Poetry as a continuous struggle between joy and hopelessness: On the Spanish and Galician translations of Adam Zagajewski’s selected poems

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24197/her.26.2024.283-308

Keywords:

Poetry, translation, Spanish, Galician, Adam Zagakewski

Abstract

The purpose of the essay is to reflect on the role of creativity in the translation of Adam Zagajewski’s poetry. We intend to carry out a contrastive analysis between two original poems (“Walizka” and “Ziemia”) and their Spanish and Galician translations – by Xavier Farré and Bartosz Dondelewski and Lidia López Teixeiro, respectively – to determine whether the interpretation stimulates creative thinking in translators, and whether the impact of poetry on creativity varies according to the work we read and then subject to linguistic and aesthetic negotiations. Due to the language of the article, we also use English translations by Clare Cavanagh for our study. As a starting point we take the notion of “lateral thinking”, proposed by Edward de Bono and recognized by Albrecht Neubert as very useful in the process of discovering new possibilities in translation. This approach will make it possible to recognize that recreational potential can be revealed in both a literal and free translation. We will also consider whether the Polish lines can be a part of the target poetic contexts with an analogous expressiveness.

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Published

2025-01-17

Issue

No. 26 (2024)

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ARTICLES

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