From Japanese Schulz to Polish Parnicki – around the year 1974

Tokimasa Sekiguchi

doi:10.18778/0860-6587.26.32

Authors

Tokimasa Sekiguchi Professor Emeritus Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 3 Chome-11-1 Asahicho, Fuchu, Tokyo 183-8534, Japan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7262-7959

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/0860-6587.26.32

Keywords:

Polish language, Polish literature, translation, Polish studies, Japan, the Japanese, Bruno Schulz, Teodor Parnicki

Abstract

The major works by Bruno Schulz and Witold Gombrowicz were translated into Japanese in the 1960s, mainly by Yukio Kudō. I was enchanted by those Japanese texts to such an extent that I decided to abandon French literature and switch to Polish contemporary literature. In 1974, I came to Poland on a post-graduate fellowship of the Polish government, and I began studies in literature and the Polish language at the Jagiellonian University. During that two-year stay in Krakow, my view of Polish literature changed several times. The phase well established in the Japanese translations I had known ended quickly. Then I began to “hunt” for promising Polish authors not yet present in world literature. I thus discovered the prolific, esoteric and difficult Teodor Parnicki (1908–1988). This essay is my description of my “penetrating” the world of the Polish language at that time.

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