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September 2012 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1687 medium. Let me mention just one example, The Literary Canon an interesting Web site called Beyond the Canon (http:/ /beyondthecanon.blogspot.com/) devoted to the and selection of “up to 100 that [are] believed to Polish as a Case Study have been under-represented by ” that mean more than “the established, well-exposed classics.” Piotr Wilczek Although the canon of great proposed by Robert Hutchins in the 1930s as a university program and as a hat constitutes a canon? A question series may no longer be acceptable and has been formulated in this way can provoke a altered many times, and while the “” of W variety of answers. A canon may be defined has been studied with suspicion by some as a collection of key works of ; it can refer as just another pseudoconservative effort to preserve a to philosophical, political, and religious texts that a status quo that in fact no longer exists, there still is and particular has come by consensus to regard as will surely always be a tendency to create canons. It foundational. Today the term canon has come to signify may be worth our while to examine the close relations authors and works that either used to be included in between canon creation and the process of translation. literature syllabi or textbooks, or those works that repeatedly appear in standard volumes of the , bibliographies, and . The The of smaller nations have a chance canon has become an issue of much contention in the to begin to function in the “universal” canon only if . The purpose of the debate, interestingly they are published in English translation. enough, has not been (as one might have assumed) about alterations, but instead about comprehending why the canon is as it is, how it was formulated, and how In 2006 a London publisher Bounty Books brought circumstances can alter and condition its supposedly out 501 Must-Read Books. It is a sort of illustrated timeless content. The canon has come to be viewed by album. It has many pictures and is divided into nine some as “the expression of cultural authority created parts (children books, classic , historical books, by other people influential in the past”; it has been , contemporary fiction, literature, fiction, defined as “the space of cultural conflict” and as thrillers, travel ). Each book is discussed on just “debatable ground, the ground of the battle between one page with a brief and a large picture, various groups, practices and institutions”. This usually a cover or an author’s portrait. While the word ongoing “ of suspicion” can produce one canon does not appear, the intention is clear: to provide of two consequences: either a new canon is established, the reader with the list of the 501 most important books or the very notion of a canon is called into question. of all time, masterpieces or “.” Among these As Jeremy Hawthorn noted: “When feminist critics 501 tomes there is only one by a Polish author: Witold started to construct a rival canon or canons, not always Gombrowicz. At the end of a brief description of the as a replacement for the ‘official’ canon but also as an characteristics of Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke, the alternative to it, then this struck at the claim to “highly acclaimed” translation of Danuta Borchardt universality that lay behind the idea of a single canon. gets equal attention. This translation was published for For, in a traditional sense, if there were several canons the first time in 2000 with an introduction by Susan then there was no canon.”[1] Sontag. The next edition in 2005 has on the cover a quotation from an enthusiastic review in the Observer My paper is not devoted to this debate; it has been that describes the novel as a masterpiece. Thus we held in numerous books and academic . As far have here the four necessary elements that I claim make as the notion of the canon is concerned I am neither a it possible for a work of literature from outside the believer nor a nonbeliever. After having read a great English-speaking world to become a part of the canon: deal about the canon I can call myself an agnostic. I a good translation into English made by an already well- am using this notion as a means to clarify my established translator; a well-known publisher (in this presentation, for even if the canon, or canons, do not case, Yale University Press); a recommendation from exist, there is still a tendency to produce lists of a critic who belongs to influential literary circles (in bestsellers, must-read books, books that changed the this case, Susan Sontag); and an enthusiastic review in world, and so on. The same applies to film as an a major literary journal or magazine (Observer). 1688 SARMATIAN REVIEW September 2012 The year 1994 saw the publication of The Western Stanisław Lem, The Investigation and Solaris Canon by Harold Bloom, a distinguished literary critic Zbigniew Herbert, Selected Poems and professor at Yale University. While now in print Adam Zagajewski, Tremor for almost two decades, The Western Canon remains (translated by Renata Gorczynski) the most famous recent attempt to preserve the traditional notion of a pantheon of . Most Polish readers would react to this list with Bloom defended the notion of a universal canon against astonishment. There is not a single pre-twentieth various counterarguments formulated in the American century author. Not Jan Kochanowski, generally system of by—as he called them in accepted as the greatest in the Slavic an 1994 interview for Newsweek—“pseudo-Marxists, world; not Adam Mickiewicz, Poland’s bard and pseudo-feminists, watery disciples of Foucault and Pushkin’s great