How I Came to the Idea of Translating "The Emperor" into English

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand. Source: http://alfaomega.webnode.com/products/ryszard-kapu/ Date of publication: 2010-03-09

It was March 1979; the aeroplane was flying over the Atlantic, and above the clouds things were for the time being fairly smooth and calm; it was only before the inland stopover at Gander in the Canadian province of Newfoundland that there were to be scenes of infernal proportions: three attempts at landing — the pilot changed his mind at about half a metre above the ground, pulling the plane up again — as well as terrible turbulence that almost prevented the plane’s wheels from making contact with the landing place, a runway covered in a thick layer of snow. For the moment one could enjoy the reading of a new book. Someone among friends, just before departure, had put into my hands “The Emperor” by Ryszard Kapuściński, saying that this was the book everyone in Warsaw was reading at the moment. He added that in Poland it was then compulsory reading, interpreted as a text with a double meaning. Ostensibly about the court of Emperor Haile Selassie, but really about the red court of the Central Committee (of the Polish United Workers’ Party) or, going lower, of the Provincial Committee or the District Committee. Ostensibly about the mechanisms of servility and toadying in the imperial chambers of Ethiopia, but really about those very mechanisms in the offices and antechambers and corridors of power in the People’s Republic of Poland and about those gathered around power.

Poezja on kapuscinski.info

How I Came to the Idea of Translating "The Emperor" into English