The Translation of Poetry: A Challenge in Progress. Case Study: In the Death of His Brother Giovanni (In morte del fratello Giovanni). A Proposal for Translation into Spanish

Speaking and writing about translation appears to be a fashionable topic not only because of the heated debates it generates, but also because of its origins. However, talking about the translation of poetry becomes almost a quixotic task. What apparently appears to be a simple change of linguistic code entails, in reality, a transposition that brings together the Weltaschauung that underlies the text. We have chosen for our case study one of the best known and studied sonnets by the Italian poet Ugo Foscolo: In morte del fratello Giovanni. In the philological analysis and the translatological results we have laid the foundations for a modern Spanish translation that tries to preserve the form and rhyme of the original text.

Questa pubblicazione è parte del Progetto di I+D+i “Nuevo Catálogo histórico y crítico de traducciones españolas de obras italianas literarias y no literarias (1300–1939)” (riferimento PID2020-118134GB-I00), finanziato da MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033”.

On the Limits and Horizons of Translation of Poetic Texts Between Cognate Languages: Alda Merini. A Case Study

The present study concentrates on the translation between cognated languages of the poetic genre with a contrastive approach. In order to demonstrate the degree of influence between languages when trasferring interlinguistically a poem, we will rely on the contributions of translation theorits to explain the process of transfer. For our purpose, we have selected two poems from La Terra Santa (1984) by Alda Merini, focused on her personal experience inside the psychiatric institution. We will reconstruct the peculiarities of her biography to get into the personal content hidden in her rhetoric in order to understand the original text and thus recreate it in the target language.

Phraseotranslation: Problems, Methods, Concepts

The aim of the article is to signal the difficulties and problems that appear when phraseology is translated. The author presents the process of phraseotranslation and selected methods and concepts that are used in translating various polylexical phraseological structures. Furthermore, she analyses the very idea of phraseotranslation as a scholarly term and in relation to the interdisciplinary field of research. An effective translation implies equivalent messages in two different linguistic codes, which becomes extremely difficult in case of phraseology. The multiple-word structures entrenched in natural languages are therefore a major challenge in the process of translation and can be a prominent difficulty even for professional translators.

Arthur Rimbaud and Dramatic Expressionism

The aim of this paper is to analyse some characteristics of the art of poetry by Rimbaud in the context of dramatic expressionism. The expressionist movement seems in fact to have inherited some concepts and motifs from the new aesthetic introduced by Rimbaud (poetic language revolution, a very personal vision of art where all the elements of the fictional world seem subordinated to fluctuations of the author’s psyche, subjectivism which abolishes the rules of the Aristotle’s mimesis, etc.). This new analytic perspective is particularly interesting because we can easily find realisation of the Rimbaudian vision of the new art of poetry in some pieces by such expressionist dramatic authors as Strindberg, Lenormand or Pellerin.

The Existential Dimension of Georges Perec’s Text-Lists through the Prism of Jolanta Brach-Czaina’s Philosophy of Everyday Life

The interest in the ordinary, everyday life, inscribed deeply in Georges Perec’s prose, was the reason for which he developed and theorized the notion of “infra-ordinaire” that determined non only most of his literary projects, but also his point of view on the reality. The aim of this work is to see some of Perec’s texts, for which he chose the privileged form of list, from the new perspective and to verify if their immersion into day-to-day life possesses an existential dimension. The methodology used for this purpose relies on the work of Polish philosopher Jolanta Brach-Czaina gathered in the book Szczeliny istnienia.

From the Critique of the Dichotomy between Facts and Values to the Redefinition of the Place of Science in the New Rhetoric

The word “rhetoric”, which has crossed the centuries, can be found at the confluence of various disciplines (philosophy, linguistics, law, communication). It is much less spontaneously associated with the sciences. However, Perelman suggests a kinship between his concerns and the work of certain epistemologists (e.g. Polanyi, Kuhn, Gonseth). Above all, we would like to show how, through a rather formal mechanism and a wise limitation of its programme, the New Rhetoric manages, in our opinion, to escape the pitfall of absolute relativism.

