The Maxims of Zagłoba “Mammon" (Continued) pg. 40

Lack of a penny, that is poison, that is great grief

Without Mammon: Zagłoba mocks the world

                                                The End

Song To the Tune of “From the Smoke of the Fire”^[1]

From the breast of the exhausted^[2], all powerful Lord

To you I raise up a screaming voice of complaint

A terrible adversity are these abysses

Towards which our cruel fate pushes [us]

Human righteousness, our treasure, does not pull [us] out

Through our fathers, something is given us

Our native tongue the foreign [tongue] casts out

It’s cruel, Oh Lord, our Lord is cruel

But that is not the end of our adversity

Which torments us Poles, your people

An excess of sorrow in Polish fields

The filth of disbelief has begun to spread

What delight in darkness and greed

Satan sent to subjugate the world,

To destroy faith, to destroy good-naturedness

Stands now at Polish huts

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[1] In a different handwriting. Presumably an intended reference to the mid-1800s patriotic song “From the Smoke of the Fires.”

[2] This word is plural

The Maxims of Zagłoba “Mammon” (Continued) pg. 39

Mammon: “Nerwus[1],” “Nerwon,” the Marshall also called it

Radecki, Bismarck, Moltke, Bisdat perished[2] in its tracks

The virtue of the most sublime people- that’s cash money

A maiden will become an old widow for a coin

For silver Judas cruelly betrayed Jesus

Brother killed brother, son, father, the mean-spirited, the world

Money: Plaster of gold[3] virtue and balsam of love

Money: That paradise, purgatory, and Hell of humanity

For gold talent is found among fools

Money changes clever people into beasts

And by contrast, the most common of asses

Grew in seconds to the wisdom of the prophets

For money all kinds of wounds are healed

Piracies and frauds are deemed honorable

            Gold is the secret key to all fortresses

            It is the more direct hope, it is the broad back

            He who casts a penny, although perhaps a splendid fool

            Emerges a delegate of the people, evidently wise

            In a word: Heaven and earth are purchased for a puse of gold

            But Mammon: From death no one ever got anything[4]

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[1] Literally “a nervous person”

[2] Literally “rotted”

[3] Crossed out in original

[4] Literally “extracted”

Song Exile to Siberia (Continued) pg. 38

And the Gendarmes’ chains on the prisoner’s legs

The chains clank on the prisoner’s legs

The prisoner was young, a defendant from Poland

[Judged] for what and to what God only knows

            He gets out of the prison-carriage with a shaking head

            He does not care that he might arouse the Gendarmes to anger

            He turned [his] eyes to the Throne of Happiness

            And [his] breast moaned a song of longing

O, already I’ll no longer see [my] homeland

Leave [me], O leave [me], my sorrowful eyes

Turn [my] glance there to the east

Where my beloved country is vanishing in the darkness

I already have to take leave [of it] forever

            O, already I’ll no longer see my parents

            Not my father, not my mother

            [And] also even my beloved girlfriend

            O, already I’ll no longer see, no longer see her

The Maxims of Zagłoba “Mammon”[1]

Money is, o, Heavenly, money is the Holy Spirit

Something that raises up the valleys, moves hard rocks

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[1] “Zagłoba” is a heraldic name used by several lines of Polish nobility among them perhaps the family of the author

Song [The] XIIIth (Continued) pg. 37

I watched and sorrows danced in my head

A tear inflamed the wine glass

            And a little tear of longing slipped down from [my] eye

            The tear inflamed the wine glass

            So I thought to myself that I would drink to your health

            [And] you maybe at that moment would sigh[1]

                                                                        The End

Song Exile to Siberia[2]

The wind blew sorrowfully through the empty steppe

And drove a snowy drift into the clouds

There a snowy dust cloud tore and shook

Like torrential dust from a hurricane

            Amidst the steppe’s windstorms and billows

            The intricate trail of a black prison-carriage

            And a sorrowful bell sounds in the distance

            Like the last sign of a dead person

In the prison-carriage one can see the figure of a young man

Sorrowful but proud it stood to be seen

On [his] face one could see the trace of ruddiness

But even this would shortly have to perish

---

[1] Literally “sighed”

[2] In a different handwriting

Song [The] XIIIth (Continued) pg. 36

And here they thus dance[1] around her

            Such pretty girls danced so prettily

            But I didn’t look at their faces

            Because she, sleepy, [was] prettier here at that time

            Than all the ballroom girls

            To thus dance in madness, I beg you by God

            Because you wake her from happy dreams[2]

            To you [these] pleasures are not called dreamy and strange

            You dance, even in a dream

To you the wines, to you the dances are everything in the world

Like her dream,[3] and for me a fantasy

But you people, you know this well

How difficult the awakening is after the madness[4]

            How to love is to drown forever in madness

            Not for such a much too short --- moment

            How to love is to explode in a volcano’s fire

            [And] not to rest until the cold tomb

And I myself was sad in that crowd

When I love[5] a living angel

---

[1] Sic for “danced”?

[2] Or, “sleeps”

[3] Or, “sleep”

[4] Or, “frenzy”

[5] Sic for “loved”?

Song XII (Continued) pg. 35

Whether I will return or perish, only God in Heaven knows

Call this girl, mother,

To [her] own to herself

            [My] heart, [my] son, your love,

            That’s [this] childlike girlfriend

            If I had the world in its entirety

            It would not be worth [my] son

May God repay your tears, mother

You will live happily again

Now my horse is neighing to [its] brothers

Be healthy, poor thing

Song [The] XIIIth

How elegantly, [How] happily they danced the Mazurka

And everyone was laughing all around me

I myself was thinking [up these] lines, she, at that moment,

Alas, however, [was] perhaps not [thinking] of me

            I myself was thinking that maybe, maybe

            A dream would remind her in some way of me there

            And I long[1] for a dream, sighed, O God!

---

[1] Sic for “longed”?

Song XII pg. 34

Song XII

In a cloud, dust stirs[1] from the earth

The daredevil[2] regiments race off

After them, in their tracks

Great, plaintive swallows[3] cuckoos cry cuckoo

            Seven trumpets sound

            After the deployment march

            Great cuckoos, great doves

            Sing plaintively, lamentingly

Mother cries, girlfriend cries

They almost drown in tears

As from [your] horse, you, daredevil

Take leave of them both

            [My] son, [my] heart, darling, golden

            May God be with you

            In tears over you, we orphans,

            Remember us everywhere

Mother, mother, take [this] sorrow from me

Don’t have sorrow on [your] tongue

My horse augurs something evil

It’s constantly stumbling under me

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[1] Literally “blows”

[2] The word translated as “daredevil” (extended meaning) originally means “Cossack”

[3] Crossed out in original