Adam Mickiewicz - Encounters with Polish Literature - S2E3

Adam Mickiewicz with Roman Koropeckyj (UCLA)
The Polish Sejm or parliament has declared 2022 The Year of Polish Romanticism, and this month we are looking at Poland’s greatest Romantic poet, Adam Mickiewicz, the author of the national epic, Pan Tadeusz, the ever controversial drama The Forefathers’ Eve, and numerous collections of lyric poetry among other works.
We begin this episode by placing Polish Romanticism on the map of European Romanticism in the nineteenth century, considering commonly held philosophical concepts like Organicism and the Sublime, figures like the Byronic hero or the outsider, and looking at the way that Polish independence during the era of the partitions was a cause célèbre in Romantic literature and discourse across Europe.
In this episode we look at his early poem, “Romantyczność” (“The Romantic”) that could be consider a manifesto of Romanticism. We consider some aspects of his biography. We take a look at new translations of the Crimean Sonnetsby Kevin Kearney, and we read a few fragments of Bill Johnston’s recent translation of Pan Tadeusz. If you pay attention to the whole episode, you can see how the famous opening verse of Pan Tadeusz emerged from Rousseau’s treatise “On the Government of Poland.” We also discuss the uses of orientalism in Polish Romanticism. We look briefly at the controversy over a recent production of Forefathers’ Eve, part III, as a mirror to two images of Mickiewicz, as a great European intellectual and as the Polish national bard. For students interested in studying Polish at UCLA, Prof. Roman Koropeckyj gives a brief overview of the program.
Encounters with Polish Literature is a new video series for anyone interested in literature and the culture of books and reading. Each month, host David A. Goldfarb presents a new topic in conversation with an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature.
Learn more about this episode, and see the biography of the guest on the Polish Cultural Institute New York's website. The linked page includes a bibliography of works in English by and about Adam Mickiewicz:
instytutpolski...
Access the Playlist of the entire series:
bit.ly/Encount...

[@angeluomo]

Roman Koropeckyj's biography of Mickiewicz is top-notch. Well worth reading.

[@huabinzhou5350]

Thanks for organizing such an informative series and making your videos public. Even though I'm not trained as a Polish studies major (I'm a grad student in sociocultural anthropology), I've been fascinated with Polish literature for years now, and this series really helped me expand my focus; I really appreciate those interesting insights bursting out of your conversations (especially those of the translators). I'm wondering are you planning to cover poets associated with Turpizm in the future (like Grochowiak and Białoszewski, since you've already talked about Różewicz)? I'm not familiar with the scope of Polish studies in North American academia so I'm not sure if those two are part of your curriculum. Anyway, thanks again for posting these talks!

[@dgoldfar]

Białoszewski is indeed on the agenda later this year as we mark the centennial of his birth. Thanks for watching!

[@dgoldfar]

Correction 20:18- Mickiewicz spent only a few months in Poznań, not two years.

[@mirzamuntasir9408]

I think the volume seems to be a bit low.

[@dgoldfar]

Thanks for your feedback. I’ll pass that on to our editor.

[@mirzamuntasir9408]

You are most welcome.