Friends in High Places: The High-Profile Friendships of Polish Romantics

pushking-and-friends-listen-toadam-mickiewicz-photo-fine-art-images-gettyimages-1155633228-s.jpg, default, Friends in High Places: The High-Profile Friendships of Polish Romantics, Alexander Pushkin and his friends listen to Adam Mickiewicz in the salon of Princess Zinaida Wołkońska, 1899-1907, painting by Grigory Grigoryevich My, center, #000000

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Imagine an evening during which Adam Mickiewicz chats with Alexander Pushkin. Antoni Malczewski and Lord Byron swap stories. Maria Szymanowska dazzles Goethe with her musicality and wit. Fryderyk Chopin goes home with George Sand. Such things could – and did – happen in the social milieu of the Polish Romantics.

Many of the great artists of Polish Romanticism spent much of their lives traveling. Some, like Adam Mickiewicz, did so because politics prevented them from returning to their native land. Others, like Maria Szymanowska, were driven by the promise of performing in salons and concert halls across Europe and Russia. During their travels, Polish artists often became acquainted with their international peers. This article considers a few of these famous friendships and the ways they influenced some of the biggest names in Romantic literature.

Adam Mickiewicz & Alexander Pushkin

Two youth, one greatcoat sheltering the twain;

The one – that pilgrim fresh come from the West,

The unknown victim of Tsarist violence;

The other – the Russian bard of greatest worth,

Whose songs are famous all throughout the North.

They stood there arm in arm. Of recent date

Their acquaintance – so soon grown best mates.

_{From ‘The Statue of Peter the Great’ in ‘Forefathers’ Eve’ by Adam Mickiewicz, trans. Charles S. Kraszewski}

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Portrait of Adam Mickiewicz on the Rock of Judah, 19th century, photo: National Museum in Warsaw

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Though Adam Mickiewicz’s move to Russia in 1824 was involuntary (he was exiled from his native land due to his association with the Philomaths), his time in St. Petersburg and Moscow proved fruitful. It was there that the great poet composed some of his most enduring works – including Crimean Sonnets and Konrad Wallenrod. It was also there that he met Alexander Pushkin.

The two men – each of whom would come to be regarded as national bards – were introduced in 1826. Pushkin had just returned from exile in Mikhaylovskoye and he shared with Mickiewicz a passion for poetry and understanding of what it meant to be forced to leave one’s home. Over the course of the next few years, the poets developed a mutual admiration for one another, while also thrilling salon-goers with their verse. The painter Grigory Grigoryevich Myasoyedov imagined once such performance in Pushkin and his Friends Listen to Mickiewicz in The Salon of Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, a work that depicts all eyes on a performing Mickiewicz and a contemplative Pushkin by his side.

One can only imagine the impassioned conversations Mickiewicz and Pushkin might have had about poetry and politics. We know that the two shared a love for Lord Byron. Among the belongings collected at the Alexander Pushkin Museum and Memorial Apartment in St. Petersburg is a volume of the English Romantic poet’s work given to Pushkin by Mickiewicz with the inscription: ‘Byron, presented to Pushkin by the admirer of both’.

Though their relationship was complicated by identity and historical circumstance, the shared respect between Mickiewicz and Pushkin is evident in their work. Each referenced the other in verse throughout their careers. Pushkin wrote a number of poems that make reference to Mickiewicz; and in his descriptions of the Polish poet as ‘inspired from above’, he offered the greatest compliment he could bestow. It’s also thought that Pushkin modelled the improviser in his 1837 story Egyptian Nights on Mickiewicz; and while not a wholly flattering portrait, it does speak to Mickiewicz’s ability to mesmerize a crowd.

Like his Russian peer, Mickiewicz reflected on their relationship in his work. In the passage from Forefathers’ Eve (The Statue of Peter the Great) quoted above, for example, he frames two men under ‘one greatcoat’ – one, a ‘pilgrim fresh come from the West’ and the other, ‘the Russian bard of greatest worth’. These ‘best mates’ might well be read as Mickiewicz and Pushkin. This reference to the Russian bard within a portion of the text that offers a particularly searing critique of czarist Russia indicates both Mickiewicz’s admiration for Pushkin, as well as his frustrations with his one-time friend.

In 1833, Pushkin published The Bronze Horseman, a narrative poem that returned to the setting of Mickiewicz’s poem – the equestrian statue of Peter the Great that towers over what is today Senate Square (once Peter’s Square) in St. Petersburg. This enormously influential poem is thought by many – including Czesław Milosz – to initially have been conceived as a response to Mickiewicz. Though we may not know what exactly inspired Pushkin’s famous work, there is no doubt that the tumultuous friendship between Mickiewicz and Pushkin played a role in shaping two of the most significant voices in Slavic literature.

