'Sonnets from the Crimea' Summary

The Crimean Sonnets are a series of 18 Polish sonnets by Adam Mickiewicz, constituting an artistic telling of a journey through the Crimea. They were published in 1826, together with a cycle of love poems called "The Odessan Sonnets" (Sonety Odeskie), in a collection called "Sonnets" (Sonety).

The Crimean Sonnets is considered the first sonnet cycle in Polish literature and a significant example of early romanticism in Poland, which gave rise to the huge popularity of this genre in Poland and inspired many Polish poets of the Romantic era as well as the Young Poland period.

The Crimean Sonnets were published in an English translation by Edna Worthley Underwood in 1917. A classic Russian rendition of one of the sonnets belongs to Mikhail Lermontov. In 2021, an English translation by Kevin Kearney was published in Cardinal Points, Volume 11: this particular rendition remains faithful to the Petrarchan sonnet form and emulates the thirteen syllable line of the Polish originals by using the twelve syllable English hexameter line.