Changes

Once again, we're coming back to ''Pan Tadeusz'', the 19th-century Polish national Polish epic by Adam Mickiewicz. There's still plenty of food and drink in this epic poem to discuss. In this series' previous posts we focused on the first ten books, or chapters; now it's time for the remaining two. There's a considerable difference between books XI and XII, and the earlier parts of the epic. First, there's a rather big leap in time. Books : books I to X are set within five days of the late summer of 1811; then we skip over all of autumn and winter, right into the spring of 1812 – a spring "profuse with events, pregnant with hope".,<ref>{{Cyt

}}, Book XI, verse 75</ref> as the poet reminisces. We can also observe a change in culinary terms: in the earlier books, the characters were having their everyday breakfasts, dinners and suppers that weren't any different from those eaten by actual Polish nobility in the early 19th century – which was also what the poet could have remembered from his own youth. But in Book XI, the village of Soplicowo (pronounced ''saw-pleet-{{small|SAW}}-vaw'') is visited by the Polish soldiers serving in Napoleon's ''Grande Armée'', on their way to Moscow. A great feast is given in their honour and Gen. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski (pronounced ''dawm-{{small|BRAWF}}-skee'', the guy the Polish national anthem is about) requests "that for the fete, he would like Polish cooking."<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verses 107–108</ref> The magnificent banquet consists of Old Polish dishes, whose names sounded foreign even in the ears of Mickiewicz himself – let alone in those of modern Poles! We're going to have a closer look at the feast itself, as described in the epic's final book, tomorrowin the next post. TodayBut first, let's take a peek inside the Soplicowo manor's kitchen , managed by Tribune Hreczecha.

Let's start by saying a few words about the Tribune himself, one of the more colourful characters in ''Pan Tadeusz''. We don't know his first name, but we do know that his surname was Hreczecha (pronounced, very roughly: ''gretch-{{small|EH}}-hah''). "Tribune" (Polish "''wojski''", Latin "''tribunus''") was a medieval title, originally used by officials who took care of knights' wives and children while their husbands were away at war; in Hreczecha's case, it was an unofficial honorific awarded by the local gentry out of respect for the old man. A middle-income nobleman, also known as a ''grykosiej'', or "buckwheat-sower" (in fact, Hreczecha's own surname comes from "''hrechka''", the Belarusian word for buckwheat), even though he had his own estate (he could afford to give his younger daughter, Tekla, a village in dowry), he preferred to live, along with Tekla, in the household of Judge Soplica, his more affluent friend, distant relative and might-have-been son-in-law (the Judge, in his youth, had been engaged to Marta, the Tribune's elder daughter, but she died before the wedding and he would never married marry anyone else). In Soplicowo, the Tribune had the role of a kind of seneschal, managing the Judge's domestic servants.

Earlier, the Tribune "with gentry had spent his life, eating, at assemblies, {{...}} or at council meeting",<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book V, verses 427–428</ref> were he mastered the ancient art of knife-throwing. But it was in the realm of hunting that the Tribune was considered a real expert. He had learned this skill as a young man serving at the court of Tadeusz Rejtan, a Polish national hero. But the Tribune remembered him not as a model patriot, but as a master hunter. As for his choice of game, he would always go for one of two extremes: on the one hand he believed that only large animals with horns, claws or fangs were worthy of being hunted by a nobleman. In his view, chasing hares was a good sport for youngsters and servants. "Hreczecha is my name – was his saying – since King Lech, it's no habit of a single Hreczecha to follow a rabbit."<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book I, verses 816–817</ref> On the other hand, he spent a lot time hunting flies. He would always carry a flyswatter around and, when mushroomingmushroom picking (a popular Polish pastime, then and now), he picked would forage for fly agarics, only to get rid of those fungi used for killing the pesky insects.

The Tribune was also a big talker. He could talk for hours on end about astrology, flies' mating habits, local legislatures and, most of all, about hunting. The poem is interspersed with the Tribune's chatter – often in episodes , as he keeps getting interrupted. He manages to finish only some of his stories by the end of the epic, but there's also one whose ending the poet had to recount in a footnote. Silence made the Tribune feel tired, so whenever he couldn't find anyone to converse with, he would run off to the noisy kitchen.

