The article deals with the contemporary translation of Tadeusz Różewicz’s poems into Russian. Regardless of the fact that some of his poetry had already been translated and published, new times and new readers need new translations. The considerations presented in the article refer precisely to them. Taken into account were primarily the translations of a generation of contemporary translators for an international competition on the translation of Różewicz’s poems, announced in 2013 by the foundation ‘For your freedom and ours’. The translations of three poems by the Polish poet have been considered: Words, In the light of flickering lamps and Such is the master, works frequently chosen by the winners of the said competition. In particular the analysis regards the saturation of the poems with cultural realities and inter-textual elements. Therefore, comments and some translators’ notes accompanying the translations were taken into account, ones defining their approach to the translation and the translated text itself. The considerations confirmed the need to activate the cognitive function of translation in modern translations – the purpose of the mentioned comments – but also to pay attention to the problems of translating free verse into Russian.

This article is an attempt to confront the autothematic refl ection in Leopold Staff’s (Ars poetica and The Artist’s Sadness) with two poems, inspired by a somewhat similar approach, by Tymoteusz Karpowicz and Krystyna Miłobędzka. What they seem to have in common are textual signs of welcome with ‘open arms’ and ‘the outstretched hand’. These emblematic gestures invite the reader/the Other to a diffi cult dialogue and at the same time indicate the nature of the authors’ poetic ambition. The analysis of the two pairs of poems is set in the context of the 20th-century evolution of the idea of poetic genius and the poet’s self-awareness. Crucial to this comparative study of the poetic practice of Leopold Staff, Tymoteusz Karpowicz and Krystyna Miłobędzka is an appraisal of the authenticity of their vision and the language they used to express their maximalist ambitions.