MlrKIKWifZ. ADAM. 



MICKIKWICZ, ADAM. 



-.-, 



I by the o**t intelligence ht pr*a 1 Ur and wide oouorrn- 

 that b* was a prisoner in the hand* of the Ku-iian govern- 



j nirlnlin of **** concerned in the went societies which 



had been tammt i to **it in the University of Wilna. The dedication 

 of the 'Poem*,' oortcining Dia.ly,' had been to Thomas Zen and a 

 few friends, and probably the poet little anticipated the dedication 

 wbioh he wae to pr6x to another part of the 'Usiady.' published 

 after loot yrars of inUrral " To the ucred memory of John Sobolew- 

 .ki. oTcypmo Deaskiewies, of Felix Kolakowiki. my fellow-students, 

 my Mlow prisoners, my fcllow-exiles, persecuted for love to their 

 country, who. with a longing for that couutry in their heart*, died 

 at Archangel, at Moscow, at St Petersburg, the martyr* of their 

 OMtry's esASe." Impriaooed for upward* of a year in the Baiilian 

 convent at Wilna, white the examination into the conspiracy went on, 

 ucder droumsUnces and incident* which were afterwards delineated 

 with all the force of hi* geniu, Mickiewicz, found guilty of being a 

 member of two secret societies, wa* condemned, in 1824, to perpetual 

 fctwhhnmt in the interior of Russia, At the age of twenty-six 

 Hiekiewicx left Poland for exile, and he never saw it again. 



At St Petenburg, where he wa* at fir*t permitted to reside, 

 Miekiewiez found himielf, in the latter year* of the Emperor Alex- 

 ander, in the mid*t of native connpirator* against the Russian govern- 

 ment lluilyeev and Beatuxhev, afterwards so active in the abortive 

 iMurrection at the accession of the Kmperor Nicholas, wore ardent for 

 the 1'oliah cause. In a poem " to his Russian friends," written in after 

 yon, Mtokiewin mention* them both by name, a* victim* of the ven- 

 geance of the csar, and allude* apparently to Pushkin, to whom they in- 

 troduced him, a* having deserted the cause of liberty. The ' Russian 

 Byron ' and the ' Polish Byron ' met at St Petersburg in the year of the 

 death of the English Byron. Probably the conjunction was not looked 

 upon with favourable eye* by the Russian government, which ordered 

 Mickiewics to Odeaca ; there however he soon obtained permission for 

 a tour in the Crimea, which gave rise to a series of ' Crimean Sonnet*,' 

 the first sonnet* in the Polish language. Their subject now give* 

 them an additional interest One of them is ' On the View of the 

 Mountains from Koxlov,' or Eupatoria ; another, ' On the ruined 

 Catle of Balaklava.' These poems have been very popular ; and one 

 of them, ' On the Chatuir-Dagb,' has enjoyed the singular distinction 

 of being translated into Persian ; but we believe that from no other 

 poem* of Mickiawics could so many instances of false brilliancy and 

 other common-place be selected. They obtained for him an invitation 

 to Moscow from the governor, Prince UoliUuin, and afterward* permis- 

 tiosi to return to St Petersburg, where, in 1828, hi* next great poem, 

 1 Wallenrod,' appeared. 



This poem was at once prohibited by the censorship of Warsaw, and 

 to those who have read it, it is an inexplicable problem how it should 

 ever have passed the censorship of 8t Petersburg. Under the thin 

 disguise of a story of a Lithuanian of the 14th century, who works hi* 

 way to the mastership of the order of the Teutonic Knights, the 

 eacmirs of his country, for the purpose of destroying them in detail, 

 it ioeukat** the most burning hatred on the part of a crushed nation 

 to ite foreign np|iiessis Its meaning, which was at once apprehended 

 by every Pol*, issnis to have escaped every Russian. Two Russian 

 tltasUtiosM were published, and it is even said that the Emperor 

 Nicholas sent a message of compliment to the author. A diplomatic 

 appointment in the Russian service was also, it is said, proffered to 

 him ; out the only favour be asked was to be allowed to visit Italy 

 far the benefit of his health, and he obtained it by the intercession of 

 the Bacsien post Zhukovsky. He left Russia, a* he left Poland, never 

 torvtvrn. 



After passing through Germany, where he spent some days with 

 Odtb*, he ustilsd at Boms, where he became intimate with Kenimore 

 Cooper, in whose Memoirs, now preparing by his daughter, it is 

 probable that some interesting particular* of him will be found. It 

 was at Home that the news of the Polish insurrection of 1880 reached 

 an insurrection wbioh was commenced by a party of the 



* atafing in the itreet* of Wsnaw some lines from his ' Ode 

 to Youth.' The rising wa* crushed by the time Miokiowicz had 

 ras*b.J Poscn on his way to join it He retired to Dresden, and there 

 ll|iliii another part of the ' Diiady,' which was first published in 



A* in the former part of this poem Mickiewics had told in a 

 drassaUc form the tale of his early love, in this he related in a sue- 

 coasted of sonc* the story of his Imprisonment in Wilna before the 

 MSrtcBcs of banUhmcnt As a lover, be represented himself as having 

 bees) driven by disappointment to insanity ; as a man, he actually 



I by the devil, and the devil as exorcised 

 cut of Us body by a priest, after the utterance of a proud and pre- 

 - *tsU.nis lo Hfsven, the impious vanity of which is 

 as having called down the chastisement. This 



by others of 



stMMH 



n lM MM Mu- 



ff, m which the poet's frimd. and foe* are put in action without 

 and la which the horrors of th< Russian sway in Poland are 

 depicted with surprising power and pathos. On the whole, this wild 

 "'**" is CSM cf the most remarkable for poetical power that the 

 "**" * H quarter of a century since 1830 has produced. 



