"Do not lose hope when it is so easy to doubt." An interview with Wojciech Marzec about the translation of The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart
Can a 17th-century masterpiece appeal to a contemporary reader? In an interview with Wojciech Marzec, the translator of the first complete Polish edition of The Labyrinth of the world and the paradise of the heart by John Amos Comenius, we discuss the backstage of the translation process, the timeless relevance of one of the most significant works of early European literature, and the reasons why it is worth picking up this remarkable book.
The Labyrinth of the world and the paradise of the heart is the most important work of early Czech literature, carrying a universal message about the search for the meaning of life. Its author, John Amos Comenius (1592–1670)—the last bishop of the Unity of the Brethren and a brilliant educator—was closely tied to Leszno, where he lived from 1628 to 1656. In fact, the book’s first edition, published in 1631, was most likely printed right here in this city.
This new publication marks the first complete Polish edition of the work. Jakub Piwoński interviews Wojciech Marzec, the book's translator.
Jakub Piwoński: How did your journey with The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart begin, and what made you decide to take on its translation? What were your first impressions when you read the text for the very first time?
Wojciech Marzec: It’s actually quite simple. An essential part of Czech studies is a course on the history of literature. When it comes to what we call "Old Czech literature"—stretching from the era of Saints Constantine-Cyril and Methodius up to the 18th century—Comenius’s Labyrinth is a central text of sorts. It is one of the very few works written in Czech that are older than a century and have made their way into the broader canon of European culture. However, I don't know if I can pinpoint exactly why I took up the translation in the first place. At university, this text is read during the first year, so out of necessity, it’s read in Polish—in Jan Pindór's translation, from the 1914 edition. It wasn’t until later, during a scholarship in Prague, that I had the opportunity to discover the then-new, beautifully compiled edition of Comenius’s Czech spiritual treatises. It was then that I realized just how heavily abridged the Polish version actually was. Without going into detail – about twelve chapters are missing there. The text of a much older translation (from 1695) is more complete, but even so, it does not correspond to Comenius's definitive edition. So the decision was probably influenced by this sense of lack, a dissatisfaction with the fact that the Polish reader (and even a first-year student of Czech philology who has to read The Labyrinth for an exam) does not have access to the full text, let alone a critical edition. And my impressions from the first reading? I definitely liked it—the lightness, the humor, the carnivalesque quality. I should note here that the mystical and spiritual part is the most heavily cut in the early 20th-century translation, so this grotesque image of the world-as-a-labyrinth comes to the forefront even more than it does in the complete text.
JP: What exactly is The Labyrinth of the world and the paradise of the heart? How would you describe this book to someone who has never heard of it before?
WM: This question can be answered on several levels. First, there is the seemingly simple genre issue – one could say that The Labyrinth is a proto-novel, perhaps even belonging to speculative fiction; on the other hand, it can be treated as an allegory, a parable about the world. Yet another perspective views the text as a religious treatise, serving as a kind of summation of Comenius's thinking as a key figure of the Reformation and a bishop of the Unity of the Brethren. To this, we can add some less intuitive terms emerging from recent literary history research. These terms usually describe a few or a few dozen distinct texts of older literature, such as a 'spiritual journey,' 'the theater of the world,' a 'negative encyclopedia,' and the like. It is certainly a more fictionalized text than Comenius's Latin works that have been published in Polish so far. So much for what the Labyrinth is; there remains the second question: what it is about. To put it briefly, simply and, of course, superficially, it is a story about a young man looking for his place in the world he has found himself in. Led by treacherous guides, he gets to know the world through its various manifestations. At the same time, he notices how wretched the condition of the object of his inquiry is. He falls into deep despair, but finds solace rather quickly. Christ comes to his rescue, visiting the Pilgrim (as Comenius names his main character and narrator) in his heart. It is perhaps also worth contextualizing this work within a biographical, historical, and geographical framework. The first version was written during the still early stages of the Thirty Years' War (in 1623); the first edition, likely printed in Leszno, came out halfway through it (1631); while the final one appeared in Amsterdam (1663), many years after the war had ended. The atmosphere of anxiety and war is clearly palpable in the text. The author's personal drama was similar – not only did he have to flee and ultimately emigrate due to the Habsburg Catholic forces crushing the Bohemian Revolt, but he also lost his wife and two children during an epidemic. It is not without reason that The Labyrinth is classified among 'consolatory texts'; one could say it was a form of self-therapy, which is also reflected in the text.
