Wiesław Myśliwski with Bill Johnston
Wiesław Myśliwski, novelist, essayist, and playwright, was born in 1932 in the village of Dwikozy in southeastern Poland, near the city of Sandomierz. He is the leading figure of the “peasant current” in postwar Polish literature, elevating the language of the countryside to the measure of the epic, recounting the clash of old ways with the forces of war, history, and technological progress. His early novel The Palace (1970), in which a shepherd explores the palace of his master following a bombing during an unspecified war, appeared in an English translation by Ursula Phillips in 1991 and was made into a film. His magisterial novel, Stone Upon Stone translated by Bill Johnston in 2011, is considered a masterwork of Polish postwar literature.
In this episode, we look mainly at Stone upon Stone and the next novel that Bill Johnston is translating for Archipelago, Needle’s Eye, published originally in 2018 and due out in English in the next year, which is Myśliwski’s most experimental work from the point of view of narrative. In addition to the author’s familiar combination of wisdom and images of everyday life in the Communist period, the novel offers some raucous satire. We cover a number of issues pertaining to the process of translation, what it is like to work with the author and what it is like to work with Jill Schoolman, publisher and editor in chief at Archipelago Books.
Encounters with Polish Literature is a video series for anyone interested in literature and the culture of books and reading. Each month, host David A. Goldfarb will present a new topic in conversation with an expert on that author or book or movement in Polish literature. More about the Encounters with Polish Literature series and the timeline.
Learn more about this episode, and see the biography of the guests on the Polish Cultural Institute New York's website: instytutpolski.pl/newyork/202...
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Bartek Remisko, Executive Producer
David A. Goldfarb, Host & Producer
Natalia Iyudin, Producer
5 окт 2023
