Renaissance Psalter

by John Paul II

Year 1999
Type Poem
Genre poetry
Tradition Catholic
Original language Polish

For For readers of his poetry who want to see where it began; youthful verse, of interest mainly for his biography.

Should I read this?

For the general reader: 2 of 5 worth a look
For the researcher: 2 of 5 useful
Difficulty: 2 of 5 moderate

His youthful poems of 1939, in homage to the Bible and to Kochanowski's Renaissance psalter; published in 1999.

How it proceeds

Philosophic 1 of 5
Scriptural 3 of 5
Experiential 3 of 5
Sociological 1 of 5
Historical 1 of 5

Independent intensities, 0–5 — what the work is made of, not how good it is.

Karol Wojtyła's earliest collection of poems, written in 1939, before the Second World War, when he was a student of Polish philology at the Jagiellonian University, and published only in 1999. The verses, inspired by the Bible and by the Renaissance, are an act of homage to the great tradition of Polish poetry, above all to Jan Kochanowski, the sixteenth-century poet of the Polish psalter. Polish critics regard them as apprentice work, before the reflective and visionary poems of his maturity.

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Catalog IDW.VSHT6H.7

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