Polish Literature

[Eric]

Polish literature started to amaze me when I found books by Gombrowicz in English and French in the early 1970s. After a year in Poland (1975-76) I realised that that country, although almost entirely neglected in Britain, had a big literature, with some highlights. So I got to know the works of Bruno Schulz and Witkacy (Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz) as well. That is indeed where I first came across the name Jerzy Ficowski, as he wrote a book about Schulz called "Regiony wielkiej herezji" (Regions of Great Heresy).

I read the Konwicki novel "A Dreambook of Our Time" many years ago. The fact that he, like Czeslaw Milosz, has his roots in the Polish-speaking minority of Lithuania has always fascinated me. There is a publishing house and literary centre near the Polish-Lithuanian border called Krasnogruda that specialises in the cross-fertilisation of Polish and Lithuanian culture.

I've not yet read Tulli, but her short poetic novels look interesting.

I too had a Polish girlfriend once, back in 1976, and she was, of course, an inspiration. But even when we broke up some years later and she finally emigrated to Arizona (whence she never returned) I still kept on my interest in Polish literature and, on and off, seek to improve my reading knowledge of Polish to this day. I can now read books in Polish quite well. My vocabulary is expanding, but the perfective-imperfective verb system is still one of those difficult things.

 

[pesahson]

Apparently a translation of one of Stasiuk's books is going to be out soon:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/08/road-babadag-andrzej-stasiuk-review

 

[Eric]

Fine, Pesahson. But did I miss the name of the translator? Couldn't see it. Maybe I was being inattentive. When Stasiuk's prose is "quietly effective" maybe the average Guardian reader has the translator to thank for that...

 

[nightwood]

Apparently a translation of one of Stasiuk's books is going to be out soon:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/08/road-babadag-andrzej-stasiuk-review

Thanx for posting the link Pesahson like the review and I surely would have missed this one; guess it will take me a while until I will finally get around to read his book but as I like Stasiuk so far after reading "Fado" it´s just a matter of time that I will pick up a copy of it as well in the near future.

 

[pesahson]

Michael Kandel is the translator.

 

[Eric]

Thanks for the name of the translator, Pesahson. Of course, the name means nothing to me, but it's the principle that counts. We translators often have debates about whether the translator's name should appear on the front cover of the book, the back cover, or on the title page inside. But the translator should at least be mentioned in any review.

 

[Eric]

The Stasiuk book I've got is one of meditative essays on Europe along with a fellow author, the Ukrainian Yuri Andrukhovych.

Just to hammer home my point about translators and their names, I've got this book in Polish (Moja Europa) and in German (Mein Europa). In the Polish version, only Andrukhovych is translated, by Lidia Stefanowska. In the German version, both parts of the book are translations, so the Ukrainian text was translated by Sofia Onufriv, the Polish one by Martin Pollack. The Germans (Suhrkamp publishers) do mention the names of the two translators on the title page inside. The Poles are a bit less generous, and the name of the translator is tucked away among the copyright notices.

Again, the names of the translators mean nothing to me, but as a professional literary translator myself, I feel that we should always be mentioned. Not in flashing lights, but the presence of the name of the person who has done all the work to bring the work to a new readership should at least be acknowledged.

 

[pesahson]

I agree. When it comes to books translated into Polish, it varies where the name is put. Sometimes it is hard to find, most times the name is on the first page, right under the author and title. I've noticed that sometimes on amazon the translator is right next to the author e.g. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugresic and Ellen Elias-Bursac.I guess that would satisfy you

 

[Eric]

No, the author wrote the book - an act of original creation - whilst the translator was the craftsman or -woman who managed to change it, as if by magic, into an artefact in another language.

My instinct still maintains the very un-postmodernist idea that the author wrote the book and therefore deserves more glory than the translator.

 

[blucha]

Some new informations about my lectures.

Finishing Mrożek's diary, first volume, quite different from what I've imagined, but still very entertaining.

I'm after reading Tadeusz Nowak "a jak królem, a jak katem będziesz...". Outstanding novel, very poetic yet kind of realistical. Masterpiece. It is about polish village befor and during WWII. I do not know if it was translated.

I am in the middle of Mysliwski Kamien na kamieniu (stone on stone, or rock on rock probably, i think it was translated). And I have problems with finishing it, boring as hell. Mysliwski is, in my opinion one of the these overrated writers.

