Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich

Vincent Dunin-Marcinkievič (Belarusian: Вінцэнт (Вінцук) Дунін-Марцінкевіч; Polish: Wincenty Dunin-Marcinkiewicz; c. 1808–1884) was a Belarusian writer, poet, dramatist and social activist and is considered as one of the founders of the modern Belarusian literary tradition and national school theatre.

Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkievich was born in a Belarusian part of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in a noble family (szlachta of Łabędź coat of arms) in the region of Babruysk. He graduated from the medical faculty of the University of St. Petersburg.

He wrote both in contemporary Belarusian and Polish languages. Writing in modern Belarusian language he faced the problem of its being not standardized, as the written tradition of the Old Belarusian (Ruthenian) language had been largely extinct by that time.

From 1827 Dunin-Martsinkyevich lived and worked in Minsk as a bureaucrat. In 1840 he acquired a mansion near Ivyanets and went there to write most of his works.

In 1859 he translated into Belarusian language Adam Mickiewicz's epic poem Pan Tadeusz and published it in Wilno. Under the pressure of Russian Empire authorities he succeeded in publishing only the first two chapters of the poem. This was the first translation of the poem into another slavic language.

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