Sonety krymskie [Crimean Sonnets] is a sequence of eighteen sonnets by Poland’s national poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855). Published in Moscow in 1826 together with a cycle of erotic (vel Odessa) sonnets under the omnibus title Sonety, the work is a programmatic exercise in romantic Orientalism that draws unabashedly on, among others, Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Silvestre de Sacy’s Chrestomathie arabe, Alexander Pushkin’s Fountain of Bakhchisarai, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall’s Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens, and One Thousand and One Nights. And it is to Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan that Mickiewicz turns for the epigraph to his own cycle: “Wer den Dichter will verstehen, / Muss in Dichter’s Lande gehen” (Dzieła 1:233). The Orientalist style permeates—indeed, determines—every aspect of Sonety krynskie, from their formal mannerisms and thematic concerns to their reception and place in the poet’s “symbolic autobiography”...
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Citation: Koropeckyj, Roman. "Sonety krymskie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 November 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33995, accessed 09 June 2026.]
