“I Hate You, Romeo.” A Heretic Re-writing of Romeo and Juliet

Abstract In the nineteen twenties last century a young poet and diplomat from Warsaw, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, was taking part in an international congress of intellectuals in Heidelberg. During his stay in Germany he wrote The Lovers of Verona (the title in Polish reads Kochankowie z Werony), a play that offers a radical reinterpretation of the main message of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Iwaszkiewicz’s vision of the young lovers, who are infected by insurmountable enmity, was determined by his pessimistic views on the nature of love and desire, expressed also in his other plays, prose and poetry. This article discusses the circumstances behind Iwaszkiewicz’s adaptation that shed light on the reasons for this unorthodox re-writing of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. This is done to highlight the complex interrelations between authorial writing and translation activity which in case of writer-translators are determined by a net of political, social and personal factors.