Kochanowski, Jan, Laments

(Berkeley :  University of California Press,  1920.)

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Jan Koehanowski (1530-84) was the greatest poet of Poland
-during its existence as an independent kingdom. His Laments are
his masterpiece, the choicest work of Polish lyric poetry before the
time of Mickiewicz.

Koehanowski was a learned poet of the Renaissance, drawing his

inspiration from the literatures of Greece and Rome.    He was also

a man of sincere piety, famous for his translation of the Psalms

into his native language.    In his Laments, written in memory of

his little daughter Ursula, who died in 1579 at the age of thirty

months,  he  expresses  the  deepest  personal  emotion  through  the

medium of a literary style that had been developed by long years

of study.    The Laments, to be sure, are not based on any classic

model and they contain few direct imitations of the classical poets,

though it may be noted that the concluding couplet of Lament XV

is translated from the Greek Anthology.   On the other hand they are

interspersed with continual references to classic story;  and, more

important, are filled with the atmosphere of the Stoic philosophy,

derived  from  Cicero  and   Seneca.    And  along with  this  austere

teaching there runs through them a warmer tone of Christian hope

and trust;  Lament XVIII is in spirit a psalm.    To us of today,

however, these poems appeal less by their formal perfection, by

their learning, or by their religious tone, than by their exquisite

humanity.      Koehanowski's   sincerity  of  grief,  his  fatherly  love

for his baby girl, after more than three centuries have not lost their

power to touch our hearts.   In the Laments Koehanowski embodied

a wholesome ideal  of life  such as  animated the finest spirits  of

Poland in the years of its greatest glory, a spirit both humanistic

and universally human.

G. R. NOYES.
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