This master’s thesis explores the poetry of the American poet Frank O’Hara and its Polish translations by Piotr Sommer. O’Hara, active in the mid-twentieth century, is the main representative of the New York School of poetry, which represents a departure from the solemnity and hermeticism of high modernism. His poetic expression is characterized by prosaicism, dialogism, name-dropping, interplay of high and low, camp and humor, the fusing of realist and surrealist imagery and syntactic ambiguity. In the 1980s, O’Hara was introduced into Polish by the translator and literary editor Piotr Sommer, whose translations had a profound influence on the Polish poetry scene. Sommer’s translation work is analyzed in the light of polysystemic theory, Jarniewicz’s typology of translators, and his own reflections on translation. The central (empirical) part of the thesis is devoted to stylistic analysis of selected poems and their translations into Polish, with the aim of establishing what translation shifts occurred, and ultimately how well Sommer managed to recreate O’Hara’s specific poetic language.
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