Ewa Kowal

In this article, the author analyses the novel The National Valley (2016) by the contemporary Czech writer Jaroslav Rudiš. The main argument of the analysis focuses on the concept of modernity and modern subjectivity as outlined by the American philosopher, Marshall Berman, who in his book All That Is Solid Melts into Air (1988) describes modernity as a process of constant changes in reality. The author of the article interprets the Czech capitalist system after 1989 as a process of modernisation that forces certain elements of reality to disappear. Using the tools of semiotics provided by Yuri Lotman (1984), he analyses the structure of space in the novel, whilst also focusing on the issues of masculinity, family relations and subjectivity in capitalist modernity. The protagonist of the novel, shaping his identity in opposition to the current model of modernity, has only limited possibilities of achieving subjectivity. The values he considers important do not fit into the realities of modernity, which means that the protagonist, as well as the milieu he inhabits, is doomed to marginalisation.

In this article, the author takes up the issue of the so-called “crisis” of comparative literary studies (Comparative Literature), at the same time trying to outline the presentday condition of the discipline and to point to the objectives which it should attempt to attain today. Beside other detailed problems, the author analyses the threats posed by the hegemonic status of English which has become a specific ‘foundational language’ in Comparative Literature. However, in the principal part of his analysis, the author tries to go beyond the tendency towards ‘unification and totalisation of thought,’ which is present in Comparative Studies, by means of a search for ‘commensurability’ between the elements being compared,, and also beyond the equally popular strategy of ‘divisiveness’ that consists in continual emphasis on and proliferation of differences. He juxtaposes these two dominant trends with a model of conducting Comparative Literary Studies based on the concept of language of friendship or even love – an idea stemming from the philosophical thought of Lyotard and Badiou. In this approach, reading becomes an ‘event of love, which, like love, is what is without and beyond compare.

The translation of Maria Konopnicka’s O Krasnoludkach i sierotce Marysi (The Brownie Scouts) into English is an interesting fusion of two translation strategies usually considered mutually exclusive. At first glance, this careful and faithful rendering of passages describing Polish tradition, culture, history, geography and folklore is a good example of foreignisation. Taking the reader who represents a dominant culture on a trip to an unknown peripheral culture, it seems to counter Lefevere’s understanding of how cultural capital and asymmetries between cultures influence the translator’s decision to adapt the source culture’s exotic elements to the target reader’s horizon of expectations. Thus, her decision not to domesticate the original positions Katherine Żuk-Skarszewska (née Hadley) in a group of translators called bridgeheads by Cay Dollerup. They aim at familiarising the target language audience with most interesting and valuable aspects of the source language culture. Yet this assumption is undermined by Żuk-Skarszewska’s frequent use of reduction technique, which helps her to deal with the culture-specific elements she considers less important. The Brownie Scouts uses two strategies: the translator’s efforts to faithfully preserve some items and fragments characteristic of the source language culture are counterbalanced by her decisions to cut other elements and passages in order to make room for what she judges more worthwhile. As a result, reduction controls the intensity of the overall foreignising effect. This unusual strategy becomes even more interesting to observe, as the elements most readily given up are usually those related to the child (characters, subject-matter and folklore). Paradoxically, it is children who lose most in this translation of the book about them.

The article opens with an overview of the Polish reception of fairy tales, Perrault’s in particular, since 1700. The introductory section investigates the long-established preference for adaptation rather than translation of this genre in Poland and provides the framework for an in-depth comparative analysis of the first Polish translation of Mother Goose Tales by Hanna Januszewska, published in 1961, as well as her adaptation of Perrault’s tales ten years later. The examination focuses on two questions: first, the cultural distance between the original French text and Polish fairy-tales, which causes objective translation difficulties; second, the cultural, stylistic and linguistic shifts introduced by Januszewska in the process of transforming her earlier translation into a free adaptation of Perrault’s work. These questions lead not only to comparing the originality or literary value of Januszewska’s two proposals, but also to an examination of the reasons for the enormous popularity of the adapted version. The faithful translation, by all means a good text in itself, did not gain wide recognition and, if not exactly a failure, it was nevertheless an unsuccessful attempt to introduce Polish readers to the original spirit of Mother Goose Tales.

The author of this article attempts to sketch out the development of contemporary comparative literature, in which a Eurocentric orientation is being supplanted by a genuine world perspective. In doing so, the author points out that the present-day widening of the research-field to the global dimensions signifies not so much a crisis of the discipline as a reference to the ideas which appeared at the time when comparative studies first emerged as a separate discipline of knowledge. The author takes a closer look at the works of two 19th-century comparative scholars, namely Hugo Meltzl, the Transylvanian founder of the journal Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, and the Irish scholar Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, noticing in them a number of groundbreaking, though later abandoned, trends for world comparative studies. Meltzl tried to broaden the field of study to include the masterpieces of other cultures and in this way to show some appreciation for the literatures of smaller European states as well as for folk literature. Posnett, on the other hand, looked for links between the development of literature and individual societies and attacked the imperial cosmopolitism prevalent at the time, opting for a specific “global provincialism” of cultures instead.