Negotiating the Homosexual Dimension of Federico García Lorca’s Poetry in Polish Translations: Challenges and Misunderstandings

Abstract

This paper analyzes Polish translators’ strategies towards the homosexual subtext present in selected poems by Federico García Lorca, published in Poland between 1955 and 2019: “San Miguel”, “Muerte de Antoñito el Camborio”, “Tu infancia en Mentón”, “Oda a Walt Whitman”, gacelas from Diván del Tamarit and sonnets belonging to the cycle of Sonetos del amor oscuro. The article focuses on the challenges faced by the translators and the errors they made when dealing with camp elements and allusions to male homosexuality. Following the terminology proposed by Marc Démont (misrecognizing, minoritizing and queering translation), the paper shows that the Polish translators tend to misrecognize the homosexual dimension of Lorca’s poems. The minoritizing translations are seldom, and there is only one example of queering translation, in spite of the fact that the authors of more recent translations seem to be aware of the ambiguous nature of Lorca’s poetry.