La letteratura polacca nel polisistema letterario italiano (1991-2021). Un’introduzione

Abstract

The essay considers in overall terms the growth of the presence of Polish literature in Italy over the past three decades, observable in both quantitative and qualitative terms. In quantitative terms, the determining factors are both internal to the Italian publishing market and traceable to the supportive action exerted by Polish cultural institutions. As many as 535 titles released in the last 30 years are listed in the overall bibliography. It does not escape attention, anyway, that the large number of books released in the thirty-year period does not, in many cases, equate to a large number of readers; many translations occupy a weak position in the target culture system. Also in translation policy, a distinction is made between a qualitative strategy inspired by the principle of selectivity (either large publishing houses, or small publishing houses as long as they are prestigious) and a quantitative strategy inspired by the principle of serendipity (the important thing is to throw seeds, some will germinate). In qualitative terms, however, the essay focuses on two aspects: the increase in the symbolic capital of Polish literature and its articulated presence in the Italian literary polysystem. The increase in symbolic capital concerns in particular certain fields, or genres, in which Polish literature has expressed names of commonly recognized value: the Nobel laureates Szymborska, Milosz and To- karczuk, but also representatives of non-canonized genres that have emerged from the peripheries of the polysystem only recently, such as Lem, Kapuscinski, Sapkowski. Thanks to them, Polish literature has moved in various articulations of the Italian polysystem from a peripheral to a central position. If in 1991, in Marchesani's calculations, there were twelve Polish authors who had had at least four volume titles published between 1945 and 1990, in the last thirty years there are as many as thirty-two.