The culturological elements of A. Mickiewicz’s poem “Pan Tadeusz” and their interpretation translated by M. Rylskyi

Abstract

The article presents the culturological elements used by A. Mickiewicz in the poetic novel “Pan Tadeusz” in order to reflect the traditions and way of life of the Polish people in the XIX century. Parallels were made with the translation by M. Rylskyi, who used the method of synonymy and lexical transformation in relation to Polish realities, preserving the melody of the text, but offering the Ukrainian reader a version close to his culture. In this sense, the translation interpretation can only be an appropriate tool in the process of reproducing elements of Polish culture based on the work of A. Mickiewicz. The main thing in the poem was the image of the Polish nobility, which introduced the Sarmatian traditions into folk life. A special atmosphere was created by ancient Polish cuisine with bigos, coffee and other culinary elements, described in detail in the poem of A. Mickiewicz. Details of the noble banquet, hunting, matchmaking and weddings, internecine wars, mushroom picking, local chambers, local art with Slavophilic motifs, folk dances, Polish folk costumes according to the Sarmatian tradition — these are the markers that define Polish culture in the sense of prominent Polish poet of the Romantic period. Despite the extraordinary artistic value of the Ukrainian translation of “Pan Tadeusz” by M. Rylskyi, it should be noted that cultural elements are not spelled out as clearly as in the original, because they did not constitute a special national value in a foreign language environment. The writer did not depend on the selection of the image of Poland-“Lithuania” as the main category, so patriotic motives due to the loss of insignificant details, significant for the Polish phrases underwent a translation transformation. Instead, for the author of the translation, the liberation aspirations remained key, and Rylskyi subordinated all the vocabulary, syntactic constructions, and stylistically played images to this thematic dominant. This is the significant difference between A. Mickiewicz’s original and his poetic Ukrainian interpretation.