The Unstable Text of Pan Tadeusz
The Unstable Text of Pan Tadeusz

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the changes introduced by the successive editors of Adam Mickiewicz’s narrative poem to the text version published by the poet himself. The most important one is undoubtedly the addition of the poem considered the “epilogue” to Pan Tadeusz, allegedly lost by Mickiewicz. No less radical are the interventions consisting in supplementing the text with fragments from the autograph or with the poet’s later additions made to the already printed text, as well as in corrective conjectures in instances regarded by the publisher as slips of the pen. The article compares the surviving authorial versions of the text, demonstrating that Mickiewicz himself treated his work as a continual process and tested new solutions on various occasions however, there is no evidence that he intended to introduce them into the printed text.

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