The Eternal Man

Prof. Dr Wacław Walecki is a Research Fellow in the Institute of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University of Cracow. His chief academic interests focus on Early and Enlightenment Polish Literature. He has written numerous interpretative and synthetic papers in this field, including the following monographic books:

• Jan Kochanowski w literaturze i kulturze polskiej doby Oświecenia
  Jan Kochanowski in the Literature and Culture of the Polish Enlightenment,
  Wrocław, 1979;
• Tradycje staropolszczyzny w Oświeceniu stanisławowskim
  Traditions of the Early Polish Period in the Enlightenment of the Reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski,
  Kraków, 1987;
• A Short History of Polish Literature
  Kraków, 1997.

Another branch of Wacław Walecki’s scholarship encompasses his work as an editor and his publishing venture. He has edited an anthology of 16th-century Polish prose entitled Z duchem w rozmawianiu In Conversation with the Spirit: Polish Sixteenth-Century Prose, Kraków, 1991, and a German-language anthology of Polish Renaissance literature, Polnische Renaissance, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1996, as well as collection of academic source-text and bibliophile editions of books and prints in the publishing series he has founded and is currently managing, Biblioteka Tradycji Literackich The Literary Tradition Collection. In a joint undertaking with other specialists, in this series Dr Walecki has reproduced bibliophilic curios such as a facsimile of Mymer’s 1528 trilingual (Latin-German-Polish) dictionary; a rare set of Latin odes and copper-plate illustrations presenting the biography of Cardinal Hosius (1588); a collection of Stanisław Wyspiański's autograph manuscripts; a compendium of passages which the Polish novelist and Nobel prize holder, Henryk Sienkiewicz, ultimately rejected and withdrew from his Trilogy; and a facsimile of the 16th-century Polish psalter, Psałterz krakowski.

This book, Wieczny Człowiek [The Eternal Man], is devoted to a now not very widely known novel by the late 18th-century satirical poet, Ignacy Krasicki, which faded into oblivion soon after its publication. The author endeavours to show the novel’s special attributes, particularly the extensive cultural and literary background to it which Bishop Krasicki employed to conjure up the characteristic, brilliantly witty style he is remembered for.