Romanticism outside the vector of "influence": model of American-Polish cultural resonance

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Romanticism outside the vector of "influence": model of American-Polish cultural resonance

Lawski J.

Summary

The author of the article considers Polish-American literary and cultural relations from the 18th century till the time of romanticism. He notices that those relations are falling into a model which is impossible to describe by the traditional models that use the category of ««influence» [Harald Bloom] or postcolonial dependence. The basis of American-Polish relations is the idea of freedom, fight for freedom and even a peculiar cult of freedom in both nations. The personifications of this common relation are the heroes of fight for freedom in Poland and the United States, namely Kazimierz Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko. As the author notices, studies on these relations lead to the conclusion that stand apart from the dependence relations between historical and cultural phenomena in intercultural relations. Thus, article describes American- Polish relations as a realization of a certain model called «the model of resonance, circulation and transmission» of values, patterns, common ideas.

Key words: Polish and American culture, model of cultural resonance, circulation and transmission, freedom, Romanticism, influence.

Information about author: Tawski Jaroslaw Mariusz, Doctor of Humanities, professor, dean of the Philological Faculty, University of Bialystok.

Аннотация

cultural romanticism freedom

Романтизм поза вектором впливу: модель польсько-американського культурного резонансу

Лавскі Я.

Анотація. Автор статті здійснює спробу дослідження сутності взаємних польсько-американських історичних і культурних реляцій. Вони засновані не на прямому впливі однієї сторони на іншу, а на культурному резонансі і співпраці. Цей резонанс ґрунтується на міфології свободи як найвищої цінності як польської, так і американської культур. Цю свободу уособлюють герої боротьби за свободу Сполучених Штатів: Тадеуш Кос- тюшко і Казимєж Пуласький.

Ключові слова: польська і американська культура, модель культурного резонансу, циркуляції і трансмісії, свобода, романтизм, вплив.

Інформвція про автора: Лавський Ярослав Маріуш, доктор ґабілітований гуманітарних наук, професор, декан Філологічного факультету,Університету Білостоці.

Adnotacja

Romantyzm poza wektorem wptywu. model polsko-amerykanskiego rezonansu kulturowego

Lawski J.

Streszczenie. Autor artykulu podejmuje prфbз zbadania istoty wzajemnych historycznych i kulturowych relacji ame- rykansko-polskich. Oparte sq ona nie na bezposrednim wplywie jednej strony na drugq, lecz na kulturowym rezonansie, wspфloddzialywaniu. Ten rezonans zbudowany jest na mitologii wolnosci jako naczelnej wartosci kultury i polskiej, i ame- rykanskiej. Tз wolnosc ucielesniajq wspфlni bohaterowie walki o wolnosc Stanфw Zjednoczonych: Tadeusz Kosciuszko i Kazimierz Pulaski.

Slowa kluczowe: kultura polska i amerykanska, model kulturowego rezonansu, cyrkulacji i transmisji, wolnosc, roman- tyzm, wplyw.

Nota o autorze: Tawski Jaroslaw Mariusz, doktor nauk humanistycznych, profesor, dziekan wydzialu filologicznego, Uniwersytet w Bialymstoku.

Liberty: An Essential Value

We can assume that the history of Polish- American literary and cultural relations in the 19th century has been partly written. True, there are numerous texts about Polish authors in America, but so far, nobody has put forward a thorough, holistic model of the mutual links. Until today, Polish studies have been focusing mainly on the ways of how myths of Kosciuszko and Pulaski have been interpreted in both cultures. However, for different reasons Polish-American relations are worth closer research.

Firstly, the relations between American and Polish cultures of the period of Romanticism (and the whole 19th century) are, in fact, the relations between America and Eastern Europe. Whatever came to Polish culture from America, had subsequently passed to Slavic and Baltic cultures. In the first half of the 19th century the main «medium» of that cultural transfer was Adam Mickiewicz; in the second half of the 19th century - the journalism of the young Warsaw positivists, who displayed their enthusiasm for the idea of civilizational progress.

