Entre dépression et ennui. Les étranges mélancolies de Clemens Ianicius (1516–1543)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to describe melancholic moods in the elegies of Clemens Ianicius (1516–1543), a prematurely deceased Polish Neo-Latin poet. First, the author recapitulates briefly the poet’s biography (his peasant pedigree, education, studies at the Collegium Lubranscianum in Poznań, interrupted because of his father’s poverty, his fortunes and misfortunes resulting from the ecclesiastical and nobility patronage, his stay and studies in Padua, graduation with doctoral degree, coronation with a laurel wreath, and finally his illness and death). The analysed poems include elegies from two main collections of Ianicius’verses: the Variae elegiae and the Tristia. The author traces the development of the poet’s melancholic temperament, starting with the elegies concerning his favourite patron’s (the Primate Andrzej Krzycki) fever and the mourning after his death, and finishing with the elegies from the Tristia, treating the poet’s disease and sadness.