Two Polish authors – Zygmunt Brudecki and Jan Libicki – translated during the seventeenth century a selection of one hundred stanzas from a poem on the world’s vanity written in Latin by a German Jesuit, Jacob Balde. This book includes both the translations and their Latin source, presented so that they can be easily compared with one another. The edition is preceded by an introduction to help a reader in deeper understanding of these old works. In addition, the Polish translations are equipped with a scholarly commentary.

Sen żywota ludzkiego (The Dream of the Human Life) – as this is how the Polish authors decided to capture the meaning of the original title – forms an interesting example of Latin Jesuit literature’s presence in Poland, whereas the elaborate Poema de vanitate mundi may still fascinate as a symptom of experimental mannerism, characteristic of the era, a rich collection of vanitas motifs, a poetic vision of the Thirty Years War, finally – as a deeply religious and filled with didacticism testimony to the mentality of a seventeenth-century man.