KASPROWICZ, JAN

born Dec. 12, 1860, Szymborze, Prussia [now in Poland] died Aug. 1, 1926, Zakopane, Pol. the first great Polish poet of peasant origin and a translator who made an enormous range of classical and modern European literature available to Polish readers. After studying at the universities of Leipzig and Breslau, Kasprowicz moved to Austrian-ruled Lww, Pol. (now Lviv, Ukraine), in 1889 to escape Prussian persecution for his radical activities. He attended the university there and later worked as a journalist until, in 1909, he became a professor of comparative literature at the University of Lww. His earliest poetry depicts the suffering, poverty, and ignorance of the peasants and is marked by a concern for social justice. Subsequently, in Krzak dzikiej rzy (1898; The Wild Rose Bush), he lyrically describes the countryside of Poland in the Tatra mountain area. Ginacemu swiatu (1901; To a Dying World) is a cycle of poems that expresses his concern with humanity's sufferings and metaphysical longings. The cycle used techniques that anticipated the early poetry of T.S. Eliot: free verse, quotations, and a style that progresses by associations, rather than by logical connections. Later works such as Ksiega ubogich (1916; Book of the Poor) reveal a mellowing temper and a newfound religious faith. The astonishing range of his translations includes the complete works of William Shakespeare, Aeschylus, and Euripides and works by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Blake, Robert Browning, and William Butler Yeats. He also translated voluminously from German, French, and Italian.