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Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic
Adam Mickiewicz (1798 1855), Poland's national poet, was one of the extraordinary personalities of the age. In chronicling the events of his life his travels, numerous loves, a troubled marriage, years spent as a member of a heterodox religious sect, and friendships with such luminaries of the time as Aleksandr Pushkin, James Fenimore Cooper, George Sand, Giuseppe Mazzini, Margaret Fuller, and Aleksandr Herzen Roman Koropeckyj draws a portrait of the Polish poet as a quintessential European Romantic.
Spanning five decades of one of the most turbulent periods in modern European history, Mickiewicz's life and works at once reflected and articulated the cultural and political upheavals marking post-Napoleonic Europe. After a poetic debut in his native Lithuania that transformed the face of Polish literature, he spent five years of exile in Russia for engaging in Polish "patriotic" activity. Subsequently, his grand tour of Europe was interrupted by his country's 1830 uprising against Russia; his failure to take part in it would haunt him for the rest of his life. For the next twenty years Mickiewicz shared the fate of other Polish emigres in the West. It was here that he wrote Forefathers' Eve, part 3 (1832) and Pan Tadeusz (1834), arguably the two most influential works of modern Polish literature. His reputation as his country's most prominent poet secured him a position teaching Latin literature at the Academy of Lausanne and then the first chair of Slavic Literature at the College de France. In 1848 he organized a Polish legion in Italy and upon his return to Paris founded a radical French-language newspaper. His final days were devoted to forming a Polish legion in Istanbul.
This richly illustrated biography the first scholarly biography of the poet to be published in English since 1911 draws extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the poet's literary texts to make sense of a life as sublime as it was tragic. It concludes with a description of the solemn transfer of Mickiewicz's remains in 1890 from Paris to Cracow, where he was interred in the Royal Cathedral alongside Poland's kings and military heroes."
Spanning five decades of one of the most turbulent periods in modern European history, Mickiewicz's life and works at once reflected and articulated the cultural and political upheavals marking post-Napoleonic Europe. After a poetic debut in his native Lithuania that transformed the face of Polish literature, he spent five years of exile in Russia for engaging in Polish "patriotic" activity. Subsequently, his grand tour of Europe was interrupted by his country's 1830 uprising against Russia; his failure to take part in it would haunt him for the rest of his life. For the next twenty years Mickiewicz shared the fate of other Polish emigres in the West. It was here that he wrote Forefathers' Eve, part 3 (1832) and Pan Tadeusz (1834), arguably the two most influential works of modern Polish literature. His reputation as his country's most prominent poet secured him a position teaching Latin literature at the Academy of Lausanne and then the first chair of Slavic Literature at the College de France. In 1848 he organized a Polish legion in Italy and upon his return to Paris founded a radical French-language newspaper. His final days were devoted to forming a Polish legion in Istanbul.
This richly illustrated biography the first scholarly biography of the poet to be published in English since 1911 draws extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the poet's literary texts to make sense of a life as sublime as it was tragic. It concludes with a description of the solemn transfer of Mickiewicz's remains in 1890 from Paris to Cracow, where he was interred in the Royal Cathedral alongside Poland's kings and military heroes."
568 pages, Hardcover
First published September 25, 2008
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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