The article presents and analyses Ode the 15th of the First Book of Casimire imitated, encouraging the Polish Knights after their last Conquest to proceed in their Victory, a little known anonymous English paraphrase of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski’s Neo-Latin ode Lyr. I 15 Cum Ladislaus, Poloniae princeps, fuso Osmano, Turcarum imperatore, victorem exercitum in hiberna reduceret. It shows both the historical context within which the original poem was written in 1621 as one of the so-called “turcyki”, i.e. poems exhorting Christian knights in their fight against the Turks, and the context within which the paraphrase was written and published immediately after the battle of Vienna (1683). It opens with a comment on the original poem and specifically deals with Sarbiewski’s departures from the description of the actual battle which were later skillfully employed by the English translator. Next, the volume in which the English poem appeared in 1685, Miscellany Poems and Translations by Oxford Hands is presented. A tentative attempt is made to establish the identity of the anonymous translator based on the available data concerning the place of publication and the editor of the volume, Anthony Stephens. Next, a detailed analysis shows how the anonymous translator transformed the poem originally celebrating the Polish victory at Chocim (1621) and Crown Prince Vladislaus IV Vasa into a poem celebrating the battle of Vienna (1683) and king John III Sobieski. The analysis concentrates quite exclusively on the differences between the original and the translation which resulted from the translator’s attempts to adapt the primary text to a new function in a different political situation. The translator exhibits great skill in introducing only minor changes to the original text, such changes, however, which without giving his game away (the text mentions neither Vienna nor Sobieski) clearly reveal his intentions. He also adroitly introduces new elements such as the standard of Muhammad sent by the Polish king to the pope, or the relief of Vienna Comet, which further bring the text taken from Sarbiewski to the translator’s current purpose and situation. The article ends with a presentation of the translation practices in Great Britain in the 17th and the 18th century and their influence upon the discussed poem. The question which the final paragraphs attempt to resolve is whether the text should be treated as a translation, or it is rather an adaptation or, to use a more contemporary word, a parody of Sarbiewski’s ode

The Warsaw Confederation, Piotr Skarga SJ, and Hate Speech
The discourse involving the feeling of hate is understood here rather as a soft than a hard “discourse of hate”. The Warsaw Confederation called “a jewel of a free conscience” was hated (more or less) by the contemporary elite of the Church. The subjects of analysis in this paper are two booklets by Piotr Skarga (Upominanie do ewanjelików i do wszystkich społem niekatolików iż o skażenie zborów krakowskich gniewać się i nic nowego i burzliwego zaczynać nie mają [An Admonition to Protestants and to all other non-Catholics], Kraków 1591; Dyskurs na konfederacyją – [A Discourse on Confederation], Kraków 1607) and Protestant responses to them.
The fundamental question is: can “the discourse of hatred”, i.e. “a concept of multiple meanings (...), involved in political and philosophical disputes, so typical for the beginning of the 21st century”, be used as a way of analysing and interpretating texts written 400 years ago? Such an indisputable argument as the title of the book by Wacław Sobieski published already 100 years ago: Nienawiść wyznaniowa tłumów za rządów Zygmunta III-go [The religious hate of crowds during the reign of Sigismund III] supports an affirmative answer to it.
In a kind of “hierarchy of beliefs” in Skarga’s argument Protestants are ascribed to the lowest and exceptionally godless place and described by comparisons: 1. with adulterers, thieves and parricides (Protestants are equal to them) and 2. with pagans and Jews (Protestants are perhaps even worse than them). Th e purpose of such an argumentation is severe condemnation of the Protestant godlessness since the Catholic love towards God evokes hate towards people who – like Protestants – turned away from Him. So, on the one hand, Skarga admits that Protestants are still Christians, but on the other, he claims there is no God outside his, i.e. Catholic, church.

