''Grażyna'' is an 1823 narrative poem by Adam Mickiewicz, written in the summer of 1822 during a year-long sabbatical in Vilnius, while away from his teaching duties in

Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Traka ...

.Roman Robert Koropeckyj
''Adam Mickiewicz: the life of a romantic''.
''

Cornell University Press The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University; currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in ...

'', 2008. Page 35. . Probably his first notable work. The poem describes the exploits of a mythical Lithuanian chieftainess Grażyna ( lt, Gražina) against the forces of the medieval Order of the

Teutonic Knights The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly known as the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was formed to aid Christians o ...

. The woman character is believed to have been based on Mickiewicz's own sweetheart from Kaunas, Karolina Kowalska. The name was originally conceived by Mickiewicz himself, having used the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...

of the Lithuanian adjective ''graži'', meaning "beautiful".April 1
a name-day for Grażyna, #53 in Poland among the most popular names It was said by Polish writer Christien Ostrowski to have inspired Emilia Plater, a military heroine of the November 1830 Uprising. In 1955, Ukrainian composer

Boris Lyatoshinsky Borys Mykolayovych Lyatoshynsky ( uk, Бори́с Миколáйович Лятоши́нський ()), also known as Boris Nikolayevich Lyatoshinsky (russian: Бори́с Николаевич Лятоши́нский), (3 January 189515 Apr ...

composed an eponymous orchestral work based on the poem in commemoration of the centenary of Mickiewicz's death.

References

External links

* Full text of ''Grażyna'' in Polish including ''

Konrad Wallenrod ''Konrad Wallenrod'' is an 1828 narrative poem, in Polish, by Adam Mickiewicz, set in the 14th-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Mickiewicz wrote it, while living in St. Petersburg, Russia, in protest against the late-18th-century partitio ...

'', with both French and English translations, published in Paris in 1859, with foreword by Jan Tysiewicz
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Polish poems Works by Adam Mickiewicz Lithuania in fiction {{poem-stub