Paulina Kwaśniewska-Urban

The purpose of this article is to complete the portrait of Zofia Jachimecka, who went down in history as an entertainer in one of the most important salons of Interwar Kraków and a model for the great portraitists, with her professional profile, most often presented either in residual form, or all together omitted from works focusing on the translator. The article presents an analysis of Zofia Jachimecka’s professional correspondence with Professor of Romance Studies Mieczysław Brahmer, who worked closely together from 1950 on the publication of the Polish translation of Goldoni’s comedies in the Ossolineum National Library series (Goldoni 1951, 1951, 1971), and later maintained social and professional contact for many years. The collaboration between the editor of the Goldoni editions and the translator, very well documented in the surviving correspondence (found in the Scientific Library of the PAAS and the PAS in Kraków archives and Jagiellonian Library manuscript collection), goes beyond the project and develops into a long-standing exchange of reading experiences, workshop and repertoire choices, comments on works sent to each other, as well as information on literary and repertoire news, which clearly show that in many fields it was Jachimecka, and not Brahmer, who assumed the role of the expert on Italian and French literature. According to the letters, Brahmer tries to help the translator to, among other things, find a publisher for the Pirandello dramas she translated, while Jachimecka repeatedly suggests Italian readings to the professor, and helps him find his way through the maze of contemporary literature. The article draws attention to the considerable issue of cooperation in resolving financial matters and Brahmer’s intermediation not only in the negotiations of remuneration for the translator for the volumes prepared jointly, but also when the professor was not directly involved in the project. The article is supplemented by an appendix presenting a compilation of Jachimecka’s theatrical translations.

W niniejszym artykule ukazana zostaje droga, jaką przebywa pirandelliańska „osoba”, by stać się „postacią”. Pierwsza część to przedstawienie procesu stawania się postacią, który wyjaśniają przykłady z noweli Il dialogo tra il Gran Me e il piccolo me [Dialog między Dużym i małym Me] i sztuki I sei personaggi in cerca d’autore [Sześć postaci w poszukiwaniu autora].
Druga część to charakterystyka grupy Scalognati, bohaterów ostatniej, niedokończonej sztuki noblisty I giganti della montagna [Giganci z gór], jako najbardziej reprezentatywnych przykładów „postaci” w ujęciu pirandelliańskim. Bardziej szczegółowej analizie poddałam postać maga-przewodnika Cotronego.
 

The author’s experience of translating the theoretical and theatrical texts of Tadeusz Kantor – among others the “partituras” of his masterpieces The Dead Class and Wielopole, Wielopole – becomes the starting point for a more general reflection about some theoretical and practical aspects of theatre translation and their relationship with literary translation tout court. The metaphor of (theatrical) translator as a medium and that of translation as the evocation of “voices” – stimulated especially by the “spirits” of The Dead Class and the necessity of their “resurrection” in a new language/culture – is a trope aimed at illustrating the strong link between the literary component of theatrical translation and
theatricality of literary translation. In the author’s opinion it is not a simple tautology, but one of the most important aspects of theatrical translation – which is at the same time endo- and interlinguistic, as well as intersemiotic. Theatrical translators appear indeed not only as the media of “other” voices, but to some extent also as actors of their own texts, since the interplay with the proto-texts and their emotive and communicative goals is achieved through a series of performative elements not far removed from those of an actor on stage.