Abstract:
The extensive translation work of Tone Pretnar includes within it the fourteen sonnets of Jan Nepomucen Kamiński, an important organiser of the Polish theatre and cultural life in Lvov in the first half of the nineteenth century. The sonnets, which were written in 1827, were rejected by critics of the period, and were not afforded any greater attention by later literary historians. According to his own account, Pretnar decided to undertake the translation of these works due to the author’s close links with Matija Čop, an important figure in the intellectual and artistic scene of that time. While Kamiński’s works were criticised for their linguistic and compositional failings, Pretnar’s translations are linguistically pure and flow with inherent beauty. Attention is often focused on those elements within them that are reminiscent of Prešeren — namely quotations and allusions to the poetic language of the greatest Slovene romantic poet, France Prešeren. With these elements, the translator succeeded in firmly placing his translation in a time, interest in which (apart from some subsequent attempts to revitalise interest) remained, like the sonnets themselves, restricted and confined. Nor can it be ruled out (even though for the reader who is unaware of the literary and historical background it may not be immediately apparent) that those elements that are reminiscent of Prešeren also in fact represent the translator’s ingenious solution to the problem as to how best realise in translation the very elements which some critics had seen (or wanted to see) in the original: namely, a lyric parody of the greatest Polish poet of that period, Adam Mickiewicz.
