Bigos

The article analyses the agonistic element of the canto 4 of Pan Tadeusz, focusing on the relations between art and reality as exemplified by the description of the “bigos”. It is exactly a projection of this description on the all-embracing agon of canto 4 that allows us to reveal the self-presentation of Mickiewicz as a Romantic artist and ironist, who elevates the description of cooking the “bigos” to the level of a cosmic event in which the four elements are involved. This is made possible owing to poet’s referring to an intertext which in this case is Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the Polish translation by Count Bruno Kicinski