And read some old novel by Orzeszkowa, again boring as hell. It was not exactly bad writing, but she has something that makes reading her prose a torture.

Finished Iwaszkiewicz "Sława i chwała", somewhat weak when it comes to structure, well, Iwaszkiewicz was not great at constructiong novels, but it is good as a panorama of the interwar period, and, well if someone liked his short stories will find similar atosphere here. Well, I have heard, that some musically educated chaps said one day that Tchaikovskys music is weak in structure too. Anzway, it is a must read. Oh, I recalled why it was so hard to stop reading it, even if it wasnt so well constructed. It was literaly hauting, I mean I could not stop thinking about what is going to happen next, or some images from the book was going over and over in mz mind... Kind of crazy how good writer Iwaszwiekicz was, and how this book just was not his topic. And, oh, my grandmother read that book in a week, and found it more entertaining then Tolstoy's War and piece, so me and her kind of disagree about the value of this book... Either way, I don't think it was translated.

Czesław Miłosz's history of polish literature. Of course availalbe in english. Good book, I would say, as a look on whole of this writings... Although I disagreed with him sometimes, maybe because of his look at it generaly as a poet, and a very specific one at a top of that. For example, why saying about the roots of polish literature in poetry and neglect really other "medias", by saying this language is not really suitable for philosophy, for instance, I don't really know for what, esspecially, when Miłosz don't try to even show something of philosophical writings. Well, he did mention Kołakowski and Heine-Wroński, but he didn't really try to dig any further, so such person as Roman Ingarden is not present in his book, and judging from his earlier moanings about not having great philosophical writings it looks like he rather trys to look like his biased point of view is correct... For instance his opinion on The peasants of Reymont was waaaay different from mine, as he was very unhappy about Reymont wasting such material with his manieric, poetic language - quite beautiful in my opinion. But nevermind. And the books finishes about '60, so much things are missing. Oh, but on the other hand, I may be baised too on judging this piece of his writing, because, well, yes it is rather brief form, and I'm writing this years after, knowing what kind of way would this literature choose, with prose dominatiing now above poetry, with such persons as Kępiński or Bauman, and Warsaw's philosophical university ward being the 4th largest in the world, if I'm not mistaken, and Miłosz couldn't of course know such things when he written the book. Generaly, good look on the whole to a certain point in time.T

That is all for now.

 

[Eric]

Thanks for that, Blucha.

When you read on one website the following about the Mysliwski book, you don't exactly rush out and buy it, even if it's translated into your language:

Like a more agrarian Beckett, a less gothic Faulkner, a slightly warmer Laxness, Mysliwski masterfully renders in Johnston's gorgeous translation (Mysliwski's first into English) life in a Polish farming village before and after WWII. . . .

Some critics can never stop obsessively comparing, so they never see the book for itself, but merely as reflected in other works.

I would like to read more Iwaszkiewicz, but I never seem to find the time. I would start modestly with his stories, then some of his poetry which is lyrical. I've never tackled a longer work by him.

The problem with that overview of Milosz's is that it is only the work of one man, but because he won the Nobel in 1980, that book which came earlier will have been raised to iconic status. I love Milosz's poetry, but he was only human, after all. And as so little had been translated from Polish around the time he won the Nobel, everybody in the English-speaking world will have gravitated towards that one book about Polish literature, as if it were the only one in existence. But even 30 years later, I wonder what overviews of Polish literature there are available in the English language, ones which not only update Milosz, but may even dare to disagree with him on some points? Because he has become something of a touchstone and guru in the English-speaking world, not least because he lived in an English-speaking country for a long while.

 

[blucha]

Slightly warmer then Laxness - I happened to read Laxness books lately, actually they are a lot warmer then Myśliwski. And antoher thing (I finisheed it) - it have actually some value for showing the typical mentality of polish village folks (which I hate, very reactive, traditional to the bone, actualy there is a word for that in polish - ciemnogród, untranslable for me). But in the area of style, poetry so to say it is way below the Nowak's book. But it is my taste also speaking here as I prefer more rich language, more baroque so to say.


As for Miłosz history of polish literature and further books - I don't know. Well, I don't care personally as I can touch it without any such works, I'm kind of in the heart of it. If I will came across something worth mentioning I will write, but I don't have write know to search for it. Anyway I didn't mention I think good parts of Miłosz's book - characteristic of polish romatnic theatre - quite accurate. And another bad overlooked part in philosophy which suposedly is not suited for language polish... Important in analitical philospohy Lwów-Warsaw school with Alfred Tarski, as far as I'm concerned a classic in analitical phiosophy in philosophical departments in universites all over the world.


