Text and context. English translation of Norwid’s insurgent lyric

Abstract

Norwid’s poem Blessed peace is ambiguous. Those who know the context of its origins interpret its sense as a bitterly ironic reflection upon the course of the January Uprising (1863) and the tendency of Poles to participate in ill-prepared patriotic rebellions. Some reviewers, however, propose to interpret the poem in isolation from the situation which gave origins to it. Then they understand its meaning as cheerful and praising the effort which brings victory. The readers of the translation do not know Polish historical contexts which determine the first interpretation of the original text. Thus they are more inclined to arrive at the second possible interpretation of the poem (the positive one). However, the one and only translation of Norwid’s lyric was published in 1944 and done during World War II by a translator who strove to achieve three separate objectives: that of introducing the Polish poets to the English-speaking world; that of giving access to the Polish ethos as expressed in Polish literature to the students of the Polish thought, customs and manners; and that of assisting the many British students of Polish. Such multiplicity of purpose has forced a compromise in translating which consisted in rendering poetry by prose. This method of translation (although controversial) did not affect the poem’s meaning. What influenced the structure and the sense of its translation was the double address of the bilingual anthology, which was intended for both English and Polish readers. Moreover, it was meant to console Polish soldiers fighting in England and give them hope for victory and regaining their homeland. Thus the translation was placed in the fifth and last chapter of the book: The Dawn of Spring which expressed “the birth of hope, the certainty of a new and better world to come, in which man shall have real freedom and true equality, and Poland take her place again among the great nations”. This very placement of the translation together with depriving it of translator’s commentaries or footnotes explaining all the references of the poem to the Polish history and politics gave it a new, very optimistic meaning. This is in itself paradoxical because the aim of the whole book was to discover or explain the nature of Polishness which has very little to do with optimism.