Five Poems in Shapes

To mark the year of Matthias Casimir Sarbievius and Baroque literature, Vilnius University Library presents two digital stories on the Baroque. The first is dedicated to the life and literary work of Sarbievius, while the second is devoted to the Baroque pattern poetry. “Five Poems in Shapes” presents visual Baroque texts created by different authors.

Exceptionally visual texts-drawings or texts-paintings are called pattern or figurative poetry. Ever since Classical Antiquity, such forms of writing have been of interest to creators. Some variations of visual poetry were written in the Middle Ages, some forms were favoured in the Renaissance, while in the Baroque era, these literary games took so many distinctive directions that theorists of rhetoric and poetry of the time coined a new and broad term – poesis artificiosa, which could be translated both as artificial and as artistic poetry.

Books and manuscripts from the 16^th to the 18^th centuries contain various forms of minor literature: anagrams, chronograms, emblems, gryphuses, logogriphs, etc., which, through different compositions, reveal the linguistic playground of poesis artificiosa or pattern poetry.

The way this idea is implemented makes this figured poem a centaurine. It is half poem, half drawing, in which content and form merge: the words outline, and the form reflects the meaning of the words. The peculiarity of this type of text is reflected in its title: the centaurine and the centaur are linked by an indissoluble duality. The birthday greetings to Joannes Casparus Grasmüller thus unfold like the petals of a full-flowered rose. 

Figured texts are usually twofold: on the one hand, they are based on language play, transformation, and inventiveness; on the other hand, they are subject to strict rules of composition. This duality creates the charm of such small literary forms, but it also usually raises the issue of the impossibility of their translation. However, a closer look at these visual texts might help to better understand their meaning and the principles behind their creation.

The text composed in the shape of the sun is an acroteleutium – a type of acrostic. The famous acrostic of Martynas Mažvydas’ “Catechism” consists of the first letters of lines. The telestich requires that the significant letters be placed at the end of the lines. The acroteleutium, a form of writing that requires even greater inventiveness on the author’s part, is a combination of the two, with the letters that are essential to the text being placed both at the beginning and at the end of the line.

The reading continues in the same order: from the tip of the ray to the centre of the sun, filled with the letters S and so on.

Labyrinth texts come in various shapes – square or round – and their lines or phrases can be read in different orders and directions.

The ornamental form of this labyrinth of letters highlights the visual play and creates a compelling impression of a mystery or a riddle that can be solved with the help of a key or a clue. Like the paths in an actual labyrinth – let us say, in a magnificent baroque garden – the lines in the text are not straight, and their unexpected twists give a sense of wonder.

Occasional and panegyric literary pieces accompanied various events in the life of the upper classes. For example, the centaurine (text-rose) that had already been mentioned above is a way to express birthday greetings for the venerable Joannes Casparus Grasmüller on his anniversary. Occasional printings usually marked appointments to certain positions, weddings, and various other occasions (for instance, the arrival of a ruler in a city). When bidding a departed person farewell, his or her memory was preserved through epitaphs (Greek epitaphios – tombstone). 

This epitaphic panegyric, written in the shape of a pyramid, is dedicated to the memory of Anna Ostrogska (1575–1635). The work was written by students of the Jesuit College in Jarosław to commemorate the merits of the foundress and benefactress. The duchess' noble qualities and benevolence are celebrated in 11 pyramid-shaped texts, each composed and signed by a different student.

The choice of the pyramid's shape as one of the tallest and most enduring monuments built to honour and celebrate a person or their work is not accidental. As far back as the Antiquity period, the symbolism of the pyramid was established by Quintus Horace Flaccus, who used it to compare the intellectual achievements of a person to the pyramid’s physical characteristics.

For a contemporary viewer unfamiliar with the multi-faceted variety of sophisticated Baroque poetry, the way the texts of this Vilnius book are composed might seem intriguingly unbelievable. 

The text of the book is incredibly sophisticated, and it might also be counted up.

The year of publication – 1750 – is worth bearing in mind when turning the pages of this book.

Since the authors of pattern poetry created the forms and images of texts, immersed themselves in the possibilities of language, its symmetry and even its mystery, and since the exhibition of these pieces is taking place in the library, it seems fitting to conclude this brief overview with a quote from Jorge Luis Borges's remarkable “The Library of Babel”: “This philosopher observed that all books, however different from one another they might be, consist of identical elements: the space, the period, the comma, and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet.” And “I have just written the word 'infinite'. I have not included that adjective out of mere rhetorical habit; I hereby state that it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite.”

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A narrative about one poem by the Baroque poet Matthias Casimir Sarbievius can be found here: Two Friends, a Poem and Vilnius 

Vilnius University Library 2025 

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