SOURCE: Kalinowska-Blackwood, Izabela. “The Dialogue Between East and West in the Crimean Sonnets.” The Polish Review XLIII, no. 4 (1998) 429-39.

In the essay below, Kalinowska-Blackwood examines the relationship between the Pilgrim and Mirza in Crimean Sonnets while considering Mickiewicz's portrayal of Eastern philosophies.

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 documents the poet's journey to the Crimea in 1825, is certainly affiliated with the genre of Western Oriental travelogues. In his “voyage” Mickiewicz followed Volney, Goethe, Chateaubriand, and Byron; echoes of these writers works resound throughout the Sonnets. Can we consider Mickiewicz guilty of the same...