What do you think?
Rate this book
Adam Mickiewicz. Życie romantyka
Mickiewicz w brawurowej biografii amerykańskiego autora
„Ofiara carskiej Rosji i beneficjent jej hojności, zubożały poeta i bywalec salonów arystokratycznych, pobożny katolik i zagorzały heretyk, kochanek romantyczny, małżonek, ojciec siedmiorga dzieci (w tym jednego nieślubnego) i feminista, egoista i oddany przyjaciel, bonapartysta, polityk-mistyk, rewolucjonista”.
To właśnie Adam Mickiewicz – wieszcz narodowy, ikona polskiego romantyzmu.
Roman Koropeckyj, profesor slawistyki na Uniwersytecie Kalifornijskim, portretując wybitnego dziewiętnastowiecznego poetę i dramaturga, stara się ściągnąć go z symbolicznego pomnika wzniesionego przez polską kulturę ostatnich dwóch stuleci. Niemalże powieściowa narracja przeplata się w jego książce z błyskotliwymi refleksjami historyka literatury i znawcy europejskiego romantyzmu. Monumentalne dzieło Koropeckiego to pierwsza od niemal stu lat biografia Mickiewicza w języku angielskim. Pozwala spojrzeć na romantycznego wieszcza z zupełnie nowej perspektywy, bez utrwalonych w polskiej świadomości legend i stereotypów.
„Ofiara carskiej Rosji i beneficjent jej hojności, zubożały poeta i bywalec salonów arystokratycznych, pobożny katolik i zagorzały heretyk, kochanek romantyczny, małżonek, ojciec siedmiorga dzieci (w tym jednego nieślubnego) i feminista, egoista i oddany przyjaciel, bonapartysta, polityk-mistyk, rewolucjonista”.
To właśnie Adam Mickiewicz – wieszcz narodowy, ikona polskiego romantyzmu.
Roman Koropeckyj, profesor slawistyki na Uniwersytecie Kalifornijskim, portretując wybitnego dziewiętnastowiecznego poetę i dramaturga, stara się ściągnąć go z symbolicznego pomnika wzniesionego przez polską kulturę ostatnich dwóch stuleci. Niemalże powieściowa narracja przeplata się w jego książce z błyskotliwymi refleksjami historyka literatury i znawcy europejskiego romantyzmu. Monumentalne dzieło Koropeckiego to pierwsza od niemal stu lat biografia Mickiewicza w języku angielskim. Pozwala spojrzeć na romantycznego wieszcza z zupełnie nowej perspektywy, bez utrwalonych w polskiej świadomości legend i stereotypów.
800 pages, Hardcover
First published September 25, 2008
2 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 13, 2024
I read this book yo learn about the works, life and cultural context of Adam Mickiewicz and was rewarded ten times over. What I had not expected was that his treatment of the literary trends of the Orleanist monarchy would be equally remaquarble. Gerard de Nerval, Alfred de Musset, Geogres Sand, James Fenmore Cooper, Jules Michelet, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Liszt, Heinrich Heine, Chopin and others make their appearances in this somehow relatively short biography that gave as much pleasure to read as did Jean-Yves Tadié's equally wonderful work on Marcel Proust.
March 5, 2019
somehow despite undergoing the week from hell (family issues, not important enough to mention here), I was somehow able to finish this book, Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic by Roman Koropeckyj. Well, I think it’s a book, it looked like and felt like a door stopper based on the sheer size of this thing. It was quite intimidating to be quite honest, and this is coming from someone getting their Master’s in History.
I don’t know if I can be more clear then when I say I had never heard of this man before in my life before picking up Koropeckyj’s biography. I didn't know he existed before this moment (though if you told me “well he’s a romantic poet” I would have assumed ‘oh so tragic life? Probably died in a foreign land somewhere of some terrible but now treatable disease? Had a spouse that was probably mentally ill and it affected their marriage greatly? Got it-wait this isn’t Byron? Or any other famous person during the Romantic Period?”)
Of course, I underestimated like how Mickiewicz was to Poland as a whole (I guess being a founder of like a polish independence unit and even like willingly going into exile in Russia for several years because of his work trying to gain independence for Poland, very much impressed me.)
After reading the book, I decided to google him, just to see what else there was to learn about Mickiewicz.
I shouldn't have been so surprised when I realized that very little about him had been written about him in English. Like legitimately, I was surprised about how little was written about him.
His poems were not only Major works that not only helped influence the rest of the Romantic Movement but also like, were so powerful that they helped start uprisings to make Poland an independent nation.
But because so little of his work had been written about in English, this basically means the author has to work on it literally every single free moment that they had, which impressed me, but also made me feel so exhausted from the sheer thought of it.
Of course, the one fallback about this biography of Mickiewicz is that it is, quite simply, a biography. It’s not a deep analysis of his works as one would expect a biography of a famous Romantic poet to be like, but I guess if you want that, go read a biography about Shelley or Byron.
Though in my post research of Mickiewicz I found out a fun fact (or may just be a regular fact for other people who already knew this) about Mickiewicz: apparently there is a university just outside of Poznan that renamed itself from University of Pznari to Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan shortly after world war II and apparently it Is one of the top university’s in the country. Very impressive, I thought at least. We don’t tend to have a lot of universities named for people here in America, or at least, that I know about.
I don’t know if I can be more clear then when I say I had never heard of this man before in my life before picking up Koropeckyj’s biography. I didn't know he existed before this moment (though if you told me “well he’s a romantic poet” I would have assumed ‘oh so tragic life? Probably died in a foreign land somewhere of some terrible but now treatable disease? Had a spouse that was probably mentally ill and it affected their marriage greatly? Got it-wait this isn’t Byron? Or any other famous person during the Romantic Period?”)
Of course, I underestimated like how Mickiewicz was to Poland as a whole (I guess being a founder of like a polish independence unit and even like willingly going into exile in Russia for several years because of his work trying to gain independence for Poland, very much impressed me.)
After reading the book, I decided to google him, just to see what else there was to learn about Mickiewicz.
I shouldn't have been so surprised when I realized that very little about him had been written about him in English. Like legitimately, I was surprised about how little was written about him.
His poems were not only Major works that not only helped influence the rest of the Romantic Movement but also like, were so powerful that they helped start uprisings to make Poland an independent nation.
But because so little of his work had been written about in English, this basically means the author has to work on it literally every single free moment that they had, which impressed me, but also made me feel so exhausted from the sheer thought of it.
Of course, the one fallback about this biography of Mickiewicz is that it is, quite simply, a biography. It’s not a deep analysis of his works as one would expect a biography of a famous Romantic poet to be like, but I guess if you want that, go read a biography about Shelley or Byron.
Though in my post research of Mickiewicz I found out a fun fact (or may just be a regular fact for other people who already knew this) about Mickiewicz: apparently there is a university just outside of Poznan that renamed itself from University of Pznari to Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan shortly after world war II and apparently it Is one of the top university’s in the country. Very impressive, I thought at least. We don’t tend to have a lot of universities named for people here in America, or at least, that I know about.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews