Asnyk Adam, pen name El…y, *11 September 1838 Kalisz, †2 August 1897 Kraków, Polish poet. A leading representative of the post-romantic generation of Positivists. He grew up in an atmosphere of patriotism and a fascination with literature and music: his father was a participant in the November Uprising and an exile in Siberia, and later became a bookseller, while his mother was a governess with a musical education (“she taught me to play the piano, at which she excelled for her time”). The years of his multidisciplinary studies, 1856–66 (agriculture and medicine in Warsaw and Wrocław, doctorate in philosophy in Heidelberg), were also years of activity in student conspiracies, imprisonment, participation in the January Uprising (as a member of the radical National Government, September 1863), and finally, a post-uprising mental breakdown and undefined wanderings around Europe (Paris, London, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy). In 1867, Asnyk settled in Lviv, and from 1870 permanently in Krakow, devoting himself to journalism, “organic” social work, and above all, literary creation. He published three short stories and eight dramatic works, which were received without much fanfare; his poems, contained in the four-volume Poezje, published under the pen name El…y (vol. 1 Lviv 1869, vols. 1 and 2 Krakow 1872, vol. 3 Lviv 1880, vol. 4 Krakow 1894), gained critical acclaim and extraordinary popularity among the public. Towards the end of his life, he withdrew from active participation in public life; in 1894, he travelled to India and Ceylon, and in 1897, he made his last journey to Naples.
Asnyk’s poetic work, which amounts to a kind of sublimated and objectified diary of his thoughts and feelings (1864–1894), developed in two currents that ran either in parallel or alternately. One of these dealt with public events, while the other was centred on personal experiences, and each took shape in a distinct kind of poetry. As a defeated soldier and an exile – successively overcome by rebellion, resignation, stoicism, and finally by an idealistic zeal for positive work – he produced, from Sen grobów (1865) to the cycle of 30 sonnets Nad głębiami (1887–1894), reflective, philosophical, and moral poetry shaped under the influence of Słowacki, the Mediterranean classics, and positivist philosophers. He wrote in an objectified language (with logical syntax and conceptual vocabulary) and in a highly rhythmically organised rhetorical verse form that nonetheless fully satisfied its demand for musicality through lofty, chanting verbal expression. This strand of his work, being self-contained, did not attract the interest of composers.
The second current in Asnyk’s work was poetry par excellence, lyrical in nature and devoted almost entirely to themes of love and autobiography; it bears the mark of three main experiences: unrequited love (1868–70), the death of his mother (1871) and that of his wife (1876). It is the poetry of a rejected and lonely man; yet, his “pain of existence” is expressed in a subdued, restrained manner, with detachment (con sentimento, grazioso, malinconico, elegiaco, ironicamente, scherzando), gradually moving away from directness and plain speech (with frequent stylisations), employing a language stripped of regionalisms that emphasises conventionality and universality in its vocabulary – it is a written rather than spoken verse, which consistently tempers its primary expression through form. Asnyk was therefore accused of intellectualism and coldness, “lacking the power of an elemental outburst” (J. Kasprowicz, transl. N.D.); at the same time, however, his technical mastery of versification was unanimously admired, producing the musicality of his poetry, its unparalleled melodiousness and “undeniable and insistent songfulness” (M.R. Mayenowa, 1950. transl. N.D.). Asnyk, the author of a sketch on Provençal lyric poetry (Trubadurowie. Odczyt miany w Krakowie, 1872), identifies his own lyric with melic poetry, distinguishing it from the rest of poetic creation as the canso is distinguished from verse. He underscores its songfulness and musicality already in the titles of his cycles (three “Albums of Songs” [Albumy pieśni]) and individual poems (Dzieje piosenki [The Story of a Song], Powrót piosenki [The Return of the Song], Najpiękniejsze piosnki [The Most Beautiful Songs], Serenada, Nocturno, Scherzo, Barkarola, etc.), and –at times almost insistently – in the phatic and self-referential passages of the texts themselves.
