SOURCE: Shallcross, Bozena. “Intimations of Intimacy: Adam Mickiewicz's ‘On the Grecian Room’.” Slavic and East European Journal 42, no. 2, (summer, 1998) 216-30.

In the following essay, Shallcross reinterprets Mickiewicz's poem “On the Grecian Room …,” arguing that the poet employs the room as a device to highlight issues about domesticity and elitism.

I. Flirtation and Fragments

Conquer and describe.

Napoleon

Of his entire oeuvre, a single poem—although one not commonly anthologized, nor adequately interpreted—best represents Mickiewicz's concept of domesticity. The poem, entitled “Na pokoj grecki w domu księżnej Zeneidy Wołkońskiej w Moskwie” (“On the Grecian Room in Princess Zeneida Volkonskaia'a House in Moscow”),¹ offers a description of the actual interior of his friend's residence. I intend to place the poet's evocation of Volkonskaia's home-museum and his aesthetic experience within the intimate space of her abode, intricately connected with his striving for intimacy with her, within home...