Our Mythical Childhood...
The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges
Homer at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” in Poland
We met on 20th February, within a special Seminar dedicated to the Our Mythical Childhood project. The Seminar is attended by the students from the Faculty, mainly within the curricula of Artes Liberales and Cultural Studies – Mediterranean Civilization, by the PhD students, and the Faculty’s part of the OMC team. This year our group comprises the participants from Poland, Belarus, Italy, Russia, and – in the framework of an International Students Exchange Programme, also a student from Japan who read Homer’s verses in two translations (classical and modern). We wished to revive the poignant scene of the farewell between Hector and Andromache (book 6), culminated with Hector’s death (book 22). We decided to read the chosen verses in all our native languages that, together, would build that scene beyond the millennia and national borders, thus showing the ancient power of the magic of the Word in our times.
The Seminar group was joined by our friends and colleagues who helped us in this task: Ms. Gabriele Hermani – Science Councellor at the German Embassy in Warsaw, the scholars from our Faculty, including the Dean Prof. Robert A. Sucharski, Prof. Cristina González Caizán, and Dr. Kyunney Takasaeva who prepared her own translation into the language of Sakha (Yakutian), our alumni and collaborators.
At the same time, the students of the two schools, we are happy to cooperate with: XI Mikołaj Rej High School with their tutor Anna Wojciechowska and Strumienie High School with their tutor Barbara Strycharczyk, prepared Constantine Cavafy’s poem Trojans. Their recitations were complemented by the original Modern Greek version presented by the students of the Modern Greek curriculum at our Faculty, with the tutorship by the Modern Greek lecturer Sotirios Karageorgos. The reading session was registered by Mirosław Kaźmierczak. We hope we can thus share this beautiful experience worldwide, with all the admirers of the Poet.
