This paper is a re-examination of “Ciemność,” one of Adam Mickiewicz' most controversial poetic renderings from Lord Byron. Apart from re-opening the question of the artistic merits of the Polish poem, it proposes to adduce new textual evidence concerning the poem's dating.

Generally speaking, critics have not been favourably inclined toward Mickiewicz' rendering of Byron's apocalyptical poem, “Darkness.” Wilhelm Bruchnalski, the first scholar to compare the translation with the original, stated quite categorically that “artistically ‘Ciemność’ is by no means one of Mickiewicz' masterly translations.”¹ Stanisław Windakiewicz, in his article on Mickiewicz and Byron, ranks “Ciemność” along with “Euthanasia” as one of Mickiewicz' “weaker” renderings from Byron.² In his typological analysis of the vocabulary of “Ciemność” and “Darkness,” Zygmunt Dokurno concludes that “artistically the translation does not match the original.”³ Likewise, Henryk Zbierski sees in Mickiewicz' poem “a not always felicitous ‘filling out’ of Byron's Dantesque vision.”⁴ Indeed, critical censure of the Polish rendering would be unanimous were it not for Stefan Szuman's equally categorical statement that “Ciemność” is a “splendid” work “brimming with the riches of Byron's poem as well as its own.”⁵ The fact that such diametrically opposite views have been expressed is itself sufficient reason to subject the poem and the critical attitudes toward it to new scrutiny.

If one examines past critics' treatment of “Ciemność,” one observes a consistent attempt to assess the poem's artistic merits on the basis of a strict confrontation with the original text. Such an approach, particularly in the light of modern study on the art of translation, must strike one as rather narrow. The obvious weakness of such a method is that it has only one orientation, that of literal fidelity. Its thrust is basically uni-directional: toward the original text. The overriding question is always how close a given word, phrase or line is to its corresponding unit in the model text. In consequence, all too often a homological relationship asserts itself between the original and translation, with the inevitable result that individual lexical units become separated, isolated from their broader semantic context, from the poetic text as a whole. It is very easy, thus, to forget that what does not satisfy the requirements of the original poem may well be justified in the new context of the translation.

One is faced in this case with a simplistic notion of the dynamics of the poetic rendering or, to use James S. Holmes' useful term, “metapoem.”⁶ According to Holmes, the metapoem is “a nexus of a complex bundle of relationships converging from two directions: from the original poem, in its language, and linked in a very specific way to the poetic tradition of that language; and from the poetic tradition of the target language, with its more or less stringent expectations regarding poetry which the metapoem, if it is to be successful as poetry, must in some measure meet.”⁷ The critic of a poetic rendering must consequently focus not only on the expectations of the original poem but also on the intrinsic value of the “metapoem” as an autonomous entity within its own culture responding to its own unique set of artistic exigencies. This precept applies even more emphatically to critics dealing with a translator like Mickiewicz, who treated his renderings with a good deal of creative freedom. As Zbierski has observed, translations for Mickiewicz “were fundamentally a problem of his poetic workshop; they were subjected to his own creative drive, and it is in this category that they should be above all examined.”⁸

Past critics of “Ciemność,” however, have consistently censured Mickiewicz' tendency to depart from Byron's original poem. Having observed in “Darkness” certain linguistic and stylistic features (e.g., concision and laconicism) as contributive to its artistic merit, they adduce the lack of these qualities in Mickiewicz' poem as proof of its artistic inferiority. Thus Bruchnalski's negative appraisal of “Ciemność” is based on the poem's failure to “convey the Dantesque atmosphere which permeates Byron's ‘Darkness’ and which is expressed in the desperate concision of his poetic style.” Mickiewicz' poem is a paraphrase “in which individual thoughts and expressions of the original undergo at times not only too broad and unnecessary an amplification … but also outright transformation.”⁹ Likewise, Dokurno sees in “Ciemność” a marked tendency toward expansion and “modification” of certain ideas of the original. His analysis of the vocabulary of the two poems reveals that Mickiewicz' rendering contains a preponderance of concrete nouns and verbs. Seeing this tendency toward particularity and graphic detail as a violation of the bare and terse quality of Byron's style, Dokurno concludes that the translation does not come up to par artistically with the original.¹⁰

This paper suggests, then, that the unfavourable assessment of “Ciemność” by past critics stems in large part from a faulty method of approach. “Ciemność,” it seems, is more than an exercise in translation. The modifications observed in it by all critics suggest that it represents an experiment in individual creativity. A proper artistic appraisal of the poem, thus, can only follow after this creative dimension has been adequately considered.

