(State)holders of Shakespeare: Czesław Miłosz and Roman Brandstaetter as Translators of Shakespeare Dramas in the Polish People’s Republic
The paper aims to shed light on the relationship between Shakespeare, his translators, and the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The case studies of Czesław Miłosz and Roman Brandstaetter will serve to illustrate both the artistic and supportive function of their translation endeavours completed under the patronage of the communist state. By delving into the rich archival material (published as well as unpublished), I would like to focus on the political and social circumstances that determined Miłosz’s and Brandstaetter’s routes towards translating Shakespeare.
The paper proposes to appreciate the play’s butcheries as an incision into the unstable character of the category of the human. The vividness of the “strange images of death” is thus analysed with reference to the cultural poetics of Elizabethan theatre including its multifarious proximity to the bear-baiting arenas and execution scaffolds. The cluster of period’s cross-currents is subsequently expanded to incorporate the London shambles and its presumed resonance for the reception of Macbeth. Themes explored in the article magnify the relatedness between human and animals, underscore the porosity of the soon to turn modern paradigms and reflect upon the way Shakespeare might have played on their malleability in order to enhance the theatrical experience of the early 17th century. Finally, the questionable authority of Galenic anatomy in the pre- Cartesian era serves as a supplementary and highly speculative thread meant to suggest further research venues.
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