Interpretation as Utilization. Some Remarks on the Types of Literary Recycling(Hemingway, Kundera, Bieńczyk)

Abstract

From a comparative angle, the article describes the kind of artistic interpretation that canbe called the practice of literary recycling, because it consists in transforming one text into another.Artistic interpretation concerns here the transformation of a given work by another artist,on the one hand to explain it or comment on it, and on the other to create a new work. In thistype of artistic interpretation, a pattern becomes apparent, as its function changes from an inspirationto a dominant. Three contrasting interpretations of Ernest Hemingway’s story The HillsLike White Elephants have been used to exemplify this: Harold Bloom’s in his book How to Readand Why, Milan Kundera’s in his collection of essays Testaments Betrayed, and Marek Bieńczyk’sin The Pink Feeders (in Polish Różowe karmniki), included in his book Container (in Polish Kontener).Bieńczyk takes part in the process of literary recycling in a double sense – as a translatorhe paraphrases Kundera’s interpretation of Hemingway’s story, and as a writer he creates a stylizednarrative based on the Hemingway’s text. The article thus foregrounds the concept of artistic interpretationas a form of utilization.