Zofia Szmydtowa is the only critic to have touched upon the issue of Mickiewicz' creative treatment of “Ciemność.” She has argued that “while preserving the integrity of [Byron's] text, ‘Ciemność’ manifests a dissimilarity of imagery and style, which is bound up with viewing the cosmic cataclysm as a dream rather than as something that would one day be realized.”¹¹ This tendency to bring the dream element to the fore is indeed perceivable in the opening lines of the poem:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd. …
Miałem dziwny sen, może i nie całkiem senny?
Zdało mi się, że nagle zagasnął blask dzienny. …(12)

Byron's terse, direct statements are rendered by lines fraught with greater ambiguity and tension. The adjective “dziwny” introduces an explicit note of strangeness and fantasy not present in Byron's text. Ambiguity is further enhanced by means of the pivotally-placed word “może” (perhaps, maybe), and the line closes with a question mark.¹³ Where Byron goes on to describe the going out of the sun, factually, as it were, Mickiewicz is more equivocal: it only seemed to him that it was so. The reader is clearly being ushered into the tenuous precincts of the Dream so beloved by all Romantic poets and perhaps by no one more than Mickiewicz.¹⁴ The whole atmosphere evoked in these opening lines of “Ciemność” is more strongly redolent of Byron's other ‘dream’ poem so masterfully paraphrased by Mickiewicz in “Sen” (“The Dream”):

Dwoiste życie nasze: sen ma świat udzielny
Śród otchłani nazwanych bytem i nicestwem,
Nazwanych, lecz nieznanych—sen ma świat udzielny,
Z rzetelną władzą rządząc nad marnym królewstwem.(15)

It is interesting how here, too, Mickiewicz had taken liberties with Byron's original text which reads:

Our life is two-fold: Sleep hath its own world
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.(16)

Where Byron merely affirms the separateness and paradoxical reality of the dream world, Mickiewicz goes further to impose his own strict cosmological hierarchy: the mysterious dream world of “Sen” rules over the “paltry realm” of the real world. Likewise in “Ciemność,” whereas Byron announces a dream but proceeds to treat it on the realistic plane (the very intonation of the first line throws this dimension into relief—“not all a dream”), Mickiewicz strives more consistently to preserve the fantastical mood of the dream phenomenon. This does not mean, however, as Szmydtowa infers, that Mickiewicz does not treat the cosmic accident as an eventual reality. The opening line of “Ciemność” makes it quite clear that we are dealing with a visionary experience, with a dream that crosses mysteriously into the realm of reality. From the purely semantic point of view, Mickiewicz' text conveys the original initial lines quite faithfully.

Szmydtowa appears to go too far, moreover, in attributing to “Ciemność” a “striking softening of horror.”¹⁷ If the poem operates more consistently within the dream dimension, it is nonetheless the horrific dimension of a nightmare. Szmydtowa focusses particularly on the closing lines of the two poems where a divergence of style is undoubtedly evident. Instead of the death-denoting verbs that appear in Byron's text (“die,” “expire,” “wither,” “perish”), Mickiewicz' poem closes with such euphemisms as “usnąć,” “spocząć,” “zniknąć” and “zastygnąć” (lines 80-84).¹⁸ It would be wrong, however, to impute on this basis a substantial lessening of horror to the poem as a whole. Considered in its entirety, “Ciemność” appears to be no less rich in its evocation of death. What Szmydtowa is actually pointing to is nothing more than a difference in the distribution and concentration of diction, a fact that must be taken into account when dealing with a free translation such as Mickiewicz'.

