The discussion in this article is based on the assumption that the sociocultural dynamics of quixotism is common to many cultures and, as a consequence, each of them should produce its own version of the emblematic Don Quixote. The formula of this concept of quixotism comes from Magdalena Barbaruk’s studies in the field of theory and cultural practice, in which she probes into vast stretches of history, including the centuries after the publication of Cervantes’ novel as well as the epochs that preceded it. Accordingly, the circle of Quixote-like figures should include Ignatius Loyola, Saint James, Christopher Columbus, the Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki and Prince Myshkin from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot. The principal criterion for inclusion in this category is “to be a reader who walked out of the library so as to act in accordance with the books” (Magdalena Bodnaruk, ‘Don Kichote w naukach o kulturze’ [Don Quixote in Cultural Studies], in: Wieczna krucjata. Szkice o Don Kichocie [The Eternal Wandering: Essays on Don Quixote], Poznań 2016, p. 164). Taking that step results, as a matter of necessity, in a clash with the generally accepted rules and conventions. Moreover, while doing so the quixotic individual has to face the risk of having his heroism held up to ridicule or dismissed as folly.
This article puts up some additional candidates to Barbaruk’s short list of ‘Quixotes’ and considers the way in which their distinctive qualities may modify her quixotic formula. The first is the protagonist of the 1955 stage/screen adaptation of Cervantes’ novel by the Soviet Russian author Evgeny Schwartz. His Quixote is a knight errant who knows all too well that he defies people’s routines and expectations and yet remains true to himself and his ideals. He is aware that to ‘save the world’ he has to live and act in the boundary area between the profanum and the sacred, or the real world and a kind of fairyland. Therefore, what marks the timeless Quixote is the deliberate overstepping of a role sanctioned by the ruling consensus, and making a stand against the powers that be. The Middle Ages certainly produced many figures cast in that mould, among them Saint Gerald of Aurillac (whose Vita was written by Odo of Cluny). If a sharp, uncompromising view of reality is a distinct character trait of a quixotic personality, another figure that need to be added to the short list of is Buono, the good alter ego of Viscount Medardo, the protagonist of Italo Calvino’s novel The Cloven Viscount (1952). Finally, the article argues that a character who sets off on a journey (quest) which gives him the opportunity to perform noble (chivalric) deeds represents another version of a Quixotic knight errant. The case in point is Tristran from Neil Gaiman’s fairy tale fantasy Stardust.

This article outlines the approach adopted by Władysław Syrokomla (the pen name of Ludwik Kondratowicz) in his translation of Latin verse and examines, by analyzing some of the poems he translated into Polish, how it worked in practice. He believed that the translator should strive for an empathic attunement to the writers voice (Einfühlung) while ‘remaining oneself’ and that abandoning ‘slavish imitation’ was the best way to animate a poem (an approach much criticized by philological authorities). These ideas are discussed in the fi rst part of the article; the second part contains analyses of his translations of Latin odes written by Maciej Sarbiewski, i.e. Ode I 19 (Ad caelestem adspirat patriam), II 3 (Ad suam testudinem), and IV 12 (Ad Ianum Libinium. Solitudinem suam excusat). Syrokomla does not engage in any intertextual games with the ancients; instead, he adapts the original to the formal and stylistic conventions of his time, most notably the Romantic concept of the poem as a projection of a poetic consciousness (‘ego’). In effect, Sarbiewski’s (neo) classical poetic personas become versions of the Romantic hero, most conspicuously in the case of Ode IV 12.