Laments - Softcover

Kochanowski, Jan

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Softcover

ISBN 10: 057117597X ISBN 13: 9780571175970

Publisher: Jan Kochanowski, 1995

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Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584) is acknowledged to be the first great poet in Poland's vernacular literary tradition. His Treny (or Laments) represent the height of his achievement. They are an impassioned, yet impeccably controlled, expression of grief over the death of his daughter Orszula, and, while their power scandalized Kochanowski's contemporaries, they came at length to be considered an enduring masterpiece.

As Czeslaw Milosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, has written of Kochanowski: 'His presence belies foggy notions common in the West about a barbaric Eastern Europe. And yet, the Renaissance literature of Poland is virtually unknown in the West because of the lack of translations. The Laments of Kochanowski should be ranked with the world classics. There were some attempts to translate Laments into English in the past, but now something has happened which allows the English-speaking reader to have nearly direct access to his work. Namely, the cooperation of two excellent poets, Professor Stanislaw Baranczak of Harvard, and Seamus Heaney. That team has translated Laments, preserving its metres and rhythms. It is a rare accomplishment, which brings joy to me as an inheritor of Kochanowski's language and of the Renaissance tradition.'

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About the Author:

Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966, and was followed by poetry, criticism and translations which established him as the leading poet of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, appeared in 2008; Human Chain, his last volume of poems, was awarded the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He died in 2013. His translation of Virgil's Aeneid Book VI was published posthumously in 2016 to critical acclaim.

Synopsis:

Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584) is acknowledged to be Poland's greatest poet, and this work represents the height of his achievement. The poems it contains, incorporating outspokenness and breach of decorum, are an impassioned but controlled expression of grief over the death of his daughter Orszula.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.