Born: Sycyna, Poland, in 1530. Education: Educated at Cracow Academy, 1544-49; University of Krolewiec, 1551-52; University of Padua, 1552-55. Family: Married Dorota Podlodowska in 1570; six daughters. Career: Courtier: secretary to King Zygmunt, 1560-68; retired to estate in Czarnolas, 1570. Died: 22 August 1584.
Publications
Collections
Dziela wszystkie [Complete Works]. 4 vols., 1884-97.
Dziela polskie [Polish Works], edited by Julian Krzyzanowski. 3 vols., 1960.
Dziela wszystkie [Complete Works], edited by Maria Renata Mayenowa and others. 4 vols., 1982-91.
Verse
Zuzanna [Susanna]. 1562.
Szachy [A Game of Chess]. 1562(?); edited by Kazimierz Nitsch, 1923; also edited by Julian Krzyzanowski, 1966.
Zgoda [Concord]. 1564.
Satyr; albo, dziki mz [The Satyr; or, The Wild Man]. 1564; edited by Paulina Buchwald-Pelcowa, 1983.
Psalterz Dawidow [Psalms of David]. 1579, reprinted 1985.
Treny. 1583; edited by Wiktor Weintraub, 1943; also edited by Tadeusz Sinko, 1966, Julian Krzyzanowski, 1967, and Janusz Pelc, 1972; as Laments, translated by Dorothea Prall Radin, 1920; also translated by Seamus Heaney and Stanislaw Baranczak, 1995.
Lyricorum libellus. 1580.
Elegiarum libri IV, elusdem Foricoenia sive epigrammatum libellus [Four Books of Elegies and the Trifles]. 1584; as Fraszki [Trifles], 1612; edited by Antonina Jelicz, 1956; also edited by Aleksander Soszynski, 1980; Piesni [Songs]. 1586; edited by Tadeusz Sinko, 1948.
Elegie [Elegies], translated (from Latin) by K. Brodzinski. 1829.
Poems, edited by G.R. Noyes, translated by Noyes, Dorothea Prall Radin, and others. 1928.
Plays
Odprawaposlowgreckich (produced 1578). 1578; edited by Tadeusz Sinko, 1915; also edited by Tadeusz Ulewicz, 1962; as The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys, translated by G.R. Noyes and Ruth Earl Merrill (verse), 1918; also translated by Charles S. Kraszewski, 1994.
Critical Studies:
”The Medieval Dream Formula in Kochanowski’s Laments" by Jerzy Peterkiewicz, in Slavonic and East European Review, 31(77), 1953; ”Mythological Allusions in Kochanowski’s Laments" by Ray J. Parrott, in Polish Review, 14(1), 1969; Jan Kochanowski by David J. Welsh, 1974; Ian Kochanowski in Glasgow edited by Donald Pirie, 1985; The Polish Renaissance in Its European Context edited by Samuel Fiszman, 1988.
Jan Kochanowski’s reputation outside the Polish cultural sphere is small, and his significance in European terms is difficult to assess, though his works are of an ingenuity and sophistication that compete with the best among his international contemporaries.
His debut was as a cosmopolitan poet taking advantage of the medium of progressive humanist culture, Neo-Latin. The erudite and inventive Virgilian verse of his early work, widely circulated in manuscript after 1550, was published much later as the Lyricorum libellus in 1580. Well known among the small cultured elite of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s few courts, Kochanowski was patronized by both courtiers and clerics, eventually securing himself the position of Royal Secretary for most of the 1560s. It was in this milieu that he switched to his native idiom, in which he wrote first the vignettes of humorous verse in the anthology entitled Fraszki [Trifles], which satirize contemporary society and its mores.
Kochanowski soon advanced to a combination of the sophisticated style of Neo-Latin verse and its classical models and genres with Polish vocabulary and syntax in the Piesni [Songs] (again, known widely, but published posthumously in 1586), closely modelled on Horace’s Odes. In these highly polished ”songs,” he set the stylistic and thematic standards for almost two centuries. His subjects range from subtle (and not so subtle) panegyric dedicated to court patrons, through hymns on the beauty of Creation, to the erotic and melancholic, pastoral and religious. While some are artful paraphrases from Horace, most are entirely original, and stand as a testament of the achievements of the ”Augustan” Golden Age under the sophisticated Zygmunt August (1548-72). The Piesni are a fusing of two cultures (Roman and Sarmatian), two languages (Latin and Polish), and two poets (Horace the master, and Kochanowski the apprentice).
Towards 1570, however, for reasons that are unclear, Kochanowski had severed his dependence on court favour, and retired with his new wife to his estate at Czarnolas, evoked so lyrically in the ”Piesn swigtojanska o Sobotce” (published with Piesni). Despite irregular commissions from his earlier patrons, such as his experimental Euripidean tragedy in Polish, Odprawa poslow greckich (The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys), in this idyllic environment he concentrated on his true ”vocation,” a versified paraphrase of the Psalter in Polish. This huge work, the Psalterz Dawidow [Psalms of David], is another blending of biblical, classical Latin, and Polish vernacular ingredients. His version surpassed all others in originality, beauty, and popularity. On all levels it is the culmination of his life’s work.
The last five years of the poet’s life were overshadowed by the deaths of court friends, relatives, and in particular his own children. A record of the struggle between faith and despair following the death of his three-year-old daughter Orszula, entitled the Treny (Laments), was published in 1580. It contains a cycle of contemplative lyrics on the implications of Orszula’s demise and his sense of loss. Once again there is the combination of contrasting elements—the classical and biblical, the philosophical and personal, the lyrical and dramatic, all focused by the factual event that inspired the cycle. Together they transform these laments from a conventional exercise into an extraordinarily honest psychological document, revealing much of the mentality of 16th-century man.
With the exception of some secondary political and panegyric verse, Kochanowski’s sublime poetry is not the product of a provincial. Single-handedly he extended the Polish language’s limits in all directions. The Laments are his last word, a personal legacy of the potential of Christian humanism, after which the poet abandoned his artificial lute for the rewards of David’s faith.