contemporary. Nor are there the two other French theorists.” Bloom defends a traditional winning novelists Henryk Sienkiewicz understanding of the term canon against practically the (1905) and Władysław Reymont (1924) mentioned in whole establishment of literary . The book assails the list. Moreover, at the very least two great of political and sociological methods of contemporary the twentieth century are missing: Tadeusz Róžewicz literary criticism as well as , especially and Wisława Szymborska, the latter another Nobel when interpreted from a Marxist or radically feminist Prize winner. Here is where any literate Pole’s eyebrows perspective. Bloom makes every effort to redeem the would really go up: if the selection had to be a aesthetic value of literature as determinative, and minuscule six, why include Adam Zagajewski? A good therefore privileges a method based on poet, yes, a sophisticated intellectual, unquestionably— penetrating the text in search of artistic merit rather but does he really deserve to be one of the six greatest than for social, political or moral meaning. His names in twentieth-century Polish literature, never collection consists of twenty-one essays that discuss mind representing its total contribution to the canon of works by Shakespeare, Cervantes, Chaucer, Montaigne, world-worthy writing? How could it happen that such Molière, Milton, Goethe, , , a list, at best deserving the adjective “eccentric” is , , Leo Tolstoi, Ibsen, claimed as canonical by a critic allegedly Sigismund Freud, , , and a knowledgeable and renowned? I cannot resist few other in the Western tradition as the greatest expressing my own astonishment in a classically of the greatest. In the appendices to his work Bloom American way: what in the world was he thinking? mentions a few hundred world literature masterpieces To try to understand, I once approached Adam that in his opinion belong to the canon of classic Czerniawski, a distinguished translator of Polish literature. literature into English and someone who has engaged in polemics with Bloom. I asked him his opinion of In spite of the controversy, Bloom’s ruling concept why the American critic and scholar named only these has been taken on within the realm of Anglo-American six authors. The answer was as follows: he is simply scholarship. But when one starts analyzing it from not familiar with our literature; only these few names outside the English-speaking , his version of have reached his ears. Of course, he cannot be blamed the canon becomes even more contentious. If one goes for a gap in his knowledge, for the man is not capable beyond the spheres of those larger cultures, say French of knowing everything; but he can unquestionably be or Italian, better known to Anglo-American readers and blamed for pretending to know everything. He settles on what from a Bloomian point of view might “squeezed” into the canon almost the whole bulk of be called a “local” perspective, the issues continue to nineteenth-century British so by these criteria get quite intriguing. Let us start with my own point of there should be some place not only for Mickiewicz, view, Polish culture. Among hundreds of authors and Słowacki and Norwid (who are not included) but also works from around the world constituting the canon Malczewski, Lenartowicz and Asnyk. If Krasiƒski were Bloom regards as fundamental, he includes the German and Prus French, The Undivine and following: The Doll would have been included in each European Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium canon a long time ago. Our nineteenth-century literature Under the Sign of the Hourglass was ignored since we did not exist as a state at that Czesław Miłosz, Selected Poems time. The political aspects of canonization should never Witold Gombrowicz, three [sic] be forgotten. September 2012 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1689 Czerniawski’s answer focuses on several factors counterpart was a volume titled Sounds, Feelings, decisive for the presence, or rather absence, of Polish Thoughts, translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert literature in Bloom’s classical canon. Most crucial is A. Maguire and released in 1981. In this case the Poland’s political weakness, especially in the nineteenth publisher was the well-known and highly regarded century when it did not exist as an independent state. Princeton University Press, but this collection of It turns out that if you are a nation without a state (even Szymborska’s poems likewise remained unnoticed until a relatively large one, by European standards) you are 1996, when it was republished after the author’s Nobel disregarded in multiple ways. One of these ways success. concerns the role of literary translation from the “local By , the poetry of Adam Zagajewski perspective” into foreign with international prospered on the market thanks to the influence. It is the translation into world languages that excellent renderings of an influential translator of establishes the grounds for the emergence of local Polish and Russian poetry, the very same Clare values in the classical canon. For many years now I Cavanagh. She is currently on the faculty of have been exploring how the presence of certain Polish Northwestern University. For many years Zagajewski writers on European and American literary scenes has been a visiting professor at American universities, depends on the work of translators. A translator and an first at the University of Houston, later at the University anthologist (who not infrequently are one and the same of Chicago where he now holds a position on the person) are coauthors of the canon to a degree that has Committee on Social Thought. Editions of never been sufficiently