SOURCE: “The Dialogue Between East and West in the Crimean Sonnets,” in The Polish Review, Vol. XLIII, No. 4, 1998, pp. 429-39.

In the following essay, Kalinowska-Blackwood evaluates Mickiewicz's Crimean Sonnets, in an effort to discern whether Mickiewicz viewed his Oriental subject matter in the stereotypically exploitative manner by which the East is often apprehended by the West. The critic finds that the Tatar guide, Mirza, is portrayed in the verses not as a stylized and superficial Oriental element, but as a participant in the dialogue of the poetry.

Since the publication of Edward W. Said's study Orientalism two decades ago, both scholarly and literary nineteenth century Orientalism have been analyzed as accomplices in the enterprise of Western colonization.¹ Said's work initiated a reevaluation of any involvement with other cultures and contacts between cultures as potentially imperialist and exploitative in nature.

Mickiewicz's Crimean Sonnets [Sonety Krymskie], a poetic travelogue which...