POTOCKI, WACLAW

born , Wola Luzenska, Pol., 1621 died July 9, 1696, Luzna Polish author of a vigorous epic poem, Wojna chocimska ("The Chocim War"), and famous also for his epigrams, collected in Ogrd fraszek ("Garden of Rhymes," written 1670-95; published 1907), which gives a lively picture of ideas and manners among the gentry at a time of political and religious conflict. Potocki, a country squire with little formal education, wrote most of his verse (about 300,000 lines) to please himself. A Unitarian (Adrian), he was given a choice between exile and conversion to Roman Catholicism when a decree banished all Unitarians from Poland. He chose reluctantly to convert, but his wife refused and he spent many years fearing for her life. Wojna chocimska, finished in 1670 but not published until 1850, describes the defense in 1621 of the city of Chocim by 65,000 Poles and Cossacks against a Turkish army estimated at 400,000. Historically accurate, though idealizing the Polish heroes, the epic reveals Potocki's gift for poetic condensation.