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Translating Hungarian poetry
Julia Hartwig Poet
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No więc byliśmy... byliśmy zajęci – byliśmy zajęci organizacyjnie, byliśmy zajęci także pisarsko. Właściwie no, Artur w ogóle tłumaczył bardzo dużo. Myśmy się z tego głównie utrzymywali, że tłumaczył różnych pisarzy – poetów właściwie – z języków, które nawet słabiej znał, ale ktoś inny... nikt inny nie chciał się tego podjąć, on to robił, tak że byłaby chyba cała półka zapełniona tymi... tymi przekładami poetyckimi z różnych języków. Na przykład z... z takiego języka jak węgierski to oczywiście trudno było szukać – ktoś znał węgierski, ale nie umiał tłumaczyć wierszy. Myśmy mieli taką wspaniałą... wspaniałą przyjaciółkę Węgierkę, która – Gracja Kerényi, córka słynnego... religioznawcy Kerényiego – która była w obozie niemieckim jako piętnastoletnia dziewczynka i zabrano ją z misiem, i tego misia ona trzymała w obozie, zachowała, co chyba było rzadkością. Ale tam się zetknęła z Polkami i tam się nauczyła polskiego i pokochała bardzo kulturę polską i właściwie jej główne zajęcie to było to, żeby... żebyśmy my dostali antologię węgierskich poetów, a żeby Węgrzy dostali antologię polskich poetów. I myśmy byli przez nią także wynajmowani, że tak powiem do tłumaczenia tych węgierskich poetów z jej pomocą. To znaczy, ona dawała tak zwaną rybkę i była przy nas, żebyśmy mogli zapytać o rytm, jak to wygląda. To jest ryzykowne, ale to nie było innej drogi i po prostu... i ta antologia była bardzo czytywana i moim zdaniem, oni mają też bardzo dobrą poezję – przynajmniej mieli. Nie tylko Polacy – muszę to przyznać.

So we were busy... we were busy organising all kinds of matters and we were also busy writing, Artur was doing a lot of translating. This was our main source of income, the translation of various writers, poets mainly, from languages that he didn't have a good knowledge of but if no one else wanted to take it on, he would do it, so we had a whole shelf filled with these translations of foreign language poetry. For instance, from a language like Hungarian of course it was hard to find... someone might be able to speak Hungarian but they didn't know how to translate poetry. We had a wonderful friend who was Hungarian who – Grácia Kerényi, the daughter of a famous expert on world religions – who'd been imprisoned in a German camp aged 15, and she'd been transported there with her teddy bear, and she had held on to that teddy bear while she was in the camp which was very rare, but she'd met some Polish women there and had learned to speak Polish and came to love Polish culture very much and her main concern was that we should receive an anthology of Hungarian poets while Hungarians should get one of Polish poets. We were 'hired out' by her to translate Hungarian poets with her help. She would give us a rough version and then be there when we wanted to ask about the rhythm of the poem. This was risky but there wasn't any other way and this anthology was very widely read and, in my opinion, they also have very good poetry or at least they had, it's not just the Poles – I have to acknowledge that.

Born to a Polish father and a Russian mother, Julia Hartwig (1921-2017) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and author of children's books. She studied at the University of Warsaw, the Catholic University in Lublin and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Czesław Miłosz called her 'the grande dame of Polish poetry'. Julia Hartwig was one of the few poets in Poland who made masterly use of poetic prose. She translated poems by Apollinaire, Rimbaud, Max Jacob, Cendrars and Supervielle, and published monographs on Apollinaire and Gerard de Nerval. She also translated from English, and published a large anthology of American poetry which she co-edited in 1992 with her late husband, the poet Artur Międzyrzecki.

Listeners: Andrzej Wolski

Film director and documentary maker, Andrzej Wolski has made around 40 films since 1982 for French television, the BBC, TVP and other TV networks. He specializes in portraits and in historical films. Films that he has directed or written the screenplay for include Kultura, which he co-directed with Agnieszka Holland, and KOR which presents the history of the Worker’s Defence Committee as told by its members. Andrzej Wolski has received many awards for his work, including the UNESCO Grand Prix at the Festival du Film d’Art.

Tags: Poles, Polish poets, , Hungarian poets, German camp, Artur Międzyrzecki, Grácia Kerényi

Duration: 1 minute, 52 seconds

Date story recorded: June 2010

Date story went live: 16 October 2011