MICKIEWICZ, ADAM. - Polish poet, b. at Zaosie on 24 Dec. 1798, d. at Constantinople on 26 Nov. 1855. He spent his childhood and adolescence in the Lithuanian land, where the memories of Kosciuszko's insurrection were still alive; in 1812 he saw the Napoleonic army pass by, which reawakened the hopes of the Poles, and the following year he witnessed the sad retreat. Those impressions were to stamp all his art, inseparably bound to his life. In 1815 M. enrolled at the University of Wilno and there founded with Tomasz Zan the Society of the Philomaths (later Philaretes, later Radiants), with aims that were apparently literary but in reality social and political and linked to the idea of national resurgence.
Appointed professor at the gymnasium of Kaunas in 1819, he published his first collection of poems, which won him wide fame. His Ode to Youth, whose publication the censorship had forbidden, circulated in manuscript throughout Poland. The short poem Grazyna, printed later, was well received. His love for Maryla Wereszczaka inspired delicate lyrics and the Ballads and Romances, drawn from popular legends but marked by the highly personal imprint of his genius. Maryla, by the will of her relatives, became the wife
(by courtesy of Dr. Witold Weber)
MICKIEWICZ, ADAM - Portrait. Engraving (c. 1850).
to others; and M. poured out his grief in a poem: Dziady ("The Forefathers"), centered on an ancient Lithuanian folk rite by which, on the day of the dead, they are evoked in chapels and cemeteries. To the return of the spirit of the beloved woman the poet linked his own tragedy of love; the novelty of the subject and the power of the verse aroused the deepest admiration. But already the Russian government was undertaking the great political trial known as that "of the Philarets." M., arrested with his friends, spent a year in prison; then, condemned to exile in Russia, he left his homeland, which he was never to see again.
The Russian period was fruitful in new works: a journey to the Crimea inspired the Sonety Krymskie ("Crimean Sonnets"), which are the most perfect in all Polish literature; he wrote the Farys, qaside in the Arabic manner, and the Byronic poem of vengeance and revolt Konrad Wallenrod. In 1829 M. obtained permission to leave Russia, and traveled in Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
Rome conquered him, not only for its classical memories, but because he glimpsed a new world, a new humanity. His spiritual formation had been Enlightenment and Voltairian; in Rome he recovered the awareness of the superior creative power of faith in comparison with reason alone; and from this concept all his poetry was henceforth to draw its inspiration. Already in the Avi of Dresden (Eve's prayer), in the ode To the Polish Mother, which Mazzini translated, and in the Words of the Most Holy Virgin there were accents of faith; but in Faith and Reason and in the Evening Conversation M.'s poetry reaches the highest summit of religious lyricism.
In 1831, after having sought in vain to reach his homeland in revolt, M. went to Paris. There the Polish exiles gathered, forming what was called the Great Emigration, divided into irreconcilable factions. It was then that from the poet's spirit burst forth the Book of the Polish Nation and the Book of the Polish Pilgrimage, biblical and prophetic in tone, in which is the sublime appeal to love, to sacrifice, to concord after the example of Christ. At Dresden, where he withdrew with some Polish emigrants, he wrote the third part of Dziady and the prologue. As in the Dziady of Wilno he had manifested his personal grief, in those of Dresden he sealed the martyrdom of Poland through his experiences of the trial, the prison and the condemnation, in touches of tragic power. The work won the approval of all Europe.
In 1834 M. published the masterpiece of all Polish literature, Pan Tadeusz (Sir Thaddeus), pervaded by nostalgia for the beauty of his native land and by memories of his early youth. The poem is a vast picture of Polish life in 1812 and unfolds around the idyll of two young people, Thaddeus and Zosia, whose hostile families are reconciled in their love; but the light plot barely takes shape amid the richness of the episodes, the multiplicity of the characters and the magic of the verse. This was M.'s last poetic labor. In 1839 he was called to the chair of Latin literature at the University of Lausanne, and the following year to that of Slavic literatures at the Collège de France. His courses sought, in a fascinating synthesis, the characteristics common to all Slavic literatures and the differences originating in the nature of each individual people.
In 1848, at the uprising of the peoples, M., who had followed national movements all his life and was a friend of Mazzini and of other patriots, formed a legion that fought in the first war of Italian independence. After 1849 he directed in Paris the Tribune des peuples, just as in 1833 he had collaborated on the Pielgrzym polski (Polish Pilgrim). In 1855, entrusted with a political mission, he went to Constantinople and died there. His remains rest today in the Wawel, the national temple of Polish glory. For his lofty personality and the admirable work that transcends literary value in the exaltation of patriotic, human and religious values, M. is the greatest poet of Poland.
Bibliography6 works
Marina Bersano Begey