Adam Mickiewicz’s Crimean Sonnets (1826) have repeatedly been interpreted through the lens of postcolonial studies, with several researchers (Roman Koropeckyj, Dariusz Skórczewski, Danuta Zawadzka, Magdalena Siwiec) arguing that the cycle is deeply embedded in Russia’s colonial discourse. This article reconstructs the imperial logos connected with the production of knowledge about Crimea in the years from 1783 to 1825, taking the example of one sonnet (View of the Mountains from the Kozlov Steppes) to illustrate how Mickiewicz manages to evade it. A poetological, somatic and intertextual analysis of the poem reveals the strategies to confront the discourse of power that are contained in the text. The voice of the author’s l’énonciateur-scripteur has been read as a phonen: a supra-legal detonator of imposed logos, a means of protest that overrules legal conditions, a form of rebellion against the established order. Mickiewicz’s phonen subjugates herself discursive rules of colonial authority. The language of the Sonnets liberates itself from the domination of Russian logos.
