The bard shall sing them unto knights in war,
And women sing them for their babes at home.
Aye! they shall sing them, and in future days
Some venger shall arise from out our bones.”
Alf fell upon the window-sill with tears,
And long, long time upon the tower he gazed,
As though he yet his gaze would satiate
With those dear sights he shortly must forego.
He hung on Halban’s neck; they mixed their sighs,
In that embrace of long and last farewell.
But at the bolts they heard a steely rattle,
And armèd men came in, and called Alf s name.
“Traitor, thy head must fall beneath the sword;
Repent thee of thy sins, prepare for death!
Behold this old man, chaplain of the Order,
Cleanse thou thy soul and make a fitting end!”
Alf stood with drawn sword ready for their coming;
But paler aye he grew, he bowed, and tottered,
Leaned on the sill; casting a haughty glance,
His mantle tore off, flung the Master’s badge
On earth, and trampled scornful under foot.
“Behold the sins committed in my life.
Ready am I to die; what will ye more?
The annals of my ruling will ye hear?
Look on these many thousands hurled to death,
On towns in ruins, and domains in flames.
Hear ye the storm-winds? clouds of snow drive on;
Thither your army’s remnants freeze in ice.
Hear ye? The hungry packs of dogs do howl,
They tear each other for the banquet’s remnant.
“I caused all this, and I am great and proud,
So many hydras’ heads one blow has felled;
As Samson, by once shaking of the column,
To o’er throw the temple, dying in its ruin.”
He spoke, looked on the window, and he fell.
But ere he fell, he cast the lamp to earth.
It three times glimmered with a circling blaze,
That rested latterly on Konrad’s brow;
And in its scattered flow the fire’s rust gleamed,
But ever deeper into darkness sank.
At length, as though it gave the sign of death,
One last great ring of light shot forth its blaze;
And in this blaze were seen the eyes of Alf,
All white in death, and now the light was dark.
And at this moment through the tower walls pierced
A sudden cry,16 strong, lengthened, broken off —
From whose breast came it? Surely ye can guess
But he who heard it readily might tell,
That from the breast whence such a cry escaped,
Now never more should any voice come forth.
For this voice a whole life spoke aloud.
Thus lute strings, shuddering from a heavy stroke,
Vibrate and burst; in their confusèd sounds
They seem to voice the first notes of a song,
But of such song let none expect the end.
Such be my singing of Aldona’s fate.
Let music’s angel sing it through in heaven,
And thou, O tender reader, in thy soul.
PAN TADEUSZ
OR THE LAST FORAY IN LITHUANIA:
A HISTORY OF THE NOBILITY IN THE YEARS 1811 AND 1812
The national epic of Poland, Pan Tadeusz was first published in Paris in 1834 and is considered by many to be the last great epic poem of European literature. The narrative takes place over the course of five days in 1811 and two days in 1812, at a time in history when Poland-Lithuania had already been divided between the armies of Russia, Prussia and Austria and erased from the political map of Europe. In 1807, shortly before the plot opens, Napoleon had established a satellite Duchy of Warsaw in the Prussian partition, in existence until the Congress of Vienna held in the aftermath of Napoleonic defeat. The setting is the village of Soplicowo; the country estate of the Soplica clan, within the Russian partition. The epic recounts the story of two feuding noble families and the love between Tadeusz Soplica, the title character, and Zosia of the rival family. A sub-plot involves a spontaneous revolt of the local inhabitants against the occupying Russian garrison. Since Mickiewicz published Pan Tadeusz as an exile in Paris, he was free of the Russian censors to talk openly about the occupation.
The Polish national poem begins with the words “O Lithuania”, referring rather to a geographical region and not the country, which had a much broader geographic extent than it does now in modern Lithuania. Mickiewicz is often regarded by Lithuanians to be of Lithuanian origin, while Belarusians proclaim Mickiewicz to be one of them, since he was born on the territory of contemporary Belarus. The poet had been brought up in the culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a multicultural state that had encompassed most of what today are the separate countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Numerous quotations from Pan Tadeusz are well known in translation, above all its opening line,
O Lithuania, my native land,
you are like health — so valued when lost
beyond recovery.
Pan Tadeusz evokes a vivid impression of the life and times in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the eve of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia. Composed entirely in thirteen-syllable couplets and originally intended as an apolitical idyll, it was not highly regarded by contemporaries, nor by Mickiewicz himself, but in time it would win the reputation of being “the highest achievement in all Polish literature.”
The first edition’s title page
CONTENTS
PAN TADEUSZ VERSE TRANSLATION by Leonard Kress
PAN TADEUSZ PROSE TRANSLATION by George Rapall Noyes
Illustration to Book III: Picking mushrooms, painting by Franciszek Kostrzewski, c. 1860.
Illustration to Book VII: Gerwazy showing off his sword called Scyzoryk (Pocketknife), by Michał Andriolli
PAN TADEUSZ VERSE TRANSLATION by Leonard Kress
CONTENTS
About Pan Tadeusz
About Adam Mickiewicz
About the Translator
Dedication.
