Grzegorz Czemiel

“The Task of the Translator” in the Anthropocene. Today’s Role of Translation in the Light of Ecopoetics and Speculative Realism

According to the 2014 UCL report on communicating climate change, a new social contract is necessary to save the biosphere, challenging us not only to provide commentary on scientific data, but also to rethink the categories framing the relationship between humanity and the natural environment. The former is related to translation insofar as it regards the development of accounts that convey conclusions from natural sciences in rhetorically impactful ways. The latter defines “the task of the translator” in the Anthropocene – to draw from Walter Benjamin – as the effort to develop, in processes of translation, more self-conscious metaphors of inhabiting the Earth. A special role would be played in this area by literature, especially the kind that foregrounds environmentally-aware linguistic invention capable of overcoming the persisting dualism of nature and culture. The aim of this article is to sketch a theoretical framework for such an understanding of translation on the basis of ground-breaking research in the fields of translation studies (Michael Cronin, Kobus Marais), ecopoetics (Julia Fiedorczuk, Gerardo Beltrán), and philosophical criticisms of anthropocentricism formulated within the post-humanities and speculative realism (Bruno Latour, Catherine Malabou). To illustrate these claims, the article invokes poems by Alice Oswald, Sinéad Morrissey (translated by Magda Heydel) and Forrest Gander (translated by Julia Fiedorczuk). These translators are tasked with reconstructing – to borrow Benjamin’s idea – a “pure language” understood here as an expressive absolute that defies anthropocentric limitations. Accommodation of various languages, including non-human ones (as biosemiotics suggests), could thus streamline the development of a new social contract or “constitution” (as Latour terms it) that would redefine (or re-translate) the social and the natural.

Cartographies of Loss. Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetry in Translations and Works by Andrzej Sosnowski

Little attention has been devoted so far to the relation between the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and works by Andrzej Sosnowski, which include translations of Bishop’s poems, despite many similarities the two poets share: a peculiar position within the literary tradition, a specific sensibility, an interest in sophisticated forms, or various affinities in terms of subject matter, especially nautical topics. More resemblances can be also identified at a deeper level, where they manifest in subtle ways: both poets are inclined to reflect on loss and the limits of poetic expression, ultimately scrutinizing (albeit indirectly) the relationship between death and literature. Exploring the connection between the two writers also makes it possible to highlight the role played by translation in poetry. As shown, the boundary between original works and translations can be blurred, offering a new model for reading and interpreting poetry – one based not on hierarchies but a community of thought.

Achille Mbembe, Polityka wrogości. Nekropolityka, przeł. Urszula Kropiwiec (Polityka Wrogości) oraz Katarzyna Bojarska (Nekropolityka), Wydawnictwo Karakter, Kraków 2018, ss. 256.