Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński (c. 1550 – c. 1581) was an influential Polish poet of the late

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

who wrote in both Polish and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

. He was a pioneer of the

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

and the greatest representative of the metaphysical movement of the era in Poland. His love poems are often classed as

mannerist Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Ita ...

. Jan Błoński has called Sęp Szarzyński a "mystical poet full of

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or " concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abst ...

", and Wiktor Weintraub has called him "the most outstanding poet of the times of

Jan Kochanowski Jan Kochanowski (; 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. ...

".Wiktor Weintraub, ''Od Reja do Boya'' (From ikołajRej to adeuszBoy[-Żeleński.html" ;"title="Żeleński.html" ;"title="adeuszBoy[-Żeleński">adeuszBoy[-Żeleński">Żeleński.html" ;"title="adeuszBoy[-Żeleński">adeuszBoy[-Żeleński, Warsaw, 1977, pp. 45-47. The poet's status in the history of Polish literature is controversial.

Life

Little is known about Sęp Szarzyński's personal life. He was born in Zimna Woda near Lwów, the eldest of three sons, and educated at the universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig. His stay in Germany brought him close to Protestantism but he later became an ardent Roman Catholicism, Catholic and his religious devotion is reflected in his poems. He probably died in Wolica, Przeworsk County, Wolica in 1581 in the age of 31. He amass all his writings in handwritings. After his death, Sęp Szarzyński's verse was collected by his brother Jakub and published under the title ''Rytmy abo wiersze polskie'' in 1601.

Works

Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński's work is often called "the sunset of the Polish

". His poems introduced the

to Polish literature. The most important Szarzyński's poems are probably his

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

s. They are written according to French model of the form. They were translated into English by Richard Sokoloski. The most important is perhaps the sonnet ''On the War We Wage Against Satan, the World, and the Body'' that was translated into English by Michael J. Mikoś.Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński, Sonnet IV.
/ref> Szarzyński made paraphrases of some Psalms, too.

Sources

*Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński: ''Rytmy polskie'' (Ad Oculos, 2004)

References

External links

Collected works (Polish)
1550s births 1580s deaths Polish male poets New Latin-language poets {{Poland-poet-stub