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Adam Mickiewicz

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Adam Mickiewicz
Sketch by Joachim Lelewel
Sketch by Joachim Lelewel
OccupationPoet, essayist.

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (pronounced: [mit͡sˈkʲɛvit͡ʂ] ⓘ; in Belarusian, Адам Міцкевіч; in Lithuanian, Adomas Bernardas Mickevičius; December 24, 1798 – November 26, 1855) was a was a Polish Romantic poet[1][2] — one of Poland's Three Bards, alongside Zygmunt Krasiński and Juliusz Słowacki.

Mickiewicz — scion of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, born in what is now Belarus, educated at Lithuania's Vilnius University, a Polish-language poet — is claimed as a national poet by Belarus, Lithuania and Poland.

Mickiewicz is considered by some to have been the greatest Slavic poet,[3] alongside Alexander Pushkin.

Life

Mickiewicz's house, Navahrudak
Portrait by Wańkowicz, 1828
Daguerrotype, 1842
Mickiewicz's temporary grave under his Istanbul apartment, now Adam Mickiewicz Museum

Adam Mickiewicz was born at his uncle's estate in Zaosie, near Navahrudak in the Russian Empire (now Belarus). The region of Mickiewicz's birth had once been ethnically Lithuanian, but now had a Belarusian-speaking peasant population.[4] His father, Mikołaj Mickiewicz, was a member of the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and bore the hereditary Poraj coat-of-arms.

Mickiewicz enrolled at the Imperial University of Vilnius. His personality and later works were greatly influenced by his four years of living and studying in Vilnius. He took a strong interest in Polish and Lithuanian history, which later became important themes in his poetry. In 1817, together with Thom Zan (Tomasz Zan) and other friends, he created a secret organization, the Philomaths, that advocated progressive causes and independence from the Russian Empire. Following graduation, in 1819–23, under the terms of his university scholarship, he taught secondary school at Kaunas.

In 1823 he was arrested, investigated for his political activities (membership in the Philomaths) and in 1824 banished to central Russia. He had already published two small volumes of miscellaneous poetry at Vilnius, which had been favorably received by the Slavic public, and on his arrival at Saint Petersburg found himself welcomed into the leading literary circles, where he became a great favorite both for his agreeable manners and his extraordinary talent of improvisation. In 1825 he visited the Crimea, which inspired a collection of sonnets (Sonety Krymskie—The Crimean Sonnets) with their admirably elegant rhythm and rich Oriental coloring. The most beautiful are "The Storm," "Bakhchisaray," and "The Grave of Countess Potocka". Crimea had earlier caught the eye of another famous contemporary poet, Alexander Pushkin, who had written about it in "The Fountain of Bakhchisaray" two years before Mickiewicz.

In 1828 appeared Mickiewicz's Konrad Wallenrod, a narrative poem describing the battles of the Teutonic Knights with the heathen Lithuanians. In it, under a thin veil, Mickiewicz represented the sanguinary passages of arms and burning hatred which had characterized the long feuds of the Russians and Poles. The objects of the poem, though obvious to many, escaped the Russian censors, and the poem was allowed to be published, complete with the telling motto, adapted from Machiavelli: "Dovete adunque sapere come sono duo generazioni da combattere — bisogna essere volpe e leone." ("Ye shall know that there are two ways of fighting — you must be a fox and a lion.") This striking long poem contains at least two revered subsections, including the Alpuhara Ballad.

In 1829, after a five-year exile in Russia, the poet obtained permission to travel abroad. He had secretly[citation needed] made up his mind never to return to Russia, or to his own native land so long as it remained under Russian imperial rule. He went to Weimar and made the acquaintance of Goethe there. After a cordial reception by the latter he continued through Germany all the way to Italy, which he entered by the Splügen Pass. He visited Milan, Venice and Florence, and finally established his residence in Rome.

There he wrote the third part of his poem Dziady (Forefathers' Eve; in Lithuanian, Vėlinės), which adverts to the ancestor commemoration that had been practiced by Slavic and Baltic peoples; and Pan Tadeusz, his longest poem, which is considered his masterpiece. The latter epos draws a picture of Lithuania on the eve of Napoleon's 1812 expedition to Russia. In this "rural idyll," as Aleksander Brückner calls it, Mickiewicz gives a picture of the country seats of the Polish magnates, with their somewhat boisterous but very genuine hospitality. They are seen just as the knell of their nationalism, as Brückner says, seems to be sounding, and therefore there is something melancholy and dirge-like in the poem, in spite of the pretty love story that forms the main incident.

