Piotr de Bończa Bukowski

Witold Gombrowicz’s novel Trans-Atlantyk, written in a style imitating the Sarmatian 17th century storytelling (gawęda), is widely accounted as one of the most demanding works to translate. The present paper aims at describing stylistic features at the level of syntax, which are present in Trans-Atlantyk’s Swedish translation done by Anders Bodegård and praised as an extraordinary piece of work. We focus solely on distinguishing different types of syntactic constructions used by the translator revealing his way of rendering the syntactic stylization of the unique source text. Additionally, the study has a didactic focus. It shows an enormous stylistic potential of the Swedish language captured in one text.

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.

In this article I reflect on the concept of fidelity, which I believe is of fundamental importance in any discourse on translation. According to Roman Ingarden in his essay “On Translation,” this concept may appear in a variety of different contexts – ethical, epistemological and aesthetic – allowing us to better understand the essential components of a faithful translation. When attempting to reconstruct Ingarden’s own concept of what constitutes a faithful literary translation, I refer not only to the above text, but also to his research within the fields of ethics, epistemology and the philosophy of literature. I also consider his role as an author and editor of translations of Immanuel Kant’s works, published in the series Library of Philosophical Classics. To conclude, I try to place the results of this reconstruction within the context of the various theories to be found in contemporary translation studies.

The article discusses Przemysław Chojnowski’s research on the work of Peter (Piotr) Lachmann, a German-Polish author born in pre-war Gliwice (Gleiwitz). Lachmann consistently thematizes the experience of the borderland, describing his existence between two languages and cultures, that is, a “life in translation”. The culmination of Chojecki’s long-time research is the monograph Liminalność i bycie „pomiędzy” w twórczości Petera (Piotra) Lachmanna. Studium literacko-kulturowe (Kraków, 2020), which is the main subject of analysis in this article. This work situates itself in the domain of modern anthropological-cultural comparative studies, clearly and convincingly demonstrating the heuristic potential of such approach. Chojnowski’s book is not only a mine of information about the work of Peter (Piotr) Lachmann, but also an invitation to discuss the broader issues of borderland and cultural bivalence, usually associated with ambiguous national identification.

The aim of this article is to confront the images of two Scandinavian countries – Denmark and Norway – as created by two prominent and controversial Polish immigrant writers and scholars: Bronisław Świderski and Nina Witoszek. Bronisław Świderski was forced to leave communist Poland after the anti-Semitic campaign of March 1968. Since 1970, he has been living in Denmark where he was a scholar at Copenhagen’s Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre. Nina Witoszek emigrated from Poland in 1983 and became research leader at the Centre for Development and the Environment at Oslo University. She received the Norwegian Freedom of Expression Foundation Award. Both authors bring Eastern European perspectives to the public debate, creating critical, provocative portraits of Danish and Norwegian society and culture. Looking at their new countries from a foreign perspective, they see patterns and contradictions that the natives often do not notice. The question of interest of this study is how the authors value what appears to them foreign, different, exceptional, and whether their discourses show similarities.

The article presents the origin and intellectual backgroud of the project called „Roman Ingraden in the Space of the Word”, which resulted in the conference on the 130th anniversary of Ingarden’s birthday, and the monograph issue of Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis. The author proposes that throughout his scholarly career, Ingarden explored the space of the word, tackling it on various levels. The philosopher was convinced that words can be epistemic tools and as such are open to understanding. He wrote about the difference between the living word, used in a specific situation, and the polysemous `word of language’. It is also noted that Ingarden himself was involved in creative writing and subjected it to description, translated literary works and discussed the nature of literary translation. In the space thus outlined, the introductory article locates the analyses of the project participants who have decided to reflect on the multifaceted question of the word in Roman Ingarden’s thought.

This article comments on the correspondence of Karl Dedecius and Czesław Miłosz which started in 1958 and lasted for over 40 years. The letters were collected and published in 2011 by Przemysław Chojnowski. They constitute an interesting material for translation researchers. The article shows the history of a diffi cult dialogue between the Polish writer and his German translator, in particular their divergent interpretations of the German literary fi eld within which Dedecius tried to place Miłosz’s work.

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 the Romantic art critique – is capable of making a significant contribution to the contemporary discussion on the functional model of translation criticism. According to my argument, 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 major postulates of a hermeneutic critique of literary translations. This criticism is of an interrogative nature: it finds and poses questions that are answered by the examined statements. The critic’s questions include those about the original and to the original, about the translator and to the translator, as well as about the reader and to the reader. Finally, I show cases in which a critical dialogue around literary translations crystallizes. It is a dialogue that can be shaped and interpreted by the postulated hermeneutic translation criticism.