170 Years Since the Poet’s Death
Adam Mickiewicz was a poet and writer, translator, teacher, playwright and supporter of the Polish national liberation movement. “He is one of the most famous poets of Poland and an apostle of Polish national liberation,” writes the Encyclopedia Britannica. His epic poem “Pan Tadeusz”, written in the period 1831-1834 in Paris, where the writer lived in exile, and published there in 1834, has been compared to Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, Goethe’s “Faust” and Byron’s “Manfred”. He is considered the national poet of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. In 1999, the poem “Pan Tadeusz” was filmed by the famous Polish director Andrzej Wajda.
Mickiewicz died suddenly at the age of 56, on November 26, 1855, 170 years ago. It is believed that he contracted cholera. He died in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire. His remains were transferred and buried in the Montmorency Cemetery, Val d’Oise, in Paris. In 1890, they were reburied with honors in the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, where many Polish kings are buried. He had a wife, Selina Szymanowska, and six children. Adam Mickiewicz was born on December 24, 1789 in Zaosie, near the city of Nowogrodok in the Lithuanian Governorate (now Belarus) into a gentry family (b.a. gentry were the nobles in the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, etc.). His father, Mikołaj, was a lawyer. His mother, Barbara, was a converted Jewish Catholic. Adam Mickiewicz graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Vilnius University in 1819. He was expelled from Lithuania in 1824 for his participation in the secret student society of the Philomaths.
Here we must clarify what is meant by the Philomaths society. This organization was established in 1817 at the Imperial University of Vilnius. The structure of the society was something between a Masonic organization and a scientific society with self-educational and didactic goals. In 1819, the members of the organization split over the question of whether the society should focus solely on self-education or take a more active role in restoring Polish independence. Mickiewicz was among these members.
Adam Mickiewicz was a Freemason. Many researchers of the poet also believe that he had prophetic gifts and that he even practiced “magical” techniques and rituals, but this remains shrouded in the secrets of the secret society itself. The rest are interpretations of his metaphorical images from his work.
The main genre in which he works is poetry in the directions of romanticism and Polish messianism (i.e. a mystical movement that arose in Poland in the first half of the 19th century, which developed the mystical-religious concepts of Polish philosophers and poets). His first volume “Poetry” (1822) includes ballads, romances and an important preface in which he explains his admiration for European poetic forms and his desire to introduce them into Polish literature. The second volume of “Poetry” Mickiewicz published in 1823.
Here we should specify that after graduating from Vilnius University, Mickiewicz began working as a teacher. However, in connection with his participation in the Philomath Society, he was arrested and sent to Russia. The following years (1824 – 1829) he spent in Odessa, Moscow and St. Petersburg, where he established contacts with the young Russian intelligentsia. In Russia he became friends with participants in the Decembrist movement, with prominent poets and writers, with whom he shared the ideals of fighting against the oppressors of the Polish and Russian people. There he also published his famous “Crimean Sonnets” (1826) and the poem “Konrad
The latter is a historical poem-metaphor of the moral conflict experienced by Polish emigrants. In May 1829, Mickiewicz left St. Petersburg. He lived in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. He made an unsuccessful attempt to join the November Uprising in 1830, after which he lived as an emigrant in Paris from 1832.
In 1839, Mickiewicz was appointed professor of Latin literature at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, but left a year later to teach Slavic literature at the Collège de France. In early 1848, he went to Rome to persuade the new Pope to support the cause of Poland’s national liberation. In December 1848, he was offered a position at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, then under Austrian rule, but the offer was soon withdrawn under pressure from Austrian authorities. This was the period when, in his last days, in the winter of 1848/49, the Polish composer Frederic Chopin visited Mickiewicz to give him the courage not to be discouraged by his misfortunes and to continue the struggle to which he had dedicated himself. Two geniuses inspired hope for their homeland.
In 1848, Mickiewicz founded a Polish Legion in Rome. Together with a group of French emigrants, he published the radical magazine “Tribune of the Peoples”, which was closed after the intervention of the Russian embassy. After France’s involvement in the Crimean War, the poet attempted to found more Polish legions to fight against Russia, and for this purpose he was sent by the Polish prince Adam Czartoryski to Turkey – to mediate between groups of Poles who were preparing to fight on the side of the allies in the Crimean War. But Mickiewicz did not survive this trip. It is likely that it was then that he contracted cholera, which caused his death in Constantinople. Adam Mickiewicz’s work is rich and diverse – it includes lyrics, epic poems, dramatic works, and journalism. It is believed that with “Poetry. Volume 1” (1822) he marked the beginning of Polish romanticism. “Poetry. Volume 2” was published in 1823 and contains the third part of the drama “All Souls’ Day” and the historical poem “Grazyna”. In 1832, the Dresden version of “All Souls’ Day” was published. It is a kind of compilation of previously written versions of the work and refers to a pagan ritual for communicating with the dead.
It is assumed that it was influenced by Mickiewicz’s experiences in the prison in Vilno during the trial of the Philomaths. In the same year, Mickiewicz prepared “A Book about the Polish People and the Polish Pilgrimage” – a text that summarizes his concept of Polish messianism.
The poem “Pan Tadeusz”, published in 1834, is still considered a national epic of Poland. The work of Adam Mickiewicz has enormous importance for Polish culture. It becomes an element of the patriotic education of generations of Poles. Mickiewicz is a model of a romantic poet-prophet.