And may I ask you, Eric, or another english native speaker, why the surenames of latin american writers or french ones are writed in translated books into english with thier characteristic latters, I mean García Márquez and not Garcia Marquez, while it is for instance Milosz all over and not Miłosz?

 

[Worldeater]

Can someone tell me little bit about books by Julian Stryjkowski? Which are worth checking out etc.

 

[pesahson]

I've never read him, but the popular view in Poland is, that his best novel is "Głosy w ciemności" (Voices in the darkness).

 

[Liam]

Good news for poetry lovers and lovers of Polish poetry in particular:

Adam Zagajewski's collection Unseen Hand came out as a hardcover earlier this year; it is being republished in an affordable paperback edition in June 2012.

Add to this a new kid on the block: a young poet named Jacek Gutorow (1970-), whose slim volume, The Folding Star, is also coming out in translation around the same time, courtesy of the Lannan Translations Series.

Gutorow is described as an eminent young Polish writer, poet and translator, having translated Ashbery, Armitage and Wallace Stevens (among others) into his native Polish.

​

It is curious to note that the title corresponds to Alan Hollinghurst's earlier novel of the same name, published in 1994.

 

[lenz]

And may I ask you, Eric, or another english native speaker, why the surenames of latin american writers or french ones are writed in translated books into english with thier characteristic latters, I mean García Márquez and not Garcia Marquez, while it is for instance Milosz all over and not Miłosz?

Sorry for this late reply but I just saw your post. The reason that non-latin letters and diacritical marks are not often used in English translation of names is that there are few English readers who would understand the pronunciation they represent.

 

[Liam]

Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition (1816), arguably the first "modern" novel in Polish, is being released in English in May 2012:

First published in Warsaw in 1816, Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition has been largely--and unjustly--ignored by the Polish literary canon. Ingeniously structured and garrulously related by a Tristram Shandy-esque narrator, Maria Wirtemberska's psychologically complex work is often considered Poland's first modern novel.

This splendid translation by Ursula Phillips should restore Wirtemberska to her rightful place in the literary pantheon while providing fertile new ground for the study of the international development of the novel.

The romantic story of the young widow Malvina and her mysterious lover Ludomir, Malvina combines several literary styles and influences--from the epistolary to the Gothic.

Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz argues that Malvina is quintessentially a sentimental novel--a model of the genre whose chief aspiration is to promote a change in sensibility and inspire new forces of feeling and imagination. For this reason Wirtemberska is often considered the Polish counterpart to her English contemporary, Jane Austen.

A work of genuine artistic daring and sophistication, Malvina, or the Heart's Intuition has been overlooked by critics for too long, and readers have been denied the pleasure of reading one of literature's major landmarks--until now.

 

[Eric]

To reply to Blucha and Lenz' point about accents (aka diacritical marks), it is sheer ignorance that stops newspapers and books from reproducing the correct letter-with-accent. Many computer software systems provide the option of using the right accent, especially at the level of publisher and publishing house. But as most English speakers haven't the slightest idea about the importance of accents to get the pronunciation right, they arrantly throw the accents overboard.

You see this when Tranströmer is mentioned, ditto Václav Havel. Some newspapers (e.g. the Financial Times!) do their best to get the accents right. Other newspapers, in many countries, just can't be bothered. It is a question of the level of education and willingness of the journalists concerned.

If Brits can manage the é and è of French there is no reason why they cannot learn that, for instance. a Polish l (ell) with a line through it is like an English w. Or that the accent under the Polish a and e is not a cedilla, but the other way round. It is cultural superiority and laziness that prevent people from bothering to learn.

 

[liehtzu]

This might tickle one or two of the non-Polish language readers amongst us. I know it got a quiet "bravo!" from me:

http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780300118063

 

[Eric]

The Lillian Vallee translation of his diaries tickled my fancy decades ago, before I could read a word of Polish. The first volume of the Diaries was first published in the UK in 1988 in Lillian Vallee's translation, but probably appeared in the USA even earlier than that. Volume One of the Diaries in that version covered 1953-56, and there's plenty there already to get an idea of what sort of iconoclast Gombrowicz was. It's nice that Yale are reprinting the Diaries, so that access is not confined to university libraries with dusty shelves of yellowed tomes.