Published: 2025-10-17

On the French Translations of the Poetry of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński

Katarzyna Jopa Logo ORCID
Section: The Benefits and Drawbacks of Linguistic and Cultural Transfer
https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2025.36.01

Abstract

 L’Insurrection angélique (Angelic Insurrection) and Testament de feu (Testament of Fire) are the first and so far only stand-alone volumes of selected poems by Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, published in French translation in 2004 and 2006 respectively, in a joint translation by Claude-Henry du Bord and Krzysztof Jeżewski. The scant critical and literary reception of Baczyński’s poetry in France prompts us to consider the publishing context of the aforementioned translations and to examine the translation strategy employed in them. The aim of this article is to look at this native poetry through the prism of the translation and its paratextual frame (consisting, among other things, of the titles given to these selections of poems, prefaces, and translators’ footnotes), in order to answer the question of how the translation decisions taken by du Bord and Jeżewski, in the broadest sense of the term, may affect the French reader’s reception of the Polish poet’s poetry. The author of the article also devotes attention to some aspects – concerning the book market in France and the translation space – (un)conducive to a wider popularisation of Baczyński’s poetry in France.

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Jopa, K. (2025). On the French Translations of the Poetry of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński. Postscriptum Polonistyczne, 36(2), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2025.36.01

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Vol. 36 No. 2 (2025)
Published: 2025-12-31


ISSN: 1898-1593
eISSN: 2353-9844
Ikona DOI 10.31261/PS_P

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

Licence CC Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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