Juliusz Słowacki

Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849) was one of the great poets and dramatists of Polish Romanticism, counted with Adam Mickiewicz and Zygmunt Krasiński among the "Three Bards" of Polish literature. His work, which often draws on Polish history, mysticism, Slavic paganism and the Orient, is regarded as the foundation of modern Polish drama. Although he is remembered mainly as a dramatist and poet, his philosophical thought, particularly the so-called "genesiac philosophy", holds a notable place in his country's literature.

He was born in Krzemieniec, in Volhynia, then part of the Russian Empire and now in Ukraine. His father, a professor of rhetoric and poetry, died in 1814, and his mother later married a professor of medicine, August Bécu, whose home hosted a literary salon. There, at the age of thirteen, he met Mickiewicz, shortly before Mickiewicz was exiled by the Russian authorities for his part in a secret patriotic student society. Słowacki studied law in Vilnius and in 1829 moved to Warsaw to work in the administration. His patriotic poetry, written during the November Uprising of 1830, brought him quick fame. After the defeat he went into exile and spent most of his life abroad, in Paris, in Switzerland, where he wrote the drama "Kordian", and on journeys through Italy, Greece, Egypt and the Holy Land, which shaped works such as the epic "Journey to the Holy Land from Naples".

His rivalry with Mickiewicz defined much of his career. After a period close to the religious circle led by Andrzej Towiański, which pushed his later writing towards mysticism, he left the group in 1843. His final work, "Król-Duch", a visionary poem that weaves together Polish history and political and literary reflection, was never completed. He died in Paris in 1849 of tuberculosis, at the age of forty. His remains were moved in 1927 to Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, and he is today considered one of the major names in Polish literature.