Living in Translation: Polish Writers in America by Halina s> Stephan (review)

Abstract

732 SEER, 82, 3, 2004 It is a myth, often refuted by Bykau and others, that relatively close languages are easy to translateone into another. This undoubtedly appliesto the process of putting Belarusianinto Russian. The 'false friends'beloved of language text books are here a danger to be avoided in syntax and idiom, whilst particular problems are created for translatorsby the lexical inventiveness of severalof the best poets, includingRazanau and the doyen of them all, Ryhor Baradulin (b. I935). On the whole, however, the standard of translationhere is admirablyhigh. In the I96os Bykauitook to puttinghis own worksinto Russian to avoid Bowdlerizationat the translationstage, but those who do it in this anthology presumably have other reasons. They include a majorhistoricalnovelistwho has recentlytaken up poetry, Uladzimier Arloui (b. I953), and a talented poet and dissidentAleh Biembiel (b. 1939) who in 2000 abandoned the world for life as a monk. Biembiel is one of seventeen poets here not included in the Krasai sitaanthology, which may, perhaps, be takenas furtherconfirmationof Belarus'srichpoetic resources. This bilingualanthology isa timelyandworthwhileenterprise,well selected and edited, with a good overallstandardof translations.It may be hoped that, at the beginning of a new century, it will go some way towards putting Belarusianpoetry on the map. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Stephan, Halina (ed.). Livingin Translation: PolishWriters inAmerica. Studies in Slavic Literatureand Poetics, 38. EditionsRodopi, Amsterdamand New York,2003. 382 pp. Notes. ?78.oo: $93.00 (paperback). HALINA STEPHAN has done a finejob of editing sixteen essays into a unified anthology on Polishexile writingin America, between the mid-I96os and the late i980s. The professed aim of revising and updating the image of wellknown Polish intellectualsand artistsis most fitting, especially in view of the past decade's many new perspectives on the exile experience as such; or, as clarifiedin the volume's concluding article,given 'thatthe traditionalnotions of exile as treason or loss no longer apply in today's cultural moment of globalization and postmodernism' (George Z. Gasyna, p. 33I). The case studies contained in Livingin Translation. PolishWriters inAmerica focus on the ambivalence of the writer'sprofile resulting from her or his engagement in two (or more) differentcultures.More precisely, they examine the degrees of culture transfer,border straddling,benefits and disadvantagesresultingfrom a transcultural existence; for example, those who became expatriates in response to a totalitariansystem, the 'People's Poland' they had left behind, and who also had to deal with the equally oppressivecommercialismof their new country. Aftera twofold introduction,in which the editor'sown surveyis felicitously complementedby Beth Holmgren'stracingof how, successfullyand otherwise, post-war Polish emigre writers endeavoured to produce and promote their workin the US, the book opens with a section on poets as culturalmediators. Bogdana Carpenter, who investigates Czeslaw Milosz's cross-fertilizing REVIEWS 733 relationswith American poetry, is followed by Clare Cavanagh who explores the contributory aspects of the exilic experience for Stanislaw Baranczak's poetics of displacement;FrankKujawinskiand Tomasz Tabako present their joint 'Field Guide to Tymoteusz Karpowicz', while Regina Grol deals with affirmativeeroticism in the poetry of Anna Frajlich,herself a contributor to thisvolume. In the next section, which addressestheAmericanizationofprose writers,Thomas GladskyarguesthatJerzy Kosinski'swritings,obsessedwith homelessnessas they are, exemplify 'the essence of the post-modernistversion of immigrant literature' (p. I37); Ewa M. Thompson shows the stages of Leopold Tyrmand's self-definition as an emigre writer, while assessing his attempts to contribute to American culture his distinctive Polish experience and knowledge; Roman Koropeckyjexamines classicallyin-between figuresin Marek Hiasko's semi-fictional Letters fromAmerica (Listyz Ameryki, I967-68), suggestingthat the author re-imaginesan America that functionsas a kind of 'anti-utopia'of brutality,misogyny and latent homoeroticism;Anna Frajlich traces Henryk Grynberg's'Quest for Artisticand Non-ArtisticTruth' against the universalunderstandingof the twentieth-centuryJewish experience; and, Madeline Levine offers an intriguing and well-argued analysis of Eva Hoffman's 'shrewd' i 980s-adaptation of her traditional immigrant'stale 'to contemporary intellectual fashions and sensibilities through a modified postmodernnarrativestructureand skilfullyintegratedelements' (p. 2 I6). The anthology'sthirdsection targetsthe stage asvirtualhomeland. AllenJ. Kucharski, in his excellent 'Ardenand Absolute Milan: Jan Kott in Exile', compares this theatre critic andperformance theorist including his relationship to Shakespeare with other Polish emigre writers, notably Witold Gombrowicz; Tamara...