Thoughts of the God

Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola wrote his treatise on human dignity at the beginning of the Renaissance, while Blaise Pascal is the author of Thoughts from the Baroque period. In the transitional period between these epochs Mikołaj Sęp - Szarzyński, known mainly for his manneristic, i.e. sophisticated and astonished sonnets.

In his treatise, Mirandola shows a man endowed by God with life and free will. In other words, man can do whatever he wants with his stay on earth and has a duty to develop the talents given to him by God. He can even descend to the order of animals. During the creation of the work, important was the philosophy adhered to by the Renaissance Italian, called neoplatonism. He referred to Plato's thoughts, proclaimed the idea of freedom as a superior value, as well as anthropocentrism, i.e. putting man at the centre of the universe. The shaping of one's own soul is also an important aspect he touched upon. Like Sęp-Szarzyński, Mirandola also professes a deep faith in God and recognizes him as the Creator of the universe, but according to the former, the man in old age regrets the mistakes of his youth, while the latter author shows that a worthy man develops and carefully rounds his life throughout his entire period. It should be noted that Mirandola when writing about his dignity, was only twenty-three years old, so he was relatively young.

Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński is an exceptionally intriguing writer, and the cycle of his sonnets is considered by researchers to be mysterious and unusual, mainly due to the abandonment of the classical rules of writing, so important in the Renaissance, i.e. the rebirth of antiquity. Szarzyński touches upon the dilemmas faced by the man during his life, which shows what a sensitive and intelligent man he was, but also an original man. Mannerism, so characteristic of Sępa's poetry, was distinguished by its complicated and unique structure. In Sonetto V, the lyrical subject, like the medieval French poet Franciszek Villon, "regrets the time of his youth", even though both writers were about 30 years old when he was writing. Sonnet V shows how fragile things are in the world.

A rich man wants to enlarge his wealth and having tasted the fame, power and beautiful appearance, he cannot get rid of fear. Man cannot love - just like the Greek Anaconte, "it is hard to love him, but it is also hard not to love". In Sonata IV, the lyrical subject shows a man who loves God, turning to the Highest for help in the war, which is the life of man. A war between bodily sins and one's conscience and dignity. Man feels "divided within himself" because he cannot find a golden mean that would combine physical pleasures and questions of faith or eschatological reflection on life and death.

This attitude shows that Szarzyński would be closer to Blaise Pascal's thought. Although Pascal's work was written almost eighty years after Sęp's death, it raises similar dilemmas. Pascal is the creator of the principle of the separation between rational cognition (order of reason) and intuitive cognition (order of heart). However, he does not believe that expressions to God himself are appropriate for man - above the knowledge of God, he places the knowledge of Christ, which helps to find the means, that is, God and his own misery. Pascal admits that man is astonished by his existence. Like Szarzyński, man and the Baroque philosopher cannot understand the relationship between body and spirit. He is full of contradictions because at the same time he learns about the world with his senses and reason. "And "Emotions of the soul with the senses" and man gets a false impression of the world.

All three authors - Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Mikołaj Sęp - Szarzyński and Blaise Pascal - raise in their works issues related to man, his dignity and the relationship between God and man, but Pascal is the closest to Sępa's thoughts, because both wrote about the relationship between the innocent soul, i.e. sacrum, and the sinful body, i.e. profanum.

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