Pan Tadeusz

The manuscript of Pan Tadeusz held at Ossolineum in Wrocław. Adam Mickiewicz's signature is visible.

The story takes place over the course of five days in 1811 and two days in 1812, at a time in history when Poland-Lithuania had been divided between the armies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria (see Partitions of Poland) and erased from the political map of Europe, although in 1807 Napoleon had established a satellite Duchy of Warsaw in the Prussian partition which remained in existence until the Congress of Vienna held after Napoleon's defeat.[6]

The place is situated within the Russian partition, in the village of Soplicowo, the country estate of the Soplica clan. Pan Tadeusz recounts the story of two feuding noble families, and the love between Tadeusz Soplica (the title character) of one family, and Zosia of the other. A subplot involves a spontaneous revolt of the local inhabitants against the occupying Russian garrison. Mickiewicz, an exile in Paris and thus beyond the reach of Russian censorship, wrote openly about the occupation.[7]

The Polish national poem begins with the words "O Lithuania"; this largely stems from the fact that the 19th-century concept of nationality had not yet been geopoliticized. The term "Lithuania" used by Mickiewicz refers to a geographical region encompassed by the present-day borders of Belarus and Lithuania as well as the eastern edge of present-day Poland.

Compendium ferculorum, albo Zebranie potraw, the oldest cookbook in Polish, served as an inspiration for Mickiewicz's nostalgic description of "the last Old Polish feast" in Pan Tadeusz.[8] In his account of the fictional banquet in Book 12, the poet included the names of several dishes described in Compendium ferculorum, such as "royal borscht", as well as two of the master chef's secrets: the broth with pearls and a coin, and the three-way fish.[9]

All of Mickiewicz's works, including Pan Tadeusz, are written in the Polish language. He had been brought up in the multicultural Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a state that incorporated most of what today are the separate countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. (Hence a waggish witticism has it that Mickiewicz, who grew up in a Polish family in Belarus and studied at Vilnius University in Lithuania, was "a Belarusian poet who wrote about Lithuania in Polish".) Of numerous passages from Pan Tadeusz that are familiar to Poles, the most celebrated is its opening quatrain:

(translation by Christopher Kasparek)

(translation by Katie Busch-Sorensen)

(translation by Kenneth R. Mackenzie)

(translation by Marcel Weyland)

(translation by Leonard Kress)

(translation by Jarek Zawadzki)

(translation by Bill Johnston)

Maude Ashurst Biggs published "Master Thaddeus" in 1885 in London, Watson Kirkconnell "Sir Thaddeus" in 1962. George Rapall Noyes published a prose translation of the poem in 1917. Book Four was published in 2000 by Christopher Adam Zakrzewski. A full version translation by Marcel Weyland in the original metre was published in Sydney in 2004, London and New York in 2005 (ISBN 1567002196 US, and ISBN 1873106777 UK). A new English verse translation by Bill Johnston was published in September 2018 (ISBN 9781939810007).[10] In 2019, Johnston received the National Translation Award bestowed by the American Literary Translators Association for his translation of Mickiewicz's work.[11]

The first translation of the poem into a different language, Belarusian, was made in 1859 by the Belarusian writer and dramatist Vintsent Dunin-Martsinkyevich, in Vilnius.[12] Because of the pressure from Tsarist authorities, Dunin-Martshinkyevich was able to publish only the first two chapters of the poem.

The first film version of the poem as a feature was produced in 1928. The film version made by Andrzej Wajda in 1999 was his great cinematic success in Poland.

In 2012, during the first edition the National Reading Day organized by the President of Poland Bronisław Komorowski, Pan Tadeusz was read in numerous locations across the country as a way of promoting readership and popularizing Polish literature.[13][14] Google's Doodle for Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Iceland, Ireland and UK on 28 June 2019 commemorated the poem.[15][16]

• 
  Illustration to Book III of Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz. Picking Mushrooms, painting by Franciszek Kostrzewski, ca. 1860.
• 
  Illustration to Book VII of Pan Tadeusz. Gerwazy showing off his sword called Scyzoryk (Pocketknife), by Michał Andriolli
• 
  The Hunt, illustration to Book IV
• 
  Jankiel's Concert, oil on canvas by Maurycy Trębacz (1861-1941)

• Polish literature
• List of Polish language poets

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Food and drink in Pan Tadeusz

• Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania: A Story of Life Among Polish Gentlefolk in the Years 1811 and 1812 in Twelve Books, the full text of the 1917 translation by George Rapall Noyes, 1917; the text also available from archive.org
• Pan Tadeusz or the Last Foray in Lithuania: a History of the Nobility in the Years 1811 and 1812 in Twelve Books of Verse translated by Leonard Kress
• Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania: A Tale of the Gentry During 1811–1812 translated by Marcel Weyland, 2004
• Adam Mickiewicz. Sinjoro Tadeo, aŭ la lasta armita posedopreno en Litvo. Nobelara historio de la jaroj 1811 kaj 1812 en dekdu libroj verse esperanta.. Pan Tadeusz in Esperanto, translated by Antoni Grabowski