Adam Bernard Mickiewicz was a Polish national poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator, and political activist. A principal figure of Polish Romanticism, he is counted one of Poland's "Three Bards" and is generally regarded as the greatest poet in all Polish literature. He is also considered one of the greatest Slavic and European poets and has been described as a "Slavic bard". A leading Romantic dramatist, he has been compared in Poland and Europe to Byron and Goethe. He is known chiefly for the poetic drama Dziady and the national epic poem Pan Tadeusz, the last great epic of Polish-Lithuanian noble culture. His other influential works include Konrad Wallenrod and Grażyna. All of these served as inspiration for uprisings against the three imperial powers that had partitioned Poland out of existence, and contributed to the concept of Poland as "the Christ of Nations." Mickiewicz was born in the Russian partitioned territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was active in the struggle to win independence for his home region, then part of the Russian Empire. After spending five years in internal exile in central Russia for his political activities, he left the Russian Empire in 1829 and, like many of his compatriots, lived out the rest of his life abroad. He settled first in Rome, then in Paris, where for a little over three years he lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France. He died, probably of cholera, at Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire, where he had gone to help organize Polish and Jewish forces to fight Russia in the Crimean War. In 1890 his remains were repatriated from Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, in France, to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland. Wikipedia [ - ]

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz was a Polish national poet, dramatist, essayist, publicist, translator,... [ + ]