The Brest Bible as an Inspiration for Protestant Poets. Biblical Phrases in the Religious Poetry of Evangelical Protestants in the 16th and 17th Centuries. A Preliminary Survey

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the Brest Bible (its lexis and phraseology) on the religious poetry of the followers of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland and the Polish Reformed Church in the 16th and 17th centuries. The article is a preliminary study of the subject.
The author analysed thematically consistent poems on death and divided them into three types: occasional poetry, represented by Cyprian Bazylik’s Short description of an affair at the death and funeral of the Enlightened Duchess Elżbieta of Szydłowiec Radziwiłłowa (Krótkie wypisanie sprawy przy śmierci i pogrzebie Oświeconej Księżny Paniej Halżbiety z Szydłowca Radziwiłowej, 1562); functional literature, illustrated with four songs from a Protestant hymnary by Krzysztof Kraiński (1609) and Andrzej Hünefeld (1646); and fine poetry, for which the author chose the The Quartan Fever Penance (Pokuta w kwartanie, written in 1652).
For the Old-Polish Protestant authors of religious poetry, the Calvinist Bible is a constant reference point. It determines but by no means limits the horizons of imagination. Writing about deathly issues, the authors of occasional, high-art poetry or hymnary songs rarely borrow from the lexis of the Brest Bible and freely realize their artistic concepts. In their works there are only a few most expressive phrases and lexemes from the first Polish Protestant Bible. In the analyzed poems, Biblical phrases usually appear in the form of paraphrases, well-thought-out verses or Biblical scenes. The poets borrow words or Biblical phrases only when the described plot is scarcely known, usually drawn from a rarely referred to Old-Testament book. This gesture can be interpreted as a token of the poet’s circumspection.
 

The Linguistic Imaging in the Classical Poetics of Drama in France Illustrated with an Example of La Pratique du Théâtre by François Hédelin d’Aubignac (1657)

Linguistic imaging in old literature is the subject of many studies, among which we list books recently released in Poland by Barbara Niebelska-Rajca (“Enargeia” i “energeia” w teoriach literackich renesansu i baroku, Warszawa 2012) or by Roman Krzywy (Wędrówki z Mnemosyne: stadium o topice dawnego podróżopisarstwa, Warszawa 2013). These studies, however, either gloss over the problem of linguistic imaging in drama, or treat drama as a marginal province of this phenomenon. Among texts devoted to drama and theatre (e.g. Françoise Siguret, L’Oeil surpris, Paris 1993; Emmanuelle Hénin, Ut pictura teatrum, Genève 2003), relatively little space is dedicated to the question of how drama theoreticians look upon linguistic imaging. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to fill this gap in the research to date. It presents an analysis of those parts of La Pratique du Théâtre (Paris 1657), a treatise by François Hédelin d’Aubignac (1604–1676), that concern description and imaging.
The first part of the paper focuses on showing the tension intrinsic to d’Aubignac’s reflection on the place of descriptions in drama. While this 17th-century theoretician calls for permeating the text of a drama with utterances of a descriptive character, he also warns against excessive elaboration of such parts, as they could harm the dramatic action. The aim of further parts of the study is to reconstruct the basic ways of relieving this tension as proposed in La Pratique du Théâtre.
In the second part of the paper, the author distinguishes three fundamental forms of imaging words discussed in d’Aubignac’s treatise: narration, description and pathetic speech. They appear to be three paradigmatic structures that focus on a broader spectrum of issues related to linguistic imaging in classical drama. At the same time, the theoretician’s reflection contains a distinct valorization of conciseness, thanks to which a limited number of short utterances perform as many functions as possible (namely, they are a description of a thing or event, and convey an expression of emotions at the same time).
Further in the paper, the author concentrates on how to put together dramatic descriptions and a character’s mental life. Embedded both in a situation as well as in a character’s mind state, and expressed using appropriate linguistic figures, images have several functions: not only does their pictorial dimension allow the audience to reconstruct certain elements of the narrative world, but they also express the characters’ emotions and thoughts, thus facilitating understanding of the dramatis personae and plot. In this, d’Aubignac combines his reflection on dramatic description with some aspects of the rhetorical theory of figures, also elaborated on in La Pratique du Théâtre. Following Cicero and Quintilian, d’Aubignac says that figures have an expressive function too. Their presence in the descriptive parts of drama is, therefore, inscribed in the strategy of creating a character.
Regardless of its specific function, the illustrative ability of dramatic language comes from the rhetorical theory of evidentia. To support this hypothesis the author analyses analogies between part of La Pratique du Théâtre containing a description of a ransacked city, and a fragment of Institutio oratoria, where a similar image illustrates Quintilian’s deliberations on evidentia.
Dramatic texts must simultaneously comply with rhetorical criteria (they must convey enough information about various circumstances of the action) as well as dramatic criteria (they must be concise and embedded in the characters’ mental lives). Hence achieving a technically spotless merger of descriptive parts into the tissue of a drama seems to be nearly impossible. This proves that, despite its normative character, one of the fundamental assumptions of classical theory of drama is the acceptance of tiny compositional imperfections, given that they appear in a structure whose general silhouette remains in keeping with the requirement of rational poetics.

