Abstract
Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595–1640) was considered a pious Jesuit father, neo-Latin poet, equal if not better than Horace. However, when almost immediately after his death his poetry crossed the English channel, it gained an unexpected subversive power. It gained a new territory not so much for what it actually was but thanks to a new purpose for which it could be used. In Great Britain controlled by the forces of the Parliament acquaintance with the works of Sarbiewski became a telling sign for the Royalists. Consequently, several Royalist poets started to write and publish translations from Sarbiewski which departed from the originals in such ways which allowed the poets to express their true sentiments and bypass Parliamentary censorship. Others would quote excerpts from his poems in their original works for similar purposes. The present paper traces the way Sarbiewski’s poems were used—translated, adapted, quoted, emulated etc.—by such Metaphysical poets as Richard Lovelace, Henry Vaughan, Abraham Cowley, and Sir John Denham, to mention but a few. It also presents an analysis of the most important testimony to Sarbiewski’s popularity in the days of the War of Three Kingdoms and the Commonwealth period, a volume of translations by George Hils.
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Notes
- 1.
The translations have been collected in the volume Casimir Britannicus: English Translations, Paraphrases, and Emulations of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski. Fordoński, K. and Urbański, P., eds. London: MHRA. The first edition was published in 2008, a new one, expanded and corrected, is expected in 2010
- 2.
Poems of Sarbiewski are usually referred to by their numbers and not their long Baroque titles—Lyr. IV 13 stands for the 13th ode of the 4th book of Lyricorum libri IV.
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Fordoński, K. (2013). The Subversive Power of Father Matthias. The Poetry of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski as Vehicle for Political Propaganda in England of the 17th Century. In: Fabiszak, J., Urbaniak-Rybicka, E., Wolski, B. (eds) Crossroads in Literature and Culture. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21994-8_35
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