Born in Poznań, Poland on November 13, 1946, Barańczak was raised by his father Jan and mother Zofia, both doctors.[2][1] He was the brother of the novelist Małgorzata Musierowicz.[3] He studied philology at Poznań's Adam Mickiewicz University, where he obtained an M.A. and Ph.D. His doctoral dissertation concerned the poetic language of Miron Białoszewski.[2] In 1968, he married Anna Brylka, with whom he had two children, Michael and Anna.[2][3]
Barańczak became a lecturer at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He broke into print as a poet and critic in 1965. Barańczak was on the staff of the Poznań magazine Nurt from 1967 to 1971. After the political events of June 1976, he became a co-founder of the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and of the clandestine quarterly Zapis. In 1981, the year Poland declared martial law, he left the country and accepted a three-year contract to work as a lecturer at Harvard University.[4] He stayed at Harvard for almost two decades, leaving in 1999 due to complications with Parkinson's disease.[1] He was a co-founder of the Paris Zeszyty Literackie ("Literary Textbooks") in 1983, and a regular contributor to the periodical Teksty Drugie. He also served as editor of The Polish Review from 1986 to 1990.
Barańczak was a prominent representative of the Polish "New Wave" and is generally regarded as one of the greatest translators of English poetry into Polish and Polish poetry into English. He received the PEN Translation Prize with Clare Cavanagh in 1996. His book, Surgical Precision (Chirurgiczna precyzja), won the 1999 Nike Award - Poland's top literary prize. The language he employed in his works is highly evocative of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, John Donne and Robert Frost, with whom he felt strongest connection and whose literary legacy he helped popularize in Poland. Barańczak's own poetry deals with three major themes: the ethical, the political, and the literary. His language can be characterized as outstandingly fluent and flexible and the subject-matter of his poems seems to confirm his commitment to social issues. He started his literary career as "a poetic critic of language and the social order" but his greatest achievements came from his works as a late-20th-century Parnassist, a master of poetic form.[5][6]
Barańczak introduced the concept of semantic dominant (Polish: dominanta semantyczna) in translations of poetry. The semantic dominant is a "key to the content" of the poem. It is a semantic or formal element that is most crucial and irreplaceable. It can take the form of rhyme, versification, syntax, or the other stylistic elements that prevail. The translator's task is to find the dominant feature of a given work and make it the most important translation element. This approach to poetry translations is based on heuristic model, which Barańczak described in his essay entitled: "Mały, lecz maksymalistyczny manifest translatologiczny"(Small but Maximalistic Translatological Manifest), included in his book:"Saved in Translation: Sketches on the Craft of Translating Poetry".[7]
Each year below links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
Poetry:
1968, Korekta twarzy ("Facial Corrections"), Poznan: Wydawnictwo Poznanskie[10]
1968, Dziennik poranny ("Morning Journal"), Poznan: Wydawnictwo Poznanskie[10]
1970, Jednym tchem ("Without Stopping for Breath"), Warsaw: Orientacja[10]
1977, Ja wiem, że to niesłuszne ("I Know It's Not Right"), Paris: Instytut Literacki[10]
1978, Sztuczne oddychanie ("Artificial Respiration"), London: Aneks - English edition: Artificial Respiration (translated Chris Zielinski), Poetry World 2, March 1989.[10]
1980, Tryptyk z betonu, zmęczenia i śniegu ("Triptych with Concrete, Fatigue and Snow"), Kraków: KOS[10]
1986, Atlantyda i inne wiersze z lat 1981-85 ("Atlantis and Other Poems"), London: Puls[10]
1988, Widokówka z tego świata ("A Postcard from the Other World"), Paris: Zeszyty Literackie[10]
1991, Biografioly: poczet 56 jednostek sławnych, sławetnych i osławionych ("Biographies of 56 Celebrated, Famous or Notorious Individuals"), Poznan: a5[10]
1991, Zwierzęca zajadłość: z zapisków zniechęconego zoologa ("Animal Ferocity: From the Notes of a Discouraged Zoologist"), Poznan: a5[10]
1995, Słoń, trąba i ojczyzna ("The Elephant, the Trunk, and the Polish Question"), Kraków: Znak[10]
Pegaz zdębiał. Poezja nonsensu a życie codzienne: Wprowadzenie w prywatną teorię gatunków (Pegasus fell dumb. Nonsense poetry and everyday life: introduction to a private theory of genres), Puls, London 1995.
Literary criticism:
1973, Ironia i harmonia ("Irony and Harmony"), Warsaw: Czytelnik[10]
1979, Etyka i poetyka ("Ethics and Poetics"), Paris: Instytut Literacki[10]
1981, Książki najgorsze 1975-1980 ("The Worst Books"), Kraków: KOS[10]
1984, Uciekinier z utopii. O poezji Zbigniewa Herberta ("Fugitive from Utopia: On the Poetry of Zbigniew Herbert"), London: Polonia[10]
1990, Tablica z Macondo. Osiemnaście prób wytłumaczenia, po co i dlaczego się pisze ("A License Plate from Macondo: Eighteen Attempts at Explaining Why One Writes"), London: Aneks[10]
1992, Ocalone w tłumaczeniu. Szkice o warsztacie tłumaczenia poezji ("Saved in Translation: Sketches on the Craft of Translating Poetry"), Poznan: a5[10]
1996, Poezja i duch uogólnienia. Wybór esejów 1970-1995 ("Poetry and the Spirit of Generalization: Selected Essays"), Kraków: Znak[10]
