The Exile’s Song and It is weary – American poems by August Antoni Jakubowski

Abstract

The subject of this article is the forgotten works of August Antoni Jakubowski, The Exile’s Song and It is weary, discovered on the last pages of a rare 1835 edition of The Remembrances from Auburn. After the November Uprising, Jakubowski, an illegitimate son of Antoni Malczewski, was sent to America, where he became the author of The Remembrances of a Polish Exile – the first publication about Polish history, literature, and education written in English and published in the United States.
So far, Jakubowski’s short life (ended by suicide), torn between two continents, is shrouded in more mysteries and secrets than confirmed facts. Much has been verified through the research of Przemysław Bloch, a New York-based lawyer, together with the author of this article in the United States. The Exile’s Song and It is weary complete the picture of the last American stage of Jakubowski’s work. They are a concentrated expression of all his characteristic moods, and testify to the extreme alienation, hopelessness, and despair that he felt. Despite its intimate tone, the work in large measure constitutes a general testimony of the experience of Polish exiles forced to travel across the ocean.