SOURCE: Coleman, Arthur Prudden. “Mickiewicz and Northern Balladry.” InThe Slavonic Year-Book (American Series, I): Being Volume XX of the Slavonic and East European Review, pp. 173-84. Menasha, WI: The George Banta Publishing Company, 1941.

In the following essay, Coleman explains Mickiewicz's incorporation of northern folk ballads into his poetry.

In four lines of the opening stanza of the Ode to Youth Mickiewicz describes in vivid images the world which he desired, as poet, to espouse. “O Youth!” he says,

                                                                                … give me wings And I will soar above the callous earth, Into the wonder realm of phantoms and chimeras, Where enthusiasm creates a world of marvels. 

Among the factors which impelled Mickiewicz to embrace this world, by no means least in importance was the northern ballad. How did the balladry of the north come to play so large a part in the poet's growth, in what manner did it...