Secondly, towards the end of the 18th century, the ways of two societies, Polish and American, diverged in radically opposite directions: the history of American struggle for liberty was a virtual reverse of the fall of the Polish state. Into the 19th century, America came as an independent country and Poland disappeared from the maps. In America the colonized have shortly became colonizers; in Poland the former colonizers of Eastern Europe were colonized by Russia, Prussia and Austria. All the aforementioned facts provide a justification for proposing a strong cultural analogy between the histories of America and Poland, which are fulfilled by the idea of liberty - liberty understood as a fundamental attitude in its various manifestations. Liberty is the idea that has been always providing the fuel for the political, economic, cultural and literary dialogue between America and Eastern Europe.

«I do not like the great 19th century» Czeslaw Milosz, Widzenia nad Zatokq San Francisco

Since the 18th century, the Polish-American cultural and social relations had been developing on two levels. The first one, which I call «elitist», was developed by Polish travelers, authors of the Enlightenment, who were deeply moved by the American phenomenon of liberty (for example: Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Tomasz Kajetan Wзgierski, Maurycy Beniowski gave numerous written testimonies to their «enlightened» encounters with American culture and its political, literary and military elite). On the second level, which I call «egalitarian», the Pol- ish-American dialogue was initiated by the waves of emigrants from Poland and Eastern Europe, mostly of peasants and workers, who crossed the Atlantic in the second half of the 19th century. The «egalitarian» contributed to the development of a negative stereotype of the Pole as an uncivilized simpleton. On the one hand, and the creation of an ironic image of the American as a cowboy from the Wild West narratives, on the other hand, (who in the contemporary leftist version has become a military hegemon treating the whole world as a space of possible conquest).

Both myths - the «elitist» and the «egalitarian» - are underpinned by the Polish mytho-biographies (mythologized biographies) of the heroes devoted to the fight for liberty: Kosciuszko and Pulaski. It needs to be emphasized that these mytho-biogra- phies - fundamental for the Polish-American real and imagined relations - were conceived at the end of the 18th century, then cultivated throughout the 20th century and up to the nowadays. However, it is barely forgotten, that they were developed and cherished by Polish Romanticism.

Romanticism: A Hidden Code of the Polish-

American Relations

Here we have reached the stage of important preliminary assertions - the elitist circle of the 19th century American-Polish literary relations is a missing, forgotten link in the chain of Polish- American cultural relations. The existence of this circle accounts for numerous phenomena in the Polish-American connections in the 20th and 21st centuries (which is going to be discussed at the end of this article). However, other 19 th century «Romantic» phenomena such as the Polish-German cultural and literary transfer, relations with English, French, Russians, Ukrainians, as well as with representatives and cultures of the Orient are still more important for Polish scholars. All these nations played a crucial role in the birth and the development of Polish Romanticism, but their influence - which was very strong at a certain moment - was relatively short-lasting and not as creative as it would have been expected. The great fascination with Schiller, Goethe and Herder (whom Polish poets treated as Romantics, by the way!) ended abruptly after the November Uprising (1830/1831) with the rejection of German inspirations. The French influences were very close to the American model - Polish Romanticism was mesmerized by Napoleon's idea of the republic and remained faithful to it throughout the 19th century. The idea of liberty, so close to Polish hearts, was strengthened by the dreams about a great man or even a redeemer with eschatological traits. English literature had a great impact on Polish Romanticism, mainly through the works of Shakespeare, Scott, Byron and Moore, but till 1830 it came to be seen as utterly conventional and was often met with ironic contestation. The influence of Russian, Ukrainian and Oriental themes was, in turn, complex and long-lasting. As far as these literatures and cultures are concerned, there could be observed numerous complicated processes of «influence» - the reactions of Polish Romantics to the real «influences» whose strength weakened after the November Uprising of 1830.

If we seriously take into account some of the ideas proposed by Harold Bloom , the first phase of Polish Romanticism should be seen as correlated with the transformation of European «influences». Later phases, however, were dominated by the history of Central and Eastern Europe, and by the fact that Polish literature had to react to the scandal of historical evil - the Partitions of Poland and the repressions of Russia and Austria after the uprisings and revolts of 1830, 1848, 1861 and 1863.

