„Ile przemilczam, tego nie wypowiem”: o (prze)milczeniu w utworach Wisławy Szymborskiej i ich przekładzie na język niemiecki

Abstract

“How Much I Dissemble I shall not Utter”: on Aposiopesis in the Poems by Wisława Szymborska and Their Translation into German Krystyna Pisarkowa emphasises the importance of means which participate in shaping the expression of emotions in a poetic text, and calls for extracting from the text “essential ingredients from seemingly minor semantic accents” (Pisarkowa 1998: 36). In this article, the author takes this inspiration and analyses how Wisława Szymborska applies silence in her poems as an aesthetic category and an expression of choked emotions, what indicators of silence she uses, and what happens with this silence in the translation of her poems into German by Karl Dedecius. The author concludes that a translator should be able to empathise with emotions and be an intermediary not only for the word, but also for the unspoken.

Keywords

• aposiopesis
• understatement
• poetry translation
• translation of emotions
• emotional prosody