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Jan Kochanowski (; 1530 – 22 August 1584) was a Polish Renaissance poet who wrote in Neo-Latin and Polish and established poetic patterns that would become integral to Polish literary language. He has been called the greatest Polish poet before Adam Mickiewicz (the latter, a leading Romantic writer) and one of the most influential Slavs poets prior to the 19th century.
In his youth Kochanowski traveled to Italy, where he studied at the University of Padua, and to France. In 1559 he returned to Poland, where he made the acquaintance of political and religious notables including Jan Tarnowski, Piotr Myszkowski (whom he briefly served as courtier), and members of the influential Radziwiłł family.
From about 1563, Kochanowski served as secretary to King Sigismund II Augustus. He accompanied the King to several noteworthy events, including the (held in Lublin), which enacted the Union of Lublin, formally establishing the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1564 he was made provost of Poznań Cathedral. By the mid-1570s he had largely retired to his estate at Czarnolas. He died suddenly in 1584, while staying in Lublin.
All his life, Kochanowski was a prolific writer. Works of his that are pillars of the include the 1580 Treny ( Laments), a series of nineteen Threnody (Elegy) on the death of his daughter Urszula; the 1578 tragedy Odprawa posłów greckich ( The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys), inspired by Homer; and Kochanowski's Fraszki ( Epigrams), a collection of 294 short poems written during the 1560s and 1570s, published in three volumes in 1584. One of his major stylistic contributions was the adaptation and popularization of Polish-language .
Little is known of Jan Kochanowski's early education. At fourteen, in 1544, he was sent to the Kraków Academy. Later, around 1551-52, he attended the University of Königsberg, in Ducal Prussia (a fiefdom of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland); then, from 1552 to the late 1550s, Padua University in Italy. At Padua, Kochanowski studied classical philology and came in contact with the humanism scholar Francesco Robortello. During his "Padua period", he traveled back and forth between Italy and Poland at least twice, returning to Poland to secure funding and attend his mother's funeral. Kochanowski concluded his fifteen-year period of studies and travels with a visit to France, where he visited and Paris and met the poet Pierre de Ronsard. It has been suggested that one of his travel companions in that period was , a future Flemish scholar and poet.
Around 1562–63 he was a courtier to Bishop Filip Padniewski and Voivode Jan Firlej. From late 1563 or early 1564, he was affiliated with the royal court of King Sigismund II Augustus, serving as a royal secretary. During that time he received two benefices (incomes from ). In 1567 he accompanied the King during an episode of the , itself a part of the Livonian War: a show of force near Radashkovichy. In 1569 he was present at the which enacted the Union of Lublin establishing the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Kochanowski died, probably of a heart attack, in Lublin on 22 August 1584, aged 54. He was buried in the crypt of a parish church in Zwoleń. According to historical records, at least two tombstones were erected for Kochanowski, one in Zwoleń and another in Policzno, neither of which survives. In 1830 Kochanowski's remains were moved to his family crypt by the Zwoleń church authorities. In 1983 they were returned to the church, and in 1984 another funeral was held for the poet.
In 1791 Kochanowski's reputed skull had been removed from his tomb by Tadeusz Czacki, who kept it in his estate at Porycko. He later gave it to Izabela Czartoryska; by 1874, it had been transported to the Czartoryski Museum, where it currently resides. However, anthropological studies in 2010 showed it to be the skull of a woman, possibly Kochanowski's wife.
Upon his return to Poland in 1559, his works generally took the form of epic poetry and included the commemoratives ( On the Death of Jan Tarnowski, 1561) and ( Remembrance for the All-Blessed Jan Baptist, Count at Tęczyna, 1562-64); the more serious (1562) and Proporzec albo hołd pruski (, 1564); the Satire social- and political-commentary poems Zgoda ( , or Harmony, ca. 1562) and Satyr albo Dziki Mąż (, 1564); and the light-hearted Szachy ( Chess, ca. 1562-66). The last, about a game of chess, has been described as the first Polish-language "humorous epic or heroicomic poem". Some of his works can be seen as journalistic commentaries, before the advent of journalism per see, expressing views of the royal court in the 1560s and 1570s, and aimed at members of parliament (the Sejm) and voters. This period also saw most of his Fraszki ( Epigrams), published in 1584 as a three-volume collection of 294 short poems reminiscent of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron. They became Kochanowski's most popular writings, spawning many imitators in Poland. Czesław Miłosz, 1980 Nobel lureate Polish poet, calls them a sort of "very personal diary, but one where the personality of the author never appears in the foreground". Another of Kochanowski's works from the time is the non-poetic political-commentary dialogue, ( Portents).
A major work from that period was Odprawa posłów greckich ( The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys, written ca. 1565-66 and first published and performed in 1578; translated into English in 2007 by Bill Johnston as The Envoys). This was a blank verse tragedy that recounted an incident, modeled after Homer, leading to the Trojan War. It was the first tragedy written in Polish, and its theme of the responsibilities of statesmanship resonates to this day. The play was performed on 12 January 1578 in Warsaw's Ujazdów Castle at the wedding of Jan Zamoyski and Krystyna Radziwiłł (Zamoyski and the Radziwiłł family were among Kochanowski's important patrons). (1984). 9788301033231, Państwowe Wydawn. Nauk. ISBN 9788301033231 Miłosz calls The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys "the finest specimen of Polish humanist drama".
