Roman Koropeckyj. Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. xvii + 549 pp. $45.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8014-4471-5.
Reviewed by Christoph Garstka
Published on H-HistGeog (September, 2009)
Commissioned by Eva M. Stolberg (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany)
In 1822, the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz in‐ culties that non-Polish students face when dealing formed his friend Franciszek Malewski: "I'm liv‐ with texts from Polish romantics. Both the mes‐ ing a truly literary life, I breathe only verse and sianic ideology in Mickiewicz's play Dziady (The nourish myself on it" (p. 44). His characterization Forefather's Eve) and the biblical style in his work of himself in this statement was the result of a Księgi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa pol‐ brief but intensive phase in which he studied skiego (The Books of the Polish Nation and Polish world literature, while taking a sabbatical in Vil‐ Pilgrimage) (1866) are difcult to understand. To nius. It can also be considered a leitmotif of Ro‐ complete his comprehensive book the author man Koropeckyj's biography on the life and work adds a detailed bibliography and a helpful index. of Poland's outstanding poet, as implied in the The method Koropeckyj chooses, interweav‐ subtitle, The Life of a Romantic. The biographer ing historical facts and fction, can be regarded as writes in his introduction: "Like his heroes traditional, but it is also an efcient means to Napoleon and Byron, Mickiewicz saw life itself as write an enormously readable and thought-pro‐ a page upon which one must write a poetry of voking study. He inserts long quotations from let‐ deed. He was the quintessential European roman‐ ters, journals, memoirs, and other documents tic" (p. x). Mickiewicz desired to transform the po‐ from the poet and his contemporaries. In thirteen etic word into deed, logos into praxis. chapters, he recounts the diferent phases of the Koropeckyj inverts this method by describing poet's life, from his early childhood to his death, the poet's deeds and experiences and delivering following an infection with cholera. In a post‐ outstanding translations of excerpts from Mick‐ script, he focuses on the festivities in 1890 in Cra‐ iewicz's work, making it approachable for read‐ cow on the occasion of the transportation of Mick‐ ers. This is what makes this biography extremely iewiecz's corpse from Paris to the Wawel. In this useful for university teachers who know the dif‐ part of the book, Koropeckyj also sheds light on H-Net Reviews the complicated history of the poet's fame after otic elements of the myth with socialist-revolu‐ his death and his signifcant impact on Polish in‐ tionary elements. tellectuals. Koropeckyj wrote this book from an Ameri‐ What Koropeckyj intends to achieve in his can perspective. Unlike many Polish authors work is pointed out in its preface: the poet is whose presentation of the national poet's great‐ meant to be understood as a vehicle to transport ness might disconcert foreign readers, Koropceck‐ understanding for Poland as a nation as Mick‐ yj approaches the topic without using common iewicz's authority had a strong infuence on all stereotypes. Recent biographers' (hagiographic) later literary generations "down to the rappers of approach to the Mickiewicz myth is one reason Poland's postsocialist bloks" (from "blokersi" for why an English translation of a Polish publication the Communist housing projects that circum‐ would not have satisfed the need for an English scribe the lives of a special "lost" youth generation biography on Mickiewicz. Younger Polish biogra‐ after 1990) (p. ix). Moreover, he managed to blend phers have tried to deconstruct a myth that is all Polish literary tradition from the Middle Ages. hardly known in Western countries. By contrast, But not only his work as a poet had a formative Koropeckyj also approaches "delicate" issues of infuence on Polish culture, but also his life in‐ the poet's life, for example, his erotic relation‐ spired his compatriots as it was marked by prose‐ ships in his youth; his dandyism; his family life; cution and emigration since Russian authorities the mysticism after the doctrine of Andrzej Tor‐ had started to survey student activities at the Uni‐ wiański, around the middle of the nineteenth cen‐ versity of Vilnius. Despite his ideals regarding tury a charismatic and infuential leader of a martyrdom and messianism, Mickiewicz did not Christian sect and one of the founders of Polish tolerate the acts of humiliation exerted by Russian "messianism"; his religiousness and his complicat‐ organs silently. On the contrary, the creator of ed attitude to Catholicism and Judaism; his Jewish such works as Konrad Wallenrod (1830) fought mother (a fact that was still contested in the Pol‐ oppression openly until his death in Istanbul ish press in the year 2000); and so on. Being where he had intended to raise a Polish legion to American, the biographer does not need to con‐ combat Russia in the Crimean War. This is why ceal the truth to continue the myth. Yet he does the famous Polish literary critic Jarosław Marek not need to polemicize to heat the debate about Rymkiewicz once labelled the poet's life as the Mickiewicz. “archetype of Polish life." Many Poles recognized Finally, the greatest merit of Koropeckyj's in his life their own fate, which, since the parti‐ book is that it points out Mickiewicz's signifcance tioning of the country at the end of the eighteenth for European intellectuals. The exiled Polish poet century through the end of socialism, had been was more famous in Europe in his lifetime than marked by brutal foreign rule. It is not surprising the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Mickiewicz that every Polish generation created and propa‐ was a European intellectual whose works were gated its own Mickiewicz myth, which, in most marked by Christian and Jewish ideas whereas cases, tended to transfgure his life and work in a Pushkin embodied Russian nationalism and the hagiographic way, making his legend appear country's isolated position. By showing Mick‐ more important than his personality. A curious iewicz as a representative of an all-European example is found in Mieczysław Jastrun's biogra‐ identity, Koropeckyj reminds us of something that phy on Mickiewicz, published in 1949, as the Pol‐ was lost due to the formation of the blocs in the ish poet tries to interweave nationalist and patri‐ second part of the twentieth century and that is about to be regained in a painfully slow process.
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In addition, two other infuential romantic poets marked the Polish movement: Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński. They also deserve to fnd such a skilled biographer as Koropeckyj.
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Citation: Christoph Garstka. Review of Koropeckyj, Roman. Adam Mickiewicz: The Life of a Romantic. H- HistGeog, H-Net Reviews. September, 2009.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25170
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