Salvete Omnes,
in 1836-39 while living in village of Kalenica Wincenty Pol, already a poet and veteran of November 1831 Uprising, met a nobleman and veteran of Polish pre-1795 army, Duchy of Warsaw and all the other wars Poles fought in the early XIX century, general Franciszek Ksawery Krasicki.
Pol also met and conversed with another veteran major Kazimierz Ostaszewski of Zarszyn. In Nienadowa he met another veteran soldier Antoni Debinski, commander of infantry battalion in the pre-1795 Polish Crown army.
All these veterans told to Wincenty Pol these chivlaric stories about one brave cavalryman Szymon Mohort, who in the autumn of this life, being almost a 100 years old and still a soldier, was killed defending Polish lands against the Russian invasion in the battle of Bruszkowice in 1792.
Inspired by these conversations our Wincenty spent a dozen year composing and polishing his poem - Mohort or knightly rhapsody, officially finishing the poem on December 28, 1852.
Mohort Rhapsodies was published in in Krakow in 1854, and immediately was met with praise and admiration by other writers, intellectuals, artists and general readership. It was published in many editions, more than a dozen times, between 1854 and 1914. Many Polish artists of the era painted canvases based on Mohort poem, including Juliusz Kossak, January Suchodolski, Jozef Brodowski and others.
The 1882 edition of Pol's rhapsodies was particularly finely presented for the demanding audiences by Herman Altenberg of Lwow, who asked then famous Juliusz Kossak to create illustrations for the poem.
This edition was exquisite and widely admired, adding more to the spread and interest in the Pol's poetic work.
I corralled some of these full page and smaller illuminations for our viewing pleasure -
all images come from Polona, Polish National Library, digitized edition of Pol's Mohort.
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Valete
