Sonnets from the Crimea
many-sided and capable of various activities. He devoted considerable time to advanced [XI] mathematics and philosophy. He made scientific investigations in Vilna under Lalewel. At one time and another he lived in various large cities of Europe. In Germany he met and became friendly with Goethe. In Switzerland he met Krasinski. In 1833 he married Celina Szymanovska. Her mother was the famous Slav beauty and musician who had so delighted Goethe in her youth.

[XI]

Among writers of Russia and Poland whose life period somewhat coincided with that of Mickiewicz's are: Korzenowski (born in 1797), the novelist (a brother of Adam Mickiewicz was fellow-teacher with Korzenowski at Charkov); Danilewski (1829), likewise a novelist—it was he who translated The Crimean Sonnets into Russian; Malzweski, Polish patriot and poet, whose "Maria"—perhaps the most popular poetic story in Poland—appeared at almost the same time as The Crimean Sonnets; Zaleski (1802), Slowacki (1809), Krasinski (1812), the three greatest poets of Poland excepting only Mickiewicz himself, the Polish critic, Brodzinski.

In Russia, the golden age of literature almost covered the same period as Mickiewicz's own life—Puschkin, Lermontov, Schukowski, Gogol, to mention only some of the most important names.

 [XII] In the eighteen-thirties we find Mickiewicz in Paris, which happened to be filled just then with a crowd of brilliant Slavic exiles. Here he became the friend of Chopin, and one of Chopin's most talented pupils—a young Polish girl—made the first translation of the Sonnets into French. It was a wonderful and brilliant Paris which Mickiewicz entered. This was the time when the city was first called "the stepmother of Genius." Heine was here in exile, and Börne. It knew the personal fascination and the denunciative writings of Ferdinand la Salle. It was the day, too, of Eugene Sue, Berlioz, George Sand, de Musset, Dumas, Gautier, the Goncourt Brothers, Gavarni, Sainte Beuve, Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Ary Scheffer, Delacroiz, Horace Vernet—to mention only a few great names at random. Julius Slowacki, Count Krasinski and Adam Mickiewicz were all here editing their poetry in the midst of this brilliant life in the inspiring city by the Seine. This period in Paris signs perhaps the high-water mark of the creative genius of Mickiewicz. He had already written the Ballads and Romances, the third part of Dziady, Pan Tadeuz.

[XII]

The Crimean Sequence belongs to the period of Mickiewicz's youth, the Vilna period. He 
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