle Ages) and in a different political constellation (Lithuania vs Teutonic Order) was certainly one way of drawing the censor’s attention away from the potential subversive political message of the poem. But in order to trick the censor, Mickiewicz needed much more. He effectively supplied his work with a set of safety devices. The slightly unsettling motto, in Italian, about the necessity of employing two types of strife – being both a fox and a lion (an unattributed and inaccurate quote from Machiavelli) – was immediately disarmed by the author’s foreword, which stressed the purely historical aspect of the whole thing. Rejecting any potential political readings of the events described, Mickiewicz declared that this “Lithuania is now all gone in the past”. To drive the point even further home, the foreword concluded with a quote from Friedrich Schiller which stated that ‘What must live on in song, must perish in reality’.

The whole poem, unequivocal as it was, ended with poet’s commentary in which Mickiewicz, much in the style of an external ‘scholarly’ editor, was elucidating the historical reality of the plot, diligently referring to Medieval chronicles, offering historical sources and parallels for the events and characters described. Thus he was once again relegating the whole story to the realm of historical, long gone and politically irrelevant. (Mickiewicz’s games with censorship would continue in the book’s second imprint from 1829, whose preface concludes with a truly servile preamble addressed to the Tsar which called him a tolerant “Father of all nations” of the Empire, who secures the wellbeing and customs of all his children” – a truly foxlike strategy indeed).

These efforts proved successful and the poem was eventually published with only minor interventions from the censor. The most famous of these was the erasure of the line: “Thou art a slave; the only / Weapon that slaves may use is treachery” (the latter word, according to a different version, read as ‘artifice’). The erased line would only be restored in the poem’s editions published after Mickiewicz’s death in 1855. But its power to encapsulate the core idea of the poem and its many idiosyncrasies (including the controversy as to the choice of the actual word used by Mickiewicz) was reflected in numerous debates that followed, engaging all the future readers of the poem.

First edition of "Konrad Wallenrod" (1828) by Adam Mickiewicz [gallery]

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Lithuanian, German, Alien…

The 2nd edition of Konrada Wallenrod, published in the Russian Empire, 1829. Photo: Polona.pl

Mickiewicz’s poem very quickly made its way to Polish readers at home – meeting immediately with some truly… diverse reception. In the Polish Kingdom (a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Empire established by Tsar Alexander I after the Vienna Congress in 1815), the poem was read and interpreted according to literary tastes, readers’ age as well as political allegiances. The older and more conservative critics who cherished classical poetic ideals chastised Mickiewicz for factual discrepancies and incongruities of the plot and characters, as well as picking a traitor, ‘madman’, and potentially a ‘drunkard’ for the poem’s protagonist.

The poem’s main idea, that of treason (or subterfuge) as a legitimate way of struggle for the nation’s independence, was seen as particularly repulsive, in fact, a threat to traditional Polish morality, with its chivalric ideals. As one of the most fervent critics Kajetan Koźmian argued: “I don’t want Poland won at the price of honour“. The book was pronounced ‘a work alien to our culture’, a non-Polish work that can only be explained through “the influence of the German spirit on Polish poetry’; alternatively, a result of “Lithuanian fierceness”. Thus, all conspiratorial aspirations embodied in Wallenrod were subsumed as suspicious and alien to the original and authentic spirit of Polish culture. And such was Wallenrod too, according to these critics.

Postcards from Adam Mickiewicz's "Konrad Wallenrod" [gallery]

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Literature which conspires, or how “Wallenrod became Belvedere…”

The assault on the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw on the first night of the November Uprising of 1830. Painting by Wojciech Kossak. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile, for the younger Romantic generation, but also for the wider circles of society, Wallenrod was seen as the most faithful reflection of the fervent patriotic mood in the country that would eventually lead the national uprising of November 1830, a period marked by the activity of secret societies and patriotic conspiracy networks. As Maurycy Mochnacki, the brilliant literary critic, insurgent and future historian of the November uprising reflected, that was the time when “everything that was poetic was also patriotic”. “Thus, literature in Poland, like people, started to conspire,” Mochnacki wrote.

Wallenrod was seen as a paragon of patriotic virtue, a hero fighting for his country. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, his attitude was almost intuitively understood as a call to open resistance, “abandoning books, and getting hold of the Archangel sword”, as one of the insurgents would later call it. Namely, a call to a national military insurgence.

The idea of Konrad Wallenrod as one of the catalysts or actually triggering factors of the November Uprising is perhaps best encapsulated in the famous catch phrase, which has come to define the earliest moments of the Uprising: “The Word became flesh, and Wallenrod became Belvedere”. It referred to the key event which started the uprising, that is the Warsaw’s regiment’s cadets’ assault on the Belvedere palace, the Warsaw residence of Prince Constantine on the night of 29 November.

As Stefan Chwin, writer and one of the most important scholars of Wallenrod’s history, put it, “This metaphorical formulation [...] suggested that the conspirators’ assault on the seat of Prince Constantine, and more broadly, the entire November Uprising, was to a large extent a psychological-moral result of the reading of the poem about Wallenrod by the cadets and wider circles of Polish society.”

Thus Wallenrod from the very beginning became almost inextricably tied with the insurrectionist action, even if the act of open resistance itself was quite remote from the actual idea of the poem.

