Łódź was waking.

The first shrill factory whistle rendered the silence of early morning. In its wake, others, from all parts of town, ever more clamorous, began screaming hoarsely with unruly voices like a chorus of monstrous roosters crowing, through their metal throats, the call to work.

The gigantic factories, whose long black sprawling bodies and slim neck-like chimneys loomed in the night, fog and rain - woke slowly, gushed flames from their stoked fires, exhaled billowing smoke, and began to come alive and move in the darkness which still enveloped the land.

The fine, March rain, mixed with snow, continued to fall and it spread a heavy, sticky mist over Łódź. The rain drummed on tin roofs and dropped from them directly onto the sidewalks, onto the dark streets full of deep mud, onto the leafless trees that, tousled by the wind, hugged the long walls and shivered in the cold. The wind arose somewhere from the sodden fields and rolled heavily through the town's muddy streets, rattling the fences, grappling with the roofs and falling into the mud; it whistled through the branches of the trees, beating with them the windows of a low, stubby house in which suddenly the light went on.

Łódź sie budziła.

Pierwszy wrzaskliwy świst fabryczny rozdarł ciszę wczesnego poranku, a za nim we wszystkich stronach rniasta zaczęły coraz zgielkliwiej inne i darły się chrapliwemi, nesfornemi głosami niby chór potwornych kogutów, piejących metalowymi gardzielami hasło do pracy.

Olbrzymie fabryki, których długie czarne cielska i wysmukniente szyje-kominy majaczyły w nocy, w mgle i w deszczu -- budziły się z wolna, buchały płomieniami ognisk, oddychały kłębami dymów, zaczynały żyć i poruszać się w ciemnościach, jakie jeszcze zlewały ziemię.

Deszcz drobny, marcowy deszcz pomieszany ze śniegiem, padał wciaż i rozwłóczył nad Łodzią ciężki, lepki tuman; bębnił w blaszane dachy i spływał z nich prosto na trotuary, na ulice czarne i pełne grzęskiego błota, na nagie drzewa, przytulone do długich murów, drżące z zimna, targane wiatrem, co zrywał się gdzieś z pól przemiękłych i przewalal się ciężko błotnistymi ulicami miasta, wstrząsal parkanami, próbował dachów i opadał w błoto, i szumiał między gałęziami drzew, i bił niemi w szyby niskiego, parterowego domu, w którym nagle zabłysło światło.

The Translators' Dilemma

All the differences between the original and its translation can be glaring and disturbing to an individual fluent in both languages. Yet, differences in the grammatical structure and meaning of words preclude the possiblity of a completly literal translation. Efforts to approximate it, if taken too far, can cramp the style. Nonetheless, if the translation departs too far from the original, the genius and charm of the original prose may be compromised. A happy medium presumably exists, though readers' views on how close any given translation approaches it would likely differ. By way of an exercise, you are invited to compare the two translations the opening paragraphs of The Promised Land featured on this page. With regard to the 1927 translation of The Promised Land by Michael H. Dziewicki, a Reader of English Literature at the Jagiellonian University, one needs to also remember that English usage has changed in the intervening three quarters of a century.

Łódź was awakening.

One first shrill blast, rending the silence of the small hours, and followed by the ululations of sirens all over town, noisier and still more noisy, rearing and ripping the air to tatters with their harsh uncouth din - a chorus of gigantic cocks, at it were, from those metal throats of theirs.

With long, dark bodies and slender upstanding necks, looming out of the night, the fog and rain, the big factories were slowly rousing up, scintillating with many a flame, and beginning to live and move amid the darkness.

A thin March rain, not without sleet, was falling, falling; covering Łódź with thick viscid mistiness, pattering upon the iron-plate roofs, pouring thence down to the pavements and the black rniry, sloughy streets, streaming down the bare tree-trunks, marshaled in low rows close to the walls and shivering in the cold and tossed about by the wind the wind that now swept the thoroughfares buried in ooze, now rattled and shook the fences, and now tried the roofs: or again would swoop into a quagmire or howl through the branches of a tree.