PL
For a long time, the romanticist Orientalism has been an important interpretation problem in the study of the Crimean Sonnets. In the field of intertextual relations, researchers have emphasized the importance of Byronic inspirations to Mickiewicz; although the Crimean cycle has been preceded with a motto taken from the West-Eastern Divan, the inspiring role of Goethe is poorly known. The sketch is intended to examine whether the Crimean Sonnets realize not only Byron’s programme of a romanticist’s flight to the East but also Goethe’s universalistic project from the West-Eastern Divan, situated above the classicism-romanticism alternative and on both sides of this cultural dichotomy. It brings a comparative analysis of a range of motifs constituting the poetic exoticism of Goethe and Mickiewicz. The search for Goethean inspirations in the poetry of the Polish author reveals both secret and revealed traces, as well as common places in the works of both writers, leading to a wider approach to the European contexts of Mickiewicz’s Orientalism