Recenzenckie zachwyty i niedyskrecje. Seweryn Bączalski w roli krytyka „Światowej Rozkoszy” Hieronima Morsztyna
Reviewers’ raptures and indiscretions. Seweryn Bączalski as a critic of Hieronim Morsztyn’s „Światowa Rozkosz”

Summary/Abstract: In Old Polish literature, literary criticism was virtually unknown. In view of the scarcity of appraisals and reviews, a rhyming review written by a second-rate poet from the second half of the 17th century Seweryn Bączalski has extraordinary weight. In a poem “Do tego, co już przeczetł”, which crowns his 1608 collection of poems “Przestrach śmiertelny”, Bączalski evaluates the works of several poets from Cracow of that time, taking this opportunity to comment in great detail on Hieronim Morsztyn’s popular poem “Światowa Rozkosz”, published in 1606. The reviewer was riveted by an apparent clash: throughout the poem, Morsztyn enumerates multitudinous delights, only to unexpectedly deprecate in the ending their value when confronted with death and decay. This discrepancy hardly motivated in the poem and still attracting researchers’ attention, Bączalski motivates by a biographical key presenting Morsztyn as an inveterate womanizer who, finally, ends up ensnared by… syphilis. This experience allegedly changed the poet’s attitude towards carnal pleasures, and “Światowa Rozkosz” gave this existential discovery of his literary form.

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