Abstract

Maria Kuncewiczowa’s (1895-1989) self-translation activity lasted over a quarter of a century (1939-1968) and was linked to her status as a migrant following the outbreak of World War ii. Her self-translations are bidirectional and include four texts: Klucze, Dziękuję za różę, Gaj oliwny, and Tristan 1946. To date, only the self-translation of the play Dziękuję za różę has been the subject of a detailed case study. The first work that marks the writer’s overcoming of monolingualism is her war memoirs entitled Klucze. Kuncewiczowa began writing the first chapter of the book in French during her stay in France. She then continued to work on the text in Polish. The book, written between 1940 and 1942, was published in Polish in 1943 and in English self-translation in 1945 under the title The Keys: A Journey Through Europe at War. This article aims to analyze the relationship between self-translation and the memoir as a form of life and identity narrative, in order to draw more general conclusions about the author-translator trajectory in the broader context of the dynamics of diversity and inclusion, the negotiation of the hybrid self that takes place in the course of the self-translation of autobiographical narratives, and the concept of “world citizenship” coined by Kuncewiczowa herself.