10 Quirky Quotes from Poland’s First Encyclopaedia
Published in the mid-18th century, ‘New Athens’ by Father Benedykt Chmielowski is considered Poland’s first encyclopaedia. But this aged book is rather different from the encyclopaedias we’re used to – its eyebrow-raising entries describe the likes of dragons and headless humanoids as real...
A portrait of Benedykt Chmielowski from his book ‘New Athens’, 1795, photo: public domain
Father Benedykt Chmielowski (1700-1763) spent his entire life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; he never travelled abroad. He was a parson in Firlejów (today’s village of Lipówka in western Ukraine) and is said to have seldom left his out-of-the-way place of residence. He was, however, an avid reader and owned a sizeable collection of books that numbered 140 volumes.
In the 1740s, he published Nowe Ateny (New Athens), which is considered the first Polish encyclopaedia. It’s worth adding that the full title of this book is very lengthy; it takes up almost an entire page and includes the following intriguing passage: ‘Created for the Wise to Remember, Idiots to Learn, Politicians to Practice, and Melancholics to Entertain Themselves.’ The title’s first part or the words ‘New Athens’ is said to be a nod to ancient Greek philosophy.
New Athens mostly recounts what Chmielowski had read and is largely based on texts by authors such as Pliny, Tertullian, and Saint Augustine. However, in his book, Chmielowski repeated even the most outlandish pieces of information, believing they were true simply by virtue of appearing in a venerable source. Poland’s Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Olga Tokarczuk, who appreciates Chmielowski’s encyclopaedia as a curious work of literature, once wrote the following about New Athens:
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[It’s] a compilation of knowledge characteristic of a provincial and backward consciousness which remains far behind the main trends in research, philosophical discourse and scientific or geographical discoveries. Written in the first half of the 18th century, the book describes the biblical fish Leviathan, magic and sorcery, acephalous (headless) humans. This is a silva rerum, a forest of things, which the reader wanders through in endless surprise, learning, as from modern-day television, this and that, often nothing but nonsense.
Author
From ‘Benedykt Chmielowski, Wikipedysta Sarmacki’, a 2011 essay by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. MK
New Athens was created before the rationalist Enlightenment took root in Poland and constitutes an amusing document of the mindset of its times. It’s written in a literary style that differs vastly from the dry language of modern-day encyclopaedias. The hefty publication, expanded by Chmielowski in the 1750s, includes a multitude of entries organized into thematic categories discussing things like geography, zoology, astronomy, sorcery, the devil’s affairs, and more. Below you can find ten especially quirky quotes from Chmielowski’s remarkable publication.
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An image of a horse, photo: Polona.pl
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First up, we have what is definitely the best-known quotation from New Athens, Chmielowski’s description of a horse:
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What a horse is like, anyone can see.
In Chmielowski’s times horses were much more prevalent than they are today, and indeed plenty of people could see those animals with their own eyes on a regular basis. So, it seems that the author didn’t want to waste his time describing what appeared to be obvious. However, it’s hard not to notice how different Chmielowski’s description is from what you’d expect to find in a contemporary, purely informative dictionary that would discuss things like the history of the horse family, it’s characteristics, and so on. This stark contrast has rendered the quote truly famous in Poland. It has become an idiomatic phrase, used to humorously express that there’s no point in discussing the obvious.
In her essay about New Athens titled Benedykt Chmielowski, Wikipedysta Sarmacki (Bendykt Chmielowski, the Sarmatian Wikipedist), Olga Tokarczuk writes that the Polish priest was generally disinclined to describe the obvious in his encyclopaedia and focused more on the extraordinary and bizarre. The following rather amusing passage, taken from New Athens’ entry about dogs, certainly confirms Tokarczuk’s observation:
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A certain French duke had a dog trained in such a way that it set the table for guests, it opened the chest containing the tablecloth with a key taken from its master, and after spreading the cloth on the table, it laid out the plates, spoons, knives, and napkins in the appropriate order.
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An ant in an illustration for Jean de la Fontaine's fairy tales, photo: Polona.pl
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In addition to dogs and horses, Chmielowski was interested in the tiniest of animals. Here we have a curious quote from New Athens about an insect, namely about an ant:
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ANT, in the Persian city of Susa in a market square called Avianus, there was an ant that daily ate a pound of meat, as Rhasis and Jonstonus relate.
