Abstract
Drawing on a PhD thesis inspired by Antoine Berman's "Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne", the paper discusses the translations of John Donne's verse into Czech. The Czech reception of Donneʼs poetry starts after the twentieth-century Donne revival in the English-speaking countries, and to date six translators have been involved in the rendering of his poetic works into Czech.
The article focuses on the translators' profiles and their reasons for translating Donne: commenting on their choice of texts, treatment of form and aesthetic preferences, it illustrates their widely different motivations and translational approaches, ranging from a deep scholarly interest in the poetʼs work to a spontaneous unschooled translation intended for private use and spiritual sustenance.