While their poetry remains the greatest testament to the influential relationship between the national bards, their friendship is also commemorated with a bas relief plaque in the heart of Moscow that depicts the men in their final meeting.

Fryderyk Chopin & George Sand

Thumbnail — Portrait de George Sand by Nadar, 1864, photo: Bibliothèque de la Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine

Tell Mickiewicz that my pen and my house are at his service and only too glad to be ready for him; tell Grzymała that I adore him; tell Chopin that I worship him, and tell all those you love that I love them too…

^{George Sand in a letter to Countess d’Agoult, 5 April 1837, in ‘Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin’, trans. Arthur Hedley}

Though both outstanding artists in their own right, Fryderyk Chopin and George Sand might seem an unlikely pair. He was a refined émigré and musical genius – with a capricious temperament and failing health. She was bold, subversive, and brilliant – an esteemed novelist who wore pants and smoked in public (at a time when such things were still scandalous). Yet both were celebrated Romantic artists and notable personalities in Parisian social circles. Their shared acquaintances included, among others, the artists Eugène Delacroix and Auguste Clésinger, writer Marie d’Agoult, and composer Franz Liszt, who is thought to have introduced the pair.

Chopin and Sand first met in 1836. It was an inauspicious introduction, following which, Chopin remarked of Sand: ‘There is something about her which positively repels me’. That first impression didn’t last and when the pair was reintroduced in 1838, they saw each other in a more positive light. So much so, that Sand’s feelings for Chopin prompted her to write a five-thousand-word letter to Albert Wojciech Grzymała detailing her thoughts on love and asking for advice. Shortly thereafter, their relationship began, and the couple temporarily relocated to Mallorca with Sand’s children.

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Monument to Fryderyk Chopin in Łazienki Park in Warsaw, photo: Tomasz Paczos / Fotonova / East News

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It was on Mallorca that Chopin composed his 24 Preludes (and suffered through a bout of tuberculosis). Writing about Mallorca, Sand described a landscape of ‘severity and grace, melancholy and magnificence’. These words, as Annik LaFarge notes, could just as well apply to Chopin’s compositions. Though conditions on the island were less than ideal, it was a productive period for the pair. The 24 Preludes are a brilliant study in contrast and emotion. Sand recalls Chopin writing the famous Raindrop Prelude (Prelude No. 15) in the midst of a terrible storm; and it was she who gave the work its familiar title (the literalness of which displeased Chopin). While on the island, Sand wrote her novel – A Winter in Mallorca.

Upon returning to France, the two maintained their relationship for almost a decade, splitting time between Paris and Sand’s home in Nohant. In 1847, towards the end of their time together, Sand published Lucrezia Floriani, a novel about a worldly woman who falls in love with an ill and introspective Eastern European aristocrat. The unflattering fictional portrait – along with growing tensions amongst Chopin, Sand, and her children – eventually led to the pair’s split. Not long thereafter, Chopin died (with Sand’s daughter Solange at his bedside).

The meeting of these great Romantic minds sparked great works of art in its time – and continued to fascinate and inspire long after the pair went their separate ways. For example, there were two films released in 1991 that depicted the relationship between the artists. In James Lapine’s fun and flirty Impromptu, Sand (played by Judy Davis) pursues Hugh Grant’s foppish Chopin. Andrzej Żuławski’s La Note Bleue is a more ambitious project, set at Sand’s Nohant estate with the role of Chopin played by the 1970 Chopin Competition winner Janusz Olejniczak. For those interested in the pair and their social milieu, both films offer a portrait of the unlikely couple and their famous friends.

Maria Szymanowska & Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the Roman Campagna by Johann H.W. Tischbein, 1786-1787, oil on canvas. 164 x 206 cm. Located in the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany, photo: VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images

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Madame Szymanowska from Warsaw, the most skilled and delightful pianist, has also stirred up something quite new in me. One is astonished when she handles the piano and when she stands up and comes towards us with all amiability, one enjoys that just as much.

^{Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in a letter to Johann Jakob Willemer (1823), quoted in ‘Madame Szymanowska and Goethe – A Burning Love?’ by Axel Feuß}

Maria Szymanowska’s, née Wołowska, stunning talents as a pianist and composer took her across Europe, where she not only performed in salons and concert halls, but also socialized with a who’s who of the arts and politics. As a young woman in Poland, she made the acquaintance of composers Józef Elsner, Karol Kurpiński, and Franciszek Lessel. While on tour, she played for Fryderyk Chopin and Tsar Alexander I. Her daughter, Cecylia, would grow up to marry Adam Mickiewicz.

