This present collection of George Gomori's essays covers several centuries of Polish literature and its reception abroad. The first three essays are devoted to Jan Kochanowski, the greatest poet of the Polish Renaissance, followed by shorter pieces on Stefan Batory, King of Poland from 1576 to 1586, whom Montaigne thought to be 'one of the greatest princes of our age'. This is followed by a comparative essay on the Pole Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski and the Hungarian poet Balint Balassi, both important poets of the late sixteenth century, and an essay with an Amendment, investigating Sir Philip Sidney's little-researched visits to Hungary and Poland. A substantial part of the book is devoted to the Baroque period, first on the poet Hieronim Morsztyn, recently rediscovered in Poland. A long essay analyses his first important work, "Worldly Delights," a poem which illustrates the transition from the classical models of the late Renaissance to Baroque poetics. The following part of the book examines the huge impact that the neo-Latin poet Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski made on more than one English poet of the seventeenth-century, while also explaining the political reasons for his warm reception in England. The Verse Letter of the Polish Baroque follows the development of this interesting genre from Daniel Naborowski to Jan Andrzej Morsztyn. The final part of the book deals with the great precursor of modern Polish poetry, Cyprian Norwid (1821-1883). Apart from Norwid's relationship to Adam Mickiewicz, the final essays in this collection investigate Norwid's views on Lord Byron, expressed both in his poetry and his public lectures in Paris, as well as the complex views of the Polish poet on nineteenth-century England, which he only briefly visited, and the United States where he resided for two years.
About the Author: George Gomori is a Hungarian-born British scholar and Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. He came to England after the 1956 revolution, in which he took part. From 1969 until his retirement, he taught Polish and Hungarian Literature at the University of Cambridge. His publications include Polish and Hungarian Poetry 1945 to 1956 (1966), Cyprian Norwid (1974) and Magnetic Poles, Essays on Modern Polish Literature (2000). He is a Member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU) of Cracow. He has published twelve books of poetry in Hungarian, three in English and one in Polish. His Polish distinctions include the Jurzykowski Prize and the ZAiKS Prize for Translation as well as the Medal of the Komisja Edukacji Narodowej. He has lived in London since 2005.