Memoirs of the Polish Baroque: The Writings of Jan Chryzostom Pasek, a Squire of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania

Baroque was a rich period in Polish literature, yet it is poorly represented in English translation. This great work, which stands apart from the majority of diaries and memoirs of the period, is one of the most important of Polish literary and historical documents. Although it has never before appeared in print in English, it has been translated into several other languages and has been published in dozens of editions in Polish. Few nations have been more entangled in military, religious, social and political crosscurrents than Poland in the seventeenth century. Pressured from every side in neighboring states, hobbled by a weak central government, it had become a European counter-culture: libertarian, democratic, provincial and hopelessly divided internally. Pasek, a nobleman, soldier, parliamentarian, adventurer, was in the thick of the struggle. Although irascible and a pompous egotist, he was a keen observer and a spirited writer who freely employed a racy, colloquial idiom; his chronicle is filled with whimsy, color, excitement, action and humor. For the political scientist and historian, the Memoirs provides insight into Poland's odd form of egalitarian parliament, and is a rich source of social and military history. Religious scholars will find a new context for the study of the Counter-Reformation and radical Protestantism. And there is much for the student of comparative literature: so well do Pasek's writing fit the romantic idea of a free narration in which one can feel the inflections of a living voice, unhampered by literary conventions, that when the manuscript was discovered in the nineteenth century, scholars at first suspected a forgery. Catherine Leach has translated Pasek with extraordinary clarity and literary power. She also provides extensive annotation, illustrations, map and other reference aids, and a perceptive introductory essay of 45 pages; her work is the product of many years of research and painstaking effort. She has previously published several scholarly papers and translations of many poems, stories, essays and books from Polish and Russian, including Czeslaw Milosz's Native Realm. -- from dust jacket.