The Crimean Sonnets is an expression of Mickiewicz's interest in the
Orient, shared by many of the students of the
University of Vilnius. Involuntarily residing in Russia, Mickiewicz left
Odessa and went on a journey, which turned out to be a trek to another world, his first initiation into "the East". The Crimean Sonnets are romantic descriptions of oriental nature and culture of the East which show the despair of the poet—a pilgrim, an exile longing for the homeland, driven from his home by a violent enemy.
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. ==List of sonnets==