Stylistyczne właściwości psalmu In Te, Domine, speravi Klemensa Janickiego oraz psalmów XXXI i LXXI Heliusa Eobanusa Hessusa i George'a Buchanana

Abstrakt

The paper resumes the most important questions as regards the stylistic problems of the five selected Biblical Renaissance paraphrases of the psalms In Te, Domine, speravi by Eobanus Hessus, George Buchanan and Klemens Janicki. All the three poets transformed psalms into classical genres: into elegies (Hessus and Janicki) and odes (Buchanan), thereby imitating the most prominent representatives of those poetic genres, i.e. Ovid and Horace. As a result, completely different works were written. Buchanan's odes are characterized by a simple style, they are condensed, without unduly accumulation of rhetorical figures and this is what made them, in a sense, similar to the Biblical paradigm. Now, conversely, Horace's elegies contain long sentences and constructed with ornaments, with numerous ornaments, such as solemn apostrophes, epithets, and comparisons. Thus they are deprived of such a desirable simplicity and spontaneity in expressing feelings, things that are so important in the case of prayers. In the context of the paraphrases of those authors, Janicki's psalm looks very positive, which in fact is not a strict counterpart of one of the two biblical psalms In Te, Domine, speravi, but actually a free poetic interpretation. One observes here broader images than in the original, with a considerable number of metaphors, images and symbols drawn from many different psalms. Parallel phrases as a means of expression played in Janicki an important role as well. They allowed to divide the long sentences woven into elegiac distich into smaller rhythmic units and compose them in respect of the mood of the prayer. Despite a large accumulation of rhetorical means, the work does not smite us with artificial elaboration. On the contrary, it surprises us with its very individual approach, colorfulness, and its vivid prayerful confession. This is something that, undoubtedly, was lacking in Hessus's and Buchanan's paraphrases, which were uniform in terms of their composition and style.