Archiwalne tropy do biografi i Genowefy Zduń, tłumaczki chińskiej literatury dla dzieci i młodzieży

This article presents the findings of archival research on Genowefa Zduń (1927–2018), a sinologist affiliated with the University of Warsaw from 1956 onward who, in the 1950s, translated Chinese children’s literature under the pseudonym Bożena Kowalska. The article discusses the results of archival queries conducted at three institutions: the University of Warsaw Archive, the Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Manuscript Department of the Stanisław Staszic Pomeranian Library in Szczecin. A key discovery was a set of letters written by Zduń in her youth to her friend Halina Leszczyńska (1922–1988), the daughter of Maria Leszczyńska and the stepdaughter of the poet Stefan Flukowski (1902–1972). This correspondence revealed not only the personal dimension of the bond between Zduń and Leszczyńska, but also made it possible to reconstruct the circumstances of the young translator’s collaboration with Flukowski and to trace the origins of Zduń’s first Polish translations of children’s literature produced directly from Chinese.