Przekład w służbie studiów literackich: Waleria Marrené-Morżkowska

Abstract

The paper presents the activity of Waleria Marrené-Morżkowska as that typical of women who aspired to be present in literary circles at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. She was a novelist, publicist, literary critic and women’s activist who also devoted herself to translation. She translated from English, French, Italian and German, bringing to the Polish reader’s market some authors who were important but not yet widely known. She published several hundred papers on literary subjects in the most important Polish periodicals. She herself attempted to create a women’s magazine and to build a network of female authors around it. By presenting some facts from her biography and analysing her critical and literary works, we try to show the connection between her translations and her literary studies and the poetics she adhered to. This allows us to define Morżkowska as a a cultural transmitter who promoted foreign literatures through translations and journalism, who was characterised by her knowledge of recent European literature, her progressive mindset, her tolerance and independence of judgement, and who paid a great deal of attention to the social and cultural situation of women.