When three-year-old Urszula was dying, beloved daughter of the poet, the author already had his best works. After that breakthrough, Kochanowski did not write anything comparable to his earlier works.
Threnody is a genre of mourning poetry that originated in ancient Greece, an elegiac song expressing regret over someone's death, praising the virtues of the deceased, his deeds, remembering this figure. The creators of the Renaissance period referred to the ancient patterns of the genre, np. F. Petrarek or J.. Kochanowski. The innovation of the latter was to write the entire training cycle, which was imitated many times later in Polish poetry. In our contemporary poetry, the beautiful mourning cycle of Anka W. stands out. Broniewski.
The trainings were written over the years 1579-1580. They were issued in print in Kraków in 1580 year. It is a series of nineteen lyrical pieces dedicated to Orszula Kochanowska, constituting a carefully composed, closed whole. In world literature, it is hardly so touching, a wonderful work of a similar nature. The individual works are testimony to Kochanowski's erudition, knowledge of literary tradition (mythology, ancient lyric, The bible). On this basis, the poet created a very original work, attesting to his extraordinary poetic imagination and huge workshop possibilities (varied structure of poems, complicated time signatures, shuttles, inversion, comparisons).
Each of the Threnes is an independent poem, has its own, proper ways of imaging, revision, arrangement of rhymes, order of accent sets. At the same time, all these lyrics form a kind of a poem, threads, the images and reflections from the individual poems unfold, complete. Only an analysis of the whole allows you to properly read individual pieces and understand the message of the work.
Initially, the hero of trains is a man who is almost mad after his daughter's death, confused, his current system of values has collapsed. Tragedy, the pain makes him reject a previously recognized worldview, even the logic of acting and thinking, ask for validity, the justice of the judgments of Providence. All shades of despair appear in Threnas. They change in the following lines, as if along with organizing the consecutive stages of pain for one's own use. Laments are not a messy lament, but a precisely ordered cycle of poems with a clearly defined author's idea.
The trains fully reflect the poet's worldview crisis – it is difficult to indicate another, an equally comprehensive record of a similar process in Polish literature. The poet rejects it, written into earlier works, beliefs about the harmony of the world, he questions the existence of any permanent and fair order. The whole vision of the world changes – once considered beautiful, magnificent, harmoniously shaped by God.
Trifles, The songs were saturated with optimism. It was based on an idea of the natural order of the world, belief about it, that nature is God's most perfect work. Her rights were considered equally unchanging, what is reasonable. Hence the joy of life, so clear, for example, in Fraszki, optimism of Jan Kochanowski (but also other Renaissance poets). God is also assigned the creation of moral laws, which are also permanent, unchanging. They are strengthened by the enormous power of human reason, the power to control even the greatest emotions.
The climax of the dialogue with not so long ago accepted ideas is the middle part of Threnas – mainly from IX to XI. It is also the pinnacle of despair, the point from which the road to reconciliation with the world begins. If you can't believe in divine justice, it should at least be trusted in the mercy of the Creator – as in Trena XVI. Ask him for comfort, which is mainly carried by the passing of time, father of oblivion. Only the last trend brings a complete rejection of the egocentric attitude. The lyrical hero already feels a part of the suffering person here, unhappy humanity. He gives up feeling his uniqueness, which he kept within himself as an outstanding poet. He submits to God's will, with Christian humility, he renounces the understanding of the Creator, in return he achieves peace. Kochanowski's new philosophy foreshadowed the Baroque, it did not fit into the mainstream of Renaissance thought, it did testify to its deep crisis.
