epitaphs, and obscenities to pure lyricism". described them as varying from "humorous or serious, reflective or lyrical, simple or ornamented". Recurring motifs found in them are transcience and (a literary tropos of a "happy man"). Specific themes, as enumareted by Kotarski, include "autobiographical issues (III, 1), praise of the family home (II, 6; III, 6; III, 7; III, 37), erotica, portraits of friends, state and church officials, comic anecdotes and pictures of court and rural life (I, 79; II, 16), such events as the building of a bridge over the Vistula River in Warsaw (II, 106, 107, 108), [respect for] heroism (I, 77; III, 49), [praise of] friendship and the cult of woman so popular at court". One of the poems is a riddle "concerning an animal with one eye that is shot at with arrows without arrowheads", with the answer debated by both Kochanowski's contemporaries and modern scholars, and most often assumed to be a female vagina. While most are Kochanowski's originals, some are Polish language adaptations or translations of Ancient anacreontics, epigrams taken from The Greek Anthology, and poems by Sappho and Martialis. Czesław Miłosz referred to the collection as a sort of Kochanowski's "very personal diary, but one where the personality of the author never appears in the foreground". described Fraszki as "wonderful and extremly popular", and inspiring many imitators in Poland . References External links Fraszki in the Polona Digital Library Works by Jan Kochanowski Polish poems 1584 works Polish poetry collections Polish-language works