Enter Wallenrodism

The fall of the November Uprising and the repressive measures that followed brought about an important change in the reading of Wallenrod, both in the country and by the Polish emigres, who now flocked en masse to the countries of Western Europe. Rather than seeing Konrad Wallenrod as a simple call to military action and offering one’s life for the fatherland, readers started to recognise the problems inherent in the Wallenrodian attitude, which that were integrally connected to an activity that was sneaky and masked… and hardly verifiable.

Some like Juliusz Słowacki would refuse to differentiate between a casual traitor and one that is led by high motives. Recognizing its morally doubtful ramifications, the poet noted that it was ‘Wallenrodism’ (a term coined by Słowacki), which “introduced a method to treason / multiplying one traitor by one hundred thousand”. Słowacki was making an important point: in real life, who was to decide about who is the legitimate Wallenrod and who is merely making a career in the Russian administration? Who could vouchsafe and determine that this is a genuine kind of patriotic treason, and not a career path pursued in the Russian state? After all, the only source of knowledge and ultimate verification as to the integrity of the Wallenrod character lied buried deep within the soul of this Wallenrod-wannabe. A place that is hardly eligible for access and verification procedures.

Over time readers started to recognize more of such labyrinthal problems inherent in the Wallenrodian attitude. At its most extreme, as Maria Janion shows, this practical Wallenrodism was exposed as a strategy conducive to Russian interests: “allegedly Polish Wallenrodism against Russia was interpreted as Russian Wallenrodism versus Poland”. Thus Wallenrodian strategies could now be seen as planted in Poles’ heads by their enemies. The trend would not spare Mickiewicz himself. As one of the fiercest critics of Wallenrodism argued, the Russian authorities may have deliberately allowed for the publication of the book, so as to poison the Polish consciousness with harmful ideas.

Thus, in the emigration circles Wallenrod was increasingly often perceived as a harmful role model, a comfortable motivation masking meanness, conformism, and cowardness - an easy excuse. Far away from home, the emigres were cautioning against a true epidemic of fake Wallenrods. Once again, the idea was seen as un-Polish and repugnant. And yet the dilemmas of Mickiewicz’s poem, and the major theme of legitimate ways of fighting for independence in the face of overwhelming odds, was echoed in the principal works of Polish Romanticism, like Słowacki’s Kordian (which centred around the idea of the assassination of the tsar) and Zygmunt Krasiński’s Irydion (which transposed the cause of Polish independence into the period of early Christians in Rome) – both of which can be seen as polemical to Mickiewicz’s vision of patriotism.

Fryderyk Chopin’s Ballade in G-minor Op. 23 was often linked to Mickiewicz’s Konrad Wallenrod.

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Szymon Nehring – Ballade in G minor Op. 23 (second stage)

Mickiewicz burns Wallenrod…

Photograph of Mickiewicz with a pilgrim staff. Photo: Polona.pl

Meanwhile the author of Wallenrod was also experiencing an interesting change of heart with regards to his work. Already in 1839, Mickiewicz was said to have called Wallenrod the work “he values the least”. A decade later, around 1850, he was quoted by his interlocutors as calling Wallenrod ‘an important [in its day] pamphlet regarding current events”, ‘a political pamphlet’. This dismissive tone likely reflects Mickiewicz’s overall evolution: turning away from Wallenrod – and his ‘sneaky’ and deceitful methods, powered by the desire or taking revenge – had likely to do with embracing high moral evangelical ideals, those of truth and openness, which were also supposed to be, according to Mickiewicz, the guiding force in international politics, one that rejected any political pragmatism and fox-like cunning, Machiavellism and Realpolitik.

A late, but not entirely trustworthy testimony, coming from towards the end of the poet’s life, implies that Mickiewicz considered Konrad Wallenrod a mistake. Asked by his interlocutor what he would have done had he suddenly become very rich, Mickiewicz allegedly responded, “I would have bought out all the copies of Konrad Wallenrod and had them all burned to the last one”.

But, again, it was all too late. As Maria Janion comments, Mickiewicz had Konrad killed (by suicide) in the poem and by renouncing him now, he may have wanted to kill him again. But the fact is that Wallenrod had already slipped away from its author:

“As is often the case with literary figures, Konrad Wallenrod, put to death so many times before, had already started to live its own, sovereign life - independent from its author’s design or will. He started to live his posthumous life.”

Odysseus, Don Quixote, Wallenrod…

Alf (aka Konrad) and his mentor - the Lithuanian bard Halban. Illustration by M.E. Andriolli. Photo: Polona.pl

The brutal quashing of the January Uprising of 1863 by the Russian army and the ensuing set of brutal administrative repressions (including executions, confiscations and deportations to Siberia for whole families) once again brought a change to the interpretations of Mickiewicz’s masterpiece.

For the sober-thinking generation of the positivist writers, whose position was largely shaped by the trauma of the latest Uprising and its lasting terrible repercussions, the poem was a dangerous and harmful work - and any future implementation of its core idea should be “cordoned and uprooted”. As one of their proponents, the journalist and novelist Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, argued, “Wallenrod was a wonderful poem but Wallenrodism was a lethal idea, an apotheosis of falseness and vengeance, an acknowledgement of frailty and [moral] decline”. Kraszewski went on to portray wallenrodian protagonists, and the overall moral fiasco of the wallenrodian project, in some among his numerous novels.

