ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603150108
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY EDWARD C. LYNSKEY
LAMENTS. By Jan Kochanowski. Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Seamus Heaney. Farrar Straus Giroux. $17.50.
When I first received this title, I had only a vague notion of who Jan Kochanowski was. When I discovered he modernized Polish medieval verse with his use of end rhymes, line breaks, images and meter, I feared that these poems would prove dull fare. Instead, I enjoyed reading and reflecting upon his poignant poems.
This collection, consisting of 19 laments first published in 1580, was written as an outlet for Kochanowski's grief over the death of his 30-month-old daughter, Ursula. A bard at the royal court in Cracow who married rather late in life, Kochanowski was also a Renaissance humanist who believed that "reason" governed all worldly forces. However, Ursula's untimely death upset him enough to admit his own mortality. In Lament 9, Kochanowski wrote, "Wisdom for me was castles in the air;/I'm hurled, like all the rest, from topmost stair." Any parent who has lost an offspring (no matter how old) can empathize with these intensely personal feelings.
Kochanowski was ridiculed in his lifetime for making his daughter's death the subject of poetry because most verse then eulogized famous noblemen. Yet, when read today, "Laments" remains as moving and dramatic as John Milton's "Paradise Lost." This bilingual edition is the first serious English translation and was done in part by 1995 Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.
Edward C. Lynskey lives in Warrenton.
LENGTH: Short : 38 linesby CNB