In 1966 Poland will celebrate the thousandth anniversary of her acceptance of Christianity, the first major event to bring Poland on to the modern European scene from the shade of prehistory. Looking back over the past millennium, Poles are now analysing their history, reassessing their cultural achievements, and looking for directives for the future. When the civilized world was out-growing the boundaries for Europe, Poland was in bondage. It is time that after 1,000 years of its existence knowledge of Polish culture should not be confined to one part of Europe but should extend over much more of the globe.
The Millennium of Christian Poland Celebration Committee in Canada, sponsors of this volume, is aiming to make Polish cultural achievements and information about Poland available to the Canadian people. As the first of its publications the Committee presents an English translation of Pan Tadeusz, a land-mark in Polish literature.
Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania is the greatest epic poem of Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). It was written in exile and published in Paris in 1833, during the author's long absence from his native country because of his patriotic sympathies. The scene of the poem is Lithuania on the eve of Napoleon's expedition into Russia in 1812 and its subject is a family feud among the country gentry; Mickiewicz gives vivid pictures of the life of the old Polish nobility and gentry, their manners and past times, their patriotic enthusiasms and his descriptions of the Lithuanian landscape especially have kept his poem in the hearts of generations of readers. The poem ends in the spirit of hope caused in the heart of every Pole by the French onslaught on Russia.
The original poem is in rhymed Alexandrine couplets, and the translation in the English heroic couplet; this is the first translation in rhymed English verse to be published. Watson Kirckconnell's gifts as translator and poet are well known, and this publication is a splendid opportunity to become acquainted with one of the world's great epics. Dr. William J. Rose provides a helpful historical introduction.

Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) is arguably Poland’s greatest poet. Born in Nowogródek in what is now Belarus, he is often compared to Goethe and Byron, and was the dominant figure in Poland’s Romantic Movement. Banished as a political subversive to central Russia in 1824, he was welcomed into the leading literary circles of Saint Petersburg and Moscow where he became a favorite for his agreeable manners and extraordinary talent for poetic improvisation. In 1829, he left the Russian Empire for a life of perpetual exile in Italy, France and Switzerland. For three years he lectured on Slavic literature at the Collège de France in Paris. He died in Constantinople while helping organize Polish and Jewish forces against Tsarism in the Crimean War of 1855. Among his great works besides Pan Tadeusz are his poetic drama Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve), his historical narrative poems Grażyna and Konrad Wallenrod, and his sublime Crimean Sonnets. His body rests in the crypt of the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, Poland.

Adam Mickiewicz's profile page

Watson Kirkconnell (1895-1977) was an army officer, a professor emeritus of Latin and English, ninth president of Acadia University (1948-1964), a Milton scholar, author of many volumes of prose and poetry, historian, and genealogist. He was also the joint founder of the Federal Citizenship Branch (1940), the Humanities Research Council of Canada (1943) and the Baptist Federation of Canada (1944). In 1936 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Watson Kirkconnell's profile page