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Translation as Talking to Oneself: Miłosz Makes Whitman Speak

Publication date: 05.03.2014

Wielogłos, 2013, Issue 3 (17) 2013, pp. 43 - 56

https://doi.org/10.4467/2084395XWI.13.022.1558

Authors

Stanley Bill
Cambridge University, United Kingdom
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4898-6641 Orcid
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Titles

Translation as Talking to Oneself: Miłosz Makes Whitman Speak

Abstract

In this paper, the author examines Czesław Miłosz’s poetic dialogue with Walt Whitman on the ambivalent status of the natural world and material existence. By translating Whitman’s poems and interspersing them among his own verses in the collection Unattainable Earth (Nieobjęta ziemia, 1984), Miłosz practices a peculiar form of poetic commentary or criticism, drawing attention to certain tensions within the work of his American predecessor. This tendentious form of dialogue between poets simultaneously intertwines with a conflict within Miłosz’s own poetics – as the Polish poet effectively argues with himself by proxy. The author plays close attention to Miłosz’s translation of Whitman’s “As I Ebb’d With the Ocean of Life,” pointing to several crucial distortions of its original meaning and context. This analysis opens the broader question of whether Miłosz’s poetry is truly hospitable to other voices or whether the dominant voice of the Miłoszean poetic subject inevitably subjugates or perverts them.

References


Information

Information: Wielogłos, 2013, Issue 3 (17) 2013, pp. 43 - 56

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Translation as Talking to Oneself: Miłosz Makes Whitman Speak

English:

Translation as Talking to Oneself: Miłosz Makes Whitman Speak

Authors

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4898-6641

Stanley Bill
Cambridge University, United Kingdom
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4898-6641 Orcid
All publications →

Cambridge University, United Kingdom

Published at: 05.03.2014

Article status: Open

Licence: None

Percentage share of authors:

Stanley Bill (Author) - 100%

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

English