SOURCE: Zakrzewski, Christopher Adam. “Misers of Sound and Syllable: Reflections on the Poetic Style of Adam Mickiewicz.” Canadian Slavonic Papers XL, nos. 3-4 (September-December, 1998) 401-12.

In the following essay, Zakrzewski extols the simple style and pure language of Mickiewicz's poetry.

Pоd sinhy gоr Tavridy оtdalinnоj Piviц Litvy v razmir igо stisninnyj Svоi micty mgnоvinnо zaкlycal. 

[In the lee of distant Crimea's mountains, Litva's songster would lock his thoughts In an instant within its strait measure.] 

Alexander Pushkin, “The Sonnet”

In this bicentenary year of his birth, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), the Byron, Goethe and Pushkin of Poland, remains an anomalously obscure figure to the English-speaking world. To this day his nimbus outside of the Slavic world rarely transcends the confines of the academic lecture hall and the serious poet's private study. How to account for this? It is tempting at this point to...