Although the Jagiellonian University was established as early as in 1364, its widelyrecognized motto was chosen and inscribed on the portico leading from the Assembly Hall to Copernicus Hall much later, only in the mid-twentieth century. In 1952, Professor Karol Estreicher Jr., the head of the University Museum, came across a sentence which he considered “worth being the Jagiellonian University’s motto” (the inscription was eventually carved on the portico in 1964). Apparently, all that Estreicher knew was that the phrase plus ratio quam vis was “a part of a Latin proverb.” He had no idea whatsoever of its author or the original context in which it had been used.
Frequently (still too frequently, in truth) the phrase is quoted as coined by Cornelius Gallus, usually labeled, after Ovid, the first of the elegiac poets of Rome. The mistake is justifiable, at least to some extent, as the actual author of the poetic work in which the hemistich appears was for quite a long time mistaken for Cornelius Gallus. After Pomponius Gauricus’s edition of Cornelii Galli Fragmenta (Venice, 1501 die. XII. Ianuarii, which actually means 1502, as the date is indicated more veneto), the elegiac oeuvre by Maximianus, an author active in sixth-century Italy, was, so to speak, redefined as Gallus’s. Until the late eighteenth century the false attribution continued to be repeated by many other editors, who in fact very willingly published collections of the Roman love poets, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and ‘Gallus’ (= Maximianus).
It is to some point ironic that in the modern era Maximianus was so easily deprived of the ‘copyright’ to his own poetry, considering that earlier, in the Middle Ages, he was an author (relatively) well-known (under his real name) and even read in and recommended for schools. This aspect brings us back to our main topic here, i.e. the choice of Maximianus’s phrase as the motto of the Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest universities in the world. Karol Estreicher himself was presumably not aware of this but Maximianus was indeed studied in the Kraków Academy in mid-fifteenth century (as two manuscripts, BJ 1954 and 2141, preserved in the Jagiellonian Library, clearly indicate). He was studied for his vivid descriptions of old age (for which he was  celebrated among many medieval commentators and theorists of teaching, who apparently were not at all embarrassed by the fact that their students, when reading Maximianus, might have also read a laus Mentulae) and for his sententiositas. What is more, the Jagiellonian Library possesses a considerable collection of incunabula and old prints containing Maximianus’s (or ‘Gallus’s’) work. So paradoxically, Karol Estreicher could not have chosen better. The motto of UJ is related to its history, in the sense that it is taken from an author whose work was on the reading list in the Academy in the later Middle Ages, it is concise, intelligent, significant, and ‘decent,’ even though it was originally expressed by a poet who was not less efficient when coining memorable sententiae than when singing the praises of Mentula, the embodiment of human corporeality.

Nowości wydawnicze

Recenzja:

Atenajos, Uczta mędrców, przełożyli, wstępem i komentarzem opatrzyli Krystyna Bartol (księgi I‒II, VI‒VII, XI‒XII, XIV, XV 665a‒686c) i Jerzy Danielewicz (księgi III‒V, VIII‒X, XIII, XV 686d‒702c), Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, Poznań 2010, s. 1374.

Recenzja:

Ewa Krawiecka, Staropolskie portrety św. Marii Magdaleny, „Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne”, Poznań 2006

Wystawa Odzyskane piękno. Obraz Lucasa Cranacha starszego Chrystus błogosławiący dzieci po konserwacji, 6 listopada 2012–5 lutego 2013, Zamek Królewski na Wawelu

Recenzja:

Teresa Banaś, Pomiędzy tragicznością a groteską. Studium z literatury i kultury polskiej schyłku renesansu i wstępnej fazy baroku, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, Katowice 2007, ss. 238

Marsilio Ficino and Plato’s Charmides
The following article, devoted to Ficino’s interpretation of Plato’s Charmides, consists of two parts. The first one is an introduction to Ficino’s comment. It brings up Ficino’s stylistics and the place of Charmides among the Plato’s dialogues. It seems that the decision to translate the works of Plato was not accidental. Th e philosopher’s views on governance perfectly justified the strong power of Cosimo de’ Medici in Florence. Poliziano praised his rule in his own preface to Charmides. Charmides, in turn, is an interesting dialogue because it was followed by Ficino’s censorship where the philosopher tackles Plato’s homoerotic fascinations. Th e translator, so honest and conscientious in other translations, this time decides to pare down the content of the dialogue. However, a comment written by him becomes a valuable compensation for these shortcomings. Ficino’s main philosophical notions (above all the prisca theologia doctrine) bloom in every passage of the paper. The author interweaves the wisdom of Arab mystics with the wisdom of ancient Greek mystics in order to reconcile these thoughts with the Christian revelation. Particularly interesting is the psychosomatic approach to human nature, that is the interdependence of the health of body and soul. As by the means of sophrosyne full harmony is to be discovered between them, we can even reach immortality. We are like Adam Kadmon, who, though imperfect, can improve his own and the world’s nature.
The second part of the paper is a translation of Ficino’s synopsis of the dialogue, in which the author explains what can be understood under the term sophrosyne. Temperance needs to be instilled into a man’s mind early, as early as the patient is given medication. It should be given especially to young people, to those from noble families and to the beautiful. Physical beauty, in particular, hinders striking the right balance but, on the other hand, it can also stimulate insight into the beauty of the soul. The form allows us to explore the idea. When the violent desires are tamed, it is easier to balance all other activities. Th at is the reason why “moderation is best”, as Cleobulos of Lindos would say. When both the soul and body are healed, we achieve a harmonious consonance. In the spirit of this harmony, Pythagorean magical practices agree with the thoughts of Avicenna and Hippocrates’s medical practice to end up with the mysteries of Moses. That is what they have achieved – Enoch, Elijah and St. John the Evangelist. Enriched with necessary footnotes, the translation seems to represent an important example of Italian Renaissance interpretation of Platonic thought.