Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic (Book) [show prizes]
Title: Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic
Author: Roman Koropeckyj
Abstract: 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 émigrés 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 Collège 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.
Year: 2008
Primary URL: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100182570&CFID=963950&CFTOKEN=a62ac6fc58a130f0-D000AB30-C29B-B0E5-3E12B5950D6402A0&jsessionid=8430a91cf22c5ddb26f3694f5b1660518011TR
Primary URL Description: Cornell UP on-line catalog
Publisher: Cornell UP
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-080144471

Permalink: https://apps.neh.gov/publicquery/products.aspx?gn=FA-50322-04