Adam Mickiewicz - Life

Life

Adam Mickiewicz was born at his uncle's estate in Zaosie (now Zavosse) near Navahrudak (Nowogródek) in what was then the Russian Empire (now Belarus). The region was on the outskirts of Lithuania Propria and had been a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the 1795 Third Partition of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The area had historically been inhabited by ethnic Lithuanians, although at the time of his birth it was largely Belarusian. Belarusian folklore would exert a major influence on his work along with Lithuanian historic themes. The region's upper class members, such as Mickiewicz's family, were however either Polish or polonized. Poet's father, Mikołaj Mickiewicz, was a lawyer, and a member of the petty Polish nobility (szlachta) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and bore the hereditary Poraj coat-of-arms, his mother was Barbara Mickiewicz (née Majewska).

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, Belarusian, and Lithuanian history, which later became important themes in his poetry. In 1817, together with 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, specifically his membership in the Philomaths society, 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".

In 1828 appeared Mickiewicz's Konrad Wallenrod, a narrative poem describing the battles of the Teutonic Knights with the heathen people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. 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 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), 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 Grand Duchy 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.

On the first line of Pan Tadeusz Mickiewicz wrote of Lithuania, calling it his "Fatherland", actually referring to his native Grand Duchy of Lithuania through the eyes of a political exile, and gives some of the most delightful descriptions of the skies and the forests of current Belarus and Lithuania. He describes the sounds to be heard in the primeval woods in a country where the trees were sacred. The depiction of clouds are equally striking.

In 1832 Mickiewicz left Rome, where his life was for some time marked by poverty and unhappiness, for Paris. There, on 22 July 1834, he married Celina Szymanowska, daughter of composer and concert pianist Maria Agata Szymanowska. Marital discord, and Celina's later becoming mentally ill, would cause Mickiewicz to attempt suicide in December 1838, by jumping out of a window.

In 1840 Mickiewicz was appointed to the newly-founded chair of Slavic languages and literature 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 Polish Messianist philosopher Andrzej Towiański. His lectures became a medley of religion and politics, and thus brought him under censure by the French government. The messianic element conflicted with the contemporary teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and some of his books were placed on its forbidden list, although both Mickiewicz and Towiański regularly attended Catholic masses and encouraged their followers to do so also.

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 acquainted with Polish, Czech, Serbian and Russian literatures, 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 Frédéric Chopin, in the final months of his own life, visited his ailing compatriot and soothed the poet's nerves with his piano music. Over a dozen years earlier, Chopin had set two of Mickiewicz's poems to music (see Polish songs by Frédéric Chopin).

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 Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire, where he arrived on 22 September 1855, to organize Polish forces to be used in the war against Russia. With his friend Armand Levy, 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 Constantinople (now Istanbul), . He had most probably contracted cholera. The house where he lived in is now a museum.

After being temporarily buried in a crypt under his apartment in Constantinople (now Istanbul), his remains were transported to France and buried at Montmorency. In 1890 they were disinterred, moved to 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 cultural history.