A long article, with numerous photographs and illustrations, about the laying of J. Piłsudski's heart in his mother's grave at the Rossa cemetery. The text recalls Piłsudski's biography. The issue also contains other mentions and memoirs about Piłsudski (Source: "Dziennik Polski", Czech Cieszyn 1936, R: 3, no. 69, p. 303, after: Silesian Digital Library).

A modernised reading of the text

The Marshal's heart

Today, in accordance with the last will of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, his Heart will rest at the feet of his beloved Mother, in the Rossa cemetery.

"When I take my heart by the grave, I lay my heart there on Rossa, so that the Commander in Chief may rest with his soldiers".

- With these words Marshal Piłsudski ended his speech in Vilnius, less than seven years before his death. And today, his Heart - the Heart of the greatest man our history has ever produced - will rest forever at the feet of his beloved Mother, and will rest among the graves of those who "gave their lives to honour the Commandant". A great heart. A heart obscure and steadfast, A heart ever vigilant and active. A heart proud, hard and horned - but at the same time, how loving! Loving all that is most beautiful, best and purest - loving actively and sacrificially, manfully - but at the same time radiant with the warmth and glow of a strange, conscious romanticism.

"I have much in common with that age - he admits in 1916. Piłsudski - in which it was the law to measure strength by intentions, to break what reason would not break. I had to be a romantic, because, after all, in order to reach for independence with an armed hand, it was necessary that what was madness should also become Polish reason".

And in the now free state, liberated by himself, the Supreme Commander upheld the same principle. In response to a speech by the rector of Lublin University, he says:

"In my childhood I was constantly whispered in my ears the so-called wise proverbs: "Don't blow against the wind!" "You can't beat a wall with your head!", "Don't try to get ahead! I came to the conclusion later that a strong will, energy and enthusiasm can break down these very principles. And now, when we are faced with the great task of continuing to build the Polish state, it is precisely those people who are able to defy this old wisdom of proverbs that we need."

Throughout his life, the Marshal's first love, suckled from his Mother's breast, his guiding love and every thought, every step guiding him, was love for Poland. Long years before, at his command

"First Kadrowa carried Poland in her schoolbag",

this Poland - free, independent, powerful and just - lived in the great heart of the Commander. How strongly that Heart was struck when, driving from Magdeburg to Warsaw, he repeated to the rhythm of the carriage's rumble: "To Poland! To Poland!" What powerful feelings filled it when, in his first order to the army, he said:

"Soldiers! I take command of you at a moment in which the heart in every Pole beats stronger and more vividly, in which the children of our land have seen the sun of freedom in all its splendour. With you I experience the emotion of this historic hour, with you I vow to devote my life and blood for the good of the Fatherland and the happiness of its citizens.

The Commandant also loved his soldiers: those who were the first to answer his call, almost all of whom he knew by name, and the nameless "grey soldiers" who would later use their blood to define the borders of the liberated homeland. With what an astonishing modesty he unites them to each other, speaking to his Legions at the Lviv Rally:

"To you I belong deeply, for it is thanks to your work and your blood that I have been brought forward into the historical arena".

How camaraderie with them, how solidarity in the hardship of battle! In Krzywopłoty, although terribly weary, after several nights in the saddle, he rejects the offer to rest in the manor house.

"If one is to camp, one is to camp with everything. A warmer, more comfortable sleep for tired boys was out of the question".

So he spends a sleepless night in the woods, in the night chill, smoking cigarette after cigarette, gazing into the grand visions of his commanding soul... He cares for his boys as if they were children. Marszałek loved nature, felt and understood it, enjoyed its charm and observed its mysteries with an artist's eye. He is like Marszałek when he recalls the ancient Lithuanian primeval forests that hummed over his head as a child and a boy - when he paints with a brilliant pen the charm of the Neman river plain - when he describes the Siberian morning and evening aurorae - when, rebuking his lack of courage and indecision, when he likens it to the clucking of ducks in the mud - when he speaks of a frog in a children's fairy tale - when, finally, he strokes his favourite chestnut "on its neck flashing gold in the sun", saying to it in the first year of the war: "You are in Krakow, do you understand?

In dear, wonderful Polish Kraków, where a Polish soldier can die with honour, do you understand, you chapel creature! On you, on you I will ride, silly boy, to Vilnius!" And five years later, after conquering this "nice city", he experiences a "triumph of the soul complete": "To no city conquered by me did I enter with such feeling as to Vilnius. Those sweet songs of children, those fearful eyes of mothers, those tears, those emotions - I was entering on horseback - my city was waiting". And he exclaims:

"Beloved, dear Vilnius - riding there, I taught my officers to love this city of Mickiewicz and Slowacki".

Because Piłsudski shaped his great spirit in the most radiant splendour of Romantic poetry - because he loved poetry all his life, and held it dear.

"There were harps in the sky," he says of the post-Insurrection era, "when swords went underground, decaying and rusting. Our poet is Słowacki - for he replaced the truth of the sword with the truth of the spirit".

In all his speeches and writings, too, the Marshal draws heavily on Słowacki's most wonderful phrases and ideas - and over the bard's coffin on Wawel Hill he delivers one of his finest and most powerful speeches on the subject of "Polish greatness". And the Commander-in-Chief rejoices and is proud that a nation that has put art before all that is most beautiful in human culture - art serves. The greater the effort, the greater the work of the human spirit, the more strongly poetry and art seek for their creativity the motives in this unquenchable life.

But - beyond his greatest love, beyond Poland - the purest and tenderest feeling is held by Piłsudski's heart for his Mother. Whenever he recalled her, his words, full of immeasurable tenderness, burned with filial reverence and the most heartfelt emotion.

The mother's womb, the mother's caress," he says at the Vilnius Congress, "caresses the child, who, in the eyes of the mother, sheds tears and fears, when the child wakes up in fear, the first look he sees above him is of the mother bending down to caress the child, to calm it. When the child sobs harder, the mother calls the child to calm it down, to bind it to herself and to stifle the sobs. And how many memories! When they talk about mothers, how many pleasant memories and pleasant experiences are drawn towards what is maternal and pleasant".

"When I am at odds with myself," she confesses in another place, "when a storm of indignation and accusations is brewing all around me, when circumstances are even seemingly hostile to my intentions - then I ask myself, as if Mother would have me do in this case - and I do what I consider to be Her probable demand, Her will, no longer looking at anything".

A great and greatly loving Heart rests today at the feet of the Mother who awakened this Heart to these loves. So that both wills - the Will of the Leader and the Will of the Poet - may be fulfilled:

"May my friends gather at night and burn my poor Heart on aloes. And to her who gave me this Heart, they shall give it back: this is how the world pays out to mothers when the dust returns'.