Pan Tadeusz: or the last foray into Lithuania

Adam Bernard Mickiewicz (24 December 1798 – 26 November 1855) is arguably Poland’s greatest poet. A posthumous child of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, whose final collapse and dismemberment occurred three years before his birth, he is regarded national bard in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. Often compared to Byron and Goethe, he was a major figure in Polish Romanticism. In 1824, he was banished as a political subversive to central Russia. Welcomed into the leading literary circles of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, he became a favorite there for his agreeable manners and extraordinary talent for poetic improvisation. In 1829, he left the Russian Empire for a life of continued exile in Italy, France and Switzerland. For three years he lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France in Paris. He died in Constantinople while helping to organize Polish and Jewish forces to fight against Tsarism in the Crimean War. Among his other great works are his poetic drama Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve), his historical narrative poems Grażyna and Konrad Wallenrod, and his admirable Crimean Sonnets. He lies buried in the crypt of the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland.