Hieros Gamos – Sacred Marriage. The Hebrew Bible Translated by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig (with a Special Focus on Rosenzweig’s Poetics of Translation)

Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig’s German translation of the Bible is doubtlessly a masterpiece; however, as it reveals its artistic qualities only to those who do not search for them, its beauty may be compared to the elegance of a mathematical proof. The article analyses Buber and Rosenzweig’s cooperative rendition of the Bible (fi rst edited in 1926) against the Jewish tradition of translation, focusing on Franz Rosenzweig, since this Jewish theologian and translator (1886–1929) is less known in Poland than the philosopher Martin Buber. First, the article describes Rosenzweig’s thought as rooted in the Jewish hermeneutic tradition, with its essential notions like midrash, and discusses his contribution to the development and systematization of that tradition. Next, it presents Rosenzweig’s translatory work as well as the principles of Buber and Rosenzweig’s Bible translation (literalness, foreignness, renewal and repetition). In the second part, several translation problems, e.g. proper names and neologisms, are examined comparatively, i.e. selected passages of the Book of Genesis or Exodus taken from Buber and Rosenzweig’s rendering are set against the Luther Bible and the Polish Biblia Tysiąclecia. The analysis highlights Rosenzweig’s contribution to the new German Bible. The article closes with some comments on the reception of the new Bible in Germany, particularly in the interwar period.

Wszelkie słowo jest słowem mówionym. Pierwotnie księga służy jedynie słowu – dźwięczącemu, śpiewanemu, mówionemu; tak jak to dziś jeszcze dzieje się w żywym dramacie scenicznym czy choćby w operze. Czysto techniczny, instrumentalny, tymczasowy charakter, jaki cechuje zapisany tekst dramatu, określał niegdyś rangę i miejsce każdej księgi wobec słowa mówionego. A jednak technika ma niebezpieczną władzę nad swym panem; znienacka środek staje się celem, tymczasowość – ostatecznością, technika – magią. Księga, zamiast służyć słowu, przemienia się w panujące nad słowem, stojące mu na drodze „pismo święte”. Pisma święte, komentowane „według litery”, litery pozbawionej dźwięku, niemej – aleksandryjski Homer, neoplatoński Platon, żydowska i chrześcijańska Biblia, Koran – oznaczają koniec księgi pozostającej w służbie słowa, księgi w sposób najbardziej oczywisty czytanej na głos, jedynej, którą znała starożytność i która jeszcze dziś znana jest nadal tam, gdzie żywa pozostaje antyczna tradycja, jak choćby w żydowskim „nauczaniu”. Pisma te są prekursorami nowoczesnej, niemej książki; niemej, a więc odłączonej od człowieka, wyposażonej w nieograniczone możliwości, lecz właśnie dlatego skazanej na przestrzenną i czasową bezdomność. Pismo w dobitnym znaczeniu tego słowa, pismo święte, zapoczątkowuje niekończące się, przekraczające ludzkie możliwości percepcji „piśmiennictwo”; wyraz ten tylko z pozoru brzmi szlachetniej niż obce słowo „literatura”, które zastępuje; w rzeczywistości podobnie jak tamto, za sprawą swej abstrakcyjnej końcówki, odzwierciedla rozpaczliwą kapitulację człowieka wobec nieskończonej sterty książek, której nie sposób ogarnąć.

Gdansk – Moscow – Krakow: Encounters with Ksenia Starosielska

The article presents my encounters with Ksenia Starosielska, a translator of Polish literature into Russian, as a pretext for discussing various aspects of her translatory work. First, I mention Gdansk, where our acquaintance has begun, to describe Ksenia Starosielska’s Polish roots and contacts with the Polish language. Next, I move to her home in Moscow to show her methods of work and the attention she pays to each element and to the overall effect of her translations. Then, Gdansk as the organizer of a translators’ meeting with the writer Paweł Huelle provides a perfect opportunity to present Ksenia Starosielska’s favourite authors and literary tastes. After that, I return to Moscow, this time to the editorial office of the Inostrannaja literatura magazine, to focus on Ksenia Starosielska’s editorial and educational occupations. Our fifth and (so far) last encounter takes place at the World Congress of the Translators of Polish Literature in Krakow, becoming a good occasion to emphasise the role of translators as ambassadors of our culture.

