Jan Kochanowski
Who is Jan Kochanowski
Jan Kochanowski (Polish: [ˈjan kɔxaˈnɔfskʲi]; 1530 – 22 August 1584) was a Polish Renaissance poet who established poetic patterns that would become integral to the Polish literary language. He is commonly regarded as the greatest Polish poet before Adam Mickiewicz.
Life
Jan Kochanowski was born at Sycyna, near Radom, Poland. He was the older brother of Andrzej Kochanowski, who would also become a poet and translator. Little is known of Jan's early education. At fourteen, fluent in Latin, he was sent to the Kraków Academy. After graduating in 1547 at the age of seventeen, he attended the University of Königsberg, in Ducal Prussia (a fiefdom of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland), and Padua University in Italy. At Padua, Kochanowski came in contact with the...
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Jan Kochanowski Poems
- Lament I
Come, Heraclitus and Simonides,
Come with your weeping and sad elegies:
Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the lands
Wherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:
...
- Lament X
My dear delight, my Ursula, and where
Art thou departed, to what land, what sphere?
High o'er the heavens wert thou borne, to stand
One little cherub midst the cherub band?
...
- Lament Xii
I think no father under any sky
More fondly loved a daughter than did I,
And scarcely ever has a child been born
Whose loss her parents could more justly mourn.
...
- Lament Xiii
Ursula, winsome child, I would that I
Had never had thee if thou wert to die
So early. For with lasting grief I pay,
Now thou hast left me, for thy sweet, brief stay.
...
- Lament Xiv
Where are those gates through which so long ago
Orpheus descended to the realms below
To seek his lost one? Little daughter, I
Would find that path and pass that ford whereby
...
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