Elizabeth Mika

 

 

I would like to thank Sister Krzysztofa Maria Babraj from the Order of Sisters Albertines in Krakow for providing me with materials about Brother Albert’s life.

 

 

Theoretical Considerations

 

Studying biographies of eminent individuals and personality exemplars using the TPD-based conceptual framework allows us to describe developmental forces shaping their lives and map out certain developmental trends that may deepen our understanding of human psychological growth in its multilevel and multidimensional richness and variety.

 

The life of Adam Chmielowski, a.k.a Brother Albert, an artist-turned-monk-turned-humanitarian, exemplifies a case of global and accelerated personality development through positive disintegration. As such, Chmielowski’s case is invaluable for students and researchers of TPD as it provides an empirical validation of the theory’s basic tenets. Apart from its scientific value, however, Chmielowski’s life is even more an inspiring example of things developmentally possible for those of us engaged in a search for authentic existence.

 

According to the Theory of Positive Disintegration, personality growth through positive disintegration is guided by the developmental instinct. As Dabrowski says, “The whole process of transformation of primitive drives and impulsive functions into more reflective and refined functions occurs under the influence of evolutionary dynamisms which we call the developmental instinct.” (Dabrowski et al., 1973, p.22). The instinct of development arises from and eventually transcends the instinct of self-preservation in individuals endowed with high developmental potential. It contains “separate nuclei of transformation; of possible disintegrative processes; of the inner psychic milieu, special interests and talents; and the nuclei of the fundamental essence of human existence – i.e. the most substantial individual human properties.” (ibid., p.23). The multilevel approach of TPD differentiates two distinct multilevel parts within the instinct of development: a lower creative instinct and a higher instinct of self-perfection.

 

The creative instinct encompasses and expresses various dynamisms characteristic of both UL and ML disintegration, while the instinct of self-perfection is associated with higher dynamisms expressive of organized multilevel disintegration, and is the dominant force in the later stage of development, the borderline between levels IV and V. Dabrowski considered the instinct of self-perfection “the highest instinct of a human being” (ibid., p. 32).

 

As Dabrowski says, “The creative instinct can operate at the stage of unilevel disintegration. The multilevel dynamisms and hierarchies are not as indispensable in its development as in the instinct of self-perfection. The creative instinct does not necessarily express universal, fully rounded development. Very often it is based on partial disintegration. In this instinct sensual and imaginational hyperexcitabilities play the greatest role. Inner psychic transformation, and especially the transgression of the psychological type and the biological life cycle do not show the necessary globality; they are partial only. The instinct of self-perfection does not usually embrace a narrow area, but the whole or at least the greater part of the personality of the individual. All its functions are shaped so as to “uplift” man. It is the expression of the necessary, self-determined “raising up” in a hierarchy of values toward the ideal of personality.” (ibid., p.30)

 

The interplay of these two developmental forces, which can act in concert and in opposition, is responsible for creating a rich inner milieu, full of contradicting desires and ripe for inner conflicts, which, in turn, lead to and guide disintegrative processes of both unilevel and multilevel kind. It can be argued that an assessment of the strength of both instincts (creative and self-perfection) would allow us to make predictions about the shape and direction of an individual’s development. Such predictions, however, by necessity would be crippled by uncertainty inherent in our judgment of the causes and results of complex human behavior.

 

In Adam Chmielowski’s case, we can follow the evolution of his developmental instinct throughout his life and observe the shaping of his personality through both the instinct of creativity, dominating the first part of his life; and the instinct of self-perfection, which although present almost from the beginning of his life, gradually gained strength and became the primary developmental force in its later part, after a dramatic period of global positive disintegration. As his first biographer wrote, “His life was full of contradictions and surprises.” (Kaczmarzyk, 1990, p.7) Very early on, we can observe in Adam manifestations of a high developmental potential: high intelligence, abundant forms of all five types of overexcitabilities, artistic and humanistic interests, and, already in childhood, precursors of multilevel dynamisms seen in his attitudes of responsibility, honesty, and a desire for authenticity and self-improvement. At the same time, the richness of his developmental potential set the conditions for inner conflicts and contradictions, among which the conflict between his creative instinct and emerging instinct of self-perfection took the center stage for many years of his life.

 

Adam’s Childhood and Youth

 

Adam Chmielowski was born on August 26, 1845 in a small Polish town of Igolomia.

