The Polish Swan Triumphant : Essays on Polish and Comparative Literature from Kochanowski to Norwid [1 ed.] 9781443854245, 9781443849692

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The Polish Swan Triumphant

The Polish Swan Triumphant: Essays on Polish and Comparative Literature from Kochanowski to Norwid

By

George Gömöri

The Polish Swan Triumphant: Essays on Polish and Comparative Literature from Kochanowski to Norwid By George Gömöri This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by George Gömöri All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4969-3, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4969-2

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................................. vii Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1 ‘The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys’ and Bornemisza’s ‘Magyar Elektra’ Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 11 Cochanoviana in Foreign Libraries Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 15 Where was István Báthori Educated? Or: The Genesis of a Legend Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 19 Eulogies of Kochanowski in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Encyclopaedias Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 25 Montaigne’s Praise of Stefan Batory: A Note on His Source Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 31 %DURTXH(OHPHQWVLQWKH3RHWU\RI%iOLQW%DODVVLDQG0LNRáDM6ĊS 6]DU]\ĔVNL Chapter Seven........................................................................................... 47 Sir Philip Sidney’s Hungarian and Polish Connections Chapter Eight ............................................................................................ 59 Sir Philip Sidney’s Polish Friend: An Amendment Chapter Nine............................................................................................. 63 Poles in Hugo Blotius’s Album Amicorum Chapter Ten .............................................................................................. 67 Polish Authors in Ben Jonson’s Library Chapter Eleven ......................................................................................... 73 ĝZLDWRZD5R]NRV]: Hieronim Morsztyn’s Poetic Survey of Human Life

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Table of Contents

Chapter Twelve ........................................................................................ 95 µ7KH3ROLVK6ZDQ7ULXPSKDQW¶(QJOLVK5HFHSWLRQRI0DFLHM.D]LPLHU] Sarbiewski in the Seventeenth Century Chapter Thirteen ..................................................................................... 119 The Verse Letter in the Early Polish Baroque Chapter Fourteen .................................................................................... 133 The Myth of Byron in Norwid’s Life and Work Chapter Fifteen ....................................................................................... 147 Norwid’s Image of England and America Original Place of Publication .................................................................. 159

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This collection could not have been published without the generous help of the Grabowski Foundation (London). Some of the essays were first published in the 2[IRUG6ODYRQLF3DSHUV 3ROLVK5HYLHZ7KH0RGHUQ/DQJXDJH5HYLHZand 7KH6ODYRQLFDQG(DVW (XURSHDQ5HYLHZ. “The Verse Letter in the Early Baroque” was included in M. Delaperrière (ed.) /H%DURTXHHQ3RORJQH(INALCO, Paris, 1990).

CHAPTER ONE ‘THE DISMISSAL OF THE GREEK ENVOYS’ AND BORNEMISZA’S ‘MAGYAR ELEKTRA’ A comparative study of Polish and Hungarian literature could bring to light hitherto unnoticed affinities between these two literatures: while in spite of close dynastic and cultural contacts, there have been comparatively few direct literary influences, we can often establish similar trends and draw significant parallels. Péter Bornemisza’s (OHFWUD(or as it is often called, “Hungarian” or 0DJ\DU (OHNWUD  and -DQKochanowski’s 2GSUDZDSRVáyZJUHFNLFK(The Dismissal of the Grecian Envoys) is a case in point – they are the first genuine examples of a play written in Hungarian and Polish respectively. Both plays entail a message relevant to the given political and social situation; both, in the guise of a tale borrowed from ancient Greek/Hellenic history, raise problems of great importance for the future of the communities which they represent. 7KRXJKWKHVXEMHFW-matter of both plays is historical (that is, historical in a semi-mythological fashion), the revenge of Orestes upon his father’s murderers and the ominous dismissal of the Grecian envoys from Troy are seen by the authors through the prism of Erasmian (or in the case of Bornemisza, Protestant) Humanist ideals. Both dramas were commissioned and written (or in the case of 2GSUDZD touched up and completed) for a specific occasion. Bornemisza wrote his (OHFWUD in 1558 to entertain his Hungarian fellow-students in Vienna and also to provide them with a play which could easily be staged. As for 2GSUDZD SRVáyZ JUHFNLFK, it was Jan Kochanowski’s special gift to Jan Zamoyski for the Chancellor’s 1578 wedding, although it had probably been written much earlier; according to one view, still in the poet’s courtly period.1 It was performed (as far as we know) only once in front of the distinguished guests, and it was followed by an additional piece of Latin verse 2USKHXV 6DUPDWLFXV) which reflected upon the political situation; likely a war with Muscovy. Although both the Polish and the Hungarian plays were written 1 Cf. T. Ulewicz’s introduction to 2GSUDZDSRVáyZJUHFNLFK%LEOLRWHNDQDURGRZD Warsaw, 1962;/9,

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for an élite audience, their respective styles correspond to different models of taste and are geared to different levels of expectation. Bornemisza’s creative adaptation of Sophocles’ (OHFWUD is in prose, though he uses a rich, expressive language which abounds in rhetorical structures and dramatic metaphors; he also increased the length of the original substantially, from 1510 to 2050 lines.2 Kochanowski’s 2GSUDZD, on the other hand, is a fairly short play (all in all 606 lines) in blank verse, the lines varying in length from eleven to twelve and thirteen syllables and including a striking metric experiment in the Third Chorus.3 Metric variety mitigates and partly offsets the uniformity lent to the play by its elegant rhetoric; it also helps in the individuation of particular characters through defining their specific mode of speech. (For instance, the fast-moving exchange between Antenor and Alexander is in the eleven-syllable verse, but the same Antenor speaks in the more dignified thirteen-syllable verse when addressing Priam.) Péter Bornemisza’s main source was Sophocles’ (OHFWUD, which he learned to appreciate through Georg Tanner’s lectures on the Greek playwright in Vienna. As Bornemisza put it in his Latin afterword to the Hungarian text of the play, he had found the reading of Sophocles fruitful “both from a moral and a political point of view”.4 At the time, Sophocles was being discovered all over Europe: Tanner, for example, was familiar with Melanchton’s commentaries on (OHFWUD and knew such adaptations of the play as those of Lazare de Baïf in French (1537) and Vitus Winshemius’ in German (1546). Sophocles was not unknown in Poland HLWKHU VXIILFH WR PHQWLRQ 6WDQLVáDZ *UHSVNL¶V LQDXJXUDO OHFWXUHV GHYRWHG to him at Cracow University in 1565 and Walenty Jan Jakubowski’s now lost poem on Antigone, written not much later.5 As for Kochanowski, he seems to have been more impressed by Euripides and Seneca than Sophocles; he translated a fragment of Euripides’ $OFHVWLV and the influence of Seneca on 2GSUDZDhas also been established.6 Bornemisza, although he clearly admires Sophocles, chose to reinterpret him in several ways. Broadly speaking, the original text 2

István Borzsák, $] DQWLNYLWiV ;9, V]i]DGL NpSH, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1960, 16. 3 ³2ELDáRVNU]\GáDPRUVNDSáDZDF]NR«´-DQ.RFKDQRZVNL']LHáDSROVNLH, wyd. 5, Warsaw, 1967, vol. 2, 103-04. This experiment was apparently influenced by lines 752-75 of Euripides’ drama +LSSRO\WXV; see 3RHPVE\-.RFKDQRZVNL, ed. by George Napall Noyes, Berkeley, 1928, 13. 4 Borzsák, op. cit. 81. 5 Ulewicz, op.cit., XVI. 6 Wiktor Weintraub, 5]HF]F]DUQROHVND, Cracow, 1977, 285.

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underwent three kinds of change in his hands – he Christianised, modernised, and also “nationalised” it, i.e. applied the text to specific local conditions. Something similar happened to the Homeric episode of the visit and dismissal of the envoys in Kochanowski’s treatment. The “national” interpretation of the theme corresponded (in both cases) to the social and political situation of the two countries in question, which differed markedly from each other. The situation in a loosely centralised Poland, VXEMHFW WR WKH FHQWULIXJDO SXOO RI SRZHUIXO PDJQDWHV DQG VWURQJ regional interests, yet run on the basis of the “noblemen’s democracy”, and in a Hungary torn by wars for a quarter of a century, and by 1551 GH IDFWR divided into three different parts ruled by different rulers, was quite dissimilar. Both authors were well-travelled, with shorter or longer periods of study abroad: Bornemisza may have studied in Padua, was a student in Vienna and Wittenberg; Kochanowski had been to Königsberg before Padua, and after Padua visited Paris. In fact, as far as we know, both of them could have been in Padua in 1557, and if so, they could have met; after all it was at that university7 that Kochanowski befriended the learned Humanist clergyman András Dudith, and in all probability made the acquaintance of another Hungarian humanist, János Zsámboki-Sambucus. Kochanowski’s ties with Padua and with Italian humanism in general were, of course, much closer than Bornemisza’s and there is reason to believe that his erudition and familiarity with Greek and Latin writers was also deeper than that of the author of 0DJ\DU(OHNWUD who, when quoting such authorities, often used second-hand sources or commentaries rather than the original text.8 This is not to question Bornemisza’s mastery of Greek; we can be reasonably sure that he used Sophocles and not some Latin translation of the original; on the other hand 0DJ\DU(OHNWUD was his sole undertaking as translator-adaptor, whereas Kochanowski proved his erudite skill not only on Euripides but also on Homer (he translated the Third Canto of the ,OLDG and the lesser-known Alexandrian Greek poet, Aratos (author of 3KDLQRPHQD). In his play the Polish poet adhered to the rules handed down to posterity by Aristotle – he preserved the three unities discarded by Bornemisza.9 In avoiding the representation of direct action on stage Kochanowski was keeping to the spirit of Renaissance drama which, on the whole, preferred to operate with ‘set speeches’, i.e. reported action. 7

See his two Latin poems to Dudith in Jan Kochanowski, (OHJLDUXP /LEUL ,,,,, eusdem )RULFRHQLD Cracow, 1584, 94-97 and 149-50. 8 Borzsák, op. cit., 303. 9 Between Acts I and II of 0DJ\DU(OHFWUD twenty years have passed.

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Chapter One

Bornemisza, on his part, was not concerned with this particular convention and showed, for example, the murder of Aegisthus by Orestes on stage. The framework of Greek mythology and religion proved to be too constricting for both authors. Although in certain passages of 2GSUDZD SRVáyZJUHFNLFK we find invocations of Apollo and Venus, the Chorus at LWVILUVWDSSHDUDQFHDGGUHVVHVRQO\RQH*RGµ2%RĪHQDZLHONLPQLHELH¶  also Helen’s Old Lady and Antenor speak of ‘God’ in the singular, which implies a Christian rather than pagan deity. This ‘Christianization’ of the immortals is even more apparent in Bornemisza’s 0DJ\DU(OHNWUDwhere for instance Orestes’s prayer (Act III, Scene 2) sounds not only Christian but positively Protestant in its phrasings: “Oh eternal, almighty Lord, whose merciful eyes are upon all WKRVH LQ PLVHU\« , EHVHHFK Thee, my dear God, if it pleases you, take me to my land in peace and demonstrate it WKURXJKP\KDQGWKDW\RXDUHD*RGWKDWDYHQJHVVLQ«´10 Clytaemnestra also refers to ‘God the Lord (~ULVWHQ)’ and her Sophoclean prayer to Apollo (Act III, Scene 1) is changed by the Hungarian poet into a prayer to a Christian God. The only lapse in Bornemisza’s otherwise consistent elimination of Greek gods occurs in the same scene, where Electra, during her argument with her mother, advises her to consult ‘Diana’, in order to find out from the goddess why Iphigenia was really sacrificed.11 (In the Greek original she is, of course, Artemis not Diana, but most Hungarians knew the Latin equivalent goddess rather than the Greek one). From Clytaemnestra’s reply Bornemisza deletes the name of the goddess altogether but makes an oblique reference to her which could also be construed in a Christian way: ‘So should the Holy Woman (6]HQW$VV]RQ\) KHOS PH \RX¶OO SD\ IRU WKLV RQFH $HJLVWKXV UHWXUQV¶12 Perhaps in Bornemisza’s case this thorough Christianisation was necessary in order to create an illusion of immediacy for the audience, reminding them that while this tale was about a Greek royal family, the same things could happen anywhere at any time; that the tale had wider moral implications. This impression is reinforced by the language of the play. While they often use religious rhetoric or express themselves in slightly elevated language, Bornemisza’s characters basically speak the vernacular in the same way as it was spoken in Hungarian castles and country houses at the time. In other words, the language is plastic, vivid, often racy; it includes popular axioms, proverbs and colloquialisms. Even the Queen herself, Clytaemnestra, sounds remarkably outspoken in her first monologue: ‘Let God be thanked that I managed to get rid of my husband, this old hound 10

Péter Bornemisza, 9iORJDWRWWtUiVRN, Budapest, 1955, 46. ibid., 56. 12 ibid., 58. 11

