The first poem composed in Polish was "Bogurodzica", in the 13th century. For over five centuries, this "Carmen Patrium" was considered a national anthem: a paradox, in a sense, since it contains no national elements.

It is now possible to prepare a multimedia (including audio recordings), and/or a book edition of this text, a transcultural and polyglot opus containing poetic, literary and cultural comments from the translators.

As such, this is an unprecedented project, since no poetry has yet been researched nor presented in this manner. This is confirmed by the "Index Translationum" bibliographical database of UNESCO.

Bibliographical references:

"Bogurodzica": The first poem composed in Polish. A polyglot opus in forty languages.
(c)2003, Z.W. Wolkowski, University of Paris
ISBN 2-904414-08-8
Catalog references:
Library of Congress, Washington
British Library, London
National Library of France
National Library of Poland, Warsaw

Other projects:

A study in geopoetics and identity: the polyglot compilation of one poetry in 109 languages (concerns Mickiewicz's Invocation in "Pan Tadeusz")
(c)2002 Z.W. Wolkowski, University of Paris
ISBN 2-904414-05-03
Library of Congress, Washington
National Library of Poland, Warsaw

List of languages, for which translations of "Bogurodzica" have been received
(as of March, 2007):

Albanian
Alsatian
Amharic
Arabic (classical)
Aramaic
Armenian (West)
Basque
Breton
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese
Corsican
Creole (Martinique)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Esperanto
Finnish
French
Georgian
German
Greek (ancient)
Greek (modern)
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Kabyle
Kashubian
Khmer
Lao
Latin
Lingala
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Malagasy
Maltese
Mongolian
Moore (Burkina Faso)
Niederdeutsch
Norwegian
Occitan
Persian
Poitevin
Polish (modern)
Portuguese
Provencal
Rom (gypsy)
Romanian
Russian
Sanscrit
Sardinian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Tagalog
Tamil
Tigrinya
Vietnamese
Welsh
Wolof

Additional translations are welcome!

Zbigniew W. Wolkowski
Dr. hab.lett.sc.hum.
University of Paris 6
4 place Jussieu
BC 64
75252 Paris Cedex 05, France

E-mail: