Is This Thing On? The Laughs & Lows of Sowizdrzał Literature
Jesters were much more than just people who made a laughing-stock of themselves. Feigned stupidity became their life’s philosophy. They found a receptive audience as they spun their absurd yarns, sowing seeds of doubt and questioning the social order, revealing the malicious truth of the world, not unlike the standup comics and rappers of today.
WANTED
Full name: Till Owlglass (in Polish: Dyl Sowizdrzał, a.k.a. Sowiźrzał to his friends) or Till Eulenspiegel, according to his German passport.
Description: A jolly, elderly chap with a snide smile. Sports a three-horned hat with bells on it. Usually accompanied by an owl clasping a mirror in its talons, hence his name: Owlglass (n.b. the Old Polish words for owl and mirror were sowa and źrzadło).
Wanted for: Ridiculing noble and church culture; parodying scholars and the wealthy; scoffing at the social order; making bawdy jokes in polite company; and public nudity.
Bounty: Guaranteed to cheer you up.
In jester’s costume
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Jan Matejko, 'Stańczyk', 1862, photo: National Museum in Warsaw
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Arriving in Poland from northern Germany, he immediately conquered the literature of the late-16th and early-17th centuries. Being such a charismatic figure, he could have had a meteoric career in politics, but instead chose literature, one branch of which bore his name. It stood in opposition to writings by the ruling classes, and since Sowizdrzał adhered to democratic values, he had as many followers as enemies. People loved him for raising the problems of the impoverished plebs and exposing the duplicity of the church prelates, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie – all in simple, earthy language. Others hated him for the selfsame reasons.
Sowizdrzał literature was the realm of Kraków students who took jobs at parish schools after graduating. The community of Lesser-Polish priests, minstrels, teachers, and other ‘hacks’ (as they were contemptuously dubbed) was prone to drinking and fighting, and all too familiar with the hardships of a beggar’s lot (either from observation or personal experience). Though not exactly a close-knit group, they did share common ideas that slammed the feudal society on whose margins they existed. These writers, whose literary hero was named Sowizdrzał, lived just as he did – on the threshold of destitution and freedom, scorning the ethical principles of the time and veiling their misfortunes in humour. Like Jan of Kijany, they were also painfully honest:
Text
I have no joy in this world, I have no delight,
Hence wit have I none either – a fool am I, all right.
Author
Trans. Artur Zapałowski
Jesters were much more than just people who made a laughing-stock of themselves. Feigned stupidity became their life’s philosophy. They found a receptive audience as they spun their absurd yarns in taverns packed with simple folk, sowing seeds of doubt and questioning the social order, which eventually began to bear fruit. As the prominent Sowizdrzał-literature researcher, Stanisław Grzeszczuk, pointed out, jesters were a sort of ‘mythical Aesop or historical Stańczyk, revealing the malicious truth of the world’.
Call me Trztyprztycki
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'Eulenspiegel: A Rogue and Prankster Like No Other', 1908, published in Chełmno by W. Fiałek, photo: National Library of Poland (Polona)
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Writers of Sowizdrzał literature did not crave fame, though they did expect to be paid for their toils. They never regarded themselves as superior to their readers, and there was no concept of intellectual property in popular culture:
Text
I dedicate my verse to none, as you recall,Z
Pray do not find that strange: ’tis given free to all.
Author
– Jan of Kijany, trans. Artur Zapałowski
Several authors would commonly write under one pseudonym, so it is virtually impossible to establish their true identities today. They preferred anonymity not due to shame or doubtful talents. Quite the contrary, it was merely another tool to demonstrate their worldview and strive for acceptance. Only someone with a name like Jadam Nieboraczkowski of Chuda Wola (‘Gobble Poorwretch of Leantown’) could earn the trust of the lower strata of society. Only a Potański (from the Latin potus, implying alcohol and drinking) could have authored Wódka albo Gorzałka (‘Vodka or Firewater’). Equally popular were Radopatrzek Gładkotwarski of Lekarzewice (‘Gladlylook Fairface of Leechtown’), Wierzchosława Kendzierzkowska (‘Summitina Tanglelock’), Eufrozyna Lubokłońska (‘Euphrosyne Curtsiful’), Józef Pięknorzycki of Mątwiłajcy (‘Joseph Fairbum of Confuscatiomeadring’), Maurycjusz Trztyprztycki (‘Maurice Trztyprztycki’), and Niebyliński de Niedopytanów (‘Benot de Don'task’).
