Pasek, Jan Chryzostom

▪ Polish diarist

born c. 1636, near Rawa Mazowiecka, Kingdom of Poland [now in Poland]

died August 1, 1701, Niedzieliska, Poland

      Polish soldier best remembered for his memoirs, which provide an excellent example of Polish Baroque prose.

      Pasek received some education in a Jesuit school. He enlisted in the army at age 19, seeing service against the Swedes in Poland, with the Danes against the Swedes in Denmark, and against Muscovy and, later, Turkey. He retired after 11 years of service and married. Lawsuits that arose from his various excesses eventually resulted in his sentence to exile, but the sentence was never enforced. Toward the end of his life he wrote down anecdotes of his life.

      Discovered in the 19th century, Pasek's Pamiętniki (1836; Memoirs of the Polish Baroque: The Writings of Jan Chryzostom Pasek) is a lively, humorous work that gives a vivid description of the life of an independent, resourceful man of action. In it he relates tales of the 17th-century Swedish and Muscovite wars, the catastrophic last years of the reign of King John II Casimir (John II Casimir Vasa) (1648–68), and the incompetent rule of King Michael Wiśniowiecki (Michael Wiśniowiecki) (1669–73), and he concludes his narrative with the splendid reign of King John III Sobieski (John III Sobieski) (1674–96). Pasek was an excellent raconteur and a keen observer of the people with whom he came in contact. Both the style and the characters and events of his memoirs influenced a number of later Polish writers.

* * *