Stanisław Barańczak

"Stanisław Barańczak (b. Nov. 13, 1946, in Poznań, d. December 26, 2014, in Newtonville, MA) a poet, essayist, literary critic and lecturer; author of numerous essays and monographs on literary theory, anthropology, and translation; renowned translator of English literature, a master of language, operating with surgical precision. Barańczak made his debut as a poet and literary critic in 1965, with the poem “Przyczyny zgonu” [–Causes of death] published in the monthly Odra. Between 1964 and 1968 he was a member of a poetic group Próby [–Attempts/ trials], founded by Adam Mickiewicz University philology students, often referred to as Poznań linguists. Barańczak remained as a lecturer at UAM, where in 1973 he was awarded a doctorate for his dissertation on Miron Białoszewski’s poetic language. He took an active part in opposition against the communist government of the Polish People’s Republic; he was one of the leading poets of the New Wave and co-founded the Workers’ Defense Committee [KOR], a major anti-communist civic group of those times. As retribution for KOR, he was banned from publishing and removed from the university. At the outset of the eighties, he then migrated to the United States upon a long-standing teaching invitation from the department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University – a university he retired from eighteen years later. Professor Barańczak was published in periodicals Tygodnik Powszechny, Znak, Nurt, Odra and Literatura na Świecie. One of his most readily recognized books on literary and translation criticism is Ocalone w tłumaczeniu [Saved in Translation: Sketches on the Craft of Translating Poetry] (1992). The wealth of his poetic, critical, and translational output will not fit within the limits of a biographical note. What’s left is „Best to keep appropriate order – the front, the end – within the line’s neat border […]” – and read Stanisław Barańczak. "