Pan Tadeusz Part 32

200 ["The finest palace in Warsaw was beyond dispute that of General Pac, who died in exile at Smyrna."-Ostrowski. The proprietor of the palace seems to have been present at Soplicowo at this very time: see p. 301.]

201 [This was a Polish escutcheon characterised by a golden crescent and a six-pointed golden star. It was borne by the Soplicas: see p. 319.]

202 [A village in eastern Galicia, the scene of a battle in 1667 between the Turks and the Poles under Sobieski.]

203 [See p. 295 and note 200.]

204 Radziwill the Orphan travelled very widely, and published an account of his journey to the Holy Land. [Mikolaj Krzysztof Radziwill was converted from Calvinism to Catholicism. In 1582-84 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Egypt, on which he wrote a book.]

205 [See p. 333.]

206 [Jaroszynski explains _kontaz_ as a sort of sausage, _arkas_ as a cold dish of milk, cream, and yolks of eggs, and _blemas_ (the same word as _blancmange_) as almond jelly.]

207 In the sixteenth, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century, at the time when the arts flourished, even banquets were directed by artists, and were full of symbols and of theatrical scenes. At a famous banquet given in Rome for Leo X. there was a centrepiece that represented the four seasons of the year in turn, and that evidently served as a model for Radziwill's. Table customs altered in Europe about the middle of the eighteenth century, but remained unchanged longest in Poland.

208 Pinety [Pinetti?] was a conjurer famous throughout Poland, but when he visited the country I do not know.

209 [Henryk Dembinski (1791-1864) took part in the Napoleonic wars, the insurrection of 1831, and the Hungarian insurrection of 1849.]

210 [Joseph Dwernicki (1778-1857), a member of the Legions, who in 1804 fitted out a squadron at his own cost. In 1826 he was made a general, and distinguished himself in the insurrection of 1831.]

211 [Samuel Rozycki entered the army in 1806; he took part in the insurrection of 1831.]

212 [The translator cannot find that _counterpoint_ is a term of fencing, but does not know how else to render _kontrpunkt_.]

213 [The Pulawski family were among the organisers and most prominent leaders of the Confederacy of Bar. Joseph Pulawski was the first commander-in-chief of its armed forces. His son Kazimierz won fame as a leader after his father's death. Later, in 1777, he came to America, and distinguished himself by his services to the cause of the revolutionists.

He was killed in 1779 at the attack on Savannah.]

214 [Michal Dzierzanowski, a Confederate of Bar and an adventurer famous in the eighteenth century; he took part in almost all the wars of his time. He died in 1808. The Cossack Sawa was one of the most active leaders in the Confederacy of Bar.]

215 The mournful song of Pani Cybulski, whom her husband gambled away at cards to the Muscovites, is well known in Lithuania.

216 [That is, is fickle. The translator is here indebted to Miss Biggs's version.]

217 [Charles Francois Dumouriez (1739-1823) was an agent of the French government sent to support the Confederacy of Bar. He later became prominent in the affairs of his own country.]

218 [The Piasts were the first royal dynasty of Poland. In later times the name was used to denote any candidate for the Polish throne who was of native birth.]

219 [The italicised words are of foreign origin in the original text. For old Maciek everything not Polish is Muscovite or German. Gerwazy has the same way of thinking: compare p. 318.]

220 [Doubtless Maciek had heard of the excommunication of Napoleon by Pius VII. in 1809.]

221 The fas.h.i.+on of adopting the French garb raged in the provinces from 1800 to 1812. The majority of the young men changed their style of dress before marriage at the desire of their future wives. [On the _kontusz_ see note 13.]

222 The story of the quarrel of Rejtan with the Prince de Na.s.sau, which the Seneschal never concluded, is well known in popular tradition. We add here its conclusion, in order to gratify the curious reader.-Rejtan, angered by the boasting of the Prince de Na.s.sau, took his stand beside him at the narrow pa.s.sage that the beast must take; just at that moment a huge boar, infuriated by the shots and the baiting, rushed to the pa.s.sage.

Rejtan s.n.a.t.c.hed the gun from the Prince's hands, cast his own on the ground, and, taking a pike and offering another to the German, said: "Now we will see who will do the better work with the spear." The boar was just about to attack them, when the Seneschal Hreczecha, who was standing at some distance away, brought down the beast by an excellent shot. The gentlemen were at first angry, but later were reconciled and generously rewarded Hreczecha.

223 [Compare p. 100.]

224 The Russian government recognises no freemen except the gentry (_szlachta_). Peasants freed by landowners are immediately entered in the rolls of the Emperor's private estates, and must pay increased taxes in place of the dues to their lords. It is a well-known fact that in the year 1818 the citizens of the province of Wilno adopted in the local diet a project for freeing all the peasants, and appointed a delegation to the Emperor with that aim in view; but the Russian government ordained that the project should be quashed and no further mention made of it. There is no means of setting a man free under the Russian government except to take him into one's family. Accordingly many have had the privileges of the gentry conferred on them in this way as an act of grace or for money.

225 [Compare p. 296, and note 201.]

226 ["Before the inauguration of a better taste by Mickiewicz and other great writers, the so-called French or Cla.s.sical school of literature in Poland produced a quant.i.ty of _panegyrics_ or complimentary verses in honour of great personages, with stale cla.s.sical images, and strained, far-fetched metaphors, dest.i.tute of real poetry. Our author has seized this happy opportunity of satirising the faults of cla.s.sicism."-M. A.

Biggs.]

227 ["Janissaries' music, a type of extraordinarily noisy Turkish martial music, was fas.h.i.+onable in eastern Europe in the eighteenth century, and was introduced into Poland."-Jaroszynski.]

228 [See p. 333.]

229 [See p. 334.]

230 ["Readers who have already observed into what close connection Mickiewicz loves to bring the phenomena of nature and the affairs of men, will not find it difficult, nor will they regard it as a forced interpretation, to understand the clouds, which at the close of the poem... he paints with such disproportionate breadth and with such apparent minuteness, as something quite different from mere external reality. They will have no difficulty in seeing in that western cloud, which was adorned with gold and pearl, but in the centre was blood-red, Napoleon, the great warrior of the west; or, if they prefer, the hopes of Poland that were linked to him. We are in the year 1812: both the aureole of that name, and the hopes and rejoicing that it aroused, we may recognise in the gleaming, but fleeting picture, which 'slowly turned yellow, then pale and grey,' and behind which the sun fell asleep with a sigh. Thus in this pa.s.sage, as well as earlier, in the words of Maciek (page 314), the poet gives us warning of the great tragedy which was soon to overwhelm not only Lithuania and Poland but the world."-Lipiner.]

231 [This concluding couplet imitates the conventional ending of a Polish fairy tale.]