Nici życia i pamięci. Herbertowska „Tkanina”, błagalna i pożegnalna
Threads of Life and Memory. Herbert’s Imploring and Farewell "Tkanina"

Summary/Abstract: The author examines Zbigniew Herbert’s lyrical masterpiece Tkanina (1998), written almost three months prior to the poet’s death. In this last poem Herbert expressed his perception of the world and himself as well as sparse self-reflections. From the viewpoint of genre and style the researcher describes the poem, consisting of two stanzas, as imploring (first stanza) and farewell (second stanza). The author of the article also included several remarks on the poem’s translation by Wiktor Dmytruk (1945 – February 10, 2024), known for the best translations of Herbert’ poetry into Ukrainian. In doing so, J. Nachlik demonstrates that in the case of Tkanina the translator tackled the problem of recreating the semantic contents of the text and the necessity of preserving rhymes in accordance with the ABBA CDDC scheme applied in the original version. While seeking the best solution the author of the translation balanced between a suitable rendition of the meaning of words and tropes, on the one hand, and a search for successful rhymes, on the other; since discovering words matching the original proved to be not entirely possible he adapted semantics to the rhyme, thus limiting himself to words of similar meanings. Such an approach denotes that semantic nuances in rhyming words are sometimes lost in translation.

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