Lesya Ukrainka’s Poetry in Kazimierz Andrzej Jaworski Translation

Abstract

Kazimierz Jaworski began to translate Lesya Ukrainka’s works in the mid-1950s. The first translations were published in the ninth issue of “Kamena” magazine from 1956, in the section From Ukrainian Poetry. K. A. Jaworski’s Translations, and in the fifteenth issue from 1958. All Jaworski’s translations of her works were included in the third volume of his Pisma, entitled Przekłady poezji ukraińskiej, białoruskiej i narodów kaukaskich (Translations of the Poetry of Ukraine, Belarus and the Caucasian Nations), published in 1972 in Lublin. It included nine poems by Ukrainka from her early books of poetry На крилах пісень (On Wings of Songs, 1893), Думи і мрії (Thoughts and Dreams, 1899), Відгуки (Echoes, 1902).

Ukrainka’s poems in Jaworski’s translations are a quintessence of her poetic works. Both the selection of poems and the manner of translating them were carefully considered. The poet from Lublin did not avoid reflexive works, poems about existential matters and those concerning the role of the poet in the society. Larysa Kosach’s lyricism in Jawirski’s translations is exceptionally expressive and dynamic. It is the result of the translator’s strategies on the plane of pragmatic and emotional-stylistic meanings.