acknowledged. Zagajewski’s poetry and essays have consistently been I discuss this issue later in more detail, but first let available in mainstream American bookstores, while us return to Bloom’s list. For Polish readers this set of his new poems have often made their debut in either names and titles is certainly surprising both in terms The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books. of quantity and quality. The presence of Czesław His most spectacular American success was thus Miłosz, a Nobel Prize winner and that of Zbigniew described in Newsweek Magazine on September 5, Herbert, a highly acclaimed poet and essayist are not 2011: unexpected, but if the list is limited to only three poets A week after the collapse of the Twin Towers The New why is Wisława Szymborska, another Nobel Prize Yorker ran Polish poet Adam Zagajewski’s “Try to Praise winner not the third choice, or (were we to prove our the Mutilated World” on the final page of its special 9/11 own discernment and not rely on the judgments of the issue. Written a year and a half before the attacks, the poem Nobel committee) Tadeusz Róžewicz? Instead, the nevertheless quickly became the most memorable choice is Adam Zagajewski—a poet less highly statement on the , and arguably the best-known poem regarded from the local Polish perspective. of the last 10 years. A critic writing in The New York Times Book Review in December 2001 subtly mocked its appeal, The reason for Szymborska’s absence seems to be “as if America were entering the nightmare of history for very much in with our premises about which local the first time and only a Polish poet could show us the way.” works make it into the canon, and why: she received Let me quote “the best-known poem of the last 10 the Nobel Prize in 1996, two years after the first edition years” originally published in English by The New of Bloom’s book, and outstanding of her Yorker on September 24, 2001: poetry were published widely in the United States only after the 1996 Nobel Prize. View with a Grain of Sand appeared that year; the translation was a collaborative Try to praise the mutilated world. effort by Stanisław Baraƒczak and his former student Remember June’s long days, Clare Cavanagh. Miracle Fair was published in 2001 and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. and was translated by Joanna Trzeciak. In the United The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. Kingdom Szymborska was barely better known. You must praise the mutilated world. Before the Nobel Prize only Adam Czerniawski had You watched the stylish yachts and ships; made on Szymborska’s behalf the considerable effort one of them had a long trip ahead of it, that translating poetry demands, and he produced a while salty oblivion awaited others. small selection of her poetry titled People on a Bridge. You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, This small book only sparked the interest of a small you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. publishing house, Forest Books. Its American You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together 1690 SARMATIAN REVIEW September 2012 in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Róžewicz, who is hardly known in influential literary Return in thought to the concert where flared. circles, would be replaced by Zagajewski (this might You gathered acorns in the park in autumn change since Norton published an anthology of and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars. Róžewicz’s poetry in 2011). The reason for this Praise the mutilated world “replacement” is that in Britain Róžewicz has Adam and the gray feather a thrush lost, Czerniawski, an excellent British translator, as his and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns. champion, but Czerniawski’s translations, alas, are hardly available in the United States. Adam Zagajewski, by contrast, is quite well known in One more example—a poem written by Wisława American academic circles, well liked because of his Szymborska after 9/11, titled “Photograph from regular presence on American campuses and —thanks Sempember 11” and translated by Clare Cavanagh and to his excellent American translator—well represented Stanisław Baraƒczak: in popular but highbrow American literary journals and magazines. They jumped from the burning floors— These issues became all too clear to me in 1999 when one, two, a few more, higher, lower. a special double edition of The Chicago Review devoted to “New Polish Writing” was being prepared. As a The photograph halted them in life, professor of Polish literature at the University of and now keeps them Chicago I was one of the consultants and coauthors. above the earth toward the earth. The idea was to present works of all written over the previous decade by writers of all generations. Each is still complete, But the editor, Bill Martin (then a graduate student at with a particular face Chicago, now a professor at Colgate University in New and blood well hidden. York) made a fateful revision to the plan. He decided to include poems from Polish poets who were already There’s enough time for hair to come loose, considered “classical” or “canonical” that represented for keys and coins their “greatest” work. I then realized that among the to fall from pockets. four poets he wanted to include there was no room for Tadeusz Róžewicz. Instead, together with the two They’re still within the air’s reach, Nobel winners Miłosz and Szymborska, and the within the compass of places indisputable Herbert (who by that time also had an that have just now opened. influential translator and critic, Stanisław Baraƒczak, championing him in English), Martin decided to include I can do only two things for them— Adam