Meanwhile, in the course of the 19th century Mickiewicz’s work became a staple element of the Polish literary canon at home (even if it was not published in the Russian-held parts of Poland due to censorship). As Maria Janion argues, towards the turn of the century its wide reception led to the development of a certain stereotype, one namely which argued that wallenrodism is “a typically Polish phenomenon”. Others went further suggesting that Konrad Wallenrod was a Polish protagonist par excellence:

"Malicious people claimed that while other nations had given rise to Odysseus, Don Quixote, Don Juan, etc., Poles produced Wallenrod – and that there was something to it. Especially in the minds of those who for various reasons nourished hostile feelings for Polishness, Wallenrod was seen as a typically Polish figure; he would be simply associated with a Pole.”

This negative Polish stereotype was picked up by many contemporary authors, most famously by Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose journalism is chock full of tropes of Polish land-lords and Polish traitors. These two phantasmatic figures were, in Dostoyevsky’s mind, guilty of all the evil that was happening, or could happen, in the Russian Empire.

Illustrations for "Konrad Wallenrod" by Jan Tysiewicz [gallery]

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Mickiewicz as the poet of betrayal…

Portrait of Ivan Franko, 1989. Photo: Wikimedia

While the idea of Wallenrod as a work hailing and justifying betrayal was around for quite a time, its most radical as well as spectacular formulation came towards the end of the century and from a non-Polish author. It was presented by the Ukrainian author Ivan Franko and published in 1897 in the Vienna newspaper Die Zeit. Invoking Wallenrod as the crowning evidence (but also lining up other works by the poet) Franko was trying to prove that Mickiewicz’s whole oeuvre was informed by the idea of betrayal and treason. This made Mickiewicz the ultimate “poet of betrayal”, as the title of the article went.

The piece met with a powerful backlash from Polish circles, who instead accused Franko, who was also publishing in Polish, of ineptitude and ingratitude. One of the most meritoric responses to Franko’s attack came from Włodzimierz Spasowicz, a Polish-Russian intellectual from Petersburg, and one of the leading adherents of the ‘conciliation politics’ vis-a-vis the Russian Empire, who also happened to be a huge fan of Konrad Wallenrod (the reading of which by Polish patriotic youth across the vast expanse of the Empire he compared to a ‘vaccination for a patriotic pox’).

Spasowicz believed that ‘the wallenrodian turn’ may have been necessary at one point in Polish history, but that moment was now long gone and irreversibly over. He also acknowledged that while Poles can be reproached for outright madness and irrationality which found expression in subsequent senseless (according to Spasowicz) uprisings, they can hardly be accused of clandestine conspiring and treason, which is the definition of ‘Wallenrodism’. And while he recognised a number of careerists, he also argued that ‘not a single real Wallenrod turned up among them’. Really?

The real-life Wallenrods

Leaders of the January Uprising of 1863, a period of Polish history particularly rife with Wallenrod figures. Photo: public domain

“The immense variety of authentic and literary characters circling around Konrad Wallenrod is a testimony to a secret, truly incredible power of Mickiewicz's work, a power which has often been called "magnetic".

This inexplicable magnetic or hypnotic power of Mickiewicz’s character to inspire both life and literature for Maria Janion resulted in many decades of studies and ultimately a sumptuous book called “Życie pośmiertne Konrada Wallenroda” [Konrad Wallenrod’s Posthumous Life, 1990]

“Disguised in historic costume, hidden behind many masks, Konrad Wallenrod provided for a countless number of masks to individuals who were called Wallenrods, and who themselves took on that name”, she argued.

In her book, Janion depicts several real life figures who in the course of the Polish 19th century, in one way or another, embodied the Wallenrodian ideals, becoming ‘agents’ of the fatherland. Janion recalls figures like Józef Bem and Michał Czajkowski who in their long and international fight for the Polish cause, didn’t hesitate to change political allegiance, or convert to an altogether different religion, like Islam, or even Orthodox Christianity (as was eventually Czajkowski’s case). Janion also points to the many characters connected to the Polish conspiratorial circles, preparing conspiracies and insurgencies throughout the 19th century, as bound to develop some Wallenrodian traits.

However, one must admit, the core idea of Wallenrodism – one which consisted in secretive rising to the highest ranks within an enemy state and then, unrecognised to the very last moment, bringing doom upon it – would make a career like this, especially in the modern bureaucratic reality of the Russian police state, extremely difficult, if not impossible.

And yet one period and one event in the Polish 19th century specifically seems to have lent itself particularly hospitably to the Wallenrodian idea, namely the January Uprising. As has been noted by scholars, the uprising which was the biggest Polish military effort of the 19th century and which covered much of the former Polish Eastern territories would hardly have been possible if not for the military officer cadre educated and trained in the Russian Empire. In fact, as Janion shows, the task of preparing the military plans of the insurgency was largely organised by young Polish officers of the Russian army.

The aspect that would make the career of a real Wallenrod plausible at precisely this moment was the fact that a new “Russified’ generation came to age. This meant that many of those Poles, growing up in the reality of thorough Russification of Polish territories which followed after the November Uprising, went through a whole curriculum of the Russian education system, crowned by training in the higher military schools. This ultimately made their connection to Polishness particularly tenuous and shaky (in fact, by this time some of these officers could barely speak Polish). This however would, in turn, lend credulity to the possibility of a truly impossible Wallenrodian plot.