“All Souls’ Day” was staged by some of the leading Polish directors and playwrights, and “Pan Tadeusz”, as we have already mentioned, was adapted for the screen by the great Andrzej Wajda.
Many researchers of Mickiewicz’s work pay attention to how in “All Souls’ Day” his romantic hero blames God for the misfortunes of his people and all of humanity. This theocraticism is typical of Mickiewicz’s “messianic character”. His is the phrase “There is no peace in fire with water”.
The romantic poet has an unhappy fate, similar to our revolutionaries – he devotes his entire life to the struggle for national liberation of his people, but does not live to see it. “Pan Tadeusz” has an optimistic finale, filled with joy and hope. Mickiewicz wanted, as he himself said, “to strengthen hearts”. In anticipation of a better future, which he himself did not live to see. In fact, this is exactly the “reading” of romantic messianism, in which the main thing is the conviction that after times of chaos and suffering, a Great Change always comes, which will bring the embodiment of Christian principles in socio-political life.
Mickiewicz calls Poland “Jesus among the nations” – both because of the suffering that his country is experiencing, and because of the hope that “the eternal Polish aspiration for freedom brings to all of Europe”. This idea and all of Mickiewicz’s work is a source of inspiration not only for masters of the word, but also for many painters, graphic artists and composers.
And did you know that Mickiewicz was also a science fiction writer? In his book “History of the Future” he writes about acoustic devices with the help of which a person can listen to concerts from the streets of the city? He also describes mechanisms through which people can maintain contact with extraterrestrial beings.
How the personality of this extraordinary man was formed: Mickiewicz was born in a city that combined people of different ethnicities, religions, peoples, countries and empires. He spent his adolescence among them. Later, he traveled the world and met people of different nationalities.
This multinational culture left an imprint on his overall intellect, but he remained a selfless patriot of his homeland until the end of his life.
Poland was the first in Europe and the second in the world to adopt a written Constitution (1791), but it disintegrated as a state torn between Russia, Austria-Hungary and Prussia, three years before the poet was born. This, as one researcher of the poet notes, became a kind of original, “birthmark” of the future fighter for national liberation. Some critics feel confused that in “Pan Tadeusz”, however, Mickiewicz calls not Poland, but Lithuania his homeland, but they attribute this to “geography at that period of history”. Others, however, stare at the biographical fact that the poet’s mother was Jewish and believe that “Jewish blood” flows in his veins. Mickiewicz’s mother was from a family of followers of Jacob Frank – a Jewish mystic and preacher who declared himself the messiah. In conflict with the orthodox Jewish communities, his entire sect was eventually forced to adopt Catholicism. Mickiewicz’s mother was baptized, and she also baptized her son Adam. In this regard, we should note something very curious: in the later years of his life, Mickiewicz said that “Poles are the Jews of Europe.” His biographers believe that he made the comparison because of the historical similarity between the two peoples – the division, persecution and exile. And another curious fact about Mickiewicz’s biography: this very well-read man was not a good student as a child. He was more interested in acting and the theater. However, he received a scholarship to study at the Imperial University in Vilnius as a teacher, and then taught at school for four years under contract. As it became known, while still at the university he got involved in undercover activities and showed the whole “palette” of his character. He was such ardent in his personal life. His great love was not his wife Selina, but Maria Vereshchakovna, but marriage to her remained his unfulfilled dream. The reason was that he was poor and of lower social status, and Maria was already engaged to a prince.
In addition, at about that time Mickiewicz became even more unreliable for the girl because of his arrest along with the Philometes. He was sent to a monastery for six months instead of house arrest, and later he was sentenced to exile in Central Russia. According to his biographers, the word “exile” is at odds with his actual situation during the exile. In Russia, he could move freely and even wrote “Crimean Sonnets” and published his poem “Konrad Valendor”.
After leaving Russia, he made a long tour of Europe. In Weimar, he met Goethe, in Berlin he listened to Hegel’s lectures, and stopped in Prague. Then he traveled to Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome. Through Geneva and Paris, he headed to the Prussian border and tried to cross into Russia with a false passport to participate in the Polish November Uprising, but he failed. The uprising was soon suppressed. Mickiewicz was devastated and wrote the third part of his poem “The Ancestors”, compared by many to Byron’s “Manfred”.
An interesting life, filled with a lot of revolutionary fervor, but also with a lot of amorous fervor. Mickiewicz constantly fell in love, but by his own admission – always unsuccessfully. He married his wife Selina in 1834. They had six children, but the family lived in constant poverty, and also in sorrow, because Selina suffered from a mental illness.
Mickiewicz’s often mentioned poem “Pan Tadeusz” put an end to his literary activity – after it Mickiewicz devoted himself to journalism and political activity, and also went through a period of dark mysticism, from which the uprising in Krakow in 1846 sobered him. In 1853, when the Crimean War broke out and Russia faced the combined forces of France, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia, the poet welcomed the war and went to Turkey, where he met his end.
But as he himself wrote in his poem “The Ancestors”, “he who has never touched the earth cannot go to heaven.” His poetry achieves even more than that – it touches our souls like a bridge from earth to Heaven.
Photo: “Portrait of Adam Mickiewicz on the Judas Rock”, 1828 / Wikimedia Commons
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First published in this link of The European Times.
