Biography
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (Lithuanian: Adomas Bernardas Mickevicius) was a Polish (Polish-Lithuanian) poet, publisher and political writer of the Romantic period. One of the primary representatives of the Polish Romanticism era, a national poet of Poland, he is seen as one of Poland's Three Bards and the greatest poet in all of Polish literature. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic language or European poets. He has been described as a Slavonic bard. He was a prominent creator of Romantic drama in Poland and has been compared both at home and in Western Europe to Byron and Goethe.
He is known primarily as the author of the poetic novel Dziady and national epic Pan Tadeusz, which is considered the last great epic of Polish-Lithuanian noble culture. Mickiewicz's other influential works include Konrad Wallenrod and Grazyna. All served as inspiration during regional uprisings and as foundations for the concept of Poland as "the Christ of Nations."
Mickiewicz was active in the struggle to achieve independence for his homeland, then part of the Russian Empire. Having spent five years in internal exile in central Russia for political activities, he left the Empire in 1829 and spent the rest of his life in emigration, like many of his compatriots. He settled first in Rome, later in Paris, where he became professor of Slavic literature at the Collège de France. He died, probably of cholera, at Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish forces to fight against Russia in the Crimean War. His remains were later moved to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland.
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