Janion discusses several biographies of these Russian-officers-turned-Polish insurgents, among them Józef Hauke-Bosak, Jarosław Dąbrowski and Zygmunt Sierakowski. She also goes to show how these figures then, in turn, inspired works of fiction, most importantly the contemporary novels of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. Thus literature (Mickiewicz’s book) was feeding real-life attitudes and biographies, which in turn would inspire works of literature again. This feedback loop between fiction and reality would become symptomatic of the whole of Wallenrod’s reception, lasting well into the late 20th century.

Zygmunt Sierakowski or the Wallenrod of the January Uprising

One of the figures to whom Janion dedicated most attention was Zygmunt Sierakowski (1827-1863). Born in present day Ukraine (Volhynia), and subjected to early Russification in school, Sierakowski was from the very beginning an avid reader of Polish Romantic poetry. Arrested in 1848, at the time of the Spring of Nations, for what was seen as an attempt to cross the border and flee Russia, he was sentenced and conscripted into the Orenburg regiment, Russia’s southern military outpost. It took him eight years to get out of the humiliating status of a conscript, but once he did he started to climb up the ladder of the Russian military. He soon moved to Saint Petersburg, pursuing a career as of an officer in the Ministry of War. Shortly upon arrival in the capital city, he began organising a clandestine network of Polish officers. His letters to family, friends and collaborators throughout this whole period are – as one of his biographers noted – "chock full of Wallenrodism so adroit that their reader, not acquainted with its author, would have been assured that they came from the hand of the most loyal servant of the Tsar". In writing these letters – in the reality of censorship and secret police – he was often resorting to Aesopian language, as a way to communicate the secret patriotic message. In doing so, as Maria Janion has proved, he was often relying on allusion and camouflaged quotes from Mickiewicz, in particular Konrad Wallenrod.

In April 1863, following many months of conspiratorial plotting and secret communication, Sierakowski crossed the border to Lithuania where he now disposed of his Russian general’s military uniform. He joined the January Uprising, becoming its leader for the Samogitia region. Wounded in one of the battles Sierakowski was arrested and soon afterwards tried and hung by the Russian Governor General for the Vilna region, Mikhail Muraviev, known as ‘Veshatel’, for his brutal role in quashing the January uprising.

But, as Maria Janion claims, even before taking up arms in the uprising Sierakowski was engaged in several other clandestine projects that could be seen as Wallenrodian in nature. To name only one, while an officer in the Russian army Sierakowski became engaged in the struggle for the abolition of corporal punishment in the Russian military – a ruthless and ubiquitous practice of the day (and much longer). Sierakowski was the author of a research paper which thoroughly explored the issue, in which he anaysed the detrimental psychological and social effects of this practice. But according to Janion and other biographers of Sierakowski, his goals were not exclusively humanitarian. Sierakowski saw the institutionalised violence, prevalent in the military, as central to the functioning of the whole Russian imperial regime. “To break the [military officer’s] baton would mean breaking the entire power of the Tsarate,” as he was quoted as saying to his colleagues. As one of his biographers argues, the project was tantamount to building “a new Trojan horse which would enter unobserved into the frozen Moscovy of despotism and enslavement”. Thus, Sierakowski’s project can be seen as a daring subversive attempt at reforming or revolutionising the Tsarist system from within. One which, like many others, would not materialise to this day.

Jan Witkiewicz, or “the only true Wallenrod”

Portraits of Jan Witkiewicz, "the one and only Wallenrod", portrayed in the Russian unifor and in Eastern garb. Photo: public domain. Collage: Culture.pl

But what are the odds of one more Wallenrod? A figure whose story would actually involve a lonely avenger figure working surreptitiously over decades of undercover action, moving on the fringe, taking on different costumes and masks. A genius mastermind who would devise the most daunting secretive plan – that could result in dismantling of the whole Empire? And what if he did all that single handedly – and was actually really close to achieving that goal? And what if that figure came from the circle close to Mickiewicz, having been formed in those very same days when this whole story starts, the 1820s in the Vilnius region.

As it turns out, a figure like that actually existed – however much of the details surrounding his life and precisely his intentions are, as it only deserves to be, “surrounded by a cloud of mystery.” Jan Witkiewicz (1808-1839), as his name goes, was born into a noble family in the area of historical Samogitia. In early 1824, while a pupil of the gymnasium in Kražiai and member of a secret organization called the Black Brothers, he was arrested as part of the Novosiltsev’s crack-down on Polish youth. The boy, who was around 15 at the time, was then put on trial and sentenced to death, before that sentence was changed into life-long service in the Russian army (with no promotion possible) – one of the many brutal sentences with regard to culprits who were often children.

Like Zygmunt Sierakowski, a quarter of century later, Witkiewicz was sent to the so-called ‘Orenburg line’. He initially spent several years as a soldier in and around Orsk fortress. In this most remote and inhospitable outpost he would undertake occasional excursions into the surrounding steppes, inhabited by the Kyrgiz and Kazakh tribes. These (and other later) bold explorations enabled Witkiewicz to study and eventually learn a dozen of local languages, and earned him the respectful name of Batyr, as he was known to the peoples of the Central Asian steppes.

