"Na cóż koło tego pracować, czego Bóg nie chciał mieć na świecie?" : a note on (two) poems by Wacław Potocki in the light of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s "Adagia"

This paper compares two monumental works (in prose and verse) in old culture: on the one hand the Adagia, i.e. the most extensive in European writings until the 20th century collection of ancient proverbs and sentences (4,151 entries in the 1536 edition) by one of the greatest representatives of Renaissance humanism, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and on the other hand, Moralia, the most extensive collection of poems in 17th-c. Polish poetry (over 2,100 items) by Wacław Potocki, one of the greatest representatives of Polish Baroque. The paper asks the following questions: what actually lies behind the functional dissimilarity of the two collections and literary (actually: rhetorical) specificity of particular paraphrases made by Potocki? Why does his 1677-1687 work show no sign of him having read the Adagia, even though as early as 1670 Potocki made first notes on the margins of that book presented to him as a gift? Is it possible, as Leszek Kukulski claimed, that Erasmus’ thesaurus did not open before the poet any new problems he had not addressed before (criticism of morals and the church, religious tolerance, philosophical reflection on human condition, vices of the nobility etc.), merely helping him to put certain detailed observations in the form of general opinions, inspiring him to compose sophisticated poetic descriptions of plots? Finally, what function did the Adagia potentially play among 17th-c. Polish Arians and to what extent (if any) did they influence the awareness of the contemporary Catholic and Protestant elites of the time? Will we ever read a monograph comparing the two outstanding works from the philological and historical-cultural perspective?