A Funeral Rhapsody in Memory of General Bem

File:Bem József.jpg

"A Funeral Rhapsody in Memory of General Bem" (in Polish Bema pamięci żałobny rapsod) is a poem by Polish poet Cyprian Norwid,[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cyprian-Norwid Jerzy R. Krzyzanowski, Cyprian Norwid, Polish poet at Encyclopaedia Britannica.] a descendant of the Polish king John III Sobieski. It is an elegy for a famous Polish commander, Józef Bem,[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jozef-Zachariasz-Bem Józef Zachariasz Bem, Polish general at Encyclopaedia Britannica.] who was a hero of three nations, Polish, Hungarian and Turkish. It was written in 1851. The poem is a description of an imaginary funeral. It is described as a funeral of a medieval knight or Slavic warrior, encased in armour, with his horse and a falcon, accompanied by groups of boys and girls.Lucylla Pszczołowska, Wiersz polski. Zarys historyczny, Fundacja na Rzecz Nauki Polskiej, Wrocław 1997, p. 218. The poem is especially interesting because of its form. It was written in rhymed hexameter. All the lines are made up of fifteen (7+8) syllables according to the pattern ' x ' x x ' x || ' x x ' x x ' x.Wiktor Jarosław Darasz, Mały przewodnik po wierszu polskim, Towarzystwo Miłośników Języka Polskiego, Kraków 2003, p. 72.

The rhapsody opens with a Latin citation of Hannibal:

iusiurandum patri datum usque ad hanc diem ita servavi

(The oath given to father I have kept even unto this day)

Norwid's poem was often used and performed by Zbigniew Herbert and was translated into English by Adam Czerniawski.