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So far polysystem theory has not been preoccupied with the question of how far the major changes within one
social and literary polysystem influence other literary polysystems. In this particular case, the question is
whether the major changes in Poland had any impact on the translation of Polish literature into other languages.
The question has two aspects. The
first one concerns textual matters, that is whether the new linguistic and stylistic features of post-1989 Polish
literature are a challenge for translators, and whether the new Polish idiom is reflected in the English versions
of translated books. The second aspect of this question is about the selection of what gets translated and why.
To answer the first question one would have to undertake a systematic corpus research with a sample of
representative texts. However, since the period under consideration is short and the selection of literary texts
from 'small' literatures is always idiosyncratic, the
outcome of this kind of research would not be neither particularly useful nor incisive. Perhaps at this stage
in the evolution of the Polish literary polysystem, it is more important to ask how the response to the Polish
changes is reflected in the change of book selection for translation in relation to the period before 1989.
The first response to the changes in Poland was an expectation on the part of British and also American
publishers that the change will either reveal something that was hidden from the public view by censorship,
or generate a wave of new and exciting writing. In 1993 the now-defunct Forest Books published a collection
of Polish poetry with an emphatic title
Young Poets of a New Poland. In the introduction to the volume, the editor Donald Pirie claimed:
Though this selection of poems may reflect a period of transition rather than a new poetic aesthetic that is the
expression of a very different Polish society, it is surely also true that authentic, convincing poetry is always
located in the transitional and unstable, rather than confined by the predictable. (Machey: 1993: XIII)
Ten years later, an anthology, Altered States (Mengham et al., 2003) was very similar in tone. In fact, the
subtitle of the volume, New Polish Poetry, implied that Poland had a generation of new poets to be discovered.
In both volumes separated by exactly a decade, new was a buzz word, very much in the spirit of how Poland
and the whole of Eastern Europe was represented in the media. However, when we try to assess the impact
of both volumes, we shall see that it was not substantial. Neither of the two publications generated either
individual volumes for the poets included, or a follow-up interest in the whole generation of these poets.
In fact, the mainstream publishers, if they published Polish poetry at all, remained committed to the poets
of the older generation: Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rozewicz, Ewa
Lipska, Adam Zagajewski and Piotr Sommer. Even if we take into consideration publications in small literary
magazines, we can clearly see that Polish poetry ceased to be in demand and that the novelty of Polish
literature had to be discovered in other genres.
In contrast to poetry, the Polish prose, not very well represented before 1989 (perhaps with the exception
of Stanislaw Lem's science fiction and Ryszard Kapuscinski's literary reportage) began to be noticed abroad,
and in a different way from before. In the absence of political criteria for the selection of texts, the UK
publishers began to apply the same criteria to Polish literature as to literature from other countries. There is
now a clear correlation between the translated texts and their reputation in Poland. This reputation is based
on three sets of criteria: an award of a prestigious literary prize (such as Nike Readers' Prize), the long-term
reputation of the writer in Poland, or the media publicity around a book, usually written by a previously
unknown author.
In the first category, that is books awarded prizes in Poland, we have Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day,
House of Night, Joanne Olczk-Roniker's In the Garden of Memory, and Antoni Libera's Madame. Pawel Huelle's
short stories were published in 1991, so his novel Mercedes-Benz had an easier entry into the market, although
the sponsorship by Mercedes-Benz for this novel created a lot of media and marketing publicity for the author
in Poland. Tomek Tryzna's Girl Nobody, and Dorota Maslowska's White and Red are good examples of a new
Polish phenomenon of authors and books
whose reputation is created by publicity and media manipulation.
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