Among the lesser romantic poets, the so called "Ukrainian school" forms a group apart. Its earliest representative, Antoni Malczewski (1793-1826), preceded even Mickiewicz as the author of a Byronic tale in verse. His romance Marja (Mary, 1825), breathes all the charm of chivalrous tradition and melancholy steppe landscape associated with Poland's south-eastern border.
Byronic colours are laid on more thickly by Seweryn Goszczyn ski (1803-1876) in his verse tale Zamek Kaniowski (Kaniow Castle), full of the horrors of age-old class war between the Ukrainian peasantry and the Polish borderland gentry. In his later work, he became a forerunner of realism.
The third most prolific singer of Ukrainian traditions and land scape in Polish poetry, Joseph Bohdan Zaleski (1802-1886), is a lyrical poet of great melody, but fatal facility. In his most am bitious effort, the philosophical poem The Spirit of the Steppe (Duch od stepu) he endeavours to reconcile the Romantic dreams 'See the study by Monica M. Gardner: The Anonymous Poet of Poland (Cambridge, 1919).
of the high dignity of Poland's sufferings with a moral and Chris tian view of her past errors and contemporary fate.
Another region of Poland's historical domains, the Masovian plains in the centre of the country with their purely Polish peasan try, are the subject of the lyric poetry of Teofil Lenartowicz (I822–I89) : although he spent his later years as a sculptor in Florence, he never ceased to sing of Polish country life.
His counterpart is Wincenty Pol (1807-1872), who sings with equal persistence of the old-world life of the country gentry. A soldier in the insurrection of 1831, he commemorates this in a series of stirring and popular songs (Pieini Janusza) : a Professor of geography in his later days, he produces a picturesque descrip tive account of Poland in verse (Pie,s'n o Ziemi Naszej) and several geographical works in very vivid prose.
What the Ukrainian group did for the South-East, and Lenarto wicz and Pol for central Poland, was done for the North-Eastern domains of the historical Poland (Lithuania and White Ruthenia) by Ludwik Wiadyslaw Kondratowicz, known as Syrokomla (1823– 1862). A son of the minor gentry of those lands, he is at his best when drawing on his memories of his own youthful sur roundings (as in the two charming longer poems on the Early Life and School-Days of Jan Deborog).
The romantic inspiration still produced a poet of action in Mieczyslaw Romanowski (1834-1863), who died a hero's death in the ranks of the insurgents of 1863. He had shown promise in a longer narrative poem of Polish town life in past ages (Dziewczf z Sqcza), but this bears clear traces of the influence of Mickiewicz' epic masterpiece. It is echoes also of the song of the great Roman tic masters that we catch everywhere in the poetry of Kornel Ujejski (1823-1897). He had made his mark, at the age of twenty with the verse tale Marathon. Not long afterwards, the national disaster of the Galician peasant riots of 1846 inspired him to write a series of elegies entitled The Lamentations of Jere miah (Skargi Jeremiego), one of which, the Choral Song became the anthem of national woe. Before fading away utterly, the Romantic flame once more leaps up wildly in the enigmatic and convulsive, but intensely inspired poetry of Cyprian Norwid (d. 1885). The poet lived in disregard and neglect, and only came into his own long after his death through the efforts of a loth century critic (Z. Przesmycki).
Of novelists of the romantic period, the very spirit of romance seems incarnate in Michael Czajkowski, who began active life as a Polish insurgent in 1831 and ended it as a Mussulman and a pasha in the Turkish Army. His novels, chiefly from the history of Poland's i8th century wars, are marred by wild improbabilities and artificial glitter. Higher literary value distinguishes the works of Count Henry Rzewuski (1791-1866), especially his stories from i8th century Polish life The Memoirs of Severin Soplica and November (Listopad).
We are on the road from romance to realism in the novel and plays of Joseph Korzeniowski (1797-1863). His drama The Carpathian Mountaineers (Karpaccy GOrale) is aglow with the colours of folk-lore, his comedies, such as The Jews (Zydzi) or Miss and Mrs. (Parma mpatka) take us out of the region of old fashioned comic types into the sphere of modern individualism in character-drawing, and his novels, e.g., The Schemer (Speku lant) or The Neighbourhood (Kollokacja) are satiric.