SOURCE: "Romanticism," in The History of Polish Literature, 1969. Reprint, second edition, by University of California Press, 1983, pp. 195-280.

A celebrated Polish poet, essayist, and novelist, Miłosz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. In the following excerpt from a work first published in 1969, he explores some of the main historical events that contributed to the character of Polish Romanticism, asserting that "Polish Romanticism was thoroughly imbued with historicism."

After the third partition [of Poland], the Respublica disappeared from the map of Europe, but it survived in the minds of its inhabitants. To keep the three areas of the previous Polish state apart, profoundly united as they were by a common language and tradition, was no easy task for the occupying powers. And it was not only in Polish minds that the Respublica remained alive: as late as 1848, Karl Marx called for a reconstruction of Poland based...