On the new translation of Szymon Szymonowic’s Pentezylea (Penthesileia)

Abstract

In the oeuvre of Szymon Szymonowic, an outstanding Polish poet of the late Renaissance, Latin works occupy a prominent place, which led to him being called the Polish Pindar. One of his works is the tragedy Penthesileia that continues the themes of the Trojan myth. Printed for the first time in Zamość (1618), the work was not fully translated until 1778. Parts of the work were translated later. The latest translation by Elwira Buszewicz combines a vocabulary understandable to modern readers with a desire to reproduce the poetic artistry of the Latin original and a solid philological commentary. The bilingual edition with parallel printing of the Latin and Polish texts, which makes it possible to follow the translation continuously, was preceded by an extensive scholarly introduction. Its author outlined the state of research on Penthesileia and pointed out the antecedents of the theme of the Amazons in Greek, Roman, medieval, and modern literary traditions.