In numerical terms, “Darkness” refers to death directly twelve times, while “Ciemność” refers to it nine times. Of the twelve instances in Byron's text, six are concentrated in the final seventeen lines, while the rest are distributed more or less evenly between lines 36-65. All but one of the nine in the Polish text, on the other hand, are concentrated between lines 46-69, while half of these are further condensed between lines 51-58:

                                                  Jeden pies zachował
Wierność panu swojemu; żywego pilnował,
Teraz się umarłego wyżywieniem trudzi,
Znosi zdechłe lub słabe bydło, ptastwo, ludzi;
Sam nie dotknął pokarmu, z żałośnymi jęki
Lizał twarz pana swego, głaskał się u ręki
Co go już nie głaskała—i zdechł.—I nareszcie
Wszyscy ludzie wymarli.

Comparing these lines with their counterparts in Byron's poem, we find (apart from the altered image) only two direct references to death (“the dropping dead” [line 50], “die [line 54]), both of which, moreover, derive from the same etymological root. In this particular instance, then, “Ciemność” is actually more explicit in its evocation of death than “Darkness.” Apart from exceeding the latter in purely numerical terms, the Polish fragment shows a significant use of what Roman Jakobson calls the “etymological figure.”¹⁹

Unlike English, the Polish language distinguishes between dying a human death (umrzeć) and dying an animal's death (zdechnąć). When applied to humans, as in Mickiewicz' powerful asyndeton “zdechłe lub słabe bydło, ptastwo, ludzi,” the latter verb carries with it a stark suggestiveness incapable of being precisely rendered in English. By juxtaposing the two basic death-figures—marł and zdechł—Mickiewicz engages them in a subtle semantic interplay with the end-result of bringing to the fore the notion of death. A still more subtle manipulation of the etymological figure is seen in line 53:

Teraz się umarłego wyżywieniem trudzi. …

Byron's text makes no allusion to the dog seeking “sustenance” for his dead master (cf., “Darkness,” lines 47-54). A closer examination of Mickiewicz' rendering and its context, however, reveals that we are probably dealing with something more than a simple “linguistic error” as Zbierski would have it.²⁰ The noun “wyżywienie” assumes a precise logic of its own when one considers that it is constructed around the basic etymon żyw- (living, alive), already adumbrated in the previous line in the word “żywego.” The semantic tension exerted by the oxymoronic collocation of the figures -marl- and żyw- results in a pronounced heightening and throwing into relief of the theme of death.

Thus, even a brief examination of this type reveals that it is difficult to speak of a quantitative difference of tone between the two poems. Insofar as their diction is concerned, “Darkness” and “Ciemność” are equally forceful in conveying the theme of death, although this result is not necessarily achieved in the same manner.

A brief look at the imagery of “Ciemność” likewise indicates that Mickiewicz' stylistic modifications are not necessarily prejudicial to the rendering's artistic integrity. Several departures appear to be consistent with the poet's general focus on death as a process rather than a state. Whereas Byron tends to view death as a pure state of inanimation, Mickiewicz focusses on the phenomenon as a process of decay and as a cessation (rather than absence) of sensory perception. Consequently, where Byron strives to evoke death by means of inert things removed as far as possible from the realm of perception, Mickiewicz does so through images which more directly engage the senses. For example, where the English text reads:

The populous and the powerful was a lump …

(line 70)

Mickiewicz' reads:

Z ludnego i pięknego, milczącym i ślepym …

(line 72).

The adjectives “silent and blind” acquire additional poetic force in the light of the near oxymoron produced by their collocation with the sense-oriented substantive “the beautiful” (piękny), deftly substituted by Mickiewicz for Byron's original “the powerful.” Likewise,

A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay …

(line 72)

becomes:

Trup, chaos powolnego żywiołów zepsucia …

(line 74).

Mickiewicz' consistent avoidance of Byron's inanimate noun “lump” is noteworthy.²¹

Two other images also deserve attention. In the original text, the passage of the planet Earth through space is described thus:

                                                                                                    the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air …

(lines 4-5).

In Mickiewicz' translation this becomes:

                                                                                                    Ziemia łodowata
Wisiała slepa pośród zaćmionego świata

(lines 5-6).

In an earlier variant Mickiewicz considered rendering the English verb—“to swing” by “kręcić” (to turn, rotate).²² This would have adequately satisfied the denotative though not the connotative requirements of Byron's highly suggestive verb. By choosing “wisieć” (hang, be suspended), however, Mickiewicz was able at once to preserve some of the connotative value of “swing” and bring the image with its increased suggestion of suspended motion in closer alignment with the dream-like perspective of his poem.

It is interesting from the structural as well as stylistic point of view how Mickiewicz reinforces this image of suspension at the close of the poem. Byron paints a stark picture of abandoned ships floating motionlessly in the sea. He goes on:

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge …

(lines 76-77).

Mickiewicz renders this image in this manner:

Maszty ich kawałami padały i gniły
I tonęły na wieki w spokojnych wód bryle …

(lines 78-79).

Translated back into English, these lines would read something like: “Their masts fell down piecemeal and rotted / And sank for ever in the lump of still waters.” It has already been noted that on two other occasions Mickiewicz avoided rendering Byron's noun “lump.” Now, however, when it suited his purpose, he availed himself of it freely. The result is a suggestive metaphor which dramatically raises the tension of Byron's original image. An impression of thickening water is created, wherein objects appear fixed in a perpetual state of suspension. The image of frozen motion seen at the beginning of the poem on the macrocosmic scale is now realized at the microcosmic level. As Mickiewicz' poem comes to its close this weird, almost surrealistic impression of elemental congealment and total cessation of movement is brought to a vivid climax:

Burze usnęły, fale spoczęły w mogile,
Bo nie było księżyca co by je podźwignął.
Wicher w stęchłym powietrzu uwiązł i zastygnął.
Znikły chmury—to dawne ciemności narzędzie
Stało się niepotrzebnym—ciemność była wszędzie.

Nowhere, as Szmydtowa correctly observed, is the divergence between Byron's and Mickiewicz' poetic viewpoints more clearly discernible than at the conclusion of the two poems.

Additional evidence suggests that Mickiewicz' enhancement of the dream element in “Ciemność” is linked with still another problem of the poet's workshop. This evidence comes, curiously, from none other than Dante, whose atmosphere Mickiewicz allegedly failed to convey in “Ciemność.” One should not forget that Mickiewicz also tried his hand at a Polish rendering of the Divine Comedy. The outcome of this endeavour was “Ugolino,” a self-contained work embracing Cantos Three, Thirty-Two and Thirty-Three of the “Inferno.” Although the precise dating of this work is still in doubt, scholars are in general agreement in ascribing it to Mickiewicz' Moscow-St. Petersburg period (1825-29). The best authority on this question is still Bruchnalski who, on the basis of the so-called Moszyński Album, placed the poem somewhere between 19 October 1825 and November 1827.²³ Scholarly consensus, albeit a very flimsy one, has placed the composition of “Ciemność” in roughly the same period.²⁴ Without for the moment going into the problems associated with the dating of “Ciemność,” it should simply be noted that this consensus has been substantial enough for standard editions of Mickiewicz to have placed the poem after and often directly after “Ugolino.”²⁵ It is curious, then, that no one has yet considered the potential influence of “Ugolino” on “Ciemność.”

If Mickiewicz indeed worked on Byron's “Darkness” soon or immediately after his rendering of Dante, then it is not difficult to see how strongly Byron's poem would have suggested to him Dante's evocation of the Inferno. The very first line of “Darkness,” with its levelling of the barriers between the real and dream worlds, bring to mind the visionary character of the medieval masterpiece, where sleep too, it will be recalled, plays a significant role.²⁶ Still more striking likenesses, however, suggest themselves between Byron's poem and the part of the “Inferno” rendered by Mickiewicz in “Ugolino.” Darkness, hunger and slow, agonizing death constitute the subject-matter of both works. Consider, for example, the following lines of “Ugolino,” corresponding to lines 22-23. Canto Three of Dante's poem:

