Adam Mickiewicz

Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) was born near Nowogródek in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then under Russian rule, and studied at the University of Wilno, where he joined secret student societies. In 1823 he was arrested for this activity and in 1824 exiled to Russia, where he lived in Odessa, Crimea and Moscow and became friends with Russian writers including Pushkin. In 1829 he left Russia and never returned to his homeland.

He settled in Paris after the failed uprising of 1830–31 and lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France. Regarded as the national poet of Poland, he is the author of the drama Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) and the epic Pan Tadeusz (1834), which recalls the Lithuanian countryside of his childhood. He died in Constantinople in 1855. The work here is George Rapall Noyes's English prose translation of 1917.