Many Wallenrods
‘The vast diversity of real and literary figures orbiting around "Konrad Wallenrod" demonstrate the secret, incomparable power of this work, a force that has been called “magnetic”,’ Janion wrote, herself feeling the magnetic power of Mickiewicz’s character. She explored Konrad Wallenrod and its effect on Polish history and reality in many articles, and she crowned her life’s work with a remarkable study, Życie pośmiertne Konrada Wallenroda (The Afterlife of Konrad Wallenrod, 1990).
Among the figures whose biographies and ties with Wallenrod Janion examines are politicians and activists such as Józef Bem and Michał Czajkowski, whose long struggle for their homeland involved swapping political alliances and converting to Islam or Orthodoxy. Yet she gives special attention to figures in conspiracy organizations that were behind Polish uprisings in the nineteenth century and international secret societies. For people from these circles Wallenrod’s traits and attitudes were practically compulsory: the ethos of the conspirator went hand-in-hand with a readiness for the ultimate sacrifice.
And yet, as Janion shows, it was not just conspiratorial action that made Wallenrod. A key element of Mickiewicz’s character was a vital circumstance in which the protagonist reaches the upper echelons of the state hierarchy, which he then attempts to destroy. Here, for the sake of objectivity, we must mention that the bureaucracy of the oppressive police state that was nineteenth-century Russia (and the other partitioning powers) made such a career extremely difficult, if not impossible.
It seems things were looking up for the Wallenods in around the mid-nineteenth century, culminating in the events of the January Uprising. Historians have proven that the uprising of 1863 would have been impossible were it not for a staff of officers educated and trained in the military academies of the Russian Empire. As Janion shows, the uprising’s military plans were essentially developed by Polish officers of the Russian army.
A key fact was that a new, highly Russified generation of Poles was just entering adulthood. Brought up after the disaster of the November Uprising, in what had been Polish territory, they had been through Russian schools and military academies, and had served in the Russian army. Not much in fact connected them to Poland any more; for many of them, Polish was a foreign language. Yet it was this very aspect that made them seem credible, making a true Wallenrodian approach possible.
Janion quotes the biographies of several Polish officers in the Russian army who played vital roles in preparing the uprising, such as Józef Hauke-Bosak and Jarosław Dąbrowski, as well as those, like Romuald Traugutt, who shouldered the burden of leadership. Among them, Zygmunt Sierakowski deserves special attention.
