Thinker, Critic, Soldier, Citizen of Poland: The Short Life & Lasting Legacy of Maurycy Mochnacki

maurycy_mochnacki_1834_r.jpg, default, Maurycy Mochnacki, drawing by anonymous artist, 1840-1850. Photo. Polona.pl

A look at the remarkable life of Maurycy Mochnacki, including his many roles and achievements – along with a few good arguments to ground his claim to eternal fame.

Born in the beginning of the 19th century in present-day Ukraine, Maurycy Mochnacki lived only until his early thirties, when he died of tuberculosis in France. Yet in his short lifetime, he managed to become a soldier in a major military effort against the Russian Empire, its first historian, a leading critic writing about Polish Romantic literature, as well as a philosopher who almost single-handedly defined the modern philosophy of Polish identity, with its fearless striving for freedom. At a most difficult time and in spite of defeatist attitudes around him, he managed to instil in his contemporaries and future generations an unwavering sense of pride and confidence in their powers and a love for freedom as the greatest value.

Conspirator

Born in Bojaniec (today Boyanets, in western Ukraine), in what was then a fresh territorial acquisition by the Russian Empire (and formerly the Kingdom of Poland), Mochnacki moved to Lwów (Lviv) with his family at the age of twelve, where he took music lessons. In 1819, the family moved to Warsaw, where Mochnacki enrolled in law studies at Warsaw University. Soon, however, he was expelled from the university for striking a policeman – and later imprisoned for his activity in a secret patriotic organization.

Much later, Mochnacki would write about the widespread and popular character of Polish secret societies on the eve of the November Uprising, but he was likely exaggerating their true scope and number. Mochnacki’s clandestine activity was certainly heroic and along with others paved the way for the insurrection – it also became an inseparable element of the Polish patriotic canon, one that Mochnacki so effectively helped to forge.

Literary critic

Five years younger than Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), Mochnacki was one of the first journalists and critics to recognise the greatness of the author of Ballads and Romances (Ballady i Romanse) and Mickiewicz’s role in shaping modern literature in Poland. In the conflict between the young generation of Romantic writers and conservative classicists, Mochnacki passionately took the side of Mickiewicz, Antoni Malczewski (author of Maria) and others. He soon became the most important theoretician of Polish Romantic literature.

More importantly perhaps, Mochnacki came up with a truly pioneering idea of literature and its role for the nation’s identity – namely, the concept of ‘a national literature’. Unlike other early Romantic critics who considered literature to be an expression of the ‘national character’ of a given community that shares a territory and speaks one language, Mochnacki spoke of a ‘national soul’ or ‘national temperament’. As Stanisław Pieróg notes, Mochnacki believed that it was thanks to literature that the community of individuals becomes a ‘collective individual’, an active subject that not only exists but also has an awareness and understanding of this existence. Thus, in Mochnacki’s own words, literature becomes a key way for ‘the nation to recognise itself in its existence’.

Literature, which Mochnacki admittedly understood very broadly (‘the overall mass of all conceptions and ideas characterizing the nation’), was hence an expression of the national temperament, but it also, in a sort of feedback loop, emanated that image outward, enabling people, or the nation, to recognize themselves in it, thus effectively shaping the nation’s own idea and understanding of itself.

As Stanisław Pieróg concludes, this concept of literature was of fundamental importance for Polish culture:

[I]t was the first conceptual framing of culture enabling [Poles] to express clearly and emphatically the rudimentary idea that would later be reiterated by generations of Poles living under a foreign yoke – namely, that the historical existence of a nation is not determined by a sovereign statehood but rather by its spiritual culture. The state, as a form of existence, may be destroyed but the national existence will remain intact as long as the nation is able to produce a culture in which it still recognizes itself as a separate entity and ‘recognizes itself in its national being.’

This, in the long run, came to define the great mystery of Poland’s existence after its ‘political death’ (along with the grand role of Romantic literature and national poets) – and can be seen as key to explaining Poland’s ultimate survival.

Soldier

Battle of Ostrołęka, May 1831, painting by Karol Malankiewicz. Photo: Wikimedia

In 1829, Mochnacki joined a military conspiracy of Warsaw’s army officers led by Captain Piotr Wysocki. Its aim was to ignite a national uprising which would effectively liberate the nation from Russian oppression (in place since the partitions of the late 18th century). Mochnacki was involved in the Warsaw events of 29 November 1830, which started the insurrection and which involved an assault on the Belvedere, the seat of the governor of Poland, Prince Constantine.

Mochnacki then joined the uprising, which spiralled into a full-scale war with Russia. He took part in the battles of Miłosna and Olszynka Grochowska, where he was wounded. After returning to the frontline with the rank of an officer, he took part in another string of battles before he got wounded (four times) in the battle of Ostrołęka. This effectively took him out of further military activities on the battlefield. He turned to political writing instead, but his pen was just as cutting as a sword.

Mochnacki stayed abreast of the events of the uprising until its fall, which is also when he joined the emigration stream of Polish refugees that ultimately took him to France. Mochnacki’s battle wounds were what eventually helped to identify his body when his remains were exhumed from an Auxerre cemetery in May 2021 and transferred to Poland, where he was interred at the Powązki cemetery in Warsaw – some 190 years after his death.

Historian

Maurycy Mochnacki "Powstanie narodu polskiego" — Cover of Maurycy Mochnacki's book about the Polish uprising of 1830. Photo: Polona.pl

After finding himself in exile in France, Mochnacki took on the truly gargantuan work of writing a history of the uprising, or the ‘Polish revolution’, as he would call it. Despite not having access to many sources and testimonies, he was able to produce a detailed and largely faithful account of events in which he was only partially involved.