The versification of Asnyk’s melic poetry represents the pinnacle of Polish accentual-syllabic verse, a system initiated through the collaboration of J. Elsner and K. Brodziński and one that soon declined with the work of M. Konopnicka. Asnyk implemented all of Elsner’s fundamental metrorhythmic suggestions, significantly expanding the initial repertoire and complicating it many times over. He employs an internally differentiated stanza as a closed form, which is repeated in an unaltered shape. His practice of aligning the intonation of the sentence and phrase with that of the line and the stanza (by avoiding enjambment and employing a fixed caesura) together with his frequent use of semantic-intonational parallelism, lends the stanza its often-noted harmony and “transparency”. By neutralising the romantic dynamism resulting from the tension between language and verse, he re-classicises the poem (the Polish variant of Parnassianism). Compensation is provided by the variety of stanzas; Asnyk uses several dozen types, often of his own design (not without the influence of Provençal poetry, which he attempted to translate); alongside isosyllabic stanzas, he favours polyformat and polymetric stanzas, employing both types of rhyme. He often uses a simple 8-syllable quatrain, but employs all its possible variants: trochaic (in popular or parodic stylisations, e.g. Huczy woda, Między nami nic nie było, dactylic (Na śniegu), adonic (Widmo jesieni) and sapphic, as well as numerous mixed arrangements within a single stanza. Among other forms, Asnyk achieves particularly notable sound and expressive effects in the seven-syllable verse, both in its iambic variant (e.g., Letni wieczór) and in the adonic form with anacrusis, as well as in nine-syllable iambic verse (Tałza). He reserves the eleven-syllable verse for especially literary constructions (e.g., Jednego serca), the six-syllable verse exclusively for folk-like verse (Nie będę cię rwała), and the five-syllable verse for distinctive effects (Noc taka jasna). The heterosyllabic stanza appears in Asnyk either as a conscious reference to Polish tradition (Siwy koniu, 8 6 8 6), more rarely to foreign models (Anielskie chóry, 8 8 8 5), or as a result of his own invention. Most often these are stanzas constructed on the basis of mixed masculine and feminine rhymes (e.g. Daremne żale, próżny trud, 8′ 7 8′ 7). It may be noted that a considerable number of masculine rhyme pairs later overused by Modernism and popular songwriting originate with Asnyk, such as dal – fal, woń – toń, łzy – sny, szał – ciał, and the like. The “instrumentation” of the text carried out by the poet, who in a sense assisted potential composers (through repetition, anaphora, expressive refrains), also naturally differentiates the shape of the stanza in Asnyk’s poetry (for example, Chłopca mego mi zabrali: 8 3 8 8 8 8 3). To counter the uniformity inherent in the accentual-syllabic system, Asnyk also tends to maintain a distinction between the metrical span and the tonal span. Moreover, in many poems, especially in folk-style stylisations (e.g., Błąka się wicher w polu), Asnyk moves away from strict syllabism toward a modality of secondary syllabism. In others – both heterosyllabic and isosyllabic – an accentual verse appears (probably under the influence of Heine’s work, which the poet was familiar with), such as the three-accent Powój or the two-accent Barcarolle, representing an introduction to the tonic (accentual) system.