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$JDPHPQRQ ZKR KDG ZDQWHG WR NHHS PH RQ D WLJKW UHLQ«¶13 (This particular monologue is Bornemisza’s invention.) Equally outspoken and direct is Electra in her speech, and also the Chorus which sometimes DSSHDUVWREHMXVWRQHSHUVRQEXWDWRWKHUWLPHVLVDJURXSRI\RXQJJLUOV As for Kochanowski’s language in 2GSUDZD, it is not nearly as direct as Bornemisza’s, though its general rhetorical stylization still leaves room for individualised speech. Antenor’s statesmanlike observations differ in tone from the more emotional speeches of Alexander (Paris) and Helena, MXVW DV 3ULDP¶V SHURUDWLRQ LV PXFK PRUH UHVWUDLQHG WKDQ WKH SDVVLRQDWH condemnation of Troy by Ulysses or Cassandra’s visionary utterings about the destruction of her native city. Even the longest set speech in the play, the Messenger’s account of the Senate’s deliberations about the fate of Helena is varied enough to hold our attention: his report mimics different speeches made at the meetings, amongst them one by a certain Iketaon. This speech is crucial for the further course of events. It is short-tempered and emotional, but at the same time colourful and vivid – other arguments look anaemic in comparison.14 In vividness Iketaon comes closest to Bornemisza’s dramatic heroes which include a character, unknown to Sophocles but well-known to sixteenth-century Europe, called ‘Parasitus’. He is a cynical courtier, first playing into the hands of Aegisthus, but in the final scene of the play actually helping Orestes to kill his former royal master. Iketaon may not be a turncoat, but he is a skilful, and hence dangerous, demagogue. In 2GSUDZD his impetuous directness is the exception rather than the rule, the unifying element being a dignified fluency. Kochanowski’s state (though corrupt inside) is upheld by rank, pride and dignity; Bornemisza’s by passion, pomp and power. My parallel rests, to a large extent, on the political didactic function of both plays. Power, when used irrationally and immorally, destroys itself; not immediately, but in due course. Péter Bornemisza actually states this in his Hungarian introduction to 0DJ\DU(OHNWUD: ‘Consider this play, my ORUGV WR EH VXFK DQ HQWHUWDLQPHQW LQ ZKLFK« KXman life is put right, in which you shall see how terribly the powerful King and Queen of Greece have to pay for their heinous crimes, from which all kings, lords, great ones as well as small ones can take a lesson and a great example that God has the poweU WR DYHQJH«’15 The same thing is repeated in the Latin afterword, the motto of which could be a line quoted by Bornemisza: ‘'LVFLWH LXVWLWLDP PRQLWL HW QRQ VSHUQHUH GLYRV¶ /HDUQ MXVWLFH IURP admonitions and do not despise the gods). Despising, or rather ignoring, 13

ibid., 36. Weintraub, op.cit.,146. 15 Bornemisza, op.cit., 33. 14

Chapter One

6

the gods is here equivalent to the transgression of natural laws – the murder of close blood-relations and the usurpation of royal power certainly belong in this category. Bornemisza lays special stress on the general moral message, too, by claiming that one of his aims was to show ‘the godless and the Epicureans’, that, however long we have to wait for God’s punishment, one day it will unfailingly arrive. Moreover, Aegisthus in 0DJ\DU(OHNWUD is not only a usurper but also a tyrant, insecure in his position. When he hears of Orestes’ alleged death, KHLVEHVLGHKLPVHOIZLWKMR\QRZDWODVWKHFDQEUHDWKHIUHHO\IRUQRZKH can smash whatever is left of ‘the party of Orestes’. ‘What I want is to have no greater master in the land than myself’ ($]WDNDURPH]RUV]iJED W|EE ~U QiODPQiO QH OHJ\HQ) – says Aegisthus. A comparison with Sophocles reveals that Bornemisza considerably amplified Aegisthus’ relief over the death of Orestes and added to the Greek text specific elements of sixteenth-century Hungarian life. This Central European Aegisthus wants ‘to gather a new court’ (PDMG~MXGYDUWWpWHWHN) and punish those foolish enough to resist: ‘I shall give presents to all those on my side, but those who still cause trouble I shall have cut down’.16 This was a practice fairly common in medieval Europe as well as in fifteenthsixteenth century Hungary; in fact, it can be read as a commentary on the Hungarian-Transylvanian situation after 1526 with two crowned kings fighting for the throne, their influential supporters changing sides several times, destroying or taking over the estates of their less Machiavellian neighbours in the process. During this period, assassinations of important political figures or army commanders who had amassed too much power in their hands was not a rare event in those parts (e.g. Gritti’s assassination in 1534, György ‘Fráter’ Martinuzzi’s in 1551). One of Bornemisza’s critics suggests that when he condemns ‘tyranny’ he has in mind Turkish rule, which was branded as ‘tyrannical’ in the anti-Turkish Humanist literature of the period.17 Nevertheless, it is clear even to the same critic that when Bornemisza condemns ‘usurping princes’ he also passes MXGJHPHQW XSRQ WKRVH µ$WKHQLDQ¶ Ln fact, Hungarian) magnates who behave like Aegisthus. Considering the further course of Bornemisza’s life (around 1561 or 1562 he became a Lutheran minister, later publishing a collection of his homilies some of which were strongly critical of the immoral, dissolute way of life of certain magnates), as well as his clashes ZLWKSRZHUIXOIHXGDOORUGVZKRHQIRUFHGMXULVGLFWLRQRQWKHLURZQODQGV one can see that his ideas about tyrannicide, as put forward in 0DJ\DU (OHNWUD, were less ambiguous and more widely applicable than those of 16 17

ibid., 95. Borzsák, op.cit., 95.

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Sophocles. Also, in contrast to the Greek dramatist, Bornemisza adds a monologue to the plot, an epilogue discussing the double murder committed by Orestes. It is spoken by the Master, Orestes’ tutor, who tells the audience that while ‘it is a mighty wondrous thing that a son should murder his own mother’ (though this was but a link in the chain of murders perpetrated by the descendants of Pelops), he hopes that Orestes – aided by good advice – will not come to the same sad end: ‘He should be pious and pure in his life, he should live truthfully and mercifully lest he should come to the same end as his forbears.’18. Though there is a curse on the family, piety and the exercise of virtue might save Orestes. In his monologue the Master refers to mother-killer Orestes as ‘this poor orphan’; earlier, Orestes in his prayer to God contrasts himself (‘your small servant’) with that ‘conceited, powerful king’ whom he can destroy only thanks to God’s power vested in him. It has been suggested that Bornemisza, when attacking ‘tyranny’, thought of the anti-Protestant Habsburg rule, that Aegisthus stands for the Emperor Ferdinand and that Orestes triumphs not only as a liberator from tyranny but as a restorer of the laws of Protestant morality.19 7KLVDUJXPHQWUHVWVPRUHRQFRQMHFWXUH than on facts; what LV certain is that 0DJ\DU (OHNWUD condemns greed, hunger for power and lechery – crimes that lead to the downfall of the royal couple who share between them the responsibility for Agamemnon’s death twenty years earlier. It has to be stressed that 2GSUDZD SRVáyZ JUHFNLFK is not a drama ‘with a key’ either. It cannot be linked with any specific event in sixteenthcentury Polish history, although Kochanowski ‘Polonized’ his Troy to some extent – its political system resembles the Polish democracy of the nobility.20 It is a system fraught with grave dangers. From the Messenger’s account it is clear that in the Senate, matters are not decided upon their merits by sober and rational arguments, but by opportunism (some of the senators were bribed by Aleksander) and by emotional ‘gut arguments’ of the kind marshalled by Iketaon. Demagogy is a constant threat to any democracy; in Troy’s case its skilful application leads to the ruin of the state. In the second choral ode Kochanowski hammers out a moral of universal validity: ‘The crimes of the rulers caused the ruin of cities/And led to the devastation of large empires’ (3U]HáRĪRQ\FK Z\VWĊS\ PLDVWD ]JXELá\,V]HURNLHGRJUXQWXFDUVWZD]QLV]F]\á\).21 As this warning is not KHHGHG E\ WKH 7URMDQV D IXUWKHU GUDPDWLF ZDUQing is pronounced by 18

Bornemisza, op.cit., 99. József Szigeti, $%DODVVL-&RPRHGLDpVV]HU]ĘMH Budapest, 1967, 162. 20 Janina AbramowskaàDGLIRUWXQD, Warsaw, 1974, 47. 21 Kochanowski, ']LHáDSROVNLH, vol. 2, 96. 19

8

Chapter One

Cassandra who can foresee the whole sequence of events culminating in the sack of Troy. She is not listened to either: she is a woman ‘possessed by the spirit of Apollo’, that is both inspired and deranged. As for the third ‘warning speech’ – the one by Ulysses beginning with the words ‘O state GLVRUGHUO\ DQG QHDU WR UXLQ«¶ 2 QLHU]ąGQH NUyOHVWZR L ]JLQLHQLD EOLVNLH«)22 – it is uttered by an envoy of the enemy, that is, by an outsider, and though it contains much bitter truth, it also could be disqualified and ignored. At the end of the play, however, when it is reported that hostilities have broken out, Antenor (hitherto a spokesman of the anti-war faction) makes a surprising turnabout and suggests an attack on the Greeks. Most critics put this change down to Antenor’s statesmanship or else they suggest that the last lines of the play were ‘concocted’ by Kochanowski to make the transition to 2USKHXV 6DUPDWLFXV less abrupt. This problem arises because 2GSUDZDis basically a drama of responsibility; it is based on rational, humanistic premises with strong pacifist undertones. In other words Kochanowski could not have written his play when Zamoyski commissioned it – it was only completed and perhaps altered in some parts for the occasion of the Chancellor’s wedding. In 1577, a war with Muscovy was almost a foregone conclusion and no poet with such experience in court and in the world as Kochanowski would have written such a play under the circumstances. After all, in line 577 Antenor still condemns Aleksander in strong words – KHLVWKHURRWRIDOOWKLVWURXEOH Although in the last lines of the play he takes up the challenge of war, Kochanowski obviously felt that this was not quite enough to dispel doubts about his ‘message’ – hence his epilogue, 2USKHXV 6DUPDWLFXV a call WRDUPVWRIDFHWKHRXWVLGHWKUHDWµ3ROHV«WKLVLVQRWLPHIRULGOHQHVV VOHHSQRWIRUIHVWLYLWLHV«¶23 This message is for the political moment; as for the play, its message is a moral-political one, and as such, it is above transitory exigencies. It blames the way in which the state of Troy functions: there is also a kind of tyranny here. While the citizens are free to listen to any argument, they are vulnerable to the more subtle tyranny of demagogy and that of private interest which in the end will bring about the decline of the polity and the ruin of the state. Two recent studies on 2GSUDZD and 0DJ\DU (OHNWUD respectively discussed the influence of Aeschylus. In the case of 2GSUDZDsimilarities have been claimed between Kochanowski’s plays and Aeschylus’ 7KH 3HUVLDQV, notably the lack of a single individual hero and the report of the

22 23

ibid., 102. 7UE\&]0LáRV]TXRWHGLQ'DYLG:HOVK-DQ.RFKDQRZVNL. Boston. 1974, 75.

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Messenger as the real culmination point of both plays.24 Kochanowski certainly read Aeschylus, who was not unknown to Bornemisza either: in fact he mentions one of Aeschylus’ plays in the Latin foreword to 0DJ\DU (OHNWUD.25 This play is $JDPHPQRQ, a certain aspect of which is also reflected in Bornemisza drama: namely, the idea of resistance to tyranny. After the murder of their lawful king, several old men in the Chorus of Aeschylus call upon the people to resist the usurper and one of them declares: ‘It is not to be endured. To die is better. / Death is more comfortable than tyranny.26 Electra in Bornemisza’s play is in complete agreement with this view and it is stressed that Orestes has to kill Aegisthus not only to avenge his father’s death but also to deliver his ‘miserable people’ from slavery. Finally, neither in 0DJ\DU (OHNWUD, nor in 2GSUDZD is IDWXP a dominant factor. It is not the will of the gods or a consequence of an ancient curse that Greek-7URMDQQHJRWLDWLRQVEUHDNGRZQLQ2GSUDZD; it is the humans who decide about war and peace, men of opposing viewpoints and interests. War is not ordained by gods – it is the result of human greed, obstinacy and stupidity. While the protagonists of 0DJ\DU (OHNWUD inherited the curse on the house of Pelops, it is not God’s will that this chain of crimes should go on forever. The determination of good men may defeat the genetic programming of Evil. For all their numerous differences, both plays discussed above are typical products of their period, the late Renaissance, with its glaring conflicts between virtue and vice, with its emphasis on human choice and on individual responsibility for the consequences. Both have a didactic bent: they sound warnings about the uses and abuses of power, and are less interested in the extremes of human love and passion than in the peace and well-being of their respective communities.

24

=RILD*áRPELRZVNDLQ3DPLĊWQLN/LWHUDFNL/;;:DUVDZ&UDFRZ*GDĔVN 1979, 193-209. 25 Bornemisza, op.cit.,101. 26 7KH$JDPHPQRQRI$HVFK\OXV, trans. by Louis MacNeice, London, 1972, 60.

