The aim of the article is to open up a discussion of Justin Quinn’s book Between Two Fires: Transnationalism and Cold War Poetry. The monograph focuses on transnational movements of poetry between Czech culture and the Anglophone world during the Cold War. The book allows us to reconsider the way in which we study similar transfers of Polish literature and the categories and models we use to describe them, which usually stem from translation studies, studies of reception of Polish literature abroad, and recent debates on world literature.

The article addresses the problem of cultural transfer, first, by defining its conditions, and, secondly, by asking about the criteria by which we can measure its success. Among the latter, one can mention the impact of the translated work on the target language literature, the critical reception of the work, and on its author’s presence in the public space of the foreign culture. The successfully transferred work becomes an element of “world literature,” constituted differently in different cultures. The article discusses these issues by analyzing specific examples of translations of contemporary Polish literature into English and various forms of their presence in the Anglophone world. Special attention is paid not only to the influence these translations have on the literature of the target language, but also on the ways in which they are in turn affected by their new cultural and linguistic environment. Cultural transfer is thus seen as a process of multidirectional osmosis, in effect of which both the translated work and foreign literature are modified.

The article deals with the changes that have been occurring in the reception (both translational and critical) of Polish poetry in Sweden since the 1980s. It points to the break with reading Polish poetry in the historical and political contexts (that were the dominant “style of reception” for several decades) and abandoning the order of literary history for the anthropological perspective. Analysis of examples shows that since the 1990s Swedish literary criticism was clearly seeking new ways of accentuating the independence of reviewed Polish authors from the “historical” background (e.g., the case of Adam Zagajewski but also of Tadeusz Różewicz). The context into which Polish poetry is successfully and very consequently inscribed in contemporary Sweden is the feminist perspective, which is rooted in the long-time tradition of taking up “the plight of women” in Sweden (or, more broadly, in all of Scandinavia) and clearly visible also in Swedish research in literary history pertaining to Polish literature that were conducted during the last three decades. The poetry of Polish female poets is currently the subject of intense focus of Swedish critics and translators.

Adam Zagajewski is an established figure within the Spanish literary system. He might be the most admired author amongst foreign poets. His oeuvre is a reference point for Spanish poets from various generations and representing diverse literary movements. This article explores the mechanisms, which allowed the Polish poet  to claim a central position in the new system and analyses the background as well as the course of this particular literary transfer.

This article presents the Argentinian reception of the author of Trans-Atlantyk from his arrival in Buenos Aires until his death in France. The article is divided into three parts and each of them is dedicated to one of the three last decades of Witold Gombrowicz’s life. The author mentions the initial attempts of establishing relations with Argentinian writers (Jorge Luis Borges, for example, or the circle of the Sur magazine), first publication of texts as well as the collective translation of Ferdydurke in Café Rex during the 1960s, and recognizes that sometime in the 1950s Gombrowicz made peace with the fact of his literary obscurity in the land of his emigration, therefore changing his strategy of self-promotion. Only after he returned to Europe did the first signs of recognition reach him from Argentina, where the Diario argentino was just published (it was a selection of writings from Gombrowicz’s Diary for the Argentine reader).

This paper is an attempt to narrate the history of translation of Polish literature in Brazil from the 1990s until today. It gives a detailed account of the translational achievements of the preeminent translators of Polish literature into Brazilian Portuguese, among them: Henryk Siewierski, Tomasz Barciński, Marcelo Paiva de Souza, Regina Przybycień, Piotr Kilanowski, and Eneida Favre. It also traces the interrelations between translational activities and scholarly research of the translators who are also academics working in the field of Polish literature. At the same time, the article attempts to highlight the importance of Polish studies in Paraná and of the Polish diaspora in popularizing Polish literature in Brazil.