31 Facts About Cyprian Norwid

Cyprian Norwid is considered one of the four most important Polish Romantic poets, though scholars still debate whether he is more aptly described as a late romantic or an early modernist.

Cyprian Norwid experienced mounting health problems, unrequited love, harsh critical reviews, and increasing social isolation.

Cyprian Norwid's work was rediscovered and appreciated only after his death by the Young Poland movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Cyprian Norwid's mother died when Cyprian was four years old, and in 1835 his father died: Norwid was 14 at the time.

In 1836 Cyprian Norwid interrupted his schooling and entered a private school of painting, studying under Aleksander Kokular and Jan Klemens Minasowicz.

In 1842 Cyprian Norwid received inheritance funds as well as a private scholarship to study sculpture and left Poland, never to return.

Cyprian Norwid later visited Venice and Florence in Italy; in Florence he signed up for a course in sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze.

Cyprian Norwid's visit to Verona resulted in a well-received poem W Weronie published several years later.

Cyprian Norwid was arrested for trying to cross back to Russia without his passport, and his short stay in Berlin prison resulted in partial deafness.

Cyprian Norwid lived in poverty, sometimes forced to work as a simple manual laborer.

Cyprian Norwid suffered from progressive blindness and deafness, but still managed to publish some content in the Polish-language Parisian publication Goniec polski and similar venues.

Cyprian Norwid was involved in the creation of the memorial album of the Crystal Palace Exhibition and the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations.

Cyprian Norwid took a very keen interest in the outbreak of the 1863 January Uprising.

The poem's theme is the Russian troops' 1863 defenestration of Chopin's piano from the music school Cyprian Norwid attended in his youth.

Cyprian Norwid continued writing, but most of his work met with little recognition.

In subsequent years, Cyprian Norwid lived in extreme poverty and suffered from tuberculosis.

Some scholars consider Cyprian Norwid to represent late romanticism, while others see him as an early modernist.

Critics and literary historians eventually concluded that during his life, Cyprian Norwid was rejected by his contemporaries as his works were too unique.

Cyprian Norwid's style was criticized for "being obscure and overly cerebral" and having a "jarring syntax".

Cyprian Norwid attempted to start new types of literary works, for example "high comedy" and "bloodless white tragedy".

Cyprian Norwid's works are considered to be deeply philosophical and utilitarian, and he rejected "art for art's sake".

Cyprian Norwid is seen as a harsh critic of the Polish society as well as of mass culture.

Cyprian Norwid's works featured more than purely Polish context, employing pan-European, Greco-Christian symbology.

Cyprian Norwid's stay in America made him a supporter of the abolitionist movement, and in 1859 he wrote two poems about John Brown Do obywatela Johna Brown and John Brown.

Cyprian Norwid's "Collected Works" were published in 1966 by Juliusz Wiktor Gomulicki, a Cyprian Norwid biographer and commentator.

On 24 September 2001,118 years after his death, an urn with soil from the collective grave where Cyprian Norwid had been interred in Paris' Montmorency cemetery was buried in the "Crypts of the Bards" at Wawel Cathedral.

Cyprian Norwid is often considered the fourth more important poet of the Polish romanticism, and called the Fourth of the Three Bards.

Cyprian Norwid has been praised as the best poet of the 19th century by Joseph Brodsky and Tomas Venclova.

The life and work of Cyprian Norwid have been subject to a number of scholarly treatments.

Cyprian Norwid authored numerous works, from poems, both epic and short, to plays, short stories, essays and letters.

Some of Cyprian Norwid's works have been translated into English by Walter Whipple and Danuta Borchardt in the United States of America, and by Jerzy Pietrkiewicz and Adam Czerniawski in Britain.