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POŁACKTS EARLY VERSE 71demonstrate, these features are due to the fact that the verses in question arePolackij's first attempts to compose emblem verse and inscriptions inspiredby plates or drawings. In demonstrating this hypothesis, I shall present eachof the texts, indicate a possible source, and discuss those correspondencesbetween the verse and the suggested source which allow us to posit such arelationship. 7The connection between these texts and emblem verse is most clearlyseen in "Pieszczota dziatek." The poem is a quatrain in which the authorwarns of the dire consequences of excessive parental affection:Małpa, ucieszne i smyślne zwierzątkoZbytnie kochając, zadławią małpiątko.Tak zbytnie pieszcząc miłe swoje dziatki,O śmierć przywodzą nieuważne matki. 8Both the theme and illustrative motif of this text appear in several emblembooks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One, entitled "CaecusAmor Sobolis," is listed as "No. 77" by Joachim Camerarius in his Symodmianaу różność," and, as part of this text, "Wściekłemi biegasz końmi, Kupidynie..." in anannotated scholarly edition: Simeon Polockij: VirSi (Minsk, 1990), pp. 195, 172, 174. Whilefollowing contemporary punctuation and spelling, they do not separate the texts into strophes,contrary to indications in the manuscript. In treating "Czasu odmiana у różność" andWściekłemi biegasz końmi, Kupidynie..." as a single text, they repeat Luzny's error (cf. fn. 20below).No archaeographic description of CGADA, fond 381, MS. 1800, is known to me. Łużny,Pisarze kręgu, pp. 109-24, contains a general description and partial listing of contents. Bylininand Zvonareva remark on the paleography of the manuscript. The earliest dated work isPolacki's translated Akafist Najświętszej Pannie.. ., dated by him in the text to 1648. Amongthe latest texts is Lamiencik sławieński, dated by the author 27 May 1663. The watermarks Iobtained in situ (fols. 7, 10, 14, 22/24, 24/26, 28/30) seem to reflect most closely E.Laucevicius, Popierius Lietuvoje: Atlasas, 2 vols. (Vilnius, 1967), vol. 1, p. 171, nos. 1090 and1089, a mounted figure in a double circle containing the name Marcjan Giedroycz; vol. 2, p.189, dates no. 1089 to Vilnius, 1646/Rasenai, 1648; no. 1090 to Vilnius, 1647/Rasenai, 1648;and no. 1094 to Vilnius, 1654. If the terminus post quern of 1646/47 is accepted and the lastwatermark has been correctly identified, some of the texts in question definitely stem fromPolacki's studies in Kiev and Vilnius or Polack.7Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery; Samuel С Chew, The Pilgrimage of Life(New Haven and London, 1962); E. H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of theRenaissance (London, 1972); Arthur Henckel and Albrecht Schöne, Emblemata: Handbuch zurSinnbildkünst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1972); Janusz Pele, Stowo-Obrak-Znak, and idem, "Old Polish Emblems: An introduction to the Problem," Zagadnieniarodzajów literackich 12, no. 2 (1968): 31 -54, served as my introduction to the problems of theemblem and related genres.8The monkey, an amusing and intelligent beast/loving excessively suffocates the youngmonkey ./Caring for their dear children in a similarly excessive way,/careless mothers causetheir death.