Jan Kochanowski, Polish Works, Vol. I–III. [1919]

Title: Jan Kochanowski’s Polish Works. Vol. I–III. Complete Edition.

Author: Jan Kochanowski (1530–1584) [founder of the Polish literary language of the Renaissance, author of *Treny*, *Fraszki*, and *Pieśni*, graduate of the University of Padua]

Edited by: Jan Lorentowicz

Publisher: S. Orgelbrand & Sons Joint-Stock Company, Warsaw (Main Warehouse at the E. Wende & Co. Bookstore and at H. Altenberg’s in Lviv)

Year of publication: [1919]. Series: Muza Literary and Artistic Library.

Format: 20 cm.

Volume: Vol. I: [4], XXXVI, 350, [1] pp. Vol. II: [4], 267, [2] pp. Vol. III: [6], 306, V pp., portraits on separate plates.

Binding: Period half-leather.

This collected edition of the works of Jan Kochanowski, prepared by Jan Lorentowicz and published in 1919, was produced at a unique moment: Poland had just regained its independence after more than a century of partition, and the return to the author who established the standard for literary Polish served as a symbolic reckoning with the past. The edition appeared in the series “Muza’s Literary and Artistic Library,” edited by Lorentowicz, with the main printing done at the E. Wende & Co. Bookstore and at H. Altenberg’s in Lviv. The presented Volume I opens with an extensive introduction by the editor and a reproduction of the poet’s portrait, modeled after the bas-relief on his tombstone in Zwoleń. In the introduction, Lorentowicz wrote of Kochanowski as a poet who, having absorbed the poetic richness of antiquity, “immediately elevated Polish poetry to the heights of a model unattainable for his contemporaries.” At the time, it was the most comprehensive collected edition of the Czarnolas poet’s writings.

Jan Kochanowski is regarded as the founder of the Polish literary language—it was in his poetry that the Polish language first met the standards drawn from ancient poetry. His body of work includes 301 epigrams and 59 songs, including the twelve-part cycle “Midsummer Songs of Sobótka.” The editor of this volume, Jan Lorentowicz (1868–1940)—a literary and theater critic, journalist, and book collector, who developed his critical skills during a thirteen-year stay in Paris (1890–1903), where he attended the École d’Anthropologie and studied at the Sorbonne. He served as president of the Polish PEN Club from 1925 to 1927 and, beginning in 1938, was a member of the Polish Academy of Literature; Julian Krzyżanowski described his method as a combination of impressionistic criticism and a distinct scholarly passion.

Provenance: An original woodcut bookplate reading “Ex Libris W. Marony,” decorated with a star motif, is affixed to the endpaper. Despite a search of available ex-libris and library records, the owner’s identity could not be determined—it remains unknown to the literature on the subject.

A complete edition featuring a unique, artistic woodcut bookplate—of interest to enthusiasts of Old Polish literature, scholars of Kochanowski’s reception, collectors of interwar books from the early years of independence, and bookplate collectors.

The text block is clean and intact; the pages are free of stains except for the page with the bookplate; the plates are preserved. The binding is half-leather, with natural signs of wear.

Catalog ID: 1140x1-20-B-Z