Notes in the Margin of Edition of a Basilian Poem The Massacre of the Innocents

This paper is intended to gather some remarks regarding a first published late-Baroque poem The
Massacre of the Innocents, being an anonymous Polish translation of Giambattista Marino’ s work. After
giving a sketchy characterization of the poem and displaying the main reasons of its publication, the author
proceeds to conclusions drawn from the simultaneous reading of three existing versions of the Polish
text survived in one of the Ossolineum manuscripts. He dwells on the paths the translator takes arduously
forming and transforming his version of the Italian poem, pointing out the main types of corrections he
makes and trying to present a reasonable explanation for his artistic choices. The paper intends though to
shape a more profound picture of the work taking into account not only the final (or the one considered
to be such) form of the text but also all the traces of the translator’ s continuous labour conserved in the
extant versions of the Polish poem.