Fame
All works of Mickiewicz including Pan Tadeusz are in the Polish language. He had been brought up in the culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a multicultural state that had encompassed most of what today are the separate countries of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Numerous quotations from Pan Tadeusz are well known in translation, above all its opening lines:
| “ | Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie;
Ile cię trzeba cenić, ten tylko się dowie, Kto cię stracił. |
” |
- Lithuania, my fatherland! You are like health;
- How much you must be valued, will only discover
- The one who has lost you.
-
- (translation by Katie Busch-Sorensen)
- O Lithuania, my country, thou
- Art like good health; I never knew till now
- How precious, till I lost thee.
-
- (translation by Kenneth R. Mackenzie)
- Lithuania, my country! You are as good health:
- How much one should prize you, he only can tell
- Who has lost you.
-
- (translation by Marcel Weyland)
- Oh Lithuania, my homeland,
- you are like health--so valued when lost
- beyond recovery; let these words now stand
- restoring you, redeeming exile's cost.
-
- (translation by Leonard Kress)
Read more about this topic: Pan Tadeusz
Famous quotes containing the word fame:
“Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat and potatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)