Prominent Poles
Waclaw Potocki one of the most important Polish baroque poets, writer, moralist.
Born: 1621(?), Wola Luzanska, Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth
Died: August 9, 1696 in Luzna, Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth
Early days. Waclaw Potocki was born to a minor nobility family, coat of arms Szreniawa, belonging to the Polish Brethren (called by some: Aryans). It is likely the he attended the Polish Brethren Rakow academy.
Career. After The Deluge (the Swedish invasion and occupation of Poland from 1655 to 1657), the Polish brethren were sentenced to exile from the Commonwealth for their support of the invading Swedes. Potocki was given a choice between exile and conversion to Roman Catholicism, and he reluctantly chose conversion. His wife, however, refused. He then worked on his estate in Luzna in the Podkarpacie region of the Commonwealth. Periodically, he performed many civic duties, including those of a local magistrate in Biecz and a cup-bearer in Krakow (1678-1685). He participated in the fight against the Cossack uprisings in 1638, took part in the Battle of Beresteczko in 1651, and-after initially supporting the Swedes- in the wars against Sweden (1656-1657). Between 1665 and 1666 he supported the rebellion of Jerzy Lubomirski. Later he supported kings Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki and Jan III Sobieski. He argued for the reform of the Commonwealth political system, and for stabilization through the introduction of a hereditary monarchy instead of the elective monarchy.
Works. His literary output, plentiful and varied, took Potocki half a century to create. However, his contemporaries knew little of his literary production; probably it reached them in the form of manuscripts. Most of the works which survived were published only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He started writing around 1646, mostly for his own pleasure. He wrote many classic poems and novels about the life of the nobility. During his lifetime only Poczet herbow (Herbary) and two shorter works were published. Among the epic works the most important position is occupied by Transakcyja wojny chocimskiej ("Transaction of the Chocim War"), written during the period 1669-1672, and first printed in 1850. Designed as a chronicle in verse (13-syllable), it provides a precise report of the course of the Chocim campaign. He created an idealized image of Poles to which he opposed an image of the Turks. Hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz and Cossack hetman Piotr Sahajdaczny were presented as immaculate heroes, and Osman was presented as a demon. The report of the course of the battle is accompanied by numerous digressions in which he evaluated his contemporary generation, noticing a decline of knightly virtues and unmanliness. It is his biggest novel, and is generally considered to be the best epic novel written in the Commonwealth. It describes the battle of Chocim in 1621 and is based on the diaries of Jakub Sobieski, future king Jan III's father. His epigrams were written around 1670 and 1695, and first published in 1907 as Ogrod fraszek (Garden of Rhymes). This set of over 2000 poems give a vivid picture of ideas and manners among the szlachta (Polish nobility) towards the end of the Polish Golden Age, and of many political and religious conflicts. He saw the life of nobility from a perspective of a kind-hearted, tolerant neighbor, a humorist but also, quite often, a satirist and moralist, reprimanding the nobility and clergy for egoism, greed, ignorance and cowardice. Another great collection (also of more than 2000 works) created during the last several years of the poet's life is entitled Moralia and based on Adagia by Erasmus of Rotterdam, which was a dictionary of Latin proverbs and sayings with a commentary.
Family. In 1648 he married Katarzyna Morsztyn. He lost members of his family one by one: first, his son Stefan who returned ailing from the Chocim expedition of 1673, then his daughter Zofia, his brothers, his son-in-law Jan Lipski, and his son Jerzy. The widow of Jerzy, Aleksandra, took care of the poet in the last years of his life.
This article uses, among others, material from the Wikipedia article "Waclaw Potocki." Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License :
Wikipedia
with additional information from other sources:
Wikipedia(in Polish)
Bracia Polscy (in Polish)
Prof.Edmund Kotarski
Encyclopedia Britanica
English translations of some of his works see:
Constance J. Ostrowski
Return to home page:
Prominent Poles
