Imagination and creation versus politics and power – the case study of Adam Mickiewicz's Paris lectures In the article Imagination and creation versus politics and power – on the example of Paris lectures by Adam Mickiewicz Ewelina Głowacka proposes to examine the vision of history created by Mickiewicz in lectures, in which many conviction about the past were built not so much on facts but on the imagination. The analysis mainly concerns the poet's etymological ideas contained in two lectures

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... f the third course about the origin of the Slavs, where he told the ancient history of these people by studying the etymology of individual words. Using postcolonial theory, the author demonstrates that the historiosophy of lectures given at the Collège de France was a thoughtful strategy designed for specific political effects. As a professor of Slavic literature and languages at the cathedral in Paris, Mickiewicz assumes the role of a spokesperson for the Slavs in the West. The main goal of the poet's speeches was associated with the mission of freeing the Slavs from subordination to Western European countries, and in particular, of winning the independence of the Republic of Poland. As a poet and a visionary, Mickiewicz knew that such changes do not take place only in the military and official domains, but also, and perhaps above all – in the sphere of the imagination. Thus, the poet tried to create a new Slavic myth that would empower the Slavic culture and increase its political significance. In this context, theories of Hobsbawm's invented tradition and Anderson's imagined community are recalled, as they allow for a better understanding of the community-forming dimension of the narrative built by the poet. To outline the origins of Mickiewicz's postcolonial attitude, the poet's early works were also discussed, as already in his student days he exhibited cognitive skepticism about the official historiography and noticed some forms of symbolic violence. From an early age, he also knew that imagination is an in [...]