Against the backdrop outlined above, we can see that the American-Polish relations in the first half of the 19th century belonged to a different type. They were shaped not in the relation of «influence» and the reaction on that «influence», but in accordance with a certain model that I call the model of resonance, circulation and transmission. I would like to emphasize one thing: it is only a model, my subjective attempt to understand the phenomena that have not been properly examined yet.

The proposed model refers to the elitist level of cultural relations. It is based, on the one hand, on the mytho-biographies of Kosciuszko and Pulaski, and, on the other hand, on numerous, hardly known and unrecognized intellectual, ideological, and aesthetic relations. Most of them have not been interpreted in a satisfactory way. The model of cultural resonance appeared towards the end of the 18th century, developed during the period of Romanticism, and later - after the waves of the peasant emigration at the turn of the 19th century - was eclipsed by the egalitarian model, which evoked the cultural stereotypes of the American in Poland and the Pole in America. The egalitarian, «folk» model was based on the cultivation of Polish tradition by immigrants who settled in America, and on the cultivation of a certain myth or stereotype of America, which had never been undermined in Polish culture.

In the meantime, the elitist model continued to exist as if clandestinely until the next wave of emigration in the Solidarity period and the Martial Law (introduced on 13 December 1981). It was at the time when Polish-American cultural dialogue was enriched by the amazement of Polish new emigrants - often intellectuals and free lancers - at the predominance of the 19th century egalitarian model, which - as I mentioned earlier - was based on national stereotypes. Simultaneously, in America there slowly emerged a new wave of elitist, if not «exclusive» literary and cultural current, with Czeslaw Milosz as its main representa-tive. It manifested itself by American translations of the poetry of Szymborska, Herbert and Zagajewski, to name but a few. Polish musicians, film directors, and visual artists were also actively present on the American cultural scene at the time. Both currents - the elitist and the egalitarian - were equally underpinned by the idea of liberty, symbolized by the mytho-biog- raphies of Kosciuszko and Pulaski, and enriched by the figure of Pope John Paul II , who was perceived not only as the leader of the Catholic Church, but the icon of Polishness. The «Polish pope» became a bridge between the two currents, between the folk Catholicism of emigrants and the elitist tradition of the Polish symbolic Romanticism.

All the above-mentioned events originated from the Romantic cultural resonance: on the Polish side, it stemmed from the one-hundred-and- twenty-three-year long irredentism; on the American side, it came from the Founding Fathers, from the Civil War and various civil movements. In Polish culture, Romanticism remains the major paradigm of thinking about the world - this paradigm was unchallenged in the 20th and 21st centuries . Romanticism sustains and develops the aforemen-tioned «model» of cultural resonance, which was triggered the Polish representatives of the Enlight-enment who visited America, and by the Americans who visited Poland just before the Partitions.

1. The Model of Resonance, Circulation and Transmission

How different is the cultural resonance from Harold Bloom's «influence» and «reaction» to in-fluence? I would like to enumerate seven character-istics of such a relation:

* Instead of hiding the fact of influence, the writer ostentatiously exposes it.

* «Influence» is exposed not as a shameful dependence on the earlier pattern, but as an analogy or elected affinity in aesthetic, in-tellectual, thematic or spiritual terms, which should be proudly manifested.

* The cultural resonance is usually enabled by a common idea (in our case: liberty), a historical figure (in our case: Kosciuszko, Pulaski) or any other cultural factor.

* As far as the cultural resonance is con-cerned, the proximity of both cultures is in inverse proportion to the strength of their mutual influence. The longer the distance, the stronger and longer lasting the cultural resonance.

* United in the contemplation of the common idea (or figure, symbol, etc.), the par-ticipants of the «resonance» remain separate but display solidarity towards the other side.

* In the cultural resonance, the «influential» impact changes into the circulation of mutu-al influences. The «influential» becomes the «influenced.» This mechanism applies both to elements of culture and to cultures as such.

* The mutual resonance and transmission of values - literary «transfer» - lead to the pro-cess of transmitting values and ideas to other cultures: the American «cultural code», its ideas and motifs, is transferred by means of Polish culture to other cultures of Central and Eastern Europe. Some elements of Pol-ish cultural code are transferred and spread by means of American culture. I will elabo-rate on all this later.

