The work of one of the greatest poets of the sixteenth century, Laments has been beautifully rendered by contemporary poets Stanislaw Baranczak and Seamus Heaney. This poignant series of poems on the death of Kochanowski's young daughter is surprisingly intimate and domestic in nature, expressing a candid grief and an undeniably modern sense of humiliation and religious doubt.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
One of Poland's foremost contemporary poets and Ireland's most famous living bard offer a collaborative translation, with the original Polish on facing pages, of Poland's first supreme contribution to world literature. The Treny or Laments of Jan Kochanowski (1530^-84) mourn the death of his 30-month-old youngest daughter, defying poetic tradition by doing so, for such elegies were reserved for the mighty and famous. They also show the quintessential Renaissance scholar-poet struggling with the stoicism enjoined by classical philosophy because it simply did not answer his grief. At last, in a dream of his mother holding the lost child, Kochanowski receives Christian consolation in eternal life and in the acceptance of "time's great remedy . . . The wax / And wane of things, and nothing more" while he lives. An elegy as great as Milton's Lycidas and Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," Laments exerts a more poignant appeal because it commemorates a child. Ray Olson
Language Notes
Text: English, Polish (translation)
Original Language: Polish
Original Language: Polish
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, but far too smooth...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Laments (Paperback)
This translation is perhaps as good as they get -- it reads well, rythm and cadence are flawless. And yet, a comparison of two versions side by side serves as a useful reminder that even the best translation is merely an approximation of the original. It is also evident that sometimes very substantial compromises in content are needed to preserve the structural integrity of the poetic form. The English text, as beautiful and touching as it is in its own right, unfortunately does not reflect the very noticeably rougher texture of the Polish original. Polish text, still mostly comprehensible to the educated Polish reader, sounds distinctly archaic, and "resists" contemporary reader's temptation to read fast, as if it deliberately tried to slow him/her down. Alas, gone as well are many poetic devices of the original, such as clever metaphors and word plays. E.g., in the fragment of Lament 2, reproduced on the amazon website, lost is the original's play on the word "piórko" (feather) which can be both a child's toy, and a poet's quill in "Jeslim kiedy nad dziecmi piorko mial zabawic"; similarly, the contrast of the SOUND of the poet's lament and the empty SILENCE of death ("plakac nad gluchym grobem", literally "to WEEP on a SILENT grave") is awkwardly lost in an admittedly smooth sounding, and more emotional "to weep on a small daughter's grave". The fairly unfortunate "maritime" metaphor ("Looms like cliff above some wild and rough / Shore") is perhaps more in line with the Irish or English poetic tradition, but is totally out of place in Kochanowski's poem, and it unwisely replaces a wonderfully archaic, yet entirely comprehensible, and often quoted "moja nienagrodna szkoda" (literally, and in awkwardly too many words, "my loss, which no prize shall repay"). Still, given the original's complexity, the task both translators decided to tackle must have been daunting indeed, and the result is stunningly beautiful. Despite some lost or awkward metaphors, the essential core of the work, which is its profound emotional charge, comes across as strong as in the original, and so the 5-star rating is entirely deserved. Additionally, both poets-translators probably deserve a 6th, honorary star, for taking on an important task, several centuries overdue.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Messenger,
By A Customer
This review is from: Laments (Paperback)
I discovered this collection in a Slavic Literature class where it was required. I was deeply touched by these words of a father in mourning for his daughter; feelings expressed in the 16th Century that translate as if they were written today. Last week I was discussing Polish literature with a Holocaust survivor. When I mentioned Kochanowski's "Treny" (Laments), she got tears in her eyes and gasped- how did I know Kochanowski? She quoted a phrase in Polish, then said she always thinks about "Treny" when she thinks of her mother- it was her favorite- who was killed in Auschwitz. Today, when I gave her my bilingual copy, she held it to her heart. I could hear her heart crying when she said "thank you." Words of a daughter in mourning - and a human connection spanning four centuries.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Silently Powerful,
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This review is from: Laments (Paperback)
Without knowing some of the history of this work, "Laments" may seem merely a touching remembrance of the poet's daughter, whom he lost when she was only 3 years old. However, the poetic style that Kochanowski employs was reserved for those of fame and fortune, and it was considered socially unacceptable to write such a thing for a young child. Ironically, the poems still exist to this day for us to enjoy and Seamus Heaney, known for his own poetry and the recent translation of Beowulf, has rendered Kochanowski's verses in stark, simple language that conveys the rhythm, rhyme, and gravity of the poet's profound grief.Now, Seamus Heaney's translations have always created mixed feelings in me. On one hand, Heaney is excellent at making poems seem human and not like transcendent works of words that must be studied and analyzed to be followed. On the other hand, Heaney puts much of himself into his translations and adds a presence of Irish colloquialism into the work (particularly in Beowulf). In this work, along with the aid of Stanislaw Baranczak, Heaney perfects the style that I've always known him to be capable of. The bilingual aspect will also make this edition indispensable to scholars and those attempting to learn the Polish language (and, hell, even those who can read both languages and want to compared the two(, All in all, a vital piece of Renaissance poetry.
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