Recenzja: Victoria Kahn, The Future of Illusion: Political Theology and Early Modern Texts, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago-London 2014, s. 246.

A letter by Niccolò Perotti

This paper is dedicated to a letter that Niccolò Perotti wrote to a friend. It is divided into two parts. The first part is an introduction to the letter. It presents an autobiography of the Renaissance humanist with special emphasis placed on his translations of ancient Greek texts into Latin. Jean-Louis Charlet, the leading researcher on the Italian’s works, highlights the importance of this particular letter for establishing the chronology of translations and Perotti’s other works, as well as his date of birth and other major events in his life. The introduction also discusses the epistolary art, which Perotti practiced and whose grammatical rules he wrote down so he could study them.
Next, the author considers the subject matter of the letter, which oscillates between the notions of vera nobilitas and homo novus. Perotti decides to give himself over to literary activities and he substantiates his choice in a form of examination of conscience. For him as a humanist, who often avails himself of quotes from Pliny the Younger, true nobility arises out of the virtues of reason and is not based on material goods. In his deliberations, Perotti follows such remarkable minds as Petrarch, Poggio Bracciolini and Buonaccorso da Montemagno. He quotes Petrarch on the magnitude of human thought, Bracciolini on the threats arising from the desire for wealth, and Montemagno on the true source of nobility lying in virtue and a person’s work, but not in the right of inheritance. Finally, these thoughts are collated with the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus. Having translated Encheiridion, Perotti filled his epistolary confessions with an echo of the Stoic’s teachings. These mostly concern taking care of one’s soul and not becoming attached to material goods, obtained by twist of fate.
In the second part, the author presents a collective translation of the discussed letter, preserved in manuscript in the Vatican Library (Vat. lat. 3027, f.115r–f.118r). It is a very important autobiographical document that allows the reader to look upon Perotti’s work in the context of the popularization of ancient Greek thought, as well as to his motivations and the internal dilemmas that were entailed in this undertaking.
 

Two Anonymous Eclogues from the First Half of the 17th Century Found in a Manuscript Preserved in the Baworowscyki Library in Lviv

The main aim of this paper is to present a critical edition of two eclogues found in manuscript no. 1332 in the Baworowscy Library in Lviv. The eclogues were probably written in the 1630s or the early 1640s.
This is the first critical edition of these texts. Manuscript no. 1332 is the only known source of these eclogues. The transcription is based on the rules contained in the script Zasady wydawania tekstów staropolskich (Wrocław 1955; “B” transcription). The punctuation has been adapted to contemporary rules.
The transcription is provided with detailed notes and commentaries, which are a source of information about the meaning of Old-Polish words as well as proverbs. References to biblical texts and mythological and historical context are also well explained.
“The first eclogue, entitled A Quarrel, is a paraphrase of the Sixth Eclogue of Baptista Mantuanus. It was written in the form of a dialogue between two shepherds who talk about the habits of the townspeople.” One of the interlocutors criticizes the vices of the courtiers, merchants, astrologers, medics, lawyers and Christian priests. These tirades are contrasted with the second shepherd’s replies. He condemns his interlocutor and accuses him of being too impetuous. This eclogue bears the mark of a strong influence from the pastoral poetry written by Simon Simonides. This influence is evident in the pessimistic, decadent atmosphere and sad reflections on human degeneration. The eclogue contains an anecdote that humorously explains the main cause of social inequality.
The second eclogue, The Grandiosity or the Election of Vladislaus IV Vasa, King of Poland and Sweden, is connected with the election sejm that took place in 1632. This poem is a paraphrase of the Seventh Eclogue of Calpurnius. Like A Quarrel, it is written in the form of a dialogue between two shepherds. One of them returns to the village after a long absence. He is asked by his friend to tell him about his journey. It turns out that the traveller visited Warsaw and was a witness to the election of Vladislaus IV Vasa. The panegyric part of the poem is extensive and implies that the decision of the electors was inspired by God. The author ingeniously uses some phrases from Calpurnius’ eclogue to describe the works of art collected by the king.
Both eclogues reveal formidable literary training – they are comparable to bucolics written by Jan Gawiński and Adrian Wieszczycki.