Literature from literature

(translation as quotation)

Edward Balcerzan

Translated by David Malcolm

in: Edward Balcerzan, Stanisław Barańczak, Literature from literature, , sdvig press, 2020

Abstract

In this 1985 text, Balcerzan debunks some of the misconceptions of what he calls “translation anti-criticism”. According to him, this brand of criticism strips literary translation of its status as art, deeming it to be merely a copy instead of the real picture. This reductionist approach is influenced by the utilitarian function of translation in monolingual societies, which primarily consists of helping readers with no knowledge of a given language to gain an understanding of the original text. In bilingual societies or during the individual process of reading two texts bilingually, however, a literary translation does not need to replace the source text, as translation exists alongside the original. This double role of literary translation leads Balcerzan to construe it in polyphonic terms: one’s word is oriented towards the other’s word, and hence the rhetorical mechanism behind translation is analogous to that of quotation. By recounting “the poetics, composition, and artistic forms of expression of another’s vision of the world,” it can substitute the role of quotation, which also lies in the field of “the poetics of reminiscence”.