Katarzyna Szymańska

Translatory Confrontations: Stanisław Barańczak and Jacek DehnelTranslate Philip Larkin

This article examines Polish reception of Philip Larkin, one of the most infl uential 20th-century English poets, and focuses on Stanisław Barańczak’s selection 44 wiersze (44 Poems; 1991) and Jacek Dehnel’s presentation of Zebrane (The Collected; 2008). My analysis compares the translators’ artistic stances (their role in the intercultural transfer and their translations’ modulating function in the target culture) as well as their intellectual inspirations and interpretative contexts. Barańczak as the fi rst “ambassador” of Philip Larkin is opposed by Dehnel, who concentrates on a meticulous, almost philological reconstruction of the source text. While Barańczak domesticates, Dehnel advertises his own texts as a remedy for such a model. Moreover, both translators have been infl uenced by the changing perception of Larkin’s poetry: Barańczak draws on the symbolical and thematic interpretations of his time as well as on critical essays by Seamus Heaney; Dehnel follows Jerzy Jarniewicz’s interpretations and, in general, the “new wave” of criticism after Larkin’s letters and biography by Motion were published. Thus, the Polish Larkin is shaped both by Barańczak’s metaphysical, brightened and metaphorical version and by Dehnel’s skeptical, ambivalent and concrete rendition.

This article discusses a new approach to the artistic translation œvre by the Polish New Wave poets, as pursued in Arkadiusz Luboń’s recent book Przekraczanie obcości. Problemy przekładu w programach i twórczości poetów Nowej Fali [Overcoming Foreignness. Translation in the Poetic Agenda and Literary Output of the New Wave Poets]. The author successfully demonstrates how their translation activity and criticism ought to be analysed alongside their own poetic agenda and literary output, in relation to other theoretical texts and translations as well as within the historical context of their time. As it is shown, literary translation becomes for the New Wave poets a vent for their artistic and political ideas and a possibility of taking stance towards the other texts.