Adam
Mickiewicz, Poland's greatest poet since Jan
Kochanowski (1530-84) and Mikolaj
Sep Szarzynski (1550-81), was born near Nowogrodek in
present-day Minsk province in 1798, and educated at Vilna
university, from which he was exiled to Russia for political
activism. He joined writer's circles in St. Petersburg and
wrote a series of exquisite sonnets based on a visit to
the Crimea in 1825. His verse talesGrazyna (1823) and Konrad
Wallenrod (1828) introduce the Romantic themes of
sacrifice, tragic loneliness of the hero and illicit love.
The greater Pan
Tadeusz (1834), set in Lithuania on the eve of Napoleon's
invasion of Russia, is a Homeric celebration of Poland's
identity. Mickiewicz
left Russia in 1831, toured Europe (meeting Goethe
and others) and settled in Paris.
He became the leading representative of Slavonic literature
after Pushkin's death, but his
many
interests — politics, philology, mysticism
— did not bring happiness or prosperity. His wife became
insane, Poland remained partitioned, and Mickiewicz himself
died of cholera
in Istanbul in 1855, his remains being re-interred in
Cracow Cathedral in 1890.
Polish poetry
Until the final partition of the country in 1795, Polish
literature went through the usual European phases: the generally
devotional poetry of the middle ages, the splendours of
the late renaissance,
the richness of baroque
and then the clarity and enlightenment
of classicism. But with partition, and more particularly
the abortive insurrections against czarist Russia in 1830
and 1863, romantic
literature became the rallying point of nationalism
and the shaper of a Polish mentality. Mickiewicz,
Slowacki
(1809-49), Krasinski
(1812-59) and Novid
(1821-83) are very different writers, but all incorporated
a strong political message. The mood darkened after 1863,
and again during the 1918-39
period of Polish independence, when the approaching
catastrophe became all too evident. The horrors of W.W.II
were followed by communist censorship, and many of Poland's
greatest writers again worked in exile: Milosz,
Wierzynski
and Wat.
Nonetheless, a great variety of excellent poetry has been
produced in Poland during the post-Stalinist
period, much of it modernist, experimental and introverted,
but sometimes returning to older and sunnier traditions.
The Polish
achievement
The literature of Poland is as varied as that of any other
country, and a brief survey can only touch on a few outstanding
achievements. Jan
Kochanowski replaced medieval forms with a strict syllabic
system, bequeathing verse and stanza patterns that served
until the 20th century. Mikolaj
Sep Szarzynski's tortured religious poetry is the equal
of that of Donne or George Herbert, as Mickiewicz's is of
the English Romantic's. Brilliantly witty poetry was written
by Jan
Andrzej Morsztyn (1621-93), Ignacy
Krasicki (1735-1801) and Stanislaw
Trembecki (1739-1812). Juliusz
Slowacki's (1809-49) enormous and varied output is matched
by astonishing virtuosity, and Cyprian
Kamil Norwid's (1821-83) ushered in modernism with irony
and semantic density. Boleslaw
Lesmian (1878-1937) was a belated symbolist, and the
leading exponent of the Young Poland movement. Czeslaw
Milosz (1911- ) was well known in the States, and of
course the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1980.
