Skovoroda’s Poetry Translations into Polish. Theoretical Aspects and Practical Dimensions

Abstract

Walentyna Sobol’s article consists of two parts. The first part retrospects to the first mentions of Skovoroda in Poland – from Bohdan Lepky’s informational textbook (1928) and Dmytro Chyzhevsky’s study The Philosophy of Skovoroda (1934) – to the dramatic resonance of the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian philosopher celebrated in 2022. In the second part of the article, the author focuses on translating some works of the collection Garden of Divine Songs into Polish – in the projection of selected translation theories by Umberto Eco, Eugene Nida, Ezra Pound, and Jiří Levý. The experience of translating Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose by Helena Kostyukovich has been analysed. A comparative analysis of Skovoroda’s poetic works translated by Janusz Trybusiewicz and Jerzy Litwiniuk is supported by observations about the peculiarities of the translation skills of each translator. The complexity and importance of working with ancient texts are emphasised. Among the wide variety of translation concepts, the article’s author believes that the Jiří Levý’s concept is also promising. It is characterised by the desire to give scientific status to experiments on the translation by providing them with specific methods. One proposed method is multiple translations of the same text into a certain language by different translators, and then back-translation into the original language.