Barriers and Possibilities – Haiku Poetry in Poland

Abstract

An excellent exemplum of a thus-understood synaesthetic sensitivity to texts is the inter-sensual prose penned by Vladimir Nabokov, an author gifted with a perceptive form of synaesthesia – both as a writer and a translator the man behind Lolita took care to chew on his words, carefully giving them their measure, shape, sound and identity. In Nabokov’s criticism as well as his translation practice, much as in Douglas Robinson’s translatological ideas (The Somatics of Translation), it is this synaesthetically sensed materiality of language which becomes the key criteria in choosing the lexical and syntactic means at the translators’ disposal. In both cases synaesthesia turns out to be – a more or less conscious – principle underlying the linguistic translators’ instincts. Inter-sensual, corporeal contact with language comes into being during the creative process, which should also include literary translation, but also a (Barthean) reception of the literary arts, as well as meta-reflection in literary studies. Synaesthesia seems to feed its own unique poetics of reading and translating the authors under analysis.