Napis (Aug 2022)
The issue of the genre of Kolyma stories by Varlam Shalamov and its editions in Polish
Abstract
The article discusses the translations and the history of publishing of Kolyma stories in Poland, from the first underground booklets released in the 1980s’, which contained merely a dozen or so stories selected from the famous London publication, Колымские рассказы [Kolyma stories], published by Mikhail Geller in 1978. They were the first presentations of the work. Thus, for translators, it was essential that such important pieces reached Polish readers as quickly as possible, at least in excerpts. One of the translators, Stefan Wodnik (born Adam Bal), took on the task of rendering a significantly larger selection of the stories accessible, but it was still not the entirety. In the introduction, he offered an interpretation of Shalamov’s work, combined with a justification of his translational choices, including the necessity to change the order of many of the stories in relation to their London original. It was only the next translator, engineer Juliusz Baczyński, who had not up until then been professionally involved in translation, who rendered the entire London volume. In Poland, it is still considered the full translation of Kolyma stories by Varlam Shalamov, although, as we know today, it diverges significantly from the author’s version in terms of the selection and organisation of individual stories. His translation was very highly regarded by, among others, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, a distinguished writer and prominent expert in Gulag literature and the works of Shalamov.
