Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Nihil novi (talk | contribs) at 09:04, 23 December 2010. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

David's Psalter (original Polish title: Psałterz Dawidów) is a poetic translation, into Polish, of the Book of Psalms, by Jan Kochanowski, the most prominent poet of the Polish Renaissance. It was printed in 1579 in Kraków, at the Lazarus printing house.

Kochanowski, like many of his contemporaries in Western Europe, used a Latin translation of the Book of Psalms as the basis for his translation. Being expert on the ancient Classics, he combined the Biblical spirit of the original with some artistic achievements of Greek and Latin authors.

The work of Kochanowski gained recognition from both Protestants and Catholics in Poland, and created also some echoes abroad, notably in the work of Moldavian Metropolitan Dosoftei. Some of his renderings of the psalms are still used in Poland during Catholic masses.

Notes

1. The form Dawidów here is not a genitive plural, as it would be in standard modern Polish, but the masculine singular nominative form of a possessive adjective, meaning "of David". The English translation "David's Psalter" is used, among others, by Michael J. Mikoś in Polish Literature from the Middle Ages to the End of the Eighteenth Century (p. 285), and by Czesław Miłosz in The History of Polish Literature (p. 63).

References

• Michael J. Mikoś, Polish Literature from the Middle Ages to the End of the Eighteenth Century: a Bilingual Anthology, Warsaw, Constans, 1999.
• Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, 2nd ed., Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983.

This article about a poet from Poland is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Polish poet stubs
• 1579 works
• History of Poland (1569–1795)
• Polish poems
• Psalters