Jan Kochanowski – poeta polski epoki renesansu, sekretarz królewski. Uważany za jednego z najznakomitszych twórców czasów renesansu w Europie, najwybitniejszego poetę słowiańskiego, który przyczynił się do rozwoju polskiego języka literackiego. Wikipedia PL

Jan Kochanowski 1530 – 22 August 1584) was a Polish Renaissance poet commonly regarded as the greatest Polish poet as well as the greatest Slavic poet prior to the 19th century.

Family

Parents: Piotr Kochanowski and Anna, née Białaczowska.

Consort:

1. Dorota, née Podlodowska

Children:

1. Urszula
2. Hanna
3. Ewa
4. Poliksena
5. Halszka
6. Krystyna
7. Jan (posthumous)

Works

Kochanowski's best-known masterpiece is Treny (Threnodies, 1580). It is a series of nineteen elegies upon the death of his beloved two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Urszula (pet name Urszulka). It has been translated into English as Laments) in 1920 by Dorothea Prall, and in 1995 by Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney.

Links

• Selection of translated poems
• Works by Jan Kochanowski at Project Gutenberg

References

• Jan Kochanowski
• Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, 2nd edition, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983, pp. 60-80.
• Jan Kochanowski, Laments, translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney, New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1995.