Epic Cooking: The Perfect Cook: Difference between revisions

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.

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.

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'':

A tu, dla porównania, pierwsze wersy z&nbsp;drugiej księgi ''Iliady'' w&nbsp;tłumaczeniu Franciszka Dmochowskiego:

| <poem>Inni spali, bogowie i&nbsp;ziemscy rycerze;

| źródło = {{Cyt  

  | inni    = tłum. Franciszek Ksawery Dmochowski

}}

Rym ten sam, z&nbsp;tym że tu mamy boga wszystkich bogów planującego wojnę trojańską, a&nbsp;tam – drobnego szlachcica planującego obiad. Takich zbieżności można znaleźć więcej; ''Pan Tadeusz'' to w&nbsp;dużej części po prostu parodia ''Iliady''. Co ciekawe, Mickiewicz najczęściej parafrazuje epos Homera właśnie wtedy, kiedy pisze o&nbsp;Hreczesze. Ale nic w&nbsp;tym dziwnego: przecież kiedy Wojski zabiera się za gotowanie, to efektem nie będzie zwykły posiłek – ale prawdziwie epicka uczta!