Mickiewicz przetransliterowany: Romantyczność w tłumaczeniu W. H. Audena

Abstract

The article centers on the English translation of the seminal ballad “Romantyczność”, made in the United States in the 1950s on the occasion of the centennial of Adam Mickiewicz’s death. The author of the translation, W.H. Auden, a well-known and respected poet at the time, described the result of his work as a “transliteration”. He gave us a text that does not retain all the formal features of the original and introduces elements absent from Mickiewicz, but nevertheless constitutes an interesting modernization of the traditional Romantic ballad and thus contributes to its wider recognition in a foreign cultural area.