Syrokomla was born September 29, 1823 in the village of Smolków, in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire, to an impoverished noble family. His parents were Aleksander Kajetan Kondratowicz and Wiktoria. His uncle was Hilary Kondratowicz, a Polish teacher of maths in gymnasium in Vilnius, who published some articles in Wiadomości Brukowe. A year after his birth his parents moved to another village. In 1833 he entered the Dominican school in Nesvizh. He had to give up his studies due to financial problems. In 1837 he began work in a Marchaczewszczyznafolwark. Between 1841 and 1844, he worked as a clerk in the Radziwiłł family land manager's office. On April 16, 1844 in Niaśviž he married Paulina Mitraszewska, with whom he had four children; three of them would die in the same year. In 1844 he published the first of his poems – Pocztylion – under the pen-name Władysław Syrokomla, coined after his family's coat of arms. The same year he also rented the small village of Załucze. In 1853, after the death of three of his children, he sold it or gave his manor to his parents, and settled in Vilnius itself. After a few months he rented the village of Bareikiškės, near Vilnius. He became one of the editors of the Kurier Wileński, the largest and most prestigious Polish-language daily newspaper published in the Vilnius area. In 1858 he visited Kraków, and some time later he visited Warsaw. For taking part in an anti-tsarist demonstration in 1861 in Warsaw he was arrested by the Okhrana and then sentenced to home arrest in his manor in Bareikiškės. He died on September 15, 1862 and was buried in the Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius. Throughout his life, Syrokomla would remain impoverished; Czesław Miłosz wrote that he was "forever struggling against his lack of education and his poverty". Despite that, Syrokomla had many influential and even wealthy friends; his manor was visited by count Eustachy Tyszkiewicz, Stanisław Moniuszko, Ignacy Chodźko, Mikołaj Malinowski, Antoni Pietkiewicz and others.
Works
Syrkomla was influenced by Adam Mickiewicz. In his prose he supported the liberation of peasants and secession of the lands of former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from Imperial Russia, which had annexed portions of the Commonwealth, including its Lithuanian areas, during its late 18th-century partitions. Among the most notable of Syrokomla's works are translations of various Russian, French, Ukrainian, German and Latin poets, including works by Goethe, Heine, Lermontov, Shevchenko, Nekrasov, Béranger and others. His translations are considered a "great service" for the Polish language. Syrokomla also produced a number of works about the rustic nature, people and customs of Lithuania and Belarus. The vast majority of his works were written in the Polish language, however, he also wrote several poems in Belarusian. Syrokomla is considered by some as one of the early influential writers in modern Belarusian language, although many of his Belarusian poems are believed to be lost. During his lifetime, his works were translated into several languages, including Lithuanian. The composer Tchaikovsky adapted one of his works expressing a sympathetic view of the then-unliberated peasants – The Coral Beads – into a song. He also wrote of the Karaite community in Lithuania and its mosques and of a Jewish bookseller in Vilnius. Some of his works are classified as gawęda.
While majority of sources refer to him as a "Polish poet", his legacy is best understood in the context of the multicultural Polish-Lithuanian identity. His birthplace was located within the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and he referred to himself as a Lithuanian when expressing own regional identity. Syrokomla also identified himself with the land of modern Belarus and its people. During Syrokomla's burial ceremony, the Lithuanian poet Edvardas Jokūbas Daukša emphasized that while Syrokomla was influenced by Polish culture, he was a Lithuanian poet, closest to Lithuania after Adam Mickiewicz. Teofil Lenartowicz wrote a memorial poem on his death referring to him as a "lirnik Litewski". His works were often translated into Lithuanian and Belarusian languages. In modern Belarus, he is being praised for depicting the life of 19th century Belarus and for his ethnographic research of Belarusians. In his publications, Syrokomla supported the Belarusian language and the Belarusian theatre plays by the playwright Vincent Dunin-Marcinkievič. In Belarus, there are streets named after W. Syrokomla in Minsk, Hrodna and in smaller towns Navahrudak, Niasvizh, Pinsk, Vaukavysk, Maladzechna and Pruzhany. In Smolhava a school is named after Syrokomla. In Warsaw's residential district Bródno there are two streets dedicated to the poet: Ludwik Kondratowicz St and Władysław Syrokomla St. In Vilnius, a Polish-language school of the Polish minority in Lithuania is named after him.