CHAPTER TWO COCHANOVIANA IN FOREIGN LIBRARIES 1. Occasionally new pieces of evidence turn up in libraries outside Poland which demonstrate Jan Kochanowski’s enduring popularity throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Recently I have come across two such inscriptions, the authorship of one can be identified, while the other one poses interesting questions to be answered. Let us begin with the second inscription which is in a sixteenth-century book. It stands at the end of the 1584 (first) edition of Kochanowski’s (OHJLDUXP OLEUL ,9 HXLVGHP )RULFRHQLD VLYH HSLJUDPPDWXP OLEHOOXV now in the Cambridge University Library.1 The Polish poet’s Latin poems are bound together with a poem by the Transylvanian Saxon poet Leonard Uncius mourning the death of Prince Kristóf Báthori of Transylvania ((OHJLD GH 0RUWH LOOXVWULVVLPL 3ULQFLSLV &KULVWRSKRUL %DWKRUL GH 6RPOR Cracoviae, 1584). The only thing that connects the two pieces is the place of publication, which is Cracow in both cases. Kochanowski’s Latin collection consisting of elegies and epigrams is 169 pages long and it is to the last page, after the epigram “Ad And(ream) Patricium” that an unidentified hand added in light brown ink an “Epitaphium” on Jan .RFKDQRZVNLE\$QGU]HM7U]HFLHVNLWKHWKH 0RGHVW@ ZKR E\ µG¶XQ FRPPRQ DFFRUG  OD PDLQWLQGUHQW D OD EDUEH GHV FRPPLGLWH] PDULWDOHV¶ ([by mutual agreement] did not consummate marriage) with ‘Kinge,’ his wife. Apart from these two anecdotes added to the 1588 and 1595 editions of the (VVDLV, Book III, Essay 9 also contains a solemn declaration of brotherhood with other nationalities, which is rare in Montaigne’s age: µ-¶HVWLPH WRXV OHV KRPHV PHV FRPSDWULRWV HPEUDVVH XQ 3RORQRLV FRPPH XQ )UDQFRLV SRVWSRVDQW FHWWH OLDLVRQ QDWLRQDOH D XQLYHUVDOOH  FRPPXQH¶[I consider all men my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as I do a Frenchman, setting this national bond after the universal and common one]. This unusual sentiment could be due to the fact that Henry III of France was for a short time also King of Poland, and insisted upon this title to the day of his death. It is most likely that Montaigne himself heard Henry III’s stories about his Polish experiences when in court, for already in Book I, Essay 14, he quotes Henry recounting that he saw people wounding themselves intentionally: µQRVWUH 5R\ UHFLWH GHV QRWDEOH H[HPSOHVGHFHTX¶LOHQDYHXD3RORLJQH¶[Our King tells of the notable examples of this among those he saw in Poland] (I:59). Apparently, this was the only bit of interesting information he learnt from the king, known DV +HQU\N :DOĊ]\ >+HQUL 9DORLV@ LQ 3RODQG ZKR IOHG .UDNyZ RQ horseback to return to Paris in order to be crowned King of France. There is one more place in the (VVDLV with an erroneous reference to Poland. This appears in Book II, Essay 27, where Montaigne speaks of a rebellion of ‘FHV SD\VDQV GH 3RORQJQH¶ [Polish peasants] led by ‘George Sechel,’ that is, György Dózsa6. In fact, both the leader and the peasants were Hungarian. In Book I, Essay 36, however, Michel Montaigne makes a startling observation: ‘Celuy que les Polonnois ont choisi pour leur Roy apres le nostre, qui est a la verité un des plus grans Princes de notre siècle, ne porte MDPDLVJDQVQ\

5

Montaigne, Book III, essay 1; Herburt, 68. All citations from the (VVDLV are from the following edition: Michel Montaigne, (VVDLV, ed. Maurice Rat (Paris, Garnier, 1963). The tale referred to here is in Vol.II, 214-215. 6 Montaigne, (VVDLV Vol. I. 280.

Montaigne’s Praise of Stefan Batory: A Note on His Source

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ne change pour l’hyver et temps, qu’il face, de mesme bonnet qu’il port au couvert’ (I/257). [The man whom the Poles chose for their king after ours, and who is in the truth RQHRIWKHJUHDWHVWSULQFHVRIRXUFHQWXU\, never wears gloves, or changes, for winter or any other weather whatever, the bonnet that he wears indoors] (168).

Part of this sentence, which I highlighted, shows in what high esteem this well-read Frenchman held the Transylvanian-born Stefan Batory, elected King of Poland. How did Montaigne, a contemporary of Batory’s, reach this conclusion? In early September 1580, Montaigne set out for Italy in the company of some friends and a secretary. The group travelled through Switzerland and Germany, not reaching Rome until the last days of November. They stayed here until the 19th of April, 1581, meeting Pope Gregory XIII as well as a number of theologians and scholars, including the French Marc-Antoine Muret who taught at the University of Rome.7 Muret was known to some learned Poles, one in particular, Chancellor Jan Zamoyski, who had, with the wholehearted support of Batory, invited a number of professors, also Muret, to Poland.8 Although according to Montaigne’s travel diary kept at the time, during the meal with Muret on March 15WKHPDLQVXEMHFW of conversation was the French translation of Plutarch, it is possible that they talked about politics as well. In this case during the conversation Henry III, the reigning king of France and ex-king of Poland would have also been discussed and his successor in Poland, István or “Stefanus” %DWRU\FRXOGKDYHEHHQPHQWLRQHG7KLVKRZHYHULVMXVWFRQMHFWXUHIRU in March, 1581 Montaigne was fascinated by some ancient manuscripts ZKLFK KH KDG MXVW VHHQ LQ WKH 9DWLFDQ /LEUDU\ DQG ZRXOG talk to Muret mostly about those.9 Soon afterwards Montaigne visited Ostia and Tivoli, but back in Rome, he met the Master of the Sacred Palace on April 15, 1581, and probably on the same occasion also made the acquaintance of 6WDQLVáDZ5HV]ND Reszka, or in its Latinized form, Rescius, was born in Poland, and lived from 1544 to about 1600.10 He came from a family of burghers, studied in Cracow and at the Protestant university of Frankfurt on the 7

Montaigne records his opinion of Muret in I:188, 191. Roman Pollak, et al. 1RZ\ .RUEXW 3LĞPLHQQLFWZR 6WDURSROVNLH, Warsaw, PIW, 1965, Vol.3, 433. 9 Montaigne, -RXUQDO GX9R\DJH, November 30 1580-April 19, 1581. 10 Some sources put his date of death either at 1603: cf. /LWHUDWXUD SROVND 3U]HZRGQLNHQF\NORSHGLF]Q\, Warsaw, PWN, 1985, Tom II. 282. 8

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Oder, but in 1560 he was already in the court of Cardinal Hosius, one of the leading figures of the Polish Counter-Reformation. As his secretary, he accompanied Hosius on his foreign travels, and, after his death decided to write the Cardinal’s biography. This book, written in Latin, was published only in 1587 in Rome, but was preceded by shorter publications describing the circumstances of Hosius’ death. The first of these was (SLVWROD 6WDQLVODL 5HVFLL GH WUDQVLWX HW GRUPLWLRQH 6WDQLVODL +RVLL >/HWWHU RI 6WDQLVáDZ 5HV]ND RQ WKH 3DVVLQJ RI 6WDQLVáDZ +RVLXV 5RPH @ while the second, a funerary poem 'H RELWX PDJQL 6WDQLVODL +RVLL FDUGLQDOLV RGH OXJXEULV >$Q 2GHRI 0RXUQLQJ RQ WKH 'HDWK RI WKH *UHDW 6WDQLVáDZ &DUGLQDO +RVLXV@ ZDV SULQWHG E\ àD]DU] LQ .UDNyZ LQ  When Montaigne met Reszka in Rome, the latter presented him with copies of the epistle. As Montaigne records it: µ(Q FH WHPSV OD MH SULQV HQWUHFRQQRLVVDQFHVLF DXQSRORQRLVOHSOXVSULYpDPLTXHXWOHFDUGLQDO +RVVHOLQOHTXHOPHILWSUHVHQWGHGHX[H[HPSOHUHVGXOLYUHWTXLODIDLWGHVD morWHWOHVFRUULJHDGHVDPHLQ’11 [At this time, I made the acquaintance, among others, of a Pole, the most intimate friend of the late Cardinal Hosius, who presented me with two copies of the booklet he had written on the cardinal’s death and corrected with his own hand]. Reszka was not only a devoted biographer of Cardinal Hosius, but also a supporter and admirer of both Chancellor Zamoyski and Stefan Batory. He corresponded with both, and he aided Batory’s war efforts with a pamphlet written a year after Montaigne’s visit to Rome, entitled 'HUHEXV JHVWLV 6WHSKDQL , UHJLV 3RORQLDH FRQWUD PDJQXP 0RVFKRUXP GXFHP QDUUDWLR >$ 1DUUDWLRQ RI WKH +LVWRU\ RI WKH 'HHGV RI 6WHSKHQ , .LQJ RI 3RODQG DJDLQVW WKH *UDQG 'XNH RI 0XVFRY\@.12 This was printed in Rome, probably with a subsidy from Poland; it seems likely that when Reszka met Montaigne, the Pole was already working on this pamphlet praising the courage, steadfastness, and other virtues of his Warrior King. In the spring of 1581 when Montaigne met Reszka, 6WHIDQ%DWRU\ZDVMXVW embarking on his third campaign against Muscovy. The threat of defeat compelled Tsar Ivan IV to send his Ambassador Shevrygin to Rome pleading for the Vatican’s intervention to cease hostilities. While the monolingual and rather ignorant Shevrygin’s appearance in Rome caused general merriment amongst the cardinals (a fact duly noted in Montaigne’s 11

This fact is mentioned under the entry “Stanislaw Reszka” in Wladyslaw .RQRSF]\ĔVNL HW DO 3ROVNL 6áRZQLN %LRJUDILF]Q\ :URFáDZ HW DO 2VVROLQHXP 1988-89, vol. XXXI 130. See also in Montaigne, -RXUQDO, 154-155. 12 Apparently Piotr Dunin Wolski was co-author of this pamphlet.Cf. Jan Czubek in the introduction to 6WDQLVODLL5HVFLL'LDULXP $UFKLZXPGRG]LHMyZOLWHUDWXU\L oswiaty w Polsce), Cracow, PAU, 1915.

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diary), Ivan’s plan worked: the Pope did send a special envoy to Moscow, Antonio Possevino, who then helped to negotiate a ten-year long armistice between the 5]HF]SRVSROLWD and Muscovy. In praising Stefan Batory, Reszka was also acting in accordance with papal policy. Though for years, mainly due to Habsburg propaganda, the king had a “bad press” in the Vatican, with the enthusiastic reports of Giovanni Andrea Caligari, the papal nuncio to Poland, favourable information about Batory began to change his image.13 The otherwise staunchly anti-Protestant and belligerent Pope came to realise the wisdom of the Catholic king who was not persecuting Protestants, but was trying to defeat them by founding numerous Catholic schools and a Catholic Academy in Wilno. In sending out Possevino to Moscow to broker the peace, the Pope had had high hopes for forging some kind of an antiTurkish coalition of Christian powers, not realizing the fundamental duplicity of the Tsar in matters political. Ivan IV died in March 1584, but even if had he lived longer, he would never have made an alliance with that ‘upstart’ Polish king who succeeded to defeat him in three wars. 6WDQLVáDZ5HV]NDFRQWLQXHGWRWKLQNYHU\KLJKO\RI6WHIDQ%DWRU\,Qa book published four years after the king’s death he assured the reader of Batory’s immortality.14 There is no doubt that he knew Batory personally; in fact, he probably knew him better than anyone else in Rome. The story which Montaigne recounts about the king braving the extreme cold of the Polish (and Russian) winter was most certainly told to him by Reszka when they met in April 1581. In the same essay where he praised Batory, Montaigne was writing about Julius Caesar and Hannibal, who always marched with head bare in front of the army. He quotes Silius Italicus on Hannibal: “7XP YHUWLFH QXGR ([FLSHUH LQVDQRV LPEUHV FHOLTXH UXLQDP” [Then with bare head/ He met the frenzy of the storm, the falling sky].15 Hardiness represented fortitude for Montaigne, who was particularly pleased that in Batory the Poles had elected a worthy successor to Henri Valois. Stefan Batory lived for four more years after this second edition of the (VVDLV 7KH PDMRULW\ RI 3ROHV RQO\ EHJDQ WR DSSUHFLDWH KLP DIWHU KLV death and because of the ineptitude of his successors. Thanks to Montaigne, however, in the West he was recognized already in his lifetime as the truly great king that he was.