Asnyk’s song-like lyric poetry aroused exceptional interest among Polish post-romantic composers; of the more than 80 melic miniatures by Asnyk (out of approximately 100 extant), some 75 composers produced over 200 settings (around 170 solo songs and 30 choral works). His texts began to be set to music shortly after their publication, with activity reaching its height between 1880 and 1900. This surge followed a period of interest in the poetry of B. Zaleski, Syrokomla, and Lenartowicz, and immediately preceded the turn towards the poetry of Konopnicka and Tetmajer, which became the domain of the Modernists. The most significant cycles and groups of solo songs were composed by: A. Zarzycki: 4 songs from Op. 13 (Serenada, Między nami nic nie było, Ach, jak mi smutno, Różne łzy), 1871; 2 songs from Op. 14 (Tęsknota, Idź dalej), 1873; Pięć pieśni Op. 15 (Siwy koniu, Szumi w gaju brzezina, Błąka się wicher w polu, Nie będę cię rwała, Siedzi ptaszek na drzewie); Krzyżanowski: 4 songs from Śpiewnik domowy (Szumi w gaju brzezina, Siwy koniu, Nie będę cię rwała, Bodaj owa rzeczka), 1887; E. Pankiewicz: Dwie pieśni Op. 6 (Jednego serca, Kiedym cię żegnał), 1887; Huczy woda from Op. 5 as well as Gdy ostatnia róża zwiędła, Szczęśliwa młodość, Zwiędły listek; I.J. Paderewski: Cztery pieśni Op. 7 (Gdy ostatnia róża zwiędła, Siwy koniu, Szumi w gaju brzezina, Chłopca mego mi zabrali), ca. 1888; W. Żeleński: Trzy pieśni (Powrót piosenki, Pan Jezus chodzi po świecie, Siedzi ptaszek), ca. 1888, as well as Zaczarowana królewna, Gdy ostatnia róża zwiędła; Gall: 5 songs (Nie będę cię rwała, Siwy koniu, Zaczarowana królewna, Najpiękniejsze piosnki, Gdybym był młodszy), 1891–93; Z. Noskowski: Dwie pieśni Op. 55 (Astry, Jestże to prawda), 1897; Zwiędły listek from Op. 67, 1901; M. Karłowicz: 2 songs (Zaczarowana królewna from Op. 3, Najpiękniejsze piosnki op. 4), 1897; S. Niewiadomski: Trzy pieśni Op. 4 (Abdykacja, Między nami, Z ksiąg Genezy); 2 songs from Op. 23 (Zaczarowana królewna, Gdy ostatnia róża zwiędła); Astry, 12 songs Op. 40 (Najpiękniejsze piosnki, Na początku nic nie było, Ach, jak mi smutno, Walc jesienny, Astry, Za moich młodych lat, Ty płaczesz, dziewczę, Ostatnie kwiaty, Gdybym był młodszy, Widmo jesieni, Ja ciebie kocham, Nawrócona); Słonko, 8 songs Op. 49 (Słonko, Klątwa, Szumi w gaju, Siwy koniu, Siedzi ptaszek, Przykro, przykro jest dębowi, Nie będę cię rwała, Chłopca mego mi zabrali); 6 songs from an issue titled Humoreski (including Kopciuszek and Królowa Arkadii).
In addition, songs were composed to Asnyk’s poems by: E. Kania, A. Münchheimer, J. Kleczyński, M. Hertz, H. Jarecki, W. Wszelaczyński, J. Surzyński, B. Borkowski, W. Rzepko, P. Maszyński, R. Statkowski, L. Płosajkiewicz, F. Szopski, F. Starczewski, M. Świerzyński, W. Gawroński, A. Dworzaczek, Z. Stojowski, H. Opieński, T. Joteyko, A. Marczewski, W. Rapacki, W. Krogulski, W.E. Kronenberg, J. Krudowski, W. Lachman, L. Rogowski, Z. Jachimecki, I. Friedman, K. Garbusiński, L. Różycki, B. Wallek-Walewski, Z. Rund, G. Gadeyski, J. Wieczorek, M. Mierzejewski, F. Maklakiewicz, M. Drobner, C. Niemen and others. At the end of the 19th century, they were published almost en masse, most often by Piwarski, Krzyżanowski, Idzikowski, Seyfarth, Gebethner and Wolff (occasionally also by foreign publishers) and in sheet music supplements to “Echo Muzyczne” and “Kłosy”. According to critics and historians, the songs that enjoyed particular popularity on the concert stage – featured in the repertoires of, among others, D. Filleborn, M. Sembrich-Kochańska, T. Friderich-Jakowicka, K. Kleczyńska, M. Horbowski, M. Battistini, and S. Argasińska – include: Zarzycki’s Między nami, Paderewski’s