Whitman’s One’s-Self and En-Masse Rewritten. On the Polish Reception Series of ”One’s-Self I Sing”

The poem “Inscription,” which for the first time opened the 1867 Leaves with the dominant image of “ONE’S-SELF,” has become one of the most prominent of Whitman’s poems in the Polish rewritings of Leaves of Grass. Although only the final version of the poem (1871) has been translated, paraphrased, quoted or alluded to, its main subject – an exchange between the individual self and the collective self – has been well preserved in the Polish culture. I present Polish rewritings of the poem according to my concept of “a reception series” that encompasses not only translations but also various texts connected with the original as well as with its translations, e.g.: retranslations, paraphrases, adaptations, parodies, commentaries, interpretations, quotations and other texts representing intertextual and intermedial connections. All of these retextualisations, together with the data on how they used to function, that is, on how they were published, republished, or otherwise presented to form a “reception series,” which is, to my mind, the fullest object of research on the functioning of a given foreign text in a new culture. A reception series always becomes a rich source of knowledge of the possibilities of interpreting a particular original and of the ways in which that original can be used (culturally but also politically). It also helps to capture “the third value” created in the process of intercultural exchange which, in the case of Polish rewritings of “One’s-Self I Sing,” is exceptionally rich and intriguing.