Poezja wciąż uwikłana najnowsze tłumaczenia liryki Rudyarda Kiplinga na tle jej wcześniejszej recepcji przekładowej w Polsce

Abstract

The article discusses the latest Polish translations of verses by Rudyard Kipling and their relations with current literary, cultural and ideological discourses in Poland. Retrospective recapitulation of the manners the poetry of British Nobel Prize Laureate was interpreted and analyzed throughout its history clearly suggests at least one common pattern in critical and translational perception of Kipling’s texts. After the years at the turn of 19th and 20th Centuries, when his poetry had been marginalized by Polish publishers as supporting colonial politics of European empires, his poetical works – for the same reason – were often translated and eagerly printed during the interwar period. Ostracism for his “imperialistic” agenda after the Second World War in the communist state of People’s Republic of Poland only slightly changed after the political turn in 1989, since the translations of Kipling’s writings remained sparse and occasional due to the popularity of postcolonial studies among Polish readers and critics. Numerous of the latest translations also link Kipling’s poetry to Polish social and political context – often as a result of arbitrary changes introduced by the translators in the target texts.