The category of the cultural resonance opens up my perspective on the history of the relations be-tween the United States and a certain region of Cen-tral and Eastern Europe, which, until the end of the 18th century, belonged to a multi-national, multi-reli-gious and multi-cultural state called the Polish-Lith- uanian Commonwealth, and which today belongs to Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine.

Motifs and Analogies

That was the region where, in the first half of the 19th century, the cultural resonance was very strong; this fact, however, was ignored and has re-mained unexamined. First, I would like to signal a few dimensions of the resonance on the elitist level, which occurred in the culture of the first half of the 19th century - in the culture dominated by Romanticism. Even if it is going to be a Polish viewpoint, it will demonstrate how the mechanism of this resonance changed into cultural circulation and transmission.

* The Birth of Polish Romanticism (up to 1822). The myth of America as a promised land and a utopia of liberty was strongly present in the early Polish Romanticism. Young students from Vilnius, the philomaths and the philaretes, referred to Columbus, Kosciuszko, Pulaski and Washington as the symbols of common ideas and endeavors .

Young Mickiewicz wrote the satirical poem «Kartofla» (»Potato») (between 1818 and 1821), which discussed civilizational con-sequences of the discovery of America. Just at the beginning of the epoch the American theme was more than obvious for young Poles. In fact, that fascination was the legacy of the Enlightenment because initially the students from Vilnius were avid readers of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Trembecki.

It was as late as in the 21st century that another Romantic project was reclaimed from oblivion. In Vienna in 1815 (that is before Mickiewicz started his literary career) the Polish prince and, at the same time, Russian diplomat Edward Lubomirski (1796-1823) suggested that Polish literature and culture should be based on myth and symbol, taking as an example the myth of Faust in the culture of Germany. Lubomirski, who was engaged in diplomacy in Vienna, Berlin and London, published only one original (and highly valued) poetic work Graves on the Day of Tadeusz Kosciuszkos Death. Knights Songs (Warsaw 1821), in which his inspiration by the Ossian poems and English grave poems is combined with the exploration of the American biography of Kosciuszko . Lubomirski's work is just being re-discovered in Poland.

* The Early and Mature Romanticism (1822-1848 /1855). The major and symbolic representative of this current is Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), who included some distinct American elements in his major works. One of the footnotes to Konrad Wallenrod, a long, famous poem which approves of «betrayal» as a legitimate method of combat, indicates that Mickiewicz was inspired by James Feni- more Cooper, the author of The Spy and The Last of the Mohicans3. Years later both writers met in Rome, and the meeting with the «Polish philosopher of liberty» is mentioned in American biographies of Cooper (this fact, in my opinion, should be re-examined) . In the most often translated work of Mickiewicz, The Books of the Polish People and of the Polish Pilgrimage (1832), America is the living embodiment of liberty, contrasted with the corrupted Europe of tyrants. The Books... met with enthusiastic reactions in France, Ireland, America and Russia. Despite the fact that it was predominantly a manifesto of Polo-centric messianism, it was interpreted in more universal terms, particularly by those communities that suffered from various forms of oppressions. America is imagined as a utopian, contemporary New Jeru- salem , and thanks to Mickiewicz, this image permeated into other cultures.

In particular, the America-Polish cultural res-onance manifested itself when Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), the American precursor of feminism, met Adam Mickiewicz . Their close relation re-vealed - as it was the case with Cooper - the second aspect of the resonance: namely, it started a circu-lation of ideas and pictures. As a result of meeting Mickiewicz, Fuller reported on Polish affairs in American newspapers. The Polish poet inspired in her - and that is visible in his letters to Fuller - a certain understanding of female roles, and the necessity of female «spiritual» emancipation based on Christianity. The fact that Fuller responded to that inspiration should be seen today as something extraordinary. In the spirit of the first half of the 19th century, Mickiewicz preached the spiritual and intellectual emancipation of women as equals to men. As far as I know, Margaret Fuller is still a major part of American cultural landscape. We should remember how important the meeting with Mickiewicz was for her intellectual development.

