Poems by Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg Translated by Polish Poets. The Conflict between “Classicists” and “Barbarians”?

This article is about the emerge of “late barbarians” centered around bruLion and their dispute with the classicists. The main thesis is that Polish “barbarians” were unable to engage in a real intercultural dialogue with the Beat Generation and New York School poets who inspired them. The author refers to this phenomenon as “seconddegree intertextuality” and states that it was caused mostly by the limited knowledge of the English language. The writers often had to base on translations which were distant from the original texts. The author analyzes and compares the tendencies in translations made by Polish authors, both “barbarians” (Musiał, Sommer) and civilized (Hartwig, Międzyrzecki), proving that the classicists often adapted “barbaric” works to familiar patterns, and the translations made by “barbarians” sometimes resembled free paraphrases of the original texts.