5,079
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
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. The Tribune remembered him not as a model patriot, though, 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 mushroom picking (a popular Polish pastime, then and now), he would forage for fly agarics, a species of fungus 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 assemblies 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.
[[File:Daniel Chodowiecki, Chłopiec przy rożnie.jpg|thumb
