Kulturowe świadectwa lektury "Sióstr" Josepha Conrada w przekładzie Wita Tarnawskiego

Abstract

The present essay examines Wit Tamawski’s translation of Joseph Conrad’s The Sisters and the debate that followed its publication in Poland as “testimonies of reading” (Rolland Barthes’ term). Wit Tamawski was an eminent Conrad critic and translator. The main interpretative assumption he made while translating The Sisters was that this novel was autobiographical. Likwise, Kazimierz Wyka interpreted this work as autobiographical and deeply rooted in Polish Romantic literature. Contrary to them, Zdzisław Najder dismissed all talk of the novel being autobiographical or based on Polish Romanic literature. He claimed that The Sisters was a text of low artistic value and its roots were in European literature and the Bible. As readers, Tarnawski, Wyka and Najder brought with them their own “baggage” of literary experience. Such a reading-writing (lecture-réécriture) is a testimony to readers’ activity proceeding in divergent directions. The final meaning of the work emerges from ‘cooperation’ between the text and the reader (in this case the translator, Wit Tarnawski, the literary critic Kazimierz Wyka and Conrad’s biographer Zdzisław Najder).