Problemy z konstrukcją odbiorcy w polskich przekładach poematu Song of Myself Walta Whitmana
The Question of Rendering the Addressee in the Polish Translations of Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

Summary/Abstract: The subject of the article is the question of rendering the addressee in the Polish translationsof Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, in which a certain indeterminacy in the shaping ofthe recipient can be observed. The crucial distinction between the intratextual addressee andthe extratextual addressee projected by the text, based on the typology proposed by DavidHerman, allows taking into consideration the personal reader as the communicative partner ofthe speaker in the poem. Initially, the Polish translation of the poem by Andrzej Szuba projectsa community as the addressee, whereas from the translation by Ludmiła Marjańska theimage of the individual recipient emerges. However, further on in the translation by Szubathe collective addressee changes into the single one, whereas in the translation by Marjańskathe opposite process takes place because in the final section the individual addressee turnsinto the collective one. But it is not an unspecified community that is the participant of thecommunicative situation projected by the text; it is an individual, it is each personal reader.It is the individual extratextual addressee that is the beneficiary of the poetic undertaking.Unfortunately, the existing Polish translations are not conducive to the understanding of therole assigned to the extratextual addressee by the text, and make it hard for the Polish readerto form a proper mental image of the recipient projected by the poem.

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