Pan Tadeusz
Pan Tadeusz (full title Pan Tadeusz, czyli ostatni zajazd na Litwie. Historia szlachecka z roku 1811 i 1812 we dwunastu księgach wierszem - Pan Tadeusz or the Last Foray in Lithuania. A History of the Nobility in the Years 1811 and 1812 in Twelve Books of Verse) is an epic poem by the Polish writer
Adam Mickiewicz. It was first published in June 1834 in Paris, and is considered by many the last great epic poem of European literature. It is today compulsory reading at Polish school, and the most read book in the country after the Bible. Numerous quotations from this work are known by heart by near every Pole, above all its first verse: - Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie.
:Ile cię trzeba cenić, ten tylko się dowie, - O Lithuania, my country, thou art like good health;
:I never knew till now how precious, till I lost thee (trans. by Kenneth R. Mackenzie)
Andrzej Wajda made a film version in 1999, which was a great audience success in Poland.
Content The story happens in the year 1811. Poland was divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria (see Partitions of Poland) and has disappeared from the political map of Europe. The action happens in the Lithuanian village of Soplicowo. Pan Tadeusz recounts the story of two feuding noble families, and the love story between Tadeusz (the Pan Tadeusz of the title) and Zosia.
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