Stamtąd wzdychania, żale i okrzyki
Szumią śród nocy bez gwiazd i księżyca. …(27)

It is striking that “Ugolino” also contains a clairvoyant dream. Recounting how he and his sons were condemned to starvation by Archbishop Ruggieri, Count Ugolino describes a vision he experienced shortly before his ghastly death:

Aż mnie raz we śnie przywidziana mara
Zdarła przyszłości chmury tajemnicze.
Przyśniło mi się, że. …(28)

In the light of these similarities, then, one would expect Mickiewicz' rendering of Byron's “Darkness” to have been particularly susceptible to influence from Dante. Indeed, internal evidence strongly suggests that “Ciemność” underwent precisely such an intermediary influence. Consider, for example, how Mickiewicz renders lines 31-32 of Byron's text:

With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd. …
Znowu pada i bluźni, i w piasku się ryje,
Targa włos, zgrzyta zębem, ręce gryzie, wyje

(lines 33-34).

Where the English text adopts the conventional Biblical language for this infernal scene, the Polish text introduces additional details directly linked with Dante's poem. The action of “gnawing on the hands,” in particular, has its counterpart in Canto Thirty-Three of the “Inferno,” which Mickiewicz in “Ugolino” rendered thus:

Nazajutrz do nas zbłądził promyk słońca
I w twarzach dzieci ujrzałem mą postać;
Natenczas z bolu gryzłem obie ręce

(lines 101-103).²⁹

Likewise, the action of “pulling hair” played a conspicuous role in Dante's poem immediately preceding the Ugolino incident rendered by Mickiewicz. Consider Dante's encounter with the uncommunicative traitor Bocca:

Allor lo presi per la cuticagna,
          e dissi: “El converrà che tu ti nomi,
          o che capel qui su non ti rimagna.”
Ond'elli a me: “Perchè tu mi dischiomi,
          nè ti dirò ch'io sia, ne mosterrolti,
          se mille fiate in sul capo mi tomi.”
Io avea già i capelli in mano avvolti,
          e tratti li n'avea più d'una ciocca,
          latrando lui con gli occhi in giù raccolti. …(30)

Dante's influence would account for other smaller, yet equally significant, modifications of Byron's text. In line 51 of “Ciemność,” Byron's “even dogs assail'd their masters” (line 47) is transformed into the far more graphic “Psy darły swoich panów.” Dante's poem made ample mention of dogs' jaws “tearing apart” living flesh. Here, for example, is what the hero of “Ugolino” described in his dream:

                                                  biskup zawzięty
Polował wilka z małymi wilczęty …
Już chudą psiarnię zemkniono ze smyczy …
Już wilk znużone zatrzymuje kroki,
Upada wreszcie i ojciec, i dziatwa;
I widzę kłami rozprute ich boki

(lines 73-78).

This stark scene might provide the key to another interesting departure from Byron's text. Note how Byron's lines “and the pang / Of famine fed upon all entrails” become in “Ciemność” “ząb głodu pożerał / Wszystkich” (lines 47-48) It is possible, of course, that Mickiewicz simply confused the English noun “pang” for “fang” (kieł). In the light of the relation drawn between “Ciemność” and “Ugolino,” however, it is equally possible that the change is the result of Mickiewicz' refracting of “Darkness” through the prism of his rendering from Dante. If we accept that Ugolino's dream is a prophetic allegory in which the fanged hounds represent death by starvation, then it would appear that Mickiewicz is simply transferring the same allegorical association to his rendering of Byron's poem. This is re-enforced by the fact that Byron himself alludes to the “lank jaws” of famished dogs, a detail which Mickiewicz does not subsequently render.

“Ugolino” once again refers to dogs' jaws at the conclusion, where the Count resumes wreaking his gruesome vengeance upon the damned Ruggieri:

Skończył i dziko wywróciwszy oczy,
Na nowo usta w krwawą czaszkę broczy
I jak pies zgrzytając rwie kości

(lines 126-28).

