''Fraszki'' (Polish: ; the title has been translated to English as ''

Epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek (, "inscription", from [], "to write on, to inscribe"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia ...

s'', ''Trifles'', ''Facetious Verse'') is the 1584 three-book collection of 294 short, merry poems by

Jan Kochanowski Jan Kochanowski (; 1530 – 22 August 1584) was a Polish Renaissance poet who wrote in Latin and Polish and established poetic patterns that would become integral to Polish literary language. He has been called the greatest Polish poet before ...

. They were written mostly during Kochanowski's

courtier A courtier () is a person who attends the royal court of a monarch or other royalty. The earliest historical examples of courtiers were part of the retinues of rulers. Historically the court was the centre of government as well as the officia ...

period, in the 1560s and 1570s. That work has been described as among his most popular, and spawned many imitators in Poland.

Editions and translations

The collection has been reprinted in Poland numerous times, including several times in the 17th century alone. Some reprints suffered from moral censorship; for example one poem alluding to clergy's homosexuality was often removed from subsequent editions. The first, if incomplete, translation of ''Fraszki'' was to Czech, by

Bartosz Paprocki Bartosz Paprocki, in Czech known as Bartoloměj Paprocký z Hlohol a Paprocké Vůle ( – 27 December 1614), was a Polish and Czech historiographer, translator, poet, heraldist, and a pioneering figure in Polish and Bohemian/Czech genealogy ...

, published in Prague in 1598 (''Nova kratochvile''...). Some were translated to German; in fact Kochanowski has been said to be the first Polish poet to be translated to that language. translated over a hundred (138, to be exact) to that language in 1652 (in ''Geist- und Wetliche Gedichte, Erster Teil'' ). The complete collection of ''Fraszki'' has been translated to Italian by Nullo Minissi in 1995 (''Frasche'') with subsequent editions in 2001 and 2002. His translation is the most comprehensive, although a number of poems have been translated to Italian in the preceding decades by various scholars. In the 20th century, about a dozen poems from the collection have been translated to French, mostly by Edmond Marek. Three were translated to English by Nobel laureate

Czesław Miłosz Czesław Miłosz ( , , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish Americans, Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He primarily wrote his poetry in Polish language, Polish. Regarded as one of the great poets of the ...

("To the Muses", "On Human Life" and "On the Linden Tree"; in his '' The History of Polish Literature,'' 1969), and few dozen others have been translated by various scholars and poets over the years;

Michael J. Mikos Michael J. Mikos is a professor of foreign languages and literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He specializes in Polish language, literature, and culture. He is also a translator and has rendered many works of Polish literature ...

' ''Polish Renaissance Literature: an Anthology'' (1995) is likely the largest English-language collection of ''Fraszki'', with 24 poems from the collection.

Reception and analysis

The title of the volume comes from Italian term ''frasca'' (lit. little twig), which was occasionally used to refer to a short poem (the term has also been translated to English as "trifle"). Fraszki is a plural of Polish fraszka, and the term fraszka is often used to refer to one of 294 poems contained in the 1584 collection. In fact the term became more popular in Poland than in Italy, and in Poland the term is also used to refer to the entire genre of poems similar to what Kochanowski wrote. Kochanowski's fraszki are generally described as "merry" or "lighthearted", ranging from "

anecdote An anecdote is "a story with a point", such as to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative or to characterize by delineating a specific quirk or trait. Anecdotes may be real ...

s, humorous

epitaph An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...

s, and

obscenities An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin , , "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral ...

to pure

lyricism Lyricism is a term used to describe a piece of art considered to have deep emotions. Its origin is found in the word ''lyric'', derived via Latin ' from the Greek ('), the adjectival form of ''lyre''. It is often employed to relate to the capab ...

". described them as varying from "humorous or serious, reflective or lyrical, simple or ornamented". Recurring motifs found in them are transcience and ' (a literary tropos of a "happy man"). Specific themes, as enumareted by Kotarski, include "autobiographical issues (III, 1), praise of the family home (II, 6; III, 6; III, 7; III, 37), erotica, portraits of friends, state and church officials, comic anecdotes and pictures of court and rural life (I, 79; II, 16), such events as the building of a bridge over the Vistula River in Warsaw (II, 106, 107, 108), espect forheroism (I, 77; III, 49), raise offriendship and the cult of woman so popular at court". One of the poems is a

riddle A riddle is a :wikt:statement, statement, question, or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or Allegory, alleg ...

"concerning an animal with one eye that is shot at with arrows without arrowheads", with the answer debated by both Kochanowski's contemporaries and modern scholars, and most often assumed to be a female

vagina In mammals and other animals, the vagina (: vaginas or vaginae) is the elastic, muscular sex organ, reproductive organ of the female genital tract. In humans, it extends from the vulval vestibule to the cervix (neck of the uterus). The #Vag ...

. While most are Kochanowski's originals, some are Polish language adaptations or translations of Ancient

anacreontics Anacreontics are verses in a metre used by the Greek poet Anacreon in his poems dealing with love and wine. His later Greek imitators (whose surviving poems are known as the ''Anacreontea'') took up the same themes and used the Anacreontic meter. ...

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek (, "inscription", from [], "to write on, to inscribe"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia ...

s taken from ''Greek Anthology, The Greek Anthology'', and poems by Sappho and

Martial Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman and Celtiberian poet born in Bilbilis, Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of '' Epigrams'', pu ...

is. Czesław Miłosz referred to the collection as a sort of Kochanowski's "very personal diary, but one where the personality of the author never appears in the foreground". described ''Fraszki'' as "wonderful and extremely popular", and inspiring many imitators in Poland .

References

External links

Fraszki
in the Polona Digital Library {{Wikisourcelang, pl, Fraszki (Kochanowski, 1883) Works by Jan Kochanowski Polish poems 1584 books Polish poetry collections Polish-language works

Editions and translations

Reception and analysis

See also

References

External links