On “Shadow”

As I sit with Tomasz Różycki’s “Shadow” in front of me again, as I wade into its shade for the umpteenth time (both the Polish version and the English version) in order to convey something to you about the process of bringing the poem to light in a different language, I’m struck by the magnitude of its title. The concept of a shadow holds great significance in Różycki’s collection To the Letter, a series of linked poems forthcoming in my translation from Archipelago Books this November. It’s a book interested in doubling—the object and its shadow—understood as the metaphysical predicament in which we live. As our bodies break down, as we get closer to our matter becoming worm food, more and more of ourselves inhabit that shadow realm. Writing, for Różycki, is a record of this process of losing and the longing we feel for our own absence.

Of course, the same could be said for the art of translation. I long for the absent Polish even as I find immense joy in rewriting the poem in English. Could it be hours I’ve spent contemplating the rather mundane verb “zapisać,” here rendered as “bequeath,” thus losing other senses of “save,” “record,” “inscribe,” “fill with writing”? It sends me into a consideration of Polish prefixation, “za” added to the base verb “pisać” (to write), and the way it gives more specificity of purpose to the action, making it more intense or thorough. The verb is essential in setting up the last line. It hints at the poem’s final awareness of the struggle against time inherent in the act of writing. On the other hand, “bequeath” feels more removed from that intensity of writing but works well with the impulse of the first line that propels the whole utterance to begin with. As the translator, I love listening intently to this dialogue between options, or to use a phrase from another poem from the book, the “shadow traffic” within the words. And then I get to do it all over again with the English.