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Count Zygmunt Krasiński, a Polish nobleman traditionally ranked with Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki as one of Poland's Three National Bards - the trio of great Romantic poets who influenced national consciousness during the period of Poland's political bondage. He was the most famous member of the aristocratic Krasiński family.
Background
Krasiński was born on February 19, 1812 in Paris, France, the son of the Napoleonic General Wincenty Krasiński, and Countess Maria Urszula Radziwiłł. Krasiński remained faithful throughout his life to the aristocratic and Catholic traditions of his family.
Education
In September 1826 Krasiński entered a local Warsaw Lyceum and received his high school diploma in the Autumn of 1827. Krasiński began his professional studies at the Faculty of Law and administration at the Imperial University of Warsaw, however, the incident on March 14, 1829, during which Leon Łubieński accused Krasiński of lacking solidarity with other students and refraining from participating in the patriotic manifestation, and subsequently refusing to attend any of the classes during the funeral of the President of the Sejm and Senator Piotr Beliński, interfered with his education at the complex. As a result of this event, in late March 1829, Krasiński was expelled from the university.
Career
Under the pressure of his despotic and legitimistic father, Krasiński did not take part in the Polish Insurrection of 1830-1831. Krasiński's early work was made up of novels after the manner of Walter Scott, lacking in great interest, and in no way foretelling the marvelous achievement of his The Undivine Comedy (1834), written when he was twenty-one years old. Among the various problems (the poet, the child, family life, bourgeois selfishness, the leader) condensed in this extraordinarily concise play, that of social revolution is dominant. With an amazing clairvoyance the author foresaw in 1833 the unavoidable approach of the class struggle. The objectivity of his political vision is remarkable, for he has no social predilections. He shows the dissolution of the old world and the new enslavement of the masses, brought by revolution and the destruction of cultural values, following the ultimate battle between the two worlds. Krasiński's other symbolic play, Iridion (1836), which deals with the tragedy of Poland, allegorically presented in ancient Rome, shows an exceptional feeling for history and noble Christian philosophy. Both The Undivine Comedy and Iridion have been translated into English. Krasiński was a greater master of prose than poetry. The most important of his poems are The Psalms and The Dawn (1843); in these, as in some treatises, he develops his philosophy of love and his messianic conceptions based on the Hegelian triad, foretelling the coming of the third epoch - the Kingdom of the Spirit and of the Divine Law. Important also, but to a lesser degree, is his poem The Last, which concerns the Polish exiles in Siberia. His political writings, in which he is an implacable and prophetic enemy of Russian despotism and imperialism, are of great interest. Krasiński's correspondence with Countess Delphine Potocka, springing from their romance, was published shortly before World War II. He died on February 23, 1859.