Metafora pralni. Zofii Chądzyńskiej czytanie, pisanie, tłumaczenie

The essay is devoted to the life and work of Zofia Chądzyńska, with special focus on three manifestation of her intellectual activity: reading, writing, and translation, and their linguistic relations. The complicated post-war vicissitudes forced the writer to frequent changes in her way of life, and required an effort to adapt to the new reality. Chądzyńska did different jobs, and often changed her place of residence. The point of departure for the present discussion is her work at white-wash laundry in Buenos Aires. The laundry serves as a metaphor for moving from one linguistic space to another, and both spaces seem to be rigidly isolated from one another for Chądzyńska. The essay also refers to James Clifford’s On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning: Conrad and Malinowski. The anthropologist claims that each sphere of life is allotted to a different language: native, transgressive, and the language of restraint. The languages of both authors discussed by Clifford entered into various interferences, however, or replaced one another and created new connections. In Chądzyńska, it is definitely more difficult to see such relations, and her strong self-fashioning techniques reinforce the impression of radical transit from one language sphere to another. The author’s autobiography and her numerous autobiographical acts of expression also provide evidence for research in translation work, which in Chądzyńska can be analysed, for example, in the feminist context.