Gran Canarian Spanish: A Reflection of Weakening Language Change in the Spanish-Speaking World

The aim of the paper is to present a thorough description of the terms weakening and lenition in the context of language change, and to present major theories of lenition proposed in the framework of generative phonology. Among the most recent theories of lenition, we mention the proposal by Katz (2016) based on Kingston (2008) in which a distinction is made between loss and continuity lenition. We then present empirical data from the Canary Islands dialect of Spanish in which both types of lenition can be found, making the dialect a model example of weakening language change.

* Este estudio fue financiado por El Centro Nacional de la Ciencia (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) de Polonia, proyecto Sonata 2017/26/D/HS2/00574.

Forms of Address in Portuguese as a Foreign Language Textbooks: Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach

In this paper, starting from the methodological viewpoint of natural semantic metalanguage (NSM, see Wierzbicka 1996, 2013), we aim to describe how forms of address are used in Portuguese as a foreign language textbooks (European variety), investigate whether they comply with the real use of forms of address and with cultural norms of today’s Portuguese society, and propose NSM explications of their pragmatic and lexical meaning that would facilitate their acquisition. Our corpus of data contains examples taken from the PFL textbooks used for teaching students in Poland.

Modality and Interrogative Sentences

The article deals with the modal scheme of the interrogative sentence in Italian. For this purpose, the inflectional verbal mood in Italian is observed with the aim to describe the way in which it operates along with non-grammatical means in the act of indication of different illocutionary act and various modal meaning of the deontic and epistemic modality that may be associated with this sentence type. For this purpose the verbal mood is viewed within the modal scheme of a particular sentence type and as the modal centre of a type of utterance that may function as several illocutionary acts. Both direct and indirect speech acts are taken into consideration.

From a Double Author to a Double Reader. On Poetyckie podwojenie. Marian Pankowski – polski poeta języka francuskiego / Dédoublement poétique. Marian Pankowski – poète polonais de langue française by Dorota Walczak-Delanois

This review is a discussion of the book Poetyckie podwojenie. Marian Pankowski – polski poeta języka francuskiego / Dédoublement poétique. Marian Pankowski –poète polonais de langue française, by Dorota Walczak-Delanois. The author emphasizes the value of the monograph, which is the first comprehensive discussion of Marian Pankowski’s French-language poetry. A particularly interesting aspect of the book is its bilingualism. The author of the review interprets it as an extension of Marian Pankowski’s own writing practices and draws attention to the similarities between them and the work of the author of the book. He also emphasizes the influence of the book’s structure on its reception. The work is also presented as an important contribution to the history of Polish francophony.

* L’auteur de cette étude bénéficie d’un financement octroyé par le Centre national de la recherche scientifique polonais (National Science Centre, Poland, research project 2018/30/M/HS3/00153).

New Perspective on Romanian Post-Communist Literature. Mihai Iovănel, History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990–2020

The article addresses Mihai Iovănel’s 2021 History of Contemporary Romanian Literature: 1990–2020, the first history of Romanian literature that presents the development of Romanian post-communist prose and poetry. Iovănel’s book sparked a heated debate among literary critics, historians and writers, because it discusses and redefines prevalent concepts in Romanian literary theory and criticism, focusing on the extraliterary (political, social, economic) conditioning of literary production and inscribing Romanian literature into the system of transnational literary interactions. The paper shows thus the most important assumptions of Iovănel’s work and discusses the critical reception of the volume among Romanian intellectuals.

Towards a Rehabilitation of a Woman Writer. Elena Ion, Femeia fără chip. Pe urmele Soranei Gurian [The Faceless Woman. On the Trail of Sorana Gurian]

This paper aims to discuss the strategies that Elena Ion uses to bring Sorana Gurian and her literary work back into cultural discourse. Firstly, I will recapitulate existing research and the way her writings were received after her death in 1956. I will then present the main objectives and results of Elena Ion’s study, as well as the importance of the new sources she has identified for further research into the work of Sorana Gurian.