Not a Treatise, but a Treatise in Verse...

Abstract

Natalia Gorbaniewska, an acclaimed translator of Polish literature into Russian, remembers her first meeting with Miłosz in Paris, and the reading of Traktat poetycki [Treatise on Poetry], which for her became a real translator’s challenge. The memory, in this case, becomes a pre­text for a discussion of the genre characteristic of the Treatise, and of the melody of Miłosz’s language and the literary tradition, which makes it possible to understand his poems.

Keywords

• Czesław Miłosz
• Treatise on Poetry
• treatise as genre
• long poem
• translation
• musical quality of verse