His parents belonged to impoverished Polish nobility. His father, Wojciech, was a customs administrator in Igolomia; his mother, Jozefa, a delicate and religious woman, ran their household with tact and a sense of humor. Adam was a beautiful child, whose intelligence, mature sensibility and physical beauty never failed to impress others. His own father wrote this about his 1-year-old son in a letter to his relatives:

“My son is a big man and I can count on him completely in so many respects; he is very sensible, understands everything, walks by himself, even though they try to hold his hand. A beautiful child; I’m looking at him not through the father’s eyes, but (…) he is so lovely and admirable that all who see him always say they have never seen such a beautiful child.” (Kluz, 1981, p.14)

 

Little Adam was christened at 2, and as one story goes, his parents invited beggars congregating around the church to be his godparents and secure the blessing of the poor for their son.

 

When Adam was 8, his father died of tuberculosis, leaving his widow with four young children and little money, since most of their finances were spent on Wojciech’s doctors and medications. Adam was sent to Petersburg where he could get free education as a child of a government employee. At 11, he was enrolled in a military school, where he excelled in studies and self-discipline. In spite of his admirable attitude toward his studies, he greatly missed his family and often cried at night. When he came home on vacation, his mother was terrified to find out that his already excellent – and growing -- mastery of the Russian language was threatening his ability to use Polish. She decided not to send him back to Petersburg, but enrolled him instead in a Polish gymnasium in Warsaw.

 

Mrs. Chmielowska, not even 40 yet, died in August 1858. The fate of the four Chmielowski children from now on would be decided by a family council consisting of relatives and friends of the family.

 

The Soldier

 

Adam’s next educational step was the Institute of Agriculture and Forestry in Pulawy, the only academic center open to Polish youth in the region.

 

In 1862, when Chmielowski began his studies there, the conflicts between Poles and occupying Russians grew to dangerous levels. On January 23, 1863, the tensions culminated in the January Uprising, one of the most heroic events in the history of the Polish fight for freedom. Chmielowski, along with almost all the students of the Institute, joined the uprising. He was 17 and ½. Adam’s participation in the Uprising was characterized as much by his personal courage, witnessed and reported by his comrades in arms, as by several unusual strokes of luck that helped him stay alive in very dire circumstances. He fought, he was arrested, escaped from prison, joined the resistance again, fought again, was seriously wounded in a battle of Melchow, and was captured by Russians, who, instead of killing him, as it was to be expected, treated his wounds. Unfortunately, part of this treatment involved amputating his left leg – without painkillers. The only means of easing the pain was a cigar, which Adam swallowed whole, still burning, in the agony of the amputation.

 

His friends from this period remembered him as a courageous and honest young man, liked by everyone, who “with his joyfulness and enthusiasm energized in the saddest moments the whole camp.” (Kluz, 1981, p.33)

 

Adam’s family was able to negotiate his release from the Russians, and, in order to protect him from possible reprisals for his involvement in the failed uprising, sent him to Paris in 1864, with very meager financial means, which were used partially to purchase an artificial leg for him.

 

From Paris, young Adam returned to Warsaw, where he wanted to enroll in an art school. His family council, however, did not approve of this choice, believing that art was not a suitable occupation choice for a young man. They sent him to Belgium to study engineering, borrowing money for his education. Adam did not like science and engineering did not interest him at all. He returned to Warsaw, and from there, after obtaining, seemingly in another stroke of luck, a generous stipend to study abroad, he set out to Munich to study art.

 

The Artist

 

In Munich, which at that time was home to the most prestigious Academy of Art in Europe, Adam, who was 25 then (1869), joined a group of Polish artists, who were among the Polish artistic elite – or on their way there. Jozef Brandt and Maksymilian Gierymski, two eminent Polish painters, became Chmielowski’s best friends. Adam studied hard, despite his very precarious financial standing with the academy. He worked with particular efforts on his drawing skills, which were his weakness. At that time his development intensified. His friends and acquaintances remarked on his severe self-criticism and demands from himself, and constant self-doubts, combined with a critical approach not only to his own creations, but also to art in general. He was particularly dismayed with what he saw as commercialization of art and its artifice that rendered it dishonest and superficial. To him, art was the means of expressing one’s soul. His goal as an artist was to “minimize the gap between thought and its expression in a painting” (Kluz, 1981, p.45) With the goal in mind, he put particular efforts into perfecting his skills.  He approached his work with the characteristic honesty and obsessive devotion. Many of his letters that survived from this period portray Chmielowski as much devoted to art as lamenting, often with a mocked desperation, over its demands on one’s life.

