Błoński Festival in May – “To see clearly… in translation?”

The 5^th edition of the Jan Błoński Festival will take place on the 18^th and 19^th of May 2016. The theme of this year’s edition will be “To see clearly… in translation?” The event is organised by the Department of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian University, the Krakow Literature Foundation, the Department of Contemporary Criticism of the Jagiellonian University, the Critical Questions Workshop and the Krakow Festival Office, operator of the UNESCO Krakow City of Literature programme.

The paraphrase of the title of a book about Proust’s work serves not only as a reminder of Błoński’s interests and his work on acquisition of French literature and critical thought, but also determines two important and closely tied themes of this year’s edition of the Festival – the role of literary translation and literary criticism in the globalised reality, in which world literature and national literature coexist. Using this paraphrase, in which the translation both replaces and recalls the “excitement”, we want to invite everyone to a discussion about the perception of literature and reality in the framework of translation, as well as about literature and contemporary literary life, in which the global and local tendencies will inevitably compete.

The meetings with translators and critics – both translation and literary, will be a great opportunity to discuss terms such as “global literature”, “world literature” and “national literature”, as well as to ask many questions: Do we see anything in translation? What? How? Is “clarity” really desired in this context, or should it be – in relation to the translation – more problematic? Does striving for explanations and making everything that comes into existence in a given cultural circle thanks to translation understandable cause a blurring of the boundaries of literature, which becomes one of the elements of global reality? To what extent? How does the co-existence of many literatures influence Polish literature and our perception of it?

Find out more at: www.festiwal-blonskiego.pl

The programme of the Festival will be available here.

The meetings will take place at the Department of Polish Studies of the Jagiellonian Univesity, Grodzka 64, Jan Błoński Lecture Hall.