MICHIEWICZ, nlits'kf-tth•ic•h, ADAM (1798 1855). The greatest of Polish poets. He was born near Novogrodek, Lithuania; his father was a lawyer of the lesser nobility. Inclined to the study of nature, lie took up mathematics and physics at the University of Vilna, hut later passed to biology and literature 11515-19). After that he taught Latin and Polish at the gymna •ium ill Kovno until 1523. publishing there the first collection of his poems in two volumes in 1`22. T.) the legend., .iiper.titionz5, and tales of the Polish nation contained in it, :Miekiewiez gave a wonderfully poetie Din in, and at one botuld became the national poet of the l'ohes. The V01 111111.`; contained twp longer works: Thimly (.1n cestor., Festival in 1101101' of the Dead), a ro mantic drama: and arn:ima, all historical epic. The former contain. 11111(.11 autobiographical ma terial. The poem is deficient in orderlinc.., the episodes being flung together with almost reek kw. freedom. lint the chief perhap., never been better sung. ara5gna relates the noble death of a princess of that name, who dons the armor of her husband, and thus dis guised leads his army against the Teutonic Knights.
In 1S24 Mickiewicz was arrested in Vilna on suspicion of revolutionary plotting. and was sent to Saint Petersburg. In the capital he formed a warm friendship with Pushkin, but S0011 went to Odessa (1825) as instructor in the Richelieu Lyceum. After nine months he visited the Cri mea, and this was a turning point in his career. The Crimean Sonnets recording his impressions are glowing with Oriental color and graceful in form. In December, 1825, he obtained a position in the office of the Governor-General, Prince Go litzin, at Moscow. In 1828 he returned to Saint Petersburg, and there published his second epic, Wallcnrod, descriptive of the struggle of the Lithuanians against the Teutonic Knights. In 1S29 the poet received permission to travel in Italy, Germany, and France. In Weimar he met Goethe, who became greatly interested in him. After staying for a time in Rome, where he met James Fenimore Cooper, he started for Poland on hearing of the uprising of 1830, but, unable to cross the strictly guarded frontier, he went to Dresden, after lingering in Posen for a while.
and soon settled in Paris. In 1832 he published the third part of his Mindy. In poverty and dis tress, he published his masterpiece, Sir Thaddeus (Pan Tadeusz), in 1834. In 1839 he was called to the chair of Latin literature at Lausanne, and in the year following he was appointed the first incumbent of the newly founded chair of Slavic literatures at the College de France. But after a year or two he began to intermingle his lectures with irrelevant discussions on politics, religion, and mysticism, and the French Gov ernment was forced to stop his lectures in 1844. In 1848 he went to Italy, and there undertook to form Polish regiments against Austria. Then, in 1S49, he edited at Parie the Tribune des Peeples, which was soon stopped by the French Govern ment. In 1852 he was appointed a librarian in the Arsenal, and on the outbreak of the Crimean War Louis Napoleon sent him to Constantinople to organize Polish regiments against Rus4da. Here he died shortly afterwards. He was buried in Paris; in 1890 his body was transferred to Cracow.
The best edition of Miekiewiez's works is that of 1838, in eight volumes, published in Paris, under the poet's personal supervision; and the latest. by Dr. Biegeleisen, in four volumes (Lem berg, 1893). They have been translated into most European languages. Ilis ballads and son nets are to he found, in German, in Reelam's rnirersal Bibliothek Dziady (Alinefeier), in German by Lipiner (Leipzig. 1887) Ora..'yna. in German by Nitschmann in Iris (Leipzig, 1880) ; Wallenrod, by Weiss (Bremen, 1871): Herr Thaddeus, by Weiss. (Leipzig. 1882) and Lipiner (Leipzig, 1883). Conrad ll'ullenrod was translated into English by Leo Jablonski, and a poetical version of it by Cettley appeared in London in 1840. The best biography in French is by his son, Wladislaw Mickiewicz (Paris, 1888) : revised and enlarged in Polish (Posen, 1890-94). His tiEurres romplets appeared in eleven volumes in Paris, 1860.