JP: Comenius guides his character through the world in search of meaning and order. In your opinion, what resonates most strongly from this journey today and remains relevant?
WM: Well, Comenius’s text is a kind of mosaic, or perhaps rather a mansion theatre, where the reader wanders with the Pilgrim from scene to scene. And although history has falsified certain views (such as the opposition to the Copernican heliocentric theory), and other issues have ceased to be pressing or relevant to our times (such as alchemical pursuits or the Rosicrucian Brotherhood), the obsolescence of some elements has in no way diminished the value of the jigsaw puzzle as a whole. We can still encounter many people in the world who act wickedly, out of self-interest, driven by greed, hatred, a desire for revenge, or simply thoughtlessness. We can still burst into laughter that dies on our lips when reading passages about putting on masks in the company of others, or shake our heads in sadness upon coming across a chapter on the futility of wars. However, this applies primarily to the first part of the text—namely, the description of 'the labyrinth of the world'. The more religiously marked 'paradise of the heart' seems to me even more relevant today. Comenius’s quest for a 'true' religion—which constitutes a moral system heavily influenced by mysticism, a kind of instruction manual for a good life—appears highly necessary in these bleak times (that is, both in the seventeenth century and today). On the one hand, it is a path toward Truth and the certainty of fundamental things; on the other, it is a path leading to the hope that we all, after all, need.
JP: What did your day-to-day work on the translation look like? Was it a more systematic process, or did it rather require constant backtracking and revisions?
WM: It changed from time to time! At first, with no prospect of publication in sight, I worked very irregularly; I treated this 'scratching around' in the text more as a series of translation exercises. I don’t mean to devalue that period—that was when some crucial decisions were made, most importantly, that the translated text had to be readable. The very first version was, in places, almost slavishly faithful to the syntax of the original. In it, I preserved the heavily Latinized Baroque syntax, which often resulted in nearly all the predicates of the subordinate clauses piling up at the end of the sentence. In its own way, this built up a certain 'monumentality' in the text, but on the other hand, when I returned to it after about a month, I had to piece together individual syntactic relationships myself, pencil in hand. That was when I decided to simplify the text, though only to such an extent that it wouldn't completely lose that perceptible 'patina' of age. Later, after my initial talks with the director, Kamila Szymańska, the process became a bit more disciplined, though at no stage was it a case of sitting down in front of my laptop at specific hours to translate. It was more of a sporadic process. There were days when I would translate for twelve hours with only short breaks, but there were also weeks when I wouldn't touch the text at all. Later, once I managed to power through to the end, I put the text aside for a few weeks to be able to look at it with fresh eyes, and immediately after that, the period of revisions began. I do my best editing on paper, so I printed out the whole thing and carried it around with me almost everywhere, along with a pen—to cafes, on trains, though I often worked at home as well. The next phase meant another 'fresh pair of eyes'—this time, not mine. The entire text was read and checked by my mother, who is a Polish language teacher; in a few places, she asked me what exactly I meant, which was a sign that something was unclear. So, more revisions followed, then another round, and so on.
JP: What was the most challenging part of translating this text? Was it the archaic language of a bygone era, or rather conveying its meanings and imagery?
WM: It is difficult to speak of one without the other. The text is, of course, quite archaic, though its reading is perhaps made more difficult by its syntactic complexity rather than its lexical aspect (as I have already mentioned). The edition I used tries to make the most incomprehensible words accessible to modern Czech readers through explanations, so it was helpful to me in that respect too. Perhaps the greatest difficulty lay in maintaining the gravity of the text without losing its lightness—a balance I hope I have successfully achieved. Comenius is, after all, highly witty and does not shy away from wordplay and linguistic jests; yet, in the final analysis, his Labyrinth remains an entirely earnest work, touching the deepest recesses and the most sensitive chords of both heart and soul.
