Miron Białoszewski’s Pamiętnik z Powstania Warszawskiego in Italy

This paper aims to reconstruct the history, characterised by several attempts, of the publication of an Italian translation of the book Pamiętnik z powstania warszawskiego (1970) by Miron Białoszewski. I shall present, for the first time, unpublished communication material (1995) produced by the publishing house Voland (Rome), which provides evidence that Barbara Adamska Verdiani, who is curiously one of the book’s main characters, tried to translate the work. This article discusses several translation and editing issues concerning the Italian edition of Białoszewski’s text, such as the challenge of transposing the writer’s register, defined by Barańczak’s (1976) as “childish” and “colloquial”, and which came to be somehow obscured by editing conventions. Also, this research contrasts the choices made in the Italian translation to several relevant textual sources that range from George Orwell’s (1946) quest for non-verbal formulation of ideas, Roland Barthes’ (1973) concept of a “text de jouissance” and Lawrence Venuti’s (1995) theory of “foreignising translation” as opposed to a “fluent” one.