Why did Tadeusz Róźewicz Translate Dragutin Tadijanović’s ‘’Ring’’? (On the Author of Niepokój as a Translator of Serbian and Croatian Poetry)

Review article

Abstract

Tadeusz Różewicz’s work as a translator is limited to a mere half-dozen or dozen-odd more or less successful efforts. He translated individual poems by the Czech poet Jan Pilař, the Serbian poets Vasko Popa and Miodrag Pavlović, the Hungarian writer Sándor Petőfi, and Dragutin Tadijanović. Translated poems of once-called Yugoslavian authors were invested in the poetry of culture, poems focused on “the bright side”, though not devoid of references to the darker side of existence, poems that are trusting in the sense that they turn toward the future with hope, poems “reconciled” “to the wound.” Tadijanović’s Prsten offered him an opportunity to express some convictions which, despite the magnitude of his own doubts, he considered worth upholding or at least giving some consideration. His translation of Prsten can and should be read as a purposefully borrowed quotation.