SIGNA SIDERUM. STAR SIGNS

Discover the world of 17th-century poetry with "Signa siderum. Star Signs." This unique collection introduces the reader to the world of Baroque metaphor and spiritual depth, showing how contemporary creators perceived the sky and stars as a source of inspiration and knowledge. Let yourself be carried away by the beauty of words and travel back in time to an era where poetry was an art of the highest order.

• Inspiration of star signs: Poetry illuminated by star symbolism stops the passing of the world.
• Figures of immortality: Stars as symbols of eternal fame and beauty.
• Unspeakable beauty: Discover heavenly homelands in the texts.
• All-night vigil: Poetry as a vigil among the stars.
• Inspiration for the imagination: Stars ignite the linguistic invention of poets.

Wojciech Ryczek presents Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, a Jesuit and the most outstanding Neo-Latin poet of the 17th century. Sarbiewski, crowned with laurels by Pope Urban VIII, was a theorist of poetry, the creator of the aesthetics of the concept and a teacher in Jesuit colleges. His work, inspired by ancient masters, is characterized by exquisite Latin, an allegorical interpretation of biblical figures and a wealth of rhetorical forms. The poet freely used various verse measures, which earned him admiration throughout Europe.

Sarbiewski often turned his eyes to the starry heavens, looking for inspiration that, igniting his imagination, revived his linguistic invention. The stars illuminated the textual sky with a golden glow, creating constellations of luminous meanings, extracting lyrical heroes and the author himself from darkness and shadow. Even if their flickering light reaches us scattered in translation, it never completely disappears.

Literary scholar Wojciech Ryczek, associated with the Faculty of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University, specializes in the history of Old Polish literature. Ryczek, author of monographs on Christian rhetoric and the rhetorical theory of Bartłomiej Keckermann, is interested in tracking tropes and rhetorical figures, 16th and 17th-century Neo-Latin literature, comparative literature, translation, the history of ideas, anthropology and philosophical aesthetics.