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Problemy z konstrukcją odbiorcy w polskich przekładach poematu Song of Myself Walta Whitmana

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Studniarz S.

Acta Neophilologica

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2013

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issue XV/2

191-202

EN

The subject of the article is the question of rendering the addressee in the Polish translations of Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, in which a certain indeterminacy in the shaping of the recipient can be observed. The crucial distinction between the intratextual addressee and the extratextual addressee projected by the text, based on the typology proposed by David Herman, allows taking into consideration the personal reader as the communicative partner of the speaker in the poem. Initially, the Polish translation of the poem by Andrzej Szuba projects a community as the addressee, whereas from the translation by Ludmiła Marjańska the image of the individual recipient emerges. However, further on in the translation by Szuba the collective addressee changes into the single one, whereas in the translation by Marjańska the opposite process takes place because in the final section the individual addressee turns into the collective one. But it is not an unspecified community that is the participant of the communicative situation projected by the text; it is an individual, it is each personal reader. It is the individual extratextual addressee that is the beneficiary of the poetic undertaking. Unfortunately, the existing Polish translations are not conducive to the understanding of the role assigned to the extratextual addressee by the text, and make it hard for the Polish reader to form a proper mental image of the recipient projected by the poem.

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In Search of a Modern Epic: on the Generic Status of Walt Whitman’s song of mysel

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Studniarz S.

Acta Neophilologica

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2005

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issue VII

63-76

EN

The aim of the article is to show the affinities of S ong o f M y self by Walt Whitman, an American Romantic poet, with the classical epic poem, on the basis of the theory of genre evolution propounded by such Polish scholars as Ireneusz Opacki, Michał Głowiński and Andrzej Zgorzelski. The first part discusses the status of S ong o f M y self as an epic poem as it is perceived by American literary historians. Then the extensive analysis of the poem’s elements and devices is conducted, pointing to their roots in the classical epic. However, the dominant tendency in the poem is the strategy of simultaneous evocation and subversion of the epic tradition. As a result, S ong o f M y self emerges as an innovative poem, a precursor to the later Modernist ‘long poems’, and serves as the link between the classical epic poem and the extended poetic works or sequences of the twentieth century. In the final analysis, the role of S ong o f M y self is seen to consist in harking back to the tradition of classical epics on the one hand, and in its radical modification, and thus it seems to launch a new poetic genre.

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LOST IN THE TEXTUAL MAZE? CONCEALMENTS AND DOUBLINGS IN PETER STRAUB’S MR. X

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Studniarz S.

Acta Neophilologica

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2010

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vol. XII

193-202

EN

The article explores the textual intricacy and the epistemological uncertainty projected by the 1999 novel of Peter Straub titled Mr. X. Already the title of the novel hints at secrecy, hidden identities, and cryptic messages. Indeed, the novel seems to be conceived as a cryptogram and a kind of literary “Russian doll”. This applies as much to the person of the narrator as to the construction of the narrative, its layers upon layers of secrecy and deception. This cryptic character of the novel is reinforced by the lack of closure and the ambiguity of the ending: “the fog” that shrouds everything as well as “undecipherable signs” that Ned meets along the way serve as a trope that projects the implied reader’s loss of certainty. The sense of being lost in the textual maze is compounded by the abundant instances of doubling and mirroring in the text. This is first observed in the composition of the novel as the dual-level narrative, consisting of the part narrated by Ned, and of the diary of Mr. X, the mysterious figure seen by Ned in his dreams, later revealed to be his father. The two, Ned and Mr. X, in their own peculiar ways act out the same pattern: Ned’s quest to find out the identity of his father is paralleled by his father’s (futile) attempts to confirm his own unearthly origins. However, duality is most powerfully expressed by the motif of doppelganger: Ned, the narrator, in time realizes the existence of his not-entirelyhuman brother, Robert, his “shadow self”, his “dark half”. Finally, even the novel, Mr. X, finds itself reflected in the work of fiction written by Mr. X, a story titled Blue Fire. Blue Fire, introduced at length into the narrative, serves as its specular text, mise en abyme, encapsulating its two central themes, as verbalized by the narrator: “the obsession with the ancestral house” and “the flight from and the pursuit of the Other”.

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PIĘĆ ŻYWOTÓW KRUKA, CZYLI O POLSKICH PRZEKŁADACH WIERSZA THE RAVEN EDGARA ALLANA POEGO

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Studniarz S.

Acta Neophilologica

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2011

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vol. XIII

281-302

EN

The article examines five Polish translations of the famous ballad The Raven written by Edgar Allan Poe. The translations come from different periods; the efforts by Przesmycki and Beaupre belong to the period of “Młoda Polska”, and date roughly from the tum of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The translation by Kasiński, although it was created a few decades later, still shows a clear influence of the specific aesthetics of the “Młoda Polska” movement. These three translations, in spite of numerous differences, form quite a uniform set, with the dominant underlying strategy of domestication, which manifests itself in “ennoblement” and “clarification”. By contrast, the two contemporary translations, by Barańczak and by Kozak, lack the stylistic homogeneity of their predecessors. They are also characterized by the various departures from the original, motivated by the different subjective approaches taken by each translator. None of the five examined Polish translations has attained the satisfactory degree of equivalence with respect to the original text.

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Problemy z konstrukcją odbiorcy w polskich przekładach poematu Song of Myself Walta Whitmana

In Search of a Modern Epic: on the Generic Status of Walt Whitman’s song of mysel

LOST IN THE TEXTUAL MAZE? CONCEALMENTS AND DOUBLINGS IN PETER STRAUB’S MR. X

PIĘĆ ŻYWOTÓW KRUKA, CZYLI O POLSKICH PRZEKŁADACH WIERSZA THE RAVEN EDGARA ALLANA POEGO