Mickiewicz's importance extends beyond literature to the broader spheres of culture and politics; Wyka writes that he was a "singer and epic poet of the Polish people and a pilgrim for the freedom of nations." Scholars have used the expression "cult of Mickiewicz" to describe the reverence in which he is held as a "national prophet." On hearing of Mickiewicz's death, his fellow bard Krasiński wrote: For men of my generation, he was milk and honey, gall and life's blood: we all descend from him. He carried us off on the surging billow of his inspiration and cast us into the world. Edward Henry Lewinski Corwin described Mickiewicz's works as Promethean, as "reaching more Polish hearts" than the other Polish Bards, and affirmed Danish critic Georg Brandes' assessment of Mickiewicz's works as "healthier" than those of Byron, Shakespeare, Homer, and Goethe. Koropeckyi writes that Mickiewicz has "informed the foundations of parties and ideologies" in Poland from the 19th century to this day, "down to the rappers in Poland's post-socialist blocks, who can somehow still declare that 'if Mickiewicz was alive today, he'd be a good rapper.'" While Mickiewicz's popularity has endured two centuries in Poland, he is less well known abroad, but in the 19th century he had won substantial international fame among "people that dared resist the brutal might of reactionary empires."