During the 1560s and 1570s, Kochanowski completed a series of elegies titled Treny, which were later published in three volumes in 1584 (in English generally titled Laments rather than Threnody). The poignant nineteen elegies mourn the loss of his cherished two-and-a-half-year-old daughter . In 1920, the Laments were translated into English by Dorothea Prall, and in 1995 by the duo, Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney. As with Kochanowski's Fraszki, it became a perennially popular wellspring of a new genre in Polish literature. Milosz writes that "Kochanowski's poetic art reached its highest achievements in the Laments": Kochanowski's innovation, "something unique in... world literature... a whole cycle... centered around the main theme", scandalized some contemporaries, as the cycle applied a classic form to a personal sorrow – and that, to an "insignificant" subject, a young child.
In 1579 Kochanowski translated into Polish one of the Psalms, Psalterz Dawidów (David's Psalter). By the mid-18th century, at least 25 editions had been published. Set to music, it became an enduring element of Polish church masses and popular culture. It also became one of the poet's more influential works internationally, translated into Russian by Symeon of Polotsk and into Romanian, German, Lithuanian, Czech, and Slovak. His Pieśni ( ), written over his lifetime and published posthumously in 1586, reflect Italian lyricism and "his attachment to antiquity", in particular to Horace, and have been highly influential for Polish poetry.
Kochanowski also translated into Polish several ancient classical Greek and Roman works, such as the Phenomena of Aratus and fragments of Homer's Iliad. Kochanowski's notable Latin works include ( Little Book of Lyrics, 1580), ( Four Books of Elegies, 1584), and numerous occasional poems. His Latin poems were translated into Polish in 1829 by Kazimierz Brodziński, and in 1851 by Władysław Syrokomla.
In some of his works, Kochanowski used Polish alexandrines, wherein each line comprises thirteen , with a caesura following the seventh syllable. Among works published posthumously, the historical treatise ( Woven Story of Czech and Lech) offered the first critical literary analysis of Slavic myths, focusing on the titular origin myth about Lech, Czech, and Rus'.
From May 2024, the only copy of a work by Jan Kochanowski in the author's hand, the poem Dryas Zamchana, is presented at a permanent exhibition in the Palace of the Commonwealth in Warsaw.
According to Ulewicz, Kochanowski both created modern Polish poetry and introduced it to Europe. An American Slavic studies, , holds that Kochanowski was "the first Slavic author to attain excellence on a European scale". Similarly Miłosz writes that "until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the most eminent Slavic poet was undoubtedly Jan Kochanowski" and that he "set the pace for the whole subsequent development of Polish poetry". The British historian Norman Davies names Kochanowski the second most important figure of the Polish Renaissance, after Copernicus. Polish poet and literary critic Jerzy Jarniewicz called Kochanowski "the founding father of Polish literature".
Kochanowski never ceased writing in Latin. One of his major achievements was the creation of Polish-language that made him a classic for his contemporaries and posterity. He greatly enriched Polish poetry by naturalizing foreign poetic forms, which he knew how to imbue with a national spirit. Kochanowski, writes Davies, can be seen as "the founder of Polish vernacular poetry who showed the Poles the beauty of their language".
American historian Larry Wolf argues that Kochanowski "contributed to the creation of a vernacular culture in the Polish language"; Polish literary historian describes him as "the 'founding father' of elegant humanist Polish-language poetry"; and American Slavicist and translator David Welsh writes that Kochanowski's greatest achievement was his "transformation of the Polish language as a medium for poetry". Ulewicz credits Kochanowski's Songs as most influential in this regard, while Davies writes that "Kochanowski's Psalter did for Polish what Luther Bible did for German". Kochanowski's works also influenced the development of Lithuanian literature.
In 1875 many of Kochanowski's poems were translated into German by H. Nitschmann. In 1894 Encyclopedia Britannica called Kochanowski "the prince of Polish poets". He was, however, long little known outside Slavic-language countries. The first English-language collection of Kochanowski's poems was released in 1928 (translations by George R. Noyes et al.), and the first English-language monograph devoted to him, by David Welsh, appeared in 1974. As late as the early 1980s, Kochanowki's writings were generally passed over or given short shrift in English-language reference works. However, more recently further English translations have appeared, including The Laments, translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney (1995), and The Envoys, translated by Bill Johnston (2007).
Kochanowski's oeuvre has inspired modern Polish literary, musical, and visual art. Fragments of Jan Kochanowski's poetry were also used by Jan Ursyn Niemcewicz in the libretto for the opera Jan Kochanowski, staged in Warsaw in 1817. In the 19th century, musical arrangements of Lamentations and the Psalter gained popularity. Stanisław Moniuszko wrote songs for bass with piano accompaniment to the texts of Lamentations III, V, VI and X. In 1862, the Polish history painter Jan Matejko depicted him in the painting ( Jan Kochanowski and his Deceased Daughter Ursula). In 1961 a museum (the ) opened on Kochanowski's estate at Czarnolas.
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