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In 1966 Poland will celebrate the thousandth anniversary of her acceptance of Christianity, the first major event to bring Poland on to the modern European scene from the shade of prehistory. Looking back over the past millennium, Poles are now analysing their history, reassessing their cultural achievements, and looking for directives for the future. When the civilized world was out-growing the boundaries for Europe, Poland was in bondage. It is time that after 1,000 years of its existence knowledge of Polish culture should not be confined to one part of Europe but should extend over much more of the globe. The Millennium of Christian Poland Celebration Committee in Canada, sponsors of this volume, is aiming to make Polish cultural achievements and information about Poland available to the Canadian people. As the first of its publications the Committee presents an English translation of Pan Tadeusz, a land-mark in Polish literature. Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania is the greatest epic poem of Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). It was written in exile and published in Paris in 1833, during the author's long absence from his native country because of his patriotic sympathies. The scene of the poem is Lithuania on the eve of Napoleon's expedition into Russia in 1812 and its subject is a family feud among the country gentry; Mickiewicz gives vivid pictures of the life of the old Polish nobility and gentry, their manners and past times, their patriotic enthusiasms and his descriptions of the Lithuanian landscape especially have kept his poem in the hearts of generations of readers. The poem ends in the spirit of hope caused in the heart of every Pole by the French onslaught on Russia. The original poem is in rhymed Alexandrine couplets, and the translation in the English heroic couplet; this is the first translation in rhymed English verse to be published. Watson Kirckconnell's gifts as translator and poet are well known, and this publication is a splendid opportunity to become acquainted with one of the world's great epics. Dr. William J. Rose provides a helpful historical introduction.… (more)
User reviews
It’s an epic story told in verse, complete with literary references to classic literature, but if that sounds intimidating or dry, nothing could be further from the truth. The book is highly approachable and engaging from beginning to end. The all-too-human characters are cleverly developed, and the story is told with both restraint and concision. There is humor, romance, merriment, and feuding amongst landowners. The rural setting is beautifully evoked throughout the book by Mickiewicz, who had clearly spent time in nature.
Mickiewicz wrote the book from France in 1834 when Poland’s uprisings against its partitioning had failed, but he makes the setting 1811-12, at a time when there was hope that in siding with Napoleon, who had carved out the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, that they would regain the full independence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and their former glory days. Readers at the time knew how tragically that would turn out, and this combined with Mickiewicz’s childhood memories of a time that was slipping past make the book incredibly poignant. Readers today also know of how partitioning and subjugation in the 18th and 19th centuries would segue to an eerily similar invasion from both Germany and the Soviet Union in the 20th, with outrageous atrocities that are still hard to fathom. It all makes for a very stirring read, particularly at the end with his epilogue, when he laments the fate of his country, as well as cherishes his childhood memories.
This should be required reading for anyone travelling to Poland, and I can’t recommend this edition highly enough. The introduction from Johnston, thoughtful translation, and helpful notes all enhance what is a great book. As he points out with such insight, “Perhaps one of the reasons Pan Tadeusz is so popular is precisely that it beautifully melds two impossible longings – for a future free and independent Poland, and for the lost Poland of the past. The interplay between these two unslaked desires provides a mighty emotional tension at the heart of the poem.”
Just this quote on Poland, which reverberated within me as I toured the country, getting greater insight into such a sad history, and wondering how one could even go on afterwards:
“The blood, though, spilled in Poland lately,
The tears that flood the land completely,
The glory that still echoes quietly –
We had no strength to think of these!
For nations can face such agonies
That, gazing upon their misery,
Even Courage stands helplessly.”