Mickiewicz turned to Lithuania, firmly stating it as his "Fatherland"—in so doing, he was actually referring to his native former Grand Duchy of Lithuania—with the loving eyes of an exile, and gives some of the most delightful descriptions of "Lithuanian" skies and "Lithuanian" forests. He describes the weird sounds to be heard in the primeval woods in a country where the trees were sacred. The cloud-pictures are equally striking.

In 1832 Mickiewicz left Rome for Paris, where his life was for some time marked by poverty and unhappiness. On July 22, 1834, he married Celina Szymanowska (daughter of composer and concert pianist Maria Agata Szymanowska), who became mentally ill. Marital discord and Celina's mental illness would drive Mickiewicz to attempt suicide on December 17 or 18, 1838, by jumping out a window.

In 1840 Mickiewicz was appointed to the newly-founded chair of Slavic languages and literatures at the Collège de France. He was, however, destined to hold it for little more than three years, his last lecture being given on May 28, 1844. His mind had become increasingly possessed by religious mysticism.

He had fallen under the influence of the Polish Messianist philosopher Andrzej Towiański. His lectures became a medley of religion and politics, and thus brought him under censure by the French government. A selection of his lectures has been published in four volumes. They contain some sound criticism, but the philological part is defective — Mickiewicz was no scholar, and it is clear that he was well acquainted with only two of the Slavic literatures, Polish and Russian, and the latter only to 1830.

A sad picture of his declining years is given in the memoirs of the Russian writer Alexander Herzen. Comparatively early, the poet exhibited signs of premature old age; poverty, despair and domestic affliction had taken their toll. In the winter of 1848–49, the Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin, in the final months of his own life, visited his ailing compatriot and soothed the poet's nerves with his piano music.[5] Over a dozen years earlier, Chopin had set some of Mickiewicz's poems to music.[6]

In 1849 Mickiewicz founded a French newspaper, La Tribune des Peuples (The Peoples' Tribune), but survived for only a year. The restoration of the French Empire seemed to kindle his hopes afresh; his last composition is said to have been a Latin ode in honour of Napoleon III.

In 1855 Mickiewicz's wife Celina died. On the outbreak of the Crimean War, he left his under-age children in Paris and went to Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire, where he arrived 22 September 1855, to organize Polish forces to be used in the war against Russia. With his friend Armand Levy, a Romanian Jew [1], he set about organizing a Jewish legion, the Hussars of Israel, comprising Russian and Palestinian Jews. He returned ill to his apartment from a trip to a military camp and died on 26 November in his apartment on the Yenişehir street in Istanbul.[7] The house where he lived in is now a museum.

After being temporarily buried in a crypt under his apartment in Istanbul, his remains were transported to France and buried at Montmorency. In 1900 they were disinterred, moved to a politically still-unreborn Poland, and entombed in the crypts of Kraków's Wawel Cathedral, which is shared with many of those who are considered important to Poland's political and/or cultural history.

Works

Adam Mickiewicz Museum, Vilnius
Lithuanian folk song written down by Mickiewicz
File:Mic br.jpg
Bust, Brest
File:Pomnik Adamu Mickieviču, Miensk.jpg
Mickiewicz monument, Minsk

The political situation in Poland in the 19th century was often reflected in Polish literature which, since the days of Poland's partitions took a powerful upward swing and reached its zenith during the period between 1830 and 1850 in the unsurpassed patriotic writings of Mickiewicz, among others. The writings of Mickiewicz have had such a tremendous influence upon the Polish mind that they can not be underestimated.

The author Edward Henry Lewinski Corwin wrote of Mickiewicz:[8]

"Because of the greater simplicity of his style and the directness of presentation, Mickiewicz reached more Polish hearts than either Krasiński or Słowacki and came to be regarded as the greatest interpreter of the people's hopes and ideals...His two monumental works, marking the zenith of his power, are Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) and Pan Tadeusz. The latter is universally recognized as "the only successful epic which the 19th century produced." George Brandes says that Mickiewicz alone approached those great names in poetry which stand in history as above all healthy, far healthier than Byron, healthier, even than Shakespeare, Homer and Goethe. The poetic serenity of the description of Lithuanian life at the opening of the 19th century is the more remarkable when considered in the light of the poet's volcanic nature and his intense suffering over the tragic fate of his native land to which he could never return...It is the Promethean idea, no doubt, but greatly deepened in conception and execution and applied to but one part of humanity, the Polish nation whose intensity of suffering was the greatest in all mankind."