Zagajewski. A compromise was finally reached describe this flight and both Róžewicz and Zagajewski appeared in the and not add a last line. list of contents, but my astonishment remained. How I submit the following for your consideration: today could he not plan to include Róžewicz? I have now “local” (national) literatures begin to function in the supplied you with my then-conclusion, a verdict that I “universal” canon only if they are published in English have seen reinforced since. The answer is, it is all about translation. I have attempted to suggest briefly what translation. could easily be documented at length, namely the extent The author of an anthology is inevitably at least a to which the presence of Polish writers on the American canon contributor, and if he has the status of a Harold and European markets depends on who gets translated, Bloom he is a canon creator as well. If, as in this case, on what and how well, and finally, on just when. The an anthology of recent Polish literature published in role of translators and anthologists as coauthors should the United States becomes the prime source of not be underestimated. Compose a list of the four knowledge about this literature with no alternative greatest contemporary Polish poets published in available, it inevitably becomes “canonical.” We can English and you will find the list is different depending criticize such an anthology, just like we criticize Norton on which side of the ocean it was created. In the United or Oxford anthologies of classical British or American Kingdom Miłosz, Szymborska and Herbert would be literatures: they impose an academic canon of joined by Tadeusz Róžewicz; in the United States September 2012 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1691 fundamental works of literature. Although that issue this issue will inspire readers and publishers to further of The Chicago Review had different goals and acquaintances with Polish literature and culture. ambitions than a Norton anthology, it ended up This editor was conscientious enough to point out the fulfilling a similar role when no other anthologies of obvious limitations of time, space, availability of contemporary Polish literature were available. When translators explicitly, but such caveats tend to get there are no other opportunities to learn about recent overlooked when the anthology represents what is Polish writing, what was intended to be an overview available of Polish literature in English and is included turns canonical and definitive. You will appreciate how on college reading lists. It soon becomes a “canonical” mixed my feelings were a few years later when I saw work. the collection on a required reading list at one of the top Slavic departments in America. As I come to a close, the standard phrase in summary takes on a certain irony as I assert that anthologies of translations are the main sources in the creating and The author of an anthology is inevitably at least a shaping the literary canons. As Armin Paul Frank has canon contributor, and if he has the status of a observed, “Translation anthologies are. . . indispensable Harold Bloom he is a canon creator as well. in the study of translation and literary culture. . . [and they] were, until quite recently, part of a ‘shadow culture’ over-looked, by and large, by cultural critics, The aspiration of the Review’s editors was, of course, literary historians, and translation scholars alike.” A completely different: the idea was to present only newly translation anthology (including selections of poems prepared translations of works of writers of all of one poet translated to another ) is “one of generations, published in Polish between 1989 and the most enlightening and memorable ways of 1999 and unavailable in the United States. This was transferring culture internationally.” The translator/ not supposed to be a representative presentation of new anthologist has great power to impose on the uninitiated Polish literature, and certainly not a judgment about his/her canon of foreign literature. However, s/he needs the best of the best. For starters, there were numerous to be supported by other authorities—publishers, limitations due to the lack of qualified translators and critics, and public figures active in media and cultural to issues. The ultimate selection was a life. The combined efforts and judgments of the subjective amalgam of a series of choices made by the translator, the publisher, and the literary critic are each editor and his advisors, including myself. Let me give crucial for a translation to achieve success. just one example: a large selection by a young female Let me give you one more Polish example of how a , Natasza Goerke, was included because the editor little-known work can become successful abroad if such of the anthology was her translator and admired her a combination exists, but can also be a failure if a work. She has never been popular in Poland among translation is good yet external support of this kind is critics and readers, yet based on the Chicago Review lacking. Laments, a series of poems written by the Natasza Goerke looks like a canonical writer. Polish Renaissance author Jan Kochanowski, is now In his introduction the editor of the anthology wrote: considered to be a masterpiece of world literature. It was translated into English by Adam Czerniawski; the Although I had some naive hopes of being translation was published in 1996 by a Polish university “comprehensive” at the beginning of this project, circumstances and my own increasing familiarity with the press. This publication went almost unnoticed in wealth of work out there have made it clear that even with English-speaking countries. The revised version over