In this case it is more interesting how this image coincides with that contained in lines 42-44 of “Ciemność.”

Głodni żelazem sobie szukali obłowu,
I z zakrwawionym kąskiem na stronie usiedli
I w milczeniu rozpaczy samotni go jedli.

Byron's text, after all, reads thus:

                                                  A meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom …

(lines 39-41).

One cannot claim that Mickiewicz' tendency toward specificity and amplification of the original text contributes necessarily to a failure in conveying the Dantesque mood of Byron's vision. On the contrary, Mickiewicz evidently re-enforced this quality by superimposing a good deal of Dante's imagery upon his rendering of Byron's “Darkness.”³¹ It would appear, therefore, that the heightened dream-like quality of “Ciemność” is also linked with the poet's desire to align Byron's poem with the nightmarish aspects of Dante's “Inferno.”

The above evidence also provides a valuable clue toward the dating of “Ciemność.” It suggests that the latter's composition is chronologically linked to that of “Ugolino.” Thus, it substantially strengthens the position that “Ciemność” (at least in its final form) belongs to Mickiewicz' Moscow-St. Petersburg period. If “Ugolino” did exert an intermediary influence upon Mickiewicz' rendering of “Darkness,” then one must conclude that a final draft of “Ciemność” could not have been written before 19 October 1825, that is to say, the earliest date by which Bruchnalski closes the period of “Ugolino's” probable composition. By the same token, if we accept Bruchnalski's latest date for “Ugolino,” then we may suppose that “Ciemność” would not have been composed much later than November 1827.

This does not, however, preclude the possibility, suggested by Kleiner, that an earlier draft of “Ciemność” existed before the period 1825-27.³² Indeed, the evidence would suggest that such a draft of the poem existed during Mickiewicz' Kowno-Wilno period (1820-24), when it is known that the poet was occupied with other translations from Byron. This supposition is based on a significant textual association between “Ciemność” and “Sen,” which we know to have been composed between 1823 and 1824.³³ A certain kinship of mood between the opening lines of the two poems, which goes further than warranted by the English originals, has already been stressed. However, no one has drawn attention to another Mickiewiczian departure from Byron's “The Dream” which suggests an even stronger creative relationship between that poem and “Ciemność.” Consider how Mickiewicz transforms Byron's lines “they [dreams] have power— / The Tyranny of pleasure and of pain” (lines 13-14) into “ciemność do ich ręki / Składa tyrańskie berło rozkoszy i męki.”³⁴ From this it would appear that Mickiewicz' renderings of “The Dream” and “Darkness” exerted a mutual influence upon one another in the process of translation. Perhaps for this reason Mickiewicz, in his letter of August 1823 to Jan Czeczot, felt the need to forewarn his friend against a possible confusion of Byron's two ‘dream’ poems.³⁵

One can conclude, therefore, that Mickiewicz composed a tentative draft of “Ciemność” some time during his Kowno-Wilno period;³⁶ that, for reasons whereof he knew best, he did not publish the poem at the time;³⁷ and that he returned to Byron's poem and undertook a reworking of his earlier version only in 1825-27 when he was under the new and powerful stimulus of Dante's “Inferno” and particularly of its Ugolino episode.

It can, moreover, be argued that the stylistic departures taken by Mickiewicz with respect to Byron's “Darkness” by no means detract from the rendering's general artistic integrity. Far from being arbitrary and unnecessary, as past critics have claimed, they are in fact consistent with a distinctive creative design. Influenced by a peculiarly strong Romantic predilection for the dream as well as for Dante, Mickiewicz was inclined to interpret “Darkness” not as a realistic prophetic vision but as some ghastly and infernal hallucination. “Ciemność,” thus, cannot be considered a “paraphrase” in the sense the term as been applied to Mickiewicz' other renderings from Byron, such as “Sen.” Rather, it must be considered as an “imitation” of Byron's poem, much as Pushkin's “Voevoda” has been considered an imitation of Mickiewicz' own ballad “Czaty.”³⁸ As such, one cannot apply to “Ciemność” the same artistic criteria as to “Darkness.” Indeed the question of whether or not Mickiewicz' poem “equals” artistically its English counterpart becomes quite irrelevant. The sooner that “Ciemność” is treated as an autonomous poem adhering to an intrinsic set of artistic requirements, the sooner a fair appraisal of its poetic merits can follow.

