Because the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz is so closely identified with the history of the Polish nation, one often reads him as an institution, rather than a real person. In the Crimean and Erotic Sonnets of the national bard, we are presented with the fresh, real, and striking poetry of a living, breathing man of flesh and blood. Mickiewicz proved to be a master of Petrarchan form. His Erotic Sonnets chronicle the development of a love affair from its first stirrings to its disillusioning denouement, at times in a bitingly sardonic tone. The Crimean Sonnets, a verse account of his journeys through the beautiful Crimean Peninsula, constitute the most perfect cycle of descriptive sonnets since du Bellay. The Sonnets of Adam Mickiewicz are given in the original Polish, in facing-page format, with English verse translations by Charles S. Kraszewski. Along with the entirety of the Crimean and Erotic Sonnets, other "loose" sonnets by Mickiewicz are included, which provide the reader with the most comprehensive collection to date of Mickiewicz's sonneteering. Fronted with a critical introduction, The Sonnets of Adam Mickiewicz also contain generous textual notes by the poet and the translator.
Translated from the Polish and Introduced by Charles S. Kraszewski.
This book has been published with the support of the ©POLAND Translation Program.
Sprache
Produkt-Hinweis
Broschur/Paperback
Klebebindung
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
Dicke: 11 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-911414-90-2 (9781911414902)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) is the national poet of Poland. He was successful in every genre at which he tried his hand, setting the benchmark for excellence in poetry, prose and drama for all the writers that came after him. His lyric poems, collected in Ballads and Romances [Ballady i romanse, 1822], ushered in the Romantic Movement in Polish literature. His Erotic and Crimean Sonnets [Sonety mi¿osne and Sonety krymskie, 1826] form one of the most accomplished cycles in that demanding form since Petrarch. His narrative poems, Konrad Wallenrod (1828) and Gräyna (1823), reveal his sustained mastery with longer poetic genres. Mickiewicz's epic in twelve cantos, Pan Tadeusz (1834), is universally recognized as Poland's national epic, as well as the last Vergilian epic written in Europe.Prose occupies a rather minor niche in Mickiewcz's corpus of writings. The quasi-Biblical Books of the Polish Nation and Polish Pilgrimage [Ksi¿gi narodu i pielgrzymstwa polskiego, 1832] put the English reader in mind of a more practicable William Blake. With their socially and politically-applied Christianity, Mickiewicz had an appreciable influence on the thought of his friend, Lammenais. Finally, his Cours de litte¿rature slave professe¿ au Colle¿ge de France, delivered during his exile in Paris, and published posthumously in 1860, is one of the first balanced and comprehensive accounts of the Slavic traditions in literature and culture to meet Western eyes.It is impossible to assess the importance of Adam Mickiewicz to the Polish consciousness. During the period of the Partitions, which lasted from 1795 until 1918, Poles looked to Mickiewicz for the guidance that political figures could not supply them. He died in exile, trying to raise troops in Turkey for the Polish independence struggles.
