Wladyslaw Syrokomla

Ludwik Kondratowicz Władysław Syrokomla
Władysław Syrokomla by Adam Szemesz
Born	Ludwik Władysław Franciszek Kondratowicz (1823-09-29)September 29, 1823 Smolków
Died	September 15, 1862(1862-09-15) (aged 38) Vilnius (Wilno)
Resting place	Rasos Cemetery, Vilnius
Pen name	Władysław Syrokomla
Language	Polish
Nationality	Polish
Ethnicity	Lithuanian
Genre	Romanticism
Signature

Władysław Syrokomla was the pseudonym of Ludwik Władysław Franciszek Kondratowicz (1823–1862), was a Polish romantic poet, writer and translator working in the Russian Empire and Congress Poland.

Syrokomla was born September 29, 1823 in the village of Smolków, Belarus, at that time part of the Russian Empire (now Smolhava, Minsk Voblast, Belarus), to an impoverished noble family. His parents were Aleksander Kajetan Kondratowicz (d. 1858) and Wiktoria (née Złotkowska). His uncle was Hilary Kondratowicz (1790–1823), 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 (Jaśkowicze). In 1833 he entered the Dominican school in Nesvizh (Nieśwież). He had to give up his studies due to financial problems. In 1837 he began work in a Marchaczewszczyzna folwark. 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 (1852).

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 (1861–1862) 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.