Zbigniew Bieńkowski (31 August 1913, in Warsaw — 23 February 1994) was a Polish poet,
literary critic
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...
Bieńkowski graduated in 1931 from the Gymnasium XX Marian in
Bielany
Bielany () is a district in Warsaw located in the north-western part of the city.
Initially a part of Żoliborz, Bielany has been an independent district since 1994. Bielany borders Żoliborz to the south-east, and Bemowo to the south-west. Its ...
near Warsaw. From 1932 to 1939 he studied at the University of Warsaw both law at the Faculty of Law, as well as at the Faculty of Humanities. Bieńkowski received a one-year scholarship from the Sorbonne and moved to Paris in 1938. In 1939 he moved to Italy and then to Yugoslavia, where he was caught by the outbreak of World War II. He returned to Poland during the Nazi occupation. He fought as a soldier for the
Armia Krajowa
The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) esta ...
, and participated in the Warsaw Uprising.
After the war he worked in the editorial department of the ''
Rzeczpospolita
() is the official name of Poland and a traditional name for some of its predecessor states. It is a compound of "thing, matter" and "common", a calque of Latin ''rés pública'' ( "thing" + "public, common"), i.e. ''republic'', in Engli ...
'' daily, then in the weekly ''Odrodzenie'' and monthly ''
Twórczość
''Twórczość'' (Creativity, or Creative Output) is a Polish monthly literary journal, first published in 1945. Since 1 April 2000, ''Twórczość'' has been published by the state-funded Book Institute (Instytut Książki).Małgorzata Hillar.
Bieńkowski was a member of the Polish PEN Organization from 1966 to 1972.
The authors on which he focused as a translator include:
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
,
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...
Saint-John Perse
Alexis Leger (; 31 May 1887 – 20 September 1975), better known by his pseudonym Saint-John Perse (; also Saint-Leger Leger), was a French poet-diplomat, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative ...
,
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard (), born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel (; 14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the Surrealist movement.
In 1916, he chose the name Paul Éluard, a matronymic borrowed from his maternal ...
, and
Jules Supervielle
Jules Supervielle (16 January 1884 – 17 May 1960) was a Franco-Uruguayan poet and writer born in Montevideo. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times.
He opposed the surrealism movement in poetry and rejected automatic wri ...