Epic Cooking: The Perfect Cook: Difference between revisions
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{{Z wizytą w Soplicowie}} | {{Z wizytą w Soplicowie}} | ||
We're coming back again to ''Pan Tadeucz'', the 19th-century 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, of ''Pan Tadeusz''; 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 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 | |||
| nazwisko = Mickiewicz | | nazwisko = Mickiewicz | ||
| imię = Adam | | imię = Adam | ||
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| url = https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Pan_Tadeusz_(wyd._1921)/całość | | url = https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Pan_Tadeusz_(wyd._1921)/całość | ||
}}, | }}, Book XI, verse 75</ref> We can also observe a change in culinary terms: in the earlier book 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 is visited by the Polish soldiers serving in Napoleon's Grand Army, on their way to Moscow. A great feast is given in their honour and Gen. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski (pronounced ''dawm-{{small|BRAWF}}-ski'') 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, tomorrow. Today, let's take a peek inside the kitchen managed by Tribune Hreczecha. | ||
== "Hreczecha is My Name" == | == "Hreczecha is My Name" == | ||
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From an illustration by Michał Elwiro Andriolli (1881).</poem>]] | From an illustration by Michał Elwiro Andriolli (1881).</poem>]] | ||
Let's start by saying a few words about the 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 title 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 gave his younger daughter, Tekla, a village in dowry), he preferred to live in the household of Judge Soplica, his 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 never married 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 was prone to going for 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 fly-swat around and, when mushrooming, he picked fly agarics, only to get rid of those pesky insects! | |||
The Tribune was also a big talker. He could talk for hours about astrology, fly reproduction, 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; there's one whose ending the author had to tell in a footnote. Silence made the Tribune fell tired, so when he couldn't find anyone to converse with, he would run off to the noisy kitchen. | |||
[[File:Daniel Chodowiecki, Chłopiec przy rożnie.jpg|thumb | [[File:Daniel Chodowiecki, Chłopiec przy rożnie.jpg|thumb | ||
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Maybe this is how he got his culinary expertise? | |||
In his formative years, which he most likely spent in some Jesuit school, the Tribune must have been made to read classic epics, such as Homer's ''Illiad'' or Vergil Maro's ''Aeneid'. He wold later refer to the latter as "my friend Maro",<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 977</ref> even though he probably knew the ''Aeneid'''s plot from scholars' commentaries rather than the epic itself. Mickiewicz himself, no doubt, had to read the same classics, in their 18th-century Polish translations, as a schoolboy. And while he didn't think very highly of these translations' poetic value, they must left a deep impression on his memory. Just see for yourself; take this excerpt from Book XI of ''Pan Tadeusz'': | |||
{{ Cytat | {{ Cytat | ||