| Abstract [eng] |
The main research object of this dissertation is the Latin religious poetry of Mathias Casimirus Sarbievius (1595–1640). The research material covers Sarbievius’s religious odes, epodes, and epigrams. This dissertation aims to thouroughly examine the aspects of Sarbievius’s religious texts that have been traditionally overlooked by other scholars. Sarbievius’s religious poetry is analysed in terms of what and how many intertexts it encompasses; how Sarbievius’s texts transform and make use of the verbal models and symbols borrowed from other epochs and authors; which semantic layers of his poetry have had an impact on later poetic texts, including Lithuanian religious poetry of the 18th and 19th centuries. Ancillary texts are analysed retrospectively, by comparing intertextual motifs that recur throughout Sarbievius’s poems. The research has revealed that the intertexts which interact in Sarbievius’s religious texts are symbols from The Song of Songs, as well as variations on the Psalms and antiphons of Virgin Mary, medieval hymns, litanies, prayers, and poetic forms of iconographic stories. Sarbievius’s texts based on biblical stories employ the imagery suggestive of the post-Tridentine imagination. Reflections of this kind of imagination recur in later, among them Lithuanian, Catholic poetic texts. The use of the topoi associated with the yearning for the heavenly land in Sarbievius’s work reveal an intimate dialogue with God, like in Augustine’s writings. Sarbievius’s epigrams based on the motifs borrowed from The Song of Songs use complex means to convey the transcendental tension and have been attributed to the genre of mystical poetry. The analysis of Sarbievius’s religious poetry demonstrates the poet’s ability to join the universal topoi of the quest for God with specific Baroque patterns of religious reception. |