Translator in the Cultural and Social Context: On Zofia Chądzyńska

This presentation of Zofia Chądzyńska as a translator and an expert on Latin American literature is inspired by Anthony Pym’s remarks regarding the so-called sociology of the translator. The article discusses the extent to which Chądzyńska’s life could affect her decision to become a translator at the the age of fifty, her choices of books to translate and, eventually, her methods. Moreover, the translator’s relationships with well-known writers and her own attempt to become a writer are presented.

Transcreation: Haroldo de Campos’s Theory of Translation

This article presents Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003), an eminent Brazilian translator, theorist, literary scholar, co-founder of the concrete poetry movement, who championed radically new perceptions of the source text and the translator. His transcreations into Brazilian Portuguese range from Genesis and Ecclesiastes through Japanese haiku to Pindar, Homer, Dante, Goethe, Mallarmé, Mayakovski, Joyce or Pound. They do not constitute free translation or paraphrase; rather, they aim to appropriate the original and re-create its isomorphic equivalent in the target culture. An overview of the concept of cultural cannibalism as well as Campos’s contribution to concrete poetry sets the context for the presentation of Haroldo de Campos’s translation theories as well as some of his solutions to literary translation problems.

Olgierd Wojtasiewicz: Father of Polish Translation Studies

Olgierd Wojtasiewicz was a translator (from Chinese into Polish, from English into Polish and from Polish into English) and a linguist. In 1957 he published a book entitled Wstęp do teorii tłumaczenia (An introduction to the theory of translation), which was one of the first academic publications on translation in Poland. Republished after almost forty years (Wojtasiewicz 1992), it proves to be still interesting and important. This resulted from Wojtasiewicz’s basic assumptions: texts are signals corresponding to certain mental states and a translation is equivalent to the original if it evokes a similar set of associations. Wojtasiewicz wrote of equivalence in translation two years before Jakobson and based his definition of translation on the principle of similar effect seven years before Nida. In his book, he concentrates mainly on the problem of “objective” untranslatability and divides its causes into two groups: structural differences between languages and conceptual differences between cultures/languages. Contrary to Catford, Wojtasiewicz realized that cultural differences were a much more difficult obstacle in translation than structural differences between languages and drew an optimistic conclusion: owing to the process of cultural rapprochement (mediated by translators), translating may become easier with time. Among the causes of untranslatability Wojtasiewicz describes allusions and the use of different language varieties in the original. According to him, geographical dialects are never fully translatable – it is not possible to replace a SL dialect with a TL one because of different cultural-historical associations evoked by the use of such dialects. Wojtasiewicz’s insights remain valuable after more than fifty years, and his book is still an obligatory reading for all those interested in translation.

Praise of Irena Tuwim

Irena Tuwim is one of the very few Polish translators who are recognizable by large readership. What is even more remarkable, she achieved this success as a translator of children’s literature. Although she is known above all for the Polish version of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books, generally considered her greatest accomplishment, in fact she translated many other children’s books, among them such classics as the Mary Poppins saga, Edith Nesbit’s books or H. Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This article first briefly outlines Tuwim’s apparently transparent, yet surprisingly elusive biographical vicissitude, then examines her translation strategies. It is not easy to decide whether Tuwim’s versions may be defi ned as free translations or adaptations, but a detailed analysis of her method clearly shows that her choices were based on a very incisive study of the original text. Although not without occasional minor errors, her translations are exquisite examples of stylistic mastery that enriches the target language.