As a young man, Mickiewicz took a leading part in the literary life of the university circles at Vilnius. When the societies were closed in 1823 by order of the Russian government he was arrested and exiled to Russia. While in the Crimea he wrote his sonnets. In France in 1835 Mickiewicz came under the influence of Towianski, a mystic, and ceased to write. Toward the end of his days he freed himself again of this peculiar thrall which Towiański was able to exert over him.

It was while in Istanbul he wrote the Books of the Pilgrims, which have been called "Mickiewicz's Homilies".

Beside Konrad Wallenrod and Pan Tadeusz, noteworthy is the long poem Grażyna, describing the exploits of a Lithuanian chieftainess against the Teutonic Knights. It was said by Christien Ostrowski to have inspired Emilia Plater, a military heroine of the November 1830 Uprising who died in Lithuania. A fine vigorous Oriental piece is Farys. Notable too are the odes to Youth and to the historian Joachim Lelewel; the former did much to stimulate the efforts of the Poles to shake off their Russian conquerors.

His son Władysław Mickiewicz wrote a Vie d'Adam Mickiewicz (Life of Adam Mickiewicz, 4 volumes, Poznań, 1890–95) and Adam Mickiewicz, sa vie et son œuvre (Adam Mickiewicz: His Life and Works, Paris, 1888). Translations into English (1881–85) of Konrad Wallenrod and Pan Tadeusz were made by a Miss Biggs. Christien Ostrowski rendered into French Œuvres poétiques de Michiewicz (Poetic Works of Mickiewicz, Paris, 1845).

The most recent translation of Pan Tadeusz into English, in the rhyme and rhythm of the original, is by Marcel Weyland of Sydney, Australia (ISBN 1-56700-219-6 in the US, and ISBN 1-873106-77-7 in the UK).

Nationality

Godebski's statue, Warsaw

Adam Mickiewicz is generally known as a Polish poet; but though all his major works are written in Polish, his nationality and ethnicity have been a subject of controversy.

Lithuanian coin

Mickiewicz is regarded by some Lithuanians to have been of Lithuanian origin, his name being rendered into Lithuanian as Adomas Mickevičius. He was descended from an old Lithuanian noble family, Rimvydžių – Mickiewicz. Lithuanian nobility at that time spoke Polish, though they regarded themselves as Lithuanians.

Belarusians claim that Mickiewicz was descended from a Polonized Belarusian family and call him Ада́м Міцке́віч. According to the Belarusian historian Rybczonek, Mickiewicz's mother had Tatar roots.[9]

Some sources claim that Mickiewicz's mother was descended from a converted Frankist Jewish family.[10][11][12][13] Other sources view the latter claim as "improbable."[14][15] The poet's mother, Barbara z Majewskich Mickiewiczowa, was a devout Catholic of ethnically Polish background, as explained by Tomasz Łubieński in his 1998 biography M jak Mickiewicz. It was another Majewski family in Lithuania of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who were descended from Frankists.[16][17]

The controversy over Mickiewicz's ethnic background stems in part from the fact that in the 19th century the modern concept of nationality based on ethnicity had not yet been fully developed and the term "Lithuania," as used by Mickiewicz, had a much broader geographic meaning than it does now.[18] Mickiewicz had been brought up in the culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a multi-cultural state that had encompassed most of what today are the separate countries of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine. His most famous poetic work, Pan Tadeusz, begins with the invocation, "O Lithuania, my country, thou art like good health..." It is generally accepted that in Mickiewicz's time the term "Lithuania" still carried a strong association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and that Mickiewicz used the term "Lithuania" in a political rather than an ethnic sense.[19] However, he clearly distinguished the ethnic Lithuanian nation[20] and understood and wrote some Lithuanian.[21]

Simonas Daukantas' translation of Mickiewicz's poem "Žywila" into Lithuanian was the first translation of a poem by Mickiewicz.[22]

