„Jak zachwyca, kiedy nie zachwyca?”
“How Is It Delightful When It Is Not?”: On the Translations of the 55th Sura of the KoranAr-Raḥmān – The Merciful

Summary/Abstract: The Koran is not only the holy book of Islam, but also one of the most important literary works of classical Arabic literature. Muslims and people who know Arabic emphasize the extraordinary beauty of this text, written in rhymed and rhythmic prose. 55 sura of the Koran, Ar-Raḥmān (The Merciful) is widely regarded, both in Muslim and Orientalist circles, as one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, sura of the Koran from the artistic point of view. This is mainly due to the presence of a kind of “refrain” in this sura, which, of course, also has a semantic role in the context of the content of this fragment of the holy book of Muslims. The subject of the article is, first of all, a comparative analysis of the translation of this sura, and first of all of the refrain, in selected translations of the Koran into Polish, German, French and Russian. The analysis focuses not on the way of presenting the content, but on whether the authors of the translations tried to reflect the undoubted beauty of the sound of the Koranic text, which is supposed to delight not only with its content, but also its form, and translators usually have huge problems with this. The conclusions resulting from this analysis have a broader meaning, because analogous problems also arise in the case of ancient Arabic poetry and some other literary genres, primarily maqāma.

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