Notes

1. See Bruchnalski's commentary to “Ciemność” in Dzieła Adama Mickiewicza, 6 vols. (Lwów, 1893-1910), II, 497-98.

2. Stanisław Windakiewicz, “Mickiewicz i Byron,” Pamiętnik Literacki, XXXI (1934), 128.

3. Zygmunt Dokurno, “O mickiewiczowskich przekładach z Byrona,” Pamiętnik Literacki, XLVII (1956), 337.

4. Henryk Zbierski, “Mickiewiczowskie przekłady drobnych utworów Byrona i Moore'a,” Przegląd Zachodni, XII (1956), 112.

5. Stefan Szuman, O kunszcie i istocie poezji lirycznej (Toruń, 1948), p. 183.

6. James S. Holmes, “Verse Translation and Verse Form” in J. S. Holmes (ed.), The Nature of Translation: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation (The Hague, 1970), p. 93.

7. Ibid. (emphasis added).

8. Zbierski, Przegląd Zachodni, XII (1956), 113.

9. Bruchnalski, II, 497-98 (emphasis added).

10. Dokurno, Pamiętnik Literacki, XLVII (1956), 337.

11. Zofia Szmydtowa, Mickiewicz jako tłumacz z literatur zachodnio-europejskich (Warsaw, 1955), p. 108.

12. G. G. Byron, Works, 8 vols. (London, 1818-20), VI, 34; and A. Mickiewicz, Dzieła Wszystkie, 5 vols. (Wrocław, 1971-), I cz. 2, 60. All subsequent citations from “Darkness” and “Ciemność” are taken from these two editions and are noted in parentheses in the text.

13. Notice how skillfully Mickiewicz uses the caesura to heighten his effect. In addition to the conventional caesura at the end of the seventh syllable, Mickiewicz places a strong pause after the fifth syllable, with the result that the caesura is weakened. At the same time the word “może,” bordered by a pause on two sides, acquires a more prominent, pivotal position, thereby heightening the tension and ambiguity seen on the semantic level.

14. For a recent discussion on the place of the dream in Mickiewicz' thought, see Alina Witkowska, Mickiewicz: słowo i czyn (Warsaw, 1975), pp. 45-46. See also J. Kleiner, Mickiewicz, 2 vols. (Lublin, 1948), II, 272-82.

15. Mickiewicz, Dzieła Wszystkie, I cz. I, 109.

16. Byron, VI, 43.

17. Szmydtowa, p. 108.

18. Ibid., p. 109.

19. See Jakobson's discussion of the etymological figure with respect to Pushkin's “Bronze Horseman” in “The Kernel of Comparative Slavic Literature,” Harvard Slavic Studies, I (1954), 11-12.

20. Zbierski, Przegląd Zachodni, XII (1956), 112. Interestingly enough, Amêdée Pichot's French prose rendering of this rather involved portion of Byron's text is quite accurate. The fact that Mickiewicz, who we know to have consulted Pichot (see A. Mickiewicz, Dzieła, 16 vols. [Warsaw, 1955], XIV, 253) departs from both texts so significantly suggests that we are dealing with a conscious departure from Byron's poem. See A. Pichot (ed.), Oeuvres de Lord Byron, 8 vols. (Paris, 1822-25), I, 117.

21. The same tendency to evoke death in more perceptual terms is seen in Mickiewicz' rendering of Byron's “The pall of a past world” by “Jak kir nad nieboszczykiem światem” (line 32).

