From Euphemisms to Vulgarisms: Translating King Lear’s Misogynistic Monologue (Act IV, Scene 6) into Polish

Abstract

The paper investigates the issue how Polish translators of William Shakespeare’s King Lear dealt with rendering Lear’s monologue (Act IV, Scene 6, ll. 107-132), being a misogynistic tirade of the mad king against adultery, sexuality, and women in general. The play was translated into Polish at least fifteen times in the 19th and 20th centuries, beginning with the oldest published rendition by Ignacy Holowinski (1841) and concluding with the most recent one by Jerzy S. Sito (2001). The paper analyses seven selected fragments taking into consideration lexical and stylistic choices made by the translators of the monologue in order to show how changing attitudes to sexual taboo and Shakespearean obscenities affected the translations in question. The analysis reveals the evolution of translators’ attitudes to those issues (also affected by contemporary Shakespearean research): from euphemistic treatment of the topic in the 19th century, through philological translations of Tarnawski and Chwalewik, to unrestricted modern renditions of Slomczynski and Baranczak, and the extreme case of straightforward obscene translation of Jerzy S. Sito