From Poetry into Film – and Back (through Translation)

The aim of the article is to analyse the interrelations between three works: the ballad “Panna Anna” (1926) by the Polish modernist writer Bolesław Leśmian, Aleksandra Szymanska’s short film Lilith (2012) inspired by it, and Marian Polak-Chlabicz’s English rendition of Leśmian’s poem (2014). The material is discussed in terms of intersemiotic translation and translation proper but I also propose a framework for examining the intermedial relation between the two artworks based on the same source-text. “Panna Anna” and Lilith are linked tenuously yet unmistakably by the motif of a woman’s erotic attachment to a wooden dummy, and the connection between them invites reflection on the scope of the Jakobsonian notion of transmutation. It is suggested here that another relevant notion is that of intersemiotic aspects of (interlingual) translation.