Foreign Embodiments of Dusiołek. Bolesław Leśmian’s Poetic Neologisms Translated into English Cover Image

Obce wcielenia Dusiołka. Leśmianowskie „cudotwory słowotwórcze” w przekładach anglojęzycznych
Foreign Embodiments of Dusiołek. Bolesław Leśmian’s Poetic Neologisms Translated into English

Author(s): Aleksandra Wieczorkiewicz
Subject(s): Translation Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Bolesław Leśmian; Polish poetry; English translations; literary translation; neologism

Summary/Abstract: Bolesław Leśmian is an impossible writer – according to Edward Balcerzan, “a poet with no masters, a master with no followers.” Additionally, he is usually considered as an untranslatable poet: the creator of his own idiomatic language, fraught with neologisms, archaisms, and dialectisms and subjected to the rigours of rhythm and rhyme, permeated with philosophical thought and vivid colours of the Slavic world – in short, an evident proof of the existence of the phenomenon known as untranslatability. But is it quite so? The main objective of the article is to present some difficulties connected with translating Leśmian’s poety into English at the example of the translations of Leśmian’s ballade “Dusiołek” (by Rochelle Stone, Marian Polak-Chlabicz, and Krzysztof Bartnicki) and to compare the translation strategies adopted by their authors.

  • Issue Year: 2016
  • Issue No: 32
  • Page Range: 226-248
  • Page Count: 23
  • Language: Polish