 

His first exhibited work, “An Italian Siesta,” was received with mixed reviews: Some appreciated its subtle and poetic harmony, the original use of color, and a mysterious subject that stimulated imagination; while others criticized it as unfinished and amateurish. Chmielowski was undaunted by the criticisms. He continued working and learning, searching, critically, for his unique style:

 

“They say that style and the man are one and the same; I don’t know how true this is, but that a painting and the one who paints it are the same, of that I’m completely convinced. (…) However God made one, that’s how one will paint.” (Kluz, 1981, p.65)

 

His own style evolved through mythological inspirations, fairy tales, and influences of Greek and Italian cultures toward sad, mystical landscapes and religious scenes. He saw the essence of art to be an expression of the human soul. In his 1879 essay, “On the Essence of Art,” Chmielowski defined a work of art as “any honest and direct expression of human soul” in an artist’s works. Authenticity mattered more than acquired skills, according to Chmielowski. As his artistic work progressed, it became increasingly more connected to the contents of his inner milieu; it not only illustrated his current state of mind, but also heralded changes to come.

 

During his stay in Munich, Adam’s social contacts strengthened. He formed exclusive and enduring friendships with his Polish fellow artists, especially with Maks Gierymski, whose diaries preserved recollections of a very close, though at times conflictual relationship between the two men. The conflicts had largely to do, it seemed, with Adam’s growing religious fervor and seriousness toward life and their work. At that time, he became a sought out authority among his friends not only as an objective and wise critic of their work, but also as a great companion appreciated for his personal charm, kindness, loyalty and a great sense of humor, especially for his penchant for practical jokes (one of them involved putting his artificial leg under the wheels of an oncoming carriage).

 

At the same time, along with continuing self-doubts, other desires began to take shape in his feelings and thoughts. “Can one also serve God while serving art? Christ says that one cannot serve two masters. Though art is not money, it is not god either – rather an idol. I think that serving art always amounts to idolatry, unless one can, like Fra Angelico, use his art and talent and thoughts to devote to God’s glory and paint holy images; but one should, like him, purify oneself and sanctify and enter a monastery, because it is difficult to find such holy inspiration in the world-at-large. These questions are old things, no doubt; but when one grows older and starts gaining some wisdom, one would gladly learn which one is his path and what will matter in his life. It’s a very beautiful thing – the holy pictures; I would very much like to ask God to let me make them, but only from true inspiration and this is not given to just anyone. So much suffering and best blood goes into painting. If only there was some good use for it.” (Kluz, 1981, p.71).

 

Descriptions of Adam as a young man portray him as tall, well built, handsome (beautiful), with regular facial features, large expressive eyes, and a long beard. Helena Modrzejewska, a famous Polish actress and a very close friend and promoter of Chmielowski and other Polish artists of his generation, described Adam this way:

 

“Chmielowski has been a walking example of all Christian virtues and deep patriotism – almost without a physical body, breathing poetry, art and love of one’s neighbor, a nature so pure and free of egoism, whose motto should be: happiness for all, and glory to art and God!” (Kluz, 1981, p.89)

 

Here is another characterization, by a friend artist:

 

“Adam was a strong well built man, dark haired, with a straight nose and gentle blue eyes. His beard and mustache dark, closely cropped. His behavior was aristocratic. Sometimes a grimace showed on his lips. He was about thirty years old. (…) His stomach problems grew stronger due to his lack of physical activity and Adam was frequently upset. He was irritated by everything and displeased at those times. He only grew livelier in good company, because he was such a refined conversationalist. He spoke fluent German and French. In his good moments, he painted such impressions that they simply blew us away. Unfortunately, he destroyed almost all of them in his moments of depression. Of course, he never made any money and he did not care about it.(…) He was the smartest among us painters. Even though he could never finish anything and destroyed magnificent works. (…) His color sensitivity was so great (…) nothing made him more upset than disharmony of colors. (…) When he noticed a false tone, he had a wry face, as if he bit a pepper seed, and his mood was spoiled for some time.” (Kluz, 1981, p. 85 and 86)

 

The Munich period ended for Chmielowski sadly with the death of his beloved friend, Maks Gierymski, in September 1874. Gierymski died in Chmielowski’s arms, and Adam was one of only two people present at his funeral.

