3,960
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
| rok = 1921
| url = https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Pan_Tadeusz_(wyd._1921)/całość
}}, 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 '': {{pron|saw-|pleet-{{small|SAWsaw|vaw}}-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. Gen. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski (pronounced ''dawm-: {{smallpron|dawm|BRAWFbRawf|skee}}-skee'', the guy the Polish national anthem is about) makes a request "that for the fete, he would like Polish cooking."<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verses 107–108</ref> Therefore, 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, in [[Epic Cooking: The Last Old Polish Feast|the next post]]. But first, let's take a peek inside the Soplicowo manor's kitchen, managed by Tribune Hreczecha.
== “Hreczecha is My Name” ==
|"<i>When {{...}} unexpectedly shot first a fly and, soon after, the Tribune's fly-swat.</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book II, verses 697–698</ref><br>{{small|From an illustration by Michał Elwiro Andriolli (1881)}}]]
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-{{smallpron|EHHReh|cheh|Hah}}-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 could take place and he would never 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[s]",<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book V, verses 427–428</ref> where 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 was spending a lot of time hunting flies. He would always carry a flyswatter around and, when mushroom picking (a popular Polish pastime, then and now), [[Epic Cooking: The Decorous Rite of the Mushroom Hunt#Mushroom War|he would forage for fly agarics]], a species of fungus used for killing the pesky insects.
}}
In a footnote, Mickiewicz adds that it's "now a very rare book, published over a hundred years ago by Stanisław Czerniecki."<ref name=obj>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Poet's explanatory notes, own translation</ref> And this is where 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-: {{smallpron|stah|nee|NEEsWahf}}-swahf churn-{{smallpron|chehr|YETnyet|skee}}-skee''). It was actually ''La cuisinière bourgeoise'' by Menon, translated into Polish and published by Wojciech Wielądko (pronounced '': {{smallpron|voy|VOYcheH}}-chekh vyeh-{{smallpron|LAWNDvyeh|lawnt|kaw}}-kaw''), a man who otherwise had little to do with catering business. All the Tribune would have found there were French culinary novelties rather than time-honoured Old Polish recipes.
[[File:Compendium ferculorum.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.15
[[File:Pałac w Kopaszewie.jpg|thumb|Kopaszewo Palace, Kościan County, Greater Poland]]
Aaand 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, then 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-: {{smallpron|skoo|zhef|ZHEFFskee}}-skee''), who lived in the village of Kopaszewo (pronounced '': {{pron|kaw-|pah-{{small|SHEHsheh|vaw}}-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
| nazwisko = Mickiewicz
| imię = Adam
}}</ref>
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 '': {{smallpron|TOOtoo|Ref}}-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, to Soplicowo, Lithuania, while also enhancing it with an Old Polish menu inspired by a cookery book he had kept as a dear souvenir of his stay in Lady Skórzewska's manor.
== In the Tribune's Kitchen ==
