Mickiewicz published two sonnet cycles, Sonety Odeskie (Odessa Sonnets) and the particularly remarkable Sonety Krymskie (Crimean Sonnets) circa 1826, more below. A mere forty sonnets between the two cycles, both often unite in one publication. Now Polish being my most challenging-to-read language, I spent 2.5-3 weeks in endless reiterations, dictionary references and commentaries.
Upon hindsight, Mickiewicz, one of the predominant, if not the de facto Polish language bard, bears profound influence over the respective literature. Between the subject matter (ie folklore, political, oriental, nationalist, travel) and the romance tradition, comparison most naturally yields Pushkin, Byron, possibly Hugo.
Mickiewicz’s grandiose monument extends about ten minutes from where I’m residing here in Poznań, next to the university bearing his name. Poznań is possibly the only place he stayed in the Polish proper, I somewhere encountered in the biography; otherwise transitioning from the Belarus/Lithuania territory formerly of the Commonwealth and then annexed by the Russian Empire; to the five-year exile in Moscow/Petersburg, then western Europe and ultimately Constantinople.
At some point Mickiewicz must have visited both Odessa and Crimea - then still part of Ukraine proper.
The Odessa cycle pursues a thematic fairly common among the sonneteers: the woman. Shakespeare, Spenser, Drayton, Sidney, Petrarca have carried out the same time and time again; a few sonnets appear directly inspired by Petrarca, per the editor’s comments.
Sonety Krymskie, however, achieves something far more punk rock. Composed in the unwavering classic Italian rhyming pattern and the relentlessly regular iambic hexameter, the sonnets nevertheless address topics by no means typical of sonnets: travel, ethnography, natural phenomena, relics, religion and such matters pertaining to the then Tatar occupied, Islamic region of Crimea: matter normally reserved for prose, travel journals or at least less rigorous poetic forms.
True, sonnets have been known to address a wider range. Dedicatory. Evocation. Satirical. Epistolary. Though most manner-challenging sonnets I’ve encountered usually make for isolated cases.
Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal comprises of maybe half sonnets of varying format and decadence, which in itself spawned a revolution later on in the century. But that makes for a cycle far less cohesive in nature.
Both Byron and Pushkin produced much oriental and ethnographically rich poetry. Pushkin’s Onegin is a novel not only in verse, but entirely in 14-line tetrameter stanzas which one could, technically, refer to as sonnets, except they don’t stand as independent units. And therein we also find ethnographic insight, albeit across a more familiar, Slavic rural territory more characteristic of the nineteenth century romance.
In prose (poetic or otherwise), we find similar detail in Babel’s Конармия (Red Cavalry), Voltaire’s Candide which I recently read, or the substantially greater in scope Don Quijote, Moby Dick or Tolstoy’s writings among endless others. Anything but sonnets!
The particular Crimean cycle numbers at just eighteen sonnets. You might even question the commotion. But the elegance therein, the craft and that cohesion of which I’d spoken, really justify their placement.
Some of them incorporate a plain, direct narrative nearly devoid of symbols or metaphors. Other sections are diametrically opposite: symbolic, mystifying, and ever contemplative. Many incorporate a dialogue.
At times, the sonnets resemble little portholes onto a vaster historical landscape.
Now, this being an oriental cycle, the references are truly invaluable. And I’ve had an ever growing interest in Orientalism anyhow.
We find mention of (the bird) Simurg. Of Genies. Eblis. Of the gargantuan mountain Czatyrdah; of the lakes and rivers; the Bakczysaraj province, the subject also of Pushkin’s “Бахчисарайский Фонтан”; also Bajdary, Ałuszta, Czufut-Kale, Bałakław; mosques, religious practices and respective terminology. The Harem. Tons of ruins and relics. The homage to the horse (also shared with Babel’s writings a century after). Numerous nods to the Persian and/or Arab poetic tradition, per the (invaluable) author and editor commentary.
And we find abundant introspection open to varying interpretation, a property I consider paramount of quality philosophical poetry.
It’s all there across the mere eighteen sonnets.
Questions, comments? Connect.