utput, plentiful and varied, took Potocki half a century to create. However, his contemporaries knew little of his literary production; probably it reached them in the form of manuscripts. Most of the works which survived were published only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Potocki’s production includes romances, epic and lyrical works, collections of reflective and occasional verse, satires and epigrams.

In romances such as Judyta, Wirginia, Syloret, Lidia, Potocki developed Biblical and ancient motifs (the latter came from Ethiopian Stories by Heliodor and Metamorphoses by Apuleius, both popular at that time) with their unusual adventures, journeys, intrigues, unexpected turning points. In Argenida, he drew from a romance, widely read at that time, by a Scottish author, John Barclay, combining a fantastic plot and dramatic events with reflection and moralising.

Among the epic works the most important position is occupied by Transakcyja wojny chocimskiej (“Transaction of the Chocim War”), written on the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Chocim (1621). Designed as a chronicle in verse (13-syllable), it provides a precise report of the course of the Chocim campaign. The author based his work on Commentariorum Chotinensis belli libri tres (“Commentary on the Chocim War in three volumes”) by Jakub Sobieski (father of the king-to-be) of 1646 and on other written and oral sources. He created an idealised image of Polish knighthood to which he opposed an image of the Turks. Hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz and Cossack hetman Piotr Sahajdaczny were presented as immaculate heroes, and Osman was presented as a demon. The report of the course of the battle is accompanied by numerous digressions in which he evaluated his contemporary generations, noticing a decline of knightly virtues and unmanliness. He also dealt with more general issues, pondered upon the decline of mankind in general and weaved very pessimistic visions.

In his lyrical production, including Pieśni, (“Hymns”), there reoccurred religious motifs (in the form of prayer, confessions of a penitent) and personal ones related to the death of close relatives of the poet. Among the funeral poems, there are Periody (“Periods”) forming a collection of eighteen threnodies written after the death of his son Stefan. They draw on the tradition of Polish Renaissance poetry, especially on Treny (“Threnodies”) by Jan Kochanowski.

During several decades, Potocki wrote and composed collections of poems representing various literary genres. In this way, a set of over 2000 poems was created and finally edited by the author at the end of his life. Today, this appears most frequently with the title Ogród nie plewiony or Ogród fraszek (“Unweeded garden” or “Garden of Epigrams”). The collection consists of small and larger works, solemn and humorous, often bluff, reflective, occasional and satirical poems, epigrams and anecdotes, fables, riddles, puns and anagrams, stories from social and political life. The poet pictured there the world of the nobility, with its customs and habits, in a vivid, chronicle-like and meticulously precise manner. In the description, he did not omit himself and his relatives. He saw the life of nobility from a perspective of a kind-hearted, tolerant neighbour, a humorist but also, quite often, a satirist and moralist, reprimanding the nobility and clergy for egoism, greed, ignorance and cowardice.

Another great collection (also of more than 2000 works) created during the last several years of the poet’s life is entitled Moralia and based on Adagia by Erasmus of Rotterdam, which was a dictionary of Latin proverbs and sayings with a commentary. With reference to them and their Polish equivalents, in epigrams, reflective songs and satires, Potocki presented his opinions on the political system of Poland, the place of each class in the state; he criticised the clergy for their greed and stupidity; the nobility and aristocracy; he defended peasants (Wolne kozy od pługu) (“Goats free from the plough”) and expressed his approval of religious tolerance (he meant mainly the Polish Brothers called Aryans). Moralia, however, contains not only current and topical observations but also generalisations which are universal in character, very personal reflections not free from d