Mikoła Husoŭski

(ca 1470-1533)

Poet-humanist and enlightener of the Renaissance epoch. He came from the family of a hunter. Got education in Belarus, enlarging afterwards his knowledge in Vilnya, Poland and Italy. In 1518, he arrived in Rome as a member of the Polish-Lithuanian diplomatic mission, and, in 1522, he wrote there his best work: "A song about the bison," full of love to his motherland, anxiety for its destiny and pride for the glorious past of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. "A song about the bison," and other works of Husousky were written in Latin, the literature language of Europe of those times. However, his creative work had a considerable effect not only on the Latin language literature, but also on general development in Eastern Europe of such genres as lyric-epical, historical and satiric poem, epigram, elegy, polemic and publicistic treatise. Mikoła Husoŭski was not only a popularizer of his motherland in the Western world; he was also an exponent of advanced socio-political and esthetic views of that epoch.