VILLON Francis - The Great Testament together with the "Codicil" - transl. ¿LEŃSKI-BOY - 1917

The Great Testament (French: Le grand testament) - a work byFrançois Villon. It shows the feelings of a man living at the end of the Middle Ages. It was written after the poet's release from a Paris prison[. It is a farewell to the world and a kind of examination of conscience. A literary hero appears, which has not been in literature before. The Middle Ages did not know a hero who was average, undistinguished by anything.

In the work one can find the topos ubi sunt in the recurring refrain Ach, gdzież są niegdysieysze śniegi (fr. Où sont les neiges d'antan?). It is a maxim, a maxim by Villon. It expresses a longing for a bygone time. The ballad On the Ladies of Time Past, which is part of the Great Testament, contains the idea of passing and the impossibility of return - memento mori ("remember death"). There are also references to the danse macabre, or dance of death. Death is all-powerful, omnipresent, unexpected, cruel. A naturalistic representation of man and death prevails. There is also an eschatological motif.

Henry Valois was supposed to know the Great Testament by heart.

Tadeusz Boy-Zelenski translated the Great Testament into Polish in 1917, during "the darkest period of the war," when - as a "doctor of the common movement" - he spent every other day in the barracks of the "Dressing Station," to which transports of soldiers were arriving from the front, "...putting our [doctors'] feelings of humanity to a severe test." He later wrote about the translated work, among other things:

Gebethner and Wolff Publishing House, 1917

Format: 180 x 120 mm, 130s.

Hardcover bookbinding.

Very good condition, light rubbing of corners and edges, on the title page a short dedication to Krzysztof Bienkowski from 1921 and the stamp of his book collection.