Witkacy by Total Immersion: On the Translation Methods of Daniel Charles Gerould
This article discusses the achievement of Daniel Charles Gerould, one of the world’s most renowned “Witkacologists” and the best known translator of Witkacy’s works into English. Gerould’s devotion to the Polish playwright spanned more than half a century: from his early encounter with Witkacy’s oeuvre in the mid-1950s until his death in February 2012. Gerould translated almost all of Witkacy’s plays as well as fragments of his novels, theoretical and philosophical treatises, letters to Bronisław Malinowski and Rules of the S.I. Witkiewicz Portrait Painting Firm. He was also instrumental in bringing Witkacy’s dramas onto the Anglophone stage and making the Polish artist recognized worldwide not only as a pioneer of the Théâtre de l’Absurde but also as one of the first postmodern playwrights. The article examines examples selected from Gerould’s numerous translations in order to prove that his translation method was that of “total immersion” in Witkacy’s art and life. Thanks to the intimate relationship he had developed with his favourite artist (as he confessed in his memoirs, he saw Witkacy as his “twin” or “double”), Gerould was able to make his renderings of Witkacy’s texts almost transparent, without a trace of the translator’s idiosyncratic intrusions. Exceptionally faithful and composed with a perfect ear for stage dialogue, Gerould’s translations capture Witkacy’s vivid style and unique sense of humour. They are also published with the utmost editorial care, complete with exemplary critical commentaries, so that recipients of these texts – regular readers, actors, directors, students or literary critics – can also immerse themselves in the curious worlds conjured up by Witkacy.

Troublesome Masters: Rhymesters Translating Ancient Literature

This article outlines the history of rhyme in Polish translations of ancient literature and focuses on the role of major Polish poets, the “troublesome masters.” They were the ones who, through the use of rhyme in their translations, created a tradition so strong that it could not be easily defied. This rhyme routine had spawned multitudes of translators-verse mongers, who paid more attention to the structure and arrangement of their work than to the quality of their translation. The dominance of rhyme created the illusion that rhyme itself should be blamed for translation weaknesses, which resulted in hostility toward that stylistic measure. After years of its widespread use, or rather its misuse, in translation of ancient literature, rhyme was almost entirely abandoned in favour of prose or blank verse. Today rhyme slowly returns from exile, but only in those genres which in the Polish language have always been connected with it, such as epigram or fable. Moreover, rhyme re-appears where it is used to strengthen humour or alleviate the indecency of wit.

New Translation of C.P. Cavafy’s Poetry (A Polemical Essay)
This article compares and contrasts C.P. Cavafy’s original Greek poetry and its new Polish translation by Antoni Libera. It comments on some of the weaknesses of Libera’s version by analyzing particular solutions, as proposed by the French theorist of translation Antoine Berman. Four out of twelve so-called deforming tendencies inherent in the act of translation are examined: rationalisation, clarification, qualitative impoverishment and quantitative impoverishment.
 

What Do These Ithacas Mean? In the Margins of Cavafy’s Ithaca in Polish

This article analyses all Polish translations of the well-known poem by Constantine P. Cavafy (1863– 1933), Ithaca (Ιθάκη). Comparing the beginnings of the fi rst stanza and the last stanza, which are fundamental to the comprehension of the poem, I point to the main differences between the original and its Polish versions. In my analysis I concentrate on the idiosyncrasies of Cavafy’s language, so challenging to translators of this poetry. My parallel reading of the translations by Zygmunt Kubiak, Nikos Chadzinikolau, Czesław Miłosz and Antoni Libera reveals striking discrepancies between the original text and the proposed versions, most noticeably Libera’s.

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.

Polish Ashbery Back in America?

John Ashbery’s poetry was introduced to Polish readers for the fi rst time in 1986, in the now legendary “blue” issue of the world literature review “Literatura na Świecie”. Although the American poet spoke vicariously through the voice of Piotr Sommer’s translatory ventriloquism, and later also via other translators’ voices, it is Andrzej Sosnowski who is typically perceived as the ambassador of Ashbery in Poland. He has been popularizing Ashbery’s poetry by translations and criticism, and – what is more important – also by publishing his own poetry, which has grown through Ashberian verse. Still, easy parallels should be avoided, especially if one considers translations of Sosnowski’s poetry into English. A discussion of a rendition by Rod Mengham, an American poet who translates in cooperation with the author, raises interesting questions of the limits and hermeneutics of translation and mediation of authorial intention, form and language. Can this poetry, so deeply rooted in the American tradition, resist translation into English? This article attempts to answer some of the questions by studying the processes and (im)possibilities of translation of Sosnowski’s poetry.