A lucky coincidence in 1829 – a conversation with Alexander von Humboldt (the famous German polymath and explorer was on a geological research visit in Orenburg region), who then recommended Witkiewicz to the tsar – enabled the Pole to launch a brilliant if clandestine career in the Russian service. Throughout the next decade, thanks to his knowledge of the region, peoples, and languages, Witkiewicz would become the head of a series of Russian exploratory and diplomatic missions. The two most important of these took him to Bukhara (1835-1836) and Kabul (1837). The latter mission landed Witkiewicz right in the centre of the Great Game, a key political competition between Russia and Great Britain for domination in Central Asia. As Maria Janion relates, Batyr’s diplomatic skills allegedly led to the consolidating of Russian influence in Afghanistan, which by its very nature infringed on British interests in the region. Witkiewicz’s efforts effectively led to the breaking of previous arrangements between the emir of Afghanistan and the British agents, “which almost had the effect of starting a for Russia much undesired war with Britain”.

In the aftermath of the diplomatic brawl that followed, Witkiewicz was dismissed and summoned to Petersburg. A couple days after his arrival in the capital city he was found dead in his hotel room, with a pistol and allegedly a suicide note. His death however was never fully explained.

The memory and legend of Witkiewicz as “the one and only Wallenrod” was cherished in his family, but many original documents and testimonies did not survive (the documents collected by Witkiewicz’s brother were confiscated in Siberia). According to Stanisław Witkiewicz, who was Jan’s nephew and who arguably did the most to perpetuate the family Wallenrodian legend, “it was my paternal uncle’s idea to push Russia as deep as possible into Asia, so that it would bring it into conflict with Britain, the only great power in the East at the time, which could confront Russia and, as my uncle had believed, defeat it”.

The war in Central Asia never materialised. It was another war which erupted soon afterwards – the Crimean War of 1855 – that had the effect of substantially weakening Russian power in Europe. It was however yet another war, one in Russia's vast East, already in the early 20th century, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, that can be seen as the fulfillment of Jan Witkiewicz’s political testament. As Stanisław Witkiewicz concluded, “England by the hands of Japan destroyed Russia, simultaneously eradicating the latter’s influence in Tibet, while also holding onto the gateway to India, that is Afghanistan, the gateway Jan Witkiewicz had been pushing Russia into”.

Konrad Wallenrod as Polish Tragedy

The Alpujara scene, Illustration from the 1851 French edition, with illustartion by Jean Tysiewicz. Photo: Polona.pl

The biography of Jan Witkiewicz (as well as that of Zygmunt Sierakowski) – enigmatic and inconclusive as it may be – is also important in highlighting the “tragic”, existential aspect of the whole Wallenrodian project. This moral aspect of the poem and its protagonist’s stance rarely came to the attention of readers and critics (with potential exceptions of Maria Konopnicka and Spasowicz) who were more eager to search for the literary motifs of betrayal, revenge, conspiracy without considering the underpinning psychological and existential aspects of the Wallenrodian project. These however, as Maria Janion shows, are actually present in Mickiewicz’s work from the very beginning.

After all, Wallenrod in Mickiewicz’s poem is much aware, as all tragic heroes are, of the moral dimension of his position and decisions. He is painfully aware of the collision between the noble goal of his struggle and its morally ambiguous methods. He deals with a higher instance, that of History, and is willing to sacrifice much, if not all. In the end however, he dies from his own hand in recognition of the potential futility of his lifetime project, with a sense of despair, as he sees that the price he was willing to pay (that of his personal life, woman’s love) took its toll. The idea of revenge which came to dominate his life also disfigured his soul and character.

In a way, as Maria Janion argues – and in striking contrast to how the poem was so often read – Wallenrod ‘commits suicide because the ends do not justify the means’.

In this sense, Janion claims, “Wallenrod is a true Romantic hero, a hero of conscience. Rarely was the discrepancy between morality and history so drastically articulated,” Janion claims.

For Janion, Konrad Wallenrod became the ultimate tragic hero of not only Polish but also universal history. She claimed that salvation – in this most tragic dimension – “can be achieved not only through reconciliation [of arguments], but also through despair”, one more tragic paradox. By passing judgment on himself, Wallenrod, in Janion’s interpretation, redeems his tragic error – but also, once again, elevates the condition of being a slave, a condition imposed from without.

For Janion, the essence of Mickiewicz’s poem lied in the protest, formulated from the very beginning, against enslavement – something she considered a central theme of modern Polish culture, dominated by the idea that there’s nothing worse than the condition of subjugation, or as she puts it: ‘there’s no greater hell than that of bondage”

Wallenrod realises the irreconcilable contradictions between morality and history - and decides to take these all the way, and test them with his own life. In this interpretation, Wallenrod was joining the most tragic figures of European literature, like Antigone or Oedipus, whose tragedy doesn’t find justification in human morality or divine sanction, but plays out in the protagonist’s conscience. Thus tragic irony was materialising in Polish history.

