Baltazar Castiglione o naturze i naturalności. Uwagi tłumacza
Baltazar Castiglione on Nature and Naturalness. Translator’s Comments

Author(s): Andrzej Borowski
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: paraenesis; paraphrase; courtier; Renaissance aesthetics; nature and naturalness; natural beauty; artistic beauty; dialogue; translation; Baldassare Castiglione
Summary/Abstract: Castiglione’s dialogue "Il libro del cortegiano" is one of the most important parenetic texts written in the humanistic circles of early modern Italian and European culture. The text was an inspiration for Łukasz Górnicki, who wrote a Polish paraphrase of this work (using entirely Polish realities, location and interlocutors) and published it under the title "Dworzanin polski" ("A Polish Courtier"). The notions of nature and naturalness are of special interest to Castiglione’s interlocutors, who perceive them from two perspectives.The first one is “metaphysical” as the interlocutors discussing nature, naturalness and the theory of existence refer to Thomas Aquinas and implicitly to Aristotle. The second thread concerning nature and naturalness is closely connected with aesthetics. Castiglione considers the “tension” between the notion of “natural beauty”, which inspires an artist, and the artistic beauty of the “work of art”. It is connected with the individual act of creation, which is thoroughly and competently discussed by the interlocutors. The work on the Polish translation of Castiglione’s text allows to understand the meaning of the dialogue, as translation is not simply finding the correct words, but also interpreting the meaning (hermeneia). And this is what the article discusses.

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