JP: What is special about this new edition? What is worth noting when picking up this book?
WM: Even at first glance, it is clear that this is a "monumental" edition—distinguished by its large format, coated paper, and a highly spectacular visual design created by Miroslav Huptych. His collages can easily serve as a reason to spend hours with the book; indeed, it is well worth examining and analyzing them through the lens of the hermeneutic circle, exploring the relationship between individual elements and the overall picture, perhaps even the entire suite of illustrations, and their connection to the text itself. As for the main text, this edition features several distinctive characteristics worth noting. Above all, the translation is based on the most complete edition—published in Amsterdam in 1663—yet the use of color-coding allows the reader to trace the text’s evolution across three stages: from the manuscript, through the 1631 edition (likely published in Leszno), to the aforementioned Amsterdam edition, released seven years before the author’s death. The text is also accompanied by the author's own marginalia, which offer a look at the events from a somewhat different perspective. Another point of interest is the translation of what is perhaps the very first artistic reflection on Comenius’s treatise, namely a song by Jan Cassius. Additional elements that will, I hope, also prove noteworthy include the introduction and the commentaries, which can facilitate a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding the work's creation, certain aspects of the piece itself, and, above all, outline the intellectual horizon of the era.
JP: Did working on Labyrinth influence the way you view the world in any way?
WM: Most certainly, though it is not so easy to diagnose. On the one hand, when spending so much time in dialogue with someone or something (and reading is, after all, a form of communication), it is perhaps impossible to escape that influence—especially in such a unique relationship, where a thing once expressed in one language must be "clothed in the right word" in another. Something like this has to be rethought and felt over and over again, so it’s bound to stay with you in some way. I think what I take from the Labyrinth most of all is a powerful message: don't lose hope when it's so easy to doubt. Comenius possesses a truly remarkable power to convince us that precisely because things are as bad in the world as they are, all is well. However, one must not overlook a major caveat—the fact that the world functions as it does, and that its course is governed by Divine will, in no way absolves humanity of a profound responsibility, first and foremost, for oneself. Human beings are called to goodness and wisdom, but one must strive greatly to approach them, and this in itself is a monumental task.
You can buy the book HERE.
The Labyrinth of the world and the paradise of the heart is the most important work of early Czech literature, carrying a universal message about the search for the meaning of life. Its author, John Amos Comenius (1592–1670)—the last bishop of the Unity of the Brethren and a brilliant educator—was closely tied to Leszno, where he lived from 1628 to 1656. In fact, the book’s first edition, published in 1631, was most likely printed right here in this city.
This new publication marks the first complete Polish edition of the work. Jakub Piwoński interviews Wojciech Marzec, the book's translator.
Jakub Piwoński: How did your journey with The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart begin, and what made you decide to take on its translation? What were your first impressions when you read the text for the very first time?
Wojciech Marzec: It’s actually quite simple. An essential part of Czech studies is a course on the history of literature. When it comes to what we call "Old Czech literature"—stretching from the era of Saints Constantine-Cyril and Methodius up to the 18th century—Comenius’s Labyrinth is a central text of sorts. It is one of the very few works written in Czech that are older than a century and have made their way into the broader canon of European culture. However, I don't know if I can pinpoint exactly why I took up the translation in the first place. At university, this text is read during the first year, so out of necessity, it’s read in Polish—in Jan Pindór's translation, from the 1914 edition. It wasn’t until later, during a scholarship in Prague, that I had the opportunity to discover the then-new, beautifully compiled edition of Comenius’s Czech spiritual treatises. It was then that I realized just how heavily abridged the Polish version actually was. Without going into detail – about twelve chapters are missing there. The text of a much older translation (from 1695) is more complete, but even so, it does not correspond to Comenius's definitive edition. So the decision was probably influenced by this sense of lack, a dissatisfaction with the fact that the Polish reader (and even a first-year student of Czech philology who has to read The Labyrinth for an exam) does not have access to the full text, let alone a critical edition. And my impressions from the first reading? I definitely liked it—the lightness, the humor, the carnivalesque quality. I should note here that the mystical and spiritual part is the most heavily cut in the early 20th-century translation, so this grotesque image of the world-as-a-labyrinth comes to the forefront even more than it does in the complete text.
