Cynamon na mapie ciała. The Cinnamon Peeler Michaela Ondaatjego w przekładach na język polski
The Cinnamon On the Corporeal Map. The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje and its Polish translations

Author(s): Aleksandra Wieczorkiewicz
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Translation Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: Michael Ondaatje; contemporary Canadian literature; Polish translations; literary translation; cultural context
Summary/Abstract: Michael Ondaatje is recognized in Poland mainly as a novelist and the author of The English Patient; his poetic works are, therefore, hardly known to the Polish reader. Ondaatje is one of these poets whose writing is shaped by the biographical experience – his poems often allude to the past and present an imaginative re-creation of memory and time. One of the most famous and beautiful of Ondaatje’s poems, The Cinnamon Peeler from Running in the Family (1984), is deeply immersed in Sri Lankan (or Cingalese) intensity of sensations and feelings. The article aims to present and analyse the four Polish translations of this poem and critically compare the translation strategies adopted by its translators – Jerzy Jarniewicz (Zbieracz cynamonu, Literatura na świecie 1998/4-5; Zbieracz cynamonu. Poezje wybrane, Kraków 2016), Krystyna Lenkowska (Obieracz cynamonu. Fraza 2001/3), Justyna Drobnik and Zofia Małkowiak (Korowacz cynamonu and Cynamonowy pan, the Internet website). The translators take up a difficult translation challenge since Ondaatje’s poem is not only highly musical and imaginative, but also immersed in language and culture that are “exotic” in the Polish cultural context and, consequently, open to manifold postcolonial interpretations.

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