TranslatoLogica: A Journal of Translation, Language, and Literature, 1 (2017), p. 173-187 Eliene Mąka-Poulain University of Silesia Poetry of Excess and the Art of Creating Anew: Wisława Szymborska’s Urodziny and its English Translation ABSTRACT “Te chaszcze i paszcze, i leszcze, i deszcze, / bodziszki, modliszki – gdzie ja to pomieszczę?” despairs the speaker in Wisława Szymborska’s poem “Urodziny” (“Birthday”), overawed by the splendor and complexity of the world he or she inhabits. The poem’s joyful celebration of excess takes place on many levels: the lushness of vegetation, diversity of landscapes and peculiarities of fauna and flora find its reflection in the “excess” of the poet’s language. The poem manages to curb this excess effortlessly, balancing exotic images with a light-hearted monologue. Is it possible, however, to adequately render this surplus form and content in English? This article compares Szymborska’s “Urodziny” and its English translation by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak, focusing on the translators’ interpretation of the poem. It examines the way, in which the translators’ decisions, such as the choice of a literary convention or the choice of particular nouns or verbs, alter Szymborska’s universum and its ontology. The English translation constitutes a poem that is markedly different, but arguably as creative and bizarre (and as compelling) as Szymborska’s eccentric original. Translation is seen here as a process involving a series of difficult but necessary decisions; although the translator always has to act as a mediator and negotiator, he or she also becomes a creator in his own right. KEY WORDS Literary translation, untranslatability, compensation strategy, metaphor In her essay “The Art of Losing: Polish Poetry and Translation,” Clare Cavanagh, American translator of contemporary Polish poetry, discusses the well-known dilemma of the translator: Is poetry, after all, “translatable”? Cavanagh (2013, p. 244), who often collaborated with Stanisław Barańczak and translated poems by, among others, Białoszewski, Miłosz, and Zagajewski, teases the reader: “Of course translating poetry is impossible: all the best things are.” She adds immediately, however: “But the impulse that drives one to try is not so far removed, I think, from the force that sends the lyric poet out
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TranslatoLogica: A Journal of Translation, Language, and Literature, 1 (2017), p. 173-187
Eliene Mąka-Poulain University of Silesia
Poetry of Excess and the Art of Creating Anew: Wisława Szymborska’s Urodziny and its English Translation
ABSTRACT
“Te chaszcze i paszcze, i leszcze, i deszcze, / bodziszki, modliszki – gdzie ja to pomieszczę?” despairs the speaker in Wisława Szymborska’s poem “Urodziny” (“Birthday”), overawed by the splendor and complexity of the world he or she inhabits. The poem’s joyful celebration of excess takes place on many levels: the lushness of vegetation, diversity of landscapes and peculiarities of fauna and flora find its reflection in the “excess” of the poet’s language. The poem manages to curb this excess effortlessly, balancing exotic images with a light-hearted monologue. Is it possible, however, to adequately render this surplus form and content in English? This article compares Szymborska’s “Urodziny” and its English translation by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak, focusing on the translators’ interpretation of the poem. It examines the way, in which the translators’ decisions, such as the choice of a literary convention or the choice of particular nouns or verbs, alter Szymborska’s universum and its ontology. The English translation constitutes a poem that is markedly different, but arguably as creative and bizarre (and as compelling) as Szymborska’s eccentric original. Translation is seen here as a process involving a series of difficult but necessary decisions; although the translator always has to act as a mediator and negotiator, he or she also becomes a creator in his own right.
KEY WORDS
Literary translation, untranslatability, compensation strategy, metaphor In her essay “The Art of Losing: Polish Poetry and Translation,” Clare Cavanagh, American
translator of contemporary Polish poetry, discusses the well-known dilemma of the
translator: Is poetry, after all, “translatable”? Cavanagh (2013, p. 244), who often
collaborated with Stanisław Barańczak and translated poems by, among others,
Białoszewski, Miłosz, and Zagajewski, teases the reader: “Of course translating poetry is
impossible: all the best things are.” She adds immediately, however: “But the impulse that
drives one to try is not so far removed, I think, from the force that sends the lyric poet out
Poetry of Excess and the Art of Creating Anew: Wisława Szymborska’s “Urodziny” and its English Translation
174
time after time to master the world in a few lines of verse. You see a wonderful thing in front
of you, and you want it.”
Cavanagh’s title, “The Art of Losing,” is a reference to a well-known poem by Elizabeth
Bishop. Bishop’s villanelle (of the same title) appears at first glance a playful commentary on
how one is perfectly capable of “mastering” the art of losing, but the closing lines of the
poem make it clear that this seemingly light-hearted tone is suffused with bitter irony.
Concluding her article, Cavanagh (2013, p. 244) observes that the translator can often be
temporarily relieved, finding that the translation is a satisfying equivalent of the poem in a
foreign language, and yet later may become convinced that “the wall” of impossibility is “still
there,” and so is the original poem, unreachable, as if mockingly reminding the translator of
the ultimate futility of his or her endeavor:
[Y]ou try remaking it in your own language, in your own words, in the vain hope of getting it once and for
all, of finally making it your own. And sometimes you even feel, for a while at least, for a day or two or even
a couple of weeks, that you’ve got it, it’s worked, the poem’s yours. But then you turn back to the poem
itself at some point, and you have to hit your head against the wall and laugh: it’s still there.
