Jan Kochanowski

Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584) is widely regarded as the greatest Slavic poet of the Renaissance period, and the greatest Polish poet until the advent of Adam Mickiewicz in the nineteenth century. Friend of Pierre Ronsard, widely travelled in Europe, Kochanowski created the modern poetic idiom in Polish, striving, like Horace before him (on whom he modelled his Songs), to achieve immortality through composing in his native language — although he also achieved a widespread fame in Europe for his Latin poems. He was creative in nearly all literary genres, and succeeded splendidly in each he attempted: lyric poetry, such as the Songs and the Trifles, drama (the humanist tragedy The Dismissal of the Grecian Envoys), translation (fragments of Euripides, the Greek Anthology, and Latin poets), narrative poetry (The Satyr), and prose. His greatest claim to fame is a cycle he never wished to write: the Threnodies, a cycle of laments written in honour of his daughter Orszula, who died not quite aged three.