13

Jerzy Besala, 6WHIDQ%DWRU\, Warsaw, PIW, 1992, 327. [Stanislas Rescius], 6SRQJLD TXD $EVWHUJXQWXU &RPLWLD HW 0DOHGLFWLD (TXLWLV 3RORQL&RQWUD-HVXLWDVCracoviae, 1590, B 3/v. 15 Montaigne, (VVDLV I., 257. 14

CHAPTER SIX BAROQUE ELEMENTS IN THE POETRY OF BÁLINT BALASSI AND M,.2à$-Sĉ3S=$5=«@3DUV/\ULFD>«@5RPDHH[RIILFLQD)DELLGH)DOFR 53 Vaughan, 2ORU,VFDQXV, 98. 54 ibid, 43. 55 There was a Milan edition of Sarbiewski in 1645, another one in Paris and/or 'LMRQ   \HW DQRWKHU ZLWKRXW WKH SODFH EXW SUREDEO\ LQ %UHVODX QRZ :URFáDZ LQDQGRQHLQ&RORJQHLQ

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the Turk. It was the ‘spectacular charge’ of Sobieski’s winged hussars on the Turkish camp that clinched the Christian victory on September 12, 1683.56 After Chocim in 1621, this was the first time that foreign public opinion had taken note of Polish military valour, and Poland began to matter once again as a ‘bulwark of Christianity’. A new interest in Polish affairs manifested itself in various ways from Rome to London; odes were written to Sobieski in a number of languages, and on 21 February 1683/84 a book was entered with the Company of Stationers under the title ‘Scanderbagg redivivus or, the Life of John Sobieski the 3rd, King of Poland’.57 At the same time, the religious-political situation in England was changing in favour of Roman Catholicism. After the Rye House Plot, Monmouth fled to Holland, the openly Catholic Duke of York was restored to favour and the king ruled without the consent of parliament. By 1684 ‘the Duke of York’s succession seemed secure’.58 I think it was these two factors, new admiration for the Poles and the rise of the Catholic faction within Charles II’s court and among the elite, that made possible the publication of Sarbiewski’s original poems in 1684 in Cambridge. This book is a modest affair, a 24-to Latin ‘mini-book’ based on the 1634 Antwerp edition, though the title-page has no drawing or woodcut at all. The publisher was Richard Green, a Cambridge bookseller active between 1682 and 1694.59 A substantial number of copies are extant; the Wing catalogue entering six copies in England, one of these with two variants in the Cambridge University Library. It was intended mainly for the Latin-reading elite which by that time had shrunk substantially, consisting mainly of members of the legal and medical professions and schoolmasters. Nevertheless, its publication marked a new height of temporary tolerance for Roman Catholicism, combined with admiration for the Poles who ‘had saved Europe’ from the rule of Islam. 7KDW P\ DUJXPHQW LV PRUH WKDQ D FRQMHFWXUH LV VKRZQ E\ WKH publication in 1685 of a curious anthology entitled 0LVFHOODQ\ RI 3RHPV DQG 7UDQVODWLRQV E\ 2[IRUG +DQGV.60 It contains many translations by various Fellows of Oxford colleges such as Francis Willis of New College 56

Norman Davies, *RG¶VSOD\JURXQG$+LVWRU\RI3RODQG, vol. I.: 7KH2ULJLQVWR , New York, 1982, 483. 57 $7UDQVFULSWRIWKH5HJLVWHUVRIWKH:RUVKLSIXO&RPSDQ\RI6WDWLRQHUV$',,, -, London 1914, 226. 58 Claire Tomalin, 6DPXHO3HS\V7KH8QHTXDOOHG6HOI, London, Viking, 2002, 330. 59 H. R. Plomer, $'LFWLRQDU\RI3ULQWHUVDQG%RRNVHOOHUVLQ(QJODQG«HWFVol.3, London, Bibliographical Society,1968, 133. Green also published the works of Anacreon, Terence and others. 60 Printed for Anthony Stephens, Bookseller near the Theatre in Oxford, 1685.

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and Humphrey Hody of Wadham í they translate between them a number of Latin poets such as Catullus, Propertius and Horace. Thomas Brown of Christ Church also paraphrases Horace, and it is likely that he is the translator/paraphraser of several poems by ‘Casimire’. These include “To the Rose” based on Sarbiewski’s Ode IV.18, “To Quintus Tiberinus” (Ode IV.34), “A Dialogue between the Child Jesus and the Virgin-Mother” (Ode IV.25), “To the Grasshopper” (Ode IV.23) and last, but not least, “Encouraging the Polish Knights after their last Conquests to proceed in their Victory” (Ode I. 15). Charles S. Kraszewski pays much attention to the “Dialogue”, a truly ‘Marian’ poem which, according to him amounts to ‘a daring challenge’ in Protestant England.61 Considering the mood in a FRXQWU\ZKLFKKDGMXVWFURZQHG-DPHV,,LWVILUVW&DWKROLFNLQJVLQFHWKH Reformation, this poetic challenge by an Oxford don to staunch but rather subdued Protestants probably went unnoticed. Kraszewski continues with his praise of the English translator of the 0LVFHOODQ\, although he completely misunderstands the poem ³(QFRXUDJLQJ WKH 3ROLVK .QLJKWV«´ WKLQNLQJ WKDW LW UHSUHVHQWV µWKH SXUH strain of the martial Sarbiewski’. In fact Sarbiewski is used here only as a SUHWH[W IRU VRPHWKLQJ TXLWH GLIIHUHQW WKH HQWKXVLDVWLF SUDLVH RI 6RELHVNL While the subtitle of Ode I. 15 is ‘Cum LADISLAUS Poloniae Princeps, fuso Osmano Turcarum Imperatore, victorem exercituum in hiberna reduceret’, i.e. a celebration of the much earlier victory ascribed to :áDG\VáDZ,9WKHVXEWLWOHRIWKHRGHSDUDSKUDVHGUDWKHUWKDQWUDQVODWHG is the following: ‘Ode the 15th of the First Book of CASIMIRE LPLWDWHG encouraging the Polish Knights DIWHU WKHLU ODVW &RQTXHVWV to proceed in their Victory”62 Everything that Sarbiewski’s English imitator has to say in eight lines of verse running to twelve stanzas relates not to the forgotten :áDG\VáDZ ,9 EXW WR -DQ 6RELHVNL¶V µPLJKW\ &RQTXHVW¶ DQG µWULXPSKDQW victory’ at Vienna. The second half of the first stanza makes this amply clear for the contemporary reader: The Turks they fly now basely all, Their scatter’d Troops ignobly fall; Gasping they beg your fatal Arms to cease, And with their Blood they bargain for a Peace”63

61

Kraszewski, op.cit., 37. 0LVFHOODQ\ RI 3RHPV DQG 7UDQVODWLRQV E\ 2[IRUG +DQGV, Oxford, 1685, 75., emphases added. 63 ibid. Sarbiewski’s original Latin poem runs to 43 lines, while the Ode in the 0LVFHOODQ\ is 96 lines long - DFRQVLGHUDEOHHQODUJHPHQWRQWKHRULJLQDO 62

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The present tense is important here: ‘they fly QRZ’ and are suing for peace, but Sobieski is in hot pursuit of them through Hungary and, indeed, a year later in 1686, Buda is liberated by the allied Christian forces. While it is true that the English poet did not name Sobieski (who figures in his verse as ‘our great King’), there are nonetheless unmistakable allusions to him and his victories in the rest of this quite long poem. In the third stanza, for example, the ‘cruel Tartars’ (allies of the Turks) are brandished and mocked with these words: ‘When they beheld the 'DQXEH¶V Flood/ Rowl down in Tides of their own Blood’, but most historians know that :áDG\VáDZ,9QHYHUIRXJKWWKH7DUWDUVE\WKH'DQXEH,QWKHILIWKVWDQ]D we read ‘When %XGD *UDQ, an ev’ry Fortress near / Of their inglorious IOLJKW GLG KHDU¶ í these are clear references to Sobieski’s campaign following the relief of Vienna. Finally, the King is called ‘Thou Bulwark of the German Throne’.64 Of course, this is an enigma to Kraszewski, for why should :áDG\VáDZ ,9 EH DGGUHVVHG LQ WKLV ZD\" 5HDG µWKH +RO\ Roman Empire’ for ‘German’ and ‘Sobieski’ for ‘the Great King’ and the mystery is solved. The poem ends with an over-ambitious exhortation to Sobieski, characteristic of the optimism of the immediate post-1683 years: LI \RX KDYH GHIHDWHG WKH 7XUNV WZLFH LQ PDMRU EDWWOHV ZK\ QRW GR WKLV D third time, in the end bringing about the demise of the whole Turkish Empire: And with thy Troops pull the proud Sultan down, Tho Mahomet shou’d stand to guard his Throne.65

It is in the light of this extraordinary accolade to a Polish king that we have to look at Isaac Watts’s versions of ‘Casimire’. Watts (1674-1748) is best known as a non-Conformist Protestant author of religious verse, mostly psalms and hymns. His +RUDH O\ULFDH, first published in 1706,66 consists of poems mostly written much earlier, since his school days in Southampton and at the Academy of Stoke Newington. What we have to assume is that young Watts had an exceptionally broad-minded Latin master who, while admiring Horace and Pindar, also taught his students the neo-Latin poets Owenus and Sarbiewski.67 If a catalogue of Watts’s 64

0LVFHOODQ\RI3RHPV«76 and 79. ibid, 79. 66 &DVLPLUXV %ULWWDQLFXV, 113 gives the erroneous date of 1709 for the first publication of +RUDHO\ULFDH. This is corrected in the second, revised and extended edition: MHRA, 2010, 125. 67 His name is known from a Latin poem by Watts written in 1694:”Ad Reverendum virum Dominum Johannem Pinhorne, fidum adolescentiae meae praeceptorem”, 7KH3RHPVRI:DWWV7KH:RUNVRIWKH(QJOLVK3RHWVZLWK3UHIDFHV 65

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library is extant, I would not be surprised to find in it the 1684 Cambridge edition of Sarbiewski’s poems. At any rate, it is clear what attracted the non-conformist Watts to the Jesuit poet of Poland: mainly the aesthetic qualities and devotional substance of his verse. In the preface to +RUDH O\ULFDH he confessed his debt in the following words: ‘The imitations of that noblest Latin poet of modern ages, Casimire Sarbiewski, of Poland, would need no excuse, did they but arise to the beauty of the original. I have often taken the freedom to add ten or twenty lines, or to leave out as many, that I might VXLWP\VRQJWRP\RZQGHVLJQ« 7KHUHDUHDIHZ copies wherein I have borrowed some hints from the same author, without the mention of his name in the title’. He finishes this passage by praising ‘the riches and glory’ of Sarbiewski’s verse and with the hope that ‘some English pen would import more of his treasures’ for the benefit of all.68 In other words Isaac Watts was only slightly apologetic for paraphrasing Sarbiewski. It mattered more to him that the translated or paraphrased text should ‘suit’ his own poetic design. Present-day Catholic strictures regarding his conduct are both short-sighted and irrelevant; by the time Watts published his first collection of verse, the Age of Toleration was knocking at the door. John Locke’s essay 7KH 5HDVRQDEOHQHVV RI &KULVWLDQLW\ was published in 1695 and Watts’s appreciation of ‘Casimire’ reflected the same spirit of dispassionate, sympathetic treatment of most Christian religions. Although Protestant values are upheld and the Jesuits’ anti-Protestant zeal is condemned by him, the main enemy now is no ORQJHUµ3RSHU\¶EXWDJQRVWLFLVPDQGDWKHLVP$OOWKHVDPHWKHPDMRULW\ of Watts’s eight poems which were imitations of Sarbiewski (in seven he acknowledged the source), are not strictly speaking religious, and even those three which would fall into this category operate with terms such as ‘the Lord’ or ‘our Father’. Kraszewski quite correctly points out that ‘Although >«@ Watts >«@ scrupulously avoids all references to Catholic saints who abound in Sarbiewski’s poetry, he does translate Epigram C, “In Sanctum Ardalionem”’,69 the story of an early Christian saint who was an actor and a convert, suffering martyrdom for his Christian faith. Sarbiewski’s ending of the poem ‘Sic, sic, inquit, abit nostrae Comoedia vitae, / Terra vale, caelum plaude, Tyranne feri’ was elegantly rendered by Watts as

%LRJUDSKLFDODQG&ULWLFDOed. by Samuel Johnson, 21 vols London, printed by H. Hughs for C. Bathurst and others, vol. XIII: 7KH3RHPVRI:DWWV, 1779, 270. 68 7KH3RHPVRI:DWWV«-34. 69 .UDV]HZVNLµ0DFLHM.D]LPLHU]6DUELHZVNL7KH&KULVWLDQ+RUDFHLQ(QJODQG¶ 22.

