Trzy typy zagadek w historii polskiego przekładu literackiego

The aim of the paper is to present three types of riddles appearing in the history of Polish literary translation, as well as suggestions for methods of solving them. The first type involves the attribution of the authorship of an anonymous translation; here I will use the example of my own attempts to identify the author of an eighteenth-century translation of Voltaire’s philosophical story La Princesse de Babylone. The second type involves the explanation for the fact that the Polish translation appeared very soon after the publication of the original, under conditions of a long publishing process and limited possibilities for the international circulation of texts in the People’s Republic of Poland; the case of Beckett’s drama Fin de partie is discussed here. Thirdly, I try to find out how some texts which, in theory, should not be admitted to the People’s Republic of Poland literary field, were smuggled into it by engaged agents under favourable historical circumstances.