Wladyslaw Zelenski - Konrad Wallenrod: Scene of courtship (Arr. for Violin and Piano)

Is this literature? Wallenrod in Germany

Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Adam Mickiewicz had very different visions of literature. Photo: Wikimedia. Collage: Culture.pl

These complexities of Polish history (and literature) could hardly have been embraced by many readers, especially outside of Poland. In Western Europe the political message, which the poem was only superficially concealing – that of the necessity of resorting to all means possible (including those deemed unethical) in order to achieve the political goal deemed all-important – along with the poem’s clearly anti-Russian edge, was quite obvious for most readers of the day. But for many it was also too much, transgressing many readers’ expectations of what modern ‘enlightened’ literature is all about and what its role should be. As one conservative German critic Wolfgang Menzel noted in 1834,

“[Mickiewicz’s piece] evokes in us, Germans, very peculiar feelings: poetry which we had always considered the gentle art of peace and whose contradiction with political conflicts was felt especially deeply by Goethe, here identifies itself with that hapless politics, propagating (as politics does) hatred and vengeance; the beautiful Muse yearns now for a stiletto and mask not in the theatre anymore, which represents the world, but in the theatre of a real world, as she needs it for a real conjuration.”

The critic, who admittedly also acknowledged Mickiewicz’s greatness, calling him the greatest European poet since Lord Byron, optimistically believed that “the times of calm will return, the political strife will die down, and only the poetic art will survive”. In this future, one would surmise, Mickiewicz’s art should be able to flourish unburdened by its contingent political contexts, unworthy of a real worthwhile universal literature.

But Menzel’s seemingly innocent enunciation about great literature being first and foremost non-political literature, also had a political subtext of its own – one that comes to light in another passage in his review. Explaining the meagre awareness of Mickiewicz and Polish literature among a German audience, he argued that part of the reason lied with the fact that “the most splendid part of Mickiewicz’s poetic work pertains to the hapless fate of his nation, although [one must admit] he does not always preserve restraint vis-a-vis Russia and the states which are her friends – and that restraint is due on the part of the German press,” he concluded.

This self-imposed “restraint” towards Russia on the part of the German critic (and the German press in general), expressed so overtly, may come as a bit of a surprise. Perhaps though it should be seen as indicative of the true levels of Russian influence in Europe in the 1830’s and later – wielded by way of diplomacy, the military and the secret police, its pressure would only amplify over the course of the 19th century, having an impact on everything from politics to opinions about the role of literature. Similarly, the argument which appeals to the alleged russophobia, ascribed here to Mickiewicz by the critic, would also have a long life ahead. It would become a staple argument serving to cancel all the potential criticism of the Russian Empire, effectively outliving the Empire itself.

Mickiewicz himself was certainly untouched by any such criticism, or opinions about what constitutes real, timeless, or universal literature. In fact, with his next piece The Forefathers’ Eve, Part III (1832), he would push the boundaries of Western literature even further: by dramatising his own (and his friends’) experience of arrest, imprisonment and exile, he would create one of the earliest literary works in European literature to record the dealings of the oppressive Russian police state in the making – while all along forging a poignant metaphysical drama about the nature of evil in the world.

Wallenrod in Americas and Caucasus

Portrait of Vardan Mamikonyan from an "Illustrated Armenia and Armenians", by Ohan Gaidzakian. Photo: Wikimedia.

As is plain already, the impact of this very Polish book (just as Mickiewicz’s entire output) was hardly restricted to Poland and its immediate locale; much more than this, Wallenrod was bound to transcend boundaries of nationalities and societies. Translated into several languages shortly after its initial publication, Konrad Wallenrod lived its posthumous life also in other languages and cultures, finding new audiences – especially in those areas of the world which dealt with similar forms of colonial and imperial oppression.

In Latin America, the poem was translated twice across the 19th century: in 1851 in Chile and in 1885 in Cuba. The latter translation, by the Sellén brothers, came amidst the struggle for Cuban independence from the Spanish metropoly and, like the Polish original, was published in the context of the reality of censorship. Historian Salvador Bueno noted that the Cuban version had a ‘clear emancipatory accent” („con claro acento emancipador”), and according to Diccionario de la literatura cubana “the admirable translation of Mickiewicz’s Konrad Wallenrod had cleared the path for our most revolted intellectual youth to a literature that reflected the revolutionary ideals”.

Mickiewicz’s poem had also made its way to the Caucasus, which in the middle of the 19th century was a freshly subjugated territory by the Russian Empire. The poem, for one, made a strong impression on Akaki Tsereteli, the prominent Georgian poet (and one of the key adherents of national cultural revival protesting the Tsarist regime). Tsereteli who read Mickiewicz’s poem while still in gymnasium, claimed later that it was from Wallenrod that he had “learned to love the fatherland, accumulate strength and increase the will for struggle for its liberation”. According to scholar Bazyli Białokozołowicz, the Wallenrodian theme can be traced, in particular, in Tsereteli’s epic poem Bagrat the Great (1875).

In the neighbouring Armenia, Wallenrod resurfaced in the reflection of Arshak Chopanian (1872-1954) who considered the idea of Wallenrodism as particularly close to Armenians. He referenced, specifically, the work of Raphael Patkanian (1830-1892), author of The Death of Brave Vardan Mamikonian (1856). The poem which hailed the historical figure of the leader of the Armenian uprising against Persia (459-451), was written at a time when Armenia was facing a different oppressor from the North. For Chopanian, Vardan Mamikonian was a specific variant of the Wallenrod figure.

