Kronika pobytu Adama Mickiewicza za ziemiach ukraińskich

Abstract

In his article, Michał Siedlecki presents a chronicle of Adam Mickiewicz’s stay in the Ukrainian lands. The scholar is particularly interested not only in the Polish bard’s expedition to Odessa and the Crimea, which are parts of present-day Ukraine once referred to by Russians, but also by Poles ‘converted’ to tsarist imperialism (including by Józef Sękowski in his Fantastic Journeys of Baron Brambeus, 1833 and 1835) rather contemptuously as Little Russia, but also in how he got there and how he left these lands filled with nostalgia. Mickiewicz visited Sevastopol, Simferopol and Eupatoria, as well as Kyiv and Akerman. Importantly, on his month-long return journey from Odessa to Moscow, he visited, for example, the Stebl estate to breathe in the Ukrainian air once again before leaving the country for good. And so our story about Mickiewicz comes full circle here.