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Chapter Twelve So goes the comedy of life away; Vain earth, adieu; Heaven will applaud today; Strike, courteous tyrant, and conclude the play.70

In my view, it should be stressed here that Isaac Watts did not think of Saint Ardalio as a &DWKROLF martyr í for him the actor was an early &KULVWLDQ, so by his definition a proto-Protestant victim of state terror. After all, St Augustine (St Austin) was also a favourite saint and often quoted Father of the Church for English Protestants in the seventeenth century. Of all Sarbiewski’s outstanding seventeenth-century English translators, Isaac Watts is the most versatile as regards to form. In this respect he emulates the Latin originals í rhyming couplets seem too VLPSOHWRKLPWRJLYHMXVWLFHWR&DVLPLUH¶VPHWULFDOYDULHW\71 Amongst the eight imitations by Watts, we find six-line stanzas with an A-A-B-C-C-B rhyme scheme (Ode III .28), five stanzas in terzinas (Epigram 100), six stanzas of an A-B-A-B rhyme scheme (Ode II.2), and even blank verse in the imitation of 2GH IV. 4, where Watts was careful enough to point out that this piece is not a simple translation, for it is done with ‘large Additions’. Once again, Kraszewski wonders what made Watts ‘inflate’ 6DUELHZVNL¶VSRHPRIµD+RUDWLDQYHUVHRIOLQHV«WRD-line affair of stately Miltonic blank verse’.72 While it is unimportant why Sarbiewski’s farmer-narrator of the poem, Galesus, was changed to a certain ‘Gandor’ by Watts,73 it is interesting to see how the battlefield was altered. In Sarbiewski’s ode ‘Galesus Istri, dum sua Dacicis/ Fatigat in campis aratra’, that is Galesus who comes from near the Danube, is ploughing the field at the battlefield near the old ‘Dacian’ camp. Now ‘Dacia’ here stands for ‘Moldavia’, for Chocim is on the Dniester, not the Danube. But Watts is a bit uncertain about geography, for his narrator, ‘Gandor, the old’ holds ‘fair possesions/ Where flows the fruitful Danube’74 yet he ploughs up helmets and swords at the scene of a battle fought long ago, in ‘Dacia’. My impression is that what directed Watts’s attention in the late 1680s or 1690s to the long-forgotten battle of Chocim was, once again, Sobieski’s victories achieved í where else"í‘by the Danube’. Although ‘The celebrated Victory of the Polish Knights over Osman the Turkish 70

0DWWKLDH&DVLPLUL6DUELHYL>«@&DUPLQD61 and 7KH3RHPVRI:DWWV, 125. Sir Edward Sherbourne had already translated “Amphion” by Sarbiewski in Alcaic verse, cf. 7KH 3RHPV DQG 7UDQVODWLRQV RI 6LU (GZDUG 6KHUERXUQH  , Introduced and annotated by F.J.Van Beeck, Assen, 1961, 90-91. 72 Kraszewski, op.cit., 28. 73 This could be a variant of ‘gander’ which in Old English meant a ‘simpleton’. 74 0DWWKLDH&DVLPLUL6DUELHYL>«@&DUPLQD, 172 and 7KH3RHPVRI:DWWV, 221. 71

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Emperor in the Dacian Battle’, to give the full title of Watts’s imitation of Sarbiewski’s 2GH IV.4, is more of a sentimental and turgid tale of war than an exhortatory ode to the Polish Knights, Watts probably chose this VXEMHFWLQWKHOLJKWRIUHQHZHG(QJOLVKLQWHUHVWLQWKHYDOLDQW3ROHVOHGE\ Jan Sobieski, the Terror of the Turks.75 Watts’s continuing admiration for Sarbiewski is borne out by two further facts: the addressee of his ‘Casimire’ imitations and his characterisation of Sarbiewski in a Latin poem. Isaac Watts’s lifelong patron and benefactor was a certain John Hartopp of Stoke Newington, in whose house the poet even resided for a period of time.76 In 1700, it is “To John Hartopp Esq., afterwards Sir John Hartopp, Bart. (Baronet)” that Watts dedicates his imitation of Sarbiewski’s very Horatian Ode 4/I, EHJLQQLQJZLWKWKHZRUGVµ9LYHMXFXQGDHPHWXHQVMXYHQWDH«¶(QJOLVKHG as ‘Live, my dear Hartopp, live to-day’.77 Another addressee, also in 1700, was a rich merchant, Thomas Gunston, brother-in-law to Sir Thomas $EQH\ 0D\RU RI /RQGRQ ZKR KDG MXVW KDG D KRXVH EXLOW IRU KLPVHOI DW Stoke Newington. In the poem dedicated to Gunston, Watts praised ‘Happy Solitude’ and the blessings of Virtue: ‘Virtue alone should dwell within your seat,/ Virtue alone could make it sweet,/ Nor is herself secure but in a close retreat’78 Unfortunately, Gunston passed away soon afterwards; this prompted Watts to another, rather long poem in which he mourned not only the death of his friend but also the building in Stoke Newington which still remained at that point unfinished.79 ,VDDF :DWWV¶V DGPLUDWLRQ IRU 0DFLHM .D]LPLHU] 6DUELHZVNL DOVR transpires in a most striking way from a Latin poem addressed to the teacher of his youth, the Reverend John Pinhorne. Here Watts listed some great poets of antiquity whom he loved (Ovid, Martial, Juvenal, Catullus), also extolling George Buchanan, the Scottish translator of the 3VDOPV into Latin. He then moves on to Sarbiewski, to whom he devotes no less than 75 Earlier Turkish themes had but little interest for Sarbiewski’s English translators. This is borne out by the Hills translations as well as by Sir Edward Sherbourne’s rendering Casimire’s “De timido ANSA Fulvio” (Epigram LIV) where the lines “Dum hellicosus nuper ANSA prandentes/ In Othomanum Sarmatas adhortatur” is translated by Sherbourne as “Whilst timorous $QVD led his Martial Band/ ‘Gainst WKH ,QYDGHUV RI KLV 1DWLYH /DQG«´ 7KH 3RHPV DQG 7UDQVODWLRQV RI (GZDUG 6KHUERXUQH, 79. 76 &KULVWLDQ%LRJUDSK\FRQWDLQLQJWKH/LYHVRI,VDDF:DWWV''«/RQGRQ 16. 77 7KH3RHPVRI:DWWV, 243. 78 ibid., 245, 247. 79 ibid., 294.

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VHYHQWHHQ OLQHV RISUDLVH /HW PH TXRWHMXVW D IHZRI WKHVH OLQHV LQ /DWLQ and then in English translation: 6WHWMX[WD&DVLPLUXVKXLFQHFSDUFLXVLJQHP Natura indulsit nec Musa armavit alumnum Sarbivium rudiore lyram. 4XDQWD3RORQXPOHYDWDXUDF\JQXP80

The English translation, the work of Thomas Gibbons, comes from a new edition of +RUDH /\ULFDH published a century later. It is impressive enough to be quoted at length: Next comes the charming Casimire; Exulting in seraphic fire, The bard divinely sings: The heav’nly muse inspired his tongue The heav’nly muse his viol strung And tun’d th’ harmonious strings. See on what full, what rapid gales 7KH3ROLVKVZDQWULXPSKDQWVDLOV +HVSXUQVWKHJOREHEHKLQG«” 81

Sarbiewski here is exalted as a match for Horace and Pindar, his masters. No other Polish poet had this kind of accolade before or after in the English-speaking world and Watts’s fulsome praise could have paved the way for renewed English interest in Sarbiewski’s work in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is, however, with mid-eighteenth century recognitions of Sarbiewski’s poetic merits that I would like to conclude this essay.82 My 1759 Paris edition of his poems prints an ‘Eruditorium Testimonia de Sarbievio’ on the last page which, apart from an oft-quoted view of Hugo Grotius (‘Non solum aequavit, sed interdum, superavit Flaccum’), also 80

ibid., 272-273. Isaac Watts, +RUDH/\ULFDH3RHPV&KLHIO\RIWKH/\ULF.LQGLQWKUHH%RRNV$ 1HZ(GLWLRQ>ZLWK@D6XSSOHPHQWFRQWDLQLQJWUDQVODWLRQVRIDOOWKH/DWLQSRHPV ZLWK1RWHV, London, G.Wilkie, 1806, 290. This translation is quoted also by David Money ‘Aspects of the Reception of Sarbiewski in England: From Hils, Vaughan, and Watts to Coleridge’, Bowring, Walker, and Coxe, 3LHWDV +XPDQLVWLFD 1HR/DWLQ 5HOLJLRXV 3RHWU\ LQ 3RODQG LQ (XURSHDQ &RQWH[W HG E\ 3LRWU 8UEDĔVNL  Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2006, 157-187, and 172. 82 &DVLPLUXV %ULWDQQLFXV lists all English translators and imitators of Sarbiewski which number a staggering 25 after Isaac Watts and ‘Oxford Hands’. 81

‘The Polish Swan Triumphant’: English Reception of Sarbiewski

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lists Johann Heinrich Boecler’s remark ‘In Lyricis Sarbievius Polonus excellit’. Boecler was Professor of Eloquence, later of History in Strasbourg and this opinion of his was quoted from the %LEOLRJUDSKLD +LVWRULFR-3ROLWLFR-3KLORORJLD &XULRVD of 1677.83 Both authors wrote in Latin, so their views fit into the contemporary neo-Latin critical canon. A third critic, a great scholar, whose main preoccupation lay with the English language, also appreciated Sarbiewski’s achievement – it was Dr Samuel Johnson. In his “Life of Cowley” discussing a passage from Abraham Cowley, Johnson adds: ‘The same thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically expressed by Casimir’ and quotes four lines, beginning ZLWK WKH ZRUGV µ2PQLEXV PXQGL 'RPLQDWRU«¶ IURP 6DUELHZVNL¶V 2GH I.4.84 'U -RKQVRQ¶V MXGJHPHQW VHals the first phase of the extraordinary career in England of ‘the Polish Swan triumphant’, a Jesuit from Wilno spreading his wings wide in the cool, purified air of Latin poetry.

83

Johannes Henricus Boeclerus, %LEOLRJUDSKLD +LVWorico-3ROLWLFR-3KLORORJLD &XULRVD, Germanopoli, 1677, sig.D8. 84 Samuel Johnson, /LYHV RI WKH (QJOLVK 3RHWV 9RO, &RZOH\ WR 3ULRU Dent: London, Everyman’s, 1964, 30.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE VERSE LETTER IN THE EARLY POLISH BAROQUE This essay is not going to deal with the whole relationship of the Renaissance to the Polish Baroque; such an investigation is entirely beyond its scope. What I am proposing to do on the following pages is to examine the development of one specific genre, a genre classical in origin which reappeared once again in the sixteenth century and reached maturity in the course of the next two centuries. In other words I would like to look at the verse letter of poetic epistle in Poland in the first half of the seventeenth century, considering the factors which contributed to the gradual emergence of this particular genre. The originators of the genre were undoubtedly Horace and Ovid. Horace’s (SLVWOHV and Ovid’s +HURLGHVand (SLVWXODHH[3RQWRestablished the canon of verse letters, or epistles in antiquity. Horace’s and Ovid’s epistles differ in many ways – the tone of the first is more chatty and witty, occasionally didactic and moralising, but always offering some kind of personal advice or information. In the case of Ovid the tone is sadder, more elegiac, even monotonous in its plaintiveness; this is understandable, when we take into account the fact that the letters were written in exile pleading for a return to Rome, the centre of the ‘civilised world’. Both types (or if we include the fictitious letters of +HURLGHV, all three types) of epistles are present in the later poetry of the Renaissance – sometimes in the work of the same poet. In 15th-16th century poetics, which tried to establish a hierarchy of genres, the verse letter did not get a high rating. Panegyrics, odes, rhapsodies, elegies, even songs were regarded as ‘loftier’ vehicles of lyrical expression. Epigrams and satires also had following among theoreticians, but the poetic epistle was criticized by one of the leading poets and critics of the Pléiade, du Bellay, as ‘inappropriate to the expression of lyrical sentiments’1 for its alleged attachment to 1

P. M. Smith, &OpPHQW0DURW3RHWRIWKH)UHQFK5HQDLVVDQFH, London 1970, 119 quoting Du Bellay’s 'HIIHQFHHW ,OOXVWUDWLRQGHOD/DQJXH)UDQoR\VH, Paris 1948, 115-116.

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domesticity. Yet before the sixteenth century the poetic epistle often appears in camouflaged form, as an extended epigram sent to a friend, or an elegy written to someone far away – a good example of the latter is the poem “Feverish Janus to soldier Blasius” (%ODVLR PLOLWDQW -DQXV IHEULFLWDQV by the Hungarian Neo-Latin poet Janus Pannonius. This was written from the sickbed of the celebrated poet to his friend Balázs, or Blasius, taking part in one of the Turkish campaigns of King Matthias.2 It may have been sent as an actual letter to Blasius or may have been written MXVWIRUSXEOLFation; at any rate, it is one of Janus’s best pieces of lyrical verse in which he contrasts the bed-ridden sufferings of a sick man with WKHOLEHUWLHVHQMR\HGE\ZHOO-fed and healthy soldiers. The first important poet of the late Renaissance who wrote verse letters was Clément Marot. While it is not entirely clear how central this genre was in Marot’s oeuvre, one modern critic ventures the opinion that ‘O¶pSvWUHHVWOHYpKLFXOHSDUH[FHOOHQFHGXJHQLHGX0DURW’.3 It was a genre he took over from ‘OHV 5KpWRULTXHXUV¶ but thoroughly transformed. His verse letters, fifty-seven in all, are classified in various ways: Mayer makes a distinction between the ‘artificial’ and the ‘natural’ epistle (O¶pSvWUHDUWLILFLHOOHHWQDWXUDOOH ,4 while Marot’s English critic P.M Smith uses the categories of ‘light’ and ‘elegiac’ epistles.5 Marot’s epistles are addressed to people of different ranks and social positions, starting with the King of France, François I, and ending with personal friends such as Jamet of Lyon; there is even a verse letter (eSvWUH /) presented to a sick child, with the poet’s wishes for her speedy recovery.6 Although the emotional range of Marot’s epistles is considerable, accommodating many things from simple banter to deep personal emotions, one tends to accept the view of a modern Marot scholar, according to whom ‘LOHVWG¶DLOOHXUV LPSRVVLEOHGHGHILQLUSOXV H[DFWPHQW O¶pSvWUHPDURWLTXHSXLVTXHOHSRpWH V¶HVW VHUYL GH SUpIpUHQFH GH FH JHQUH SRXU H[SULPHU OHV VHQWLPHQWV SHUVRQQHOVWUqVYDULpV¶.7 Most of the letters are in decasyllabic couplets, a popular verse form in the sixteenth century. Marot’s epistles, by the way, reflect the influence of both Horace and Ovid, in as much as the ‘light’ epistles are reminiscent of the urban poet of &DUPLQD both in tone and wit,

2

Janus Pannonius, 0DJ\DU+XPDQLVWiN, Budapest, 1982, 82-83. C. A. Mayer, 2HXYUHV&RPSOHWHVGH&OpPHQW0DURW/HVeSvWUHV, London, 1958, 35. 4 ibid, 32. 5 P.M. Smith, op. cit., 91 and 111. 6 ibid., 92. 7 C. A. Mayer, op. cit., 3. 3

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while the ‘elegiac’ epistles written from Marot’s exile in Ferrara recall the more intensely personal, grieving tone of the banished Ovid. At first sight, the epistle as a genre seems to be absent from Jan Kochanowski’s work. A closer scrutiny, however, reveals both real and crypto-epistles. The only real verse letter is the relatively little known SRHP ³0DMRU-GRPR´ 0DUV]DáHN  ZULWWHQ VRPHWLPH LQ WKH HDUO\ V which is more of biographic than aesthetic significance. It is Kochanowski’s excuVH WR WKH UR\DO PDMRU-domo or Lord Steward for not being able to attend Court regularly; it is also his plea to be left alone as a gentleman farmer in Czarnolas: $PQLHZLĊFNWyU\N¶VWROXQLHXPLHPEáD]QRZDü 3RWU]HEDNáRV\]ELHUDü8 (And thus I, who am unable to clown at the table Have to gather ears of corn...)