In a footnote, Mickiewicz adds that it's "now a very rare book, published over a hundred years ago by Stanisław Czerniecki."<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Poet's explanatory notes, own translation</ref> And this were it gets tricky. A Polish cookbook entitled ''Kucharz doskonały'' (''The Excellent Cook" '' or ''The Perfect Cook'', depending on how you translate it) did exist, but it was first published only in 1783, which was less than half a century rather than "over a hundred years" before ''Pan Tadeusz''. What's more, it wasn't written by Stanisław Czerniecki (pronounced ''stah-{{small|NEE}}-swahf churn-{{small|YET}}-skee''). It was actually ''La cuisinière bourgeoise'' by Menon that was , translated into Polish and published by Wojciech Wielądko (pronounced ''{{small|VOY}}-chekh vyeh-{{small|LAWND}}-kaw''), a man who otherwise had little to do with the catering business. All the Tribune would have found there were French culinary novelties rather than time-honoured Old Polish recipes.

So what was it about Czerniecki? Well, he was indeed an experience experienced chef, responsible for setting up aristocratic banquets for thousands of guests and also the author of the first cookbook printed in the Polish language. Only that this book – or, rather, a booklet, as it was small enough to fit into a pocket on one's chest, which was where the Tribune held it – had the bilingual, Latin-Polish title: ''''Compendium Ferculorum albo Zebranie potraw'' (both parts meaning ''A Collection of Dishes''). And this was – as we shall see tomorrow in the next post – precisely from this book that the Tribune got the recipes for all the dishes he would serve at the great banquet in Book XII.

Besides, it wasn't only the recipes that Mickiewicz took from the ''Compendium''. The mention of the dinner given by the "Count of Tęczyn" to Pope Urban VIII in Rome was also inspired by the same cookbook, and specifically, from the dedication its author addressed to his employer, Princess Helena Tekla Lubomirska. Princess Lubomirska, the wife of Prince Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, took active part in Polish political wife; she was also a great patroness of arts. Wacław Potocki and Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, whom I have quoted in some of my previous posts, dedicated their poems to her, while Czerniecki did the same with his cookbook. In the dedication, he recalled the time when, in 1633, her father, Prince Jerzy Ossoliński, Grand Chancellor of the Crown (roughly equivalent to a prime minister), was sent by the king of Poland as an envoy to the Holy See. At the time, the Polish Commonwealth was at the peak of its power and glory, a fact Ossoliński was not going to let anyone fail to notice. His retinue included the famed winged hussars, crimson-and-gold-upholstered carriages, ten camels carrying opulent presents for the pope, while the prince's mount was dressed in diamonds, pearls and rubies, and deliberately shod with loose golden horseshoes – so that the horse could lose them along the way for everyone to see. The banquet which Ossoliński gave to the pope was without a doubt no less osstentatious. This is how Czerniecki described it:

Of course, Mickiewicz reversed the sequence of events in his poem; if Czerniecki described the Roman banquet as a historical fact in his cookbook, then the same banquet couldn't have been prepared according to the instructions from the same cookbook.

Anyway, it looks like the poet confused two different cookery books (which were, as it happens, the only two Polish language cookbooks printed before the end of the 18th century) – ''Compendium Ferculorum'' by Czerniecki, published in 16281682, and ''The Perfect Cook'' by Wielądko, published a hundred years later. How come? Was it a mistake or poetic license? Maybe ''The Perfect Cook'' just had a simply ringed better ring in the poet's ear than the bland ''A Collection of Dishes'', so Mickiewicz switched the titles on purpose? But if so, then he could have a least explained this manipulation in a footnote. If he hadn't, then perhaps it was because he was genuinely in error mistaken himself. This conjecture is confirmed by a letter written by Edward Odyniec, who travelled together with Adam Mickiewicz in Italy, where he mentions a worn copy of a piece of culinary literature that the poet always would carry carried in his luggage.

