Paradoks wieczności i przemijania: doświadczenie czasu w That in Aleppo Once... Vladimira Nabokova oraz w jego polskich przekładach

Nabokov's definition of art is based on a paradox. The eternization of evanescent beauty annihilates it; by annihilating beauty, art annihilates itself. Even though there may exist a transcendent order, we can only access it in an indirect way, limited by time and ego. This paradox is strongly inscribed in the structure of That in Aleppo Once..., whose narrator is entangled in this circular dynamics between eternity and evanescence, creation and autodestruction. Only on the level of the author and the reader, i.e. on the level transcendent in relation to the fictional world, is there a possibility of passing from egocentric narratorial perspective to intersubjective space of language. In translation, this space has to be organized according to different rules. This is visible in two different Polish translations. In hers Teresa Truszkowska slightly reduces the narrator's obsession as a result of a more rationalizing interpretation; Leszek Engelking on the other hand, sometimes even emphasizes this obsession.