MITSKEVICH Adam (Mickiewicz Adam)

(1798-1855)
Born December 24, 1798 in Navahrudak (now Belarus) in the landed gentry family. In 1819 graduated from the University of Vilna. In 1822 and 1823 published two small collections of poetry, marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in Polish literature. In 1824, for active participation in the Polish patriotic organizations was deported to Russia, lived in Odessa, Moscow and St. Petersburg, in 1829 received permission to travel to Western Europe.
In Russia, Mickiewicz wrote the Crimean Sonnets (Sonety krymskie, 1826) and an epic poem in the spirit of Byron Wallenrod Conrad (Konrad Wallenrod, 1828) that established the poetic maturity. In 1829-1831 he lived mainly in Rome, where, having experienced a spiritual crisis, got carried away mysticism. Without much enthusiasm, attempting to join the participants of the Polish uprising 1830-1831 and in 1832 he settled in Paris, where he spent most of the rest of his life. In 1832-1834 written by two of his greatest poems: III of Dzyady (Dziady) and Pan Tadeusz (Pan Tadeusz). In the first Miscavige presented his 'messianic' idea, relegating the Poles to the same place among other nations, which occupied the Christ among the people: Poland was crucified, but risen and the beginning of a new historical era. Effects of Pan Tadeusz is unfolding in rural Lithuania on the eve of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, in the plot - local feuds of the Polish gentry, successfully achieved wedding.

After Mickiewicz Pan Tadeusz virtually ceased to write poetry. In 1840 he became the first professor of Slavic literature at the College de France Paris. In 1841 came under the influence of an apologist for the Polish messianic mysticism A. Tovyanskogo, in which the teachings of the faith in the revival of Poland combined with a belief in the relentless activity of the spirit of Napoleon. For propaganda tovyanizma the French government in 1845 had removed from Mickiewicz's lectures, and in 1852 he was sent into retirement. In 1855, Miscavige went to Constantinople, where he would organize a Polish Legion to help the French and British in the struggle with Russia. Become infected, died Nov. 26, 1855. In 1890 Mickiewicz dust was transported from Paris to Krakow and placed in a sarcophagus at the Wawel Cathedral.