Finally, Kantor's most eminent literary inspiration was Adam Mickiewicz's Romantic, four-part drama-poem, Dziady [Forefathers’ Eve]. Written while Mickiewicz was in exile, Forefathers’ Eve consists of four parts, each distinct in form. They can be, and customarily were, performed separately. In 1832, in a letter to his colleague Joachim Lelewel, Mickiewicz wrote: “I place great hopes in our nation and in a course of events unforeseen by any diplomacy. […] I would think only that our aspirations should be given a religious and moral character, distinct from the financial liberalism of the French and firmly grounded in Catholicism.” For the next 200 years, Mickiewicz's martyrological, liberatory vision of a Poland as expressed and solidified in Forefathers’ Eve came to dominate Polish literature and art. It also became a primary source of Polish self-definition and nationalistic identity. Written in 1820–21, Part II, the so-called Vilnius–Kaunas part, focuses on folklore, particularly a Christianized version of a pagan ritual concerning the raising of the dead. The ludic ritual is viewed as a source of creativity and a manifestation of the early Romantic ontological and ethical attitude towards the mystical and supernatural. Part IV, written in 1821–2, is a spiritual, Romantic love story. It tells the tale of the unfortunate and exalted lover Gustav, who commits suicide upon seeing his beloved marry someone richer than he. Gustav returns from the dead to recount his story, lamenting his love and the suffering it brought him.