BERWINSKI, RYSZARD WINCENTY

born Feb. 28, 1819, Polwica, Poznan, Prussia [now in Poland] died Nov. 9, 1879, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey] Polish poet and writer, best known for his Poezje (1844; Poems), which marked him as a poet of social radicalism. In his Studia o literaturze ludowej (1854; Studies on Folk Literature), Berwinski took an international view of folk traditions, stressing their universality and challenging nationalist interpretations popular at the time. Unlike many of his colleagues, he had a university education, having studied in Germany as a young man. A committed and unsentimental revolutionary, he was twice imprisoned, first by the Austrians and later by the Prussians. The Revolution of 1848 freed him, and he became a Polish deputy to the Prussian Parliament, a post he left to travel to Crimea, where he aided the poet and patriot Adam Mickiewicz in organizing a Polish armed force. After the war the Prussians refused to let him return home; he continued his work in Constantinople, a lonely and forgotten man.