These pseudonyms might sound like innocuous jokes, were they not concealing provocative authors. The amusing monikers were intended to hint at their origins and identities, or the themes of their stories. More generally, they alluded to the common practice of giving every official a title, and also lampooned the literary fashion for Latin. So, when coming up with pseudonyms, they would use Sowizdrzał himself (distorting his name to Sowizralus, Sowizralius, or Sowizralius vel Sovizrzalius). Publication details were also cloaked in wordplay, e.g. places and dates replaced with a note, reading ‘This very year, in Prasowo’ (a fictitious town, implying ‘Pressville’).
In with the new
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'Jan Okpiświat', also known as 'Sowizdrzał: A Once Famous Jester, His Pranks and Adventures: A Comic Novel to Entertain Readers', 1885, published in Cieszyn by E. Feitzinger, photo: the National Library of Poland (Polona)
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The famous Łazarzowa print works at 20 Gołębia Street, Kraków, published the best-known Sowizdrzał tales: Wyprawa Plebańska (‘A Priest’s Journey’, 1590) and Albertus z Wojny (‘Albertus from the War’, 1596). These two books launched an entire wave of so-called Albertuses, stories starring comical priests. Wyprawa… recounts the adventures of a village priest and Albertus the student, all in grotesque style. Fulfilling his holy obligations, the priest sends a farmhand off to war with the Tatars, selecting his most faithful servant, who is utterly incapable of fighting. He procures some rusty armour for him, a sword that can only be wielded two-handed, and an old nag on its last legs. But equipment and looks are irrelevant, for bravery is what counts – and Albertus has plenty of that:
Text
His garb is mean and torn, the food he eats is rough,
A fine and righteous knight he shall make, sure enough.
For he is tall withal, and valorous as well,
On feast-days he does toll the heavy chapel bell.
Author
Trans. Artur Zapałowski
Sneering at tradition and subverting the myth of chivalry, the anonymous author of Wyprawa… depicts Albertus as an anti-hero. His further adventures only serve to discredit him, thus perpetuating the dunderheaded soldier caricature. Writers of Sowizdrzał literature often used parody and the absurd to strip bare the virtues and values of the 16th and 17th centuries with comedy.
‘The New Sowiźrzał, or rather Nowyźrzał’ 1684, photo. Biblioteka Narodowa Polona
The master of the genre, Jan of Kijany, specialised in short epigrams that were funny enough to offer solace to the downtrodden. Little is known about the actual author behind the pseudonym, although Grzeszczuk and others did glean a few facts from his writings, particularly Nowy Sowiźrzał abo raczej Nowyźrzał (‘The New Sowiźrzał, or rather Nowyźrzał’). This minstrel poet’s CV would have shown that he earned a crust in many a trade (though ‘crust’ is an overstatement, as: ‘There’s aquavit for breakfast, for lunch a bowl of gruel / And not a thing for dinner, indeed our life is cruel’), seasoned with bitter disappointment and humiliation. Travel was a central theme of Sowizdrzał literature, as it was in Jan’s own life. After finishing (or perhaps quitting?) school, Jan of Kijany was employed as a court jester (paid with beatings and cuffs around the ear). He later escaped to the countryside, taking a job at a parish school, where at least he was given free (i.e. empty) lodgings, so poetry was all he could afford to drown his sorrows in:
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A pair of poets sat and began to versify.
One drink was all they needed ’fore they saw eye-to-eye.
Author
Trans. Artur Zapałowski
Jan of Kijany’s epigrams covered topics best avoided: the World, the Devil, and the Body. Let’s examine Enemy No.3, which remained taboo up until the 15th and 16th centuries. As we have seen, Sowizdrzał literature presented a topsy-turvy view of the world, in which the human body was no longer God’s property and had become secular. Responding to the Renaissance fascination with anatomy, writers penned medical and ethical advice that was not applicable in practice. But it did have other functions, both comical and shocking (mostly describing the female body in obscene terms that left little to the imagination). Women characters lacked any deeper feelings – yet their rage knew no bounds – and their appearance was summed up in a few comparisons with animals:
Text
Fair as a stick she is, her nose doth droop and sag.