Mickiewicz's works are regarded as having had a major influence on the Lithuanian national renaissance.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ William Richard Morfill, Poland, 1893, p. 300.
  2. ^ Karin Ikas, Gerhard Wagner, Communicating in the Third Space, 2008, p. 182.
  3. ^ "Centennial essays for Pushkin‎" Page 77, Samuel Hazzard Cross - Literary Criticism - 1937 - 226 pages... "there came together in Moscow two of the most illustrious of all Slavic poets — the Pole, Adam Mickiewicz, and the Russian, Alexander Pushkin."
  4. ^ Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish literature, p. 208.
  5. ^ Jachimecki, p. 424.
  6. ^ Jachimecki, p. 423.
  7. ^ Muzeum Adama Mickiewicza w Stambule (przewodnik). Ministerstwo Kultury i Turystyki Republiki Turcji - Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, 26 November 2005.
  8. ^ Edward Henry Lewinski Corwin (1917). The Political History of Poland. Polish Book Importing Co.
  9. ^ Rybczonek, S., "Przodkowie Adama Mickiewicza po kądzieli" ("Adam Mickiewicz's Ancestors on the Distaff Side"), Blok-Notes Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza, 1999, no. 12/13.
  10. ^ Balaban, Meir, The History of the Frank Movement, 2 vols., 1934-35, pp. 254-259.
  11. ^ "Mickiewicz's mother, descended from a converted Frankist family": "Mickiewicz, Adam," Encyclopaedia Judaica. "Mickiewicz's Frankist origins were well-known to the Warsaw Jewish community as early as 1838 (according to evidence in the AZDJ of that year, p. 362). "The parents of the poet's wife also came from Frankist families": "Frank, Jacob, and the Frankists," Encyclopaedia Judaica.
  12. ^ M.Mieses, Polacy-Chrześciane pochodzenia żydowskiego (Christian Poles of Jewish Descent), vols. I–IV, Warsaw, 1938.
  13. ^ Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal, Poles and Jews: a Failed Brotherhood, pp. 119-21.
  14. ^ "Her (Barbara Mickiewicz) maiden name was Majewska. In old Lithuania, every baptised Jew became ennobled, and there were Majewskis of Jewish origin. That must have been the reason for the rumours, repeated by some of the poet's contemporaries, that Mickiewicz's mother was a Jewess by origin. However, genealogical research makes such an assumption rather improbable." (Wiktor Weintraub, The Poetry of Adam Mickiewicz, p. 11.)
  15. ^ "The mother’s low social status—her father was a land steward—argues against a Frankist origin. The Frankists were usually of the nobility and therefore socially superior to the common gentry." (Czesław Miłosz, The Land of Ulro, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000 ed., p. 116.)
  16. ^ Template:Pl icon Paweł Goźliński, "Rzym koło Nowogródka", interview with historian Tomasz Łubieński, editor-in-chief of Nowe Ksiąźki, Gazeta Wyborcza, 16 October 1998.
  17. ^ Template:Pl icon "Muzeum Historii Polski" by Fortepresse Mickiewicz past, an unproven theory (last paragraph on the page).
  18. ^ This confusion of concepts has led to the waggish description of Mickiewicz as "a Belarusian poet who wrote about Lithuania in Polish."
  19. ^ Venclova, Tomas. "Native Realm Revisited: Mickiewicz's Lithuania and Mickiewicz in Lithuania". Retrieved 2007-04-24. This semantic confusion was amplified by the fact that the Nowogródek region, although inhabited mainly by Belarusian speakers, was for several centuries considered part and parcel of Lithuania Propria—Lithuania in the narrow sense; as different from the 'Ruthenian' regions of the Grand Duchy.
  20. ^ "Preface to Conrad Wallenrod, translated into Lithuanian". {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |note= ignored (help)
  21. ^ "An original handwritten note by Mickiewicz, containing the [[lyrics]] of a Lithuanian [[folk song]]". {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  22. ^ Venclova, Tomas. "Native Realm Revisited: Mickiewicz's Lithuania and Mickiewicz in Lithuania". Retrieved 2007-04-24.

References

  • Adam Mickiewicz, Konrad Wallenrod and Grażyna, translated by Irene Suboczewski, Rowman & Littlefield, 1989, ISBN 0-8191-7556-0.
  • Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz, New York, Hippocrene Books, 1992, ISBN 0-7818-0033-1.
  • Treasury of Love Poems by Adam Mickiewicz, bilingual edition, translated by Kenneth R. MacKenzie, New York, Hippocrene Books, 1998, ISBN 0-7818-0652-6.
  • Adam Mickiewicz, The Sun of Liberty: Bicentenary Anthology, 1798-1998, bilingual edition, Warsaw, Energeia, 1998, ISBN 83-85118-74-8.
  • Roman Koropeckyj, Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8014-4471-5.
  • Jadwiga Maurer, Z matki obcej... Szkice o powiązaniach Adama Mickiewicza ze światem Żydow (Of a Foreign Mother... Sketches about Adam Mickiewicz's Ties to the Jewish World), London, Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1990, ISBN 0-85065-217-0.
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 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

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