Zuzanna Ginczanka’s poems are definitely of a different kind than what I am used to reading. Her poems are heavy, rhythmic, and serve historical documentary purposes, like mentioned in the Irena Grudzinska-Gross article, “[h]er poem was realistic enough to serve after the war as documentary evidence at a trial of a couple of her tormentors – quite an unusual role for a piece of literature.”
I am used to reading poems that are not as dense in the historical information it carries–the Hyakunin Isshu, my bread an butter anthology, has a word limit and is traditionally only made to express the astonishment one feels towards a certain natural scenery or their burning longing for someone. I tried my hands at translating some of these poems and the main difficulty that I had encountered was balancing the preciseness and conciseness–do I want it to be as accurate as possible or as terse and sweet as possible?
In the discussion of translating Ginczanka’s poemsi in Eve Bigaj’s article, she mentioned that some translations of her poems “don’t necessarily have to be bad” to “not sound well in [her] ear”. It isn’t just the rhyme that is intricate woven in a Slavic language a challenge that translators have to face, but also the emphatic beat that is hard to carry over. I do not read polish but from the poems translated by Joanna Huss, I was able to enjoy the beats of the poem that adds a lot of power to the poetry covering topics such as life and death, victory and defeat, and heart and passion. I can’t very well what type of beat it is that is employed in these English translations, but the sentences roll off the tongue and are very rhythmic to read.
With that, I will end with a question for Professor Elliot. In the poem “physiology”, there is a line that goes like: “I am happy: this is life! (exclamation point)” Why does there need to be a “(exclamation point)” when there is one “!” already?
Jiayi
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