Translating Blake’s Jerusalem into Polish

Abstract

A notice in the online news section of Blake in September 2011 informed about an in-progress translation of Jerusalem into Polish by Rafał Stankiewicz and me. Going against the Polish tradition (which has by now become a habit) of publishing Jerusalem only in the form of selected fragments, we desire to present to the Polish-speaking public the entire “golden string,” giving this string as Blakean a gloss as possible and building a Jerusalem that will be a faithful replica of the original. The purpose of this essay is to elaborate upon these metaphors. I would like to explain the motivation behind our project, speak about the obstacles, and share the encouragements, establishing a context for this testimony of a builder of a replica with some reflections concerning the history of Polish Blake translations.