SOURCE: "Byron and Napoleon in Polish Romantic Myth," in Lord Byron and His Contemporaries: Essays from the Sixth International Byron Seminar, edited by Charles E. Robinson, University of Delaware Press, 1982, pp. 130-43.

In the essay below, Treugutt comments on ways in which Byron, Napoleon, and the idea of the politically active artist were received and interpreted by the Polish Romantics.

While paying a visit in 1979 to the Institute of Russian Literature in Leningrad, I unexpectedly discovered a copy of The Works of Lord Byron, Complete in One Volume, published in Frankfurt am Main in 1826, and which came to the Institute from Pushkin's library. On the title page is this dedication in Polish: "Bajrona Puszkinowi poświęca wielbiciel obudwóch—A. Michiewicz" ("Here is Byron dedicated to Pushkin by an admirer of both of them—Adam Mickiewicz"). What impressed me was not the elegance of the dedication but...