Małgorzata Orzeł
Ossolinski National Institute
Peregrinations and adventures of the Pan Tadeusz manuscript
The lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an integral part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Adam Mickiewicz's place of birth, growing up and entering life – and their culture became an endless source of inspiration for the poet. While creating the worlds of his ballads, poems, dramas, he was reaching directly to folk tales, myths and historical events, also in language and phrasing.
„Pan Tadeusz”(1834), Mickiewicz's last, ultimate literary work, is also an example of creating the represented world, building it from historical, geographical and cultural facts related to locations which the poet's memory had never completely abandoned. They became a synonym of the Homeland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Poland. The special significance of this work is owed also to the perfection of language – Polish in its innovative and semantically rich version.
Since the poem was published in print, its life as a national epic, crucial for Polish literature, has begun. The manuscript became the most valuable artifact of Polish literature. The fates of the manuscript – its travels from Paris, where it was written, through Kraków and Lviv to Wrocław; from the poet's personal libraries, display at the Tarnowski Museum in Dzików, the Manuscript Department at the Ossoliński National Institute in Lviv, the Manuscript Department at the Ossolineum in Wrocław – an eventually, yo the Pan Tadeusz Museum at the Ossoliński National Institute, is a fascinating story – not only about the poem itself, but also of Poles, from 1834 to 2018.
