Margaret Borowezyk
on translating Wisława Szymborska
The poem "Acrobat" was inspired by an editor's mistake in a collection of poetry, where a conjunction ended up being used twice, once at the end of the poem and again at the beginning of the next poem. To Szymborska, this repetition gave the effect of swinging, as on a trapeze, so she explores this syntactic play in her poem.
about the author
Wisława Szymborska was a Polish poet, translator, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who died this year, at the age of 88. Many of her poems are heavily implicated in WWII and the subsequent Communist regime in Poland. People call her the "Greta Garbo" of Polish poetry, because she has a reputation for rapidfire humor and stinging sarcasm.
about the translator
Margaret Borowczyk is a senior studying Linguistics and Comparative Literature. She is also a submatriculant in the Educational Linguistics Masters program at Penn GSE, focusing on foreign language education.Margaret is deeply interested in the cultural and linguistic translation of poetry, and has concentrated on Polish authors, since Polish is her native language. She has also been a dancer for Onda Latina for the past four years, and has therefore been lucky enough to explore inter-culturality through dance as well as writing.
