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The mystery surrounding this figure connects Pan Tadeusz, an epic

that is truly classic in its dignified elevation and restraint of

feeling, with _Konrad Wallenrod_, a romantic tale conceived in

the spirit of Byronic passion.

In the work of Mickiewicz as a whole two characteristics

predominate: a great intensity of feeling, which sometimes sinks

into sentimentality, and at others rises into lyric fervour; and

a wonderful truth, not only to the general impressions of his

experience, but to the actual concrete facts of it, even to such

trifles as the names of persons and places. Thus _The

Forefathers,_ despite all its fantastic elements, reproduces many

incidents in which the poet himself was concerned. Furthermore,

in certain works, as in his early tale Grazyna, Mickiewicz had

shown a wonderful ability suddenly to detach himself from passing

currents of emotion and to rise into regions of Olympian calm,

giving to his work a classic, rounded completeness worthy of

Grecian art. All these aspects of his genius are present in Pan

Tadeusz.