The creative work of three poets – genuine aristocrats in their origin and in their spirit – A. Mickiewicz, O. Miłosz and Cz. Miłosz could be treated as significant paradigm, formed by multicultural personalities. The author of the article analyses the question of national identity in the context of exile experience, under the circumstances of emigratory life in Paris. The main aspects of the article, discussed in detail – emotional states of being of those emigrated from Lithuania in the 19th century, their efforts to preserve their identity, the problems of integration to French society.

The present paper attempts to capture the dominant identity features in the epic poem Pan Tadeusz and the way they are conveyed in some Lithuanian and French translations. Based on collocations and quantitative data, the analysis of the original text reveals the prevalence of the wild Edenic Lithuania, the poet’s motherland, as the theatre of events where the chivalrous Poles are the main heroes: it confirms that this work by Mickiewicz is a prominent source of the romantic myth about Lithuanian. As for the Lithuanian translation, the most obvious characteristic is the shift of the concept of Poland: while Polska ‘Poland’ designates primarily the whole Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the original text, its Lithuanian equivalent Lenkija refers mainly to the sole kingdom of Poland in the translation, as a consequence of the many generalizations and metonymic substitutions. In the French translation of Noire-Isle, on the contrary, the Polish element appears to be strengthened. Thus, both translations in verse distort significantly the original text as far as identity is concerned.