Transgresja elementu znaczącego: opowiadania Gombrowicza i ich nowy włoski przekład
Transgression of the Signifier: Gombrowicz’s Short Stories and Their New Italian Translation

Author(s): Dario Prola
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Bakakaj and Other Short Stories; stylistic dominants; Gombrowicz; Italian translation; translation strategies
Summary/Abstract: A nonconformist and demystifier, Gombrowicz made irony and paradox his tools to implement a grotesque subversion of reality, customs and literary tradition (his essay“ Against the Poets” angered Giuseppe Ungaretti). In order to challenge and destroy the conventional forms, principles and rules on which social life and culture itself are based, the writer had to engage in a similar venture also on the linguistic front, creating a personal style – rebellious, mocking, unpredictable – suitable for executing his literary and philosophical exploration outside of the usual patterns and canons. Through careful examination of the writer’s short stories dating back to the interwar period, the essay highlights the characteristics of the young Gombrowicz’s language by relating them to a precise writing strategy that would find its full realization in his most famous future novels. Subsequently, it is highlighted how some stylistic and rhetorical procedures of his writing (irony, desecration, repetition, intertextuality, neo-semantization) needed to be replicated in the translation passage in order to implement a similar “transgression of the signifier” involving models and structures as well as the grammar of the Italian language.

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