Fugaces = Ulotne

Abstract

Tom prezentuje pierwszy polski przekład poezji wybitnej hiszpańskiej pisarki, poetki i korespondentki Sofíi Casanovy (1861–1958), ściśle związanej z Polską poprzez małżeństwo z filozofem Wincenty Lutosławskim. Publikacja zawiera dwujęzyczną edycję zbioru Fugaces [Ulotne] z 1898 roku w tłumaczeniu i z wstępem dr Ludmiły Furman, a także aparat naukowy, bibliografię oraz aneks fotograficzny opracowany przez prof. Jarosława Ławskiego i współpracowników.

The volume is the first Polish language presentation of the poetic works of the outstanding Spanish writer Sofía Guadalupe Pérez Casanova de Lutosławski (born on the 30th of September 1861 in A Coruña, died on the 16th of January 1958 in Poznan). She was a poet, novelist, reporter, essayist, and publicist. She was born in the Spanish region of Galicia, but she was closely connected to Madrid where, thanks to family support and the interest of Alphons XII the King of Spain she gained her education and then started publishing her literary works. Her first volume of 1885 was dedicated to the ruler of Spain. She published three collections of poems: Poesías, Madrid 1885; Fugaces, La Coruña 1898 (2nd edition: Madrid 2017); El Cancionero de la dicha, Madrid 1911 (2nd edition: 1912). She wrote novels, novelettes, short stories, as well as outstanding reportages, articles on the situation in Central and Eastern Europe, in Poland and Russia, for Spanish readers to whom the region was largely unknown. In 1925, she was nominated to the Nobel Prize in literature. In her personal life, she was tied to Poland through marriage with the outstanding Polish philosopher Wincenty Lutosławski (1863–1954), the author of, among others, The Origin and Growth of Plato’s Logic. With an Account of Plato’s Style and of the Chronology of His Writings (London 1897). In 1887, she married Lutosławski, with whom she travelled around the Europe and the world. They stayed, among others, in Tartu, which then belonged to the Russian Empire, in Khazan, and Moscow, and later in London and Krakow. However, she spent the most time first in the Lutosławski family estate in Drozdowo near Łomża, and in the last years of her life – in Poznan. After the break-up of her marriage, from which they had four daughters (one died early and Lutosławski was unable to accept the fact that he did not have any male heirs), she stayed in Poland. There, she survived the Soviet-Polish war in 1920, the German occupation and the years of Stalinism following World War II in the country under the rule of communism. Few of her works, usually prosaic (the novel Doktór Wolski [Doctor Wolski], 1907) were translated into Polish language. As a conservatist and monarchist she did not raise significant interest in Poland after the year 1945. Her works have been rediscovered only in the beginnings of the 21st century, both in Poland and in Spain. The volume presented here contains the original Spanish poems and the Polish translation of the poetic works by Casanova from the second volume of poetry, entitled Fugaces [Eng. The Ephemeral]. The poems were translated and the introduction was written by Ludmiła Furman, PhD., literary theoretician, certified translator, and lecturer, who has been connected with the University of Białystok for years: she has been teaching Spanish language and Spanish literature classes since 2011. She graduated from the Faculty of Spanish and Portuguese Studies of the Warsaw University. In 2008, she defended her doctoral dissertation on female identity and narrative models in the prose of Hispanic American writers of the second literary “boom”. In her academic studies, she focuses on the works of women and issues related to cultural identity in the literature of Spanish language countries. She is the author of the monograph: Identidad femenina y modelos narrativos en la prosa de las escritoras hispanoamericanas del segundo boom, Białystok 2017. The poems, published in the form of a bilingual edition are presented with the original punctuation and spelling from the first edition in the Spanish language. The translator consciously decided not to strive to precisely recreate the form of the poems in terms of rhythm in order to recreate the meaning and to find a new wording in 21st-century Polish language. The immense emotional load of the epithets used and the images created indicated that it was possible to use the prosaic form and white verse in translation. The depth of spiritual experience, the mysteriousness and ambiguity of the message, captured in Casanova’s melodic and rhythmic writing, can also be rendered in rhyme-free form in the Polish translation. The volume also contains a photographic appendix showing the Spanish writer in her era, in Poland and in Spain, and presenting the first editions of her works. The volume has been edited by Prof. Jarosław Ławski, Head of the Department of Philological Studies “East – West” of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Białystok, in cooperation with Dr Hanna Libera, the great-great-granddaughter of Sofía Casanova and Wincenty Lutosławski, a Polish physician and philologist who lives in Essen (Germany). The volume is the 61st volume in the Academic Series of Publications “Przełomy | Pogranicza”.