JP: What exactly is The Labyrinth of the world and the paradise of the heart? How would you describe this book to someone who has never heard of it before?
WM: This question can be answered on several levels. First, there is the seemingly simple genre issue – one could say that The Labyrinth is a proto-novel, perhaps even belonging to speculative fiction; on the other hand, it can be treated as an allegory, a parable about the world. Yet another perspective views the text as a religious treatise, serving as a kind of summation of Comenius's thinking as a key figure of the Reformation and a bishop of the Unity of the Brethren. To this, we can add some less intuitive terms emerging from recent literary history research. These terms usually describe a few or a few dozen distinct texts of older literature, such as a 'spiritual journey,' 'the theater of the world,' a 'negative encyclopedia,' and the like. It is certainly a more fictionalized text than Comenius's Latin works that have been published in Polish so far. So much for what the Labyrinth is; there remains the second question: what it is about. To put it briefly, simply and, of course, superficially, it is a story about a young man looking for his place in the world he has found himself in. Led by treacherous guides, he gets to know the world through its various manifestations. At the same time, he notices how wretched the condition of the object of his inquiry is. He falls into deep despair, but finds solace rather quickly. Christ comes to his rescue, visiting the Pilgrim (as Comenius names his main character and narrator) in his heart. It is perhaps also worth contextualizing this work within a biographical, historical, and geographical framework. The first version was written during the still early stages of the Thirty Years' War (in 1623); the first edition, likely printed in Leszno, came out halfway through it (1631); while the final one appeared in Amsterdam (1663), many years after the war had ended. The atmosphere of anxiety and war is clearly palpable in the text. The author's personal drama was similar – not only did he have to flee and ultimately emigrate due to the Habsburg Catholic forces crushing the Bohemian Revolt, but he also lost his wife and two children during an epidemic. It is not without reason that The Labyrinth is classified among 'consolatory texts'; one could say it was a form of self-therapy, which is also reflected in the text.
JP: Comenius guides his character through the world in search of meaning and order. In your opinion, what resonates most strongly from this journey today and remains relevant?
WM: Well, Comenius’s text is a kind of mosaic, or perhaps rather a mansion theatre, where the reader wanders with the Pilgrim from scene to scene. And although history has falsified certain views (such as the opposition to the Copernican heliocentric theory), and other issues have ceased to be pressing or relevant to our times (such as alchemical pursuits or the Rosicrucian Brotherhood), the obsolescence of some elements has in no way diminished the value of the jigsaw puzzle as a whole. We can still encounter many people in the world who act wickedly, out of self-interest, driven by greed, hatred, a desire for revenge, or simply thoughtlessness. We can still burst into laughter that dies on our lips when reading passages about putting on masks in the company of others, or shake our heads in sadness upon coming across a chapter on the futility of wars. However, this applies primarily to the first part of the text—namely, the description of 'the labyrinth of the world'. The more religiously marked 'paradise of the heart' seems to me even more relevant today. Comenius’s quest for a 'true' religion—which constitutes a moral system heavily influenced by mysticism, a kind of instruction manual for a good life—appears highly necessary in these bleak times (that is, both in the seventeenth century and today). On the one hand, it is a path toward Truth and the certainty of fundamental things; on the other, it is a path leading to the hope that we all, after all, need.
JP: What did your day-to-day work on the translation look like? Was it a more systematic process, or did it rather require constant backtracking and revisions?