seventy-five contributors contained in a whopping four published in 2001 by a small academic publisher in hundred pages, this collection is far from complete. There Oxford received a few reviews in literary journals. Like are many writers I would have liked to include here but was the first edition published in Poland, it did not have a unable to for the usual reasons of time, space, and chance for a wider reception, but this second time for organizational fray; and many important names have been a very different reason: already in 1995 both Faber left out due to the somewhat arbitrary restriction of including and Faber in London, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in only work written or published since 1989. Nevertheless, New York had published the Laments translated by this special issue is “the most comprehensive” of any Seamus Heaney, a Nobel Prize winning poet, and by collection of contemporary Polish writing to date; and whether or not that criterion in itself has validity, we hope Stanisław Baraƒczak, a poet and professor at Harvard University. The authority and prestige of the publishing 1692 SARMATIAN REVIEW September 2012 houses and translators themselves, the combination consisting of four great “brand names” (Faber and Imperiological Studies Faber; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Harvard; Nobel) meant that even the Oxford edition of Czerniawski’s A Polish Perspective translation, by many experts considered to be better than the work of Baraƒczak and Heaney, passed almost By Andrzej Nowak. Kraków: Societas Vistulana unnoticed, often barely mentioned in the reviews of (www.vistulana.pl), 2011. 239 pages. Bibliography. the “Harvard-Nobel” team. Under such circumstances, ISBN 978-83-61033-46-2. Hardcover. two other translations published later by small Polish publishers and translated by Professor Michael MikoÊ Margaret Peacock of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and by a ince the partitions of the late eighteenth century, young Irish translator, Barry Keane, had no chance to Sthe Polish population has struggled to understand be noticed. the nature and legacy of empire. In particular, they have wrestled with the pivotal role that Polish perceptions

The combined efforts and judgments of the of victimhood have played in shaping national identity. translator, the publisher, and the literary critic are Andrzej Nowak has undertaken a difficult project each crucial for a translation to achieve success. attempting to chronicle how Polish victimhood has played both a constitutive and a destructive role in shaping Polish identity. He has endeavored to provide Without the four factors of an influential translator, a more nuanced understanding of the negotiations of well-known publisher, the recommendation of a power that have continued over the centuries between respected public intellectual, and enthusiastic reviews the centralizing Russian/Soviet state and those in prestigious journals and magazines, even the greatest countries that have occupied the vital margins of the masterpieces remain unknown in the mainstream empire. In so doing, he has opened the for further market, the way Szymborska’s poems were until 1996, exploration in the burgeoning field of Imperiology. or Kochanowski was for centuries, or as Róžewicz Imperiological Studies offers a set of loosely remains until this very day. Together with Miłosz— connected chapters that deal with a number of pressing who, remember, had been living in California for much questions in the history of Russo-Polish relations. Little of his life prior to the Nobel, a professor at a prestigious is given in the way of an over-arching argument in the American university—the best known Polish poet is book’s four-page introduction. Instead, the reader is the ’s Adam Zagajewski. Rumors asked to approach each chapter as a self-contained have circulated for many years that he has been a . The chapters cover a wide range of topics, some serious candidate for a Nobel Prize, especially in 2010 of which are more successful than others. The first and 2011, based on one of the most reliable sources of chapter, for instance, begins with a lengthy and often information in these matters, the bookmakers’ services seemingly tangential on ’ story on (serwisy bukmacherskie). Zagajewski has not received Iphigenia in Tauris. Professor Nowak argues that this the prize yet, but if he ever does we will have a better ancient can serve as a blueprint for appreciation of how it came to pass. Professor Clare understanding the nature of the Russian imperial Cavanagh, his translator into English, should share this relationship with Poland and provides an explanation success with him. ∆ for what he calls an “ of violence” that This lecture was delivered at Cleveland State University has historically shaped Russia’s interactions with its on 31 January 2012. neighbors. NOTES [1] Jeremy Hawthorn, “Canon,” in Hawthorn, A Glossary Subsequent chapters examine how Russian elites of Contemporary (London: Edward Arnold involved in the imperial project in the eighteenth and 1922, 26 (Hawthorn’s italics); also Paul Lauter, Canons and nineteenth centuries took the lessons that they learned Contexts (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); from their work in the western parts of the empire and Herbert Lindenberg, The History in Literature: On Value, applied them to the south, and vice versa. He chronicles , Institutions (New York: Press, how Russia had developed an overarching imperial 1990); Andrea Lanoux, Od narodu do kanonu. Powstawania style by the nineteenth century that included turning kanonów polskiego i rosyjskiego romantyzmu w latach 1815- 1865 (Warszawa: Instytut Badaƒ Literackich PAN, 2003).