''Pan Tadeusz'' is told in flashbacks as the author, Adam Mickiewicz, reads his work to a group of elderly exiles in Paris. The story takes place over the course of five days in 1811 and one day in 1812 in rolling landscapes of Lithuania inhabited by Poles whose homeland has been recently partitioned among Russia, the Austrian Empire and Prussia. Not far off in history looms Napoleon's Patriotic War of 1812, the prospect of which heartens Poles yearning for liberation. But more immediately, the characters in ''Pan Tadeusz'' are feuding among themselves.