Although Pablo Picasso claimed that people who want to translate painting tend to bark
at the wrong tree, the article is a discussion of one of such translations, E.E. Cummings’
poem xxvi (“Picasso”) from the volume Tulips and Chimneys (1923). The author analyses
Cummings’ text as an instance of intersemiotic translation and its potential renderings
into Polish as “second order” translations, entangled not only in the intricacies of
the original text but also the “original painting” behind it. The outcome is a series of
alternative versions of the poem in Polish, each elaborating on a different meaning of the
word “plane”, referring to visual design, woodwork and aviation respectively.

Although Pablo Picasso claimed that people who want to translate painting tend to bark
at the wrong tree, the article is a discussion of one of such translations, E.E. Cummings’
poem xxvi (“Picasso”) from the volume Tulips and Chimneys (1923). The author analyses
Cummings’ text as an instance of intersemiotic translation and its potential renderings
into Polish as “second order” translations, entangled not only in the intricacies of
the original text but also the “original painting” behind it. The outcome is a series of
alternative versions of the poem in Polish, each elaborating on a different meaning of the
word “plane”, referring to visual design, woodwork and aviation respectively.