³0DMRU-domo” is in thirteen-syllable rhyming couplets and not unlike one of Horace’s (SLVWOHV: the tone is friendly and humorous, the argument provides a spirited defence of the poet’s choice of ‘quiet life’ (Ī\ZRW VSRNRMQ\) in the country. This is a favourite WRSRV both in 6RQJV3LHĞQL) and (SLJUDPV )UDV]NL . As for (SLJUDPV, Jerzy Ziomek points out that not all of these are true epigrams, as some are lyrical and meditative pieces.9 The same is true, to an even larger extent, for )UDJPHQWV and it is in this context that I found some crypto-epistles. The best of these is probably “Epigram” Book III.77 ('R 0LNRáDMD :ROVNLHJR)10, a poetic farewell to a courtier friend often sent abroad on diplomatic missions, a poem which also includes elegant praise of Wolski’s pleasant character, Kochanowski admitting that he would like to accompany him on his foreign travels but cannot tear himself away from his family. This twentysix line long poem is somewhat long for a typical IUDV]ND and, indeed, it is a kind of fictitious letter written in a tone which blends familiarity with literary and mythological allusions; the line is twelve-syllabic (with the exception of lines 9-10) rather than the more common thirteen syllabic

8

Jan Kochanowski, ']LHáD SROVNLH  W , HG -XOLDQ .U]\ĪDQRZVNL :DUV]DZD 1967, 123. 9 Jerzy Ziomek, 2GURG]HQLH, Warszawa, 1973, 229. 10 Jan Kochanowski, op. cit., pp. 233-234. Janusz Pelc lists a number of fraszki as “listy poetyckie”, but perhaps the length of a given piece should be taken into account when deciding whether it fits this category. See Janusz Pelc, -DQ .RFKDQRZVNL V]F]\W5HQHVDQVXZOLWHUDWXU]HSROVNLHM, Warszawa, 1980, 322.

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(WU]\QDVWR]JáRVNRZLHF). Another poem, 'R 0LNRáDMD )LUOHMD11 could also be regarded, with certain reservations, as a crypto-epistle, although its drift LVSKLORVRSKLFDOUDWKHUWKDQSHUVRQDOH[KRUWLQJ)LUOHMWRWKLQNRIKLVµJRRG name’ and fame which grow of virtue, i.e. the service of the Fatherland: .URPGREUHMVáDZ\NWyUD]FQRW\URĞQLH 1LHSRVLDGáF]áRZLHNQLFWUZDáHJRSURĞFLH12 (Apart from a good name which arises from virtue Man has simply never possessed anything that lasts.)

Kochanowski’s example shows relatively little interest in verse letters in sixteenth-century Polish poetry. In the work of some seventeenthcentury poets however the genre reappears and gains ground: several epistles in verse were written by Daniel Naborowski and JaQ $QGU]HM Morsztyn.13 Another poet, Kaspar Miaskowski, also wrote the odd poetic epistle, addressed to his patron Jan Szczesny Herburt. The date of this poem is 1609, several decades after the death of Kochanowski, but Miaskowski’s epistle shows no poetic aGYDQFH RQ WKH DXWKRU RI ³0DMRUdomo”. In fact, the epistle to Herburt14 is more a ‘versified’ rather than a verse letter, very much in the humanist mould, not unlike the dedicatory letters in verse appended to particular pieces of poetry, addressed to this or that patron. In any event, Miaskowski was not asking for any particular favour, only expressing WKHZLVKWRVHH+HUEXUWMXVWUHOHDVHGIURPUR\DO MDLO EHIRUHORQJ0\WKRORJLFDOPHWDSKRUVDQGDOOXVLRQVDERXQGLQWKHWH[W the information content of which is rather low. Daniel Naborowski’s verse letters – ZULWWHQPRVWO\WR-DQXV]5DG]LZLáá in 1629-30 í are in many ways more interesting. Naborowski, ‘the first propagator of the fashionable Baroque style on Polish soil’15, was a broadly educated person; a poet, translator, diplomat and doctor of medicine, for many years secretary to the Protestant branch of the SRZHUIXO 5DG]LZLááIDPLO\+HZURWHWKHILUVW3ROLVKSRHPVLQZKLFKWKH FRQFHWWRDGHYLFHFHQWUDOWRWKHVW\OHRIWKHHDUO\%DURTXHSOD\VDPDMRr role. He was able to, however, also write poems in a simple, clear 11

Jan Kochanowski, ']LHáDSROVNLH, t. II, 17-18. ()UDJPHQWD XV) ibid. 47. 13 /LWHUDWXUD SROVND 3U]HZRGQLN HQF\NORSHG\F]Q\, t. I, A-M, Warszawa, 1984, 582. 14 &RFKDQRYLDQD ,, HG - 3HOF  0DWHULDá\ GR G]LHMyZ WZyUF]RĞFL -DQD .RFKDQRZVNLHJRHG0LURVáDZ.RURONR:URFáDZHWDO2VVROLQHXP194. 15 -XOLDQ.U]\ĪDQRZVNL+LVWRULDSROVNLHMOLWHUDWXU\ , Warszawa, 1963, 309. 12

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language. Dürr-Durski’s edition of his verse prints seven epistles in all, of ZKLFK WKH ILUVW WR 3ULQFH .U]\V]WRI 5DG]LZLáá  LV EXW D VKRUW congratulatory piece, partly in prose. The rest of the verse letters were DGGUHVVHG WR WKH \RXQJ -DQXV] 5DG]LZLáá ZKR DW WKH WLPH ZDV VWXG\LQJ abroad, first in Germany, then in Leiden, supervised by Aleksander Przypkowski. Naborowski’s letters were sent to the young Prince from different places (Wilno 'UHVGHQ :ĊJUyZ DQG 6áXFN  DQG WKH\ ZHUH penned by someone who, while they could be defined as a ‘courtly’ poet, was also a person with his feet firmly planted on the ground. Since these verse letters served a twofold purpose (they were not only sent to Janusz 5DG]LZLáá EXW DOVR FLUFXODWHG DPRQJ 1DERURZVNL¶V IULHQGV  D FHUWDLQ ambiguity is discernible in their composition. “Epistle II” (in fact, the first RQHZULWWHQWR-DQXV]5DG]LZLáá IRULQVWDQFHFRQVLVWVRIWZRSDUWVWKHILUVW being a panegyric to the young Prince, comparing him to a ‘young eagle’ who was flown out of the family nest in order to soar high up into the sky. This part of the poem is thoroughly conventional and artificial with a surfeit of Greek mythological allusion: ‘golden Apollo’, ‘young Hercules’, ‘brazen Mars’ (]áRW\$SROOLQPáRG\+HUFXOHVĪHOD]Q\0DUV), but it is then followed by a postscript in a completely different tone. Here the poet makes excuses for his delay in answering Janusz’s letter from abroad, the reason being: «UyĪQHPRMHDFLĊĪNLHNáRSRW\ NWyUHQLHGRGDZDá\GRU\PyZRFKRW\16 «P\YDULRXVDQGDOVRVHULRXVWURXEOHV which dampened my mood to write poetry.)

(This implies that he was H[SHFWHG WR reply in verse; perhaps the young Prince wrote his first letter to Naborowski in verse, too?) Naborowski had financial problems but speaking about them in the first few letters would not have been politic. “Epistles III-VI” are written in a more familiar and informal style; indeed, Naborowski characterizes it as ‘U\P QLH JáDVNDQ\¶ (meaning QLHJáDGNL), but the only ‘roughness’ noticeable concerns the choice of various news imparted by Naborowski. In “Epistle VII” (dated September 1630) Naborowski once again employs the model of “Epistle II”, but this time without a proper formal division – the first 36 lines constitute a panegyric well-spiked with mythological personages and place-names, but in mid-poem a tone-switch takes place and we are back to the informal, gossipy tone of the earlier letters: 16

Daniel Naborowski, 3RH]MH, ed. J. Dürr-Durski, Warszawa, 1961, 136.

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Chapter Thirteen 7HUD]GRQRZLQMDNRĞND]DáSU]\VWĊSXMĊ .WyU\FKMHGQDNQLHZLHOHWXSRFLHV]Q\FKF]XMĊ %RQDVVURJLHSRZLHWU]HĞFLVND]NDĪGHMVWURQ\ %yJVDPQLHFKDMGRGDZDVZHMĞZLĊWHMREURQ\17 (But now, as you asked me to, I proceed to the news, Of which I fear there is not much that is good, For we are pressed from all sides by a severe plague; Let God himself lend us his holy protection.)

This rather depressing piece of information is followed up by a list of the plague victims, but having done that, Naborowski supplies some political news as well (it is uncertain whether the 6HMP, planned for October, will now assemble) and also gives personal information (that the old Prince will send some horses to Janusz). He ends the epistle on a pragmatic and humorous note: -DSU]HVWDüPXV]ĊERPLĊGRSDQDZRáDMą -HĞOLPQLHMHVWWZąVáXJąR-DQXV]XGURJL 1LHFKDMPDPUR]JQLHZDQHQDVLĊZV]\VWNLHERJL18 (I must stop now for I am being called to the Master. If I am not your servant, my dear John, Let me draw upon myself the wrath of all the gods.)

7KHMRNHRIFRXUVHSOD\Von the convention in which the first half of the epistle was conceived. Here, within the same verse letter, Naborowski makes use of the artificial ‘Ovidian’ as well as the ‘Horatian’ model of the epistle. The tone of his other verse letters (III-VI) and the informal parts of “Epistles II” and VII leave us in no doubt about his preferences – as far as this particular genre is concerned, he is in favour of a natural, informative, discursive tone. If any poet of the Polish Baroque truly exploited the potential of the SRHWLFHSLVWOHLWZDVDERYHDOO-DQ$QGU]HM0RUV]W\Q,QIDFWWKHYHU\ILUVW poem which we can put a date to in Lutnia is “A Letter to His Honour Mr 2WZLQRZVNL WKH &XS %HDUHU RI 6DQGRPLU´ /LVW GR -HJRPRĞFL 3DQD Otwinowskiego, Podczaszego Sendomirskiego)19. This is often printed in DQWKRORJLHVLQFRQMXQFWLRQZLWK:DOHULDQ2WZLQRZVNL¶V³5HVSRQV´WKDWLV the addressee’s reply in verse to the young Morsztyn. Incidentally, we 17

ibid., 142. ibid., 144. 19 -DQ$QGU]HM0RUV]W\Q8WZRU\]HEUDQH, ed. Leszek Kukulski, Warszawa, 1971, 16. 18

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KDYHWRDPHQGWKHGDWHRIWKLVSRHPDVJLYHQLQ-DQ$QGU]HM0RUV]W\Q¶V critical edition – it was not written in 1638 as Leszek Kukulski thought20, but in the summer RIIRULWZDVWKHQWKDW-DQ$QGU]HM0RUV]Wyn and KLV SUHFHSWRU GLUHFWRU RI VWXGLHV  0DUFLQ 3ORUW OHIW *GDĔVN IRU WKH Netherlands, since by August 27, 1637, they already matriculated at the Protestant University of Franeker21. This first verse letter penned by the precocious sixteen year old young poet is a pleasant enough – if not particularly ambitious – piece of writing. It consists of 22 lines in thirteenV\OODEOH UK\PLQJ FRXSOHWV DQG LWV WKHPH LV -DQ $QGU]HM¶V GHSDUWXUH for foreign shores. He also makes a request to his relative and literary mentor Otwinowski: when he had finished his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses he should send a copy to young Morsztyn studying abroad so that: ,WDPVáDZDVá\QĊáDWZDSyNLSRGQLHE\ 2NUĊWZLDWUHPSĊG]RQ\SRELHĪ\22

(And that your fame should spread also there, While under the skies 7KHVKLSGULYHQE\WKHZLQGVIOLHV«

Otwinowski’s “Respons”, fourteen lines longer than his young kinsman’s verse letter, is tinged with nostalgia on account of the writer’s anticipation of his own death; he is by no means certain that he will still be alive when Morsztyn returns, but at any rate, promises to send a copy of the Ovid as soon as it leaves the printer: 1DVRPyMMHV]F]HZFLHQLXOHF]MXĪZVZ\PQLHZF]DVLH 1DU]HNDXVURJLHJRU]HPLHĞOQLNDZSUDVLH Skoro mu MHGQDN%yJGDVWDPWąGVLĊZ\SUDZLü 1LH]PLHV]NDLGR%HOJyZ]DWREąVLĊVWDZLü23 (My Naso is still in shadow, but for some time now it has been moaning in the printing press of a stern artisan; as soon as God will allow to free itself from there it won’t tarry but will present itself to you in the Low Countries)

