„Nic tak nie podnosi ducha jak czytanie klasyków!” O przekładach autorów antycznych w kręgu Szkoły Głównej
‘Nothing raises spirit like reading the classics’! On translations of ancient classical authors in the circles associated with the Main School

Author(s): Barbara Brzuska
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: translations; classics; antique; Latin; Greek; Main School
Summary/Abstract: Although the short period in which the School remained active did not bring about any major breakthrough in the field of classical studies, it did bear astonishingly abundant fruit in the form of the translation work completed; numerous works by ancient authors, especially the Greek ones, were rendered into Polish. Some texts were translated for the first time, and others, which already had a Polish translation, were translated a new, but it is a well-known truth that every epoch – or even generation – strives for its own translations of the masterpieces of world literature. And it is worth noting that this was a time when all Greek tragedies were translated into Polish – by two Warsaw Main School employees, Zygmunt Weclewski and Kazimierz Kaszewski. Professors – lecturers at the Philology and History Department or other departments – translated the classics, and so did many Main School’s graduates, among whom we can find names of great renown as well as those known to few. They undertook their translation work with different assumptions, and the relations between the source language and the demands imposed by the Polish language took various shapes depending on the case, but all the translators shared one goal – to provide their compatriots with an opportunity to get to know the Greek and Roman classics, whose original texts, especially those of Greek literature, were accessible only to a small number of people. And it must be borne in mind that the knowledge of classical literature was still of incontestable value.

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