Siwy koniu, Noskowski’s Astry, Żeleński’s Zaczarowana królewna, Gall’s Gdybym był młodszy, Niewiadomski’s Gdy ostatnia róża zwiędła and Między nami, Karłowicz’s Najpiękniejsze piosnki. The most frequently performed choral songs were those by Noskowski (the Tatra cycle), Żeleński and Pankiewicz (both with their Barcarolle), Maszyński, Niewiadomski (Siedzi ptaszek), Gall (Czary) and Wallek-Walewski. In the history of Polish song, a large group of works based on texts by Asnyk is quite representative of the specific, transitional style of post-romantic positivism, shaped between the Moniuszko generation, which created repertoires mainly for the manor house salon and the provincial stage, and the Young Poland generation, which wrote primarily for the professional recital stage. Songs with lyrics by Asnyk are characteristic of compositions written for an urban, intellectual audience, for educated amateurs of open salons and the emerging solo stage, and their style was largely determined by the character and form of the text. A group of invocatory love poems (Ja ciebie kocham, Nie mogłem tłumić dłużej, Jednego serca, and others) gave rise to a type of lyrical, declamatory song in through-composed form, characterised either by restrained expression (Żeleński, Noskowski) or verging on melodrama (Pankiewicz). Less direct erotic poems, Anacreontic poems, as well as numerous so-called “spring” and “autumn” songs, were set to music (Zarzycki, Gall, and others) most often in the form of conventional song types popular in the second half of the nineteenth century: the canzone, serenade, barcarolle, and vocal nocturne – modelled on works by F. P. Tosti, L. Denza, and L. Arditi. Lyric-epic poems, i.e., ballad-like fairytales, atmospheric scenes, and characteristic scherzos and humoresques – genres in which Niewiadomski excelled, being almost the only one capable of finding musical equivalents for lyrical wit and irony –most often received, following the suggestion of a given accentual-syllabic structure, an appropriate dance character: usually a waltz, less often a mazurka or kujawiak, and very frequently a krakowiak. These dances, clearly stylised, bore the character of salon and virtuoso music (expanded accompaniment parts, broadening of the melodic ambit, etc.). A separate group of texts, published under the title Z motywów ludowych, and most frequently set to music (Siwy koniu and Nie będę cię rwała – nine times; Siedzi ptaszek na drzewie – eight times, etc.), gave rise to a current continuing the Moniuszko model of the song “in folk style,” comparatively least affected by salon influences. This current preserved a kind of dumka– and duma-like melodiousness (most often based on an elegiac krakowiak), lyrically deepened (Krzyżanowski and, above all, Paderewski). Songs composed to Asnyk’s Parnassian texts, maintained in strophic-variation-reprise forms, are most often both song-like and dance-like in character, and as a result represent the neo-Provençal style, i.e. balladic in the original sense of the word.
Editions: Wybór poezji, introduction A. Nofer, Wrocław 1955; Poezje, introduction S. Lichański, Warsaw 1975.
Literature: W. Bukowiński Poeta melodii i głębin, “Sfinks” 1908 iss. 8–9; F. Starczewski Asnyk w muzyce polskiej, “Muzyka” 1927 No. 11; K. Wóycicki Asnyk wśród prądów epoki (including a bibliography of musical works to words by Asnyk), Warsaw 1931; J. Krzyżanowski Adam Asnyk. Poeta czasów niepoetyckich, “Zeszyty Wrocławskie” 1947 No. 4; M.R. Mayenowa Język liryki pozytywistycznej, in: Pozytywizm, collective work, Part 1, Wrocław 1950; Z. Szweykowski Liryka Asnyka a pozytywizm polski, in: Nie tylko o Prusie, Poznań 1967.