20

ibid., VII. ibid., VII. 22 -DQ$QGU]HM0RUV]W\QRSFLW 23 ibid. 18. 21

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The examples given so far show that there exists a definite connection between the poetic epistle and travelling. Either the author or the addressee is removed from his usual environment. They visit foreign countries or HOVHUHODWHHYHQWVDWKRPHWRWKHIULHQGZKRHPEDUNHGRQDMRXUQH\7KLV was the case with Naborowski’s verse letters and the same applies to the PDMRULW\RI-DQ$QGU]HM0RUV]W\Q¶VYHQWXUHVLQWKLVJHQUH6RWKHIDVKLRQ for the epistle is not unrelated to the travels of Poles abroad, increasing throughout the second half of the sixteenth century and still going strong in the first half of the seventeenth. During this period ‘a Polish gentleman was not considered accomplished unless he travelled abroad for study’24 and with visiting foreign parts a need for itineraries and travelogues was emerging. Although no comprehensive European itinerary was written at the time, Polish travellers described particular travel experiences in works such as Erazm Otwinowski’s 'HVFULSWLRQRIWKHZD\WR7XUNH\:\SLVDQLH GURJLWXUHFNLHM) (1557), the anonymous -RXUQDORISHUHJULQDWLRQVLQ,WDO\ 6SDLQ DQG 3RUWXJDO ('LDULXV] SHUHJU\QDFML ZáRVNLHM KLV]SDĔVNLHM SRUWXJDOVNLHM1595, published only in 1925) and 0LNRáDM .U]\V]WRI 5DG]LZLáá–Sierotka’s 7UDYHO WR WKH +RO\ /DQG (3RGUyĪ GR =LHPL ĝZLĊWHM)  ILUVW SXEOLVKHG LQ /DWLQ LQ   2I WKHVH RQO\ 5DG]LZLáá– Sierotka’s book reached the general public, but the idea of travelling for educational purposes was generally accepted by the wealthier nobility. Travelling creates a new awareness of distances, of space. If the religious poetry of the early Polish Baroque meditated chiefly upon the problem of time in human life, then it is also true that the courtly (and urban) poetry of the same period is increasingly space-oriented. (Even the ‘Sarmatian’ variant of worldly poetry is space-oriented in its introversion, claiming that one’s home and native country should be the centre of all human DFWLYLWLHV  -DQ $QGU]HM Morsztyn’s poetic career begins with a spaceoriented verse letter and in later years he appears as the most typical practitioner of Polish ‘courtly’ poetry. Morsztyn’s /XWH (Lutnia), a mixture of epigrams, lyrical pieces and elegies, contains several verse letters as well (no. 8, 65, 66, 103, 113). With one exception they are all written to friends or relatives. /XWH (Do Jana Szomowskiego) is a poem characterised by plenty of information and a good-natured, humorous tone. It opens with a half-serious complaint about the hardship of court service – -DQ $QGU]HM 0RUV]W\Q EHFDPH chamberlain-attendant (GZRU]DQLQSRNRMRZ\) in the King’s court in 1653 – which involved much dashing around on various errands and foreign travel, often in difficult circumstances. In the second half of the epistle, beginning with the words 24

&]HVáDZ0LáRV]7KH+LVWRU\RI3ROLVK/LWHUDWXUH, London, 1969, 27.

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-DPMXĪE\áGREU]HFXG]\FKNUDMyZV\W\ ,ZGRPXNDĪG\JRĞFLQLHFPQLHELW\25 (I have already had my fill of foreign lands DQGDWKRPHWRR,KDYHWUHDGDOOWKHKLJKZD\V«

Morsztyn relates some of his official travels which included Opatów, Pozsony (Pressburg, now Bratislava) in Hungary and the Polish army headquarters near the Dnieper in the Duchy of Lithuania; he also complains that now (in the summer of 1653), he was appointed to go to ‘Rakocy’, Prince of Transylvania26, on a diplomatic mission, to make an alliance with the Hungarian ruler against Bohdan Chmielnicki. (As the intended war would take place in Moldavia, here the line µSU]\MG]LH JR V]XNDüJG]LHPLĊG]\0XOWDQ\¶ refers to the possibility of György Rákóczi’s already being in Moldavia, rather than to Morsztyn’s lack of exact geographical information about the whereabouts of Alba Julia)27. In the concluding part of the verse letter Morsztyn confesses to a feeling of envy vis-à-vis Szomowski – the lucky man is to be sent to Regensburg for negotiations at the Imperial Diet and may have opportunity for much pleasant entertainment among ‘lovely German ladies’ (JU]HF]QH1LHPNL) in the company of high-ranking gentlemen, a prospect distinctly missing from Morsztyn’s Transylvanian-Moldavian visit. The following piece in /XWH  is also a verse letter and by far the ORQJHVW RI -DQ $QGU]HM 0RUV]W\Q¶V HSLVWOHV – 198 lines in all. It is DGGUHVVHG WR WKH SRHW¶V \RXQJHU EURWKHU 6WDQLVáDZ 'R 6WDQLVáDZD 0RUV]W\QD 5RWPLVWU]D MHJR .UyOHZVNLHM 0RĞFL), and although it relates some of the experiences shared by both Morsztyns, it is in fact a comprehensive catalogue of drinks known in contemporary Europe, based on the list of wines in Virgil’s *HRUJLNRQ28. Even if the idea is not original, this epistle is a WRXU GH IRUFH unparalleled in seventeenth-century Polish poetry which, by the way, was quite fond of cataloguing things in verse – take for example the list of birds in Hieronim Morsztyn’s 0HUU\6WRU\ of %DQLDOXN« +LVWRULD XFLHV]QD R« %DQLDOXFH)29. It also gives a wineconnoisseur’s itinerary throughout the continent, starting with French wines: 25

-DQ$QGU]HM0RUV]W\QRSFLWS György Rákóczi II, Prince of Transylvania 1648- 1660. 27 -DQ $QGU]HM 0RUV]W\Q RS FLW ¶ Multany’ definitely means Moldavia; see B.S. Linde, 6áRZQLN-Ċ]\ND3ROVNLHJR, t. II, Cz. I, M-O, Warszawa, 1809, 162. 28 Ibid., 770. 29 See 3RHFL SROVNLHJR %DURNX W , HG -DGZLJD 6RNRáRZVND .D]LPLHUD ĩXNRZVND:DUV]DZD-252. 26

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Chapter Thirteen 3LáHĞZUD]]HPQąWHFR)UDQFX]GDMH« (You drank with me those wines produced by the French...)

and continuing with German and Austrian, Spanish and Italian, Greek and Hungarian wines (of these countries only Greece had not been visited E\ 6WDQLVáDZ  DIWHU ZKLFK FRPHV D VKRUWHU OLVW RI DOHV DQG EHHUV ERWK foreign and domestic and a list of other alcoholic drinks such as mead from Lithuania, cider from Normandy and vodka brewed in Lwów. That LVQRWDOOLQRUGHUWRGRMXVWLFH to every drink consumed by his brother, -DQ $QGU]HM OLVWV WKH YDULRXV ULYHUV DQG VWUHDPV IURP ZKLFK SRRU 6WDQLVáDZ GUDQN RU PLJKW KDYH drunk, while in the Ukraine in Koniecpolski’s army. He also mentions Tartar kumis, that is, fermented mare’s milk, and, worst of all, the polluted water which during the siege RI =EDUDĪ 3ROLVK VROGLHUV KDG WR GULQN ZDWHU LQIHVWHG ZLWK ZRUPV IURP decomposing corpses30)LQDOO\-DQ$QGU]HMDVNVKLVEURWKHU¶VDGYLFHRQ dekokty, that is, herbal teas, and concludes his epistle accordingly on a (literally) bitter note: not so long ago the doctor told him to drink “china”, that is quinine (presumably against feveU 7KLVSLHFHMXVWDVWKH previous one, is written in thirteen-syllable couplets and is characterised E\ JUHDW OLQJXLVWLF VNLOO DQG LQYHQWLYHQHVV /HW PH MXVW TXRWH SDUW RI Morsztyn’s ale-and-beer list: $OHWHĪSRGF]DVGODOHSV]HMRFKáRG\ SLMDáHĞ]ZRGąSU]HZDU]DQHVáRG\ angielskie ele, FRMDNFXNLHUV]F]HU\ i w ziemnych dzbankach burzne butelbiery, PXP\EUXQV]ZLFNLHLZURFáDZVNLHV]HSV\ JRGQHZNRU\FLHSRLüĞZLQLH]HSV\31 (But sometimes, to cool yourself more, you have also drunk sweet-flavoured mulled drinks, English ales which taste of pure sugar, DQGLQHDUWKHQZDUHMXJVIURWK\EHHUV ORFDOEHHUVIURP%UXQVZLFNDQG:URFáDZ ILWIRUSLJVDQGGRJVWRGULQNIURPWKHWURXJK«

Of Morsztyn’s remaining verse letters /XWH (3RV\áDMąFZLHUV]H« 3DQX PDUV]DáNRZL ZLHONLHPX NRURQHPX) is an imaginary walkabout in Warsaw. His poem, personified as a traveller, is told to find Jerzy Lubomirski’s palace in the Old Town of Warsaw, so a route through 30 31

-DQ$QGU]HM0RUV]W\QRSFLW ibid., 54-55.

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:DUVDZ LV GHVFULEHG IURP WKH 8MD]GRZVNL 3DODFH DORQJ WKH .Uakowskie 3U]HGPLHĞFLHDORQJYDULRXVSDODFHVDQGFKXUFKHVLQWRWKHKHDUWRIWKH2OG Town. Apart from providing the itinerary for his walk, Morsztyn also pays a few compliments to Lubomirski who is a fellow-poet and a man of great erudition and prodigious memory: $OERNLHG\5]HF]SXĞFL3RVSROLWD 7DF\WDZJáRZLHLEH]NVLĊJLF]\WD $JG\PXSUyĪQDSR]ZROLJRG]LQD :LHUQHJRVNáDGD3DVWHU]D]*XDU\QD32 (When the Republic allows him, He reads Tacitus in his mind and without a book, and when he has a free hour to do so, he composes Guarino’s ‘Faithful Shepherd’)

While the tone is respectful, the spirit of the poem is not that of a humanist panegyric. Another of Morsztyn’s friends and fellow-poets was Jan Grotkowski (1600-1652), a royal courtier and diplomat whose works KDYH XQIRUWXQDWHO\ EHHQ ORVW -DQ $QGU]HM DGGUHVVHG WZR YHUVH OHWWHUV WR him. The first of these (/XWH ) dates from the 1640s, for Grotkowski became royal secretary in 1642 and his function is already being referred to in the text. This first epistle is panegyrical in intent, hailing Grotkowski as a more accomplished poet than the author himself, and it is written in the usual thirteen-syllable couplets. Morsztyn’s second epistle to Grotkowski, however, uses a different and more sophisticated form – the RWWDYD ULPD. There is a time-gap between the two epistles, the second having been written in 1652 when Grotkowski was sent to the Court of Naples as Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Polish state. It was also in Naples that he died suddenly in the autumn of 1652. This poem, /XWH 7R -DQD *URWNRZVNLHJR«  FRQVLVWV RI ILYH VWDQ]DV LQ HOHYHQ-syllable lines with an elegant (A-B-A-B-C-C) rhyme pattern, and it contains, apart from some Italian name-dropping (both literary and topographical) a remarkable exhortation to Grotkowski: although he is now in Italy, he should not stop writing in Polish: $OHW\SRPQLąFSURVWRWĊRMF]\]Q\ 0yZ]QLąGRPRZ\PQLHSU]HZRĨQ\PU\PHP

32

ibid., 76.

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,VZRMHMPDWFHQLH]DGDMWHMEOL]Q\ ĩHE\ĞMĊ]\NLHPPLDáSLVDüSLHOJU]\PHP33 (But you, remembering the simplicity of your homeland, Speak to her in native, not imported rhymes, And do not wound your mother in this way: :ULWLQJLQWKHODQJXDJHRIDSLOJULP«

7KHVH OLQHV VRXQG VWUDQJHO\ 5RPDQWLF -DQ $QGU]HM 0RUV]W\Q KHUH LQ an unexpected way anticipates the sentiments of the nineteenth-century SRHW-XOLXV]6áRZDFNL This brief survey of the verse letters of the early Polish Baroque offers some arguments towards a generalisation. First of all, it shows the ambiguity inherent in the genre – it is used for different purposes in rather GLIIHUHQWFRQWH[WV$OO1DERURZVNL¶VYHUVHOHWWHUVDQGPRVWRI-DQ$QGU]HM Morsztyn’s epistles were written in connection with foreign travels, but among the latter we also find epistles with panegyrical or/and complimentary intent. Secondly, the formal tradition established in this genre by Daniel Naborowski (the use of thirteen-syllable rhyming couplets) is broken by Morsztyn when he uses octaves in the poem to Jan Grotkowski. Grotkowski (probably well versed in Italian poetry) often VHHPV WR EH WKH WDUJHW RI -DQ $QGU]HM¶V IRUPDO H[SHULPHQWV WKHUH LV D sonnet addressed to him (/XWH) and also a sentina (/XWH) where the tone is rather artificial due to the fact that the poem is constructed in six and a half stanzas out of the same six rhymes.34 I would hesitate to call /XWH a verse letter in the sense I have been using it until now. Whatever information is in the poem, it is so arcane that one’s attention is riveted to the poet’s dazzling technique, rather than to whatever he had intended to communicate. 2Q WKH ZKROH WKH YHUVH OHWWHU UHSUHVHQWV IRU -DQ $QGU]HM 0RUV]W\Q D light and flexible option, a chance for a genuine occasional poem much less bound by formal restrictions than the ode, the elegy, or the sonnet. For us the epistle of this period stands as a link with the classicism of the Renaissance, displaying a continuity more valid than that of other genres (the use of conceits changes the sonnet or even the lyrical song quite radically). Well before the flourishing of the poetic epistle of Boileau and Pope, the Polish verse letter of the early Baroque represents a courtly and urbane model, well-suited to friendly exchange between social equals or between persons separated by rank but linked by cultural values. Also it is 33 34

ibid., 81. ibid.,. 37-38.