| Adam wanted suggested to give a purely Polish-Lithuanian feast, according the the to ancient recipes from "The Perfect Cook", that is, a tattered old book which he carries around like a treasure in his travelling library and often reads it with great pleasure. Obviously, this idea fell through {{...}}

Distinguished Mickiewiczologist, Prof. Stanisław Pigoń, has suggested a quite convincing solution of this puzzle; it was ''Compendium ferculorum'' : the book that Mickiewicz loved to read when pining for Polish cuisine and dreaming of having an actual Old Polish banquet in real lifewas indeed ''Compendium ferculorum'', but it was old and tattered, and missing its title page. So Mickiewicz knew very well the contents of the work and the dedication, as well as the author's name, but he was ignorant of its the book's title. On the other hand, he probably never read ''The Perfect Cook'', but he might have heard about it; the title could have stuck in his head and he may have later associated it with the mysterious treasure-trove of Old Polish recipes that had somehow found its way into his hands.

And how did it find its way into his hands? Well, it seems that Mickiewicz intended to tall tell us that through the Tribune's mouth. The Tribune thought his cookbook so precious that he considered it a worthy gift for Gen. Dąbrowski. While presenting the book to the general, he was also going to recount the itinerary the book had travelled until it wondered wandered into Soplicowo.

This is where the Tribune got interrupted again and there would be no later occasion to pick up the thread. Now that our appetite for an interesting story has been whetted, the dish is being snatched away from our mouths! But don't despair, not all is lost; if something's missing in the canonical version, maybe we can find it in the deleted scenes? That's right! There's an original manuscript version of ''Pan Tadeusz'' with a passage that never made it into print. It says that the Tribune's cookbook originally belonged to a Greater Poland nobleman called Captain Poniński who used this book to give opulent feasts. Before he died, he had given it to his neighbour, Lord Skórzewski(pronounced ''skoo-{{small|ZHEFF}}-skee''), who lived in the village of Kopaszewo(pronounced ''kaw-pah-{{small|SHEH}}-vaw''). His widow, Lady Skórzewska, in turn, offered it to Bartek Dobrzyński, a Lithuanian who often travelled to Greater Poland for business. But Dobrzyński was a poor nobleman with a modest kitchen and had no use of a cookbook meant for aristocratic courts, so he gave it to the Tribune, for the benefit of Judge Soplica's household.<ref>{{Cyt

This Greater Poland connection isn't random. This is where Mickiewicz stayed for a few months in 1831, while an anti-Russian uprising was raging in the Russian partition of Poland. He wished to join the insurgency, but the border between Russian and Prussian partitions was guarded so well that the he got stuck in Greater Poland, a region that is, on the Prussian side. The uprising had been long quelled when Mickiewicz was still visiting the noble manors of the Prussian partition, sightseeing, romancing and writing poetry. Many of the details of everyday life, allegedly typical for Lithuanian nobility, that you will find in ''Pan Tadeusz'' are actually the result of the observations the poet made in Greater Poland. And his precious cookbook – "a dear souvenir of righteous customs", as he wrote in the deleted passage – really did once belong to an Antoni Poniński, who gifted it to Ludwik Skórzewski and whose widow, Honorata Skórzewska, gave it as a present to… no, not to Bartek Dobrzyński, but to Mickiewicz himself, while he was a guest at Kopaszewo.<ref>{{Cyt

This was also where he heard the tales of a great banquet of 1812, which Józef Chłapowski, Captain of Kościan, gave in the nearby palace of Turew(pronounced ''{{small|TOO}}-reff''), to the soldiers of the 1st Light Cavalry Regiment of the Imperial Guard (an elite unit of Napoleon's army, made up exclusively of Polish noblemen), his son, Dezydery Chłapowski, among them.<ref>A. Kuźmiński, ''op. cit.'', p. 126</ref> Mickiewicz would then poetically transfer this feast from Turew, Greater Poland feast , to Soplicowo, Lithuania, while also enhancing it with an Old Polish menu inspired by a cookery book he had kept as a souvenir of his stay in the regionLady Skórzewska's manor.