In response to:

Bringing a Great Poet Back to Life from the February 15, 1996 issue

To the Editors:

I was dismayed reading Czeslaw Milosz’s review of Jan Kochanowski’s Laments [NYR, February 15]. In listing earlier translations of this work, Milosz does not mention my translation of Laments, the first complete rendition since 1928, which appeared in my book Polish Renaissance Literature: An Anthology (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, Inc., 1995) and was subsequently published in a bilingual edition as: Jan Kochanowski, Laments, translated by Michael J. Mikos (Warsaw: Constants, 1995).

Michael J. Mikos
Department of Slavic Languages
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Czeslaw Milosz replies:

I am glad that Laments of Jan Kochanowski found of late one more translator. If I did not mention it in my article, it was because I was unaware of the existence of that version, which is too recent to have reached my hands.

This Issue

April 4, 1996