Mickiewicz at the Collège de France

Abstract

On December 22, 1840, at two o’clock in the afternoon, the author of these words stood in the Collège de France. Before him was a brilliant audience, which included the Polish poet Niemcewicz, a veteran both of Polish culture and of the struggle for independence, Prince Adam Czartoryski, the leading figure among the Polish emigrés, Charles Montalembert, the great politician and champion of the Polish cause, Faucher, the playwright and journalist, Nicholas Turgenev, author of La Russie et les Russes, Salvandy, former Minister of Education, Jean-Jacques Ampère, son of the great physicist and himself professor of French literature at the Collège de France, a scattering of German, Dalmatian, Montenegrin, and Russian listeners, and a crowd of French and Polish auditors. The hall was packed.³

Now is my soul incarnate in my country, And in my body dwells her soul; My fatherland and I are one great whole. My name is million, for I love as millions, Their pain and suffering I feel...²