Published: 2015-06-30

Reviewers’ raptures and indiscretions Seweryn Bączalski as a critic of Hieronim Morsztyn’s Światowa Rozkosz

Radosław Grześkowiak

Abstract

In Old Polish literature, literary criticism was virtually unknown. In view of the scarcity of appraisals and reviews, a rhyming review written by a second-rate poet from the second half of the 17th century Seweryn Bączalski has extraordinary weight. In a poem Do tego, co już przeczetł, which crowns his 1608 collection of poems Przestrach śmiertelny, Bączalski evaluates the works of several poets from Cracow of that time, taking this opportunity to comment in great detail on Hieronim Morsztyn’s popular poem Światowa Rozkosz, published in 1606. The reviewer was riveted by an apparent clash: throughout the poem, Morsztyn enumerates multitudinous delights, only to unexpectedly deprecate in the ending their value when confronted with death and decay. This discrepancy hardly motivated in the poem and still attracting researchers’ attention, Bączalski motivates by a biographical key presenting Morsztyn as an inveterate womanizer who, finally, ends up ensnared by… syphilis. This experience allegedly changed the poet’s attitude towards carnal pleasures, and Światowa Rozkosz gave this existential discovery of his literary form. 

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Citation rules

Grześkowiak, R. (2015). Reviewers’ raptures and indiscretions Seweryn Bączalski as a critic of Hieronim Morsztyn’s Światowa Rozkosz. Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne [Silesian Journal of Polish Studies], 6(1), 23–51. Retrieved from https://journals.us.edu.pl/index.php/SSP/article/view/8777

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2015)
Published: 2015-06-30


ISSN: 2084-0772
eISSN: 2353-0928

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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