The article analyses selected English and German translations of Bolesław Leśmian’s poetry, with a special focus on the solutions regarding versification, rhythm, and language (dialectological structures, syntactical forms and neologisms characteristic of Leśmian’s poetic writing). The translation strategies employed by Sandra Celt, Rochelle Heller Stone, Michael J. Mikoś, David Malcolm, Karl Dedecius, are compared with the solutions used by other translators, including Czesław Miłosz, Janek Langer, Barry Keane, Cathal McCabe, Benjamin Paloff, Anita Jones Dębska, Ryszard J. Reisner, Marcel Weyland, Leo Yankevich, Marek Urban, Marian Polak-Chlabicz, Lorenz Scherlag. The article poses questions about the criteria of effective and congenial translation, and about the methods of domesticating (conventionalizing) translations. Special attention has been paid to the following problems of the translation of Leśmian’s poetry: linguistic innovation, demands of versifi cation, neologisms, references to Polish folklore, intertextual allusions.
The sample of Polish version of this article is available here: https://tekstualia.pl/files/fb7b8888/osinski_d._m._-_filologia_niemozliwego....pdf