22. Mickiewicz, Dzieła Wszystkie, I cz. 2, 271.

23. See Bruchnalski's commentary to “Ugolino” in Dzieła Adama Mickiewicza, II, 470; see also Szmydtowa, p. 158. Interestingly enough, the minor pre-romanticist Russian poet, Pavel Aleksandrovich Katenin (1752-1853), also rendered Canto Thirty-Three of Dante's Inferno under the title of “Ugolin” (1817) (see V. N. Orlov [ed.], Mastera russkogo stikhotvornogo perevoda [Leningrad, 1968], pp. 222-24). I have not been able to determine whether Mickiewicz was acquainted with Katenin or his works (there is no mention of Katenin in Mickiewicz' Paris lectures on Russian literature). Nor have I checked to see where and when Katenin's translation was published. Certain lexical affinities between Mickiewicz' and Katenin's texts, however, lead one to suspect that the Polish poet had read the Russian rendering. It is possible that Mickiewicz became acquainted with Katenin's works through his friendship with Pushkin who is known to have regarded Katenin very highly. If so, this could not have occurred before September-October 1826, when Mickiewicz' first meeting with Pushkin took place.

24. For the most recent discussion of the problems surrounding the dating of “Ciemność,” see Czesław Zgorzelski's commentary in Mickiewicz, Dzieła Wszystkie, I cz. 2, 268-70.

25. For example, the 1955 “Czytelnik” edition places “Ugolino” immediately before “Ciemność” some time during 1827. Likewise, Wacław Borowy, in the uncompleted “Sejm” edition, would have placed “Ciemność” “chyba po ‘Ugolinie’” (Mickiewicz, Dzieła Wszystkie, I, cz. 2, 270, editor's footnote).

26. Dante, Inferno, I, 11; III, 136; IV, 1-3.

27. Mickiewicz, Dzieła, I, 284, lines 20-21. All subsequent citations from “Ugolino” are taken from this edition.

28. Ibid., lines 71-73. Cf., Dante's text: “quand'io feci'l mal sonno / che del futuro mi squarciò'l velame.” Inferno, XXXIII, 26-27.

29. Cf., Dante: “ambo le man per lo dolor mi morsi.” Inferno, XXXIII, 58.

30. Ibid., XXXII, 97-105.

31. One instance of accidental suppression of the Dantesque element in “Darkness” occurs in line 71 of “Ciemność,” where Mickiewicz, evidently thinking of the German noun “der Feind” (enemy) renders Byron's suggestive “Fiend” (i.e., Demon) by “nieprzyjaciel.” In so doing, he fails to render the distinctly infernal quality of Byron's image. Incidentally, Z. Sitnicki fails to observe the influence of Dante on “Ciemność” in his study “Mickiewicz a Dante,” Pamiętnik Literacki, XXXVIII (1948), 335-73.

32. Kleiner, Mickiewicz, I, 421.

33. See Zgorzelski's commentary to “Sen” in Mickiewicz, Dzieła Wszystkie, I cz. 1, 352-54.

34. Ibid., 109, lines 13-14.

35. “Wynajdż … proszę tom Bajrona, nie pamiętam ktory, tłumaczenia francuskiego, gdzie się znajduje poezja pod tytułem Le Songe, ale nie weż na to miejsce drugiego ‘Snu’ pod tytułem Les Ténèbres” (Mickiewicz, Dzieła, XIV, 253; emphasis added). Mickiewicz could not have known at that time that “Darkness” in manuscript form bore the provisional title “A Dream.” See Byron, Works, 13 vols. (London, 1889-1904), IV, 42.

36. Mickiewicz, who at this time was deeply engrossed in his own gloomy, dream-like poem “Dziady,” Part IV, evidenced a particular empathy with the author of “The Dream” and “Euthanasia.” See Kleiner, Mickiewicz, I, 420-21.

37. Kleiner observes that this may not have been the only rendering from Byron which Mickiewicz considered unworthy of publication. As an example he cites the unfinished “Giaur” and suggests that there may have been others that never saw the light. Ibid., I, 421.

38. Zygmunt Grosbart, “Puszkinowskie tłumaczenia Mickiewicza a dzieje przekładu w Rosji” in Spotkanie Literackie: z dziejów powiązań polsko-rosyjskich w dobie Romantyzmui Neo-Romantyzmu (Wroclaw, 1973), pp. 85-112.