Szanowni Państwo

W związku z licznymi prośbami Państwa czytelników, żeby było publikowane więcej kultury, co jest zrozumiałe w obecnych czasach – sięgamy do zasobów klasycznych, które będą interesujące dla każdego, bez żadnego kontekstu. Bo kto z nas czytał polską poezję po angielsku? Właśnie mamy szansę.W kolejnych dniach zapoznamy się z kolejnymi częściami.

“Laments by Jan Kochanowski” – “Treny” zna każdy ze szkoły, to wspaniała poezja polska w przekładzie anglojęzycznym. Z największą radością, będziemy przez najbliższe dni ją Państwu publikować. Warto się uczyć języków obcych, zwłaszcza warto poznawać literaturę własną w obcych językach, to wspaniałe i ciekawe doświadczenie – warte polecenia. Serdecznie zapraszamy do lektury. W komentarzach macie Państwo dowolność, ale prosimy chociaż nawiązywać do tematyki kulturalnej. To ważne, potrzebne i ciekawe! A jeżeli ktoś czegoś nie rozumie, niech się odrobinę wysili… małe ćwiczenie intelektualne bywa pożyteczne.

Być może uda się nam powrócić do publikacji zaprzyjaźnionych poetów? Będziemy Państwa informować.

Źródło tekstów w całości: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27179 

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Laments, by Jan Kochanowski

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Laments

Author: Jan Kochanowski

Translator: Dorothea Prall

Release Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #27179]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAMENTS ***

Produced by Jimmy O’Regan (Produced from images generously
made available by Columbia University Libraries)

LAMENTS

BY

JAN KOCHANOWSKI

VERSIFIED BY
DOROTHEA PRALL

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY
1920

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SYLLABUS SERIES NO. 122

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Jan Kochanowski (1530-84) was the greatest poet of Poland during its existence as an independent kingdom. His _Laments_ are his masterpiece, the choicest work of Polish lyric poetry before the time of Mickiewicz. Kochanowski was a learned poet of the Renaissance, drawing his inspiration from the literatures of Greece and Rome. He was also a man of sincere piety, famous for his translation of the Psalms into his native language. In his _Laments_, written in memory of his little daughter Ursula, who died in 1579 at the age of thirty months, he  expresses the deepest personal emotion through the medium of a literary style that had been developed by long years of study. The  Laments_, to be sure, are not based on any classic model and they contain few direct imitations of the classical poets, though it may be noted that the concluding couplet of _Lament XV_ is translated from the _Greek Anthology_. On the other hand they are interspersed with continual references to classic story; and, more important, are filled with the atmosphere of the Stoic philosophy, derived from Cicero and Seneca. And along with this austere teaching there runs through them a warmer tone
of Christian hope and trust; _Lament XVIII_ is in spirit a psalm. To us of today, however, these poems appeal less by their formal perfection, by their learning, or by their religious tone, than by their exquisite humanity. Kochanowski’s sincerity of grief, his fatherly love for his baby girl, after more than three centuries have not lost their power to touch our hearts. In the _Laments_ Kochanowski embodied a wholesome ideal of life such as animated the finest spirits of Poland in the years of its greatest glory, a spirit both humanistic and universally human.

G. R. NOYES.

TO URSULA KOCHANOWSKI

A CHARMING, MERRY, GIFTED CHILD, WHO, AFTER SHOWING GREAT PROMISE OF ALL
MAIDENLY VIRTUES AND TALENTS, SUDDENLY, PREMATURELY, IN HER UNRIPE
YEARS, TO THE GREAT AND UNBEARABLE GRIEF OF HER PARENTS, DEPARTED HENCE.

WRITTEN WITH TEARS FOR HIS BELOVED LITTLE GIRL BY JAN KOCHANOWSKI, HER
HAPLESS FATHER.

THOU ART NO MORE, MY URSULA.

_Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse
Juppiter auctiferas lustravit lumine terras._

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:
Gather ye here within my house today
And help me mourn my sweet, whom in her May
Ungodly Death hath ta’en to his estate,
Leaving me on a sudden desolate.
‘Tis so a serpent glides on some shy nest
And, of the tiny nightingales possessed,
Doth glut its throat, though, frenzied with her fear,
The mother bird doth beat and twitter near
And strike the monster, till it turns and gapes
To swallow her, and she but just escapes.
“‘Tis vain to weep,” my friends perchance will say.
Dear God, is aught in life not vain, then? Nay,
Seek to lie soft, yet thorns will prickly be:
The life of man is naught but vanity.
Ah, which were better, then–to seek relief
In tears, or sternly strive to conquer grief?