Identities in Transition

The Enkidu Summer Conference 2007

June 1 - 5, 2007

Mexico City

in:

Constructing Cultural Identities – Polish Poetry in English Translation

Bohdan Piasecki

Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies

University of Warwick

United Kingdom

For cultures as for people, identity is something that is constructed. The same culture may have different identities when it is viewed by different groups, identities built out of extant political and cultural policies, public and private agendas, as well as historically conditioned stereotypes. While such a process may elevate the source culture’s role and influence to a level it would never have been able to achieve otherwise, if the elements constituting the carefully arranged system change, the consequences may be dire. 

This paper exemplifies this phenomenon by focusing on the identity of contemporary Polish literature, or more specifically, contemporary Polish poetry, in the eyes of anglophone readers, and its influence on British poets. The first part shows, in a brief overview, how Polish writing has been represented between the end of the Second World War and the fall of communism in 1989, and dwells on the different people and institutions that had a hand in creating the image of Poland as the mythical homeland of poetry that matters, such as Czesław Miłosz, Al Alvarez, the Penguin publishing house, and others. 

Building on the notion of patronage developed by André Lefevere, and the concepts invisibility as described by Lawrence Venuti, it explains the complex process of creating a largely fictional identity, a kind of mythical self, for a whole culture. The second part focuses on the consequences of the above process, by selecting some of the most interesting examples. It begins with an analysis of the publication, by British poet Christopher Reid, of the volume of poetry entitled “Katerina Brac”, wherein he pretended that his own texts were actually translations from a non-existent central European poet. Reid resorted to fake translation in order to appropriate an identity and a voice that he perceived as Polish, and so unavailable to him. The paper then goes on to discuss the ways in which British and American poets and critics, such as Helen de Aguilar and Donald Davie, attempted to amend their own national identities to gain access to a discourse they thought reserved for Polish poetry. The third and final part looks at the consequences of this complex and long-lasting identity construction process now that the elements used for its construction are gone: communism fell, Poland joined the European Union, and the country’s poets are no longer political dissidents. This is achieved by a study of recently published books of Polish poetry, and their reception among readers in the target cultures – thus providing valuable insights into the changing status of Polish poetry and culture, and the ongoing transition process to which it is subjected.

About Bohdan Piasecki

Bohdan Piasecki was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1980. He obtained his Master's degree from the University of Warsaw, with a thesis focusing on the translations of Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert's poetry in English. He is currently engaged in a PhD course at the University of Warwick, UK, studying the process of anthologising contemporary Polish poetry for English-speakers. Bohdan Piasecki is also an active Spoken Word poet and a devotee of capoeira, the Brazilian martial art.