 

After Munich, Chmielowski traveled to Krakow and Warsaw, and spent time with friends, continuing his artistic work. Leon Wyczolkowski, a painter and Chmielowski’s friend and roommate in 1879 in Lwow, had this to say:

 

“Chmielowski was our teacher; a refined man, a deep mind (…) A sophisticated person, a passionate artist with lots of verve. He did a salto mortale in his life – not everyone can do it. (…) An interesting life. Never discussed his love life with me. Funny, humorous, an extraordinary story-teller.” (Kluz, 1981, p. 100)

 

Chmielowski’s love life is a mystery, but some accounts link him romantically to Lucyna Siemienska, daughter of his benefactor, Lucjan Siemienski. There are numerous letters and notes from Chmielowski to Lucyna, who looked favorably upon Adam’s interest, as her sister reported in her recollections of Chmielowski. Her father, however, unhappy with the idea of a struggling painter as a candidate for his son-in-law, married Lucyna off to a rich landowner. After that, Chmielowski never mentioned Lucyna’s name.

 

As Chmielowski continued his artistic career, he grew more dissatisfied with both his artistic endeavors and his life in general. “What can I write you about myself,” he said in a letter to Lucjan Siemienski, “only that I keep painting with passion. I am a rather crazy individual, it seems, because I do not feel too good in the real world, so I run away into trifles that I create in my imagination and I live there among them; it is a rather funny way to chase away worries, and given my inherent slackness, a practical one. But for how long?” (Nowaczynski, 1939, in Ryn, 1986, p.546). This self-assessment shows Chmielowski’s maladjustment to everyday reality, with the concurrent positive adjustment to higher level world of his ideals. The growing gap between the two, however, was taking an increasing toll on his physical and mental well being:

“I’ve lost my joy and my carefree attitude, and I’m afraid for myself because of my fancy tastes;” “I’m very nervous and somewhat unwell…, my mind gets sick sometimes; it’s a common malady among people, even though they do not admit it, and they only notice it when a patient has to be put away  in a crazy house.” (Ryn, 1986, p.546)

 

The processes of disintegration, intensifying in his inner milieu, were noted by others who reported changes in his demeanor; they were also illustrated in his art, which began to grow darker in tone. Paintings such as “An Abandoned Church,” “A Grave of a Suicide Victim,” “A Funeral of a Suicide Victim,” (he destroyed the latter two), and “An Abandoned Horse” expressed his growing sadness, inner loneliness and awareness of his distance from his true self and from God. It is characteristic that his landscapes painted during this period are suffused with the same mood of loneliness and desolation.

 

His treatment of human subjects is also interesting. When we look at Chmielowski’s portraits, we notice immediately that many of their subjects do not look directly at the viewer – they are either turned away or aside, or gaze longingly in the distance – too remote and withdrawn, too absorbed in their own inner lives to pay much attention to the outside world. Those faces that are in full view strike us with their overwhelming sadness that has almost a pleading quality to it. No matter what the theme of his painting, people he painted, almost all of them, look like lost or abandoned children, isolated in their sadness from themselves and from the world.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, portraits and photographs of Chmielowski, himself an orphan, express a similar emotional tone. They show an emotional and spiritual evolution of the man in a strikingly clear manner. We see him early on as a thoughtful, searching yet hopeful young man, whose life appears to him full of possibilities. As he grows older, sadness hinted in his eyes grows, erasing the subtle signs of optimism and hope visible in his youthful portraits. The sadness takes on the tone of despair and turns into unbearable suffering, culminating in the period of Chmielowski’s mental crisis and expressed, in his art, by the hauntingly beautiful painting, “Ecce Homo.”  Chmielowski’s picture taken right after his release from the mental hospital shows a man who appears lost to himself and the world, transformed – and emptied, but not broken -- by the agony of prolonged mental suffering. The picture, it is important to note, appears to be taken when Chmielowski was still in the throes of depression which was to lift several months later. Sunken cheeks in a sickly, thin face; the same sad, deep eyes, which, although no longer hopeful, still contained glimmers of resolve -- the severity of his suffering was palpable.