WM: It changed from time to time! At first, with no prospect of publication in sight, I worked very irregularly; I treated this 'scratching around' in the text more as a series of translation exercises. I don’t mean to devalue that period—that was when some crucial decisions were made, most importantly, that the translated text had to be readable. The very first version was, in places, almost slavishly faithful to the syntax of the original. In it, I preserved the heavily Latinized Baroque syntax, which often resulted in nearly all the predicates of the subordinate clauses piling up at the end of the sentence. In its own way, this built up a certain 'monumentality' in the text, but on the other hand, when I returned to it after about a month, I had to piece together individual syntactic relationships myself, pencil in hand. That was when I decided to simplify the text, though only to such an extent that it wouldn't completely lose that perceptible 'patina' of age. Later, after my initial talks with the director, Kamila Szymańska, the process became a bit more disciplined, though at no stage was it a case of sitting down in front of my laptop at specific hours to translate. It was more of a sporadic process. There were days when I would translate for twelve hours with only short breaks, but there were also weeks when I wouldn't touch the text at all. Later, once I managed to power through to the end, I put the text aside for a few weeks to be able to look at it with fresh eyes, and immediately after that, the period of revisions began. I do my best editing on paper, so I printed out the whole thing and carried it around with me almost everywhere, along with a pen—to cafes, on trains, though I often worked at home as well. The next phase meant another 'fresh pair of eyes'—this time, not mine. The entire text was read and checked by my mother, who is a Polish language teacher; in a few places, she asked me what exactly I meant, which was a sign that something was unclear. So, more revisions followed, then another round, and so on.
JP: What was the most challenging part of translating this text? Was it the archaic language of a bygone era, or rather conveying its meanings and imagery?
WM: It is difficult to speak of one without the other. The text is, of course, quite archaic, though its reading is perhaps made more difficult by its syntactic complexity rather than its lexical aspect (as I have already mentioned). The edition I used tries to make the most incomprehensible words accessible to modern Czech readers through explanations, so it was helpful to me in that respect too. Perhaps the greatest difficulty lay in maintaining the gravity of the text without losing its lightness—a balance I hope I have successfully achieved. Comenius is, after all, highly witty and does not shy away from wordplay and linguistic jests; yet, in the final analysis, his Labyrinth remains an entirely earnest work, touching the deepest recesses and the most sensitive chords of both heart and soul.
JP: What is special about this new edition? What is worth noting when picking up this book?
WM: Even at first glance, it is clear that this is a "monumental" edition—distinguished by its large format, coated paper, and a highly spectacular visual design created by Miroslav Huptych. His collages can easily serve as a reason to spend hours with the book; indeed, it is well worth examining and analyzing them through the lens of the hermeneutic circle, exploring the relationship between individual elements and the overall picture, perhaps even the entire suite of illustrations, and their connection to the text itself. As for the main text, this edition features several distinctive characteristics worth noting. Above all, the translation is based on the most complete edition—published in Amsterdam in 1663—yet the use of color-coding allows the reader to trace the text’s evolution across three stages: from the manuscript, through the 1631 edition (likely published in Leszno), to the aforementioned Amsterdam edition, released seven years before the author’s death. The text is also accompanied by the author's own marginalia, which offer a look at the events from a somewhat different perspective. Another point of interest is the translation of what is perhaps the very first artistic reflection on Comenius’s treatise, namely a song by Jan Cassius. Additional elements that will, I hope, also prove noteworthy include the introduction and the commentaries, which can facilitate a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding the work's creation, certain aspects of the piece itself, and, above all, outline the intellectual horizon of the era.
JP: Did working on Labyrinth influence the way you view the world in any way?
WM: Most certainly, though it is not so easy to diagnose. On the one hand, when spending so much time in dialogue with someone or something (and reading is, after all, a form of communication), it is perhaps impossible to escape that influence—especially in such a unique relationship, where a thing once expressed in one language must be "clothed in the right word" in another. Something like this has to be rethought and felt over and over again, so it’s bound to stay with you in some way. I think what I take from the Labyrinth most of all is a powerful message: don't lose hope when it's so easy to doubt. Comenius possesses a truly remarkable power to convince us that precisely because things are as bad in the world as they are, all is well. However, one must not overlook a major caveat—the fact that the world functions as it does, and that its course is governed by Divine will, in no way absolves humanity of a profound responsibility, first and foremost, for oneself. Human beings are called to goodness and wisdom, but one must strive greatly to approach them, and this in itself is a monumental task.
You can buy the book HERE.
