Cultural and national identity in Jesuit Neo-Latin poetry in Poland in the seventeenth century : the case of Sarbiewski

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Europos identitetas; Horacijus; Humanistinė tradicija; Jėzuitai; Krikščioniškoji ideologija; Lietuvos ir Lenkijos Respublika; Poezija lotynų kalba; Sarbievijus; Sarmatizmas; Christian idealogy; European identity; Horatius; Humanist tradition; Jesuit; Poetry in Latin; Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; Sarbiewski; Sarmatism.

ENThe aim of the present paper is to discuss whether Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595-1640) considered his poetry as an instrument with which to construct either a national or a universal, i.e. European identity. I shall examine certain statements made by Polish and Lithuanian scholars about Sarbiewski's Sarmatism and will discuss the situation of Neo-Latin poetry in the seventeenth century, and its translations into vernacular languages (in Sarbiewski's case into English) as evidence of its reception and understanding. I shall argue that in the case of Sarbiewski's poetry, the only community and/ or identity that he wanted to extol and develop was European, rooted in the Horatian or - broadly speaking - Roman set of values, modified by the poet's Christian understanding of the world. It is clear that both his contemporaries and the later generations considered Sarbiewski as Horatius Christiamis rather than Horatius Sarmaticus. The former term indicated his poetry as a new, Christian incarnation of the poetry of Horace, and placed it within the international community of the Respublica Litteraria. The cultural, literary and philosophical traditions saturating were a common language of values which constructed a universal, European identity. It is not by accident that he was much more popular abroad.The very limited number of Polish translations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seems very peculiar. Clear evidence of the understanding of Sarbiewski's poetry are his translations into vernacular languages as well as the history of its editions. The poetry of Sarbiewski will be placed in the context of the changes and continuity of the role of Neo-Latin poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sarbiewski's world of values rooted in ancient Roman culture as well as in the broad, deep and diversified humanist tradition was much better understood as an instrument for constructing universal, cultural identity among highly educated readers, regardless of their nationality. [From the publication]