BOOK 1. THE FARM
BOOK 2. THE CASTLE
BOOK 3. FLIRTATION
BOOK 4 . DIPLOMACY AND THE CHASE
BOOK 5 . THE BRAWL
BOOK 6. THE DOBRZYN SETTLEMENT
BOOK 7. CONSULTATION
BOOK 8. THE FORAY
BOOK 9. THE BATTLE
BOOK 10. EMIGRATION - JACEK
BOOK 11. THE YEAR 1812
BOOK 12. LET US LOVE ONE ANOTHER!
Endnotes.
A Note on the Translation
About Pan Tadeusz
Pan Tadeusz, or the Last Foray in Lithuania: A History of the Nobility in the Years 1811 and 1812 in Twelve Books of Verse (Pan Tadeusz, czyli ostatni zajazd na Litwie. Historia szlachecka z roku 1811 i 1812 we dwunastu księgach wierszem) was fpublished in Paris, in June of 1834. It is thought to be the last great epic poem of European literature and is recognized as the national epic of Poland. It has long been required reading (along with memorization) in Polish schools and if the most widely known and read book in the country.
The story of Pan Tadeusz takes place over several days in 1811 and one day in 1812, during the Paritition of Poland. Poland, at the time, had been divided up between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and had literally disappeared from the political map of Europe. The specific events of Pan Tadeusz take place in the village of Soplicowo in Lithuania. The poem narrates the tale of two feuding noble families and the love story between Tadeusz and Zosia.
About Adam Mickiewicz
Mickiewicz was born on December 24, 1798 and died on November 26, 1855. He was born near the Polish town of Nowogrodek, into a family of the Polish nobility. At the time Nowogrodek part of the Russian Empire. Mickiewicz was educated at the University of Vilni
us (Wilno in Polish), where he became involed in an underground Polish-Lithuanian freedom group. After his studies he worked as a high school tutor in Kaunas (Kowno in Polish).
Mickiewicz was arrested in 1823, at the age of 25, for his political activities. He had already published two highly acclaimed volumes of poetry, and when he was banished to Russia, and St. Petersburg, he was welcomed into the most important literary circles. He gained a reputation of his poetic improvisations and even traveled to the Crimea, where he produced his first major work — The Crimean Sonnets.
In 1823, he published Konrad Wallenrod, a heroic narrative about the conflicts between the pagan Lithuania warriors and the Teutonic Knights — which was seen by Poles as a thinly veiled tirade against Russian domination.
Mickiewicz remained in exile in Russia for five years, and when he was permitted to leave, vowed never to return to his native Lithuania as long was it remained under Russian rule. He traveled to Germany, met Goethe, visited Italian cities, and eventually settled in Rome. There he wrote Forefathers Eve (Dziady), which was based on various Slavic and Pagan religious rituals, though like Konrad Wallenod, it was also profoundly political.
In 1832, at the age of 34, Mickiewicz moved to Paris. His early days there were full of poverty and despair, until he married Celina Szymanowski, a Polish woman living in exile — who interestingly came from a Jewish family that converted to Catholicism in the wake of the failed Jewish Messiah, Jacob Frank. Celina eventually went insane, but Mickiewicz managed to gain a position as professor of Slavic languages and literature at the College de France. This appointment lasted a mere three years, though, as Mickiewicz fell under the influence of the mystical philosphy of Andrzej Towianski, which was a strange combination of religion and politics.
After several failed journalistic ventures, in 1855 Mickiewicz ventured to Turkey during the Crimean War. His aim was to organize a Polish military brigade to enter the war to fight Russia. He was accompanied by his friend Armand Levy, who was similarly attempting to organize a Jewish Legion. While visiting a military camp near Constantinople, Mickiewicz contracted cholera and died that same year.
About the Translator
Leonard Kress is the author of three collections of poetry: The Centralia Mine Fire (Flume Press), Sappho’s Apples (HarrowGate Press), Orphics (Kent State University Press). The Orpheus Complex (Main Street Rag Press), Thirteens (Aureole Press), Braids & Other Sestinas (Seven Kitchens Press), and Living in the Candy Store (Finishing Line Press). He has published poetry, prose, and fiction in journals such as American Poetry Review, Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review and New Letters. He has received grants in poetry, fiction, and playwriting from the Ohio Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He has studied Religion at Temple University, Polish literature and folklore at The Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and received an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. In addition Pan Tadeusz, he has also translated several of Mickiewicz’ Ballads and Romances, as well as the work of Jan Kochanowski (several of Laments appear in Artful Dodge — http://www.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/poetsastranslators/kress.htm), Szymon Zimorowic, Kazimiera Illakowiczowna, Tadeusz Borowski, and Czeslaw Milosz. Kress teaches art history, philosophy, literature, religion, and creative writing at Owens College in Ohio.
For more information: www.leonardkress.com
Dedication.
