Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz was a Polish poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator and political activist. He is regarded as national poet in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. He also largely influenced Ukrainian literature and affected Russian literature. A principal figure in Polish Romanticism, he is one of Poland's "Three Bards" and is widely regarded as Poland's greatest poet. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets and has been dubbed a "Slavic bard". A leading Romantic dramatist, he has been compared in Poland and Europe to Byron and Goethe.
He is known chiefly for the poetic drama Dziady and the national epic poem Pan Tadeusz. His other influential works include Konrad Wallenrod and Grażyna. All these served as inspiration for uprisings against the three imperial powers that had partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth out of existence.
Mickiewicz was born in the Russian-partitioned territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was active in the struggle to win independence for his home region. After, as a consequence, spending five years exiled to central Russia, in 1829 he succeeded in leaving the Russian Empire and, like many of his compatriots, lived out the rest of his life abroad. He settled first in Rome, then in Paris, where for a little over three years he lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France. He was an activist, striving for a democratic and independent Poland. He died, probably of cholera, at Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish forces to fight Russia in the Crimean War.
In 1890, his remains were repatriated from Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, in France, to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland.
Life
Early years
Adam Mickiewicz was born on 24 December 1798, either at his paternal uncle's estate in Zaosie near Navahrudak or in Navahrudak itself in what was then part of the Russian Empire and is now Belarus. The region was on the periphery of Lithuania proper and had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Its upper class, including Mickiewicz's family, were either Polish or Polonized. The poet's father, Mikołaj Mickiewicz, a lawyer, was a member of the Polish nobility and bore the hereditary Poraj coat-of-arms; Adam's mother was Barbara Mickiewicz, née Majewska. Adam was the second-born son in the family.Mickiewicz spent his childhood in Navahrudak, initially taught by his mother and private tutors. From 1807 to 1815 he attended a Dominican school following a curriculum that had been designed by the now-defunct Polish Commission of National Education, which had been the world's first ministry of education. He was a mediocre student, although active in games, theatricals, and the like.
In September 1815, Mickiewicz enrolled at the Imperial University of Vilnius, studying to be a teacher. After graduating, under the terms of his government scholarship, he taught secondary school at Kaunas from 1819 to 1823.
In 1818, in the Polish-language ', he published his first poem, '. The next few years would see a maturing of his style from sentimentalism/neoclassicism to romanticism, first in his poetry anthologies published in Vilnius in 1822 and 1823; these anthologies included the poem Grażyna and the first-published parts of his major work, Dziady. By 1820 he had already finished another major romantic poem, Oda do młodości, but it was considered to be too patriotic and revolutionary for publication and would not appear officially for many years.
About the summer of 1820, Mickiewicz met the love of his life,. They were unable to marry due to his family's poverty and relatively low social status; in addition, she was already engaged to Count, whom she would marry in 1821.
Imprisonment and exile
In 1817, while still a student, Mickiewicz, Tomasz Zan and other friends had created a secret organization, the Philomaths. The group focused on self-education but had ties to a more radical, clearly pro-Polish-independence student group, the Filaret Association. An investigation of secret student organizations by Nikolay Novosiltsev, begun in early 1823, led to the arrests of a number of students and ex-student activists including Mickiewicz, who was taken into custody and imprisoned at Vilnius' Basilian Monastery in late 1823 or early 1824. After investigation into his political activities, specifically his membership in the Philomaths, in 1824 Mickiewicz was banished to central Russia. Within a few hours of receiving the decree on 22 October 1824, he penned a poem into an album belonging to, the mother of Juliusz Słowacki. Mickiewicz crossed the border into Russia about 11 November 1824, arriving in Saint Petersburg later that month. He would spend most of the next five years in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, except for a notable 1824 to 1825 excursion to Odessa, then on to Crimea. That visit, from February to November 1825, inspired a notable collection of sonnets.Mickiewicz was welcomed into the leading literary circles of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, where he became a great favourite for his agreeable manners and an extraordinary talent for poetic improvisation. The year 1828 saw the publication of his poem Konrad Wallenrod. Novosiltsev, who recognized its patriotic and subversive message, which had been missed by the Moscow censors, unsuccessfully attempted to sabotage its publication and to damage Mickiewicz's reputation.
In Moscow, Mickiewicz met the Polish journalist and novelist Henryk Rzewuski and the Polish composer and piano virtuoso Maria Szymanowska, whose daughter, Celina Szymanowska, Mickiewicz would later marry in Paris, France. He also befriended the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and Decembrist leaders including Kondraty Ryleyev. It was thanks to his friendships with many influential individuals that he was eventually able to obtain a passport and permission to leave Russia for Western Europe.
European travels
After serving five years of exile to Russia, Mickiewicz received permission to go abroad in 1829. On 1 June that year, he arrived in Weimar in Germany. By 6 June he was in Berlin, where he attended lectures by the philosopher Hegel. In February 1830 he visited Prague, later returning to Weimar, where he received a cordial reception from the writer and polymath Goethe.He then continued on through Germany all the way to Italy, which he entered via the Alps' Splügen Pass. Accompanied by an old friend, the poet Antoni Edward Odyniec, he visited Milan, Venice, Florence and Rome. In August that same year he went to Geneva, where he met fellow Polish Bard Zygmunt Krasiński. During these travels he had a brief romance with, but class differences again prevented his marrying his new love.
