Gorzkie żale – skarb języka polskiego okresu baroku
Lenten Lamentations – a treasure of the Polish language heritage of the Baroque era

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the circumstances under which Lenten Lamentations werecomposed and how this devotion won popularity in Poland and among the Polishcommunities abroad. Also discussed are a selection of linguistic features that LentenLamentations display (e.g. some archaic inflection, typical syntactic constructions or lexicaland semantic archaisms) and the problems related to the modernization of the text. The needfor modernizing the textual organization of Lenten Lamentations resulted both from theevolution of the Polish language system as well as from the changes taking place in cultureand religion. Since this article was originally written in relation with the collective volumeAmargas lamentaciones. Un tesoro de la espiritualidad y de la cultura polaca para el PapaFrancisco y el Mundo Hispano (Coordinación del proyecto y traducción de textos Pablode la Fuente y Cezary Taracha, Lublin 2015), addressed to Spanish-speaking audiences,the author also discusses this collective publication and puts forward a (rhetorical?) question how to present the complexity and „exoticism” of issues like the evolution of thePolish language (grammatical and semantic changes etc.) to a non-Polish recipient.

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