The bet gnat poem of Mlckicwicc, 'Pan Tadeusa,' or 'Sir Thad- 

 dec*'*.* published si Paris tlM4. It ditfcn M entirely in style and 



sentiment from the ' Dxia ly ' at ' Waverley ' from ' Manfred.' It is a 

 minute delineation of Lithuanian domestic life in the year 1812, the 

 time of the poet's boyhood, in which the. somewhat insignificant story 

 of a eommon-plaea hero is relieved against the dark background of 

 the approach of Napoloon'e invading army on its march to Russia, and 

 the intense excitement it produce* among the Lithuanians, from the 

 peasant and the publican to the priest and the noble. By some it is 

 regarded a* totally unworthy of the powers of Mickicwicz by many 

 a* the finest production of bis genius ; and there can be no doubt that 

 it is by far the most pleasing and the least objectionable. 



Up to this period the career of Mickiewicz had been one to which 

 his Polish admirer* had looked with constantly increasing admit 

 and ha occupied a position in tlie literature of his couutry without a 

 rival either in the present or the past " He is our Byron, our Slink - 

 spere," was the verdict of Klementyna Hoffmanowa herself, a staid and 

 decorous writer. None indeed could then have foreseen in what dark- 

 ness the star of Mickiewicz was to set In 1832, two yean before the 

 appearance of ' Pan Tadeusz,' he had published ' A Book of the Polish 

 Nation and the Polish Pilgrimage,' which presented an unbroken series 

 of dull absurdity and extravagance. It wa* probably the influ 

 his name which procured its translation into French by Count Mon- 

 talembert, and into English by Lach Szyrma, combined with the fact 

 that in it Mickiewicz presented himself to the world in the character 

 of a fervent Roman Catholic, convinced that it was to its toleration of 

 Protestantism that the ruin of Poland was to be ascribed. 



Before this period Mickiewicz had fixed his residence at Paris, and 

 it was in that city, in 1834, that he became united to Celina Szyraan- 

 owska, a Polish lady, to whom he had, in 1 828, addre ;se J some verses 

 at St Petersburg. To Paris and to the French lie was strongly 

 attached, but hii pecuniary circumstance* compelled him to accept, 

 in 1 839, an appointment a* professor of classical literature at Lausanne. 

 In the next year, when M. Cousin, then minister of public instruction, 

 determined to establish a chair of Slavonic literature and the Slavonic 

 language* Rt the College of France, it was considered a good fortuno 

 for the minister to be able to appoint, for the first professor, the 

 greatest poet of Poland. 



The first lecture* which he gave were eagerly attended, and were 

 reproduced in the French and German journals ; but ere long strange 

 alterations began to develope themselves. Already in 1841, when, 

 Madame Mickiewicz, who was in bad health, had received some 

 benefit from being mesmerised by a Polish fanatic named Towianski, 

 Mickiowicz had allowed himself to become associated with this man 

 as the interpreter of certain dreams, in which Towianski alleged 

 that he was favoured witU revelations by the Virgin Mary. In 

 his lecture* on Slavonic literature the professor gradually lost 

 eight of Slavonic literature altogether, and preached a series of 

 discourses, in which this Towianski was represented as the new 

 Messiah of a new religion, of which the principal feature was the 

 worship of Napoleon Bonaparte. This Mickiewicz represented as a 

 new and necessary development of improved Christianity. At last, in 

 1844, the French government interposed, ordered Towianski to quit 

 Paris, and put a stop to the course of lectures which had long excited 

 general scandal and disgust Mickiewicz's uaine appeared in the list 

 of professors for some years afterwards, but he lived in obscurity, 

 an object rather of compassion than other feelings. In 1848 the revo- 

 lution of February again excited his hopes for Poland, and he made 

 a journey to Italy for the purpose of gaining over the pope, and was 

 received with enthusiasm by the insurgents at Florence. In 1S61 his 

 name appeared in the French calendars as " Sub-Librarian of the Library 

 of the Arsenal at Paris," to which he was appointed by the prince 

 president, who might possibly view as a venial error the inculcation of 

 the worship of Napoleon I. 



About 1854 Mickiewicz became a widower, and ho afterwards 

 returned in some degree to public life. Soon after the commence- 

 ment of the war with Russia he headed a deputation to the French 

 emperor, to remind him of the opportunity that presented itself fur 

 redressing the wrongs of Poland, and in 1855 ho was Bent by him on 

 a aecret mission to the east, which was destined to prove the last 

 incident in his career. He died at Constantinople on the 27th of 

 November 1855. His remains were removed to France, where they 

 were interred in the cemetery of Montmartre, and a subscription was 

 opened directly after at Paris and London for the benefit of hi* 

 children. 



One of the most remarkable editions of Mickiowicz's works was 

 published at Paris in 1828 and 1829, in three volumes, at the expense 

 of the Countess Oitrowska, a Lithuanian lady, who presented the 

 money received from itg sale to the author, then a captive in Russia. 

 It is generally stated to be the first book printed in France in the 

 Polish language, but it had two predecessors, as iU editor, Leonard 

 Chodzlio, points out in the preface one in 1668 and another in 1S1 1. 

 It* uocessors may be counted by hundreds, many of the best works 

 in Polish being now originally printed at Paris. The best edition of 

 Mickiewics's works is that in four volume*, issued at that city in 1S14, 

 revised by the poet himself and edited by Alexander Cho.lz'ko. A 

 translation of all his works into French by Christian Ostrowski was 

 published at Paris in 1841, and again in 1845, with two very different 

 prefaces, the first all enthusiasm fur Mickiewicz and his genius, the 

 second full of the disappointment and estrangement his devotion to 