This translation is dedicated to the memory of Samuel Fiszman, 1914-1999, former Professor of Polish at Indiana University.
BOOK 1. THE FARM
A Young Man Returns — Meeting in a Chamber, then at the Table — The Judge’s Discourse on Courtesy — The Chamberlain’s Remarks on the Politics of Fashion — Dispute Over a Bobtail Hound and Falcon — The Seneschal’s Lament — The Last Tribunal Apparitor — The Current Political Situation in Lithuania and Europe.
O Lithuania, my native land,
you are like health — so valued when lost
beyond recovery; let these words now stand
restoring you, redeeming exile’s cost.
Holy Virgin, defender of the Shrine
at Czestochowa, who illuminates1
the Ostra Gate in Vilno, whose sign2
revealed as one of her protectorates
the walled Novogrodek — who saved me once
with her miraculous glow. My tearful mother
entrusted me (it was her only chance,
I was near death) so when there was no other
cure, she helped to open up my eyes,
and once my lids were raised, though weak, I made
a pilgrimage to offer thanks and praise.
This memory of resurrection has stayed
alive in me since childhood; it makes
me hope a homesick exile might return
to wooded hills, green meadows, and the lakes
spread round the River Nieman — that I’d be borne
back to that womb of gilded wheat and rye
turned silver, to the amber mustard row,
buckwheat snow, and clover, burning like a shy
girl’s blush — to strips of turf, ribbons that show
boundaries with green. All this I see
so clearly, down to each blossoming pear tree.
A larchwood manor stood upon the banks
of a stream, dividing groves of birch, its stone
foundation propping up the solid ranks
of oak beams and whitewashed walls, which shone
in stark relief against the darker green
of poplars all around. A barn attested
to abundant stores of grain, unseen,
and more in fields waiting to be harvested.
Black earth, gridded from countless plows,
fallow land, flowerbed, and garden —
everything about the farmstead shows
its owner’s lot is prosperous. Even
stranger would face, like guest, a welcome sight,
a gate, open by day, unlatched at night.
A young man raced his carriage through the yard,
halted his team by the porch and vaulted down.
His horses dragged the coach, and panting hard,
began to graze. The door was shut, the lawn
deserted — anxiously he rushed to greet
inhabitant and house alike, unlatched
the lock, dismayed he found no one to meet.
The youth was only recently dispatched
from a distant city where he’d gone to school.
Now finished with his studies, he relearns
the old floor planks, eager to roam and rule
halls hung with tapestries. Now he returns
to find that nothing is unchanged. The halls
all seem less grand, perhaps a little quainter.
The portraits he remembers still grace the walls:
Kosciuszko in Cracovian dress. (The painter3
surely had in mind the time he swore,
clutching his sword, his eyes to heaven cast,
he’d drive the occupier from the door
of every Pole, or make this act his last.)
Rejtan was next, mourning his freedom’s loss;4
knife stuck in his own breast by his own hand,
(Plutarch’s Life of Cato open across
his desk.) Next was Jasinski, his last stand:5
the hero, young, handsome, and melancholy,
beside Korsak, comrades to the end.6
(They stand in trenches aware of their huge folly:
dead Russians all around; they can’t defend
Warsaw — engulfed by flames from the attack.)
Tadeusz sees the antique chiming clock,
recalling how he’d tug a string in back;
repeating it provides a pleasing shock,
the same Mazurka of Dombrowski plays.7
He scours the house, searching for the room,
ten years unseen, where he had spent the days
of child
hood. But now he must assume
that all has changed, finding that change quite bold.
What happened here? It seems someone rolled
a piano in, and song sheets — such disorder!
Clearly female hands had made this mess:
a hanger on the floor, a lace border —
half-draped upon a chair, an evening dress.
Fragrant plants were lined up in a row:
geranium, carnation, aster, and violet.
The young man spots new marvels down below:
right by the stream, where once there was a thicket
full of nettles, now a garden thrived,
crisscrossed by tiny paths, with clumps of mint
and English grass. There was a fencepost carved
with some initials, daisies and ribbons pinned
and marking it. The flowers were all slick
and wet; someone had sprinkled half the can
and left the garden, making such a quick
getaway, the gate still swung. Whoever ran
left shoeless footprints in the sand, though shallow,
as if these feet had barely skimmed the ground.
The traveler stood and mused beside the window,
inhaling all the scents. In his profound
confusion, he began to lean too far,
as if drawn to the garden and the path,
almost tumbling out. He began to stare
at something in the distance, taking his breath
away — a girl dressed in white, her slight
body almost uncovered, shoulders and
a swan-like neck revealed! Such a sight
is rare in Lithuania, a land
where modesty prevails. And though she thought
she was unseen, her arms were shyly crossed
to screen herself. Her hair was twisted taut
and wrapped around white paper strips — and lost,
for now, the ringlets coiled and dangling free.
And yet the rays of morning sunlight drowned
her in such a strange embellished glow, she
seemed to be a holy icon crowned.
Adam Mickiewicz Collected Poetical Works Page 10