Mickiewicz, Adam (Bernard)

(born Dec. 24, 1798, Zaosye, near Nowogródek, Belorussia, Russian Empire—died Nov. 25, 1855, Constantinople, Tur.) Polish poet.

A lifelong apostle of Polish national freedom and one of Poland's greatest poets, Mickiewicz was deported to Russia for his revolutionary activities in 1823. His Poetry, 2 vol. (1822–23), was the first major Polish Romantic work; it contained two parts of Forefathers' Eve, a cycle combining folklore and mystic patriotism. Mickiewicz left Russia in 1829 and eventually settled in Paris. There he wrote The Books of Our Pilgrimage (1832), a prose interpretation of the history of the Poles; and his masterpiece, the poetic epic Pan Tadeusz (1834), which describes the life of the Polish gentry in the early 19th century.