ABSTRACT
The Delft Thunderclap, a massive gunpowder explosion which in 1654 devastated the Dutch city of Delft, elicited numerous responses by authors and artists from the Northern and Southern Netherlands. This chapter analyses another reaction, printed outside the Low Countries: a hitherto unknown Latin poem by the Silesian-Polish polymath Joachim Pastorius. His poem was published in 1657 in the Polish cosmopolitan city of Gdańsk, which maintained strong commercial and cultural ties with the Northern Netherlands. Pastorius had many Dutch contacts and likely based his verses on Dutch sources, specifically a famous poem by Joost van den Vondel. Pastorius applied a well-known rhetorical framework to inspire solidarity with the mourning Dutch. The disastrous Delft Thunderclap thus provided Pastorius with the opportunity to shape a transnational emotional community of learned readers and writers across Northern Europe, bridging Poland and the Dutch Republic.