And yet, irrespective of this feeling of disappointment that may every now and then trouble
even the best of translators, poetry has been successfully translated. The measure of this
success? The readers who are not fluent in a particular language are often willing to read
their favorite poets in translation; many of them certainly find pleasure in doing so. New
translations of classics are regularly published, reviewed and discussed. Many international
prizes, including the Nobel Prize in literature, are often awarded to poets by juries whose
members can read the nominee’s work only in translation. Simultaneously, however, it is
difficult to escape the wider implications of Cavanagh’s playful metaphor suggesting that “to
master the world in a few lines of verse” is not only the mission of the poet – it is also what
the translator aspires to do. The original work has to be respected, but the task of a
successful transposition of a text necessarily entails a range of complex decisions as to the
nature of the world that is to emerge in a different language. This necessity, however, may
become an opportunity and creates space for artistic autonomy. As a result, a new work of
art is created – a new entity which may often puzzle or even frustrate both its co-creator,
the translator, and those readers who can speak both languages, because the radical and
Poetry of Excess and the Art of Creating Anew: Wisława Szymborska’s “Urodziny” and its English Translation
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inescapable difference between the two, the original poem and its translation, sometimes
makes them question the point of translation.
The purpose of this article is to look at Barańczak and Cavanagh’s English translation of
the poem “Urodziny” by Polish poet Wisława Szymborska and try to analyze the different
ways in which certain seemingly “untranslatable” aspects of the original poem influence the
process of translation, forcing the translators to look for unique, original solutions. It is also
to juxtapose the two texts side by side in order to discover how, for example, the choice of a
literary convention or the choice of particular nouns or verbs alter Szymborska’s universum
and its ontology. The process of translation will be seen here less in terms of Cavanagh’s
somewhat defeatist “art of losing” and more in terms of the act involving a series of difficult,
but necessary decisions, such as a careful selection of the most adequate translation
strategy. The translator acts as a mediator and a bridge-builder, but he or she also becomes
a creator in his own right; to cite the words of Pietro Marchesani (Culture.pl, 2012), Italian
translator of Szymborska’s poems, he or she is like a “boatman who unites, one who
approaches, linking, overcoming obstacles, one culture to another culture [...] This ferryman
places this burden upon himself to decide what is essential and what is not essential.”
“Urodziny” may certainly be seen as a poem that has the capability to challenge its
prospective translator by exuding its difficult “untranslatable” allure. In her poem
Szymborska was indeed able to “master the world in a few lines of verse” with perfection,
also in the most literal way. In “Urodziny” she alternates two central images: one of them is
the vivid and often comical imagery of a remarkably diverse, unbridled and untamed world,
the other – a vignette of a familiar situation of getting birthday gifts that is lightly, almost
nonchalantly sketched in the speaker’s monologue. As a result, Szymborska (1996, p. 27)
creates an extended metaphor that draws an analogy between the practice of celebrating
one’s birthday each year (and getting plenty of birthday gifts) and celebrating life itself in the
act of being born into this world and living in it:
Tyle naraz świata ze wszystkich stron świata:
moreny, mureny i morza, i zorze,
i ogień i ogon i orzeł i orzech –
jak ja to ustawię, gdzie ja to położę?
Poetry of Excess and the Art of Creating Anew: Wisława Szymborska’s “Urodziny” and its English Translation
176
Te chaszcze i paszcze i leszcze i deszcze,
bodziszki, modliszki -- gdzie ja to pomieszczę?1
The impact of the poem owes much to a skillful juxtaposition of a serious existential
enquiry with the playful exploration of the whole gamut of emotions and reactions
accompanying a familiar situation – a strategy not unusual for Szymborska. But this is hardly
enough for the poet here, it seems, and the poem’s joyful celebration of the bizarre excess is
taken a step further. The superabundance of vegetation, diversity of landscapes and
peculiarities of the existing flora and fauna are also competing here with the peculiarities
and idiosyncrasies of the poet’s language: Szymborska dazzles and charms the reader with
her frequent, “excessive” use of stylistic literary devices such as alliteration or consonance,
with her puns and aptly chosen idiomatic expressions.
Szymborska’s “joke,” her evocative depiction of a familiar situation and of the emotions
that accompany it, serves as a means to introduce the not-so-familiar, i.e. a long list of
objects, plants and animals that may be found on earth, and thus to explore the twofold
implication of her title, “Urodziny” (“Birthday”). Apart from the numerous examples of
linguistic acrobatics testifying to the endless possibilities of sound in language, the poet puns
and sets side by side, for comical effects, objects that are strikingly different, although their
names sound similar. Delicate flowers (“bodziszki” – “geranium flowers”) are paired with
notorious animals (“modliszki” – “praying mantises”) and butterflies are placed in the
neighborhood of gorillas. Abstract nouns (“popłoch” – “scare”) are put next to particular
species of flora (“łubin” – “lupine”), and then it is suggested that they both may easily fit into
a solid, material container such as a vase or a jug (“dzbanek”). The species typical of Polish
flora and fauna (“żubr” – “wisent,” “orzeł” – “eagle,” but also “bratek” – “pansy” and
– gorilla,” “modliszka” – “praying mantis,” “murena” – “moray eel”). One of the puns
involves the idiom “szkoda zachodu”: the word “zachód” may be understood here either as
“sunset” or “trouble” and thus the expression may function on two levels. Yet another pun
consists in evoking the number that can be associated with the name of an object and in
assigning value to this object accordingly – although the objects themselves are hardly
1 All further quotations from “Urodziny” after Szymborska, W. (1996). Sto wierszy – Sto pociech / Hundert Gedichte – Hundert Freuden. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, p. 27.