Adam Mickiewicz - Ethnicity

Ethnicity

Adam Mickiewicz, whose works were written in the Polish language, is generally known as a Polish poet. He is described by some authors as "Polish-Lithuanian" or as Belarusian-Polish.

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, Belarus and Ukraine. For Mickiewicz, a separation of that multicultural state into individual entities due to trends such as Lithuanian separatism was undesirable if not outright unthinkable. According to Romanucci-Ross, while Mickiewicz called himself a "Lithuanian", at the time the idea of a separate "Lithuanian identity", apart from that of "Polish" did not exist. The same source calls Mickiewicz a Polish poet. Mixture of those multicultural aspects can be seen in his works; his most famous poem, Pan Tadeusz, begins with the (Polish language) invocation, "O Lithuania, my fatherland, thou art like good health..." (Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie..."), an invocation that translated into Lithuanian eventually became a part of Lithuanian anthem. It is generally accepted that Mickiewicz, referring to Lithuania, meant a historical region than a linguistic and cultural entity, and he often used the term "Lithuanian" to refer to the Slavic inhabitants of the Grand Duchy.

Mickiewicz's name is rendered into the Lithuanian language as Adomas Mickevičius. He was descended from an old Lithuanian noble family (Rimvydas) with origins predating the Christianization of the country. The Lithuanian nobility at that time was heavily Polonized and spoke Polish. The Cambridge History of Russia describes him as Polish but sees his ethnic origins as "Lithuanian-Belarusian (and perhaps Jewish)." According to the Belarusian historian Rybczonek, Mickiewicz's mother had Tatar roots.

Some sources assert that Mickiewicz's mother was descended from a converted Frankist Jewish family. Other sources view this as improbable.