This book features new translations of two iconic works of the Polish literary canon; namely, the Laments (1583) of Poland’s great Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski, and the lauded Crimean Sonnets of the Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz, which have been retranslated here to celebrate the bicentennial of the work’s first publication in Russia. Both works describe a journey into what has been called “the abyss of the soul”—the former chronicling the poet’s profound grief over t...

Jan Kochanowski (1530-84) was the greatest poet of Poland during its existence as an independent kingdom. His Laments are his masterpiece, the choicest work of Polish lyric poetry before the time of Mickiewicz.