The poetic model of the world and problems of artistic translation

Based on the Polish translations of G. M. Hopkins

Stanisław Barańczak

Translated by Soren Gauger

in: Edward Balcerzan, Stanisław Barańczak, Literature from literature, , sdvig press, 2020

Abstract

Originally written in 1984, this text approaches the process of translating a poem as an instance of reconstructing the original “model of the poetic world” by a special type of reader, namely the translator. The translator’s act of interpretation is fixated on “transfiguring a given model of the world into the substance of another ethnic language.” Barańczak then discusses Polish translations of poems by G.M. Hopkins as exemplifications of multiple understandings of the given “poetic model of the world” and the ensuing translation attempts to access it. Barańczak’s analysis, as he states, goes deeper than examining the work’s ideological import and rather focuses on the “intratextual communication situation” and organizing principles of the poetic text.