Uwagi o lekturze Moraliów

The author analyzes three works by Potocki from the collection of the Moralia. The poet intended them to exemplify the titular sentence "Whoever is too much in a hurry, must do the same thing twice." This is a translation of the Latin maxim from the collection of Erasmus of Rotterdam's Adagia: Qui nimium properat, serius absolvit to which Potocki draws, giving up the typical of the Dutch humanist references to antiquity and making the motifs of the Adagia the basis of narration placed in the realities of 17th-century Poland. What is stressed here is the poet's tendency to autobiographism (simulated at times) and to a detailed description and the construction of a decentralized vision of the presented world. The considerations conclude with a statement that the reading of Potocki requires that the references to learned tradition be taken into account, which the poet knew very well, and to Sarmatian everyday reality, which was for him the source of artistic inspiration.