Napoleon attended his christening; Poland remembers him as the Anonymous Poet
Zygmunt Krasiński was born in Paris in 1812 and baptised with Napoleon himself in attendance. He grew into one of Poland's Three Bards, the Romantic poets who kept national identity alive while the country was partitioned, yet he published under no name at all, earning the title Anonymous Poet of Poland.
His father, Count Wincenty Krasiński, was an aristocrat and military commander; his mother, Maria Urszula, came from the great Radziwiłł family. He spent his earliest years at Chantilly, where Napoleon's Imperial Guard was quartered, and the family moved to Warsaw in 1814. Distinguished tutors educated him at home. When his mother died of tuberculosis in 1822, the ten-year-old became his father's constant companion, absorbing a reverence for chivalry and honour. The critic Victor Erlich described the son as weak and hypersensitive and the father as affectionate but domineering, a close, difficult bond that shaped the poet's life.
That loyalty had a cost. After finishing at the Warsaw Lyceum, which Chopin had also attended, he studied law, but in March 1829 he stayed in class, at his father's urging, rather than join a patriotic demonstration at the funeral of Marshal Piotr Bieliński, a national hero who had clashed with the elder Krasiński. Only one other student did the same. A public confrontation with a classmate followed, and the university expelled him.
He left for Geneva, where meeting Adam Mickiewicz dazzled him and shaped his craft. News of the November Uprising reached him in Rome; he set off to fight but never took part. A stay in Italy from 1833 to 1834 produced his best-known work, the tragic drama The Undivine Comedy, often judged the most important Polish play of the Romantic era.
His early writing, inspired by Walter Scott and Byron, celebrated medieval knighthood. Later works, including Irydion and The Undivine Comedy, imagined class struggle and foresaw the destruction of the nobility, while Psalms of the Future in 1845 and other treatises reflected on history, Christianity and the need for sacrifice. He came to oppose romantic armed uprisings. Despite failing health he travelled Europe lobbying for Poland, even meeting Napoleon III, and published anonymously to avoid political trouble. He died on 23 February 1859.
Source: Zygmunt Krasiński
