La traduzione polacca de L’angoscia Delle Macchine di Ruggero Vasari ad opera di Irena Krzywicka

This paper deals with the Polish translation of L’angoscia delle macchine, the most significant piece of theatre by the Italian futurist Ruggero Vasari, first published in 1925. The translation, hitherto unpublished, dates from 1926. It is the work of Irena Krzywicka, a feminist writer well known in interwar Poland as a supporter of female emancipation and sexual liberation. The translation was associated with an attempt to stage Vasari’s drama in the National Theatre in Warsaw. This would have been the world premiere of the piece. Unfortunately the project was not realised due to differences with the director of the National Theatre, Arnold Szyfman. Since that time the typescript of the Polish translation has been preserved in the Theatre Museum in Warsaw. The present paper is intended as a first study aimed at establishing which version of the original work Krzywicka used for her translation. This has demonstrated that the Polish translation is not based on the canonical Italian original we know as L’angoscia delle macchine, but on a later version, whose existence is attested by the many affinities Krzywicka’s translation displays with other contemporary versions of the drama in German and French. Each of these versions shows a slightly different stage of development of the text, however, which leads one to think that Vasari could have had some influence on each of them. Even if it is not at present possible to determine the precise relationship of the translations with the original and with each other, it is evident that they can shed new light not only on the reception of Vasari’s work abroad, but on the very history of the text itself.