Pan Tadeusz: The Last Forray Into Lithuania by Adam Mickiewicz is the Polish classic, the ‘national epic’. In English, there isn’t a sole work with comparable stature and ubiquity. To a Pole, the name Adam Mickiewicz is emblematic of what it means to be Polish. He is a cultural icon in Polish literature, widely considered the Polish national poet. The poem is a tangle of interweaving threads. In brief: a student returns from studying in the city to his family’s gentry manor in rural Lithuania, at a time when that country was under the control of Tsarist Russia. Romantic, political, familial, and military conflicts ensue. The play directed by Mariusz Pilawski is the adaptation of the poem.