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Amilcare Ponchielli, "I lituani", Violeta Urmana performing Aldona's aria

Wallenrod with Slavs and Jews

Zeev Jabotinsky (bottom right) and Menachem Begin (bottom left) in a meeting with Betar leaders in Warsaw, 1939. The two politicians read Mickiewicz’s Wallenrod in the Polish original.

Closer to home, Mickiewicz’s poem met with a particularly strong resonance in 19th century Czechia and Slovakia, inspiring several translations, as well as original poems by poets like Svatopluk Čech, Antal Stašek and August Mużik, among others. More interestingly perhaps, in the second half of the 19th century, Wallenrodism, as Czech scholar Karel Krejci noted, “existed and evolved almost independently from Mickiewicz’s work in the Czech cultural awareness”. The Wallenrodian attitude, transposed into the context of the Czech political situation, dominated by its subordinate position vis-a-vis Austrian hegemony, was the subject of an animated discussion in the Czech press. This debate, which intensified especially at the time of increased conciliatory politics, focused on the applicability and acceptability of Wallenrodism in social and political life. Among the voices who took part in the nationwide debate were those of future president Tomáš Masaryk (critical) and writer Alois Jirasek – the latter defended the Polish poet’s project.

In Ukraine, struggling in the 19th century with the same oppressor as Poland, Wallenrod was translated several times including versions by Tymko Padurra and Stepan Charnetskyi. The latter was a poet, translator and theatre director, who also happens to be the author of the lyrics of the Ukrainian patriotic song Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow. (Originally a song of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen during World War I, it became an unofficial anthem of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression in 2022). In Belarus, where the Russification policy and censorship were particularly strong and effective throughout the 19^th century, Wallenrod was forbidden almost until the time of the Revolution of 1905. Despite the fact that the poem was never published in full in translation, it managed, along with other works by Mickiewicz, to influence Belarusian writers, most importantly Yanka Kupala.

Perhaps not surprisingly (just think of Samson!), Mickiewicz’s Wallenrod found a sustained popularity in Hebrew literature, having an impact on such diverse authors as Y.L. Gordon, I.L. Perets, Saul Tchernikhovsky and N.H. Imber. In the 20th century, Wallenrod’s influence eventually went beyond literature and can be traced in the biographies of the key 20th century Jewish political leaders, most importantly the Zionist leaders Zeev Jabotynski and Menachem Begin. These two politicians, both of whom had a tremendous impact on Jewish nationalism and eventually on the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, had the greatest admiration for Mickiewicz’s poem, which also stretched to its hero and his controversial methods. One more proof of Wallenrod’s amazing ability to inspire not only literature but also real life figures and world politics.

Wallenrodism in the 20th century

Stanisław Mikulski as Hans Kloss in the TV series "Stawka większa niż życie", dir. byJanusz Morgenstern. Wrocław, 1968,. Photo: Wojtek Laski/East News

The regaining of independence by Poland in November 1918 would seem to bring an end to the tradition and phantasm of Wallenrodism in Polish history. After all, it was not ‘the masked avenger’ nor ‘the secret conspiracies’ that ultimately brought Poland independence – but rather a military effort in the full-scale World War, one which resulted moreover in the fortunate undoing of the all three partitioning powers. This however is not to say that the generations of Polish Wallenrods – real and perceived – were all in vain.

In fact, Wallenrodism, as well as the conditions for its applicability, were far from over. The idea was revived again during World War II, when Poland was yet again occupied by neighbouring regimes: Nazi Germany and the USSR. Maria Janion goes on to enumerate a couple of “little’ Wallenrods from the 1939-1945 period, like Stanisław Schwallenberg, who had been a member of the Polish Scouts Union in Germany, and was forcibly drafted into Wehrmacht upon the outbreak of the war. Janion saw also Wallenrodian traits in protagonists of later films and books, like Hans Kloss in the TV series Stawka większa niż życie (about a double agent infiltrating the Abwehr), or Leopold Tyrmand’s novel Filip. The latter was a grotesque tale about the everyday resistance of a Polish waiter working undercover in a restaurant in Nazi Germany.

Trailer for Polish feature film "Filip" (2022) based on Leopold Tyrmand's novel, dir. by Michał Kwieciński

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FILIP (w kinach od 3 marca 2023)

Post-Yaltan Wallenrodism

Can you spot the real Wallenrod? From the left: General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Bolesław Piasecki and Ryszard Kukliński. Photo: Wikimedia.org / German Federal Archives / Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. Collage: Culture.pl

As the scholar of Wallenrodism in this period Stefan Chwin observes,

“Disputes around ‘Wallenrodism’ – even if not always overtly formulated due to censorship – played an important role in the intellectual life of Polish society also in the 20th century, especially after 1945, when, under the treaties of Yalta and Potsdam, Poland became a state dependent on the USSR, ‘with limited sovereignty’; one in which some recognised a contemporary version of the Congress Kingdom [Polish Kingdom 1815-1830]”

This meant, according to Chwin, that Wallenrod and his old-time strategies were now subject to a new, updated reading. The old questions – about the Wallenrodian methods (subterfuge, seeming collaboration, betrayal) and their legitimacy (in the face of Polish ethos and tradition) – were asked once again. Once again the real and faux Wallenrods were denounced, alleged, questioned or lauded. In the context of the reality of political subjugation and imposed administration, Wallenrodism became a kind of ‘skeleton key’ concept which enabled the interpretation, explanation and justification of a whole range of actions.

