Born: December 24, 1798, Zaosie, Russian partition of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth)
Died: November 26, 1855, Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
The early days. Adam Mickiewicz was born in Zaosie, in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, into an impoverished noble family. Father, Mikolaj Mickiewicz, worked in court in Nowogrodek. In 1815 Mickiewicz finished a local Dominican school.
Higher education. He studied philology and history at the University of Wilno in the years 1815-1819 and in 1819-23 he was a teacher in Kaunas (Russia occupied Lithuania).
The underground activities and exile. In 1811 he organized together with his friends- Tomasz Zan, Jozef Jezowski, Onufry Pietraszkiewicz and Franciszek Malewski a secret society of Philomaths and Philarets (see his poems: Song of the Philarets [1820] and Ode to the Youth [1820]). At that time his beloved Maria Wereszczak married the count Wawrzyniec Puttkammer.
His early interest in the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire soon changed into admiration for two great Romantic writers, Schiller and Byron. In 1823 Mickiewicz was arrested with many other Philomaths by the Russian police. Initially he was jailed for several months in Wilno and then in 1824 exiled to Russia. Mickiewicz never saw his home again. He lived in Odessa, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. During this period he befriended by many leading Russian writers, including Alexander Pushkin.
Poetry.As a poet Mickiewicz gained first attention with Balady i romanse (1822), which had on its background a disappointment in love. The book included ballads, romances, and a preface about western European literature. The collection opened the romantic era in Polish literature. It was followed by the fantastic drama Dziady (1823-32, Forefathers' Eve), in which Poland had a messianic role among the nations of westerns Europe.
The title of the play was taken from an ancient folk celebration in Belarus, held on All Souls' Day, which honors the memory of the dead and were common in Lithuania during Mickiewicz's youth. In 1825 he visited the Crimea and published his erotic Sonety krymskie (1826). During his exile Mickiewicz wrote among others Konrad Wallenrod (1828), a philosophical poem, which inspired the Polish youth in the struggle against oppression. In his poetical works Mickiewicz expressed a romantic view of the soul and the mysteries of life, often employing folk themes. His approach was fresh and new - when writers had depicted with polished language the life of the educated classes, Mickiewicz used colloquial expressions and portrayed peasants.
Mickiewicz in Western Europe.Marriage.
In 1829 Mickiewicz was permitted to leave Russia. He went to Bohemia, Germany, where he met Goethe, and to Switzerland and Italy, where he met James Fenimore Cooper . The author had appealed to the American people to aid Poland during the uprising against Russia in 1830-1831. Mickiewicz tried to join the insurrection but the authorities stopped him in Prussian occupied part of Poland. In Dresden he met refugees and used their hard fate as material in the third part of Dziady. Pan Tadeusz (1834) expressed Mickiewicz's nostalgia for his homeland. In 1834 Mickiewicz married Celina Szymanowska daughter of a famous Polish pianist- Maria Szymanowska. They had six children. The marriage was unhappy. The family lived on the brink of poverty and his wife suffered a nervous breakdown. Mickiewicz eventually settled in Paris.
Academic career. He served as professor of literature at the University of Lausanne (1839) and at the College de France (1840-44). Mickiewicz's espousal of the mystical and political doctrines of Andrzej Towianski (1799-1878) caused his dismissal from the college.
Mickiewicz's academic career ended when he was accused of using his position for political activities. For a time in 1848 he edited the radical newspaper "La Tribune des Peuples." He also became the center of enthusiastic followers to his lectures, both Polish emigres and French intellectuals.
Political activities.In the revolutionary upheavals of 1848 Mickiewicz's idealism renewed. He attempted unsuccessfully to enlist Polish regiments to help Garibaldi in the Italian struggle against Austria. He wrote a political program for Poland in which he espoused the end of serfdom and equal rights for women and Jews. In 1852 he got the position of a librarian in La Biblioteque d'Arsenal. At the outbreak of the Crimean War, Mickiewicz went to Turkey to raise Polish armies in Turkey. He died during a cholera epidemic in Constantinople on November 26, in 1885. His body was was first transported to Paris. In 1890 Mickiewicz's remains returned to Poland and were buried with the Polish kings in the national shrine in Krakow.
Based on the biography by Petri Liukkonen, Chief Librarian Kuusankoski Library Finland, with the permission of the author.
See the original at:
Liukkonen
where is also a list of his selected works.
Other sources:
Mickiewicz
English translations of some of his works:
Constance J. Ostrowski
See also some of his works online in Polish and in English:
Roman Antoszewski
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