That was the way in which the American fascinations of teenage Philomaths of Vilnius returned as the inspirations for the feminist Fuller.

There was yet one more element of that reciprocal circulation: thanks to Margaret Fuller Mick- iewicz discovered the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Apart from Bцhme, Saint-Martin, and Towiahski - Emerson was the most significant discovery of Mickiewicz in the late, mature stage of his career (his notes from Emerson's writings survived to our time). That was the way the American Transcendentalism and the Polish mysticism, with Margaret Fuller acting as a go-between, converged in the most sublime, elitist dimension, which Mick- iewicz might have called «mystic».

Nevertheless, the picture of the whole elitist resonance and circulation in the 19th century is not complete yet. We need to mention three «planes» of it:

* The Plane of Cultural Transfer of Emigrants. The myth of America, so vivid in Europe and, of course, in the lands populated by Polish people, turned the United States into a new desired homeland. The experience was not always easy for Polish people. There was a huge discrepancy between the imagined America and the real country, where everything depended on one's hard work, irrespective of hierarchies and social stratification. The renowned Polish poet Cyprian Norwid (1821-1883), the fist in a series of Polish premodernists, went to America in 1852 but bitterly disappointed, returned two years later. August Antoni Jakubowski - an illegitimate son of Antoni Malczewski, the author of the masterpiece Maria (1825), the poem inspired by Byron and Moore - was deported by Austrians to America in 1833. Earlier, the group of 235 Poles that Jakubowski was part of was denied entry to the «homeland of liberty» - France. A year after his arrival in America Jakubowski was already fluent in English. He was taken care of by the Presbyterian preacher and religious writer William Buell Sprague (1796 - 1876). In 1835 he published the first American study of Polish literature (mainly Romantic) along with translated fragments of selected works. The excellent essay «The Re-membrance of a Polish Exile» was re-issued five times (one of these editions in Auburn, Philadelphia) . However, Jakubowski did not manage to feel truly at home in America. On 25 April 1837, he committed suicide in Northampton, Massachusetts.

* One of Jakubowski's followers was Paul [Pawel] Sobolewski (1816 -1884), the author of the monumental anthology of Polish poetry Poets and Poetry of Poland. A Collection of Polish Verse Including a Short Account of the History of Polish Poetry, with Sixty Biographical Sketches of Poland's Poets and Specimens of their Composition, Translated into the English Language (Chicago 1881). The book ends with a presentation of August Antoni Jakubowski. Altogether about 58 books written by 22 Polish writers were published in America in the 19th centu- ry. It goes without saying that travels to and from America inspired lots of very impor-tant documents - for example, Jakubowski's essay written in English or Norwid's poems (»John Brown,» «To the Citizen John Brown» ) and his prose about crossing the ocean, entitled «Civilization. (Legend).»

* The Plane of Aesthetic Analogies. There exists a (poorly examined) plane of aesthetic and thematic analogies between Polish and American literature in the period from the beginning of the 19th century up to the Great War. The 19th century saw the interest of Polish writers in the plight of Native Americans. Jakubowski's two poems - «Indianin» and «Indianka» - convey a feeling of empathy and a yearning for freedom (they were both published as late as in 1973 in Cracow ). In the second half of the 19th century, Ludwik Powidaj (1830 - 1882) wrote the famous article «Poles and Native Americans» (Dziennik Literacki 1864), which developed the analogy between the histories of both groups .

The significance of travel writing at the time cannot be overvalued. Although the genre was pioneered by Romantic travelers, it was Henryk Sienkiewicz's journey to America that became a true literary event. His depictions of the American Wild West are interspersed throughout the narrative of the most important Polish historical novel Trilogy (1884 - 1888) . There is no doubt whatsoever that the American journey was a formative experience for the future Nobel prize winner - Sienkiewicz returned to America as the author of the best-selling Quo Vadis, which was later made into a Hollywood movie . In his oeuvre, both models of Polish-American relations - the elitist and the egalitarian - converged for the first time. Sienkiewicz knew very well the poetry of Mickiewicz and the Ukrainian poem by Malczewski , and he was exceptionally good at making use of the potential hidden in the so-called popular literature, in new media (newspapers for masses), and in the publications in the form of installments. Interestingly, Sienkiewicz and Mickiewicz shared the same enthusiasm for the novels of Cooper. For the author of Quo Vadis the thrill of reading Cooper was supplemented by the real experience of his American peregrination: «To be confronted face to face, eye to eye with untamed nature; to penetrate deeply into the virgin woods that Cooper once described - this is the happiness I have been secretly looking forward to.»