Well, that must’ve been one hungry ant!
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An illustration from ‘New Athens’ showing a knight fighting against a dragon, photo: public domain
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While the previous three quotes are about existing kinds of animals, the next one is about a fantastic beast. In Chmielowski’s encyclopaedia next to an illustration showing a swordsman and a dragon, you can find the following comment:
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It’s hard to beat a dragon, but you have to try.
This could be interpreted as an expressive metaphor of overcoming difficulties in life if not for the fact that Chmielowski wrote about dragons as if they were real. In New Athens, there’s a chapter titled On Crawling Things, where alongside entries about such real-life animals like crocodiles and snakes, you can find one devoted to dragons:
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DRACO, or a dragon, […] has the following unique features: in the past near the Jordan river such a huge one used to live, that it covered entire hectares with its body, it could fit a horse with a rider in its mouth; its scales were as large as shields.
Now that must’ve been an exceptionally tough dragon to beat…
Like dragons, headless humanoids also inhabit the world of the fantastic. But that didn’t prevent Chmielowski from describing them as real in his encyclopaedia:
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Firstly, an author by the name of Mela […] reliably and convincingly writes that there is a people named Blemij, whom Isidore calls Lemnios, and they have the complete figure and symmetry of ordinary humans, but they don’t have a head, only a face in the middle of the chest.
Amusingly, Chmielowski adds that someone might consider him ‘headless’ or dim-witted for claiming that such highly peculiar acephalous people exist. To defend his claim, he explains that it is well documented in literature.
A bust of Socrates at the Louvre, photo: Wikimedia Commons
Apart from describing fantastic humanoids, New Athens also contains entries about real people. There’s one, for instance, about the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates:
SOCRATES never laughed in his life; his face was neither happy nor sad.
Trans. MK
One simply has to notice that it’s hard not to burst into laughter or at least smile after reading this absolutely hilarious passage!
Next up, we have another description of a real person from Chmielowski’s encyclopaedia:
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ERIC, the King of Sweden, wherever he turned his hat, the wind blew from there.
Unfortunately, Chmielowski doesn’t specify exactly which Eric this entry refers to. Apparently, Sweden had a number of kings by that name before New Athens was published. Perhaps the answer to the question as to which of these monarchs Chmielowski had in mind, like in the famous song by Bob Dylan, is blowing in the wind…
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A hail cloud in the region of Mazury, photo: Grazyna Myślińska / Forum
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Whereas the last quote made mention of wind, this one is about another weather phenomenon, hail:
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How to turn around hail? Some say one has to show the hail cloud a great mirror and turn it toward the cloud; that’ll make it go away.
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From ‘New Athens’, trans. MK
So, if you ever want to divert a pesky hail cloud, thanks to Father Chemielowski, you’ll know what to do. Just be sure to keep that great big mirror handy…
According to New Athens, if you look up at a hail cloud you might happen to notice the devil as he’s flying across the world:
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The devil knows about many natural things, various affairs, and miracles, because he’s been in this world for a couple of thousand years and has gained great experience. He’s also very quick, and fast; he flies across the entire world from east to west, sees what’s happening, and reports to his favourites.
Fortunately, thanks to Chmielowski’s encyclopaedia, humankind is also familiar with many natural things, various affairs, and (plenty of) miracles. This knowledge will surely help us protect ourselves from the devil’s trickery!
Hell in Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, (ca. 1504), photo: Wikimedia Commons
Our final quote from New Athens also mentions the devil, but it mainly revolves around the centre of the Earth. According to Chmielowski, it’s possible to be taken to that place, but it’s best never to end up there…
If there was a well leading to the centre of the Earth and a man fell into it, he’d fly 5 German or 20 Italian miles per minute and rest on the centre and bottom after 172 minutes, that is 2 hours and 52 minutes. In the centre of the Earth, according to the holy fathers, hell is located, where the soul will arrive more quickly if carried by the devil.
Trans. MK
Well, it looks like we’ve arrived at the end of this article. We hope you had a hell of a good time reading our selection of quotes from Poland’s first encyclopaedia!
Written by Marek Kępa, Dec 2021
