From Baroque to Classicism

FROM BAROQUE TO CLASSICISM The Age of Baroque.—The 17th century, although a period of wars and invasions, is rich in literary production. Italian models, with all the extravagance of the seicento manner, give to 17th century Polish literature, variety and colour, but at the expense of unity and moral elevation. Important works, censored by the clergy, have come to light only in recent times.

Poets of the 17th Century.

The military events of the period, together with the influence of Tasso's epic (translated into Polish, as was also Ariosto's, by Peter Kochanowski) inspired a number of epic poems dealing with contemporary history. The principal poet of the period, Waclaw Potocki (1625-96) com posed an enormous epic on the Chocim campaign of 1621 against the Turks and followed it up with The New Mercury and The Turks' Defeat at Chocim on the victories of John Sobieski. He also left behind in ms. two large collections of minor verse, The Garden and Moralia, and both illustrative of all aspects of the Polish life of his time. Potocki is also the author of a huge body of religious verse, and of several verse romances both original and translated. Potocki was preceded by Samuel Twardowski (160o 60) author of three interminable rhymed chronicles on the stormy events of the time. A fantastic verse story of his, The Beaute ous Pasqualina, is noteworthy as a paraphrase from Montemayor. A bitter satirist appeared in Christopher Opaliriski (1610-56). His brother Lucas (1612-62) is also a satirist, and a better poet, as well as a political writer of merit. He wrote also an Art of Poetry. Vespasian Kochowski ( I633-170o), in importance next to Potocki, surpasses him in artistic refinement. Having fought in many Polish wars, he told the story of some of them in volum inous epics. But neither these nor his long religious poems are as important as his Polish Psalmody, modelled on Kochanowski's verse Psalter, but written in poetic prose and embodying much of the poet's own inner life. A poet of peculiar charm and grace meets us in the person of Andrew Morsztyn (1613-93), who trans lated Tasso's Aminta, Corneille's Cid, and Marini's Psyche, and represents, in his own lyrics, the first instance of the deep influ ences of Italian and French literature. Simon Zimorowicz (1608 29), a burgher of Lwow, who died young, shines like a meteor by the freshness and poetic sentiment of his love lyrics Roxo lanki. His elder brother Joseph Bartholomew (1597-1677), gives us delightful glimpses both of town and country life, and inter esting accounts of quiet as well as of stormy times, in his Idylls.

18th Century Prose.

Among prose writers, we may single out: the Dominican preacher Fabian Birkowski (1566-1636), a bardtpe successor to Skarga; the learned and voluminous Latin and Polish writer Simon Starowolski (1585-1656), whose Latin works include the first history of Polish literature; Count Andrew' Maximilian Fredro (162o-1697), whose Proverbs are a collection of maxims and observations comparable with the works of the French moralists of the time; Stanislas Heraclius Lubomirski (c. 1640-1702) who wrote several comedies based on Italian and

Spanish originals, and finally, John Chrysostom Pasek (1630– 1701), the king of Polish diarists, whose adventures in war and peace are embellished beyond the truth, yet simply and spon taneously narrated.

The Saxon Period.—The era of baroque is prolonged into the sad period of political decay and intellectual stagnation covered by the reigns of Augustus II. and III. (1697-1763). Specimens of literature worth recording, like the unpretending verse of Poland's first poetess Elizabeth Druzbacka (1695-1765), are isolated in this age. But even this darkest period of Polish civilisation is illuminated by such efforts as Stanislas Konarski's (170o-1773) reform of the secondary schools conducted by the Piarist fathers and his proposals for a thorough reform of Polish literary style (De emendandis eloquentiae vitiis, The Era of Enlightenment: Poets.—The reign of the last king of Poland, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski (1764-1795), is a period of literary development. Both the general atmosphere of the age of rationalism, and the peculiar conditions of Poland—the imminent danger of ruin to the commonwealth—gave the litera ture of the period a predominantly didactic character : satire, as elsewhere in Europe, is prominent. Thus, the representative writer of the age, Ignatius Krasicki (1735-1801) was, above all, a satir ical poet. Krasicki is a typical eighteenth century prelate of the sort not uncommon in western Europe at the time. After his early heroic-comic poem, Myszeis, on the battle of the rats and mice against the cats, he soon rose to a higher level in his epic satire on monastic life, Monochomachia. This was followed by a bio graphical novel, The Adventures of Dawiadczytiski, which con tains a good deal of satire on the Polish gentry. A second novel, Pan Podstoli, is more didactic in design : it draws Krasicki's picture of the ideal country gentleman. The high-water mark of Kra sicki's work is reached in his Satires, the supreme achievement of 18th century classicism in Poland. They are followed by Epistles, but his most popular work is his Fables, which has made him the La Fontaine of Poland. His voluminous prose works include the first Polish survey of universal literature.