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 religions 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