A camel’s neck she has, a head like an old nag.
Author
Trans. Artur Zapałowski.
Could some lady have got under the skin of the author, Jan of Kijany? Not necessarily. Since Sowizdrzał literature portrayed reality through a distorting mirror, his words should be interpreted as a mockery of aesthetic values.
Ewa Maciejczyk wrote that the body and soul were objectified in Polish Sowizdrzał literature. The soul was transformed into a commodity that could easily be sold (to the devil, for instance). Aware of its own physiology, the body acquired an erotic context, its status plummeting from sacred to sinful. For Sowizdrzałs, it was part of the circle of life: ‘Bodies were meant to create bodies’. Consequently, the humour the audience was expecting became ‘burlesque’. The Sowizdrzalian attitude to the body is best expressed in a bas-relief on the refurbished Great Oven at Artus Court in Gdańsk. It shows a plebeian jester with his trousers down, admiring his backside in a mirror.
Lying like a calendar
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Till Eulenspiegel Monument in Mölln, photo by Tollkühn/ullstein bild via Getty Images
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All manner of predictions and superstitious calendars were incredibly popular in the Old-Polish era. Almanacs served not only to measure time, but also as a kind of manual for all aspects of life. Some Sowizdrzalian authors decided to make the most of this fashion and parodied them. For example, Jan Żabczyc’s Kalendarz Wieczny (‘Perpetual Calendar’, c.1614) and Maurycjusz Trztyprztycki’s Minucje Nowe Sowiźrzałowe (‘New Sowizdrzał Minutiae’). Among the oldest, written around 1605, was the anonymous Minucje Sowiźrzałowe (Versions A and B), which has only partially survived. It was divided into months and seasons of the year, and there is a fragment of a third part, titled Nauka Puszczania Krwie (‘The Science of Bloodletting’). The author recommends avoiding water in October and warns against lying in November, but the majority of his tips are sex-related. Here is an excerpt from a forecast for autumn:
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Fall will be tempestuous
But in women plenteous.
Where the blooms in spring did blow
Babes in women’s wombs now grow.
Author
Trans. Artur Zapałowski
Minucje B provides more essential advice for living. On transport infrastructure: ‘The roads will be dangerous this year: the rain will make them wet and slippery; but your stride is always true when a maiden waits for you. A fifty-mile walk is easy when there’s money to be made, easier when your purse is full, be there sun or be there shade’. On problems of the heart: ‘Womenfolk will seek to show off their fierceness this year, but they will not be overly fearsome […]’. On professional matters: ‘Burghers will hold office, ’specially the well-born; while the poor, as always, have to bear their scorn’. And on health: ‘Fain would I heal all the sneezers who sneeze, so that they need not pay grim Saturn’s fees. Mind you wear your sheepskin, lest to death you freeze’.
Would Sowizdrzał have been into rap?
Most definitely! In an essay, Beata Maciejczyk compares Sowizdrzał literature to hip-hop subculture, drawing parallels with their shared themes (society, authority figures, female–male relations, religion, values, family) and similar expressive, vulgar language. Occasionally, the excerpts of literary and musical texts she has compiled seem somewhat bent to fit the premise. For example, she felt that the mediaeval quotation, ‘Poverty and woe, from Poland hence will go’ (or ‘Bad times are past, a fair year has come / The poverty and woe that plagued us once are gone’), resembled the lyrics of a Paktofonika song: ‘Every so often I picture life’s better features’. But some of her conclusions are apt and methodologically alluring, such as how Sowizdrzałs and rappers share a keen nose for social injustice, critiquing society based on observation, waging a stereotyped battle of the sexes, and condemning economic inequality. Maciejczyk recaps:
Text
Sowizdrzał and rappers are particularly like-minded in terms of the themes they touch upon. They share a defiant attitude to the world and their own fate. With a similar critical stance and sense of observation, the same problems and ways of dealing with them, as well as rebelliousness (integral to the attitude of any sensitive, thinking person), a space forms between the text, lending a new dimension to art and literature.
Author
Trans. Artur Zapałowski
Anyhow, it’s nice to imagine that the prototype for Polish rap wasn’t the Bronx, but Sowizdrzał literature straight outta Kraków!
Originally written in Polish, April 2021, translated by Mark Bence, June 2021