The relations or analogies between Polish and American «dark» Romanticisms are far less distinct. Both were driven by the English Gothicism and, later, by the French lib-ertinism. Still, there was no visible connec-tion between Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) and the Polish «dark» Romantics such as Malczews- ki, Goszczynski or Zalewski. The Polish po-ets started relatively early (between 1825 and 1847), the American counterparts were active later, and mainly in prose. Tadeusz Micinski (1873 - 1918) and the author of «hypnotic' novellas Stefan Grabinski (1887 - 1936) were among those who were closer to the American aesthetic inclinations. But they were active at the beginning of the 20th century . All in all, the analogy between both «dark» Romanticisms should be examined in aesthetic and ideological terms, and also as an exemplification of a certain symbolic imagination.

* Last but not least, the Plane of Ideological Analogies. Doubtless, the concepts and pos-sible connections between different versions of Polish messianism and American utopias are still to be looked into. The same can be said about the 19th-century relations between Polish and American feminist ideas. Until the 20th century, those influences had been mutual; later they became a one-sided assimilation of American theories by Polish pioneers of feminism. Moreover, we need to re-consider possible links between republican ideas and concepts of liberty, taking into account Henry David Thoreau and Polish supporters of republican liberty, anarchic Sarmatism and liberum veto (Juliusz Slowacki, Henry Rzewuski, Adam Mickiewicz) . Finally, we need to investigate the social and philosophical thought in the first half of the 19th century in America and Poland, as well as American and Polish con-cepts of mysticism, theosophy and transcen-dentalism. What should be emphasized, I think, is the fact that lots of Polish books published in America in the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20h century played a vital role in the process of resonance and circulation of ideas. Some of these publications were meant for mass readership; some of them, however, included works by Polish major writers, samples of journalism, and even paraphrases of the so-called «highbrow» literature. Recently, while in America, I have discovered Tadeusz Micinski's longer poem «Widmo Wallenro- da» [»The Phantom of Wallenrod»] (Warsaw 1914) published as an attachment to a novel by Ludwik Stasiak . Regrettably, a complete bibliography of similar publications has not been prepared so far - neither in Poland nor on the other side of the Atlantic.

America - Poland - Eastern Europe

The model of resonance and circulation of ideas, which I observe in the Polish-American relations, had yet one another dimension - the cultural trans-mission. All the ideas, themes and motifs present in American culture, which influenced the thought and writings of such figures as Adam Mickiewicz, met with vivid reactions in Eastern and Central European cultures: the Ukrainian, the Lithuanian, the Belarusian, and the Russian. More often than not the trace of the influence was difficult to detect but the very radiation of Mickiewicz's ideas and works - those commonly affirmed and those which were opposed - was strong at the time when Eastern Eu-ropean national cultures awoke from their slumber. Jakubowski, whom I have already mentioned several times and who wrote the first Polish poems about Native Americans, gave America the first report on Ukraine, Bohdan Chmielnicki and Cossacks (in 1835) . The idea of the so-called «wallenrodism» inspired the Balkan novels of Teodor Tomasz Jez (1824 -1915) , which were later translated into southern Slavic languages. «Wallenrodism» came in for lots of criticism from Iwan Franko (1856 - 1916), the Ukrainian national writer and author of the scandalous article «The Poet of Betrayal» (»Ein Dichter des Verrates»), published in 1897 in the Viennese newspaper Die Zeit. Distant, hidden echoes of the Polish-American resonance could be heard in the whole Central Europe.

