Polish BlakeTranslation, critical description and publication of the collected works of William Blake

Blake was an English poet, printmaker, painter-artist, and a visionary of the Romantic era, who created an original mythology that he developed over several decades. He stands as one of the brightest figures in global humanities, a staunch defender of spirituality and imagination. He was on the front line in the battle against the dehumanization of science, the materialization and commercialization of culture, and the secularization of art, literature, and the human being.

Blake's work has been a profound inspiration for the most distinguished writers, including a surprisingly large group of Nobel laureates in literature (such as Maeterlinck, Yeats, Shaw, Gide, Jiménez, Neruda, Elitis, Miłosz, Brodski, Dylan, and Tokarczuk). Citing Czesław Miłosz’s The Land of Ulro, which was inspired by Blake, the subject of this project is the collected works of a creator who is “one of the few figures distinguishing themselves against the background of the last two thousand years of history.”

Project objectives

The project is dedicated to popularizing William Blake's works within the sphere of Polish humanities. These works represent some of the most outstanding achievements of world culture and hold significant value for various scholarly and artistic disciplines. Currently, many of Blake’s writings have not yet been translated into Polish, and others exist only in fragmented form. Furthermore, some existing translations are virtually inaccessible, as they are scattered across old periodicals and out-of-print books. Beyond issues of accessibility, many texts require fresh translation research. This is because previous translators often fell into one of two categories: either eminent Blake scholars lacking sufficient linguistic or translational expertise, or distinguished translators from English who did not possess a deep knowledge of Blake’s unique mythology. To overcome these challenges, the translation work within this project will be executed by a collaborative team whose combined expertise guarantees high-quality translations, ensuring both fidelity to the content and artistic excellence.

The project envisions the publication of Blake's critically and scholarly edited collected works in four volumes, creating an edition that adheres to 21st-century standards. This edition will feature:

• High-quality reprints of selected illuminated books, where the reproduced original artworks will serve as the basis for translations in a bilingual parallel edition
• Elements of a parallel edition for the Polish translations, which will make it possible to present and analyze selected existing translations that are particularly valuable from the perspective of the history of the artist's reception in Poland.

Video

Watch the video where Professor Eliza Borkowska speaks about the "Polish Blake" project.

The core guiding principle for the translation work is to render the content and structure of each work as faithfully as possible. The main source text for the translations will be the canonical edition of Blake’s works edited by David Erdman. However, the project also envisions a subtle modernization of the translations at the lexical level and a standardization of punctuation for enhanced readability.

The translations will be accompanied by an extensive critical apparatus that will include, among other things:

• Introductions to the individual volumes and collections
• Notes drawing attention to borrowings, quotations, and self-quotations, as well as explaining Blake’s characteristic neologisms, idioms, and other linguistic idiosyncrasies
• A commentary on translation issues, particularly for the works presented in a parallel-text format with existing Polish translations
• An interpretive commentary discussing the interaction between text and illuminations for the poems included in the bilingual parallel edition
• A chronological table illustrating the dynamics of the reception of Blake’s works in Poland.

Significance for Polish Scholarship

From the perspective of Polish literary scholars, the crucial significance of this project stems from its sheer scale. By bringing together, translating, and preparing Blake’s collected works for publication by a single team, the project will achieve:

• Standardization of Terminology: This will make it possible to unify the specialized terminology used across the translations, thereby revealing the continuities and complex interactions between Blake’s different works.
• Facilitation of Future Research: The standardization will greatly facilitate future literary research conducted in Polish, particularly comparative studies.
• Encouragement of Interdisciplinary Studies: The comprehensive availability of Blake’s oeuvre in Polish will also encourage Polish researchers to pursue interdisciplinary studies situated at the intersection of literature, art, and philosophy.

Contribution to International Scholarship

The wide-ranging textual studies planned as part of the project will inspire the creation of new English-language publications. These publications will constitute a significant Polish contribution to international scholarship devoted to William Blake’s work.

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