Finally about October 1830 he took up residence in Rome, which he declared "the most amiable of foreign cities." Soon after, he learned about the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising in Poland, but he would not leave Rome until the spring of 1831.
On 19 April 1831 Mickiewicz departed Rome, traveling to Geneva and Paris and later, on a false passport, to Germany, via Dresden and Leipzig arriving about 13 August in Poznań, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. It is possible that during these travels he carried communications from the Italian Carbonari to the French underground, and delivered documents or money for the Polish insurgents from the Polish community in Paris, but reliable information on his activities at the time is scarce. Ultimately he never crossed into Russian Poland, where the Uprising was mainly happening; he stayed in German Poland, where he was well received by members of the local Polish nobility. He had a brief liaison with at her family estate in Śmiełów. Starting in March 1832, Mickiewicz stayed several months in Dresden, in Saxony, where he wrote the third part of his poem Dziady.
Paris émigré
On 31 July 1832, Mickiewicz arrived in Paris, accompanied by a close friend and fellow ex-Philomath, the future geologist and Chilean educator Ignacy Domeyko. In Paris, he became active in many Polish émigré groups and published articles in '. The fall of 1832 saw the publication, in Paris, of the third part of his Dziady, as well as of ', which Mickiewicz self-published. During this time, he made acquaintances with his compatriot the composer Frederic Chopin who would be one of Mickiewicz's closest friends in Paris. In 1834 he published another masterpiece, his epic poem Pan Tadeusz.Pan Tadeusz, his longest poetic work, marked the end of his most productive literary period. Mickiewicz would create further notable works, such as , 1839–40) and Zdania i uwagi, but neither would achieve the fame of his earlier works. His relative literary silence, beginning in the mid-1830s, has been variously interpreted: he may have lost his talent; he may have chosen to focus on teaching and on political writing and organizing.
On 22 July 1834, in Paris, he married Celina Szymanowska, daughter of composer and concert pianist Maria Agata Szymanowska. They would have six children. Celina later became mentally ill, possibly with a major depressive disorder. In December 1838, marital problems caused Mickiewicz to attempt suicide. Celina would die on 5 March 1855.
Mickiewicz and his family lived in relative poverty, their major source of income being occasional publication of his work – not a very profitable endeavor. They received support from friends and patrons, but not enough to substantially change their situation. Despite spending most of his remaining years in France, Mickiewicz would never receive French citizenship, nor any support from the French government. By the late 1830s he was less active as a writer, and also less visible on the Polish émigré political scene.
In 1838 Mickiewicz became professor of Latin literature at the Lausanne Academy, in Switzerland. His lectures were well received, and in 1840 he was appointed to the newly established chair of Slavic languages and literatures at the Collège de France. Leaving Lausanne, he was made an honorary Lausanne Academy professor.
Mickiewicz would, however, hold the Collège de France post for little more than three years, his last lecture being delivered on 28 May 1844. His lectures were popular, drawing many listeners in addition to enrolled students, and receiving reviews in the press. Some would be remembered much later; his sixteenth lecture, on Slavic theater, "was to become a kind of gospel for Polish theater directors of the twentieth century."
File:Piotr Stachiewicz - Adam Mickiewicz modlący się przed obrazem Matki Boskiej Ostrobramskiej.jpg|thumb|left|Adam Mickiewicz praying in front of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn, by Piotr Stachiewicz
Over the years he became increasingly possessed by religious mysticism as he fell under the influence of the Polish philosopher Andrzej Towiański, whom he met in 1841. His lectures became a medley of religion and politics, punctuated by controversial attacks on the Catholic Church, and thus brought him under censure by the French government. The messianic element conflicted with Roman Catholic teachings, and some of his works were placed on the Church's list of prohibited books, though both Mickiewicz and Towiański regularly attended Catholic mass and encouraged their followers to do so.
In 1846 Mickiewicz severed his ties with Towiański, following the rise of revolutionary sentiment in Europe, manifested in events such as the Kraków Uprising of February 1846. Mickiewicz criticized Towiański's passivity and returned to the traditional Catholic Church. In 1847 Mickiewicz befriended American journalist, critic and women's-rights advocate Margaret Fuller. In March 1848 he was part of a Polish delegation received in audience by Pope Pius IX, whom he asked to support the enslaved nations and the French Revolution of 1848. Soon after, in April 1848, he organized a military unit, the Mickiewicz Legion, to support the insurgents, hoping to liberate the Polish and other Slavic lands. The unit never became large enough to be more than symbolic, and in the fall of 1848 Mickiewicz returned to Paris and became more active again on the political scene.
In December 1848 he was offered a post at the Jagiellonian University in Austrian-ruled Kraków, but the offer was soon withdrawn after pressure from Austrian authorities. In the winter of 1848–49, Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, in the final months of his own life, visited his ailing compatriot soothed the poet's nerves with his piano music. Over a dozen years earlier, Chopin had set two of Mickiewicz's poems to music.