Language, Suffering, Silence. Czesław Miłosz and the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill’s prose writings contain one or two references to Czeslaw Miłosz, in which the Polish poet is heavily and unfairly criticized. Hill bases his criticism on a short fragment, taken out of context, from Jane Zielonko’s translation of The Captive Mind. No reference is made to any other of Miłosz’s writings, although a considerable number of them are available in English. This article considers how some signifi cant departures from the original in Zielonko’s translation combine with a most surprising disregard on Hill’s part not only for the “contexture” of Miłosz’s huge oeuvre, but also even for The Captive Mind as a whole, to lead to an unjust and distorted understanding of Miłosz’s moral and poetic outlook. The misunderstanding is all the more remarkable given the very many similarities between the two poets, especially in regard to the question of the “immorality of art” and to what Donald Davie describes as “the insuffi ciency of lyric”. The article compares Hill’s attitude to the translated text and to Miłosz’s oeuvre unfavourably with that of Davie, who is much more cautious in his judgments.

spisał Mikołaj Denderski

Jan Kochanowski’s Treny in English Translations

This article compares English translations of Jan Kochanowski’s Laments as well as discusses possible reasons and consequences of translatory choices. Dorothea Prall Radin, Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney, Michał Mikoś and Adam Czerniawski differ considerably in their attitude towards the formal features of the original. While the fi rst three versions preserve the original meter and rhyme schemes more or less successfully, Czerniawski abandons the strict patterns of the original. The article also examines the ways in which the translators deal with such stylistic features of Laments as the apostrophes and diminutives, classical simplicity and references to Psalms. The analysis of specifi c instances reveals the translators’ achievements as well as their failures that occasionally disturb the consistent vision created in Kochanowski’s cycle. Moreover, the analysis refers to selected reviews to illustrate the reception of old Polish literature in English-speaking countries.

Embracing the Unembraceable

Tadeusz Szczerbowski’s book Rosyjskie teorie przekładu literackiego (Russian Theories of Literary Translation) consists of 32 chapters focusing on scholars and translators who have voiced infl uential ideas on literary translation over the last hundred years. The scholars whose theories are presented include e.g. O. Potebnia, K. Chukovsky, Y. Retzker, A. Fyodorov, Y. Etkind and M. Gasparov. Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian and Czech scholars have been taken into account as part of the Soviet academic milieu. Importantly, all the material is offered either in Polish translation or in transliteration. Thus, the book presents to Polish readers a wealth of intellectual achievement, until now inaccessible due to the language barrier. The compendium will be of interest to translation scholars; however, it is also perceptibly aimed at students. It describes various individual theoretical models, but in its entirety it also offers an insight into the evolution of translation studies in Russia. Implicit or apparent analogies with the developments in Western Translation Studies are thought provoking – Russian scholars have often anticipated certain trends or concepts. Unfortunately, the compendium is fl awed by over-explaining of historical contexts and by reluctance to evaluate the discussed theories. These weaknesses, as well as the poor editing, call for a second edition of this otherwise useful book.

Between the Verses

The article discusses a new critical approach to Stanisław Barańczak’s literary translation output, presented by the Polish scholar Monika Kaczorowska in her recent publication Przekład jako kontynuacja twórczości własnej. Na przykładzie wybranych translacji Stanisława Barańczaka [Translation as Continuation of Translator’s Own Work. Analysis of Chosen Translations by Stanisław Barańczak] (2011). It emphasises the adequacy of Kaczorowska’s decision to explore the symbiotic relationship between Barańczak’s original poetic oeuvre and his treatment of the foreign authors, such as E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Robert Herrick or G.M. Hopkins, whose works he attuned to his own aesthetic pursuits.

Reception of Translations from Latin American Literature: A Slightly Different Perspective

The article provides a detailed review of Małgorzata Gaszyńska-Magiera’s 2011 book Recepcja przekładów literatury iberoamerykańskiej w Polsce w latach 1945– 2005 z perspektywy komunikacji międzykulturowej (Reception of Translations from Latin American Literature in Poland in 1945–2005: An Intercultural Communication Perspective), emphasizing the impressive scope and methodological richness of the project. Besides, the article introduces a comparative element, as I discuss Gaszyńska-Magiera’s results in the light of my work on the Polish reception of translated “postcolonial” literature (mainly from Africa and India). I also suggest that probing the genealogy of Polish perceptions of Latin America, particularly from the period of European colonialism, might offer an interesting complementary angle for interpreting Gaszyńska-Magiera’s apt remarks on translation and power and her overall results.