Literature and imagination : Gregorius Vigilantius Samboritanus ‘Nenia’ on Paweł Chmielowski’s death

The aim of this paper is to show the genesis of the poem and the manner of the poetic imitation chosen by the poet. The text is divided into two main sections. The first is to be considered as a basic factographic introduction into the circumstances of death (1562) of Paweł Chmielowski, Archdeacon of Lublin, who was the King of Poland’s envoy in Sweden; he had been dead in the sea and his body was found as frozen to the hardness of a stone. The second part is devoted to the analysed poem (Gregorius’ Nenia). The author describes the topoi used by the poet and shows that the text contents some essential parts of the epicedium, but Gregorius takes his poetic lamentation in the large sense, as an adventurous narrative and exemplary monition. Describing the sea (which he never saw) the poet draws on the works of Virgil and Ovid but also on his own imagination. The author argues that a main idea organizing the whole poem is that of metamorphosis, which occurs at many levels in the text and in its imagery.