Bitter Lamentations: The Soul’s Conversation with Our Lady of Sorrows

ABSTRACT: In 1707 a Passiontide devotion which has come to be known as the Gorzkie Żale
(Bitter Lamentations) was published in Warsaw. It is sung to this day on Sundays during Lent
and on Good Friday, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, in churches in Poland and in
Polish communities in other countries, but remains a unique product of Polish Catholicism.
The devotion relates is divided into three parts, each relating to a different stage of the
Passion story. Each part concludes with a section that seems to be an original variation on
the medieval planctus Mariae tradition, consisting of a “conversation” between the soul and
Our Lady of Sorrows.I shall consider the Gorzkie Żale as poetry intended for performance in
a liturgical context – not, however, performance as presentation to others, but performance
as enactment, entering into the experience of Mary in the drama of Good Friday.

Jean Ward is a member of the Power of the Word Project Advisory Board. She teaches British Literature and literary translation at the Institute of English and American Studies of Gdańsk University. Her doctoral thesis in Polish (2001) concerned the Polish reception and interpretation of T.S. Eliot’s poetry. Other publications include Christian Poetry in the Post-Christian Day: Geoffrey Hill, R.S. Thomas, Elizabeth Jennings (Peter Lang 2009) and The Between-Space of Translation: Literary Sketches (Gdańsk University Press, 2020). She is the co-editor of Poetic Revelations: The Power of the Word III (Routledge 2017).