ADAM MICKIEWICZ (1798–1855)

A poet, playwright, publicist and public figure. In 1815–1819 he studied at Vilnius University, and until 1817, he lived with the dean of the Vilnius University Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, Fr. Józef Mickiewicz (present-day 11 Pilies Street). It was here that he wrote his first poem Zima miejska (Winter in the City, 1817; published in 1818). In 1817, he and other like-minded enthusiasts formed the illegal Philomaths Society. When the tsarist administration traced the Philomaths, Mickiewicz was arrested and imprisoned in the Vilnius Basilian monastery in 1823–1824, which had been transformed into a prison. Later on, he was deported to Russia. In 1824–1829, he lived in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa and travelled around Crimea. From 1832 he lived in Paris where he participated in politics along with other participants of the 1831 uprising who had emigrated there. He left for Constantinople in September, 1855, where he died in November, most probably from cholera. He created verses, poems, sonnets and dramas.