Domowy wróg i sojusznik
House Enemy and Ally

Adam Mickiewicz’s Turkey

Summary/Abstract: The author of the study points at an immense significance of Turkey not only in a literary picture of the world of the most eminent polish romantic poet, Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855). He grew up in Navahrudak, on the territory of present Belarus, where the Tatars, connected to Turkish and Polish culture, made a strong group, and died during the Crimean War in Istanbul, where he went as a political emissary. Mickiewicz’s picture of Turkey was abundant in ambivalence. It received its full development in his lectures at Collège de France in Paris. He depicted Turkey as a historical enemy with which the Polish Republic waged wars, but also as the only country that, as the historical myth upholds, did not recognise the partitions of Poland. In the poet’s works, especially in their lexis, the influence of Turkish culture is quite marked and, e.g. in clothes and in militaria, significantly affects the Polish nobility.

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