This note presents a short conversation with Antoine Bourdell, creator of the Adam Mickiewicz monument in Paris. The monument was unveiled on 29 April 1929. The information was published in the journal "Sztuki Piękne",1927/1928, no. 5, p. 194 (public domain, reprinted from the Library of the University of Silesia, Katowice).

A modernised reading of the text.

Mickiewicz Monument in Paris. Interview with the creator of the monument.

The eminent French sculptor Antoni Bourdelle, currently working on the finishing touches to a monument to Adam Mickiewicz to be erected in Paris, gave an interview to a contributor to the Parisian "Excelsior" in which he said, among other things, the following:

"Work on the Mickiewicz monument is progressing, but I need some time to complete it. Just when I was about to send my bas-reliefs for casting, I found out that the figures sitting or kneeling are larger than those standing. Terrified by this discovery, I had to start all over again. Soon it will be 20 years since I started working on the Mickiewicz monument and I still have to think about it intensively. I am primarily concerned with maintaining harmony in the overall composition. The architecture of the base, the plinth and the top of the column gave me much more difficulty than the sculpture itself".

When asked by a contributor to the magazine if the artist had changed the fundamental idea of the monument after the resurrection of Poland, Bourdelle remarked:

"Never in my life! By some mysterious intuition driven by me, I had always seen, even years before the war, the three parts of a quartered Poland reunited into a single whole. Why this was so, I do not know, but in my mind I always saw only a victorious Poland! As early as 1909, when the French-Polish Committee under the chairmanship of Władysław Mickiewicz, the poet's son, entrusted me with the creation of this monument, I immediately sketched Mickiewicz in the same posture in which he would definitively appear on the monument, that is, in the posture of a pilgrim and prophet who crosses the world, heralding everywhere the resurrection of his fatherland. This monument is an act of faith. I worked on it during the hardest moments of the war, when the great German Berthas were raging over Paris. In my work, subconsciously perhaps, I was inspired by the prophetic words of Mickiewicz: "Only when Poland is liberated will there be an end to wars among Christian peoples". Driven by the guiding thought of the Polish bard, I engraved his prophetic words on the granite pedestal of the monument: "Though in bondage, you can with thought and faith demolish and erect thrones."

Bourdelle's work will stand on the Alma square. Preparations are already being made to consolidate the ground on which 30 tonnes of stone and bronze will rest.

Once this monumental work has been completed, Bourdelle will begin work on monuments to the two French poets, Lamartine and Victor Hugo, to be erected in Strasbourg.

According to the latest news received from Paris, Bourdelle was forced to interrupt work on the finishing of the monument due to illness.

For this reason, the unveiling of the monument, set for 5 May, will be delayed. The artist is proposing to postpone the unveiling of the monument until the autumn. 11 November - the historical date of Poland's liberation from the occupying forces - is considered the most suitable date for the unveiling of the monument.