Pan Tadeusz Analysis

Pan Tadeusz

or The Last Foray in Lithuania

By Adam Mickiewicz

Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz is a Romantic poem with a strong emphasis on the nation. Mickiewicz dedicated his life and creative work to the cause of the liberation of Poland, and this work is a fine example. The plot may have typical elements of a romantic, historical, and descriptive novel, but the treatment transforms it into a national epic. It clearly represents what Mickiewicz saw as the basis of a nation: a unity of people, united by a common language, history and tradition, and in certain cases, a geographical homeland. A new national consciousness is presented as a replacement for older patterns of group identity, as a means for achieving national unity, which for Mickiewicz, was the only way to gain independence and freedom.

For Mickiewicz, an essential element constituting the nation is a common history. In as much as this common history serves the purpose of unifying the people within the nation, its accuracy is irrelevant. Pan Tadeusz represents a myth of the past, "the land of dreams and memory Ð'- the only country left to the Pole."

There is but one place in this planet whole

Where happiness may be for every Pole Ð'-

The land of childhood! That shall aye endure

As holy as a first love and as pure,

Unshattered by the memory of mistake,

That no deceitful hopes can ever shake,

And that the changing tide of life cannot unmake.

The entire poem is written in this golden glow of memory, showing an idyllic, peaceful and harmonious setting. With the exception of the few cantos describing the foray, there is very little storm or tragedy within the poem. Everything is peaceful. Pan Tadeusz demonstrates how the myth of a golden, happy age can constitute the nation by uniting its peoples. Nevertheless, Mickiewicz makes it clear to his readers that this idyllic state of being has now past. The recurring of the word Ð''last' Ð'- Last Foray in Lithuania, last woÐ'ÑŸny (Court Apparitor), last steward of Horeszkos - suggests to Dr Kallenbach that it is a "reminder that all the types of humanity and the customs old as the history of the nation [represented in the play] wereÐ'... gathering to the dead." However, Pan Tadeusz is written in a manner that offers hope for the future, that such a harmonious state can once again be achieved.

Pan Tadeusz demonstrates the important role of tradition in constituting a nation. Mickiewicz looks back to the Lithuania of the years 1811-12, when Polish society appeared to have achieved order, stability and harmony Ð'- if only for a short time. The poem itself is perfectly ordered according to the thirteen-syllabic meter, with its rhymed couplets, which had been a traditional meter in Polish poetry since the 16th century. For the reader it soon becomes obvious that for Mickiewicz, order and stability lie in tradition.

Each kept his proper place of his own will.

The Judge observed the ancient customs still,

Nor suffered disrespect or negligence

For age or birth, rank or intelligence.

Ð''Such order,' he would say, Ð''makes nations great

And families, and without it they abate.

The Judge is thus presented as an example of the good old-fashioned Pole, an upright and honourable man, who loves his country and his family. The many meals mentioned within the poem are celebrated with all the observance of rite and ceremony, with Mickiewicz's careful repetition of the following before each:

The Chamberlain took the highest place of all,

By right of age and office; as he passed

He bowed to ladies, old men, young men last.

The food and drink served are themselves traditional, and are often made according to special recipes, served by special individuals entrusted with their preparation, and eaten and drunk with special utensils. These traditions and customs had been for the most part already blotted out from the face of the earth by the time Pan Tadeusz was written. This is symbolically represented in the final scene by the Polonez, a stately, traditional Polish dance, which in Polish literature had become synonymous with a passing away of the old order. Mickiewicz "eternalized that dead generation, it will not perish" wrote Krasinski. By celebrating the courtesy, hospitality, respect, modesty and patriotism of that by-gone era, Mickiewicz enshrined these values within the national character of Poland, ensuring that even today Poles strive to attain them. It demonstrates that tradition, in defining the values of a nation, becomes a very important characteristic within the nation itself. The life, the scenes, the characters which the poem described, though those of a vanished generation in a remote corner of Lithuania, seemed to succeeding generations of Poles to embody the ideals, the sentiments and the way of the whole nation.

Mickiewicz used Pan Tadeusz to express his belief that no individual can be truly free if he does not belong to a nation that is independent. Underlying the idyllic, peaceful setting of the poem is a strong patriotic undercurrent. The old servant of the Horeszko family who still clings to his ancient duties, and each day frequents the ruined castle with his bunch of keys at his girdle to wind two old broken clocks brilliantly represents the never-dying patriotism which Mickiewicz believed was still within every Pole. The presence of Captain Rykow in the early banquet scene of the poem serves as a reminder that Lithuania was occupied by Russian troops in 1811 following the Third Partition of 1795. The broken down and neglected hamlet of the Dobrzynski family (former gentry, now impoverished and forced to work alongside the peasants) can be seen as a metaphor of the entire Polish state, in decline from its period of greatness.

The war has started, brother, yes a war

For Poland! Now we shall be Poles once more!

The struggle for liberty and social justice of the Polish people is a very important role in Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz. He was convinced of the need for revolutionary

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