 

Throughout his whole life Chmielowski created over 60 oil paintings, numerous watercolors, drawings and sketches. There is no reliable record of how many of his works he destroyed. This tendency to destroy one’s art is an expression of the partial death instinct and the intensifying instinct of self-perfection, frequently observed in lives of individuals with high developmental potential in the periods of accelerated development. On the symbolic level, it can be interpreted as a need to destroy one’s old values and ways of thinking, even though the new ones are not yet formed, but barely intuited.

 

Chmielowski’s work in general received mixed critical reviews. He was universally praised for his innovative use of color and light, but some held against him his lack of strong drawing abilities and what they perceived to be a lack of substance and moodiness of his artwork. Ironically then, his one painting that received excellent reviews was one of two of early religious paintings, “A Vision of St. Margaret.” This particular painting, though critically acclaimed, appears to be imitative in nature and lacks the authenticity that Chmielowski considered to be the essence of art.

 

About the same time when Chmielowski made “A Vision of St. Margaret,” in 1879, he began painting “Ecce Homo,” his favorite painting, one on which he worked for several years, took with him everywhere and never really finished.

 

“Ecce Homo” is a painting is like no other. It mesmerizes with the depth of feeling expressed in Jesus’ face and makes even a reluctant observer stop and ponder both the mystery of Christ’s life and suffering, and the artist’s skill in depicting it. It also makes one wonder what kind of emotional work went into creating this painting, which is described as follows by Leon Wyczolkowski:

 

“The deepest expression of Christ Chmielowski showed in Ecce Homo. It’s a gray day, it’s raining. Christ tortured, his eyes sunk deeply inside. That’s what happened and what had to happen. Christ exhausted, mistreated, spat on, wrapped in a purple cloth, but his eyes are looking inward.” (Kluz, 1981, p.106)

 

Ecce Homo – Behold the man -- are words of Pontius Pilate presenting the tortured Christ to the public, demanding his execution. These words have a deeply symbolic meaning and it is no mistake that Chmielowski chose them as the title of his most important and most moving painting, the one which ushered a new, and very dramatic, period of his life.

 

In September 1880, Chmielowski entered a Jesuit convent, to a great surprise of his relatives and friends. He did not confide his plans to anyone, but just before taking this step, he sent letters to his closest friends, in which he explained his decision as dictated by his serious concern over the state of his soul and his future, eternal life. In those letters, he exhorted his friends to abandon the “aesthetic silliness” of art for art’s sake, and devote their lives to God. He also expressed hope that his artwork from now on would be better and more prolific.

 

This is what he wrote to Helena Modrzejewska:

 

“I could no longer stand this bad life, with which the world is feeding us, I couldn’t bear the heavy chains any longer. The world like a thief steals every day and every hour all that is good in our hearts, steals our peace and happiness, steals God and heaven. For all this I’m entering the convent: if I lost my soul, what else would I have had left?”

(…) Even though I don’t know whether I have a talent or just a tiny gift, I know for certain that I’m on my way back from the banks of this sad river that has swallowed so many victims, and still keeps swallowing more! Art and only art, anything for her smile, or a shadow of her smile, for only one rose from the wreath of this goddess, because it brings fame and wealth and personal satisfaction – no matter the rest; one loses family, morality, one’s country, one’s relationship with God in this crazy race; one loses everything that’s good and holy, years are passing, physical body deteriorates, and with it the so-called talent – what remains is only despair or idiocy on the bottom of one’s skull; and beyond that – death; but even if only death and nothingness, but not even that, because the soul never dies.

(…) I’ve thought for a long time in my life about who is this queen art, and I’ve understood that it is only a figment of our imagination, or rather a horrific nightmare which prevents us from seeing the real God. Art is only an expression and nothing else, works of the so-called art are only physical manifestations of our soul, they are only our works – and it’s a good thing we make them, quite simply, for this is a natural way to communicate and understand each other. But if in those works we pay honors to ourselves and give everything away, then, even though it is called the cult of art, in reality it is only masked egoism; and to worship oneself is the stupidest and most abominable kind of idolatry.” (Kluz, 1981, p.112).

 

Though the letters offer a clear indictment of his previous lifestyle and his pursuit of artistic career, they are also very optimistic and express his joy of finding the right path for his life. (“In thoughts of God and future things I’ve finally found happiness and peace, which I sought in my life without success.” (…) “I’ve started a novitiate, I feel very happy.” (…) “I’m sending you good and joyful news, joyful for me beyond all words, I’ve entered a convent.” Kluz, 1981, p. 113)