Ryszard Wincenty Berwiński

Ryszard Wincenty Berwiński (born February 28, 1819, Polwica, Poznań, Prussia [now in Poland]—died November 9, 1879, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]) was a Polish poet, folklorist, and politician, best known for his Poezje (1844; “Poems”), which marked him as a poet of social radicalism.

Initially influenced by Romantic poetry, Berwiński studied and collected folklore in western Poland, wrote his own poems and stories, and eventually penned the pioneering Studia o literaturze ludowej (1854; “Studies in Folk Literature”). Gradually his poetry assumed a more revolutionary character (Księga życia i śmierci, 1842; “The Book of Life and Death”), expressing the conflict between nobility and peasants. After 1845 he became politically active, was imprisoned by the Germans, and then freed during the 1848 revolution. In 1855 he joined Adam Mickiewicz in Turkey to organize Polish forces for the Crimean War, later serving in the Ottoman dragoons. After the war, the Prussians refused to let him return home. He died in oblivion.