KRASICKI, IGNACY

born Feb. 3, 1735, Dubiecko, Polish Galicia [now in Poland] died March 14, 1801, Berlin, Prussia greatest Polish poet of the 18th century. Born to an aristocratic but impoverished family, Krasicki was educated at the Warsaw Catholic Seminary and became bishop of Warmia (Ermeland) at age 32. He served as chaplain to King Stanislaw II Poniatowski and in 1795 was named archbishop of Gniezno. Krasicki was scholarly, skeptical, and critical but fundamentally optimistic and never cynical. His fables are among his best work. They are told in concise, unambiguous language and reflect the author's skepticism about human nature, tempered by sympathetic understanding. His satires (first collection published in 1779) concentrate on vices such as drunkenness and greediness. In Pijanstwo (Drunkenness), Krasicki portrays the gradual process of alcohol addiction. His mock-heroic poems include Monachomachia (1778; War of Monks), a satirical attack on ignorant and dissolute monks. Krasicki also introduced the modern novel to Poland with Mikolaja Doswiadczynskiego przypadki (1776; The Adventures of Nicholas Try-all). Influenced by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it was written in the form of a diary and consists of three sections, the second of which introduces an imaginary island whose inhabitants live an ideally simple life.