Enough names on the cover already: The 52-year process behind Jerzy Peterkiewicz, Burns Singer and Christine Brooke-Rose’s translations of Cyprian Norwid

Abstract

Using archive materials, this article investigates the decades-long translation process behind the year 2000 Carcanet collection ‘Cyprian Norwid: Poems, Letters, Drawings’. In doing so, it explores the role that translation played in the initial blossoming, and later collapse of, Christine Brooke-Rose and Jerzy Peterkiewicz’s romantic relationship. The translation of Christian mystic Cyprian Norwid’s poetry, from Polish to English, was undertaken for the first time by Brooke-Rose and Peterkiewicz in the 1940s. After a small batch of poems were well received, Peterkiewicz partnered with poet Burns Singer to produce another batch, included in their collection ‘Five Centuries of Polish Poetry’. As divorce proceedings began, Peterkiewicz approached Brooke-Rose with the idea of doing a full collection of Norwid translations, which she accepted. For over half a decade, this was the only communication between the two writers. The project was rejected by publishers in 1976, only to re-emerge in the 1990s, being accepted by Carcanet Press and then lost when their offices were destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1996. Pieced together for a third time, the translations by Peterkiewicz, Brooke-Rose and Burns Singer were finally published in the year 2000. By looking at the process behind these translations, this article hopes to provide insights into the personal aspect of translation work, collaborative translating methodologies and the traces such working processes leave upon the final translations.