Ognisko Polskie – Polish Hearth Club and Polish Cultural Institute invite to the lecture: „Let me Explain Myself: on the Intimate Art of Literary Translation” – Charles Kraszewski in conversation with Dr Jolanta Rzegocka.
T.S. Eliot once said that books are made from other books. These words can also be applied to identities: each book is the expression of its author as well as the culture, which in turn formed that writer. Furthermore, the books that we read form our personalities, our approach to the world and to life. In his lecture, C.S. Kraszewski, poet and translator of Polish literature, considers in conversation with English philologist and theatre historian Jolanta Rzegocka the role of translations as an expression of the source culture in the reality of the target culture.
How should Poland be presented to the broader English world through the translation of her key authors? To what degree do the predilections of the translator himself influence his decisions concerning which poet to translate, and which to pass by? The art of translation can also be a subjective enterprise, and the collected works of the translator also, presumably, offer an eloquent witness to his own person. Illustrations of the above theses will be presented from Kraszewski’s translated works, which include authors ranging from Stanisław Wyspiański to Tadeusz Kantor and Witold Wirpsza.
Charles Stephen Kraszewski
Charles Stephen Kraszewski (1962, Pennsylvania) is a literary translator from the Polish, Czech, and Slovak, as well as a poet creative in both English and Polish. Among his translations of the classics of Polish literature one may mention Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Krasiński and Wyspiański. Shakespeare’s Globe in London realised his translation of Jan Kochanowski’s Dismissal of the Grecian Envoys in June of 2019 as part of its „Read, not Dead” programme. He frequently collaborates with the London publishing house Glagoslav, where his two most recent translations appeared in autumn 2019: the Mouseiad, the Monachomachia, and other mock epics of Ignacy Krasicki, as well as the collected poems, theatrical and theoretical works of Tytus Czyżewski. A great admirer of the theatre of Tadeusz Kantor, he has translated all of Kantor’s theatrical scores into English, which are regularly made available to foreign researchers at the Cricoteka archives. He has published three volumes of original poetry in English: Diet of Nails, Beast and Chanameed; a volume of his verse in Polish, Hallo Sztokholm, is in preparation. He is a member of the Union of Polish Writers Abroad (London) and the Association of Polish Writers (SPP, Kraków branch).
Jolanta Rzegocka
Jolanta Rzegocka (b. 1975) – early modern theatre and drama scholar. Honorary Lecturer at the Department of English Language and Drama (UCL), Associate Professor of Anglo-American Literature at the Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków, Poland. She obtained her PhD in medieval studies from Central European University, Budapest (2005). She has worked on late medieval Biblical theatre in Poland, Polish-English cultural relations in the seventeenth century, civic virtues in early modern theatre and modern Central European literature. Her other scholarly interests include education through drama and literature and mental health. She has recently co-edited a volume on book circulation and cultural exchange between Elizabethan England and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Speaks English, Russian, Polish and Lithuanian.
This event is organised by The Polish Cultural Institute in London in collaboration with Ognisko Polskie – (The Polish Hearth) in London and The Union of Polish Writers Abroad.
WHEN: Friday, March 06, 2020. Time: 7pm for 7:30pm
WHERE: Ognisko Polskie – Polish Hearth Club, 55 Princes Gate, London SW7 2PN
TICKETS: Member Price: £5, non-member Price: £10: here
Entry price includes drinks reception.