This new Wallerodism, as Chwin shows, could now have many new faces. For example, joining the Communist Party could be seen as a form of Wallenrodism (an attempt to reform or have an effect on the rule of communism from within). Similarly, being a school teacher, who feigns loyalty to the authorities of the education department but manages to teach about the forbidden patriotic topics (like the Katyń massacre), could just as well be seen as Wallenrodian.

As Leopold Tyrmand observed in 1967, “Communism, along with the abyss of its moral traps, enhanced people’s yearning for Wallenrodism, as well as the social prestige connected to it: as a matter of fact, each and every Party member who christens his child in church, considers themselves a little Wallenrod – and not without reason.”

Tyrmand on his part saw the interpretative “perspectives offered by Wallenrodism as infinite”. In fact, the aporetic idea of Wallenrodism allowed one to accuse or absolve, ascribe and revoke guilt, to such diverse public figures as the former Catholic Nationalist Bolesław Piasecki, who was now collaborating with the communists, or the General Wojciech Jaruzelski, whose introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981 was seen by some as a way to save the remnants of Poland’s independence.

Then there were some more straightforward agent figures, like Ryszard Kukliński, who as a colonel in People’s Poland’s army served for over a decade as a spy feeding CIA and NATO key secret information about Soviet strategic plans and military technologies, an activity which likely contributed to the ultimate tumble of the Communist regime in Poland.

The disease of Wallenrodism: its treatment and overcoming

Protesting workers in Gdansk Shipyard, 1980. Photo: Erazm Ciolek / Forum

Chwin traces Wallenrodian attitudes (or rather the tradition of interpreting them as such) throughout the whole period of People’s Poland, finding a strain of Wallenrods (or figures perceived as such) in a streak of Polish months (standing for key political events of the era): from October (1956, Thaw) and March (1968) to August (1980, strikes in Gdańsk shipyard) and December (1981, Martial law), as each of these moments had its Wallenrods. However, according to authors and journalists publishing in the underground drugi obieg (illegal samizdat circulation), it was precisely in the 1970’s that “Polish society was infected with the real disease of sham ‘everyday Wallenrodism’ – and it was that disease that one should first and foremost fight, thus disclosing a false consciousness of Poles mired in the reality of the ‘real socialism’.”

According to author Adolf Rudnicki it was the period leading directly to the events of August 1980 that culminated in the wave of a ‘Wallenrodian hypocrisy.” For Rudnicki, shaking off this, as he believed, pervasive ‘smoke inhalation’ with the Wallenrod figure, was one of the major responsibilities of the literature of the day.

Wallenrodism seen as a legitimate mode of political resistance does indeed seem eventually to have been refuted in the course of the 1980’s – both in the wider frame of Central-Eastern European politics and Poland’s individual path to freedom. The latter was marked by the massive and largely overt civil movement of Solidarity. On the cultural and literary plain the period was defined by the politically aware and savvy poetics of the so-called New Wave movement, with such writers as Stanisław Barańczak, Adam Zagajewski and Julian Kornhauser. As Stefan Chwin claims,

The authors and critics of the New Wave movement countered the strategy of ‘deceiving the despot’ (and the ‘masking’ games with censorship) with the idea of ‘speaking plainly’ and the axiological system known from Zbigniew Herbert’s poem Envoy of Mr Cogito (1974). Underground conspiracy struggle was countered by the concept of nonviolent resistance of the “power of the powerless”, as explored in the essays of Vaclav Havel. This was in keeping with the overt, non-anonymous nature of the political protest, adopted by the members of the Workers' Defence Committee [a civil society group, Polish KOR] as one of the guidelines for their activity (KOR’s declarations and articles were openly signed with real names, and even supplied with additional information concerning the home address and phone numbers, which was a new and highly risky practice in the history of the anti-communist opposition movement).

Maria Janion's magisterial book "Życie pośmiertne Konrada Wallenroda". Photo: Culture.pl

In deed, the overt nature of KOR’s resistance and the massive character of participation in the Solidarity movement in Poland – with over 10 million of members at its peak in 1980 – seems to have triumphed in the long run, upending the long-durée of Wallenrodism as a legitimate mode of political resistance in Poland.

The period of Polish political history marked by Wallenrodism was ultimately concluded with the fall of communism and regaining of independence in 1989. In the early 1990’s, the history of Wallenrod as literary figure and the history of its cultural impact, was wrapped up by the authoritative academic works by Maria Janion (Życie pośmiertne Konrada Wallenroda) and Stefan Chwin (Literatura a zdrada. Od Konrada wallenroda do Małej Apokalipsy), which were truly epic in scope. Thus, one of the most fascinating stories of the interplay between literature and history, fiction and reality, role model and individual biography, was coming to an end. Wallenrod’s life after life was eventually coming to a close. Or so it would seem.

Primary sources: Adam Mickiewicz, Konrad Wallenrod, opr. Stefan Chwin, BN, 1997; Maria Janion, Życie pośmiertne Konrada Wallenroda, PIW, Warszawa 1990; Stefan Chwin, Literatura i zdrada, Kraków, 1993; Zdzisław Libera, Konrad Wallenrod Adam Mickiewicza; Łukasz M. Szulim, Dwa latynoskie przekłady Konrada Wallenroda z XIX wieku, 2019

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