Michał Kopczyk

(Not) new Miłosz in Slovenian

This paper discusses a selection of Czesław Miłosz’s poetry which was published in Slovenia in 2008. First, it briefly describes the Polish Nobel Prize-winner’s artistic works present in Slovenia. Next, it focuses on their most important translations. The evaluation highlights the selection’s multigenerational character: it compiles most of Miłosz’s poetry translations (made by seven translators) which have appeared over the last three decades. The multifarious techniques and approaches adopted by the translators define the poet’s current image in Slovenia. Last but not least, the article presents Jana Unuk’s essay which closes the selection. Unuk perceives Miłosz primarily as a poet of paradoxes and private experience who constantly returns to the questions of God, religion and eroticism. The popularity of the individual and existential dimensions of Miłosz’s works results from the Polish poet’s peculiar sensibility, which is largely generational.

This paper discusses a selection of Czesław Miłosz’s poetry published in Slovenia in 2008. First, it briefl y describes the Polish Nobel Prize winner’s works present in Slovenia. Next, it focuses on their most important translations. This evaluation highlights the multigenerational aspect of the selection: it compiles most of the translations of Miłosz’s poetry (made by seven translators) which have appeared
over the last three decades. The various techniques and approaches adopted by the translators defi ne the poet’s current image in Slovenia. Last but not least, the article presents Jana Unuk’s essay, which closes the selection. Unuk perceives Miłosz primarily as a poet of paradoxes and private experience who constantly returns to the questions of God, religion and eroticism. The popularity of the individual and the existential dimensions of Miłosz’s works is a result of the Polish poet’s peculiar  sensibility, which largely derives from his generation. 

The author of the article analyses the first three novels from Karl Ove Knausgård’s cycle My Struggle (Min Kamp). The author focuses mainly on the identity of the hero-narrator and on the critical views on contemporary culture presented in the novels. The author sees the real value of the novels in the fresh approach to the narrative forms, the construction of the first-person narrator, the re-evaluation of reality and in the ethical elements of language. The author also stresses the vitalism demonstrated by the writer. The author singles out the key formal features of this prose and confronts them with the twentieth century literary tradition as well as with contemporary culture.

This article proposes a reading of Dzienniki [Diaries] by Stefan Kisielewski (1911– 1991) as a counter-hegemonic narrative. The author of this article explores the question of the strategy that Kisielewski adopts (consciously or not) in response to the conditions in which he finds himself as a writer and publicist – that is, the textual strategy (devised for the purposes of a specific work, his diary) and the life strategy. The principal element in the strategy employed by the writer is his embrace of the role of a jester – a commentator of reality, who finds pleasure in the rhetorical advantage granted by categories such as: joke, ridicule, irony, and self-mockery. This attitude allows one to attain a distance to both the world and other people, which guarantees safety and also helps sidestep most of the dangers associated with placing too much confidence in reason. The jester mask precludes dogmatism, prevents devoting oneself completely to the pragmatism of fighting an enemy, and allows maintaining individual autonomy in an oppressive world.