American and Polish literatures are linked by a subtle thread of relations. In fact, these are the rela-tions between America and Central Europe. More-over, in the 19th century they were not, as I argue shaped by forces of influence, but by the model of resonance, circulation and cultural transmission. The idea of liberty, personified in the late Enlightenment in the mytho-biographies of Kosciuszko and Pulaski, was the basic chord of that cultural «melody» that both sides produced. The similarity between Polish and American culture lies in the fact that - attached as they both are to tradition - they both look into the future as a welcome guest. Unlike Western Romanticism, Polish Romanticism was not an eruption of nostalgia for the lost harmony. On the contrary, because of historical circumstances and because of the conflict with Russia, it tried to penetrate into the future understood in terms of Providentialism. The look into the future brought Polish Romanticism closer to the currents of modernity; the mistrust of secularization alienated it from modernity. In addition, Poles perceived America in a similar manner: as a modern nation that is open to the future, but - at the same time - more than careful in questioning tradition in the name of secularization and social utopias.

Granted, from the American viewpoint, the American-Polish-Central European resonance was of a rather marginal significance. When America became a global superpower, Poland fell down as a state, thus strengthening the hegemonic aspirations of Russia. It is Russian culture that has been a genuine challenge for America - as a mysterium tremendum et fascienans it has been fascinating and scary. This hierarchy of relations has been relatively stable. Such a situation is obviously caused by the geopolitical roles of the three countries: the global winners, naturally, are engaged in a global argu- ment; the cultural resonance with the marginalized culture is, inevitably, of marginal importance in the historical process.

2. The Geopolitical Epilogue

Does it really make sense to listen to the hardly audible sounds produced by such unequal cultures, which have been doomed to the roles of the winner (America) and the incurable loser (Poland)? And am I not too pessimistic in my judgments? The answer to the former is «yes,» to the latter «no.» First, I would like to remark that the geopolitical role-play is subject to change. It is a game with an uncertain outcome. The Romantic, elitist model of the Polish-American relations has not been silenced. Why did Czeslaw Milosz decide - like Nor- wid - to go to America? Why have Milosz, Herbert, Zagajewski and Szymborska - the inheritors of Polish Romantic tradition - become so successful in American culture? As I see it, all this has happened because of the aforementioned resonance, circulation and transmission of the values that appeared in the Polish-American relations at the end of the «Enlightened» 18th century. That current was developed by Romanticism and, subsequently, passed on to the 20th-century poets - to Milosz, for example, for whom Polish Romanticism and, later, American culture were important points of reference. In the 20th century, Milosz wrote History of Polish Literature for Americans, in which he emphasized the unquestionable importance of Romanticism for Polish culture. Again, it was in America that Milosz, in his conversations with Aleksander Wat, initiated the post-war discussion on the relations (also literary) between Poles and Jews. In the American testimonies of Holocaust survivors, two stereotypes of Polish culture are conspicuous: the folk Catholic anti-Semitism and the predominance of Romantic imagination.

For Milosz, until the end of his life, the most important point of reference was Adam Mickie- wicz - the avid reader of James Cooper, Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson. From this perspective, Milosz's success in America (and not only his) was not wholly unexpected. In Milosz, the cultural resonance turned into a new kind of living presence - the presence of Polish culture in America and of American culture in Poland. In the American context it is, I think, mainly the presence of poetry. Here is what Milosz wrote about this element of Polish culture when he recalled the process of composing his long poem «From the Rising of the Sun»: «Never before has Lithuania - so different from California - returned to me with such vivacity.» Lithuania returned to Milosz in his Californian surroundings, when he «immersed himself in the past.» The past, in other words, was redeemed by his metaphysical writing. It was an act of «regaining things past in a form that is resistant to oblivion; in a purified form.»

This, however, is a different problem; not related to «models,» influences or resonances. A meta-physical problem. Romantic. And awaiting to be examined.

Literature

1.H. Bloom, Lзkprzed wpfywem. Teoria poezji, przekl. A. Bielik-Robson, M. Szuster, Krakow 2002;

2.M. B|k, Tworczy lзk Stowackiego. Antagonizm wieszczowpo latach, Katowice 2013.

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4.L. Wellisz, The friendship of Margaret Fuller d'Ossoli and Adam Mickiewicz, New York 1947;

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