Władysław Tarnawski

Władysław Tarnawski (1885–1951) was one of Poland’s first Professors of English Literature. Manuscripts survive of his translations of all Shakespeare’s plays, three of which – Antoniusz i Kleopatra (1921), Romeo i Julia (1924) and Juliusz Cezar (1925) – opened a new series published by the National Library, along with commentary by the translator. Five further translations appeared posthumously in the same series, edited by other experts: Hamlet (1953), Ryszard II (1956), Król Lear (King Lear, 1957), Burza (The Tempest, 1958) and Sen nocy letniej (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1970).

Tarnawski studied Classics and Polish at Lviv University, but completed his degree at the Jagiellonian University, where he was also awarded a PhD in 1913 for a thesis entitled ‘On the Polish translations of Shakespeare’. It was the first monograph dedicated to the subject and an essential resource for researchers over the next several generations. In 1924 Tarnawski took up the chair of English Philology at Lviv University and in 1946 moved to the Jagiellonian University. In December of the same year, he was arrested as a result of his activities in support of the Eastern Lands Committee. In 1947 he was sentenced to ten years in jail. He continued to work on his Shakespeare translations in prison, where he ended his days.

In accordance with contemporary ideas about translation, Tarnawski worked in the normative tradition, judging severely the various errors and shortcomings of his predecessors in the hope that his philological efforts would eventually bring about an ideal new translation. As time went by, semantic precision and metrical discipline became the most important requirements of his own approach. He was opposed to the archaic and recommended cutting wordplay, if no suitable Polish equivalent could be found. His translations used an iambic line. He went into detail about his own working principles. He gradually relaxed his metrical rigour a little in favour of remaining faithful to the images in the original.

Tarnawski’s first translation, inaugurating the new series, received multiple reviews, and typically favourable ones. Post-war judgements on his work appeared in the broader context of a debate about Polish translations of Shakespeare, usually when theatres were looking for appealing texts. At this juncture, opinions on Tarnawski’s philological translations were quite severe. After his death, the Shakespeare expert Stanisław Helsztyński became an advocate for his work. It was thanks to his efforts that further plays appeared in the National Library series.

Tarnawski’s work has been staged sporadically, usually as part of a compilation with other translations.