In his book, Mochnacki reconstructed the run-up to and events of the uprising. He analysed the mistakes made by the leaders of the uprising – as he also admitted to having made mistakes himself. He pointed to differences among factions and the lack of firm resolve in pursuing the military and political goals of the campaign as one of the reasons for the uprising’s failure. In fact, the strife within the different political forces of the uprising nearly cost Mochnacki his own life, when he was almost lynched and then nearly hanged by the uprising’s leadership – a streak of events he only mentions in passing in his book.

As a historian, Mochnacki argued that the uprising should have aimed for maximalist goals –that is, the restitution of all of pre-partition Poland (with all its territorial integrity and freedoms), and he considered it a realistic goal. He claimed that the leaders, at a crucial point, lacked faith in their own powers, which effectively limited their ability to act.

Despite the bitter realism of his conclusions, Mochnacki’s book contained a fair amount of optimism, and, as Stefan Kieniewicz noted, ‘it established the belief that avoiding these mistakes in the future would give the nation a chance at victory and liberation’.

The ultimate take-away from Mochnacki as historian would run something like this: We lost because we lacked the ability to act energetically and effectively. ‘It was not that we couldn’t win; it’s just that we didn’t know how’, was his credo.

Radical democrat

Mochnacki’s philosophical reflection on the nation was accompanied by very pragmatic thinking about the possibilities for success of the Polish cause, which he saw as dependent on the success of a military uprising. However, the chances for this he saw as limited due to the very meagre engagement on the part of the peasantry.

As early as during the November Uprising, in 1831, Mochnacki called for a social revolution, which ‘on the strength of a single noble parliamentary resolution would establish human and civilian rights for the great majority of Polish common folk’, ‘so that each and every person taking up arms for this cause and his family would be assured of instantaneous safety until the end of time’. Mochnacki was referring to the serfdom which was still a reality in all Russian-held territories of the former Poland.

Thus, as Mochnacki suggested, it was the main task of the Polish revolution to make ‘the social revolution’ a means of ‘political revolution’. This idea, expressed most clearly in his article ‘Czemu Masy Nie Powstają’ (Why the Masses Are Not Rising Up), was connected to a peasant reform which would consist of the ‘Polonization of and granting of land to all peasants’, enacted by the Sejm and implemented by the insurgent government.

Critic of Russia

French caricature published in Charivari, photo: publisc domain

Mochnacki was one of the fiercest and sharpest critics of Russia, its imperial agenda and the danger it poses for Europe and beyond – much of which has not lost its relevance up to the present day, marked by Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. In fact, one could argue that many modern commentators and pundits discussing today the long-standing and deep causes of Russian imperialism and expansionism, inadvertently and unknowingly repeat Mochancki’s arguments from two centuries ago.

Like many after him (but none before him), Mochnacki saw the Russian state as essentially and inherently despotic and emphatically argued that it cannot function otherwise: ‘Let us just for one moment take away from Muscovy its autocratic ruler, and that very moment it ceases to be a political body’, Mochnacki claimed.

On another controversial point, he claimed that there’s no such thing as Russian society or, as a matter of fact, a Russian nation. There is just a sense of unity imposed from above by the authorities but no inner bonds to hold the community together, Mochnacki argued in the early 1830s. What held Russia together – given the lack of any other uniting elements such as history or culture – was Russian expansionism and wars, which he called ‘a narcotic for the masses’.

In another interesting insight, Mochnacki argued that the European idea of Russia as a great power relied on Russia’s ability to ‘manage endeavours that far exceeded its true powers’, as well as ‘Europe’s own superstition as to what it found appropriate to call a “nation” with regards to Muscovy’. Thus, Russia, as Mochnacki suggests, is a giant whose greatness and formidableness is based largely on our perception of it as such.

Let us add that for Mochnacki Russia’s despotism also stood in striking contradiction to Poland’s political tradition and Polish cultural formation, with its democratic and liberal values.

Pianist

Maurycy Mochnacki's monument at a cemetery in Auxerre. Source: Wikimedia

Mochnacki was a gifted pianist and musician who however did not pursue a career as a performer. His greatest moment at the piano most likely came on 23 March 1832, in Metz, France, where he performed to a sold-out audience in two concerts with orchestra. The concerts, during which the pianist reportedly played pieces by Hummel and Rossini, ended – as Bernard Richard notes – with Mochnacki singing a capella the Dąbrowski Mazurka, and then, following a longer moment of silence, continuing with La Marseillaise, eliciting enthusiasm from the audience […]’. As his friend Michał Podczaszyński noted, ‘Maurycy was the king of the day in Metz. People talked about him and him only’. The concert reportedly brought in some 6,000 francs, all of which was donated to the poor. Podczaszyński later summed up: ‘Our stay in Metz was most delightful. Maurycy claims that never in his life did he feel so happy and unfettered’.

The Citizen

The cermonial re-burial of Maurycy Mochnacki at the cemetery in Warsaw, November, 2021. Source: gov.pl

Mochnacki died on 20 December 1834 in Auxerre, where he was buried. The Latin epitaph on his tomb, composed by his comrades, reads: ‘Civis Polonus – Hostem Moscoviensem’ (Citizen of Poland – Enemy of Muscovy [i.e. Russia]). An apt summation of a life dedicated to freedom and the battle against cruel tyranny.

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