Where Is Poland? | Polish Culture in Exile

Chapter 4

Polish Culture in Exile

Due to the repressions that came in the wake of theNovemberUprising, many Poles were forced to emigrate from the country. This so-called GreatEmigration – although actually relatively small in numerical terms – was of great symbolic meaning. As a result, the greatest works of Polish Romanticism were written outside of Poland.

Marcin Zaleski, Capture of the Arsenal, 1831. Source: National Museum in Warsaw

The Tribulations of the November Night

The November Uprising was the second national uprising (after the Kościuszko Insurrection, 1894) aimed at rebuilding the Polish state in its pre-partition shape. It broke out in Warsaw on the night of 29 to 30 November and quickly transformed into open Polish-Russian warfare. The Poles were rebelling against Nicholas I’s violation of the principles of autonomy that had been guaranteed in the constitution of 1815, through the introduction of state censorship and the persecution of patriotic organisations.

Some 140,000 individuals took part in the uprising. For ten months, they fought against the greatest military power in Europe – and did so with a certain measure of temporary success. The November Uprising was the greatest military effort in the history of the nineteenth-century Polish liberation struggle.

The uprising was brutally suppressed and followed by waves of repression – the constitution of 1815 was abolished, the separate Polish parliament and army eliminated. Tens of thousands of Polish soldiers were drafted into the Russian army and exiled deep into Russia. A 100,000-strong Russian occupation force entered the rump Kingdom of Poland. Tsar Nicholas I is said to have summed up the situation as follows:

I do not know if there will be a Poland someday again, but I am sure that there will be no Poles anymore.

Le réfugié polonais, anonymous xylograph, 1831. Photo: Polona.pl

Great Emigration, or Refugees Welcome!

After the fall of the November Uprising many of its participants emigrated in order to escape repression. They headed west. After being warmly welcomed in Germany, where they were perceived as fighters for the freedom of nations, many continued their journey to settle in France, Belgium, and England. The largest Polish colony was established in Paris, but the Poles also formed active communities in Brussels and London, whereas smaller colonies existed in Switzerland, Spain, Algeria, Turkey, Scandinavia and the Balkans. What initially was considered to be a short period of expatriation turned out to be a lifelong exile for many of them.

The Great Emigration – as the exodus that followed the November Uprising is called in Polish historiography – was not in fact so ‘great’ in purely numerical terms, when compared with later Polish migrations. During its first phase, by 1847, a total of 11,000 people emigrated – most of them men. But they included representatives of the intellectual elite of the country: politicians, writers, artists, and poets, whose works and activity would continue to shape Polish culture for many years to come.

Polish Pantheon, tableau with images of Polish poets by Bronisław Puc, 1878. Source: Polona.pl

Polish Romanticism Made in France

The trials and tribulations of Polish history drove the most outstanding Polish authors and artists – including Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Krasiński, Chopin, and Norwid – into emigration. As a result, major works of Polish culture unprecedently began to be created far away from the country.

The most important works of Polish Romanticism, which soon constituted the new canon of Polish literature, were authored in exile – in isolation from domestic literary life. Although written far away from the country, the Romantics' works continually evoked the vision of the homeland and constantly dwelled upon the topic of its lost independence and the possibility of its recovery. The 'Polish issue' raised in literature was a point of dispute that divided the Polish diaspora. The 'politicisation' of literature was to be one of the main characteristics of Polish Romanticism in exile.