* Originally published in Polish in “Przekładaniec” vol. 42/2021. Open access for this publication has been supported by a grant from the Priority Research Area Heritage under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University.

In this article, I reflect on the productivity of hermeneutic translation criticism, focusing on literary translation. I pose the question whether the hermeneutic mode of translation analysis and evaluation – largely based on the premises of Romantic art criticism – has the potential to make a significant contribution to contemporary discussions on the functional model of translation criticism. My argument is that the source of the productivity (and functionality) of translation criticism is dialogicity – a feature that can be considered fundamental in the case of hermeneutics. Following the dialogical hermeneutics of F. Schlegel, F. Schleiermacher and H.-G. Gadamer, as well as H.R. Jauß’s aesthetics of reception, I formulate some general postulates regarding a hermeneutic critique of literary translations. This critical mode is interrogative: it locates and poses questions that are answered by the examined texts. The critic’s questions include those about the original and for the original, about the translator and for the translator, as well as about the reader and for the reader. Finally, I demonstrate cases in which a critical dialogue crystallizes around literary translations. It is a dialogue that can be shaped and interpreted by the postulated hermeneutic translation criticism.

Originally published in Polish in “Przekładaniec” vol. 42/2021. Open access for this publication has been supported by a grant from the Priority Research Area Heritage under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University.

Translated by: Zofia Ziemann.

In contemporary discussions on the condition and further perspectives of World Literature the moods of disappointment and disillusionment seem to dominate. Reservations concern World Literature in its complexity – its canon, potential multilingualism, existing hierarchies and often contradictory conceptualizations. The crisis of World Literature is not, however, the result of any given scandal, but rather of many years of progressive petrification resulting in actual monolingualism, formulaic narrative patterns, consolidation of the center-periphery hierarchy and abandonment of the real pluralism of interpretation. One of the areas that seems to meet the challenge of World Literature is undoubtedly translation criticism. Therefore, the aim of the article is to reflect on how contemporary theories and conceptualizations of World Literature as well as its farfetched utopia can benefit from translation criticism’s input. The article also argues that translation criticism may become a field that dynamizes contemporary World Literature and restores its reordering or even revolutionary potential.

The article focuses on my translation of Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno, published recently in a volume entitled Nowele i opowiadania (PIW, 2020), the work of eight translators into Polish. The volume contains new attempts at texts translated forty years earlier by Krystyna Korwin-Mikke; also featured is her own, newly revised translation of Melville’s classic – Bartleby, the Scrivener. Finding myself authoring a retranslation for the first time, I became intrigued by the affect accompanying such a ‘belated’ arrival at the text – not within a long, eminent ‘series’ (in Edward Balcerzan’s understanding of the term), but where only one previous, more or less canonical translation exists. Taking as my starting point Balcerzan’s terminology as well as Anna Legeżyńska’s notion of the ‘shared word’, I employ the concept of the translators’ agon, developed from Harold Bloom’s ideas by Kaisa Koskinen and Outi Paloposki (2015). On the basis of several examples from the field of Polish translations, and concentrating on the rhetorics of paratextual material, I briefly examine the positions that a second translator – fated to participate in an agonistic relation – may take with regard to his precursor; my examples here are three renowned practitioners: Michał Kłobukowski, Krystyna Rodowska and Maciej Świerkocki. Because my own experience is bound up with translation practice to a considerably larger degree than with its theoretical aspects, the heart of the article is an analysis of particular strategies in both of the Polish translations of Benito Cereno. I focus on issues such as nomenclature, narrative perspective, grammatical gender, as well as conventional and idiosyncratic metaphors. Exploring my own agonistic relations with Krystyna Korwin-Mikke, I attempt to determine the extent to which I have managed to avoid getting caught up in the affect produced by the uncomfortable yet inspiring consciousness of the first translator’s voice. The article is an extension of the critical gesture which I consider my retranslation, in itself, to be. Emphasizing the differences in our approach, I a so try to embrace what is shared, and to acknowledge my indebtedness to the precursor.

* Originally published in Polish in “Przekładaniec” vol. 42/2021. Open access for this publication has been supported by a grant from the Priority Research Area Heritage under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University.

The ongoing digitization of our literary heritage, together with growing competition between publishing houses has led to a situation where the retranslations of works considered canonical have changed their form of extending from diachronic, linear development in time to a synchronic “explosion” of parallel texts, whose task is to win over readers/consumers with their individual novelty, distinctiveness and “inventiveness.” In fact, such translations gain a new function – they become a marketing tool for publishing houses. In my opinion the newest retranslations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is one of the most interesting examples of the process described above. In recent years, new Polish versions of this novel have been published at a dizzying pace (five new translations between 2015 and 2018) and in overwhelming numbers (five editions were published in four different translations in 2018 alone). These new translations of Bulgakov’s novel have evoked a lively response from readers. All sorts of analysis, comparisons and opinions have been published not only in scholarly journals, but also in daily newspapers, internet forums and in comments on online bookstores. On the internet, professional translation criticism coexists with the personal opinions of internet users (often based on non-literary factors) and with marketing content, advertisements, and blurbs deliberately made to look like reviews. In this article I would like to discuss the new roles of professional translation criticism under the circumstances described above, analyse its presence on the internet and try to define its new objectives. On the one hand, its voice should be loud and clear enough to be heard within the virtual chaos of texts, whilst on the other hand it should be persuasive and lucid enough to assist readers with their decision-making regarding a particular translation and to perceive the literary value of texts hidden behind attractive covers of new editions.

* Originally published in Polish in “Przekładaniec” vol. 42/2021. Open access for this publication has been supported by a grant from the Priority Research Area Heritage under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University.

Only eighty years after the original publication of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood was the Polish literary market enriched by a translation of one of the strangest novels of Euro- American modernism. Marcin Szuster’s translation, with the Polish title Ostępy nocy, has already garnered praise as well as prizes, leading to the first Polish discussion concerning the work of the eccentric American writer. The focus of this article is to analyze the Polish translation of Nightwood with a special interest in Barnes’s style, which itself becomes a central character in the novel and which connects, according to feminist critics (K. Kaivola, S. Benstock), to its emancipatory potential. In this article I discuss the claim that the complex style of such prose is the (conscious) manifestation of a woman’s voice (as an affect), behind which one can discover a body – one that experiences and is experienced (J. Taylor). The body, both a structural and a rhetorical category in feminist criticism, can be seen in Barnes’s prose as an element which organizes both time and space – therefore, the ambiguity of her terms and the complexity of style make for a real translation challenge. Marcin Szuster as a translator needs to follow Barnes’s “distinctive point of view,” which is a “feminine” one, distanced by gender, experience and time.

* Originally published in Polish in “Przekładaniec” vol. 42/2021. Open access for this publication has been supported by a grant from the Priority Research Area Heritage under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University.

Translated by: Kamil Petryk