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significant that in Poland the two most important authors of epistles were both Protestant (Calvinist) poets and that in the second half of the seventeenth century this genre almost disappeared, to return triumphantly a century later. The verse letter is a secular genre, with no points of contact with devotional literature or with Sarmatian patriotism, both important features of the Polish Baroque. On account of its flexibility, it constitutes a strong link between European Humanism, the Polish Baroque, and the poets of the Enlightenment.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE MYTH OF BYRON IN NORWID’S LIFE AND WORK 1. Macaulay called Lord Byron ‘the most celebrated Englishman of the nineteenth century’1 but he could not foresee the consequences of Byron’s fame which turned him into the most influential English poet of his age. He remained controversial in England long after his death, but was accepted and eagerly imitated throughout Europe, particularly in Slavonic countries. His influence on Pushkin and Lermontov, Mickiewicz and 6áRZDFNL KDV EHHQ WUDFHG DQG FDUHIXOO\ GRFXPHQWHG E\ JHQHUDWLRQV RI scholars. The Romantic Movement in Russia, Poland and other East European countries would have been different without the Byronic touch and the brooding Byronic heroes. In what way did Byron’s personality and poetic achievement affect following generations? What forms did the cult of Byron take in the twilight period of Romanticism? These are questions too big to answer fully here, but Norwid’s myth of Byron provides a characteristic example. Cyprian Norwid (1821-83) was the most original poet to follow the JUHDW 5RPDQWLF WULDG RI 0LFNLHZLF] 6áRZDFNL DQG .UDVLĔVNL +LV significance in the development of modern Polish poetry has been firmly established in the course of the last thirty years, though writers and literary historians occasionally still disagree about his proper place in the maze of literary currents and movements; he is called by some a ‘late Romantic’, by others a post-Romantic pioneer of a new sensibility, a precursor to Symbolism. While his best poetry, for instance the cycle 9DGH-PHFXP, transcends the limits of the Romantic Movement and of a historically defined Romantic style, his philosophy and the grand historiosophic scheme that provides the framework for his work can be called Romantic. In his evaluation of great historical personalities, Norwid was closer to 1

Thomas Babington Macaulay, µ/RUG%\URQ¶6HOHFWLRQVIURP0DFDXOD\¶V(VVD\V DQG6SHHFKHV London, 1856, II, 15.

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Michelet and Carlyle than to the Positivists, and his myth of Byron, at least in part, grew out of his Romantic consciousness. If he idealised Byron, he did it not only because, like so many of his contemporaries, he was convinced of the English poet’s lasting place in European literature and history, but also because he detected in himself certain affinities with the author of &KLOGH+DUROG, similarities which helped him to understand Byron’s dilemmas and choices. In Norwid’s writings Byron appears in three roles: as a poet, as an individual in conflict with his age and society, and finally, as a great historical personality who managed to break out of the limited space assigned to him by convention – a great precursor. All these aspects were discussed in an important essay which constituted part of Norwid’s lecture FRXUVH RQ -XOLXV] 6áRZDFNL Ln 1860 in which Norwid’s cult of Byron found its fullest expression. Byron was present in Norwid’s mind from the very beginning of his poetic career; the first line of one of his earliest published poems, 0yM RVWDWQLVRQHW (My Last Sonnet) attests to this. Byron is quoted here, if only to be contrasted with the poet’s own behaviour (he refuses to say farewell to his faithless lover). The appearance of his name in a Polish poem is by no means unusual; in the 1820s Byron was already rapidly becoming a household word among young literati and among enthusiasts of ‘modern’ literature. He was read mainly in French translation,2 as only very few educated Poles managed to follow Niemcewicz’s example and learn VXIILFLHQW (QJOLVK WR HQMR\ KLP LQ WKH RULJLQDO 7KH WDVN of translating Byron into Polish was taken up, with varying success, by the Romantics (though his first translator, J. U. Niemcewicz, was not one of them). After Mickiewicz, some of the lesser Romantics produced Polish versions of individual poems and it was presumably through these that the young Norwid first came to appreciate Byron’s work. Such were, among others, &KLOGH+DUROG¶V)DUHZHOO in Mickiewicz’s translation, %HSSR in the Polish YHUVLRQ RI 1RUZLG¶V IULHQG $QWRQL &]DMNRZVNL3 and some of the shorter lyrical poems including )DUH WKHH ZHOO (1816), translated already by Niemcewicz. Norwid referred to the latter poem in the opening line of ‘My Last Sonnet’.4 At that time he still had not read the whole of &KLOGH+DUROG (unless in French but even that is doubtful), and although the phrase 2

2HXYUHVGH/RUG%\URQWUDGXLWHVGHO¶DQJODLV (par Amédée Pichot et Eusèbe de Salle, sans nom de traducteur), 10 vols, Paris, 1819-21. 3 This was only published in 1845 but was known to Norwid earlier, cf. the motto to 3LyUR (1842): Cyprian Norwid']LHáD]HEUDQH, 2 vols, Warsaw, 1966 (hereafter called ']LHáD), I, 189. 4 ']LHáD, I, 148.

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‘uczucie Haroldowe’ (a Harold-like feeling) appears in his poem on leaving Warsaw, 3RĪHJQDQLH (Farewell), it is modelled more on the popular concept of the ‘Byronic hero’ than on a thorough understanding of the poem itself. No doubt the sombre, proud, non-conformist attitude of this hero was close to Norwid’s heart and the ‘Byronic attitude’ was to return in his poetry many years later; nevertheless ‘the fearful sea’ (JURĨQH PRU]H) in his 1842 )DUHZHOO was only a cliché, a borrowed metaphor which gained meaning only a decade later when Norwid crossed the Atlantic in perilous circumstances. Many young people exhibited ‘Byronic’ traits in Warsaw in the 1840s; some simply copied Byron’s style of dressing while others tried to imitate his famous spleen, his moods of mysterious melancholy. In fact, Norwid’s ILUVWUHIHUHQFHWR%\URQLVDFFRPSDQLHGE\WKHDGMHFWLYHSRQXU\ (gloomy). This and later references to Byron as an individual, for instance the laconic line put into his mouth by Norwid in 5R]PRZD XPDUá\FK (The Conversation of the Dead): ‘The world is bitterness’,5 indicate Norwid’s belief that Byron, in spite of his social and poetic success, was basically a tormented, lonely man. This could be the result of the English poet’s harsh childhood, bodily deformity (lameness) and unhappy marriage; also of the lack of understanding shown to Byron by the public opinion of his native country. As for Norwid, his Warsaw years were characterised by a brooding, melancholic disposition which left an imprint in his early poems. This mood sprang partly from his own circumstances: the early loss of his parents, his uncertain social situation and frail health, as well as from the dark, conspiratorial atmosphere of the period, usually referred to as the Pashkevich Era. The young Norwid, equally at home among the young Bohemians and in the world of salons was an enigma for many contemporaries; he was polite, cultivated, but somehow distant and reserved. ‘His closer friends called him the Englishman’, comments a colleague.6 Norwid was determined to become an artist – at that point he had not yet decided whether a painter or a poet – but an artist who would resist fashion and avoid making concessions to politics or to public taste. He left Poland in 1842 to study fine arts in Italy – a voluntary departure (like that of Byron) – from which he never returned. Some years later, already as a political émigré, Norwid moved to Paris. There, in 1849, an older friend described him: ‘Norwid strikes Byronic VWDQFHVDVRIROG+HLVPXGGOHGDQGVDGDWKHDUW«DQGKHZLOOQRWWDNH 5

Ibid., p. 411. W. Szymanowski and A. Niewiarowski, :VSRPQLHQLH R&\JDQHULLZDUV]DZVNLHM, Warsaw, 1964, 182.

6

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advice.’7 This was a very trying period in Norwid’s life. He lived in penury and had no success with his poetry. Public opinion turned against him for the ‘mannerisms’ and ‘eccentricities’ of his style and some critics brought up the accusation, a variant of which had been used against Byron as well: ‘he [Norwid] was spoilt by the praise of the Warsaw salons’.8 In the meantime the suspicion in Norwid’s mind that his destiny was connected with or in some ways similar to that of Byron was reinforced by certain events. Reading Thomas Moore’s book on Byron,9 Norwid found that Lord Byron was very proud of the antiquity of his family and his royal blood on his mother’s side; the same was true of Norwid, who believed that through his maternal grandmother he was a distant relation of King Jan Sobieski.10 While Byron had, on the whole, much more luck with women than Norwid, his first unrequited love (for Mary Chaworth) had DOOHJHGO\ GRQH KLP µD ODVWLQJ LQMXU\¶ 1RUZLG ZKRVH ILUVW VHULRXV ORYH affair and engagement had foundered on the social considerations of his partner, interpreted the Chaworth episode in terms of his own experience and commented on Byron’s marriage, or rather on his relationship to women, in a way which implied his own disappointments.11 Society distorted and crippled love; unhappiness in one’s love-affairs was more often due to social pressure than individual incompatibility. Like Byron at one time, Norwid around 1850 was obsessed with the sudden death of people whom he loved and who were close to him; the feeling of increasing loneliness deepened his melancholy and was an important factor in his decision to immigrate to the United States.12 We have already spoken about a dramatic change in the climate of criticism in relation to Norwid’s work: people who had admired his poetry now turned against him. A similar thing happened to Byron after the break-up of his marriage and departure from England in 1816. In both cases the reasons were at least in part political and social, rather than purely aesthetic. Taking all this into account it is not surprising that Norwid felt a special affinity with Byron, the non-conformist and unhappy expatriate. 7

J. B. Zaleski, .RUHVSRQGHQF\D, 5 vols, Lwów, 1901, II, 128. Quoted by J. W. Gomulicki in Norwid, 3LVPD Z\EUDQH Z\EUDá L RSUDFRZDá Juliusz W. Gomulicki, 5 vols, Warsaw, 1968, (hereafter called 3LVPD) I: :LHUV]H, p. 98. As for Macaulay’s opinion on Byron (‘a spoilt child’), see Macaulay RSFLW., 5. 9 Thomas Moore /HWWHUV DQG -RXUQDOV RI /RUG %\URQ :LWK 1RWHV RI KLV /LIH, 2 vols, London, 1830. 10 3LVPD, V: Listy, 179. 11 ibid., 199. 12 6áRZDFNL &KRSLQ DQG RQH RI 1RUZLG¶V EHVW IULHQGV :áRG]LPLHU] àXELHĔVNL died in 1849. On Norwid’s loneliness, see letter no. 85 in 3LVPD, V/LVW\, 178. 8

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$VWRKLVµ%\URQLFVWDQFHV¶LWLVDPDWWHURIFRQMHFWXUHZKDWWKHVHUHDOO\ were. Yet, apart from play-acting, certain affinities must have existed. A poem addressed to Teofil Lenartowicz ³7\ PQLH GR SLHĞQL SRNRUQHM QLH ZRáDM«´ (Don’t Ask Me to Sing a Humble Song) illustrates this point. It was written in 1855, soon after the poet’s return from America, and in it Norwid gives a self-portrait strikingly similar to the essential traits of Childe Harold, Byron’s true DOWHUHJR: %RMD]SU]HNOĊW\FKMHVWHPWHJRĞZLDWD Ja bywam dumny i hardy, $PLáRĞüPRMDEUDFLHGZXVNU]\GODWD Od uwielbienia do wzgardy13 (For I am one of the damned of this world, Often proud proud and haughty, And my love, brother, is double-winged: From admiration it stretches to contempt)

2. The two texts more relevant to the problem of the nature of Norwid’s cult of Byron are the long poem (SLPHQLGHV (1854) and the lecture course RQ 6áRZDFNL   %\ WKH WLPH KH ZURWH (SLPHQLGHV Norwid had not only read Moore’s famous /LIH of Byron but had learned some English and was able to read Byron in the original. That he indeed did so was implied in the remark that there was an appropriate place to read each of the great authors: Dante in Florence, Shakespeare in London and Byron at sea, as this had been done ‘by someone known to me’.14 It can be assumed that this ‘someone’ was Norwid himself and that he read Byron in the original during his return trip from the United States (that is, shortly before writing (SLPHQLGHV . This may have been the case, not only because by that time his command of English had greatly improved, but also because on his RXWZDUG MRXUQH\ WR 1HZ