While she no doubt left her mark on the music world, Szymanowska also became an inspiration for the ageing German Romantic writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The two met in 1823 in the spa town of Marienbad (today Mariánské Lázně in the Czech Republic) and Goethe was immediately taken with the talented (and quite lovely) Szymanowska, who was 40 years his junior. After their initial meeting in Marienbad, Szymanowska paid a visit to Goethe in Weimar while on a tour. Of her visit, Goethe recalled: ‘Then Madame Szymanowska, who had been at Marienbad with me that summer, visited me, and, by her charming melodies, awoke in me the echo of those youthful happy days’.

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Photograph of the painting 'Portrait of Maria Szymanowska', from before 1939, photo: Jacques Nicolas Bellin / National Museum in Warsaw

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Thus inspired, Goethe dedicated his poem Atonement to Szymanowska. The work, included in his Trilogy of Passion, concludes with a gorgeous description of the passions of music and love:

In million tones entwined for evermore,

Music with angel-pinions hovers there,

To pierce man's being to its inmost core,

Eternal beauty has its fruit to bear;

The eye grows moist, in yearnings blest reveres

The godlike worth of music as of tears.

And so the lighten'd heart soon learns to see

That it still lives, and beats, and ought to beat,

Off'ring itself with joy and willingly,

In grateful payment for a gift so sweet.

And then was felt,—oh may it constant prove!—

The twofold bliss of music and of love.

^{‘Atonement [to Madame Maria Szymanowska]’ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, trans. Edgar Alfred Bowring}

Listening now to Szymanowska’s Nocturne in B-Flat Major or Caprice sur la romance de Joconde, it’s not hard to understand how her music ‘pierced’ Goethe’s ‘being to its inmost core’.

In addition to stirring the passions of the German poet, Szymanowska was also responsible for arranging a meeting between him and her future son-in-law, the young Adam Mickiewicz. In 1829, she wrote a letter of introduction for Mickiewicz, insisting that Goethe meet with the Polish ‘prince of poets’. During their meeting, the men discussed Polish literature and folk songs – and perhaps their brilliant mutual acquaintance, Maria Szymanowska.

Antoni Malczewski & Lord Byron

Many Romantic poets wrote of lives of adventure – of travelling to distant lands, summiting the highest mountains, and becoming entangled in passionate and complicated affairs. For both Antoni Malczewski and the English poet Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron), such adventures were not confined to their work. Both men lived extraordinary lives and in the course of their European travels, crossed paths in Venice.

Having resigned from the army (some reports suggest it was prompted by a duel that resulted in a wounded foot), Malczewski left his homeland in 1816 to explore Europe. Over the next few years, he climbed Mont Blac (becoming the first Poles to reach its summit), became fascinated by magnetism and the work of Franz Mesmer, and met the great Lord Byron.

Little is known about their meeting; and, in fact, it has never been verified. Nevertheless, we can imagine that the two would have had much to discuss. In addition to swapping stories of their exciting endeavours, Malczewski and Byron were both inspired artists. Though we can’t say what transpired in Venice, upon returning to Warsaw, Malczewski wrote Maria, a dark tale that uses (what Bolesław Oleksowicz identifies as) ‘the pattern of Byron’s and [Sir Walter] Scott’s poetic novels’ to tell a story of love and loss in Dnieper Ukraine. The melancholic work is Malczewski’s sole contribution to Polish letters, for he died shortly after its publication.

While Malczewski was clearly inspired by Byron, some suggest the English poet was similarly taken with Malczewski. A few years after their rumoured meeting, Byron wrote Mazeppa, a narrative poem about the life of Ivan Mazepa. The work finds Byron engaging histories and landscapes that would have been very familiar to Malczewski, a pioneer of the ‘Ukrainian School’ of Polish Romanticism.

As you can see, the lives and work of the Polish Romantics were not confined to a community of their countrymen. With their affairs, rivalries, and brief encounters, the Polish Romantics and their famous friends produced a body of work that has endured for almost 200 years.

Written by Alena Aniskiewicz, 12 May 2022

_{Sources: ‘The History of Polish Literature’ by Czesław Miłosz (University of California Press, 1983); ‘Mickiewicz’s Stay in Russia and his Friendship with Pushkin’ by Wacław Lednicki (University of California Press, 1956); ‘Chasing Chopin’ by Annik LaFarge (Simon & Schuster, 2020); ‘Madame Szymanowska and Goethe – A Burning Love?’ by Axel Feuß (Porta Polonica, 2021); Culture.pl}

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe