Translation Under Fascism

Translation under Fascism Edited by Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge Translation under Fascism Also by Christophe...

Author: Christopher Rundle | Kate Sturge

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Translation under Fascism Edited by

Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge

Translation under Fascism

Also by Christopher Rundle PUBLISHING TRANSLATIONS IN FASCIST ITALY (2010) Also by Kate Sturge ‘THE ALIEN WITHIN’: TRANSLATION INTO GERMAN DURING THE NAZI REGIME (2004) REPRESENTING OTHERS: TRANSLATION, ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE MUSEUM (2007)

Translation under Fascism Edited by

Christopher Rundle University of Bologna, Italy

and

Kate Sturge Aston University, UK

Selection and editorial matter © Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge 2010 Chapters © their individual authors 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–20354–9

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Translation under fascism / edited by Christopher Rundle, Kate Sturge. p. cm. Summary: “The history of translation has focused on literary work but this book demonstrates the way in which political control can influence and be influenced by translation choices. In this book, new research and specially commissioned essays give access to existing research projects which at present are either scattered or unavailable in English”— Provided by publisher. ISBN 978–0–230–20354–9 (hardback) 1. Translating and interpreting—Political aspects—Europe—History— 20th century. 2. Fascism—Europe—History—20th century. I. Rundle, Christopher, 1963– II. Sturge, Kate. P306.8.E85T74 2010 418'.0209409043—dc22 2010027557 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Figures and Tables

vii

Notes on Contributors

viii

Part I Introduction

1

1

3

Translation and the History of Fascism Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge

Part II Overview Essays

13

2

Translation in Fascist Italy: ‘The Invasion of Translations’ Christopher Rundle

15

3

‘Flight from the Programme of National Socialism’? Translation in Nazi Germany Kate Sturge

4

It Was What It Wasn’t: Translation and Francoism Jeroen Vandaele

5

Translation in Portugal during the Estado Novo Regime Teresa Seruya

Part III Case Studies 6

7

8

9

51 84 117 145

Literary Exchange between Italy and Germany: German Literature in Italian Translation Mario Rubino

147

The Einaudi Publishing House and Fascist Policy on Translations Francesca Nottola

178

French–German and German–French Poetry Anthologies 1943–45 Frank-Rutger Hausmann

201

Safe Shakespeare: Performing Shakespeare during the Portuguese Fascist Dictatorship (1926–74) Rui Pina Coelho

215

v

vi

Contents

Part IV Response

233

10 The Boundaries of Dictatorship Matthew Philpotts

235

Bibliography

252

Index

270

List of Figures and Tables Figures 3.1

Numbers of translated titles by year

53

3.2

Trends in source languages

56

3.3

‘The World of the Book’: Frontispiece of Langenbucher (1938)

60

5.1

Number of translated authors published per decade

125

5.2

Translated titles per decade

126

Tables 2.1

Total book production and number of translations published in Italy, France and Germany

17

2.2

Proportion of translations in average yearly book production: Italy, France and Germany

19

2.3

Number of translations into and from Italian and German

19

2.4

Proportion of translations in average yearly book production in Italy: breakdown for narrative literature

21

4.1

Numbers of copies permitted for Kant translations

95

4.2

The translated plays most frequently presented to the censors, 1936–62

vii

107

Notes on Contributors Rui Pina Coelho is a researcher at the Centre for Theatre Studies of the University of Lisbon and lectures at the Advanced School for Theatre and Cinema (also in Lisbon). He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Sinais de cena, a member of the Executive of the Portuguese Association of Theatre Critics and a theatre critic in the national Portuguese daily newspaper Público. He is the author of Casa da Comédia: Um palco para uma ideia de teatro (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional – Casa da Moeda, 2009). Frank-Rutger Hausmann is the author of a respected study of the Nazisponsored European Writers’ Association, ‘Dichte, Dichter, tage nicht!’ Die Europäische Schriftsteller-Vereinigung in Weimar 1941–1948, Frankfurt 2004. Professor Hausmann has published extensively on the history of the humanities and literary exchange under Nazi rule. He held a chair in Romance Studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany, until his retirement in 2006. Francesca Nottola is currently preparing her Ph.D. dissertation in Italian Studies at the University of Manchester in the UK. Her research interests centre on the history of publishing and translation in early twentiethcentury Italy, with a focus on issues of gender and modernity and on the interplay between imported cultural products, fascist discourse and Italian society. Matthew Philpotts is a senior lecturer in German Studies at the University of Manchester. His principal research interests are cultural policy and artistic practice in the German dictatorships; literary journals and cultural change in the twentieth century; theories of authorship and the literary field. Among other publications, he is co-author of Sinn und Form: The Anatomy of a Literary Journal (Berlin/ NY: De Gruyter, 2009) and The Modern Restoration: Re-Thinking German Literary History 1930–1960 (Berlin/NY: De Gruyter, 2004), and author of The Margins of Dictatorship: Assent and Dissent in the Work of Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2003). Mario Rubino is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Palermo. His main research interests are the age of Goethe, the history of German studies in Italy and the reception of German literature in viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Italy. He has edited and translated works by Schönberg, Enzensberger, Beer-Hofmann, Jean Paul and Fallada. Recent publications include I mille demoni della modernità (Palermo: Flaccovio, 2002); ‘La falsa ripartenza. Wolfgang Staudte: Die Mörder sind unter uns’ in M. Galli (ed.) Da Caligari a Good Bye, Lenin! Storia e cinema in Germania (Florence: Le Lettere, 2004); ‘La Neue Sachlichkeit e il romanzo italiano degli anni Trenta’ in F. Petroni and M. Tortora (eds), Gli intellettuali italiani e l’Europa (1903–1956) (Lecce: Manni, 2007). Christopher Rundle is a researcher in Translation Studies at the Faculty for Interpreters and Translators (SSLMIT), University of Bologna, Italy. He is also Honorary Research Fellow in Translation and Italian Studies at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK. His main research interests lie in translation history, with a special focus on translation and Fascism, a subject on which he has published extensively. He is the author of the monograph Publishing Translations in Fascist Italy (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010). He is a coordinating editor of the online translation journal inTRAlinea (www.intralinea.it). Teresa Seruya is full professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at the Arts Faculty of the University of Lisbon, where she teaches Germanic literature and culture, are the history of translation and translation theory. Her main research areas are the history of translation in Portugal in the twentieth century and contemporary migration literature in German-speaking countries. She has published on literature and culture in the German language, the history of Germanic Studies in Portugal and the history of translation in Portugal. She has translated works by Goethe, Kleist, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Döblin, Thomas Mann and Kafka. She is currently responsible for the projects ‘Intercultural Literature in Portugal 1930–2000: a Critical Bibliography’, and ‘Translation and Censorship in Portugal during the Estado Novo Regime’. Kate Sturge, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at University College, London (2000), is a visiting senior lecturer in Translation Studies and German at Aston University, Birmingham, and a freelance translator in Berlin. Her research interests are in translation in Nazi Germany and translation as a mode of cultural representation. As well as articles, she has published ‘The Alien Within’: Translation into German during the Nazi Regime (Munich: iudicium, 2004) and Representing Others: Translation, Ethnography and the Museum (Manchester: St Jerome, 2007). With Michaela Wolf, she is co-editor of the Routledge journal Translation Studies (www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rtrs).

x

Notes on Contributors

Jeroen Vandaele, Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (2006), is a senior lecturer at the University of Oslo, Norway. Dr Vandaele’s doctoral research examined the discursive strategies in Billy Wilder’s original and Francoist film versions: Estados de Gracia. Trasvases entre la semántica franquista y la poética de Billy Wilder (1946–75). Among other areas, he has published in the field of humour studies (Translating Humour, Special Issue of The Translator, 2002) and cognitive poetics (with Geert Brône, Cognitive Poetics, Berlin/NY: De Gruyter, 2009).

Part I Introduction

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1 Translation and the History of Fascism Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge

Recent research has placed cultural policy and practices at the very centre of our understanding of fascism,1 revealing much about the ideological frameworks of fascism as well as the institutional tools that were used to manage public perceptions and ideological change. However, within this growing body of work, one important aspect of cultural policy has been largely ignored, and that is translation, whether literary, cinematic or non-fiction. Our aim in this volume is, firstly, to begin to fill this historiographical gap, showing that questions around translation can provide important insights into four regimes: Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal. We hope to bring into the discussion material on translation that has previously been absent, and to shed new light on existing material that has not necessarily been considered from the point of view of translation; at the same time, the book aims to suggest an outward-looking approach to historical translation studies that engages closely with the surrounding historiography. Finally, this volume, with its interdisciplinary group of contributors, aims to encourage discussion between historians and translation scholars with a common historical interest and to bring them together in a joint endeavour. In our view, translation practices – as important intersections of different cultural, ideological and political influences – are most usefully examined within their precise historical context. That includes both the macro level, such as institutional constraints or long-term literary trends, and the micro level, the texts themselves, right down to the decisions made by translators, editors and publishers concerning individual translations. Conversely, all of these aspects of translation analysis can be of interest to historians investigating the fine detail of 3

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Translation and the History of Fascism

cultural institutions or ideological patterns and practices in the periods concerned. The study of translations in this way is not simply a comparative supplement to the literary history of the periods concerned. We do not trace the fortunes of individual authors in translation for their own sake: none of the essays here approaches the relationship between ‘original’ and its translation as a matter of moral probity where the ideal result would be a perfect reflection of the sacrosanct source. When we do discuss source text/target text relations, these are studied for the insight they offer into the strategies used by the translator and thus the relationship between the translator and the historical context in which he/she worked, not as part of a narrative of ‘loss’ or ‘distortion’. Nor do we consider translation to be a personal, individual affair fought out between a translator and his or her text. Instead, along with translation scholars like Lefevere (1992) or Wolf and Fukari (2007), we assume that translations are always active interventions into texts, brought about by multiple agents with multiple interests, and that they are always active interventions into the cultural and thus political environment of the receiving language. By importing ideas, genres and fragments of different cultural worlds, translations will affirm or attack domestic realities (see Venuti 1995); they are never neutral in their impact or in their representation of the sending cultures. Furthermore, translations can have an important symbolic value, as a phenomenon which reflects, or is considered to reflect, the prestige of either the source culture or the receiving culture – an issue of particular importance in this volume. The study of translations is pursued here as a means of tracing the contours of that receiving environment: translation as an indicator of cultural and political processes at work. We contend that this makes translation practices a prime area of interest for scholars of fascist cultural policy and a field that can potentially cast light on issues of central concern to the study of all the four regimes we set out to examine. Our use of the label ‘fascist’ to embrace these four different systems deserves some explanation. While Italy and Germany are generally accepted as exemplars of fascist regimes, in effect the templates against which the fascism of other regimes is measured, the term is usually employed with some qualification, such as ‘para-fascist’ or ‘semi-fascist’, when applied to Spain or Portugal.2 This is a recognition of the fact that Francoism and Salazarism, although they were both clearly inspired by the success of the Fascist and Nazi regimes, were essentially conservative systems that maintained a number of what are frequently termed ‘fascist trappings’, especially in the interwar period, but did not share the


5

drive towards national and cultural regeneration based on an imagined glorious past that can be seen in Italian and German fascism. Another important distinction to keep in mind, and one which will prove significant in the course of this volume, is that although all four of these regimes were, to varying degrees, founded on an often uneasy alliance between genuinely fascist forces and a more conservative establishment, in Italy and Germany the fascist partner in this alliance was dominant, while in Spain and Portugal it was the conservative establishment or its representatives which maintained control and effectively dictated the direction in which the regime would evolve. Finally, it is important to remember when comparing the cultural policies of these regimes that although all four were founded between the two world wars, Spain and Portugal are to a significant extent defined by their post Second World War history. The significance of this difference is apparent, for example, in the relative lack of hostility of these two regimes to the idea of cultural exchange (and translation) when compared to the much more paranoid attitudes of the Italian and German regimes in the 1930s, when a closed, nationalist and xenophobic cultural system in Western Europe was still conceivable. Aside from these distinctions, it is clearly necessary to consider the divergences between Fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany, in terms of both ideology and modus operandi. Not only did both regimes alter their stance on cultural policy over the course of their existence (most notably – especially in the case of Germany – with the outbreak of war), and not only did neither ever reach an internal consensus on means and objectives, but the two orders differed in the importance they attached to what are, in terms of translation, key policy issues. The case studies in this volume will show that the treatment of popular culture (itself largely import-based in the period) was highly contested inside each regime and drew on contradictory traditions, while anti-Semitism, a driving force of cultural policy in the Nazi context, played a far less significant role in Italy in the early years. We use the term ‘fascist’ speculatively, therefore, with a view to initiating a productive comparison of the four regimes through the lens of translation history; the research collected in this volume will show that comparative approaches can bear fruit precisely in this field. Our use of the term is informed by a body of historical research which, while making all the necessary distinctions, includes these regimes in the debate on comparative fascism.3 To clarify this, we will now consider recurrent themes in the research where the perspective of translation becomes particularly significant and promises to contribute to our understanding both of fascism in general and of the specific nature of these regimes.

6


Publishing history The history of publishing is an important component of both cultural and economic developments within a given language community. As Eliot and Rose point out, not only do books make history, as tools to ‘transmit ideas, record memories, create narratives, exercise power, and distribute wealth’, but they are made by history, being ‘shaped by economic, political, social, and cultural forces’ (Eliot and Rose 2009: 1). In all the four national contexts we examine, translations played a crucial part in the history of publishing in general, due to the success of foreign fiction, and especially foreign popular fiction. As we shall see later, in these contexts translations could be perceived as a threat to the integrity of the nation’s culture, but they were also often seen as an economic threat, provoking hostility on the part of a literary establishment that felt unable to compete with the easy commercial appeal of foreign romances and the new imported genres of crime fiction and westerns. Translations, especially from English, were driving a globalization in reading habits, both enabling and supported by the modernization of the publishing industry. While this was occurring across Europe in the interwar period, the fact that, according to the Index Translationum, in the 1930s Italy and Germany were translating more than any other countries in the world suggests that translations from English hold a special place in the history of reading under these fascist regimes (see Rundle 2010: Chapter 2). In Spain, in particular, translations enjoyed such a high status among Spanish readers that there was a boom in pseudotranslations: nontranslated works that claimed to be translations in order to enhance their prestige or market position (see Merino and Rabadán 2002). In Germany translation activity continued unabated, at least in quantitative terms, with English retaining its pre-1933 position as by far the most-translated language, until the outbreak of war (see Sturge 2004: Chapter 2). Portugal, on the other hand, was the one country where the translation market was not dominated by English as a source language. Instead, the hegemony of French gave way to Spanish as the main source language with the growth of a mass market for popular fiction – a market pervaded by translations of Spanish pseudotranslations, written by Spanish authors using anglophone pseudonyms (see Seruya in this volume).4

Censorship Another historical issue in which research on translation has an important contribution to make is fascist censorship. As recent work on translation


7

and censorship has shown, translated works are magnets for censorship, since they make manipulation possible at several stages, from the selection for publication to the precise wording of the translated text. The phenomenon of censorship in translation is far from unique to fascist or other totalitarian regimes, and the translation studies debate on the boundaries between ‘censorship’, ‘literary conventions’ and ‘good taste’ is only just beginning (see Billiani 2007a; Seruya and Moniz 2008b; Ní Chuilleanáin, Ó Cuilleanáin and Parris 2009). Equally, the history of translation in the regimes we are investigating can certainly not be adequately addressed from the perspective of censorship alone. Nevertheless the processes and rationales of fascist censorship of translation are an important theme in the research collected in this volume, at the very least because they cast light on the specific mechanics of political intervention in culture during the periods concerned, and in a more far-reaching respect because they hint at the ideological complexities that often underpinned such intervention. A number of preconceptions concerning the totalitarian efficiency of these regimes need to be reconsidered in the light of what emerges from their treatment of translations (and publishers of translations). In Germany a dense net of preventive or ‘prior’ censorship was imposed on all the mass media (press, radio and cinema), but book publishing was mainly controlled via post-publication measures; for Spain the preventive approach applied to books as well. Italy maintained the pretence that Italians enjoyed a freedom of speech and that no preventive censorship was in force – something that was in fact only true (and then only partially) for books; in any case Italy applied its censorship with a surprising degree of flexibility. Portugal maintained a tight control on all forms of mass communication but adopted a relatively pragmatic attitude towards the censorship of books, which were never monitored systematically. Like Italy, Salazar’s regime was prepared to allow the cultural elite a degree of freedom it would not allow the masses, as long as this freedom did not develop into a potentially dangerous political activism. Significantly, only the Nazi regime and, very late in its lifespan, the Italian Fascist regime devised a specific censorship policy concerning translations; and only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy adopted specifically anti-Semitic censorship policies.

Renewal and expansion The drive for renewal and regeneration, the desire to reconstitute the nation in a new form, is widely considered to be one of the defining

8


characteristics of a fascist political programme (regardless of how successfully these programmes were put into practice), and is particularly evident in the Italian Fascist and Nazi cases, while both Franco and Salazar resisted and defused such impulses from within the ranks as they established more reactionary regimes. In Italy and Germany this drive was, unsurprisingly, also played out in the cultural field – on the whole with results that were disappointing for the regime. The problem for cultural policymakers was how to generate a cultural renewal, which many thought required contact and interaction with the outside, while maintaining control over a distinctive national identity at home in a form of cultural ‘autarky’ or self-reliance. In Italy, translation became one of the nodes around which this debate developed – as a potential vehicle of cultural exchange and enrichment but also as the vehicle of a cultural pollution that was perceived as a threat to the integrity of the national culture and language. In Nazi Germany the terms of the debate were different in that exchange (via translation) with regions that seemed to have a cultural, and hence ‘racial’, affinity with Germany was not necessarily seen as an unambiguous threat, while an uncontrolled exchange with other cultures driven only by public taste could never be considered beneficial. Also typical of fascist political ambitions was the drive towards political, colonial and, by extension, cultural expansion. Among the many reasons for these ambitions in Italy and, at least in part, Germany was the desire to enhance the nation’s prestige abroad, and in both countries, though probably somewhat more so in Italy, translations became a key issue in this project. On the one hand they were seen as a uniquely effective means of cultural conquest – or ‘instrument of penetration’, as the Italian Fascists put it; on the other, the statistics on translation showed that Italy published more translations than any other state while Italian was one of the least translated languages, providing glaring evidence of the failure of Fascist culture to expand and of its low status abroad. German literature was more successful in this respect, in that it was widely translated, yet literary policymakers complained that this success arose from the translation of the ‘wrong’, that is anti-Nazi, German authors and could thus have a harmful propaganda effect (see Sturge 2004; Rubino in this volume). Careful management of translation from German in the occupied nations was to help redress the problem (see Hausmann in this volume). Such issues were of much less significance in Spain and Portugal, especially after the Second World War. Spain rapidly abandoned any ambitions it may have entertained of further colonial expansion and


9

remained in self-imposed isolation until the late 1950s. There is no evidence that the success of foreign cultural products was seen as a threat to national prestige, as long as they conformed to the ideological and moral constraints that the regime very efficiently imposed. Furthermore, both Spain and Portugal could point to a large linguistic community spread throughout the world, to the extent that, unlike Fascist Italy, the perceived prestige of their languages was unlikely to be affected by the dynamics of the translation market.

Racism One very important distinction between the regimes lies in their respective attitudes towards racism and especially anti-Semitism. Both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were deeply concerned with notions of cultural and racial purity. These notions defined the ways in which each regime reacted to the phenomenon of translation, and the different understandings of what constituted purity and national identity is reflected in the sometimes surprising differences between Fascist and Nazi treatment of translations. In official Nazi discourse, translation was viewed most often in a framework of racist assumptions, based on the understanding that (to use the terms of current translation studies) the activity of translation creates ‘hybrid’ products, mixing cultural orders and thus potentially undermining the supposed organic, ethnically defined unity of ‘true literature’. For Nazi policymakers, purity in translation was possible: translations might be racially pure and therefore foster racial understanding – a much longer-standing translation ideal that acquired new dimensions in the Nazi setting. Alternatively, and more commonly in the late 1930s, they might be contaminants that threatened to pollute the receiving nation through a kind of cultural miscegenation. Within the terms of Nazi ‘racial purity’, translations from what were considered related cultures, such as Sweden and Norway, were encouraged by parts of the regime as a means of strengthening connections within an extended idea of the Germanic Volk. Within Fascist Italy’s initially more nationalistic and less racialized idea of cultural integrity, the source culture was less significant and the debate on translation was dominated by the fear that Italy’s receptiveness was a negative reflection on its national and cultural prestige. However, in the wake of the foundation of the Italian empire in East Africa, and as Italy and Germany formed closer political and ideological ties, Italy formally introduced anti-Semitic legislation and began a systematic purge of Jews from public life. This development also marks the moment when the

10


regime first started to formulate a specific policy against translation. What had been confined to a question of national prestige now took on more dramatic tones as the regime began to see translation as a source of cultural pollution, in terms that closely matched those being used in the political sphere as part of the anti-Semitic campaign. In Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, such racialized policies were not favoured and the discourse on translation that emerges from the research is free from the heightened sense of threat that can be found in Italian Fascist and Nazi rhetoric on translation. The chapters in this volume are divided into four parts. Part II contains four overview essays on the context and structures of translation policy in each regime: Christopher Rundle on Fascist Italy in Chapter 2, Kate Sturge on Nazi Germany in Chapter 3, Jeroen Vandaele on Francoist Spain in Chapter 4, and Teresa Seruya on Salazar’s Portugal in Chapter 5. In Part III, a series of case studies address individual facets of the issues raised in the opening chapters. In the first of two Italian studies, Mario Rubino, in Chapter 6, focuses on the specific literary relations between Italy and its fellow Axis power Germany. Taking up an issue that already emerges in the opening chapters on Italy and Germany, he traces in detail the mismatch between the officially voiced desire for brotherly exchange of ideologically valuable goods and the daily practice of Italian publishers and readers of translation from German, who persisted in tastes they had acquired in the pre-Nazi period of Weimar. Rubino’s study reminds us that ‘censorship’ alone is an inadequate conceptual tool when working with translation in Fascist Italy, since the complexities of reception arose from longer histories of literary and journalistic image-making, the internal dynamics of which continued to work in parallel to official policy. Indicating the important role of translation in the generation of such cultural representations, and in turn the part that existing representations will play in the selection and mode of subsequent translations, Rubino casts light on the difficulties faced by fascist cultural policy in truly managing to ‘educate public taste’. In Chapter 7, Francesca Nottola, in her detailed study of the Einaudi publishing house, provides us with an important complement to the experiences of Mondadori and Bompiani as described by Rundle in Chapter 2. In contrast to these publishers’ relatively smooth negotiation of the sensitive field of translation publishing, the political activity of a number of his friends and associates meant that Einaudi was briefly arrested and was monitored very closely by the regime. His status was such, however, that the regime found it expedient not to shut him


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down, and instead adopted a strategy of mild but frustrating and often unpredictable obstructionism in contrast to the more cooperative spirit adopted towards publishers perceived to be aligned with the regime. In particular, Einaudi was often hindered in his attempts to publish translations which were apparently harmless, and he was even told unofficially to avoid publishing translations of Anglo-American works – the only evidence to date of a Fascist translation policy that targeted a specific source language, and a case that highlights the ambivalent and often contradictory nature of Fascist policies of censorship and cultural control. In Chapter 8, Frank-Rutger Hausmann’s essay on two poetry anthologies from the 1940s continues the theme of literary exchange as a politically charged, and politically manipulated, channel of communication. His study draws out the importance of such exchange as one element of the occupation’s cultural propaganda: the compilation of an anthology of German poetry in French translation was a project of the German Institute in Paris and part of a drive to publicize German culture in occupied France. Yet as Hausmann points out, even under such extreme circumstances the history of the anthology and its planned successor, an anthology of French poetry in German translation, was not simply one of obedience to the dictates of the state. The actors involved in the anthologizing projects were motivated too by continuities with pre1933 traditions and their own literary ambitions, which they saw as existing in a sphere beyond the reach of day-to-day political realities. Rather than focusing on institutions, Rui Pina Coelho turns to the fortunes of one author in translation in Chapter 9. His essay on Shakespeare in the Portuguese theatre under Salazar and Caetano traces the ways that state intervention could shape an era’s image of a particular imported author through the choice of particular texts for translation, textual manipulation, and the specific translational or adaptational decisions made during production. As Coelho’s case reminds us, such manipulation is not a feature of fascism alone – the eventful history of Shakespeare in translation over four centuries is a prime example of highly diverse forms of selection or exclusion, canonization or demonization, and ideologically motivated textual intervention (see, for example, Delabastita and D’hulst 1993). In the case of Salazar’s Portugal, the choice of Shakespeare’s plays and the manner of their production took place at the tense boundary between an inward-looking regime and the intellectual currents of its Western European surroundings. The volume closes in Part IV with Chapter 10, by cultural historian Matthew Philpotts, providing an overall response to the issues raised

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by the studies contained in this volume and evaluating the interdisciplinary contribution that studies of translation have to make to the cultural history of fascism.

Notes The editors would like to thank the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (SITLeC) of the University of Bologna, Forlì campus, and especially its former director Professor Rosa Maria Bollettieri, for the moral, financial and logistical support which helped make this project possible. 1. See, for example, Ben-Ghiat (2001) and Stone (1998) on Italy, Barbian (1995a) and Cuomo (1995) on Germany, Abellán (1980) and Carbajosa and Carbajosa (2003) on Spain, and Ó (1996) on Portugal. 2. Griffin (1991: 121) uses the term ‘para-fascist’ to describe the Spanish and Portuguese regimes, both of which he considers to be examples of ‘abortive’, not fully realized, fascist systems. Payne (1995: 266) uses the term ‘semifascist’ in reference to Spain but describes Salazar’s Estado Novo as a form of ‘authoritarian corporatism’ or ‘authoritarian corporative liberalism’ (1995: 313), by which he would seem to imply that Spain was more fascist than Portugal. 3. Aside from Griffin and Payne, mentioned earlier, examples of other scholars who have, in one way or another, grouped these four regimes (among others) together in a study of fascism are Blinkhorn (1990), Kallis (2000, 2003), Costa Pinto, Eatwell and Larsen (1995), and Paxton (2004). 4. Aside from the chapters in this collection, the following historical studies inform this analysis: Fabre (1998), Ben-Ghiat (2001), Payne (1995), Gallagher (1990), Costa Pinto (1995), Sturge (2004), Schäfer (1991), Geyer-Ryan (1987).

Part II Overview Essays


2 Translation in Fascist Italy: ‘The Invasion of Translations’ Christopher Rundle

If there is one thing that to my mind characterizes the history of translation in Fascist Italy, it is that this was dominated by an idea of translation rather than the activity itself. The discussion on the subject of translations developed from an aesthetic question in the 1920s, centring on the contribution that literary exchange could potentially make to the modernization and popularization of Italian literature, with the fear expressed in some more culturally conservative quarters that this process, if left uncontrolled, could lead to its impoverishment, to a characteristically Fascist ideological debate in the 1930s which was dominated by the symbolic value attributed to translation as a phenomenon and by the concern that Italy was the weak partner in an international struggle for cultural expansion and that its cultural prestige was being threatened by translation. In this chapter, I intend to focus on the debate that arose around the question of translation in the 1930s and on the way in which the attitude of the regime towards translation evolved from a silent tolerance to an active hostility – an evolution that is, in my opinion, directly related to the regime’s increasingly imperialist political agenda.1 The other important point which I think will emerge is that, despite lip-service being paid to the morally corrupting effects of much foreign literature, there is little evidence that the regime genuinely saw translation as a potentially seditious activity. It had put in place a very effective system of censorship which relied essentially on an extensive degree of self-regulation, stimulated by the odd exemplary punishment;2 it also maintained a relationship of considerable trust and cooperation with the publishers. The regime had no reason to fear, therefore, that translations might be a channel for some kind of political opposition. Instead, its real concern, as we shall see, was that the translation phenomenon 15

16

Translation in Fascist Italy

gave the lie to the myth that Italy under Fascism was enjoying a period of renewed cultural prestige and influence. Furthermore, just as the statistics on translation showed that Fascist Italy was failing to expand its cultural influence abroad, they also showed that the Italians had in fact developed a considerable appetite for foreign literature, and that Italian literature, seen both as an economic and as a cultural construct, was being dominated by the foreign competition.

The birth of a translation industry One of the interesting features of the debate on translation in Italy in the 1930s is the way in which it was informed by a series of statistics which allowed Italy to compare its own performance with that of other countries – France and Germany in particular. Using them almost like an opinion poll, the cultural establishment would consult the international statistics on translation to see which country was most successful in exporting its culture. The problem was that, for Fascist Italy at least, these statistics did not make encouraging reading. As the figures showed with embarrassing clarity, Italy translated more than any other country, while at the same time it was the least successful in exporting its own culture in the form of translations out of Italian. This translation deficit was to become a key issue in the debate that arose over whether the regime ought to intervene to correct the situation or whether Italian culture would be able to rise to the challenge and redress the balance on its own merits. Or to pose the question in more practical terms: should the regime establish barriers to restrict the number of translations being published and to protect Italian authors whose livelihood was being threatened by the ready availability of ‘low-quality’ popular literature, as the authors themselves advocated; or should the publishers be free to publish whatever the market demanded, with the authors adapting to the evolving tastes of the public and learning to produce literature with a greater popular appeal, as the publishers advocated? The discussion, therefore, evolved along two main strands. On the one hand, a concern on the part of many within the establishment that Italy’s cultural prestige was somehow being damaged by what was perceived as an ‘invasion’ of translations was set against the belief that the process of modernization and industrialization of Italian publishing, which was being driven by the success of translated popular fiction, was not necessarily undesirable or un-Fascist. On the other hand, what amounted to a turf war took place between the publishers, represented

Christopher Rundle 17

by the Publishers Federation [Federazione nazionale fascista degli editori industriali], who were keen to exploit an increasingly profitable market, and a significant number of authors, represented by the Authors and Writers Union [Sindacato nazionale fascista degli autori e scrittori], who saw their livelihood threatened as their readership’s tastes were ‘corrupted’ by an over-abundance of cheap, foreign fiction and by the increasing commodification of literature. Before we look at this debate in greater detail in the following sections, let us try to put it in perspective and establish with a reasonable degree of approximation what the situation actually was. For the purposes of this analysis I shall compare Italy with France and Germany, the three countries which published more translations than any other country in the world at that time;3 both because the available data on these three countries is reasonably consistent and has been compiled with similar criteria, and because it was France and Germany that the Italian cultural establishment naturally looked to for comparison.4 The first thing to establish is whether Italy really did publish more translations in this period than any other nation. Table 2.1 shows the

Table 2.1 Total book production and number of translations published in Italy, France and Germany Italy

1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941

France

Total Production

Translations

Total Production

5283 5687 5962 6829 9426 10067 10199 10428 10344 10484 10015 9938 9786 9683 9330 9427

582 584 444 717 1135 977 903 1295 1112 1173 912 851 919 705 659 555

11520 12300 11850 11311 9280 9998 12304 12210 10452 10006 8648

Germany Translations

430 473 549 652 641 546 800 [611] 592 782 726

Total Production

Translations

30064 31026 27794 27002 26961 24074 21452 21601 20852 23212 23654 25361 25439 20288 20706 18837

1164 1267 1477 1222 1235 1024 [726] [536] [397] 558 617 680 730 530 706 505

Note: Figures in square brackets show an average between numbers reported in the Index Traslationum and those reported in national sources – used in those instances where there was a significant discrepancy between the two.

18


number of translations published in Italy, France and Germany from 1926 to 1941, alongside the total number of books published. What emerges is that, after the economic difficulties of the late 1920s, the number of translations published in Italy rose considerably in the 1930s, reaching a peak in 1933 but not dropping off significantly until the outbreak of the war in 1939–40. The situation in Germany underwent a decline in the early 1930s and, especially, from 1939, after having been a leading publisher of translations in the late 1920s. These dips were due at least in part – and certainly after 1939 – to a series of aggressive measures on the part of the Nazi regime.5 In comparison with these two, France generally maintained a slightly lower level of production – with the exception of 1939, the one year in which it published more translations than any other country (by a small margin). Overall, Italy averaged 998 translations a year in the period 1930–39, while France averaged 637, and Germany 703. Although, Italy’s overall ‘leadership’ during the period is clear, especially around the middle of the decade, the margin does not appear to be very significant. Italy’s particular receptiveness is more apparent if we also compare the proportion of translations to the overall production in each country. Table 2.2 makes this comparison using average figures for the periods indicated. Here, the relative importance of translations within the Italian publishing industry is markedly higher than in France and Germany. Interestingly, commentators at the time never made the comparison in these terms, even when their aim was to attack the publishers by emphasizing the extent of the phenomenon. The fact that the discussion at the time centred around the rather bald figures in Table 2.1 on how many translations were published, a piece of information that does not in itself say very much about the cultural context that produced it, and not on the more representative figures in Table 2.2, is a sign that it was the symbolic or propaganda value of these statistics that made them important. This is confirmed by the importance that was given to the ‘translation trade balance’, that is to say the balance between the number of translations published into Italian and the number published out of Italian. Comparison was made with Germany, which, like Italy, was a very receptive culture but which, unlike Italy, was also very successful in exporting its own literature in the form of translations out of German. Table 2.3, although it contains a number of gaps, is sufficient to show just how great the difference between Italy and Germany was on this score.6 What the issue of the translation trade balance shows is that translation was acceptable ideologically when it could be seen as a form of

Proportion of translations in average yearly book production: Italy, France and Germany Italy

1926–1930* 1930–1936 1936–1941 1926–1941

France

Germany

Avg. Total

Avg. No. of Trans

Trans % of total

Avg. Total

Avg. No. of Trans

Trans % of total

Avg. Total

Avg. No. of Trans

Trans % of total

6637 10145 9716 8938

692 1072 767 845

10.3 10.6 7.9 9.5

10296 10708 9327 10898

452 610 678 618

4.4 5.7 6.5 5.6

28569 23115 22381 24270

1273 728 628 836

4.5 3.1 2.8 3.4

*Note: Figures for France are for years 1929–1930 only.

Table 2.3

Number of translations into and from Italian and German Into and From Italian Trans into Italian 584 444 717 1135 977 903 1295 1112 1173 912 851 919

Trans from Italian

Difference

63

⫺840

190 203 159 195 171

⫺922 ⫺970 ⫺753 ⫺656 ⫺748

Trans into German

Trans from German

Difference

1267 1477 1222 1235 1024 726 536 397 558 617 680 730

1648 1996 2143 2479 2546

⫹381 ⫹519 ⫹921 ⫹1244 ⫹1522

1252

⫹716

1964 2175

⫹1406 ⫹1558

10.1057/9780230292444 - Translation Under Fascism, Edited by Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge

19

1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938

Into and From German

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Western Sydney - PalgraveConnect 2011-02-21

Table 2.2

20


cultural exchange, or even as a form of cultural expansion. In the eyes of the Italians this was the case with Germany, which they admired for succeeding in exporting many more translations than it imported.7 When, however, the process was almost completely one-sided, as in the case of Italy, translation came to be viewed as a form of cultural invasion and became ideologically unacceptable as an indicator of Italy’s cultural weakness and its failure to convert its renewed international prestige into a greater cultural dominance. Alongside the issue of Italy’s international status, translation also became a bone of contention in a more domestic debate over the future of Italian letters and the impact of foreign literature. From the end of the 1920s up until the outbreak of the war, Italian publishers came under repeated attack in the press for the supposedly unpatriotic way in which they were flooding the market with foreign literature – most of which was assumed to be both low in quality and poorly translated. A new, wider readership was evolving with a taste for popular entertainment literature, what was called letteratura amena, such as adventure stories, romances and, especially, crime fiction. The increasing popularity of foreign models of fiction generated considerable hostility on the part of both those who disapproved of such literature on aesthetic grounds and those who felt unable to compete professionally. A closer look at the impact of literary translations will help to explain why translation could appear to be such a threat. Table 2.4 shows the average figures for the period indicated. If the proportion of translation to overall production (Column 3) was already double that registered in France and Germany, the proportion of translation within narrative literature (Column 7) was even more significant. Over a third of all novels published were translations. Furthermore, a large number of these translations by all accounts enjoyed spectacular commercial success.8 It is very difficult to collect evidence on print runs or the number of copies sold, partly because many publishing houses consider such information to be confidential, but some information is available from the 1930s on the Mondadori publishing house, without doubt the main protagonist in the evolution of Italian publishing during this period and one of the most enterprising publishers of translations. When Mondadori started publishing its now famous series of crime fiction called ‘I libri gialli’ [Yellow Books] their success was outstanding: the first four ‘Libri gialli’ sold a total of 50,000 copies in the first month. All the books in the series had a first print run of 20,000 copies followed by a second of 10,000. Up to 1942, when the regime banned crime fiction in cheap formats, the economical edition in magazine format sold

Proportion of translations in average yearly book production in Italy: breakdown for narrative literature All translations

1926–1930 1930–1936 1936–1941

Translated narrative literature only

Avg. Total

Avg. No. of Trans

Trans % of total

Avg. Total Novels

% of Avg. Total (col.1)

Translated Novels

% of Avg. Total (col. 4)

Col. 1 6637 10145 9716

Col. 2 692 1072 767

Col. 3 10.3 10.6 7.9

Col. 4

Col. 5

Col. 6

Col. 7

1125 773

10.9 8.0

384 283

34.9 36.3

21

10.1057/9780230292444 - Translation Under Fascism, Edited by Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Western Sydney - PalgraveConnect 2011-02-21

Table 2.4

22


over 5,000,000 copies overall, with an average of 26,000 copies per title. And overall, the various ‘Gialli’ series had sold over 10,000,000 copies by 1943.9 These few figures are enough to give us an idea of the impact of some of the more popular translated fiction on the average Italian author, who could usually expect an initial print run of 1000–1500 copies, and might expect to sell 5000–6000 copies overall (Tranfaglia and Vittoria 2000: 300). As we shall see later, when the regime eventually moved to restrict translations it specifically targeted the ‘Gialli’ – the genre that had come to represent both the success and the dangers of translation. There were Italian authors who became bestsellers themselves, of course: the biography of Mussolini, Dux, written by his (Jewish) mistress Margherita Sarfatti, was a major bestseller, and there were a number of authors who rose to the challenge of the various Anglo-American and Hungarian authors to produce successful popular fiction of their own, such as Guido da Verona (Guido Verona), Pitigrilli (Dino Segre), Liala (Liana Cambiasi Negretti Odescalchi) and Mura (Maria Volpi) – to name a few.10 But this did not alter the resentment that many authors felt at the increasing commercialization of Italian publishing, spurred on by the growth of the cinema industry and the market for popular magazines that this induced (Tranfaglia and Vittoria 2000: 300, 311–12). Literature had ceased to be the preserve of the cultural elite and was, instead, becoming a mass commodity that was being marketed and sold with modern industrial methods. In many ways this industrialization of the publishing sector was very much in line with Fascist populist aspirations to demolish the ivory towers in which intellectuals had been allowed to detach themselves during the post-unification era. On other hand, the fact that foreign ‘imports’ played such an important role in this process was more difficult to accommodate. As we shall see, this inherent contradiction would become impossible to ignore once the empire in East Africa was founded and autarky became a defining policy of the regime.

Translation and the ‘culture wars’ There were at least two campaigns during the 1930s in the press and in periodicals against translations, and against the publishers who were guilty of marketing them. During the first, in 1933–34, the publishers were accused of flooding the market with low quality literature that was spoiling the tastes of the Italian reading public and thereby threatening the livelihood of Italian authors. Much was also made of the newly


available statistics which, as we have seen, showed Italy to be both the most receptive culture and the culture least successful in exporting its products abroad. The second campaign, in 1936–38, came in the wake of Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia and the League of Nations sanctions that were subsequently imposed. In a highly nationalistic political climate in which the regime launched its call for economic autarky, the publishers quickly found themselves the target of a call for a ‘cultural autarky’ to be imposed on the publishing sector – in effect a call to limit the number of translations. The translation invasion When the first ‘Libri gialli’ were published in September 1929, there was already talk in the press about the ‘problem’ of translations. In May 1927 La Fiera Letteraria, a literary journal then based in Milan, published an editorial entitled ‘Un ufficio internazionale della traduzione’ [An International Translations Bureau] which suggested that a central organ was needed to encourage some form of quality control, and accused the publishers of peddling low-quality translations in order to save money. This was followed in July 1928 by an article by the influential writer and intellectual Giuseppe Prezzolini on ‘Il problema delle traduzioni’ [The Translations Problem], in which Prezzolini advocated an international translation bibliography and argued that perfect command of Italian was even more important than a perfect understanding of the source language for a good quality translation. So far, then, the discussion had centred on what was perceived as an excessively cheap market in which the integrity of the Italian language was being threatened by the number of poorly written translations being published.11 The stakes were then raised by the Fascist journal Il Torchio. Settimanale Fascista di Battaglia e di Critica [The Press. Fascist Weekly of Combat and Criticism], which conducted a very aggressive investigation into the question of translations. It first sent out a letter to a wide variety of people within the literary establishment asking them: (i) if they agreed that ‘this invasion of foreign authors seriously damages our national literature’ [‘se l’invasione di scrittori stranieri, non danneggi seriamente la letteratura nazionale’], (ii) if they agreed that Italian authors were being damaged financially by this invasion, and (iii) whether they didn’t agree that ‘protectionist measures’ [‘qualche provvedimento protettivo’] should be introduced in favour of domestic production.12 The letter was published in the journal along with an editorial on ‘L’invasione dello straniero’ [The Invasion of the Foreigner] which called explicitly for the government to institute a system of preventive censorship for translations.13 Replies to the letter

24


continued to be published until the end of that year, and most came out in favour of the journal’s position. The impact that all this negative publicity was beginning to have on the publishers is revealed in a letter that the General Secretary of the Publishers Federation sent out to its members on 25 April 1930, in which he encouraged them to use all the means at their disposal to refute the accusations being levelled at them in the press of publishing an ‘excessive number of translations’ [‘eccessiva quantità di traduzioni’] and even of being ‘anti-Italian’. He stressed that otherwise such accusations, though untrue, risked influencing public opinion by dint of repetition.14 The situation only got worse, however, and over the next four years there were hostile letters in the press, investigations into the state of Italian publishing, and a general tendency to criticize the publishers, to cast them in the guise of unscrupulous profiteers and to question their loyalty to their country. On 9 October 1933, for example, the Milanese newspaper La Sera published the following appraisal: [T]he list of recently published works is no more than a list of the futile, the temporary, the commercial, the cheap. For the most, they are foreign books, on the whole translated badly, slovenly, printed pretentiously with poor graphics, poorly bound and full of mistakes and typing errors.15 The following year, another investigation into the state of Italian literature was conducted by the Giornale di politica e di letteratura [Journal of politics and literature] and the results published in March. The journal argued that the Italian readership had been ‘ruined’ [guastato] by the growth in the number of translations that were being published. It would be in the greater interests of the nation, the journal added, if the soon to be instituted Book Corporation [Corporazione del libro] were to intervene by imposing higher prices on translations, in effect applying an importation tariff – a measure that was clearly designed to help Italian authors gain the competitive edge they tended to lack against translated literature.16 In May 1934 Corrado Alvaro published a particularly vicious attack against the publishers in the Turin daily La Stampa. Alvaro was a very successful novelist who, after a period of mild dissent in the late 1920s, had made a successful effort to return into the good graces of the regime and had taken to professing an aggressive form of literary chauvinism that in many ways anticipated the sort of xenophobic sentiment later bandied about by the Authors and Writers


Union after the Ethiopian war (Ben-Ghiat 2000: 106–12). His article complained that whatever subject you may be looking for in a publishing business that prints thousands of volumes a year, you’ll find very little Italian culture or literature, no classics, no account of the Italian way of life, etc. Instead you will find an Italian or Roman tale translated, just as you will find translated novels, and translated encyclopaedias, translated travel books, and even translated cookery books. In Italy the literary and the historical and the cultural all come from abroad.17 On 30 April 1934, just a few days before Alvaro’s article, the Publishers Federation held a General Assembly during which it became apparent that this campaign was succeeding in altering public perceptions of the translation phenomenon. Antonio Vallardi, Vice President of the Federation and owner of the Vallardi publishing house, read the delegates a report on the previous year, in which he posed the question of translations in unusually stark and pessimistic terms: Another phenomenon which deserves our attention is that of translations. Italy is the country which translates the most, as the figures of the Index Translationum prove beyond doubt. (Even if we consider that the figures of the Index Translationum are necessarily incomplete or inaccurate). Is the fact that Italy is the main tributary to foreign literature a good thing or a bad thing? (Emphasis added.)18 Here Vallardi was citing the international statistics that had only recently become available (the Index Translationum only started publishing in 1932) as an undeniable fact – however unpalatable. He also makes clear in his choice of the word ‘tributary’ how even the publishers were being forced to define the issue in the terms imposed on them by their antagonists: according to which translation was somehow an indication of cultural weakness and the statistics a political embarrassment. This is confirmed later in the same speech, when Vallardi answered the question he had just posed by trying to minimize the problem. First he argued that the figures needed to be pruned of translations from the classics, because these could not be considered foreign imports – an argument that was frequently used to try and play down the importance of Italy’s top place in the translation tables. Secondly, he argued that Italy’s lack of ‘publishing autonomy’ [‘autonomia in campo editoriale’] really only concerned popular literature, while in the fields of science,

26


art, history, jurisprudence and philosophy, and in didactic literature, Italy had ‘almost completely freed itself from any foreign domination’ [‘quasi del tutto svincolata dalla sudditanza straniera’].19 Despite the concerns of many within the literary establishment, and despite the perceived threat to Italian cultural prestige, the regime did not intervene against translations during this period. Translations had begun to be seen as a problem, and the loyalty to their country – and to the Fascist project – of publishers who were flooding the market with translations had been openly called into question, but none of these issues were serious enough to push the regime into direct intervention. This was, at least in part, due to the fact that, whatever their detractors might say, the publishers actually enjoyed a very collaborative relationship with the regime. The president of the Publishers Federation, Franco Ciarlantini, was a long-standing member of the regime’s establishment, having joined the Fascist Party in 1923 and been a member of the Fascist Grand Council, and he firmly believed that the future of Italian publishing lay in its industrial development within the corporate state that the regime was in the process of building. Aside from its president, all the other members of the Federation were either firmly pro-Fascist, such as Mondadori, Vallardi and Vallecchi (to name a few of the most prominent), or quietly neutral (such as Bompiani). With the two important exceptions of Laterza and, to some extent, Einaudi, there simply was no real opposition within the publishing world. Any publisher who might have adopted an antagonistic stance towards the regime during its establishment in 1924–25 had either been forced to close or to align itself with the regime.20 Laterza, which was based somewhat on the fringes of the publishing world in Bari, was able to maintain an openly hostile stance towards the regime thanks to its association with the highly influential philosopher Benedetto Croce; while Giulio Einaudi was probably allowed to keep his Turin publishing house in operation, despite the suspicion that he was involved with the Giustizia e Libertà [Freedom and Justice] anti-Fascist movement, because of the eminence of his father, the internationally respected economist and future president of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi. In a general climate of consensus, both within the publishing world and in the country at large, it probably suited the regime to allow these two antagonistic houses to remain open: such tolerance was a demonstration of strength, while to close them would have meant risking international disapproval. Translations and cultural autarky As the Italian invasion of Ethiopia came to a close and Italy inaugurated its colonial status (the empire was officially proclaimed by Mussolini on


9 May 1936), and in the wake of the League of Nations sanctions and the campaign for economic autarky that was launched as a response, there was another campaign against translations. The following editorial, from a provincial literary journal, gives us a sense of how the terms of the debate had been exacerbated by the resentment that the sanctions had caused: All translations by authors from enemy countries should be banned, without exception for now: this would not only function as a reprisal but it would also lead to considerable savings on cellulose. Once the sanctions are over it would be useful to set up a special office to deal with requests for, and offers of, translations both into and from Italian, regulating the concessions so as to make sure that the imports in this field do not exceed the exports. Translations into Italian should be limited to works of genuine artistic, scientific, and political value, while works of so-called popular literature should be rejected without indulgence as these constitute a constant danger to the education and good taste of our people.21 This second campaign, which lasted from 1936 to 1938, was led by the Futurist poet F. T. Marinetti – one of the few pro-Fascist artists of genuine international standing. Marinetti, and the Authors and Writers Union that he presided over, saw the opportunity that the political situation offered of lending greater weight to their argument in their ongoing dispute with the Publishers Federation, and felt that the regime was now more likely to listen to concrete suggestions on how to restrict the flow of translations. In this highly charged political context, in which nationalist and xenophobic feeling ran high, the authors’ accusations of an unpatriotic privileging of private profit over national interest were much more damaging to the publishers. How could they both join the call for a cultural autarky and continue to publish so many translations? Furthermore, at a time in which Italy had successfully completed a project of colonial expansion, the failure of Italian culture to match this with an expansion of its own became an even greater political embarrassment – responsibility for which the authors had rather ably succeeded in shifting onto the publishers with their campaign against translations. The first shot in the new campaign was the inaugural issue of the new journal of Authors and Writers Union, Autori e scrittori, which came out the same month as the founding of the empire. Here Marinetti announced the decision to draw up a list of translators, in collaboration

28


with the Publishers Federation, intended to ‘discipline both translations and translators’ [‘addivenire ad una disciplina delle traduzioni e dei traduttori’]. He also announced the formation of a Translations Commission, composed of representatives from the Authors and Writers Union, the Italian Copyright Agency (SIAE) and the Confederation of Professionals and Artists, but not the Publishers Federation. These two initiatives were explicitly presented as a logical extension of Italy’s reaction to international sanctions: All the members of the Union have responded promptly and spontaneously to the call against the sanctions. The National Executive has approved a motion against the overwhelming diffusion of foreign books and theatrical works and has also prepared a report [in which the idea of a list of translators and a new commission are put forward] which will be presented to the appropriate authorities.22 As the campaign gained momentum these two ideas evolved, over a series of articles and public conferences, into two concrete institutional proposals: a Translators Register [Albo dei traduttori] and a ministerial Translations Commission.23 The Register was intended to be restrictive and would have the effect of drawing translators away from the influence of their employers the publishers, bringing them closer to the interests of the authors. The ministerial commission was intended as an organ which could regulate the translation industry without interference from the Publishers Federation, given that the authors did not intend to include the Federation in the project. The intention was to impose some sort of quality control on translations and also a system of controlled reciprocity: the principle was that translation into Italian should only be permitted in relation to the number of Italian works being translated into that language. This could either limit the number of translations published in Italy, given the lack of popularity of most Italian literature abroad or, conceivably, encourage the translation of Italian works by exploiting the leverage of the success of foreign literature in Italy – a principle which would eventually be accepted and applied by the regime, as we shall see. This suggestion also allowed the authors to claim that they were not advocating any sort of outright protectionist ban, but merely an autarkic principle of balancing imports and exports: [N]ot protectionism then; but nevertheless […] a form of cultural exchange could be instituted, which is limited in relation to the number of Italian works of all kinds which enter the respective


foreign countries, and leaving it to a specifically competent corporate organ to prepare periodic lists of books which are indicated to the publishers as works suitable for translation into Italian.24 (Levi 1936: 6) Despite the Authors and Writers Union’s insistence, however, the Translators Register remained a list with no prescriptive power and there was no sign of a ministerial commission. The one indication that the campaign was having any effect on the regime’s attitudes towards translations was the introduction of what is, to my knowledge, the first measure by the state censor, the then Ministry for the Press and Propaganda, specifically aimed at translations.25 In January 1937 the Ministry informed publishers that from now on they must send prior notification every time they decided to translate a text. Furthermore, the Ministry required monthly lists of everything that was being published to be sent in to the local Police headquarters, the Questura.26 Although this prior notification was not a particularly threatening requirement, it will certainly have given publishers the sense that they were being observed more closely, and the fact that the Ministry had seen fit to draw up a procedure that was specific to translations was significant – so far, translations had always been regulated in exactly the same way as any other Italian publication. As the Minister himself had explained in a circular published a month earlier, the lists were the start of a new Ministry policy of taking a closer interest in book publishing (which had tended to be neglected in the past in favour of a tight control on all periodical publications) with a view to both monitoring and shaping the publishing industry; a policy which did not apparently target translations but which, it is reasonable to assume, was at least in part prompted by the campaign against the publishers. The circular explains: [Our aim is] to arrive at an exact knowledge of everything that is printed in Italy, not only for monitoring purposes, but in order to be able to exert a formative influence on the publishers and in response to the widely recognized need to collect precise statistics on the nonperiodical press in Italy.27 When the Publishers Federation met in November 1937 to elect a new executive, its president, Franco Ciarlantini, gave a speech arguing that it was possible to pursue an autarkic policy in publishing. He (understandably) felt that the onus was on Italian authors to rise to the challenge and redress the translation balance by producing works

30


that could compete on the international market, rather than trying to impose damaging restrictions on the publishers: It is possible to achieve a special autarky in the publishing field as well, without this meaning that publishers should abandon all foreign works and devote themselves solely to publishing Italian works; an autarky of this kind is neither possible nor desirable and would instead be damaging. Human progress is driven by a knowledge of all of the civilized world. […] Autarky can be achieved in the publishing field through the stimulation of an increasingly large Italian scientific, artistic and literary production, thanks to which other countries will increasingly become our tributaries, without this meaning that we should cease to inform ourselves of what is being produced abroad.28 The proper way to restore Italian cultural prestige, then, was to expand abroad without falling into the trap of imposing a culturally shortsighted, and economically damaging, closure at home. The Federation then took up the argument in a long editorial in its journal, the Giornale della libreria [The Booksellers Journal]. They argued that the problem was not actually as serious as the authors would have everyone believe, and that translations only made up 7 per cent of national production – a figure which they had manipulated to make it seem more favourable.29 They also congratulated themselves on the fact that the number of translations had anyway gone down since the war in Ethiopia which, as Table 2.1 shows, was marginally true. The editorial then launched into a complex defence of the economics of publishing in an attempt to show that, rather than being an instance of publishers privileging private profit over national interests, translations were in fact a patriotic blow struck in favour of the national industry: the money spent on buying translation rights (that is, money which left the country) was about a twentieth of the amount spent on paying Italian writers, translators, printers and graphic artists; furthermore, the money spent on publishing translations went into Italian hands, which was preferable to money being spent on the foreign editions that people would buy were these translations not available: Have [our esteemed adversaries and denigrators] considered that, in the final analysis, it is both preferable and cheaper to introduce the public to a foreign work in an Italian translation rather than in the original, a choice which would involve a greater exportation of currency?30


The editorial also refuted the idea that all translations were of low quality; they simply met the less refined tastes of the general public. It argued that a publishing house is first and foremost a commercial concern and it must publish what the public wants to read – regularly and consistently. If Italian writers could not produce sufficient works to feed the market, then the publisher must turn to translations. The authors were not convinced, however, and a month later, in January 1938, the secretary of the Authors and Writers Union, F. T. Marinetti, and its director, Corrado Govoni, had the directorate of the Emilia Romagna section of the union vote a motion against translations which stated: We think it indispensable for a literary autarky that three quarters of the foreign works which a few publishers are imposing on us, on the basis of that ancient, permanent, and insufficiently discredited Italian vice which we call xenophilia, be urgently withdrawn from translation and publication. The consequence of this xenophilia is the denigration of Italian literary products; a denigration which is augmented by the ignoble diffusion of the most mediocre novels.31 The Union followed this up in February with a second motion which once more called for the establishment of a register of recognized translators and for the government to intervene and monitor the choice of works to be translated – in effect the Translations Commission they had been advocating since 1936. These measures were necessary, they said, to stop ‘the spread of works with no literary value, chosen solely for speculative reasons and rendered in bad Italian by people who are not always suited for such a delicate task’:32 a particularly aggressive attack on the integrity of the publishers. Marinetti and Govoni then led a delegation, which included Alessandro Pavolini, head of the Confederation of Professionals and Artists and future Minister, to deliver a personal copy of this motion to Minister Dino Alfieri at the Ministry for Popular Culture (henceforth MCP). A communiqué was published in the papers announcing both the motion and the meeting with the Minister. The Publishers Federation reacted very strongly to this aggression and was particularly upset at the amount of publicity that the Authors and Writers Union had chosen to give their initiative, stating that this question ‘of prime importance to the publishing industry’ [‘di primissimo ordine per l’industria editoriale’] ought to have been introduced through the proper channels ‘before being fed to the public in such an uncontrolled fashion’ [‘prima di essere data in pasto al pubblico nelle forme

32


smodate che abbiamo visto’]. In their reply published in their journal, the Federation also firmly rejected the rather transparent attempt by the authors to bring the Minister onto their side: We are sure that His Excellency the Minister Alfieri and his staff, whose prudence we have had occasion to appreciate in the past, will want to hear representatives of the Publishers Federation before establishing controls, commissions, registers or any other of that battery of measures to which the representatives of the writers seem so attached and which they seem to think will bring about a rebirth of Italian letters, something which should in fact be their own responsibility.33 The Minister, however, was already taking an even closer interest in the translation question. That same month, January 1938, the MCP sent out a telegram to all publishing houses instructing them to present a complete list of all the translations they had published so far and the titles of all those planned for the future.34 That this was a potentially threatening request is clear from the response of Mondadori, in which he made every effort to play down the importance of translations to his company: he neglected to include the notorious ‘Libri gialli’ and another series of popular fiction, ‘Romanzi della palma’, two of the series that were most dependent on translations and which were the most resented by the authors. Mondadori argued that these were merely ‘ephemeral periodical publications’ [‘pubblicazioni periodiche di vita effimera’] – by which he meant that they were published in magazine format. Furthermore, he declared only 269 translations since the foundation of the house up to December 1937, when in fact he had published 707, and he announced that 29 translations were planned for 1938 when in fact he would go on to publish 91.35 In March 1938, the MCP then instituted a specific authorization procedure for translations: 1) As of 1 April [1938] only this Ministry is entitled to authorize the diffusion in Italy of foreign translations; 2) Publishers can send the Ministry copies of the books they intend to translate into Italian, in the original language, either directly or via the Prefecture; 3) This Ministry will inform Publishers – via the appropriate Prefecture – of its decision as quickly as possible; 4) Publishers are also permitted to submit works for approval in the form of proofs in Italian translation;


5) No prior approval is required for purely scientific treatises […] or for works which are universally recognized as classics.36 It is difficult to evaluate the exact significance of this measure. On the one hand, the MCP was clearly putting pressure on the publishers and, without actually imposing any restrictions as yet, was ensuring that it could exert control over the publication of translation if and when it chose to. On the other hand, all publications in Italy were already subject to prior authorization before distribution, so in this sense the circular did not introduce a significant change. What is clear from point 5 is that it was the translations of popular fiction which were the Ministry’s real target.37 A clearer insight into the ambivalent position of the Ministry is provided by a widely publicized speech given on 3 February 1938 in Florence by the head of the General Directorate for the Italian Press at the MCP, Gherardo Casini, entitled ‘Bonifica della cultura in Italia’ [The Purging of Italian Culture].38 This was not the first time that the word bonifica had been used to signify a process of cultural ‘renewal’, and it was a word that was to acquire ominous associations once the anti-Semitic purge got under way, as we shall see in the following section.39 In a rather long and sometimes confused analysis, Casini veered between reassuring his audience that the situation of Italian culture was actually quite healthy, since translations only made up a small proportion of the market (Casini cited the Federation’s manipulated figure of 7 per cent), and sounding the alarm that the Italian public had developed an unhealthy taste for all things foreign. Despite this concern, however, Casini tried to argue in favour of a rather improbable cultural nationalism that could also maintain a European outlook: But we do not believe that it would be fruitful to close the borders against any intellectual, artistic or cultural exchange and in fact we see all the usefulness and merits of such exchange. […] So, to work for Italian culture means above all to work for Italy, but it also means to work so that European culture can find its own path once again.40 It would, however, be wrong to assume that in this debate the publishers were without their allies, who were prepared to come out in support of cultural exchange and against narrow-minded restrictions. The Venice section of the Authors and Writers Union, for example, passed a resolution that was in direct contrast to the one sponsored by Marinetti and Govoni. The resolution argued, much like the publishers themselves,

34


that any repression of translation would be damaging to Italian culture, and that Italian literature was best defended by means of a more effective expansion abroad. The motion won the explicit approval of Giuseppe Bottai, Minister for Education and editor of the long-standing and very influential journal Critica fascista, who commented, in almost exactly the same terms as the motion: Also because excessively severe protective legislation would risk creating an atmosphere of isolation around Italy which would by no means favour its imperial role. […] Rather it would be better to defend literary Italianness by means of a more widespread and penetrating cultural expansion abroad.41 As we shall see, however, this apparent openness on the part of Bottai did not prevent him from vigorously applying the new racist legislation that would be introduced later that year. Another well-placed member of the hierarchy to come out in favour of a more open interpretation of cultural autarky was Ezio Maria Gray, a journalist who held numerous positions of responsibility in the regime, including being a member of parliament, a member of the Fascist Party (PNF) executive, vice president of the Corporation of Professions and Arts and a member of the Fascist Grand Council. In an article which appeared in the Gazzetta del Popolo on 28 July 1938, he argued that the ‘magnificent formula of “autarky”’ [magnifica formula dell’ ‘autarchia’] had been abused and debased in the same way as ‘battle’ [battaglia] had been:42 The ‘zealots’ have thought to enhance national production in the field of creative works by making war against foreign products, as if books and journals could be put on the same plane as stockings and garters. Gray also praised Mondadori for showing how cultural exchange must be reciprocal, arguing that Italians could not expect to export their books if they were not prepared to import them as well. Cultural exchange, he said, was an incentive to progress, and the economic concept of autarky could not be applied to culture. The fear of foreign invasion was misplaced because, now that it had been immunized by 16 years of Fascism, Gray rather optimistically concluded, Italy would no longer fall into the supine xenophilia of the postunification era.43


Translation and racism In the brief period between the founding of Italy’s Empire in East Africa in May 1936 and the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation in the autumn of 1938, the discourse on translation was informed by the rhetoric of cultural expansion and cultural autarky but was largely free from explicit racism or anti-Semitism. Ever since the beginning of the decade, the paradigm that lay at the heart of the debate was one where translation was either seen as an instrument of cultural penetration in a battle for cultural domination (a battle that Italy appeared to be losing) or, for those who did not feel threatened by it, as an instrument of cultural exchange in a drive for greater cultural prestige. This would change with the introduction of racist legislation: with notions of both racial and cultural purity becoming dominant, and most voices in favour of cultural exchange maintaining a politic silence, translation came increasingly to be seen as a form of cultural pollution and literary exchange as potentially a form of cultural miscegenation. Furthermore, the anti-Semitic purge would break any remaining inhibitions on the part of the MCP, which would slowly start to impose restrictions on translations. The Commission for the Purging of Books Although racist legislation was officially approved by the Fascist Grand Council in November 1938, Giuseppe Bottai had already begun an anti-Semitic purge of the education sector in August that year. All Jewish teachers lost their jobs and the publishers were told to remove all textbooks by Jewish authors from their catalogues. It is significant that it was the publishers themselves who drew up the lists of purged authors, lists which would then serve as a basis for the complete purge (of mainly Jewish authors) later carried out by the MCP.44 Their collaboration was prompted not so much by their enthusiasm for the new legislation as by a fear that, if left to others, there was a danger of the purge being too damaging economically, given that there was also considerable ambiguity as to who exactly should be included in the blacklists.45 The MCP also moved early and, on 13 September 1938, Alfieri called the first meeting of a Commission for the Purging of Books [Commissione per la bonifica libraria], which included a long list of representatives of the various cultural agencies and institutions – but none from the Publishers Federation. The naming of the commission was in itself significant. Since the mid-1920s the term bonifica had generally been used in its agricultural sense of reclaiming previously uncultivateable land, or rendering

36


previously unhealthy areas of the country habitable. In 1924 the regime had launched a campaign of important public works, such as the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, with the slogan of bonifica integrale [complete reclamation]. By choosing this name, Alfieri was consciously placing the work of the commission within a Fascist tradition of great public works. Moreover, as we saw in Casini’s speech earlier, the term bonifica had begun to be used as a metaphor for a cultural ‘renewal’. Now, as the title of this commission, this bonifica was to be a much more explicit purging of Italian culture: the purpose of the commission was, in the words of Alfieri himself to establish precise criteria and determine the most suitable and efficient methods to achieve a complete review of Italian book production and that of foreign books translated into Italian. This review has become all the more necessary in view of the racial directions from above.46 It is clear from this statement that, in Alfieri’s mind, the purpose of the commission was both to tackle the translation problem and implement the new racist legislation. In the former respect, then, the commission seemed to be an answer to the many requests from the Authors and Writers Union for a Translations Commission. Once the commission started to meet, however, its anti-Semitic agenda became dominant, and it actually paid relatively little attention to the translation question (see also Fabre 1998: 175). Nevertheless the connection had been made between the process of racial ‘cleansing’ that the regime had launched and the foreign presence of translations. Translations were now part of a larger issue, that of racial purity; one in which they were part cause and part symptom of the corrupting influence of Jewish culture.47 Shaken by their exclusion from any active role within the commission, the Publishers Federation decided that the best tactic would be to pre-empt whatever decisions it might take by drawing up their own list of works to be purged. The commission had been divided into various subcommittees, each charged with drawing up a blacklist for its respective area of competence, and the crucial area of ‘Narrative literature, Biography, Poetry and Theatre’ [‘Letteratura narrativa e biografica, Poesia e Teatro’] had been entrusted to none other than the Authors and Writers Union (Fabre 1998: 176). When, in February 1939, these subcommittees were called together in plenary session to present their lists, Ciarlantini was present and he announced that the Publishers Federation had voluntarily removed 900 books from circulation in order


to facilitate the work of the commission.48 This was a politically intelligent move which won the approval of the Minister and appears to have ensured that the publishers were included in the further meetings of the commission. Pavolini becomes minister On 31 October 1939, Alessandro Pavolini took over as Minister for Popular Culture. Pavolini was a convinced Fascist and a firm believer in the regime’s racist policies. He had been a journalist, novelist, poet, the founding editor of the Fascist literary journal Il Bargello, and more recently the president of the Confederation of Professionals and Artists, taking part in the Commission for the Purging of Books alongside Marinetti. By the time he took up his post as Minister, the anti-Semitic purge of Italian public life was well under way and Pavolini could find time to devote his mind to the question of translations. With the introduction of official anti-Semitism, the MCP had broken a long-standing policy of minimal intervention and had imposed a very damaging purge on the Italian publishers. This precedent having been set, the MCP would go on to impose difficult restrictions on translations, presenting these measures as an unavoidable necessity in the current political climate. This sense of emergency measures being introduced in particularly delicate circumstances would only increase, of course, with the outbreak of the war. Pavolini is in many ways a contradictory figure, however. On the one hand he was the first Minister to introduce concrete restrictions on translations; yet, on the other hand, he appeared to maintain a more cordial and collaborative relationship with the Publishers Federation than Alfieri had done. Despite many statements which evince a very severe attitude towards the corrupting influence of translations, his restrictive measures were in fact introduced quite gradually and, to a some extent, in agreement with the publishers. Despite the fact that translations were originally part of its brief, he did not use the Commission for the Purging of Books to impose restrictions out of hand, but instead took the trouble to negotiate these and, as we shall see, made an effort to mitigate their impact.49 Pavolini’s first move was to call a meeting with the Publishers Federation in October 1940 in which he informed them that he had decided to impose a 10 per cent quota on translations. In the meeting, Pavolini told the publishers that Italian literature must reflect the nation’s prominent international role. He therefore wanted to promote the expansion of Italian literature abroad while reducing the amount of foreign literature being translated in Italy and being distributed in

38


imported foreign-language editions. His speech confirmed, once again, that it was the success of foreign popular fiction that was the perceived problem, explaining that these measures applied to ‘so-called “creative” works and popular literature, and not to the classics or to scientific works’ [‘opere cosiddette di ‘fantasia’ e di amena lettura, e non per i classici e per le opere scientifiche’]. As well as imposing a quota [aliquota] on translations, Pavolini said that the MCP would support Italian publishing by buying a regular allocation of books to be distributed in libraries, schools, and other institutions, and by awarding subsidies to cover the cost of paper. In response, the Publishers Federation argued, first of all, that the low cost of translation rights allowed them to pay their Italian authors very generously – especially important considering the small number of copies that most of these authors sold; also that the profits made on translations allowed them to keep the price of Italian books much lower than elsewhere in the world. Secondly, they stressed that the high-selling translations actually provided work for a host of Italian translators, editors, printers and graphic artists. Both these points were an answer to the accusation levelled at them by the Authors and Writers Union of ignoring the nation’s autarkic interests. They continued along this line of argument by reminding Pavolini that their translations had effectively put a stop to the importation of French translations of foreign works – another autarkic feather in their cap. They also invoked the principle of reciprocity, reversing the way in which the authors had used it against them by arguing that the translations published in Italy were necessary as a lever to encourage foreign publishing houses to publish translations from Italian. Turning more directly to the commercial situation, the publishers also stressed that the annual turnover of the publishing sector in Italy was relatively low, and that if the quota were imposed they stood to lose a lot of money on translation rights which they had already bought – money which would go straight into foreign hands. Finally, the publishers pointed out that they had already made an effort to align themselves with the MCP’s cultural priorities and that translations were down to a mere 500 in the period 1938–39 – which was not actually true.50 Following this meeting Pavolini apparently agreed to wait with the quota until the Publishers Federation had completed a detailed survey of the situation which would ‘put the translation problem into perspective’ [‘un inquadramento del problema delle traduzioni’].51 Nevertheless the MCP imposed a series of restrictive measures over the following year, aimed in particular at translations published in magazine format and at


crime fiction. In December 1940 the MCP informed the Federation that translations published in magazine format must be included in the survey that it was carrying out;52 and this was followed a few months later by a circular which made it obligatory to request prior authorization for these translations.53 These measures were designed to close the loophole being exploited by publishers such as Mondadori, as we saw earlier, who were in the habit of not including translations published in periodical format in their requests for authorization and distribution, with the justification that they were only temporary publications with a short lifespan. Mondadori was therefore excluding both the ‘Libri gialli’ and the ‘Romanzi della palma’, two of the most successful translation series in his catalogue, in an attempt to play down the impact of translations in his publishing figures. Yet these were exactly the kind of cheap, readily available editions of foreign popular fiction that the Authors and Writers Union had complained about so bitterly and which were the principal vehicle for the ‘hasty and invasive distortion of values’ [‘frettolosa ed invadente inversione di valori’] that the regime was keen to stop.54 It was therefore fairly logical that the MCP should follow this with another circular in July 1941 which forbade the publication of crime fiction either in instalments or in periodical format; a measure that was designed to make this literature less accessible without actually banning it outright, by forcing it into more expensive editions.55 The drive against crime fiction then continued with a rather redundant measure which made it obligatory to obtain specific, prior authorization for all crime literature.56 Finally, in October 1941, the MCP informed the Federation that only publishers who were already publishing crime fiction should continue to do so, and this at a rate of no more than one book a month with a price of at least five lire – another measure designed to shut down the market for the cheaper editions which were selling at two to three lire.57 Although this did not yet amount to a complete ban, Mondadori at least did not publish any more ‘Libri gialli’ after this date. Between January and May 1942, Pavolini and the Federation finally agreed on a translation quota of 25 per cent, with the proviso that houses who had published a lower proportion in the past must maintain this. It would appear, then, that Pavolini had to some extent agreed to accommodate those houses which depended heavily on translations – this was a much more generous quota than the one he had begun with 18 months earlier and ‘special dispensations may be considered at the end of the year’ [‘qualche deroga potrà essere presa in esame alla fine dell’anno’]. It was also agreed that additional tolerance would be shown to those publishers who succeeded in selling the translation rights to

40


Italian works abroad. The quota would, however, include ‘literary, political and philosophical works, classics or not’ [‘opere letterarie, politiche e filosofiche – classiche o non’], a more restrictive remit than was originally proposed and a rejection of the argument that translations of the classics should be more acceptable as they were, in effect, ‘internal’ translations. This confirms that Pavolini was just as keen to reduce the negative propaganda value of the figures on translation as he was to throttle the flow of decadent foreign literature.58 For Mondadori, who was the most important publisher of translations and who had played a key part in the negotiations, translations dropped from 48 per cent of his total production in 1941 to 28 per cent in 1942; testimony to the fact that these measures had a real impact.59 On 6 February 1943, just six months before the regime would finally collapse, Pavolini was succeeded by Gaetano Polverelli, another dyed-in-the-wool Fascist who had been head of the Prime Minister’s Press Office from December1931 to August 1933, and more recently had been Under Secretary of State at the MCP. The only measure of significance which he had time to implement was the complete ban in April 1943 of all crime fiction until the end of the war, officially due to the shortage of paper.60 A racialized view of translation We have seen how Pavolini appears to have made some effort to maintain a collaborative relationship with the Publishers Federation even as he imposed his restrictions against translations. In his discussions with the publishers, his main concern appears to have been the issue of Italy’s cultural prestige. Translations needed to be curbed because they were a political embarrassment and undermined Italy’s international status; Fascist Italy ought to be an expanding cultural presence in the world, one which penetrated other cultures, not one which was invaded by an uncontrolled flow of foreign fiction before the eyes of the international community.61 There is little trace in his private exchanges with the publishers of the racialized rhetoric that was the hallmark of his public statements on the translation question. A good example of the latter is a speech Pavolini gave at an annual inauguration of the Italo-German Association (there is no record of the year): But the edges of that great and pure current which is the Italian tradition […] were clouded, in the dark years of our nation’s life, by a disorganized and poisonous importation of doctrines, intellectual fashions, modes of thought, of art and of life […] that were entirely


alien to the style and genius of the race. It is our constant effort, by now largely realized, to purify our native culture from this marginal pollution. The purification of books, the monitoring of translations, the selection of foreign books and periodicals for importation […] an ever more severe selection of theatrical, musical and cinematographic productions from abroad: all these and other analogous provisions […] have helped to render our Italian culture ever more ‘Italian’. Italian: that is herself, free from any small-minded protectionism, but conscious of her own eternal role as disseminator rather than receiver.62 Here, alongside the concern with Italy’s cultural prestige, we find an idea of translation clearly informed by the notions of racial purity that had become common currency since the introduction of official racism. For Pavolini, translations are not just an unwelcome sign of weakness in a geopolitical cultural project of expansion, they are not just a reflection of the failure of the colonial enterprise to project Italy fully onto the international stage: they have become a form of pollution, a poison which threatens the cultural health of the nation. Pavolini is a typical example of that peculiarly Fascist ambivalence where a clear gap opens between the rhetoric and the concrete action. On the one hand, he maintained a public alignment with official orthodoxy and offered bold statements of intent in which translation became conceptually embroiled in the regime’s racist purge; on the other hand, he allowed his private sympathy with the publishers to bring him to a more moderate, negotiated position. So it was that in the midst of the crackdown on translations, and at a time when Italy was already at war with both Britain and the United States, Pavolini was persuaded to authorize an anthology of contemporary American literature: Americana, edited by the famous Italian author and translator Elio Vittorini and published by Bompiani. Despite the insertion of a fairly critical introduction and the removal of Vittorini’s own appreciative commentary, there can have been no doubt in anybody’s mind that this volume was intended as a celebration of American literature. Partly due to the status that Vittorini was to acquire in post-war Italian literature, the anthology has gone down in history as one of the more notorious cases of Fascist censorship: the first edition had to be withdrawn from publication, and there is some evidence that the second edition was eventually banned as well.63 But what is striking is not that Pavolini’s less sophisticated successor, Gaetano Polverelli, may have banned the book, but that Pavolini, the Minister who had given himself the task of

42


cleansing the ‘great and pure current’ of Italian culture from all forms of ‘marginal pollution’, had actually seen fit to authorize it in the first place.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have chosen to concentrate on translation as an ideological issue and as a publishing phenomenon, rather than as a literary process and activity. This was not an a priori decision but rather the result of where I felt the archival material led me (see also Rundle 2010). In my reading of this history of the Fascist regime, it is this feature which I think is most significant. The regime did not perceive translation as a seditious activity and did not see translated literature as a channel for some form of ideological opposition – at least not until the introduction of racist legislation and the official paranoia that this brought with it. The regime took an interest in translation when it began to see that the translation phenomenon was actually calling into question the cultural prestige of the nation. Broadly speaking, we can trace four distinct periods in relation to the question of translation: the first period up to the end of the 1920s in which translation was essentially a literary and aesthetic question that was really only of concern to those in the literary establishment; a second period from 1928 to 1934 in which the literary establishment began to feel threatened by the increasing success of translations and the changes they were beginning to effect on the book market; a third period from 1935 to 1937 in which translations first became a clearly ideological question, both as they were caught up in the call for autarky that followed the founding of the empire and as they came to be seen as a weapon in an ideal battle for cultural expansion and dominion; and a final period, from 1938 to 1943, in which racist ideology imposed itself on the regime’s perception of translations, now seen as a polluting presence that needed to be purged – a call to arms that was only exacerbated by the war. Throughout this evolution in the regime’s attitude to translation, it was the symbolic or propaganda value of the phenomenon that caused the most concern, and, on the whole, not the impact that translations may have had on Italian literature. This is significant in that translation provides us with a means of understanding how the regime viewed itself and how that view of itself was constructed. In a regime that was led by a journalist and master of propaganda, image was everything; yet how could the idea of Italian cultural prestige be promoted if the figures


on translation showed quite clearly that French and German culture enjoyed far greater international prestige? How could Italian culture hope to expand its international influence when Italians had such an appetite for foreign literature? The voices of those who preached cultural expansion by means of unrestricted cultural exchange were drowned out by the loud reactions to this loss of face.

Abbreviations ACS AME ASMi b. DAGR DGPS DGSE f. MCP MI PNF SAM

Archivio centrale dello stato, Rome Archivio Storico Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori, Milan Archivio di stato, Milan busta (file) Divisione affari generali e riservati Direzione generale pubblica sicurezza Direzione generale stampa estera fascicolo (folder, within a file) Ministero della cultura popolare Ministero degli interni Partito Nazionale Fascista Sezione Arnoldo Mondadori

Notes 1. See Billiani (2007a) for a detailed account of the literary debate on translation in the 1920s. See also Rubino’s essay in this volume. 2. For more details on Fascist censorship see Bonsaver (2007), Fabre (1998), and Talbot (2007). See also Fabre (2007) and Rundle (2000, 2010) for more details on the censorship of translations. 3. The Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia also published a comparable number of translations, without ever quite reaching Italian levels of production, but available figures on these countries are too inconsistent to allow us to make a useful comparison. 4. The statistics used in this section were all published in the period 1930–43 in the Giornale della libreria, the official organ of the Publishers Federation, which drew them from a variety of national sources. They include all publications, fiction and non-fiction, but not sheet music or government acts. In order to fill in certain gaps and obtain a reasonably consistent and comparable series of data, I have integrated these figures with figures that I have personally compiled based on the Index Translationum. The Index Translationum was published by the Institute for Cultural Co-operation in Paris, an agency under the aegis of what was then the League of Nations. Publication began in 1932 but was interrupted in 1940 following the outbreak of the war, with

44

5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

Translation in Fascist Italy only the figures for the first half of 1939 having been published, and not taken up again until 1948. Concerning the figures published by the Giornale della libreria: the Italian figures were sourced from the Bollettino delle pubblicazioni italiane, which regularly published data compiled by the National Library in Florence. The French figures were sourced from the Bibliographie de la France. The figures on German publications were compiled by the statistician Ludwig Schönrock and include publications in Austria and German-speaking Switzerland. These were sourced from the Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel and the Swiss publication Droit d’Auteur, official organ of the Bureau International pour la protection des Oeuvres littéraires et artistiques in Berne. See Sturge in this volume. Figures on translation out of a language are clearly much more difficult to compile. In Table 2.3 I have shown those years in which I was able to find a figure for translation both to and from Italian and German. In fact the German figures were dominated by ‘un-German’ authors – exiles and anti-Nazis – but this fact was not remarked on in Italy. See Rubino and Sturge in this volume. For a more detailed analysis of the statistics on translation in Fascist Italy see Rundle (2010: Ch. 2). See Decleva (1993: 152), Pedullà (1997: 349, 368, 375–6), and Tranfaglia and Vittoria (2000: 311–12). See De Donato and Gazzola Stacchini (1991). ‘Un ufficio internazionale della traduzione’, La Fiera Letteraria, 29 May 1927, Prezzolini (1928), both cited in Sfondrini (1997: 53–4). All translations from Italian in this chapter are my own. The letter was published in Il Torchio, no. 33, September 1928: 3. Reproduced in Sfondrini (1997: 264–5). ‘L’invasione dello straniero’, Il Torchio, no. 31, August 1928: 3. Cited in Sfondrini (1997: 47–56). AME, SAM, ‘Federazione Nazionale Fascista degli Industriali Editori’. A key of all the abbreviations used is provided at the end of this chapter. ‘L’elenco delle opere pubblicate negli ultimi tempi dimostra della futilità, del provvisorio, della commercialità, del facile smercio. In gran parte sono libri stranieri, i più mal tradotti, trascurati, stampati pretenziosamente con stramba fisionomia, mal rilegati e zeppi di errori e di refusi.’ Quoted in ‘Editori e scrittori’, Giornale della libreria 46, no. 43, 28 October 1933: 233–4. ‘Per una Corporazione del libro’, Giornale della libreria 47, no. 11, 17 March 1934: 65–6. In fact a Book Corporation was never created. The publishers came under the aegis of the Corporation for Paper and Printing, which was formally created along with the other 21 corporations on 5 February 1934, a month before this discussion took place. ‘Qualunque argomento cerchiate in un’editoria che stampa migliaia di volumi all’anno trovate poca cultura poca letteratura italiana, niente classici, nessun documento di vita italiana, ecc. Troverete bensì una storia italiana e romana tradotta, come troverete romanzi tradotti, ed enciclopedie, libri di viaggio, e perfino libri di cucina tradotti. Per noi l’estero fa la letteratura e la storia e la cultura.’ La Stampa, 2 May 1934, quoted in Verde (1934: 141). See


18.

19. 20.

21.

22.

24.

25.

26.

Rubino in this volume for an account of Alvaro’s writings on Germany in the 1920s. ‘Altro fenomeno che merita la nostra attenzione è quello delle traduzioni. L’Italia è il paese che traduce di più come prova l’Index Translationum, in modo irrefutabile. […] E’ un bene o un male che l’Italia sia la maggior tributaria della letteratura straniera?’ All the quotes are from the report of Vallardi’s speech in Giornale della libreria 47, no. 18, 5 May 1934: 111. See Tranfaglia and Vittoria (2000) and Bonsaver (2007) on examples of these. See Nottola in this volume for a detailed study of relations between Einaudi and the regime. ‘Si vietino le traduzioni degli autori appartenenti ai paesi nemici e, per ora, senza eccezioni: questo non costituisce solo una rappresaglia ma altresì una notevole economia di cellulosa. A sanzioni cessate sarebbe utile istituire uno speciale ufficio destinato a raccogliere e a vagliare le richieste ed offerte di traduzione in e dall’italiano, proporzionando le concessioni in modo che anche in questo campo le importazioni non superino le esportazioni. Le traduzioni in italiano dovranno venire limitate ad opere di reale valore artistico, scientifico e politico, rifiutando senza indulgenza quelle opere della così detta letteratura amena che costituisce un costante pericolo per l’educazione ed il buon gusto dal [sic] nostro popolo.’ Unsigned editorial comment in L’Orto V, nos 4–5, July/October 1935: 39. Available online in the C. I. R. C. E. Digital Archive of European Cultural Journals (http://circe.lett. unitn.it/). ‘L’adesione contro le sanzioni è stata da parte di tutti gli organizzati nel Sindacato pronta e spontanea. La Segreteria Nazionale votò a suo tempo un ordine del giorno contro la soverchiante diffusione della produzione libraria e teatrale straniera ed all’uopo ha approntato una relazione che sarà portata all’esame dei competenti organi corporativi.’ Authors and Writers Union, first six-monthly report of 1936, cited in Autori e scrittori I, no. 4, August 1936: 15. 23. Autori e scrittori I, nos 6–7, October/November 1936: 3; ‘Problema delle traduzioni e dei rapporti con l’estero’, Autori e scrittori II, no. 10, October 1937: 1–6. ‘Non quindi proibizionismo; ma tuttavia si potrebbe attuare […] delle forme di scambio culturale limitate in ragione della quantità di opere dell’ingegno italiano d’ogni tipo che entrano nei rispettivi paesi stranieri lasciando poi a speciali organi corporativi competenti di preparare le liste periodiche di libri che si indicano agli editori per la traduzione in lingua italiana.’ The Ministry would soon change its name to Ministry for Popular Culture, the final incarnation of the state censorship institution. It began life as the Prime Minister’s Press Office; it was then upgraded to the State Under Secretariat for the Press and Propaganda on 10 September 1934. It was upgraded once again to the Ministry for the Press and Propaganda on 24 June 1935, and finally renamed the Ministry for Popular Culture on 27 May 1937. On the evolution of the Press Office, see Bonsaver (2007: Ch. 4), Cannistraro (1975: 101–72, 133), Murialdi (1986: 113–20, 145–7, 157–64), and Talbot (2007: 79–82). See the circular, dated 30 January 1937 and addressed to the publishers and printers, and preserved in the state archives in Milan: ASMi, PMG I, b.716 ‘Rassegna Bibliografica. Elenco delle pubblicazioni’.

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27. ‘Avere un’esatta conoscenza di tutto quanto si stampa in Italia, non solo agli effetti della revisione, ma per poter svolgere un’azione formativa sugli editori e per la riconosciuta necessità di avere una precisa statistica sulla stampa italiana non periodica.’ ACS, MI, DGPS, DAGR, Massime, b. S4 (provv.), f. S4A1/1, ‘Disciplina delle pubblicazioni. Circolari’. The circular is no. 390/ Div. III dated 18 December 1936. Quoted in Fabre (1998: 30). 28. ‘Una speciale autarchia decisamente intesa è possibile raggiungere anche nel campo editoriale, senza che questo significhi per gli editori mettere al bando opere straniere e dedicarsi soltanto alla pubblicazione di opere italiane; un’autarchia di questo genere non è possibile né desiderabile, e sarebbe anzi dannosa. Il progresso umano è alimentato dalle cognizioni di tutto il mondo civile. […] L’autarchia si può raggiungere nel campo editoriale stimolando una produzione nazionale scientifica, artistica e letteraria sempre più copiosa, mercé la quale, pur non disimpegnandosi dalla necessità di conoscere quel che si fa all’estero, si rendano gli altri Paesi sempre più tributari del nostro.’ In Giornale della libreria 50, no. 48, 27 November 1937: 350–7. A modified version of this speech was published as an article in Resto del Carlino, 16 December 1937 (see also Giornale della libreria 51, no. 1, 1 January 1938). 29. The article lowered the proportion by not counting translations from classics, and by including musical publications and sheet music in the overall total. In fact, translations made up 10.56 per cent of total book production, according to my calculations (Rundle 2010: 131–2, 223). 30. ‘Hanno pensato [i nostri amabilissimi avversari e denigratori] che, in definitiva, è preferibile e più economico far conoscere al pubblico il libro straniero in traduzione italiana piuttosto che nell’edizione originale, il che importerebbe una maggior esportazione di valuta?’ ‘L’autarchia editoriale e le traduzioni’, Giornale della libreria 51, no. 5, 29 January 1938: 33–5. 31. ‘Consideriamo indispensabile per l’autarchia letteraria ora urgente scartare dalla traduzione e pubblicazione i tre quarti delle opere straniere che alcuni editori impongono, basandosi sul non abbastanza vituperato antico e permanente vizio italiano che noi chiamiamo esterofilia. Questo esterofilia avendo come conseguenza la denigrazione del prodotto letterario italiano trova nella moltiplicazione di mediocrissimi romanzi il suo ignobile alimento.’ Quoted in ‘L’autarchia editoriale e le traduzioni’, Giornale della libreria 51, no. 5, 29 January 1938: 33. 32. ‘Il dilagare di opere senza nessun valore letterario, scelte solo a titolo speculativo e rese in cattivo italiano da persone non sempre adatte per questo compito così delicato.’ 33. ‘Abbiamo pertanto la precisa certezza che S. E. il Ministro Alfieri e i suoi collaboratori, di cui conosciamo la sperimentata prudenza, vorranno sentire i rappresentanti della Federazione Editori prima di determinare controlli, commissioni, albi e tutto quell’armamentario al quale pare siano particolarmente attaccati i rappresentanti degli autori e dal quale sembra si ripromettano la rinascita delle lettere italiane, che dovrebbe in definitiva essere opera loro.’ All quotes in Giornale della libreria 51, no. 9, 26 February 1938: 68–9. Fabre (1998: 72–3) also comments on the authors’ visit to the MCP and on the firm reaction of the Publishers Federation.

Christopher Rundle 47 34. AME, SAM, ‘Ministro della Cultura Popolare’, telegram from Gherardo Casini, the head of the General Directorate for the Italian Press within the MCP. 35. Letter addressed to Casini dated 18 January 1938. In AME, SAM, ‘Minstero Cultura Popolare’, busta 65–6. Mondodori’s list is reproduced in full in Billiani (2007a: 171–2 n. 53). 36. ‘1) a datare dal 1 aprile c.a. soltanto questo Ministero potrà autorizzare la diffusione in Italia delle traduzioni straniere; 2) Gli Editori possono inviare a questo Ministero direttamente o a mezzo della Prefettura, nella lingua originale, i libri che intendono tradurre in italiano; 3) Questo Ministero farà conoscere all’Editore – tramite la Prefettura competente – il suo giudizio nel termine più breve; 4) E’ data facoltà agli Editori di presentare le opere anche in bozze nella traduzione italiana; 5) Sono esclusi dalla preventiva approvazione i trattati puramente scientifici […] e i classici universalmente riconosciuti tali.’ Circular no. 1135, 26 March 1938. ACS, MI, DGPS, DAGR, Massime, b. S4 103 A (provv.), f. S4 B5, ‘Traduzione e diffusione nel Regno di opere di autori Stranieri’. Quoted in Fabre (1998: 32; 2007: 27–8). 37. See Billiani (2007a: 197), who interprets this measure as an extension of the system of preventive censorship that the regime instituted in April 1934 with circular 442/9532 (cf. Fabre 1998: 22–8); also Fabre (2007: 32–3), who interprets it as an anti-Semitic measure which anticipated the racist legislation that would be introduced later in the year. 38. Casini (1938). The speech was given considerable coverage in the press and was reprinted a number of times (Fabre 1998: 66 n. 3). The edition in L’Orto can be accessed online in the C. I. R. C. E. Digital Archive of European Cultural Journals (http://circe.lett.unitn.it/). The speech is discussed briefly in Bonsaver (2007: 172) at some length in Fabre (1998: 66–9) and in Rundle (2010: 157–62). 39. Cesare De Vecchi, Bottai’s predecessor as Minister of Education, had published a collection of his speeches and Ministerial documents the year before, under the title Bonifica fascista della cultura (Bonsaver 2007: 172). 40. ‘Ma noi non crediamo affatto che sarebbe comunque giovevole chiudere le frontiere ad ogni scambio intellettuale, artistico, culturale, e ne ravvisiamo anzi tutta l’utilità e l’efficacia. […] Così lavorare per la cultura italiana significa prima di tutto lavorare per l’Italia, ma significa poi anche lavorare perché la cultura europea ritrovi la sua strada’, Casini (1938: 67). 41. ‘Anche perché una legislazione protettiva troppo severa rischierebbe di creare intorno all’Italia un’atmosfera di isolamento niente affatto giovevole alla sua funzione imperiale. […] E’ piuttosto augurabile che la difesa dell’italianità letteraria venga affidata a una più diffusa, penetrante opera di espansione culturale all’estero’, Critica Fascista, 9, 1 March 1938. Both the motion and Bottai’s response are reported in Giornale della libreria 51, no. 11, 12 March 1938: 81–2. 42. The reference here is to the Battle for Wheat [Battaglia del grano], a campaign originally launched by Mussolini in 1925 to promote the modernization of Italian agricultural methods, but which turned into a more protectionist effort to reduce the country’s dependence on imported wheat by replacing other (often more profitable) cultivations at home with wheat.

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43. ‘Gli “zelantissimi” hanno creduto di valorizzare il prodotto nazionale nel campo delle opere dell’ingegno facendo la guerra al prodotto straniero, come se libri e riviste si potessero considerare alla stregua delle bretelle o delle calze.’ Giornale della libreria 51, nos 31–2, 6 August 1938: 229–30. 44. For more details on the purge of the Education sector see Fabre (1998: 114–28) and Sarfatti (2007: 211–17). For detailed reconstructions of how the MCP’s lists were compiled, see Fabre (1998: 163) and Bonsaver (2007: 180–84). 45. See the letter sent out by the Federation secretary Marubini to the members of the Excutive on 9 September 1938 reporting on a meeting with Bottai intended to clarify these points; AME, SAM, busta 42, ‘Federazione Nazionale Fascista degli Industriali Editori’. Bonsaver (2007: 177 n. 29) has calculated that 300–400 texts by 114 authors were removed following this first anti-Semitic move on school textbooks. He recounts how Mondadori wrote to Bottai and ‘boasted’ of having applied the anti-Jewish ban ‘severely and surgically’ [‘severamente and chirurgicamente’] (originally quoted by Galfré 2005: 153, 155). The key word here is ‘surgically’, which we might roughly gloss as taking care to cause as little economic damage as possible and taking care not to mistakenly include the wrong authors. The subject is further discussed in Giornale della libreria 52, no. 1, 7 January 1939: 1–2, recounted in Rundle (2010: 168–70). 46. ‘[F]issare i criteri precisi e studiare i mezzi più rapidi e più idonei per addivenire ad una revisione totale della produzione libraria italiana e di quella straniera tradotta in italiano. La necessità di tale revisione si è resa tanto più necessaria in relazione alle superiori direttive di carattere razziale.’ From a note to Mussolini written on 12 September 1938, the day before the first meeting of the commission. ACS, MCP, b. 56, ‘Produzione libraria italiana e straniera tradotta in italiano. Revisione totale’. 47. Yvon De Begnac (1990: 338) has recorded that Mussolini was himself convinced there was a specific connection between the spread of translations and the diffusion of Jewish culture. He considered them an attack on ‘the culture of the revolution’. Quoted in Bonsaver (2007: 174) and cited in Fabre (2007: 33 n. 10). 48. Giornale della libreria LII–6, 11 February 1939: 42. 49. Bonsaver (2007: 194–5, 207) has a different view, arguing that Pavolini actually wanted to impose a hardline policy on Italian publishing but was forced by Mussolini to soften his position in favour of a system of ‘half-written rules that were subject to change and adjustment according to the situation’ (Bonsaver 2007: 207). 50. In fact Table 2.1 shows us that 919 translations were published in 1938 and 705 in 1939. It is possible that the Federation had arrived at this figure by not counting translations of classics. This account of the meeting between Pavolini and representatives of the Publishers Federation, which took place in Rome on 3 October 1940, is based on a detailed report in AME, SAM, ‘Federazione nazionale fascista degli editori’. 51. Letter from Mondadori to Loriga, the Federation secretary, dated 4 October 1940, containing instructions to be passed on to the Federation members for the purposes of the survey. Members were told to compile detailed monthly lists of all the new translations published in 1940 and send them in to the Federation. AME, SAM, ‘Federazione Nazionale Fascista degli Industriali Editori’, busta 42.

Christopher Rundle 49 52. In a letter dated 7 December 1940 Loriga wrote to Mondadori as follows: ‘I must inform you that the Ministry of Popular Culture has remarked on the fact that your house is not in the habit of requesting permission for translations of foreign novels contained in periodical publications (libri gialli and libri della Palma). The Ministry expects these books to be taken into account in the survey on translations.’ [‘Nella circostanza ti informo che il Ministero della Cultura Popolare avrebbe rilevato che la tua Casa non è solita chiedere il benestare per le traduzioni di romanzi stranieri contenuti in pubblicazioni periodiche (libri gialli e libri della Palma). Di questi libri il Ministero esige che si tenga conto anche nella inchiesta delle traduzioni.’] AME, SAM, ‘Federazione Nazionale Fascista degli Industriali Editori’, busta 42. 53. The circular is reproduced in Giornale della libreria 54, no. 9, 1 March 1941. 54. Pavolini quoted in MCP press release which was reproduced in Giornale della libreria 55, no. 19, 20 May 1942: 77. 55. Circular no. 7286, dated 5 July 1941 and reported in Giornale della libreria 54, nos 29–30, 26 July 1941: 128. 56. Circular no. 7743, dated 2 August 1941. Reproduced in Giornale della libreria 54, nos 33–4, 23 August 1941: 134. 57. See Giornale della libreria 54, no. 43, 25 October 1941: 166. The comparison between prices is based on information collected by the author at the Mondadori archives (AME). 58. The new criteria established by the MCP were officially communicated to the members of the Publishers Federation in the Giornale della libreria 55, no. 19, 20 May 1942: 77–8. 59. Figures compiled by the author from the Catalogo storico Arnoldo Mondadori editore (1912–1994) (1995). Unfortunately there are no figures on the number of translations published in Italy in 1942 that allow us to make a similar, more general, comparison (see Rundle 2010: Appendix). 60. Reported in Giornale della libreria 56, no. 17, 10 May 1943: 52. 61. Books were often referred to as a means of cultural ‘penetration’. An editorial of 15 July 1939 in Critica Fascista, for example, stated that ‘we must learn to consider the Italian book […] as a formidable instrument of penetration’ [‘bisogna decidersi a considerare il libro italiano […] come un formidabile strumento di penetrazione culturale’]. Translations from Italian were also viewed in the same light. When the publisher Valentino Bompiani informed Pavolini that he had sold the foreign rights to some translations from Italian, Pavolini wrote back and congratulated him on his ‘very useful work of penetration’ [‘utilissima opera di penetrazione’]. Letter from Pavolini to Bompiani dated 20 December 1940, MCP ‘Bompiani’. 62. ‘Ma ai margini di quella che è la grande e pura corrente di una tradizione italiana […] si era andata addensando nei tempi grigi della vita nazionale, un’ importazione disordinata ed avvelenatrice di dottrine, mode intellettuali, maniere del pensiero […] interamente estranee al genio e allo stile della razza. E’ nostra fatica assidua, ma in gran parte ormai già portata a compimento, quella di sanare la cultura nostrana da un siffatto inquinamento marginale. La bonifica libraria, il vaglio delle traduzioni […] la cernita sempre più rigorosa nella circolazione delle produzioni teatrali, musicali e cinematografiche provenienti dall’estero, tutti questi e gli altri […] provvedimenti, uniti a quanto il Regime fa […] per favorire le arti nostre e per

50


proiettarle oltre frontiera, hanno contribuito al risultato di rendere sempre più “italiana” la cultura italiana. Italiana, cioè se stessa, del tutto immune da un esclusivismo meschino, ma ben consapevole del proprio eterno compito di irradiazione più che di ricezione.’ Undated. ACS, MCP, b.103, f. ‘Discorsi ed articoli del Ministro Pavolini’. 63. For more details on the Americana episode see Rundle (2010: 197–205) and Bonsaver (2003, 2007: 226–30).

3 ‘Flight from the Programme of National Socialism’? Translation in Nazi Germany Kate Sturge

If, as translation scholar André Lefevere has said, translation is a ‘visible sign of the openness of a literary system’ (1985: 237), it makes sense to assume that a closed and xenophobic regime like Nazi Germany would be wary of it. Translation as a commercial practice threatened to breach economic autarky by opening trade between German and foreign publishers; equally importantly, as a cultural practice it threatened to undermine the precept that German cultural production was sufficient to itself, the alien inferior and perhaps even an existential threat. There is, as well, an extent to which the very fact of translatedness – literature as a mixed product of more than one language tradition – ran counter to the crucial tenet of racialized purity that underlay Nazi cultural policy. And indeed, National Socialism’s official discourse on translation was marked by suspicion, often portraying translated literature as an insidious channel of dangerous ideas or a failure of patriotism on the part of German readers. In the worst case, as outlined by Hanns Johst, president of the Reichsschrifttumskammer (Reich Chamber of Writers, hereafter RSK), in 1939, the public’s interest in translated fiction might even be interpreted as a ‘flight from the programme of National Socialism’.1 If this suggests Nazi cultural policymakers intervened decisively and successfully to remove translations, however, that was actually far from being the case. Between 1933 and the outbreak of the Second World War, readers in Germany were as eager to buy and borrow translations as they had been before the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and despite wide-ranging attempts to restrict and instrumentalize translated literature, much remained accessible in bookshops and libraries. Judging by reprint figures it was snapped up by the reading public. In the following I will sketch the position of translated fiction in the Nazi period, looking first at the numbers of translations published and the 51

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Translation in Nazi Germany

changing contours of the translation market, then the mechanisms of control and reception of translation, and the use of literary translation as an instrument of cultural policy both at home and abroad. I will close by examining the case of a bestselling translation from Norwegian and that of detective fiction translated from English.

A world without translations? When the official journal of the state-aligned booksellers’ association warned its members about a deplorable public craze for translations, it noted a fascination with the foreign that threatened to undermine domestic security: there seems, says the Buchhändler im neuen Reich [The Bookseller in the New Reich], to be ‘a very strange and reprehensible tendency to value foreign literature especially highly just because it happens to come from abroad’.2 If in the past this interest in translation was considered to indicate a laudable open-mindedness in the tradition of Goethe’s Weltliteratur, the editorial goes on, the new era sees it differently: National Socialism has combated this as an ‘intellectual swamping’ and clearly characterized it as the expression of the Volk’s feeling of inferiority. Over the years since the National Socialist revolution, German literature itself has been thoroughly cleansed, and all the elements alien to the German character eradicated. But today we are faced with a development that tries, using the indirect route of foreign translated literature, to familiarize us with exactly the same negative values we have just managed to remove from German literature itself.3 ( June 1939: 209) Judging by this and the similar remarks that characterize the statecontrolled literary and publishing journals of the time, a radical reduction of literary imports was felt by many policymakers to be necessary to the moral and intellectual health of the new Germans. Weimar’s excessive interest in translation had, it was argued, been a sign that the nation lacked self-confidence or, in the eyes of the most vehement antiSemites among the literary commentators, that Jewish ‘parasites’ had been attempting to destroy the German nation from within by means of harmful literary imports; translation was described variously as a source of seduction, poison, miscegenation or the smuggling of dangerous ideas. Translation was in need of a severe pruning down to only those

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items that represented the Volk spirit of their nation, as opposed to the ‘rootless’ works decried as cosmopolitan, democratic, frivolous and thus ‘Jewish’.4 Measures to reduce the amount of translation were urgently called for – especially in view of what all the journals agreed was a ‘flood’ of translations threatening to swamp domestic culture. Even on a wide interpretation of what to count as acceptable translation practice, actual adherence to this translation-hostile line should have caused a collapse in translation right from the start of the Nazi dictatorship. Yet in fact the statistics for literary translation show solid and at least superficially healthy translation activity until the outbreak of war. Figure 3.1, based on the entries in the fiction section of the German National Bibliography,5 shows the number of translated titles rising from 342 in 1933 to 543 in 1937 and 539 in 1938, with a short-lived dip in 1934. This accounts for a rather steady proportion of fiction titles overall – nearly 10 per cent in 1933, rising to a peak of nearly 12 per cent in 1937 which remains solid at above 11 per cent until 1940. Again, there is a dip in 1934 with translations representing only 7 per cent of fiction titles in that year, suggesting that publishers were particularly fearful of sanctions against translations at that early period in the regime of literary control. If the volume of translated fiction did not drop in the period from 1933 to mid-1939, however, the outbreak of war did create a caesura. With blanket bans on translations from ‘enemy nations’, which I will describe later, and increasingly severe paper shortages, the figures for 1939 to 1944 (the last year for which German National Bibliography

600 Including reprints 500

Excluding reprints

400 300 200 100 0 Number of translations by year, 1933–44 Figure 3.1

Numbers of translated titles by year

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records exist) show a steep decline. Only in 1944, under the increasing pressure of paper rationing, did translation publishing finally reach the extremely selective, quantitatively insignificant role that many of the commentators had urged all along, with a mere 134 titles, making up less than 4 per cent of fiction titles published.

Provincialization and instrumentalization At least in the pre-war half of the Nazi era, then, literary translations appear to have flourished. However, numbers alone are misleading here. The literary publishing landscape as a whole altered with the more or less overt pressure of the state, and that applied in at least equal measure to translation, a ‘naturally’ suspect undertaking and one subject to particularly rigorous permission procedures, which will be outlined later in the chapter. Below the surface of the quantitative continuity, we find significant changes in the translation market’s composition. One feature of this kind is a rise in the proportion of reprints to new translations (see Figure 3.1). According to Berman (1983: 60), the proportion of reissues to new publications in general rose from 19 per cent in 1935–38 to 39 per cent in 1941–44, due at least in part to publishers’ wariness: reprinting a work that had proved safe so far was certainly less risky than offering a new one to the attention of the censors. But if the second peak in the proportion of reprinted translations, in 1940–42, suggests a turn to politically tried and tested titles in the wartime climate of exacerbated translation censorship, that in 1937 and 1938 may just as likely be a response to the state-promoted reading boom of those years (see Barbian 1995b: 179). The importance of reprints indicates that many of the translated titles were strong sellers, their reissue driven by commercial success. Many of the frequently reprinted translations were very long-lived, dating from the Weimar period or even earlier (this is true of the numerous John Galsworthy reprints by Zsolnay, for example, or Diederichs’ much-recycled versions of Old Norse sagas). Just as the biggest sellers in non-translated fiction tended to come from pre-1933 stock (Weil 1986; Vogt-Praclik 1987), in translation too it seems – though the figures are not always easy to verify – that many of the most popular translated authors were well established before the Nazi seizure of power. That is certainly true of detective and adventure novelist Edgar Wallace, counted by Anselm Schlösser (1937: 173) as the second most translated English-language author of the period 1895–1934: Wallace’s novels were repeatedly reissued by Goldmann in many thousands up to mid-1939. If the work of the most-translated

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author in Schlösser’s rather detailed survey, Oscar Wilde, soon vanished almost completely from the literary scene, reprints abounded up to 1939 for the third most translated, Arthur Conan Doyle. Similarly, Karl-Rainer von der Ahé’s study of the reception of Swedish literature shows that despite the new public prominence of translations from Swedish, only 12 of the 37 Swedish authors published in German translation in 1933–45 appeared exclusively during the Nazi period; the rest had been published before 1933 and/or remained in print after 1945 (Ahé 1982: 258). The pre-war literary market, for translations and non-translations alike, was strongly marked by continuity with existing traditions (see, for example, Nutz 1983), and the importance of reprints highlights this. At the same time, however, a drop in the proportion of new to reissued translations must bring with it a reduction in the vivacity of exchange with other literatures, as the stock of literary novelty fails to become replenished. In this respect, high reprint numbers should probably be interpreted as a form of stagnation, supporting Hall’s verdict that the Nazi period saw a ‘provincialization’ of literature in Germany and Austria (1994: 277). Trends in source languages and genres The ‘provincialization’ of a national literature by restricting translation may have two further aspects: the range of source literatures from which translation draws, and the range of content which it conveys. To begin with the origins of the translations published in the period, we find a noticeable shift in the balance of source languages over the duration of the regime, though once again it is 1939 and not 1933 that constitutes the real break. Figure 3.2 shows how strongly the source language English dominated translations into German for the entire pre-war period 1933–39, followed at a great distance by French, Scandinavian languages taken as a group, and Flemish/Dutch (these being carefully distinguished as separate languages in the journals and the National Bibliography). Of the many other source languages – over 50 are represented, showing a strong diversity despite the numerical dominance of a few large groups – the strongest were Russian and Italian, then a middle range of Hungarian, Finnish, Greek, Spanish, Middle High German, Latin, Romanian, Polish, Czech and Japanese. Looking at developments in the 1933–39 period, it is striking that the other large source language groups do not follow the steep 1934 dip in English; it appears that this was a year where the most visible source of translation was approached with the greatest caution by publishers, who later regained their confidence, altered their programme, or both.

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Translation in Nazi Germany 500 Flemish/Dutch Scandinavian French English/American

450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

Source languages by year, 1933–44 Figure 3.2

Trends in source languages

Like Figure 3.1, Figure 3.2 shows the impact of the blanket bans on ‘enemy’ literature from late 1939 on (see later in the chapter), which put pressure on the dominance of English and French, the strong front-runners until then. Finding the path to these traditional literary hunting grounds blocked, some publishers were prompted to search for as yet untested writers from previously less-translated languages (Wallrath-Janssen 2007: 299). According to the German National Bibliography, the later years of the war saw sudden surges in translations from Romanian or Bulgarian, for example – certainly due in part to the loss of the traditionally stronger source languages, but in part also to a political context which favoured the propagation of a quasi-ethnographic ‘knowledge’ of foreign source cultures through translations. In this respect state regulation forced publishers to work harder in searching out and commissioning translations from suitable authors. As Wallrath-Janssen points out, the focus on lesser-known source languages meant more dependence on individual advisers and fortuitous contacts, so that an unsystematic and arbitrary array of works emerged (ibid.: 301) as opposed to the stratified and generically patterned market that had existed for the large source languages before 1939. In terms of the content of the translations published up to 1939, censorship largely eliminated translated authors discovered or considered to be Jewish, left-wing authors and those who had spoken out against

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the Nazi regime, resulting in the loss of whole segments of, especially, the highbrow and innovative translated literature that had flourished during the 1920s. While in the area of non-fiction, politically unacceptable translated authors like Joseph Stalin or Marie Stopes quickly disappeared from the public sphere,6 in fiction these bans – accompanied by an increased caution among publishers – meant that participation in international literary experimentation was cut off. Modernist fiction faded from view and the already dominant area of middlebrow, aesthetically conservative offerings strengthened its hold on the translated fiction market. Thus, while the numbers of translated works remained steady or even rose during the period up to the war, the profile of translated literature changed, with ‘undesirable’ works disappearing and the apparently apolitical or politically aligned expanding to fill the space. It will be noted that the tendency here favoured not a ‘fascist’ literature as such, but rather a more cautious and conservative taste that made best use of existing traditions of reception. Among politically acceptable translations, the most prestigious area was the ‘Germanic’ classic translated from Old Norse (such as selections from the Edda or the Old Icelandic sagas, reprinted by Diederichs or Reclam throughout the period) or Old High German, Old Saxon and so on (such as Der Heliand for Old Saxon or, for Middle High German, Walther von der Vogelweide). Although not bestsellers, the ideological sanctity of these translations was assured by their presence in school reading anthologies (Lauf-Immesberger 1987: 84–91), where they were designed to illustrate the ancient pedigree of the Germans as opposed to being ‘translations’ in the sense of imports of foreign culture (see Kamenetsky 1984: 103–15). Also benefiting from an aura of ideological acceptability were some Flemish writers, including Stijn Streuvels, Gerard Walschap and Felix Timmermans. Nineteenth-century or earlier ‘classics’ from a range of source languages became increasingly important for publishers as censorship took hold in the course of the 1930s: in financial terms they had the benefit of being out of copyright, while politically they could be considered ‘timeless’ and hence outside the danger zone of contemporary or critical literature. Thus, a reissue of Balzac, an author presumably sufficiently well established to seem almost part of the domestic canon, boosted Rowohlt’s finances in 1936, having already saved the publisher from ruin once before, during the Inflation of 1923 (Mayer 1967: 76; for the similar case of Reclam, see Kästner 1987: x). ‘Harmless’ genres like animal stories, comic fiction or historical romance were much published, again promising an apolitical and safe

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image accompanied by unbroken interest among the buying public. Among the high sellers in these areas are the Danish Svend Fleuron’s story of a dachshund, Schnipp Fidelius Adelzahn (Ib Fidelius Adeltand, in its 137th thousand in 1944);7 in the historical romance genre French was a strong source language, for example with Octave Aubry’s Maria Walewska. Roman um Napoleons geheime Liebe, 1937 (Le grand Amour caché de Napoléon, 1925). Another important genre was the historical or vaguely blood-and-soil novel from Scandinavian languages which, though not itself fascist, fell within the ideological purview of fascism. This area was the speciality of the Munich publisher Langen-Müller, the position of which as the largest publisher of translations in the period (Sturge 2004: 71) arose from its successful promotion of Trygve Gulbranssen and other writers from the Scandinavian region. An area of publishing that was officially decried but remained central to the publishing scene was the entertainment-oriented domain of adventure novels and, especially, detective stories. The second largest publisher of translations, Wilhelm Goldmann of Munich, was the home of the fabulously popular Edgar Wallace translations, and other publishers (such as Aufwärts of Berlin), too, specialized in detective fiction translated from English. The genre accounted for an average of one third of all fiction translated from English, even approaching one half in 1934 and 1938. As for the proportion of translated English-language detective novels to their home-produced German counterparts, translations made up around 40 per cent of the detective fiction published in 1933–35. The proportion dropped to an average of around 25 per cent in 1936–39, as domestic production began to increase, and finally fell to around 4 per cent in 1940–43, as the wartime bans took effect. The high profile of translations from English in the years before the war will have been further intensified by the fact that many non-translated detective novels of the period were ‘imitations’, set in Britain or America and/or appearing under English-sounding pseudonyms. While not ‘pseudotranslations’ in the full sense of the term (see Toury 1995), these imitations indicate the continuing power of the imported genre on the book market of the pre-war period. More will be said about the fortunes of detective fiction later, but for now let it be noted that popular fiction in translation – or in imitation of translation – demonstrates the continuity with the tastes of the 1920s, and indeed of the 1950s, that Schäfer (1981) discusses in detail for other areas of culture, giving the lie to the common notion that Nazi repression all but obliterated outside influences or non-fascist cultural products.8 It is certainly the case that the regime’s control was

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not complete, as is indicated among other things by the frequent complaints of the state literary bureaucracy that the book trade was failing to fulfil its obvious duty (see, e.g., Thunecke 1987: 142). What was, however, lost was the broad range of modernism and the work of authors either considered unacceptable in their style and content or who had personally spoken out against the Nazi regime. As Bollenbeck points out (1999: 335–40), contemporary American literature, generally undesirable in official eyes, did not completely disappear from the scene, and some experimental or otherwise ‘decadent’ work was published surprisingly late in the period (for example William Faulkner with Absalom, Absalom!, Rowohlt 1938, or Thomas Wolfe with Sturm des Lebens [The Web and the Rock], Scherz 1941). James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and even Radclyffe Hall continued to appear, albeit in English – presumably considered thus to be restricted to an educated audience less likely to be harmfully influenced.9 But these were exceptions in a field largely cleared of imported modernist experimentation – and with the onset of the wartime bans they too would disappear. The list of translated titles published in the years 1940–44 shows an emphasis on politically expedient literature (such as Mussolini’s play Cavour, 1941), translations from countries newly occupied or allied, reprints of ideologically approved classics, or contributions to popular genres from new source languages (such as detective novels translated from Italian and Norwegian).

Elimination and the ‘bad translation’ The institutions of translation censorship The mechanisms that shaped this mixed picture for translation were multiple, and far from monolithic. Despite the careful diagrams published for the book trade – Figure 3.3 shows the title pages of a work introducing booksellers to the ‘World of the Book’, where the book appears to grow organically out of the soil of the Volk spirit and to return there through the efforts of the ideologically purified book production and distribution professions – the context was in fact confusingly fragmented.10 The range of institutions competing for control over literature included Party bodies such as the Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission or PPK11 and Alfred Rosenberg’s especially vocal office for the nurture of German writing, the Amt Schrifttumspflege;12 the SS’s intelligence-gathering Sicherheitsdienst (see Barbian 1995a: 386); the Gestapo (ibid.: 535) or local police forces (Aigner 1971: 954); and in rare cases a direct intervention by Hitler (Barbian 1995a: 541). The key institution governing literature was, however, the

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Figure 3.3

‘The World of the Book’: Frontispiece of Langenbucher (1938)

Propaganda Ministry, through both the Ministry’s literary policy department, ‘Section VIII’, and the RSK, one of the constituent chambers of the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer) set up in late 1933 to regulate the cultural professions. In this confused setting, friction and boundary skirmishes were common13 and publishers found explicit guidance hard to come by. In general, censorship of the book trade proceeded not via the pre-publication procedures of the Spanish case (see Vandaele in this volume) but via the constant threat of confiscation of existing books, after 1935 partially regulated by the index Liste 1 des schädlichen und unerwünschten Schrifttums (Index 1 of harmful and undesirable writings) produced by the RSK and later the Propaganda Ministry literature section (see Aigner 1971). The Liste’s approximately 4000 individual titles and more than 500 bans on complete works included writing by exiles and anti-Nazi authors as well as categories such as Christian writing, pornography, modernist literature, books on contraception and various others;14 what it did not include as a category was translated literature per se. Although individual unacceptable foreign authors in translation (such

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as Maxim Gorki, John Dos Passos or Karin Michaelis15) were officially blacklisted, then, translations were not banned in general in the pre-war period. Unlike literary publishing in general, however, for which prepublication censorship was not enforced until the advent of wartime paper rationing,16 translation became one of two groups of material subject to pre-publication permission procedures as early as 1935 (tellingly, the other group was ‘political writings’, controlled by the PPK). Before translation rights could be purchased, the proposed translation was to be submitted for approval by the RSK, with a summary, a sample of the translation, and details of the author’s racial background and the translation’s contribution to German understanding of the foreign nation (Strothmann 1963: 197; Hall 1994: 205). It seems that this procedure may have been rather loosely handled up to the outbreak of war (Strothmann 1963: 195)17 and used chiefly to filter out Jewish authors from the translation market (Dahm 1993: 186). It is, though, unlikely that the bulky pre-publication procedures had no off-putting effect at all. Added to this, translations suffered indirectly from state literary intervention, by being disadvantaged in the processes of selection and promotion that criss-crossed the distribution of literature in terms, especially, of the education system and the public libraries. In these two vital institutions of reading life, translations had little chance of competing with domestic production, since few of them were considered worthy of joining the ‘arsenal’ of intellectual weapons which the literary policymakers were aiming to amass. The recommendation lists collected by Hopster, Josting and Neuhaus (1994) show how ‘suitable’ literature was proposed by state or Party policymakers to everything from the smallest hospital library to the huge public library purchasing scheme, and in these lists, translations fared badly. Librarians were often reminded that foreign books should never be recommended to readers, and translations were rarely included on the centralized lists of library purchases. Thus, after the initial blacklisting campaign of 1933 decimated library holdings including many translated works, the list of prescribed ‘urgent acquisitions’ to refill the shelves contained no translations at all.18 Likewise, translations largely disappeared from highly regulated school syllabuses (see Kamenetsky 1984; Lauf-Immesberger 1987). In the selection offered to the frontline bookshops, probably the most highly politicized locus of recommended reading later in the period, translations are poorly represented, with mainly the usual suspects – Lagerlöf, Timmermans, Streuvel, Claes or Hedin – on the list for approved purchases (see Bühler 2002, who details

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the controversy on how far the troops should be allowed to read their preferred light entertainment as opposed to indigestible fascist fare). ‘Self’-censorship and the agents of translation The fact that the Liste, the main index of banned works, was marked ‘strictly confidential’ indicates an important building block of National Socialist policy. The ‘cleansing’ of literature and its redirection into useful channels was ideally to occur not through overt pressure but through the gesundes Volksempfinden – the healthy Volk instinct of the book trade itself. As the RSK handbook put it in 1938, ‘We do not want censorship and nor, therefore, do we want dependent publishers who do not know what they have to do […] we want publishers who are loyal helpers in our shared task, and who are genuinely capable of fulfilling their service to German literature on their own responsibility’ (Warmuth 1938: 61).19 The implication of a voluntary participation – which we might refer to as ‘self’-censorship – of course belies the reality of publishers’ situation: those who published works that were subsequently banned stood to make huge losses. Thus, Zsolnay had to have 30,000 copies of its bestselling H. G. Wells translations remaindered after a ban was imposed on the author in 1935 (Hall 1994: 262), and the potential damage was not only financial but political. Those who were not seen to be acting as loyal helpers were liable to lose their livelihood, freedom or even life. ‘Self’-censorship in this context meant the state’s delegation of part of the work of selection onto a publishing industry required to acquiesce ‘voluntarily’ in the state’s requirements; the outward face was to be one of spontaneous popular revulsion for the ‘Jewish’ products of the past. For this to work, publishers had to be kept close at heel. The system of Gleichschaltung – the ‘alignment’ of professional organizations with the state – applied to publishers and booksellers as much as to librarians and the teaching profession. The Börsenverein der Deutschen Buchhändler, the professional association of the book trade, declared its support for the National Socialist cause in spring 1933. In Barbian’s view, it was the devastating impact of the Depression on book sales and the sluggish recovery that paved the way for this quick assent: in exchange for its political support, the book trade was promised – and in due course received – large-scale economic support from the state (Barbian 1995a: 96–102, 853 n. 15). The process of aligning the writers’ unions and Academy of Arts was not dissimilar: membership of the appropriate section of the Reich Chamber of Culture became a prerequisite for professional writers, publishers or booksellers, allowing the exclusion of dissidents, and later Jews, through the vetting procedures on membership. As a

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result, numerous translators and translation publishers lost their right to earn a living and were forced into exile (among many examples, Leon Schalit, the long-time translator of Galsworthy for the Viennese publisher Zsolnay, had to emigrate to London in 1939) (Hall 1994: 90).20 In their daily work, publishers of translations faced a further obstacle in the shape of restrictions on the availability of foreign currency. Any request for foreign currency – whether for rights, legal fees, royalties, translation fees or visits abroad – was to be decided upon by the finance ministry, but only, as the RSK Handbook points out, after approval by the RSK itself (Warmuth 1938: 212). If a currency application was refused, relations with foreign authors could easily become strained, especially as publishers were not permitted to reveal the reasons for their reluctance to reprint or to pay out royalties. A memorandum to the Zsolnay house from the Propaganda Ministry dated 22 August 1939 refers to Zsolnay’s request for a reprint of Pearl S. Buck’s novels; Buck’s sales had been boosted by her Nobel Prize in 1938, but her critical comments had ruled her out for co-option by the Nazi regime. ‘In response to your request’, runs the note, ‘we inform you that a reissue of the books of Pearl S. Buck is out of the question. We wish you, however, not to make this fact known to the author. You will act towards the author as if the print run were not yet quite sold out’21 (facsimile in Hall and Ohrlinger 1999: 73). The wartime bans The context of war simplified control of translations from some source languages. While translation was still not banned as such, a December 1939 ruling specifically forbade all translations of works from Britain, and other countries attracted blanket bans as they joined the war. The books were not necessarily to be destroyed, but had to be kept out of reach for the duration of the war (Großdeutsches Leihbüchereiblatt 23, 1942: 335). The fact that not source language but ‘nationality’ and ‘race’ were the criteria for bans becomes clear in the Verzeichnis englischer und nordamerikanischer Schriftsteller [Register of English and North American writers] (1942), a list published by the Propaganda Ministry to help librarians identify which English-sounding authors were British, which American, which Irish (and hence permitted), and which either politically undesirable or else Jewish and thus under no circumstances to be published or sold (Reichsministerium 1942). A further category was authors out of copyright, who were exempt from the blanket bans: the rationale for this set of restrictions on translation is to be found at least partially in the financial aspect of translation as a channel for payment

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into the originating economy.22 Specific exemptions also applied to authors or, more commonly, individual works considered to be useful for the war effort, apparently due to their denunciatory quality, whether by pro-Nazi (as in the case of Wyndham Lewis for Der mysteriöse John Bull, 1939) or anti-capitalist authors (as in Sinclair Lewis for Babbitt, 1942). In summary, from 1939 translations from enemy countries were, with few exceptions, more easily categorized as undesirable influences and their publication and distribution much more easily regulated than before, especially as the paper rationing of the later war years ratcheted up pre-emptive censorship to eliminate all but the most ‘useful’ items from publication (Barbian 1995a: 553–61). In the 1933–39 period, in contrast, the management of translation was not clear-cut, and the literary market showed a certain amount of continuity, in line with the unbroken importance of other ‘imported’ culture in advertising, film and music (see Bavaj 2003: 153–66). Hollywood film, for example, remained part of everyday life – in the cinemas, but also in magazines and advertising – until the German boycott of US films from 1939/40, with 250 US films receiving permission for screening in the period (Spieker 1999: 331), in the original or dubbed, although the censors imposed cuts or bans often based on the participation of Jewish stars, directors or producers.

Restriction and appropriation Apart from those closest to the regime, such as the Party publisher Eher, publishers in Nazi Germany were caught between two sets of requirements which did not always coincide: at least a notional political conformity was needed for their personal safety and the continuation of their business – but commercial survival also had to be secured. As has been noted frequently (for example by Ketelsen 1992), the reading public was far less likely to be enthralled by panegyrics to the Führer than by its pre-1933 favourites, and to achieve solid sales reader taste could not simply be ignored. Recontextualization However, as both Toury (1995) and Lefevere (1992) show, the position of translations in a particular literary context can be manipulated not only through the restriction of authors and texts for translation but also by the way those translations are framed and presented to the public, both externally and in their textual detail. One means to absorb

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‘undesirable’ source texts into an acceptable target-culture norm is recontextualization of the text, for example via anthologization, where texts are selected and arranged to present a particular line of thought (see Bödeker 1997). In her study of literature in the educational system, Kamenetsky (1984: 74) notes that the anthologization of Old Norse tales as part of ‘Germanic’ literary heritage effectively swallowed them up into domestic literature; classics from Scandinavia or the Low Countries, too, could be repackaged in a German framework (ibid.: 139). But recontextualization can also take the form of publishers’ own efforts to nudge their products closer to political acceptability. One such method found in the Nazi setting is the use of titles. A well-chosen title could invite an assumption that a work was particularly close to Nazi literary norms, such as the ‘blood and soil’ elaboration added by Zsolnay to the Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg’s Sömnlos translated as Schlaflos. Roman eines Mannes der Erde, 1938 [Sleepless: Story of a man of the earth] or Raskens: en soldatfamiljs historia, as Kamerad Wacker. Roman eines schwedischen Bauernsoldaten, 1935 [Comrade Valiant: Story of a Swedish peasant soldier] (Ahé 1982: 93, 134; Hall 1994, 195–7). Adding the geographical label here helps highlight the book’s provenance within a politically acceptable region; the same strategy is found in Marie Gevers, Madame Orpha, ou la Sérénade de mai translated as Frau Orpha. Ein flämischer Roman (1935) [Mrs Orpha: A Flemish novel]. The most-translated work of the Francophone Belgian Charles de Coster already labels its Flemish provenance in the source text, La Légende et les aventures héroiques, joyeuses et glorieuses d’Ulenspiegel et de lamme Goedzak au pays de Flandres et ailleurs, but the various translations circulating in the Nazi period range from a de-nationalizing one from Insel, Uilenspiegel und Lamme Goedzak. Ein fröhliches Buch trotz Tod und Tränen, first published by Insel in 1910 and reprinted up to 1939 [Ulenspiegel and Lamb Goedzak: A cheerful book despite death and tears], to the hyper-politicized Tyll Ulenspiegel und Lamm Goedzak. Ein Kampf um Flanderns Freiheit – the new subtitle ‘A struggle for the freedom of Flanders’ was added by Diederichs in 1936 to a pre-Nazi translation. As Gisèle Sapiro (2008) points out, the use of series, too, can help to locate translations within a particular frame: the series label or reputation asks readers to classify individual titles in terms of a particular category such as ‘classic’ or ‘educational’. Unsurprisingly, few series in the period announce a translated origin, but a series like Reclam’s ‘Deutsches für Deutsche’ [German Reading for Germans] firmly positioned its few selected translations in a domestic context, while Franke’s Frankes

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Klassiker-Ausgaben [Franke’s Classics Editions] asserted membership of a canon without reference to foreign origins. At the other end of the scale we find the penny ‘pulp’ pseudotranslations or, more properly, imitations, where series titles often made an unjustified claim to translated status through the use of foreign names and settings (for example Tom Shark: König der Detektive or Bob Hunter auf Indianerpfaden, two pulp series written in German and published by Freya of Heidenau). Textual intervention Within the covers of the book, the judicious use of paratexts might also help to boost a translation’s acceptability. The officially promoted Juan in Amerika ( Juan in America, 1931) by Eric Linklater, published by Frankh in 1942, for example, includes a substantial translator’s preface. This reassures the reader that though it may seem strange to read about the enemy nation at such a time, this entertaining novel is actually highly instructive, because realistically unflattering, in its depiction of the US. As in all translations, the text itself offers a large degree of room for manipulation. I have discussed elsewhere the subtle and often inconsistent interventions made in some narrative fiction of the period (Sturge 2004: Chapters 5 and 6); many of these shifts are difficult to attribute to censorship, whether pre-emptive or retrospective, and can as easily be explained by genre expectations, a taste for moral clarity, or simply space constraints. The exceptions are explicit references to Germans, which, in the texts I examined, are consistently removed or recast in a more positive light. In one case, that of Nora Waln’s memoir of travels in China, Süße Frucht, bittre Frucht China, 1935 (The House of Exile, 1933), this is achieved through the insertion of a whole new chapter praising the Germans and their excellent education system. Translations for stage and screen, too, offer scope for adaptation to domestic requirements. The Hollywood film It Happened One Night was remade in German (Glückskinder, 1936) with toned-down sexual references, irony and social critique (Witte 1976). The source film’s ideological framework remained intact, but its playful subversion was lost, resulting in a more unambiguous, clear-cut text. Rainer Kohlmayer (1996) traces equally interventionist translations in his study of Oscar Wilde’s plays in the period. In view of the craze for Wilde, in full flow since the 1920s, the author was worth recuperating for the regime, and ‘ideological retouching’ (ibid.: 397) worked to this effect in some cases by politicizing, in others by depoliticizing the plays: Karl Lerbs’ adaptations added heroic femininity and brisk masculinity, while other

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versions playing at the same time defused Wilde’s anarchism and individualism by focusing on fun and safely marginalized entertainment. For the plays of Ibsen, Uwe Englert’s detailed investigation (2001) again highlights how difficult it is to evaluate the reception of translated work by means of the number of titles alone. He points out that in quantitative terms, Ibsen’s importance on the German stage remained more or less undented after 1933, and indeed that core elements of the period’s reception of Ibsen went back to patterns established before the First World War (ibid.: 301). But within this continuity Englert identifies a shift of preference towards particular pieces (especially Peer Gynt in Dieter Eckart’s anti-modern, sentimentalized translation; ibid.: 303–4) and an attempt to locate them within a fascist paradigm. Thus, the local Party paper praised a 1934 Dresden production of Peer Gynt, attended by Hitler, as a ‘warrior-like deed for German theatre and for the pure Germanic world view’.23 The points and agents of intervention at a micro level are now difficult to reconstruct, but Englert studies the stage manager’s and director’s notes for the 1935 production of Die Kronprätendenten (Kongs-Emnerne) in Cologne’s Schauspielhaus. He finds that the highly praised production undertook a range of small alterations to the 1870s print translation by Adolf Strodtmann. By removing some characters from the dramatis personae and streamlining parts of the plot, the theme of civil conflict is downplayed in favour of a more unified folk community that seems to tend naturally towards a sense of order, community and leadership (Englert 2001: 153–4). Individual word choices move away from both Ibsen’s Norwegian and Strodtmann’s German, introducing a ‘Nordic’ tone evidently intended to draw the play more closely into the Nazi fold: where Strodtmann had translated rigsmødet as Reichsversammlung [imperial assembly] the Cologne production preferred the Nazi-inflected equivalent Thing (ibid.: 156); Strodtmann’s Häuptling [chieftain] for høvdinger was replaced by Führer (ibid.: 157), and so on. We see that translation can filter and adjust the foreign product at all levels, from the selection of the text, to its framing and contextualization, to its macrostructure and characterization, to the very choice of individual lexical items that support or subvert particular world views.

Promotion and the ‘good translation’ This plethora of forms of adaptation to the regime indicates that ‘translation censorship’ should not be thought of as a move towards

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concealment or elimination alone. It includes modes of adaptation and cultivation – in the sense of making fruitful for the regime – that do not differ in absolute terms from many other phases in translation history, and it includes modes of promotion that, again, are in no way alien to a present-day translation market. A regime of translation cannot, after all, be built on repression alone, but is bound to work with the productive power of status for individuals, prizes, and so on. Added to this is the fact that translations – at least those of a certain shade – promised to keep a battered economic sector afloat. If, as Kamenetsky (1984: 34) tells us, 70,000 tons of books were removed from library shelves in Berlin alone after the book-burning of 1933, it is clear that works which were both readable and acceptable would become essential for the continued existence of the publishing industry. Nor were the regime’s attitudes to translation unambiguously negative. The ‘good translation’ into or out of German was to be encouraged at quite some cost, whether by supporting individual translations arising from the home market or by specifically demanding translations from abroad. The ‘good translation’ and its promotion The specific propaganda items that made up the exceptions to the wartime bans on British and US authors have already been mentioned; their role seems to have been to enlighten the reading public on the social ills of America (for example the compilation Jack London in den Slums) or Britain (such as Wyndham Lewis’s Der mysteriöse John Bull). Hall shows that the 1941 decision to promote A. J. Cronin’s anti-capitalist Die Sterne blicken herab, 1935 (The Stars Look Down, 1935) created a muchneeded financial boost for Cronin’s beleaguered publisher, Zsolnay (Hall 1994: 265). Hoping the novel would demonstrate to readers the parallel between England’s corruption and that of Weimar Germany, Party offices ordered huge numbers of reprints and in 1942 and 1943 made the German version the basis of translations designed to aid the war effort in the occupied areas, for example into Latvian (ibid.: 267–8). While official requests for reprints – and indeed, in a wartime atmosphere of censorship combined with a public hungry for reading, even mere permission – guaranteed high sales, there were other, indirect, forms of promotion for some translations as well. Lists of recommended titles proliferated, mostly with little mention of translations but in some cases recommending individual titles, primarily Flemish and Scandinavian works (such as the lists published by Rosenberg’s journal Bücherkunde [Book Lore]). The many positive reviews of translations in the period

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again gave prominence (though not exclusively) to these source areas, stressing that ‘good’ translations from Norwegian or Swedish, for example, could foster Germans’ sense of racial kinship with the North: ‘Whoever reads the story of Gisli [and other Norse sagas] senses across the centuries the identity of Germanic blood’ (Die Weltliteratur [World Literature], April 1941: 122).24 The criterion of blood, and its correlate soil, dominates positive reviews of more modern Scandinavian work as well, as will be detailed later. Of course, a desirable source language did not necessarily mean that a translation expressed desirable national characteristics. The person of the writer is paramount in the state-approved reviewers’ argumentation, since, just as un-German Germans could exist (and were to be eliminated), in other countries too not every citizen was a true member of the nation: ‘A Jew who writes and who lives in Sweden is far from being a Nordic writer’, wrote Heinrich Jessen, a functionary of the Nordic Society (see Ahé 1982: 66) in Bücherkunde (1937: 95).25 Reviewers frequently stressed the danger that unsuitable translations from a ‘kindred’ source language could enter and contaminate the German literary landscape, and called for translations, like literature in general, to represent only the ‘genuine’ soul of the originating Volk. Far from a blanket rejection of the foreign, the general (though by no means unanimous) tenor of Nazi-approved reviews was to reject what was considered not truly representative of the source Volk. Within a particular source language, the core of truly national literature was to be extracted and the non-specific left aside; Hungarian literature is targeted in a Die Weltliteratur editorial (November 1941: 281) as an area where the ‘genuinely national’ tradition must be translated instead of the nondescript or international work that has previously dominated Hungarian translation into German (Sturge 2004: 109). The worst kind of translation, therefore, was the ‘cosmopolitan’, the indigestible ‘literary salad’26 served up by rootless democrats, identified by implication or explicitly as Jewish. Translation out of German: Nazi literature abroad When praising ‘good’ translations, reviewers rarely failed to point out that these were exceptions in a sea of ‘excessive’, ‘low-grade’ and ‘superfluous’ translation. The argument that high numbers of translations imply superfluity or excess depends on a notion of ‘fair exchange’ or, in the language more often adopted by the Italian authorities (see Rundle in this volume), a ‘trade balance’ between translations in and translations out. The complaints of Nazi commentators were twofold. On the one hand they cited the sheer statistics – translations into

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German outweighed those of ‘suitable’ authors out of German, and this alone seemed to indicate an overly enthusiastic attitude towards cultural imports among the population. On the other hand, they deplored the types of work being translated out of German: foreign readers persisted in preferring anti-Nazi or otherwise officially condemned authors and shunning the work of the ‘new German’ writers (see Rubino in this volume). As Will Vesper put it in his journal Die Neue Literatur [The New Literature]: One of the most important tasks for the Reich Chamber of Writers seems to me to be a kind of intellectual planned economy towards and in agreement with other countries, a kind of foreign exchange control which would prevent other nations sealing themselves off from Germany while we still continue to take in their literature. In many countries at the moment, only Jewish emigrant literature is received and respected as ‘German Literature’, e.g. in Italy! We must make it clear to these countries that we can do without their literature for just as long as they shut out ours.27 This concern was shared by other commentators, especially as the period progressed. For example, in summer 1939 the official organ of the works librarians, Die Werkbücherei, cites in some detail the publication statistics for translation into and out of German as a reason to demand ‘that foreign writing in German translation must only be deployed in the same measure to which German writing in foreign translation is taken up and properly appreciated abroad’.28 Clearly, the issue is felt to imply both a commercial injustice and a slight to national pride, the denial of ‘proper appreciation’, and action to promote ‘suitable’ translation out of German became a relevant task. Aside from efforts to promote sales of German books abroad through price cuts and advertising campaigns (Barbian 1995a: 648, 661; see also 1995b: 174), the RSK’s founding of the Europäische Schriftstellervereinigung [European Writers’ Association] in autumn 1941 was a significant, if rather short-lived,29 policy move (see especially Hausmann 2004). An ideologically harnessed replacement for the banned PEN Club, the ESV brought together authors from 15 different countries in reading tours, networking and translation promotion. Endeavouring to further the ‘European mission of German literature’ (Hermann Burte, cited in Hausmann 2004: 49), the ESV marked an interest in exporting German culture throughout the envisaged ‘new Europe’ (see Barbian 1995a: 440) that was considerably more systematic than the raging of

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individual journalists against the translation trade imbalance. Authors including Felix Timmermans, Robert Brasillach, Svend Fleuron and Ernesto Giménez Caballero participated in the propaganda events and in return enjoyed preferential treatment in obtaining German translation contracts. If the ESV tried to cultivate an appearance of interest in intellectual exchange, its promotion of translation was clearly a propaganda investment. Translation in this context was a channel for German influence, and the absorption of foreign literatures a conquering expedition, inextricable from agendas of cultural expansionism. As Moritz Jahn put it in an early ESV speech: ‘In a secret corner of his heart, every German is a Viking. The experience of foreign humanity and foreign landscapes has a magical attraction for him’ (cited in Grössel 1997: 77).30 Brotherly exchange: The bilateral cultural agreements Another instrument used to promote translation in this vein was the bilateral cultural agreement. In his study of the cultural agreements of the late 1930s onwards, Barbian traces the lobbying for German cultural centres across Europe to compete with the British Council and Institut français in promoting German language and literature. The cultural agreements covered not only the establishment of such institutions and a range of language-teaching measures but often also the creation of a list of suitable books for translation into the foreign language concerned (on Hungary, see Barbian 1992: 422; on France, see Hausmann in this volume). In turn, the availability of ‘undesirable’ German culture of all kinds was to be restricted. Agreements were signed with Hungary in 1936, Bulgaria in 1940, Romania in 1941 and Slovakia in 1942, as well as with the Axis powers Italy and Japan (both 1938). Attempts were made to ratify similar agreements with Spain and Portugal in the late 1930s, though these failed (Barbian 1992). The agreements promised to boost the Nazi contribution to the culture of the other nation, while in terms of the German cultural market, they could ensure that the politically desirable elements of the other literature (and they alone) were guaranteed entry, there to strengthen affiliations and enhance acceptable ‘ethnographic’ knowledge among the population. In Barbian’s view, the cultural agreement between Germany and Italy of 23 November 1938, followed as it was two days later by that of Germany and Japan, may have been designed above all as a symbolic foreign policy gesture to trumpet the Axis relationship at home and abroad (Barbian 1992: 441), though Petersen (1988) finds indications of frequent practical interventions, especially on the German side, based

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on the agreement. In particular, Petersen notes the attempts, only partially successful, to implement article 26, which obliged both sides to prevent the translation or distribution of works that use falsification of the historical truth to attack the other country, its state form or its leadership, and of distorting works (tendentious literature) by political emigrants of the other country. (Cited in Petersen 1988: 59)31 This article, pushed through by the German side, was used to remove anti-Nazi authors from the Italian market with some success, although the hoped-for rush of interest in pro-Nazi German work in Italian translation did not occur. The article had not been designed with translation into German in mind, and the much smaller area of Italian literature in German attracted less attention. Even so, the number of fiction titles translated from Italian (whether new translations or reprints) trebled between the 1933–38 period and the 1939–44 period, from an average of around nine per year to an average of around 30 per year (Sturge 2004: 60). These were not commercial successes, and it may be speculated that for their publishers they promised more of a political than a financial bonus (though publisher A. Müller, for example, seems to have aimed for a combination effect with its focus on detective novels by d’Errico, de Angelis and Scerbanenco). Literary commentators, too, had a difficult task in reconciling their existing national stereotypes with the need for rapprochement. A reviewer writing in Die Weltliteratur reminds us that literary translations ‘without a doubt contribute to the German and the Italian Volk getting to know and understand each other better’.32 What this understanding should consist of is hinted by Die Neue Literatur’s review of Ettore Cozzani’s Marmor und Erde, 1940 (Un Uomo, 1934). The book, says the reviewer, is highly instructive because ‘it shows in its hero the active Italian of today, with all his passionate devotion to all the technological possibilities and with that attitude which has no fear of “crises”’.33 But when it came to the need to preserve German ‘blood’ uncontaminated, a line had to be drawn, as was made clear at a Propaganda Ministry press conference in 1941: For the nurture of German-Italian relations the publication of short stories is, of course, very useful. However, if at the end of a story the result is a German-Italian marriage, then fundamental principles are being violated which are even more important than those relations. (24 January 1941, cited in Geyer-Ryan 1987: 199)34

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Ideology meets the market: A Scandinavian bestseller If cultural commentators showed some reluctance in their politically necessitated praise for Italian literature, the case was different for translation from Scandinavian languages. Official reception of these authors was highly selective but enthusiastic, at least among those parts of the regime wedded to the concept of ‘Nordicity’ as a racial and cultural ideal (in particular those in the circle of Rosenberg and of the SS; see Ahé 1982). The ‘best’ Scandinavian authors – those writing in an anti-modern style and not known to have publicly attacked the Nazi regime – seemed to some reviewers to embody a range of virtues that combined literary value with the racially purifying or nation-building role accorded to German literature itself (see Gilman 1971). Thus, translated authors like Gunnar Gunnarsson, Knut Hamsun, Barbra Ring, Selma Lagerlöf or Svend Fleuron were praised as demonstrating the ruggedness of the northern soul and eschewing modern, urban decadence. Such works were frequently reprinted, and Aleksis Kivi’s high-selling Die sieben Brüder (Seitsemän veljestä), for example, was even made available to soldiers in two different German translations despite the wartime paper shortages (Kujamäki 2001: 60).35 The numbers of translations from the Scandinavian languages rose as the war began and translations from English and French became subject to blanket bans. This should probably not be viewed as a solely regime-induced phenomenon, since translation from Norwegian, and to a lesser extent Swedish, enjoyed a strong tradition of popularity dating from the late nineteenth century. In her study of Albert Langen (1869–1909), Helga Abret (1993) shows that in the Wilhelmine period, a huge growth in the market for middlebrow fiction combined with the failure of the Scandinavian countries and Russia to sign up to the Berne copyright convention to create excellent conditions for translations from Norwegian and Swedish (ibid.: 158, 273–4). Although not achieving the commercial success that translations from French did in the nineteenth century, translations from Scandinavian languages set deep roots (ibid.: 314). Publishers focused on works of the romantic revival, so that, as Ahé points out in his study of Swedish literature in Germany, the rural setting became the trademark of translations from Swedish; works not fitting that category would fail to find a wide readership (Ahé 1982: 75). In the case of the more modernist writer Knut Hamsun, Nazi literary commentators were eager to fit him into that rural mode as an illustration of Nordic communion with nature (see Naess 1980) – a task all the more urgent because Norwegian writers prepared, as Hamsun was, to praise National Socialism were extremely rare.

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The official reception of another Norwegian, Trygve Gulbranssen, was more mixed, and may illuminate some of the contradictions of the Nazi literary landscape. Gulbranssen’s three novels Og bakom synger skogene (1933), Det blåser fra Dauingfjell (1934) and Ingen vei går utenom (1935) were translated into German as Und ewig singen die Wälder (1935) and Das Erbe von Björndal (1936) by Ellen de Boor in an ‘authorized’ translation – the tag perhaps harking back to earlier days of translations from Norwegian, where a lack of copyright restrictions meant multiple, pirated translations frequently appeared (see Abret 1993: 274). LangenMüller had made an excellent choice: by 1944, the last year of centralized bibliographical records before the regime’s collapse, Und ewig singen die Wälder had been printed in 565,000 copies, its sequel in a further 430,000 – nearly a million in all. The same translation continued to sell after the war and was reprinted well into the 1960s, its success enhanced by the popular 1959 and 1960 German film adaptations. It seems that the novels received far more acclaim in their German ‘afterlife’ than they had done in Norwegian. Langen-Müller, the biggest publisher of translations in the Nazi period according to data collated from the German National Bibliography (Sturge 2004: 71), had been a conservative and nationally minded house since the merger that formed it in 1932; it had been integrated into the German Labour Front in 1933 and was later affiliated to the Party publisher Franz Eher (Abret 1993: 431). The Gulbranssen novels should have been politically highly desirable: a tale of man’s struggle with the mountains and of love between the rugged, inarticulate men of the Björndal homestead and a pure-hearted soldier’s daughter from town. Much of the novel is spent contrasting the effeminate weakness of urban life with the harsh nobility of the mountain-dwellers – although the heavy ideological aspect does not prevent the text from reading primarily as an exciting romance in a picturesque setting. Despite their ideological suitability, however, reviews of these two translations in the state-approved literary and librarians’ journals were rare and mixed. This mismatch indicates an uncertainty on where to locate a bestselling translation, in a political context where the configuration of the entertainment industry was being readdressed by the state in pursuit of ideological goals. Entertainment – and popular culture in general – was being redefined as an educational resource inside the sphere of state control, in the course of which the agents of literary management were frequently faced with problems of attribution of which this is an interesting example: should the Gulbranssen translations be

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positioned in the valued category of culture-as-education, or in the potentially programme-fleeing one of culture-as-entertainment? The translation certainly seems to fulfil the criteria for an edifying text in Nazi terms. Putting these criteria in the policymakers’ order of priority: its author was not Jewish, nor was his publisher or translator; the author was reputed to have fascist sympathies; the German publisher was an established bastion of the ‘conservative revolution’. All these criteria relate, as we see, to the agents of translation as opposed to the text itself. Then, the book came from a cultural sphere considered ‘racially kindred’ to Germany, and it matched up closely with Nazi ideals of nature, manhood and womanhood. Gulbranssen’s work fitted into an existing tradition of reception prepared by the ‘Nordic Renaissance’ of 1920s and 1930s Germany: the blood-and-soil romanticism of ‘Viking kitsch’ had been the foremost mode for Scandinavian literature in German for several decades, propagated not least by Gulbranssen’s publisher Langen-Müller, traditionally and very successfully specialized in translations with a particular emphasis on Scandinavian languages (see Abret 1993). Finally, the novel sequence quite consciously positions itself on the edge of a very high-status genre, indeed the canonized genre of translation in Nazi Germany: the Old Norse saga. By aligning itself with these, Gulbranssen’s novel could hope to profit from an aura of laudability among both the reading public and the institutions of literary policymaking. That Langen-Müller tried to make the most of this association is clear from the blurbs and advertisements, which highlight the novel’s geographical origins, timeless truths and other valued genre features. The back matter of the frontline edition of Das Erbe von Björndal, for example, advertises other Nordische Dichtung (Nordic writing) from Langen-Müller, listing the Nazi-approved big-hitters Gunnarsson, Hamsun, von Heidenstam and Lagerlöf. On the negative side, Gulbranssen lacked the virtue of extreme age which was one of the key positive attributes of Norse saga literature – the attribute which many of the regime’s literary commentators believed would help produce a pan-Germanic cultural pedigree and foster a sense of racial roots. It is no coincidence that his publisher was Langen-Müller, not the more highbrow proponent of the Nordic ideal, Diederichs of Jena, which had initiated the Nordic wave with its editions of the Icelandic sagas in the first decades of the twentieth century (Stark 1981: 237). Gulbranssen’s work in Germany benefited from the fact of being translated from Norwegian, but at the same time its very

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translatedness also brought it into the line of fire. In the view of the prophets of ‘flooding’, the very fact of Norwegian novels’ popular success made them suspect, since it seemed to imply that the public was turning on principle to foreign products – an ideological failure for the new regime, but also, of course, a financial one for German authors, who indeed were the most vociferous critics of the translation ‘craze’ of the late 1930s. At the same time, from a conservative point of view, huge sales seemed to disbar the novels from the high-prestige realm traditionally marked by exclusivity or ‘discerning taste’. There is no doubt that translations from Scandinavian languages, headed by Norwegian, were popular hits in the Nazi period, with large numbers of authors, frequent reprints and even occasional pseudotranslations.36 Literary policymakers generally described this as a problem, and many of the anti-translation reviewers blamed a bandwagon effect among commercially minded publishers. Certainly Und ewig singen die Wälder seems to have made a reputation and perhaps a modest fortune for its translator Ellen de Boor, whose commissions began to pour in after her Gulbranssen success.37 Yet the real bandwagon, the home of pseudotranslations and by far the bigger source of actual translations until the war, was popular fiction translated from English, especially detective novels and westerns but flanked by a whole range of successful light or middlebrow fiction. These translations really did offer an alternative reality to the blood and soil of home, and Gulbranssen’s association with them – simply by way of being an easyreading bestseller and a foreign import – may have been partly what lowered his status in the eyes of the state and Party commentators. That is to say, Gulbranssen’s excellent sales, although not in themselves disapproved by the regime, undermined his claim to a central position close to the edifying saga genre. His novels failed to achieve canonical status, but this did not remove them from the attention of literary policymaking. On the contrary, a key feature of Nazi policy was the attempt to co-opt popular culture to its own aims. For the case of Gulbranssen, this is exemplified by the 1940 inclusion of Und ewig singen die Wälder in the soldiers’ frontline editions. As already mentioned, the selection of books for the front raised arguments between Party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and the Propaganda Ministry (see Bühler 2002). The traces of disagreement can be seen throughout the pre-war period in the journals attached to the different sides, and, aside from issues of power politics, can be interpreted partly as a disagreement on how widely to peg the boundaries of the highly politicized field of education – Goebbels’ faction proposing the absorption of popular culture into the educational

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field while Rosenberg (and the librarians’ and teachers’ associations) insisted on a conservative retention of strict quality criteria, a narrower zone of inclusion and thus larger zone of exclusion. In this conflict, the Gulbranssen translations were politically ambiguous: they conformed with key ideological requirements yet were above all commercial successes. Whereas the novels raised hackles with the purists as exploiting a ‘craze’ for foreign work, for the Ministry it seems that Und ewig singen die Wälder, though a translation, in many ways perfectly fulfilled the aim of merging ideological and entertainment functions. The translation helped to buttress officially sanctioned ‘knowledge’ of the true, Germanic Norway and proposed acceptable interpretations of the human condition. As light reading, it could also take on a pacifying role, as an escape from the criminal realities of everyday life. Not least, healthy sales in an important sector of the economy were not to be despised – and this is probably among the most important reasons for the continued publication of other, much less acceptable translations in the period.

Popular literature and pseudotranslation I would like to conclude this chapter by looking at an area of particular complexity in the field of translated fiction. The success of Gulbranssen indicates a public interest in reading as adventure, entertainment and exoticism, but whereas these attitudes could be tolerated in an ostensibly ‘Nordic’ and ideologically consonant genre, they attracted opprobrium in the context of translations of an even more popular type: formulaic detective fiction translated from English. The continued success of translation from English has been noted earlier; it was quashed only with the advent of the wartime bans. Of translations from English, a good quarter were detective novels, headed up by Edgar Wallace and Arthur Conan Doyle in reprints that are not clearly numbered but almost certainly reached many hundreds of thousands by the end of the period. The detective novel had emerged as a mass genre in Germany during the Weimar Republic, driven by modern techniques of marketing and distribution. Its connection with the hated Weimar period alone sufficed to make the genre suspect to the new Nazi regime, but there were more specific criticisms as well. Literary and librarians’ journals attacked its embeddedness in the city, its playfulness and, especially, its association with Anglo-American rationalism. While not new to the Germanlanguage area (see Nusser 1992), the genre had burgeoned in the mid

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to late 1920s, riding the wave of the large-scale importation of foreign models primarily from Britain and America. The detective novel ‘craze’ was sparked by the Munich publisher Goldmann’s translation and innovative marketing of the Edgar Wallace detective stories from 1927 (Goldmann 1962: 15ff.). Goldmann used series-based marketing, massive advertising campaigns and tie-ins to help make Wallace very likely the most-sold author translated from English in the late 1920s. Wallace’s success was followed by further imported detective novels from Britain and America, and increasingly by domestic production that imitated them, using British or American sounding pseudonyms, characters and settings (hence, for example, Percy Brook. Der Fall Westminster-Abbey of 1938, or Willy Reese’s Ein Kabel an Scotland-Yard of 1939). Sold cheaply, or distributed via the commercial lending libraries at ten or 20 pfennigs an item, the detective novels fell outside the sphere of the public libraries and their conservative pedagogic goals (see Stieg 1992). By 1933, when the Nazi Party took power with an officially anticapitalist programme, detective fiction had thus come to exemplify the Weimar Republic’s modern, commercial marketing and consumption of literature. At the same time, in form and content the genre epitomized what the völkisch ideologues of Nazism saw as Weimar writing’s failure to address the high moral issues of the day. Hardly surprising, then, that it was regularly and often venomously attacked in the Nazi press as foreign to the truly German soul and a ‘threat to the moral and ethical backbone of the nation’.38 Yet in contrast to ‘undesirable’ literature in the sense of anti-Nazi texts and work by Jewish authors, most of which was more or less successfully suppressed, the detective novel became subject to attempts at adaptation and appropriation rather than simple bans. Even the main index that covers detective fiction, the Liste der für Jugendliche und Büchereien ungeeigneten Druckschriften [Index of printed works unsuitable for young people and libraries] of 1943, requires items not to be destroyed, but to be kept out of displays and secreted from youngsters. In terms of new publications, the elimination of the translated genre and its numerous pseudotranslated imitations was completed only during the regime’s very last years, and the availability of existing publications was probably undented for much of the period. This was partly due to the particular position of the commercial lending libraries that, in contrast to their highly regulated state cousins, specialized in entertainment-oriented literature, especially sentimental novels, adventure or science fiction, and detective novels. To the chagrin of many commentators, this focus remained strong until well into the war.

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Raimund Kast traces the holdings of the forty commercial libraries registered in Hannover in 1937, where of the 90,000 books on offer, over 85 per cent were entertainment fiction and two thirds of those belonged to the three groups mentioned. These were rubrics – especially the latter two – where translations were very well represented: Kast (1991: 274–5) names Zane Grey, Max Brand and Edgar Wallace as typifying the authors in these categories. Undoubtedly, the survival of translated detective fiction was partly a failure of the system of regulation. Huge practical difficulties were involved in monitoring a large segment of book production which, additionally, took place outside those areas of literary life that were completely subject to Nazi control. As Geyer-Ryan (1987: 183) points out, the majority of writers of popular fiction were part-time amateurs, thus not subject to the leverage of enforced RSK membership, and the sheer numbers of detective stories published made detailed attention to individual texts logistically unfeasible. Geyer-Ryan also remarks that the complete removal of so commercially important a segment of the publishing industry would have been damaging for an economy that, despite its anti-capitalist rhetoric, depended on a capitalist market of sorts (ibid.: 184). The picture is complicated by the fact that within the mass of competing Party, government and professional bodies which staked a claim to cultural policy, not every branch was equally adamant on the removal of popular fiction. The Propaganda Ministry, in particular, was ready to tolerate, even encourage, the availability of light entertainment as an escapist luxury, cheap to produce and serving as a pragmatic ‘safety valve’ within a highly regulated cultural economy (see Barbian 1995a: 720). Bollenbeck (1999: 325) calls it a ‘tolerated plurivocality’ ( geduldete Mehrstimmigkeit) in the field of literature and cultural journalism, contrasting strongly with the precise and merciless control to which the news media were subjected (see also Hale 1964). From this point of view, popular culture and consumerism may be considered as having offered the regime a more than viable handle on the ‘hearts and minds’ of the day (see, especially, Schäfer 1981). On the other hand, perhaps the anxious librarians were right to worry about the effects of light-hearted literature in translation. Despite the narrowing of the market, translation publishing was still failing in what the RSK considered ‘its true task’, namely its responsibility to mediate between Germans and foreign nations on the basis of ‘culturally valuable writing that serves understanding between the nations and respect’ (Warmuth 1938: 197).39

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There is also a sense (not, of course, a quantifiable one) in which reading translations – even such well-aligned ones as the Gulbranssen romances – did have a certain subversive potential. At the very least, as Helga Geyer-Ryan (1978: 274) has pointed out, reading remained a private activity in a society which refused the possibility of privacy; and in that private space foreign literature surely had at least the potential to move its readers beyond the narcissistic mirror (Venuti 1998) of translation, to take on a momentum of its own and begin to offer a window onto the outside world. Such was the fear expressed by the president of the RSK, quoted at the beginning of this chapter’s title: the public craze for translations might amount to a turn away from the much-vaunted will of the Volk, the ‘programme of National Socialism’.

Notes 1. ‘Flucht vor dem Programm des Nationalsozialismus’, Hanns Johst, president of the Reich Chamber of Writers (RSK), cited in Die Neue Literatur, August 1939: 418. 2. ‘[E]inen überaus seltsamen und abzulehnenden Hang zu einer besonderen Hochschätzung des ausländischen Schrifttums lediglich deshalb, weil es nun einmal aus dem Ausland kommt.’ Here and in the following, translations from German are my own. 3. ‘Diese sehr oft als besonders weitgehendes geistiges Interesse ausgelegte Neigung ist in der Vergangenheit gerade vom Nationalsozialismus stets als “geistige Überfremdung” bekämpft und eindeutig als Ausdruck eines völkischen Minderwertigkeitsgefühls gekennzeichnet worden. Nachdem nun im Verlauf der Jahre seit der nationalsozialistischen Revolution das deutsche Schrifttum selbst einer gründlichen Reinigung unterzogen und alles in seinen Bereichen vorhandene Wesensfremde ausgemerzt worden ist, befinden wir uns heute wiederum einer Entwicklung gegenüber, die uns auf dem Umwege über die ausländische Übersetzungsliteratur in vielen Fällen wieder genau mit den gleichen negativen Werten vertraut zu machen sucht, die wir erst mühsam aus dem deutschen Schrifttum selbst ausgeschieden haben.’ 4. On the discourse on translation in official literary and booktrade journals of the period, see Sturge (2004: Chapter 3); on the journal Die Neue Literatur see also Berglund (1980). 5. These exclude translated children’s literature, which was listed separately, as were most translations from Latin and Ancient Greek, which were listed as ‘Classical Studies’. For details of the sources and definitions used in the following bibliographical data and the limitations on their reliability in a context of state intervention, see Sturge (2004: 47–56). 6. A supplement to the German National Bibliography was published after the war, listing the works of all categories received by the copyright library in Leipzig but rejected for inclusion in the bibliography and hence for public attention: Deutsche Nationalbibliographie, Ergänzung I (1949).

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7. Even Virginia Woolf remained in print for the special case of her dog novel Flush: Geschichte eines berühmten Hundes, 1934 (Flush: A Biography, 1933). 8. The degree of freedom or restriction in literary publishing during the Nazi period continues to be contested. Ketelsen (1992) gives an introduction to the scope of the debate. 9. This distinction does not, however, appear to have been institutionalized in a manner comparable to that outlined for the case of Portugal in Seruya’s and Coelho’s chapters in this volume. 10. A comprehensive and thorough discussion of the institutions of literary censorship can be found in Barbian (1995a). As it relates to translation, see Sturge (2004: Chapter 2). 11. In full the Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission zum Schutze des nationalsozialistischen Schrifttums, or Party examination commission for the protection of National Socialist writing (see Barbian 1995a: 298ff.). 12. See Bollmus (1970), Barbian (1995a: 270ff.). 13. See, for example, the discussions in Barbian (1995a: 187, 267, 308), Barbian (1995b), Bollmus (1970). 14. For a detailed analysis, see Aigner (1971: 983ff.). 15. Listed in Sturge (2004: 43). 16. Barbian notes that quite apart from policy considerations, the sheer volume of the German book market precluded comprehensive pre-emptive censorship: neither the personnel nor the organizational resources were available for such a task (Barbian 1995b: 173). 17. Though see Barbian (1995a: 568) for a differing view, based on Wilhem Goldmann’s failure to gain permission for the purchase of further rights to British and American detective novels. 18. Memorandum to librarians in Bücherei und Bildungspflege 13, 1933: 116–21, reprinted in Andrae (1970: 167–75). 19. ‘Wir wollen keine Zensur und daher auch keine abhängigen Verleger, die nicht wissen, was sie tun sollen […] sondern wir wollen Verleger, die uns treue Helfer sind am gemeinsamen Werk, und die auch wirklich in der Lage sind, aus eigener Verantwortung heraus den Dienst am deutschen Schrifttum zu vollziehen.’ 20. In the case of translators of popular literature, this net may have been less effective, since many were part-time or ‘amateurs’ not obliged to join the RSK (Geyer-Ryan 1987: 183). 21. ‘Auf Ihr Schreiben […] wird Ihnen mitgeteilt, dass eine Neuauflage der Bücher Pearl S. Buck [sic] nicht in Frage kommt. Eine Bekanntgabe dieser Tatsache an die Autorin ist jedoch nicht erwünscht. Der Autorin gegenüber verfahren Sie so, als ob die Auflage noch nicht ganz ausverkauft sei.’ 22. The importance of this aspect of translation practice emerges particularly clearly in Rundle’s chapter in this volume. 23. ‘[K]ämpferische Tat für das deutsche Theater und für reine germanische Weltanschauung’, Der Freiheitskampf 30 May 1934, cited in Englert (2001: 190). 24. ‘Wer die Geschichte Gislis des Geächteten […] liest, der spürt über die Jahrhunderte hinweg die Gleichheit germanischen Blutes.’ It should be noted that this insistence on the role of Germanic blood in translation quality was not universal: the SS-dominated Weltliteratur differed in this

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25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35. 36.

Translation in Nazi Germany respect from journals closer to the Propaganda Ministry, which stressed the unfortunate propensity of Scandinavian authors to reject the new Germany and its ideals (see Sturge 2004: 90 and more generally Chapter 3, on translation reviews). ‘Ein Jude, der dichtet und in Schweden wohnt, ist noch bei weitem kein nordischer Dichter.’ ‘Literatursalat’; Die Weltliteratur October 1937: 385. See Sturge (2004: 104–16). ‘Eine der wichtigsten Aufgaben für die Reichsschrifttumskammer scheint mir eine Art geistige Planwirtschaft gegenüber und im Einverständnis mit dem Ausland, eine Art geistige Devisen-Kontrolle, zu sein, die es verhindert, daß andere Völker sich geistig gegen Deutschland absperren und wir dennoch ihre Literaturen aufnehmen. In vielen Ländern findet zur Zeit nur die jüdische Emigrantenliteratur als “Deutsche Literatur” Aufnahme und Beachtung, z.B. in Italien! Wir müssen diesen Ländern deutlich machen, daß wir es so lange gleichfalls ohne ihre Literatur aushalten, wie sie die unsere aussperren’ (Vesper 1935: 45). ‘[D]aß ausländisches Schrifttum in deutscher Übersetzung nur in dem Verhältnis einzusetzen ist, wie deutsches Schrifttum fremder Übersetzung im Auslande aufgenommen und gewürdigt wird’, Die Werkbücherei, June 1939, no page numbers. The ESV’s last meeting was in 1943, although the related journal Europäische Literatur, an anthology of translated and original German work in a 50:50 ratio, destined mainly for distribution abroad, continued publication until 1944 (Hausmann 2004: 78–79). ‘In einem geheimen Winkel seines Herzens ist jeder Deutsche ein Wiking. Das Erlebnis fremden Menschentums und fremder Landschaft hat für ihn magischen Reiz.’ ‘[D]ie Übersetzung oder Verbreitung von Werken, die sich unter Verfälschung der geschichtlichen Wahrheit gegen das andere Land, gegen seine Staatsform oder seine Staatsführung richten, und von entstellenden Werken (Tendenzliteratur) politischer Emigranten des anderes Landes verhindern.’ ‘[Z]weifellos dazu beitragen, daß sich das deutsche und das italienische Volk gegenseitig besser kennen und verstehen lernen’, Die Weltliteratur, February 1942: 31. ‘[Z]eigt im Helden des Buchs den aktiven Italiener von heute, samt seiner leidenschaftlichen Hingabe an alle technischen Möglichkeiten und mit jener Gesinnung, die sich vor “Krisen” und ähnlichem nicht fürchtet’, Die Neue Literatur, January 1942: 9. ‘[Z]ur Pflege der deutsch-italienischen Beziehungen ist natürlich auch die Publikation von Kurzgeschichten sehr nützlich. Wenn aber an Schluß der Kurzgeschichte eine deutsch-italienische Heirat dabei rauskommt, so verstößt man damit wohl gegen Grundsätze, die noch wichtiger sind als jene Beziehungen.’ Nazi discourse, where ‘racial’ were more important than linguistic categories, defined Finnish as a Scandinavian language. Such as Nordlands rauschende Wälder [The Whispering Forests of Northland] (Leipzig, Godwin, 1940), by ‘Gunnar Sigarssen’ – according to the German National Bibliography’s compilers, this was a pseudonym for Otto Goldbach.

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37. Only one of Ellen de Boor’s (1896–1960) numerous translations from Scandinavian languages was published before the Gulbranssen novels took off. 38. ‘[E]ine Gefährdung des moralischen und sittlichen Rückenmarks der Nation’ (Großdeutsches Leihbüchereiblatt, April 1940: 42). 39. ‘[I]n seinem wahren Auftrag […] nämlich der Verantwortung sowohl vor dem deutschen Volk als auch dem Schrifttum der Völker. Damit sei unzweideutig gesagt, daß sein Blick auf das kulturell wertvolle, der Verständigung der Völker, der Achtung dienende Schrifttum gerichtet bleiben muß’ (original emphasis).

4 It Was What It Wasn’t: Translation and Francoism Jeroen Vandaele

Francoism and Spanish Fascism It would be wrong to call Francoism a fascist regime (see Paxton 2004, especially Chapter 6), though between 1936 and 1945 it bore many features of fascism (see Richards 1998). Francoism (1936/39–75) was an idiosyncratic mixture of (ultra-) Catholicism, fascism and other reactionary ideologies or ingredients. Before the Civil War of 1936–39 and after General Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, which ended with his death in 1930, Spain’s democratic Second Republic (1931–36/39) saw two periods. In the first (1931–33), a left-wing government redistributed wealth in drastic ways and engaged in anti-clerical action. In the next (1934–36), a right-wing government suspended the social reforms. When the Republic organized new elections in 1936, which were won by the left-wing coalition Frente Popular, political polarization was complete. In such a climate bonds were created between reactionary opponents of the Second Republic: Spanish fascists, the Catholic Church, and other groups.1 Those who fought with Franco in the Civil War, including the fascists and the Church (see Casanova 2005), were in fact fighting against the Republic and the opportunities it had given to progressive forces. During and after the Civil War, Franco managed to unify these anti-Republican forces in a party called FET y de las JONS, which stood for Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista.2 It unified the ‘Falangists’ proper (Spanish fascists), monarchists (defenders of Fernando XIII), Carlists (reactionary and Catholic defenders of a different monarchic line of descent), military leaders, and formerly ‘legalist’ (that is, non-revolutionary) ultra-Catholics (Preston 1998: 245). FET y de las JONS was the result of many previous mergers. Alongside the Unión Monárquica Nacional (1930) of José Antonio Primo de Rivera 84

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(the son of Miguel), Ramiro de Maeztu and Calvo Sotelo, there was the proto-fascist group of Giménez Caballero,3 Aparicio4 and Ledesma5 that gathered around the review La Conquista del Estado. The latter group spoke out against Marxism and Communism, against the ‘liberal bourgeois’ state, against ‘the pharisaical pacifism of Geneva’ and in favour of ‘hierarchical values’, ‘the national idea’, ‘Hispanic values’, ‘the imperial spread of our culture’, ‘the intensified use of mass culture’, ‘nationalization of the large estates’, ‘syndicalism’, ‘revolutionary action’, targeting anyone who might obstruct the new State, and so on.6 The paradox that Spain’s grandeur was to be re-established by means of the principles of Italian Fascism was soon resolved by Giménez Caballero: Spain was 400 years older than Italy and Germany, and Catholicism was the essence of its true imperial spirit (Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 55). In 1931 both Unión and Conquista joined forces with the leader of Juntas Castellanas de Acción Hispánica, the corporatist Catholic Onésimo Redondo, to create the JONS, ‘an overtly pro-Nazi organization’ (Rodgers 1999: 173). It was a fascist organization, yet had a strong Catholic component (Payne 1997). In 1933, a political meeting between José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Franco’s later ministers Rafael Sánchez Mazas7 and Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, and other para-fascist personalities resulted in the Falange Española (FE), the programme of which was centralist, imperialist, Catholic, military, elitist, anti-Marxist and anti-liberal (Ellwood 1984: 37; Payne 1984: 59). Though the FE was less violent and fascist than the JONS (Ellwood 1984: 46), JONS and FE united in 1934 to form FE de las JONS, with José Antonio Primo de Rivera (conventionally abbreviated to José Antonio) as its undisputed leader. In the famous elections of 1936 which led to the Francoist uprising, FE de las JONS lost on all fronts (Ellwood 1984: 70). According to Payne (1985), Spain was too rural and too regionalistic for fascism to take root in its population. FE de las JONS was all too willing to rise against the Republic. When Franco seized power and José Antonio was killed by Republicans, Franco transformed FE de las JONS into FET y de las JONS, with the T standing for Tradicionalista. Francoism’s single, ‘mixed bag’ Party was now complete and could serve as a basis for the Francoist doctrine of ‘national-Catholicism’, a mixture of all the ideological elements mentioned earlier. From the late 1940s onwards, many of Franco’s civil servants came to follow this somewhat nebulous doctrine, which blended traditional authoritarianism (‘respect for the Caudillo’), para-fascist ultra-nationalism (‘respect for Spain, possibly as an empire’), ultra-Catholic moralism (‘respect for the Christian God and the Pope’) and opportunistic capitalism.

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Translation and Francoism

Hence, although fascism was never very popular in Spain, the viejofalangistas, or old-school fascists who had originally belonged to FE de las JONS (without the T ), did wield a good deal of institutional power before 1945, both in the Party (that is, in FET y de las JONS) and in the government. After Hitler’s final defeat, however, much power was transferred back from Party to government and both Party and government were presented as part of one Movimiento. In the words of Michael Richards (1999: 364), Franco’s Movimiento was the body to which one had to adhere in order to participate in the narrowly confined arena of official ‘politics’ during the dictatorship. However, the use of the term ‘Movimiento’ came to be interchangeable both with the name of the state party itself […] and with the regime in a general sense. This ambiguity […] permitted a grandiose falsifying terminology to be employed. Indeed, when in 1958 the capitalist technocrat López Rodó wrote his Declaración de Principios Fundamentales del Movimiento Nacional, he had nothing to say about the FET y de las JONS – all had become Movimiento (Preston 1998: 837–9; see also Paxton 2004: 149–50). If there was one consistent feature from the 1933 Falange to the 1958 Movimiento, this was their anti-Communism. On a national level, Communism or Marxism would remain a useful enemy to unite Francoists and Francoist subideologies over many decades. A victim of the leftist Second Republic, the Spanish Catholic Church shared anti-Marxist feeling with the Falangists proper and with any group which had lost its privileges after 1931. On an international level, Franco was able to use anti-Communism to manoeuvre himself back into a position of geopolitical influence, thanks to North American concerns during the Cold War. There were evident links between Franco’s international and domestic politics. Franco could retain great personal power on a national level as long as he was perceived to be the referee deciding which Francoist ‘subgroup’ (often called ‘ideological family’) – fascists, ultra-Catholics, monarchists, and so on – was to have most influence at any given moment in any given matter; Franco skilfully made this balance dependent upon his own international survival. At any one moment he gave more power to those who currently served the international image he needed. Thus, when Germany and Italy lost the war, Spanish fascists lost much power in Spain because Franco had to rebuild his image as a non-fascist. More generally, the ideological subperiods of Francoist politics often reflect or are responses to political and socio-economic changes on an international

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level, however much Franco isolated Spain from the rest of the world. In terms of censorship, Francoism can be tentatively periodized as follows. (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Censorship during the Civil War (1936–39): This was necessarily a nonsystematized and noncentralized affair because other – military – matters were more urgent and because the whole of Spain was not yet conquered. Franco’s censorship boards employed a military censor, a religious censor and other censors. This period of censorship needs much more research and is hard to study precisely because it was not as centralized and systematic as subsequent periods. Censorship during the Second World War (1940–45): In this period the Spanish fascists who originally belonged to FE de las JONS gained influence in the censorship boards as in other spheres of life; there was no longer a specific censor for the military. Censorship in transition (1945–50): The State censorship board was transferred back from the fascism-dominated Party (FET y de las JONS) to the more Catholic-dominated government (also appointed by Franco). Fascists remained present in State boards but they were losing power. It was a period of public and internal conflicts over moral issues between Catholic censors (present in the State board and in private Catholic censorship boards) and para-fascist censors (in the State board). Censorship in the ultra-Catholic decade (1950–63): In this period ultra-Catholic censors took power in the State board. Immorality was their main concern – and it was everywhere. Censorship became less political in the strict sense of the word, although Communism and liberalism remained important concerns as well. In this period, Francoist censorship alienated itself completely from large sections of the Spanish population, especially since new masses of tourists showed glimpses of lifestyles which the Spaniards were not allowed to see represented in literary discourse and film. The period known as the Apertura, or ‘opening’ (1963–69): Franco gradually lost his personal grip on the Francoist subgroups. A new group of capitalist ‘technocrats’ now tried to renovate the Spanish economy, stimulating tourism and admitting more flexible censorship criteria. In cultural policy, they were helped by ex-, post-, or ‘liberal’ fascists, who had also grown tired of Catholic moralism (see Gracia 1996, 2004). The infamous Ley de Prensa [Press Law] was passed in 1966. It abolished pre-publication censorship but reinforced post-publication censorship and self-censorship, because

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(6)


authors were made ‘responsible’ for what they wrote (Abellán 1980; Pegenaute 1999). Late Francoism (1969–75): Church (private) censorship was abolished because it had lost all social relevance. State censorship became anonymous. In terms of cultural policy, this period was partly a continuation of the Apertura, though some liberal censors strove for a relatively high degree of liberty while others (disgusted Catholics) wanted less flexibility than the Apertura allowed.

A future synthesis of research on translation and Francoism may confirm, refine or contradict the applicability of this chronology to translation, but much more research on Francoist translation is needed before such a work could be written. The present overview has a different structure. The first section introduces some general ideas from translation studies which will be helpful to understand ‘Francoist translation’, that is, translation as practised from 1939 until 1975. The next section shows that it makes sense to structure a discussion of Francoist translation in terms of discourse genres or realms (press, philosophy, prose, theatre, film), and briefly indicates which source languages were dominant in each discourse realm. In the subsequent sections I summarize existing research in more detail, identify gaps and paths for research in a variety of discursive realms, and indicate whenever possible the degree to which research on Francoist translation may shed light on the fascist or non-fascist character of Francoism.

What translation studies offers to Franco studies The following is a set of research questions which are typically asked in comparative literature and translation studies: • Which ideas and practices (repertoires) circulate in a given culture? Where do they come from? Are they the result of tradition(s), importation and/or translation? Who is responsible for the importation and translation of new repertoires and for the continuation of traditional repertoires, and why? • Which ideas and practices do not circulate? Why not? Are they inhibited or prohibited? How? By whom? Why? • Which ideas and practices are stimulated? By whom? How? In which parts of a culture? • Which repertoires are neither stimulated nor prohibited and die a silent death? (see Lambert 1980; Even-Zohar 1990; De Geest 1992)

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Within translation studies, the Tel Aviv School of Poetics (Itamar EvenZohar, Gideon Toury) has been particularly influential in framing these questions and proposing concepts for partial answers. Specifically, EvenZohar’s (1990) general cultural theory emphasizes the role of translation in the shaping of cultures.8 For the study of Francoist culture, a focus on translation offers two major advantages. First, what makes translation special among other interpretive ‘acts of meaning’ is its relative explicitness. In translation, a written or spoken end product bears testimony to the interpretation that has taken place; for a researcher in cultural studies a translation has the advantage of constituting a materialized trace of interpretation not provided by other forms of cultural production. The original text offers an explicit point of comparison against which to measure cultural (in this case, translational) practice. Secondly, translation allows us to study what does not exist in a given system, although it could in principle have existed. Translation is a means to study the non-dit, the cultural unsaid. This is especially relevant for Francoist culture, since Francoism’s continued inability to formulate an affirmative cultural project is well established. If we are interested in the ‘implicit’ or ‘negative’ ideological practices of Francoism, we must study how Francoism used translation (see Pegenaute 1999 for a similar argument). While this can also be done by studying Francoist censorship of Spanish (‘intrasystemic’) cultural goods, translation research has something extra to offer: whereas Spanish artists and non-fiction writers had to practise private, mental self-censorship from the very start, the international repertoires were already fully developed cultural products. The international democratic repertoire was not restrained by the politics of fear that dominated the Spanish cultural field, and Francoist reception and censorship had to intervene in a different way. At the same time, once their immigration was authorized, the fully elaborated repertoires obviously had a stronger innovative potential than the internal goods because they could build on many liberal, freely inventive traditions outside the Francoist system. I will return to these ideas in the Conclusion of this chapter.

Realms of discourse, countries of origin As Abellán (1980) has already noted on an intrasystemic level, Franco’s cultural agents feared innovation to different degrees according to the realm of discourse. Reality-bound discourse (press, academic writing) immediately came under strict control. As for translated fiction, the

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regime’s fear was greater for film than for performed theatre (see, e.g., Vandaele 2006), it was greater for modern literature than for the classics (see, e.g., Bandín 2007), it was greater for performed theatre than it was for written theatre (Merino 1994: 60), and it was probably greater for prose than for poetry. These divisions, which will structure my chapter, find their origins in what I will call the ‘neoplatonic’ – and generally patronizing or paternalistic – idea that some parts of the population (the uneducated masses, children, often women) are more easily influenced than members of the elite (educated males) and that, therefore, some dangerous realms of discourse should be restricted to the elite. For each realm of discourse, I will summarize the insights of existing translation research and, if appropriate, indicate paths for future research. The ‘neoplatonic’ fear of film and spectacle was certainly more typical of Catholicists9 than of Falangists. On an international level, Catholics had early on become aware of the power of film, as can be seen from the 1936 encyclical Vigilanti Cura. In 1940, the Falangist García Viñolas, who had become a leading member of the Party’s Subsecretaría de Prensa y Propaganda [Under Secretariat for Press and Propaganda] two years earlier, created the popularizing film review Primer Plano as a response to Catholic views on film (Diez Puertas 2002: 134, 153; Monterde 1997: 188). The Falangist Primer Plano and the Catholic film critics developed very different poetic norms and views regarding Hollywood (see Vandaele 2006). Spanish fascists participated in the creation of Francoist institutions from 1936 onwards, and Catholicists used the institutions for new ideological purposes from the late 1940s until 1962–63, when cultural countermovements (including ‘liberal neo-fascists’ or ex-fascists) forced them to apply their criteria in a more flexible manner (see Gracia 2004). In the early days of Francoism, certain Falangist censors also had different nationalist sensibilities to those of the Catholicists. What were the main source languages and cultures from which discourse types were imported under Francoism? As the TRACE (Translation and Censorship) project of the universities of León and the Basque Country demonstrates statistically, the anglophone dominance is overwhelming in all discourse realms except philosophy, where translations from German are dominant almost until the end of Francoism (Uribarri 2005, 2007b, c). There were various reasons for the anglophone hegemony in fiction, and often these reasons reinforced each other. In the 1940s Spanish fascists were attracted to Hollywood’s violent and sexy film noir. More generally, in Francoist times Hollywood escapism was an easy, tacit modus vivendi between large parts of the population and the Francoist bureaucrats, since the regime’s culture

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itself was unable to satisfy the cultural appetite of the Spanish people. Furthermore, it was fortunate for the Spanish regime that Hollywood applied its own Catholic censorship code, the Hays Code, between 1930 and 1966 (see Black 1998). Less fortunately for the intransigent censors, Hollywood’s lobby exerted institutional and economic pressure on an impoverished Spain, forcing Francoists to import American repertoire in large quantities even when it did not comply with Spanish norms (Vandaele 2006). As for written fiction, twentieth-century Spaniards were not very avid readers, as Behiels (2006) notes. Most popular under Francoism were escapist genres, where translations held a strong position. This even led to a flourishing market of pseudotranslations: escapist novels in special collections (‘Extra Oeste’ and ‘Selecciones FBI’, for example) written by Spanish authors using pseudonyms such as ‘Lou Carrigan’, ‘Silver Cane’, ‘Mortimer Cody’, ‘Linda Malvill’ or ‘Curtis Garland’ (Rabadán 2000b; see also Santamaría López 2007). In the realm of theatre, Pérez López de Heredia’s excellent thesis (2004) shows that the wave of ‘anglophilia’ had already reached Spain in the years before the Spanish Civil War. Regarding philosophy, Uribarri (2005, 2007a, b, c) reminds us that German influences were part of the well-studied cultural phenomenon of Krausismo. After studying for two years with Christian F. Krause of Heidelberg, the Spanish philosopher Julián Sanz del Río (2005: 366) had returned to Spain in 1844 and translated this minor German philosopher’s work in a conscious attempt to modernize Spanish thinking, making Krause much more important for Spain than for any other country – including Germany. This event reoriented the Spanish philosophical scene, away from France and towards Germany.

The hidden realm: ‘Private’ translations Some translations were not meant to be published. They only circulated within limited groups. For instance, the State censorship files kept in the Archivo General de la Administración (in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid) sometimes contain translations of conservative film reviews from the US, so that the State Censorship Board could assess the supposed danger of a film from an international conservative point of view. These translations could be documents typed on separate sheets, often including the film rating by the US-based Legion of Decency. According to my research, they were especially frequent after the cultural Apertura of 1963. It is possible that the Legion of Decency actively provided this data to the Spanish board; more generally, it is very likely

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that institutional connections existed between the Catholic Legion of Decency and Franco’s State and Church censorship – whether via translation or other forms of communication. The Francoist elites often enjoyed personal and intellectual privileges – the opportunity to travel, read expensive intellectual books, or be members of boards who could view unauthorized films. Rich, regime-aligned artists such as the writer, film director and critic Edgar Neville were relatively free to travel abroad. Eminent ‘liberal’ thinkers, such as Luis Díez del Corral, lived wealthy lives and could afford limited editions – both originals and translations. In this context, one potentially valuable type of research would be to try to map how these national Spanish elites used their international networks to circulate foreign information in private circles. To pursue research on this important area would mean working with personal testimonies (interviews, diaries, memoirs, and so on) rather than on officially archived documents, since the circulation of foreign intellectual works was often a clandestine matter (see Behiels 2006). Certainly, though, the clandestine nature of much international literature will not have prevented it being used by Francoist elites of different ideological families as a way to position themselves on a domestic level. For example, Spanish fascists – followers of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Giménez Caballero, Aparicio, Redondo and Ledesma – were very powerful between 1936 and 1945 but simply lost their international connections in 1945, at a time when Catholicism was highly organized on a global scale.10 One could study whether (or to what extent) the ideological shift from falangismo to ultra-Catholicism between 1945 and 1950 was supported by the agents’ power to import, translate and quote international discourse in private circles or in the corridors of power. Other Francoists were national-Catholicists from the onset, in the sense that they combined ingredients from fascism with ultra-Catholicism without a clear preference for either fascist or Catholic ideas or lifestyles. Nevertheless the ideological discourse of national-Catholic individuals may have evolved over time. The ultra-Catholic Jesuit Ortiz Muñoz, for instance, was a high-profile censor from 1939 until 1962 in several discursive realms. He had already served as a censor when State censorship first answered directly to the government (1938–October 1941) but also operated between 10 October 1941 and 27 July 1945, when State censorship came under control of the Vicesecretaría de Educación de FET y de las JONS. A study of Ortiz Muñoz might cast light on the influence of Catholicism under fascist rule. Was he more present and influential in 1939–41 and 1945–62 than in 1941–45? Did his discourse change over time? Of course, there was much osmosis between Falangists and

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Catholics – Gabriel Arias Salgado, a reactionary Catholic, was the head of State censorship in the ultra-Catholic decade (1950–62) but also when the FET y de las JONS was in control of censorship (1941–45). Nonetheless some censors were clearly more Catholic and others obviously more para-fascist, and it would be interesting to see if foreign repertoires helped to shape their domestic discourse. Possibly their discourse was itself a personal ‘translation’ of foreign repertoires.

Reality-bound discourse: The press Beyond the occasional anecdote in general historiographical works, very little seems to be known about the role of translation in the Francoist press. The translation or nontranslation of international political speeches for the Spanish press may nevertheless be a very important research topic. When Preston (1998: 725–6), for example, discusses the Janus-faced nature of Franco’s political discourse after the Second World War, he explicitly refers to the nontranslation in Spain of a pro-American interview Franco gave the New York Times in 1948. In times of uncertainty and isolation, after Hitler’s defeat, Franco spoke out for America in English, but made sure his words were not translated into Spanish for the Spanish newspapers. Did selective and manipulated translations of foreign press articles, or even pseudotranslations in the Spanish press, play a significant role in the propaganda of State and Church? Interesting as these questions may be, I do not know of any research into the role of press translation in Spain between 1936 and 1975. From my own archival research it is clear that specialized Catholic film journals tried to lend credibility to their views via well-chosen translations and references to foreign authors. In the 1950s, for instance, the Revista Internacional de Cine, which was also published in other languages (at least French, Italian and English), regularly featured Spanish translations of foreign conservative essays and ‘studies’ on the influence of film (Vandaele 2006). A comparative study of the different versions of this magazine could well yield interesting results. Similar research agendas could be specified for the Falangist press too, and such research could be especially promising if focused on high-profile foreign news sources quoted in a variety of Francoist newspapers.

Reality-bound discourse: Philosophy Philosophy is also non-fictional, like journalism, but unlike journalism it is written exclusively for the educated. This is very clear in the

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reception of Jean-Paul Sartre (Behiels 2006) and Immanuel Kant (studies by Ibon Uribarri, e.g. 2005). Uribarri (2007b, c) notes that philosophy came under tight Francoist control, but also that Kant was not a thinker who caused the regime too much concern because he was so difficult that he was only accessible to the intellectual elite. Similarly, Sartre’s existentialist but hermetic L’être et le néant was less problematic than his more accessible literature and theatre (Behiels 2006). Behiels and Uribarri remind us that Neothomism was the official philosophical doctrine under Franco but that deviant thinkers were sometimes tolerated for the specialized reader. Here are some examples of the censors’ positive decisions on work by Kant: 1957:

1957:

1962:

On an Argentinian translation of Kritik der Reinen Vernunft: ‘Some copies may be imported for the use of learned persons who have the ability to read forbidden books’ [‘Se puede permitir la importación de algunos ejemplares para uso de las personas estudiosas que tienen facultad para leer libros prohibidos’] (Uribarri 2005: 373). A new Spanish edition of Kritik der Urteilskraft is acceptable for two reasons: it does not contradict Scholastic philosophy in ‘dogmatic matters’ [‘cuestiones dogmáticas’] and it is a work that is ‘only within the intellectual range of the educated’ [‘sólo está al alcance intelectual de personas formadas’] (ibid.). A Spanish translation of Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft is authorized because it is a ‘text for specialists in philosophy, known throughout the world’ [‘texto para especialistas de la disciplina filosófica, mundialmente conocido’] (ibid.).

Before 1969 the authorization of Kant was always requested (and granted) for a very limited number of copies, as may be seen from Table 4.1. One censor was ‘concerned’ when in 1969 Alianza requested permission to print 10,000 copies of Kant’s Religión dentro de los límites de la razón pura (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloβen Vernunft) but authorization was given (ibid.). Only two Kant translations were directly censored. In 1955 a translation of Über eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll was not imported, but the file does not state why. More interestingly, a translation of Zum ewigen Friede (by Rivera Pastor) was banned in 1943 (Uribarri 2007b) because, according to the censor, Kant was ‘influenced by the French Revolution’ when he stated that the constitution of any state should be republican.

Jeroen Vandaele 95 Table 4.1

Numbers of copies permitted for Kant translations

Year

Title

1939 1945 1957 1957 1962

Kritik Kritik Kritik Kritik Kritik

Copies der der der der der

Praktischen Vernunft Reinen Vernunft Urteilskraft Reinen Vernunft Praktischen Vernunft

1,500 200 1,000 50 1,000

Source: Based on Uribarri 2007a: 183–7.

In fascist times – Period (2) of my categorization, the years of the Second World War – censorship of Kant thus became overtly political. No less interesting are Uribarri’s remarks on the Spanish reception of Kant in the 1920s and early 1930s, when new translations were made by, for example, Manuel García Morente and the logician and Republican President of Parliament (1931–33) Julián Besteiro. In Spain, all major intellectuals at last started to reflect on Kant in that period, whether Ortega y Gasset, Besteiro, Unamuno or Antonio Machado. Another reader of Kant was Ramiro de Maeztu. By 1930 Maeztu had abandoned his socialist and liberal ideas and, with José Antonio and Calvo Sotelo, founded the Unión Monárquica Nacional against the Second Republic (Ellwood 1984: 23; Payne 1985: 49), spreading the idea of ‘Hispanidad’, the ‘solidarity among Hispano- and Lusophone nations under the guidance of Spain’ (Rosendorf 2006: 405). As Aguilar and Humlebaek write (2002: 136): In the 1930s the ultra-right-wing writer Ramiro de Maeztu popularized the concept of Hispanidad, linking it to the fascist imagery and emphasizing the ideas of ‘historical destiny’ and Volksgeist. Hispanidad is conceived of as the community of Hispanic nations founded on the religious spirit of Spanish colonization, a specifically anti-liberal and traditionalist idea that was adopted by the Francoist regime as one of its ideological pillars. The concept was instrumentalized to exalt the heroic image of the old Spanish empire and the period when Spain was amongst the most important powers of the world, stressing the religious and political aspects much more than the cultural and literary ones. Strange as it might seem, Maeztu writes, he owed to Kant the ‘the rocksolid foundation of my religious ideas’ [‘fundamento inconmovible de mi pensamiento religioso’] (quoted in Uribarri 2005: 379). The existence

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of a priori synthetic knowledge showed him that truth is found in the soul [espíritu] not in matter [naturaleza material]. This idea would return in Kant’s reception during the late Franquismo (1969–75, Period (6) of my categorization). Behiels quotes a 1948 essay on Sartre which illustrates that phenomenology was only recommended if it concerned good existentialism – Heidegger’s: The greater analytic capacity of our present era is one of the reasons why our times are different from previous ones. Proof of it is found in phenomenology and its consequences (such as, for instance, the teaching of good existentialism – that is, Heidegger’s, not Sartre’s stupid version), the atom bomb and so on.11 (Alonso del Real, quoted in Behiels 2006) Given Heidegger’s special relation to Nazi Germany, it would certainly be interesting to study Francoist translations of this ‘good phenomenologist’. Was he promoted (via translation for example) by fascists and/or national-Catholicists? Maeztu’s notion of Hispanidad (1931) can certainly be interpreted as an instance of Heidegger’s Ur-sprung, ‘a historically originary decision or founding act that provides a people with its “destiny” or truth’ (in Galt Crowell’s paraphrase; 1999: 291). Uribarri (2007a) notes that there are only ten censorship files on Heidegger (compared with the 45 on Kant), most of which came rather late. Piñeiro’s 1956 translation of Das Wesen der Wahrheit was controversial, because it was done into Galician (Da esencia da verdade). Uribarri does not explain, however, if the controversy was somehow anticipated or reflected in the censorship file. More generally, Uribarri writes (2007a: 189) that Heidegger was unproblematic for Franco’s State censors. Although Jean-Paul Sartre was considered a pernicious influence for Catholics (La nausée had been banned by the Vatican), he was nonetheless tolerated in Spain as a philosopher for the specialists – just like Kant – and especially as time passed: although unsympathetic to Sartre, one censor observed in 1964 that ‘the Church condemned the book in 1948. Perhaps existentialism was considered more dangerous at that time’.12 According to Carlos Díaz (1983; quoted by Behiels 2006) Sartre was known as an existentialist in Spain, and hardly as a Marxist; his Communist ideas became available only in the late 1960s. The reception of existentialism deserves further research, including translational analysis of its basic philosophical texts. What happened, for instance, to Camus’ more popularizing anti-religious humanism?

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Even after the 1966 Press Law, officially presented as being a relaxation of the rules, many intellectual works were banned after they had been printed and distributed. Cisquella, Erviti and Sorolla (1977) mention several works that were censored after publication (known as ‘secuestro’): Humanismo y terror by Merleau-Ponty, El valent soldat Schweik by Jaroslav Hasek, Sobre política y lingüística by Noam Chomsky, Sobre el hachís by Walter Benjamin, El pensamiento de Lenin by Henri Lefebvre, Filosofía y política by Antonio Gramsci, El pensamiento de Hegel by Roger Garaudy, Diccionario filosófico by Voltaire and La cuestión meridional by Gramsci. Sociología de Marx by Lefebvre was authorized in 1969, Introducción a la filosofía de la praxis by Gramsci in 1970, Materialisme dialèctic by Leo Apostel in 1971, Espacio y política by Lefebvre in 1976. Lázaro (2005b) further mentions selective translations of Orwell’s literary essays, which will be discussed later. Marx himself remained absent from 1936 until 1966. In the last decade of Franco’s rule, however, 200 censorship files were opened on him. The years 1967–8 saw an avalanche of requests (Uribarri 2007b). In the 1970s, official requests were made to re-edit Marx translations from the period between 1872 and 1936, a period in which the Communist Manifesto had been published in Spanish in 47 different versions. Uribarri has discovered only one or two censorship files on Lessing, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach and Hegel, an absence which he finds especially conspicuous for a philosopher of Hegel’s stature. Nietzsche is the other German philosopher subject to as many censorship files as Marx, but Nietzsche’s reception has a different chronology (Uribarri 2007b). Like Marx, Nietzsche had been translated before 1936 – and even before 1900 – but unlike the pre-Francoist Marx translations, some Nietzsche translations were republished between 1939 and 1942, when the falangistas had control in large sectors of Party and government. Between 1942 and 1964 all attempts to publish the infamous author of the phrase ‘Gott ist tot’ failed; between 1964 and 1970 Nietzsche was tolerated in limited and expensive editions; and between 1970 and 1975 circulation became more democratic, even creating a short-lived neo-Nietzschean countercultural movement. Censors justified this shift by labelling Nietzsche as an ‘existentialist’ rather than an anti-Christian (Uribarri 2007b). There is quite a difference, I believe, between this inaccurate categorization among the censors (Nietzsche the existentialist) and similar categorizations extra muros (in published prefaces, prologues, introductions to works, and so on). A censor’s own categorization intra muros can readily be understood as his (not often her) way to defend a controversial author

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in the terms given by the Francoist regime, even though the censor knew that the author was in fact much more complex (or even controversial) than was suggested in his report. It is even possible to interpret these moves and the prominence given to framing prefaces or introductions as ‘open-mindedness’, as a will to publish. Thus, when a second censor of Kant’s Religión dentro de los límites de la razón pura commented that ‘the translator’s prologue is very good in the sense that it frames the work within the thought of Kant’13 (quoted in Uribarri 2007a: 185–6), he may have been trying to ease the process of publication as much as expressing a genuine opinion on the accuracy of the ‘frame’. It is more difficult, on the other hand, to interpret these framings as acts of resistance if they were actually published. As Uribarri (2007a) argues, in the late 1960s Franco’s agents tried to domesticate Kant in an attempt to protect Catholic ideology from the constant invasion of the materialist world, which reminds us of Maeztu’s musings on the importance of Kant for his own conservative ideas. Furthermore, in 1964 and 1967 the Aguilar house published La paz perpetua (Zum ewigen Friede), which had been forbidden in 1943. In his approval, the censor quoted the final words of the introduction to the edition, which explained that Kant really preferred monarchy to democracy (Uribarri 2007a: 185). One element is missing from Uribarri’s current work: he does not reveal the identity of the censors discussed. It is unclear to me whether their names have been omitted because their signatures were illegible, the reports were anonymous, or as a conscious decision by Uribarri (in line with some existing research on franquismo). I would argue that identity is important when we try to make sense of words as cultural speech acts, that is, as discourse endowed with agency. As Foucault (1982: 187) explains, disciplinary power ‘is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility’. If we want to understand Francoist censors, we have to do what they attempted to avoid: we have to make them visible. Thus, I welcome Behiels’ (2006) note that the 1964 censor of La nausée is Father Saturnino Álvarez Turienzo, an eminent Augustinian and prior of El Escorial in 1964 who two years later became professor of ethics at the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca. For one thing, this information contributes to our understanding of the otherwise invisible players and networks of Francoism. For another, it shows that Abellán’s (1980: 110) distinction between a first ‘época gloriosa’ and ‘académica’ of censorship and a subsequent era of mediocrity14 should be called into question – Álvarez Turienzo belongs to Abellan’s second period, yet he was ‘gloriously academic’. Behiels’ information also casts doubt on

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the claim that censors were merely ‘ruedecitas’ [tiny wheels] in ‘la gran maquinaria’ (Neuschäfer 1994: 52).15

Fiction film It would be wrong to think that only non-fiction was (or is) felt to be a threat by censors. To different degrees, fiction is also considered a reality-bound type of discourse. The classical formulation goes back to Plato’s Republic:16 Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most of those which are now in use must be discarded. (Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett) In Pourquoi la fiction, Jean-Marie Schaeffer (1999) points out that this platonic idea usually returns whenever a new medium is introduced to groups which are considered vulnerable. The invention and circulation of narrative film fiction met with strong paternalistic resistance among Catholics around the world – and especially in Francoist Spain (see also Vandaele 2006). A first illustration of this fear is the Spanish decision of 23 April 1941 to impose dubbing by law, a practice Franco had copied from Mussolini (Gubern et al. 1995: 454; Ávila 1997: 73). This measure was taken in ‘Falangist’ times and, although the law would be rescinded in 1946 (Gubern et al. 1995: 456), from 1941 until the present day, dubbing has been the standard technique in commercial film translation in Spain: once a choice of either dubbing or subtitling has been made, the option chosen tends to impose and replicate itself as the obvious practice. Even though decisions in favour of dubbing have typically been inspired by nationalism (Danan 1991, 1994), Spanish Catholics would soon make use of dubbing in a battle inspired by extreme moral paternalism. From 1945 onwards, and especially between 1950 and 1963 (what I have called Periods (2) and (3)), they promoted the ‘ideal film’ and banned anything counter to dogma – very effectively in the Catholic decade (Period (3)). In this decade, a feeble counterculture would begin to grow, in the ‘Cine-Clubs’ of the SEU (the Falangist Sindicato Español Universitario),

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which were created in 1951 (Gubern 1980: 19). The SEU’s Salamanca Cine-Club organized the 1955 Conversaciones de Salamanca, a watershed conference that would eventually contribute to the establishment of the more tolerant censorship code and practice of 1963. In turn, this new code and practice would lead to the creation in 1967 of officially ‘minoritarian’ Salas Especiales, which showed original (but censored) versions with subtitles (Gutiérrez Lanza 2007: 228). Unlike the membersonly Cine-Clubs, the special theatres were in principle open to all adult audiences. This reveals, once more, that (ex-)Falangists were important countercultural agents in ultra-Catholic times, as Gracia (2004) argues. Before and during the Second World War (Periods (1) and (2)), the Falangists had more official power due to their presence in central administrative institutions, although the Church was also represented in all relevant institutions. During the Civil War, censorship was centralized first in Seville and La Coruña, then in Salamanca (Diez Puertas 2002; Gubern et al. 1995: 454). Nominally there was no censorship board until 1938, but in practice the Departamento Nacional de Cinematografía (headed by Falangist García Viñolas) of the Dirección General de Propaganda (headed by the viejofalangista Ridruejo) worked as a film board. The Comisión de Censura and the Junta Superior de Censura, created in 1938, merged in 1940 into the Junta Superior de Orientación Cinematográfica. As mentioned earlier, this junta had to answer to the Party between 1941 and 1945. To my knowledge, film translation for these periods has not yet been studied. My own research on Billy Wilder (Vandaele 2002, 2006, 2007) shows that there is a significant difference between pre- and post-1951 film censorship in Spain. Not only did the number of Catholicist Junta members increase between 1946 (the year the first Billy Wilder file was opened) and 1963 (the year of the Apertura) but the Catholicists steadily grew more confident in the debates. Before 1951 Billy Wilder’s films were reviewed by two administratively and ideologically different State boards – the first in 1946 and the second in 1947. In 1946 The Major and the Minor (1942) was authorized by State censorship, while external Church censorship found it morally dangerous for Catholics. The ultra-Catholic State censor Ortiz Muñoz did not complain about the junta’s decision (at least not in writing). Alfonso de la Rosa, the official representative of the army, who would disappear from the files the next year, had nothing negative to say about the sexual issues in Wilder’s Hollywood debut. The next Francoist period (1946–51) was one of great conflict between fascist and Catholicist film poetics. The notorious fascist censor David

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Jato, for example, believed that Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944), a violent and sexy film noir, was ‘suitable for the masses’ (preview of 11 February 1947).17 Although the Spanish Church forbade the film, and though a 1946 decree lent more power to the ecclesiastic censor in moral matters (Gubern 1981: 98), Double Indemnity was authorized in a dubbed version, as Perdición. Jato was backed by Joaquín Soriano, the first director of Franco’s Nazi-oriented news service NO-DO, and by Domínguez de Igoa, a film director working with Bardem (Vandaele 2006: 122–3). Many other foreign films caused a stir between 1947 and 1950. For instance, Gilda (1946, Charles Vidor) was a wonderful film according to the Falangist Primer Plano (28 December 1947) and a veritable scandal for the external Church censorship. Paxton (2004: 17) reminds us that fascism’s ‘deliberate replacement of reasoned debate with immediate sensual experience transformed politics, as the exiled German cultural critic Walter Benjamin was the first to point out, into aesthetics’. This penchant for aesthetics and sensuous experience can also be identified in Falangist discourse on foreign repertoire. The Spanish Falangists loved the Hollywood aesthetic that brought sex, speed and violence to Spain. They hated Hollywood, however, when it produced anti-German propaganda films like Wilder’s Five Graves to Cairo (1943). Jato’s verdict was that the film was ‘worthy of a shopkeepers’ nation, without a shred of spiritual elegance’18 (2 September 1947). Here, spirituality or the spirit of a nation suddenly turns out to be the paramount criterion. Even in ultra-Catholic times, however, Francoist Catholicism remained national-Catholicism, Franco’s strange blend of Falangist nationalism and moral reactionary Catholicism. Thus, Wilder’s anti-Nazi PoW comedy Stalag 17 (1953) was banned by State censorship. Although Catholicists were by now more powerful in most issues, other censors had not completely forgotten their fascist roots and they were able to press their point. Falangist Mourlane Michelena explicitly asked for a ‘revision’ of the film’s ‘deformations’, ‘prejudices’ and ‘caricatures’.19 According to Pío García Escudero,20 a national-Catholicist who was more Catholicist than nationalist, such camps ‘should be Russian’ instead of German – a comment which shows how Francoist Catholicists and nationalists found common ground in anti-Communism. The journalist and otherwise relatively moderate censor Mariano Daranas and VicePresident Alonso-Pesquera, who had spent much time in Germany and Italy between 1933 and 1940 (CILEH 1990: 38), made similar remarks, while Father García del Figar and Father Villares simply acknowledged the reasoning of the other members that evaded comment on German

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atrocities. In a positive 1964 re-evaluation, the revisionism implicit in the 1953 ban – which alluded to the allegedly over-negative representation of Germans in the film – would finally fade but some of the film’s political satire would still be censored (see Vandaele 2007). Whereas State censorship gradually changed its criteria, the translators’ habitus, their way of doing things,21 remained very similar from the beginning. The translators – the film-script translators, the synchronizers, the dubbers, the import and distribution companies – wanted to achieve commercial success and do the best job they could in the circumstances, and they knew what kind of norms circulated in the Francoist system: God, Franco and Spain. Furthermore, they communicated with each other on previous problems with cultural products. Gutiérrez Lanza’s (1999) study of five scripts22 and my study (Vandaele 2006) of 23 Billy Wilder films show some common findings. Firstly, the translators were very skilled at negotiating between target and source norms. They knew how to execute constant linguistic manipulations, which were often hardly visible. Ideological translation was clearly part of their habitus as translators. Their dubbing made political and religious shifts wherever necessary, and exhibits several constant features: if the ‘good guys’ of the film are also those of Francoist ideologies, then they are made even ‘better’ in the Francoist translation; ideologically negative sides are erased and ideologically positive elements emphasized (Vandaele 2006: 454ff.; Gutiérrez Lanza 1999; see also Ballester 2001). Careful attention is paid to language, with dialects, sociolects, slang and any type of indecent language avoided. Finally, film titles are changed for moral reasons (even in pre-Catholicist 1947, Double Indemnity became Perdición) Gutiérrez Lanza takes a quantitative approach (that is, systematically tagging translation units with labels such as ‘image improvement’, ‘reduction of sexual content’, ‘euphemism’, ‘enhancement of the sociopolitical and/or moral values of the regime’, and so on) and shows convincingly that subtle manipulation pervaded the five specific Francoist film script translations. My own work (Vandaele 2006), in contrast, has a qualitative focus on narratively and culturally relevant fragments, examining the implications of certain tiny adjustments in crucial moments of the projected film narrative such as rewritings of the morally important endings and subtle shifts in the translation of subversive humour (ultraCatholic and fascist censors had different senses of humour). On the other hand, even manipulated dubbings were potential forces of innovation at any time in the period between 1939 and 1975. Gutiérrez Lanza writes that her five translated film scripts, all authorized

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during the Apertura (1963–9), offered ‘a range of infidelities, adulterous love affairs, broken marriages, broken families, etc.’ (Lanza 1999: 412). She argues that quite often they were finally authorized precisely because they were foreign and thus demonstrated the spiritual nobility of Spain (ibid.). Ex negativo they illustrated Franco’s lifelong mantra that Spain was ‘Europe’s spiritual sanctuary’. For Wilder’s The Apartment (1960), the ex negativo argument was specifically adduced in a letter of appeal by the import and distribution company CB Films (Vandaele 2006: 227), and the film was accordingly subjected to a range of thematic cuts (ibid.: 260). Regarding the censors’ response to films of this kind, I argue that we should distinguish between conservative censors, who banned as much immoral film material as possible, irrespective of its origin, and more tolerant censors who used pretend, pseudo-Francoist arguments to authorize high-quality film repertoires (a similar case was discussed earlier, for the case of Kant). This distinction between authentic and dissimulated commentaries crucially depends on the censor’s identity as extrapolated from other sources. When film distributors pointed out the ‘inherently comic nature’ of the film, or the ‘unavoidability’ of a character’s behaviour in certain circumstances, moderate or tolerant censors were happy to accept these explanations. In the case of humour, moreover, even the more conservative censors found it difficult to ban a film that they themselves had laughed at (Some Like It Hot, for instance). Another extenuating circumstance could be that the things represented were merely nightmarish recollections (Repulsion, Gutiérrez Lanza 1999: 317) or far-fetched daydreams (The Seven Year Itch, Vandaele 2007) in a fictional world, even if these scenes were ‘crudely’ represented, as some ultra-Catholics complained. And although this was hard to accomplish for film, distributors even suggested framing the story by adding a prologue (The Fugitive Kind, Gutiérrez Lanza 1999: 213). Conversely, Wilder’s original prologue to The Seven Year Itch was found too obscene and therefore cut (Vandaele 2007). It jokingly drew a parallel between the male sexual obsessions of modern New Yorkers and similar erotic preoccupations of precolonial Native Americans. The more tolerant censors of the Apertura (1963–9), who laughed and played along with the distributors’ pretences, generally had a Falangist background: Fernández Cuenca, Gómez Mesa, José María García Escudero, Arroita-Jáuregui, Aúz Castro (director of the Teatro Español Universitario and the Teatros de Cámara y Ensayo; see later in the chapter). Some Falangist censors of the national-Catholicist era (1951–62) were noticeably more tolerant in moral issues than their ultra-Catholic

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colleagues, but they lacked internal power. Interestingly, in 1960 the old-time fascist macho Patricio G. De Canales was the only one who dared to find Sidney Lumet’s and Tennessee Williams’ The Fugitive Kind acceptable, despite its adulterous theme (Gutiérrez Lanza 1999: 209, referring to Canales’ vote in November 1960). In January 1961, however, Some Like It Hot’s cross-gendered and homosexual overtones were completely unacceptable for Canales, who condemned the two main male characters as ‘poofs’ [maricas]. It is well known that a new surge of moral ‘integrism’ or ultraconservatism arose from 1969, when Minister Sánchez Bella took over power from the aperturista Fraga Iribarne (who had, in turn, succeeded Arias Salgado). The Billy Wilder files also became much more anonymous in the 1970s. Furthermore, according to Abellán (1980: 10), one of the first researchers to gain access to the censorship files, between 1975 and 1977 much information seems to have been deleted. In this sense it is fortunate that Gutiérrez Lanza was able to present a full list of censors for a 1974 evaluation of Repulsion. Some names are familiar – Gómez Mesa,23 Fernández Cuenca24 – but others are new: Father Eugenio Benito, Sáenz de Heredia (director of Raza [Race], 1942),25 José María Ramos, Rafael Gil,26 Guillermo Fernández López Zúñiga and Pablo Martín Vara. The Hays Code had been abolished in 1966, so that more violent and erotic films were now being produced in the US and exported. During the five years 1962–66, the film censorship norms of the Francoist state and Hollywood’s poetics had converged, but between 1969 and 1975 they started diverging more than ever before. More research is required on the translation dynamics of this period which was full of norm conflicts between agents who wanted to increase, maintain, halt or even reverse the Apertura. These conflicts may have been a source of retrospective embarrassment for the more reactionary censors, who later wanted to avoid their names being associated with conservative norms and the conflicts surrounding them. In any event, it is clear that Francoism was never able to create a successful repertoire of its own. Culturally and economically, it was too poor to cater for the first Spanish generation born after the Civil War, who reached adulthood around 1960. State censorship fought the symptoms, but could not address the underlying cause of the demand for ‘undesirable’ repertoire, which was a cultural hunger for creative products. Even ex-fascists preferred American films to national-Catholic austerity. Unsurprisingly, then, 3107 foreign films were shown in the period between 1951 and 1975, of which 73 per cent were North American, 22 per cent British, and 4 per cent from other countries (Gutiérrez Lanza

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1999: 411; 2000). It remains to be verified whether the figures are very different for the war years (1941–45) and the post-war autarkic years (1945–51). However, since the wave of anglophilia in theatre had already reached Spain in the years before the Spanish Civil War (Pérez López de Heredia 2004), it is quite likely that anglophone film also dominated in periods before 1951.

Theatre Around the First World War, Pérez López de Heredia (2004) argues, American works gradually replaced French as the most dominant foreign presence in the Spanish theatrical system. Political factors were not irrelevant to this cultural reorientation. When Spanish modernists sided against the Germans, they also sided with the English-speaking allies (Pérez López de Heredia 2004: 38). Pérez shows that the US provided Spaniards with two different sorts of theatre, conservative and innovative, because Francoism could not offer audiences what they wanted. Thus, on the one hand, the regime’s first main theatres (María Guerrero and Español) were meant to serve the nation, as Ridruejo said (ibid.: 49), as well as its morality, as Nicolás González Ruiz stated (ibid.: 50).27 Also, theatre had to be performed in Spanish, and not in Catalan, Galician or Euskera (Basque) – this fascist decision was taken in 1941, when film dubbing into Spanish was also imposed by law (ibid.: 54–5). On the other hand, translations gradually imported innovative elements. While conservative American theatre entered Spain from the 1940s, the more realist and transgressive sort of performances had to wait ten more years. Using Robyns’ terminology (1994), Pérez López de Heredia calls the Spanish theatre system ‘defective’ in the sense that it consciously or unconsciously sought abroad what it lacked at home. In the aftermath of the Civil War, given the paper shortage, it even had to search for publishable translations abroad – in Argentina (ibid.: 61ff.). In Merino’s (2004: 50) corpus of Spanish theatre translations from the English, only nine per cent of the editions come from Argentina, but this may be partly due to her choosing the period 1958–85, that is, including ten post-Francoist years.28 The historical links between theatre and film are very relevant here. Around the First World War, Broadway became an inventor and exporter of repertoire rather than an importer of European bourgeois comedy and detective melodramas (Pérez López de Heredia 2004: 35). The new repertoire (Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, Maxwell Anderson, Thornton Wilder and later Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee)

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was based on a new hero, the common man, and was spoken in a more spontaneous register. The most successful pieces were automatically adapted by the Hollywood studios, which also meant that they were censored according to the Hays Code. In Spain both conservative and modern theatre would profit from the Hollywood connection. Hollywood had a very strong lobby in Francoist Spain because Spain always remained one of its ten most important markets worldwide (see Vandaele 2006). Much more than Broadway, it was an institutional lobby that spoke in one voice and could thus impose its products. In the case of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the film version that had been censored by Hollywood was used as an extra source text to help create a (necessarily domesticated) Spanish theatre version. By means of this one specific example, Pérez López de Heredia argues that authorization of a text in the realm of film was a strong argument for an administrative nihil obstat in the realm of theatre. It seems that Francoism generally applied the same normative codes to film and theatre (Merino 2001: 235), although Catholics feared the former more than the latter. Thus, even though the Church’s extra muros censorship showed a special fear of film (urged by the 1936 encyclical Vigilanti Cura), the code it published in 1950 applied to the performing arts in general (Instrucciones y Normas para la Censura Moral de Espectáculos). The 1963 code of the Apertura also applied to both dramatic art forms. From the beginning of Francoism, there were a special Departamento, Junta and Comisión for film, but they all answered to the same Dirección General de Propaganda. In the Party (1941–45) there was a Delegación Nacional de Cine y Teatro (headed by Fernández Cuenca, see n. 24) including a Junta, which worked for the Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular headed by Arias Salgado (see Chueca 1983: 229). This structure for film and theatre (that is, a Delegación and a Junta) was transferred back to the government in 1945. From 1951 onwards, the Delegación became a Dirección but its competences remained the same. Unfortunately, neither Pérez López de Heredia (2004) nor Bandín (2007) mention the censors’ names, which makes it difficult to see if there were many members common to the theatre and the film board, although it may be safe to assume that this was the case. We know that Víctor Aúz (born 1935), for example, was an aperturista on the 1963 film board, a theatre director of TEU (Teatro Español Universitario) and a TEU official in 1966 (Vandaele 2006: 512). The Director General was automatically President on both boards. Shakespeare translator Nicolás González Ruiz occasionally worked as a film censor too (e.g., for Wilder’s Sabrina in 1955). The moderate Florentino Soria (censor of

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Irma La Douce) censored Fernando Arrabal’s El gran ceremonial (Arrabal in Tiempo; 6 March 1995). The connections between cinema and theatre do not stop here. As in the realm of film, but earlier perhaps, a special circuit was created for more progressive theatre, the Teatros de Cámara y Ensayo. Pérez López de Heredia (2004: 59) says in this respect that a 1955 decree merely officialized a practice that had been in existence since the late 1940s. And as in film translation, self-censorship – the translational habitus – was so effective in the theatrical realm that the Board did not often have to impose its own ‘external’ censorship. 71.5 per cent of the works submitted for censorship were authorized for adults over 18, and only eight per cent were prohibited (ibid.: 125). For the period studied by Pérez López de Heredia (1936–62), Table 4.2 shows the 11 most requested plays in translation, some of which were clearly innovative. Of what Pérez López de Heredia calls the ‘conservative scene’, only one play was banned: Romance by Edward Sheldon (1913) was impossible to authorize in 1943 and 1949 because it was about a protestant bishop falling in love (Pérez López de Heredia 2007: 191). Although the ecclesiastic censor had no qualms about the plot (because the bishop does not succumb to his passion), others decided that Catholic audiences might misinterpret the play as a tale of inappropriate lust. As for innovative theatre, A Streetcar Named Desire was severely criticized by the 1950 Board (which called it an almost eschatological play about social decay)29 yet one year later a re-written version was authorized in which

Table 4.2 The translated plays most frequently presented to the censors, 1936–62 Files

Title

Author

10 8 6 6 6 5 5 4 4 4 4

Angel Street The Trial of Mary Dugan Baby Mine Our Town A Streetcar Named Desire Desire Under the Elms The Glass Menagerie Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Death of a Salesman A Hatful of Rain Tea and Sympathy

Patrick Hamilton Bayard Veiller Margaret Mayo Thornton Wilder Tennessee Williams Eugene O’Neill Tennessee Williams Tennessee Williams Arthur Miller Michael Gazzo Robert A. Anderson

Source: Based on Pérez López de Heredia (2004: 120).

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the final scene between Blanche and Stanley was deleted, and references to homosexuality became negative (Pérez López de Heredia 2004: 163). Generally speaking, it seems that theatre was easier to mould than film because it did not come with pictures on celluloid.30 Thus, the (already censored) Hollywood version of Streetcar (directed by Elia Kazan) was not authorized by the Spanish Board in 1952 (ibid.: 166) – although it would be in 1956. Yet in spite of the drastic rewriting of the stage version and the other types of censorship, Pérez López de Heredia argues, Un tranvía llamado deseo pushed the limits of what could be shown in theatres at the time. Pérez López de Heredia also points out that North American drama – especially Miller’s Death of a Salesman – strongly influenced the Spanish theatre (ibid.: 174).31 American works were as omnipresent on the stage as they were in film. From the mid1950s there were nine or more American premieres per year in Spain: 17 in 1957, 19 in 1959, 14 in 1960, 12 in 1961 and 15 in 1962 (ibid.: 122). One major difference between film and theatre, however, was the apparent influence of theatre directors and producers on the Censorship Board’s decisions. In 1941, 1942 and 1945, for example, the Board did not find a translation of Jimmy Samson by Paul Armstrong (1914) suitable for the stage, yet still in 1945 its performance was authorized when another company with better connections submitted the same translation to the same board (ibid.: 131). Regarding the relation between theatre and book, Pérez López de Heredia (2004: 123–4) has calculated that 35 per cent of the staged versions in her corpus were also published, and that almost 90 per cent of all published versions had previously been staged (in other words, 65 per cent of the performances were not published and 10 per cent of the book versions were not performed). Bandín (2007), like Pérez López de Heredia a researcher on the TRACE project, moreover explains that classical theatre belonged more to the written circuit, whereas modern theatre was almost exclusively geared toward performance. She shows that classical English drama – perhaps even classical works in general – were considered less disruptive than modern theatre. Unsurprisingly, in classical English drama Shakespeare accounts for by far the most database entries, with performances of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear and Julius Caesar. A Shakespeare translation was presented over 500 times to the State censorship authority in Francoist times. Bandín affirms that all of these requests were authorized without any kind of restriction, except Troilus and Cressida, translated by the brilliant, anti-fascist, homosexual poet Luis Cernuda and submitted by Insula in 1953 (Bandín 2007: xvii).

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As for staged versions, nine per cent of the plays were censored from a conservative point of view (ibid.: xviii), often targeting eroticism and ‘indecent’ language (ibid.: xxxi). Bandín’s English summary of her work32 does not offer textual analyses, but it does include one culturally important example, relating to Hamlet. Shakespeare’s masterpiece was translated in the period by Astrana Marín (1940), Enrique Guitart (1945), José María Pemán (1949), Nicolás González Ruiz (1960) and Antonio Buero Vallejo (1961). Bandín writes that the critics would not accept that ‘Buero sent Ophelia to a brothel’. However, there is in fact still widespread disagreement as to whether nunnery was also slang for ‘brothel’ and whether such innuendo was intended by Shakespeare (see, e.g., Evans 1986); translator Buero Vallejo’s choice may thus not have broken any ‘prevailing norm’ (as Bandín claims, 2007: xxxv). The fact, for example, that a word like hideputa (from hijo de puta) was acceptable in 1945 (Guitart’s version) and not acceptable in 1961 (Buero’s translation) may hint at a censor’s personal antipathy toward a translator or at idiosyncratic decisions yet simultaneously also at a change in normative poetics (from Falangist to Catholicist). In fact, Bandín’s study (2005) of Ben Jonson’s Volpone may testify to a similar normative conflict between the poetics of its translator, the rightwing humorist Tomás Borrás (author of the anti-Republican novel Chekas de Madrid), and the norms of some Catholic censor who banned the word cornudo from the Borrás translation (Bandín 2005: 34). In 1942 Borrás was certainly more of a Falangist than a Catholicist. The founder of the Sindicato Nacional del Espectáculo, he believed that by nationalizing the playhouse Teatro Español he had taken ‘the right course’ in ‘the Spain of the Falange’ because ‘theatre is an art for the people’ (Borrás 1942 quoted in Wahnón 1996: 208).

Literature Written literature was considered less dangerous than visually performed fiction, though perhaps not when the literature was meant for children, as Fernández López’s (2000, 2007) research shows. More than half of the books translated for young Spanish people in the period were originally written in English. Worldwide, and until the 1960s, such writings were restricted by taboos on violence-for-fun, death of children or parents, divorce, alienation, and killers (Fernández López 2000). In Spain the legislation was ambiguous until 1955 (Fernández López 2007: 20), yet censorship actually decreased once the procedures were

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officialized – what Fernández calls the ‘bureaucratization’ of children’s literature censorship (ibid.: 44). Fernández found 118 censorship files for the 1940s (12 of which dealt with cases which were morally and/or politically ‘problematic’), 48 for the 1950s (with 4 ‘interventions’), 20 for the 1960s (no problems) and 8, all unproblematic, cases for the 1970s (ibid.: 26). Of three British bestselling authors (Blyton, Dahl, Crompton), only Crompton encountered problems in Spain (7 bans; see also Craig 1998). Regarding genre, until late in the 1960s adventures and moralizing books written by members of the clergy were particularly widely distributed (ibid.: 21). Distinguishing three different periods – Autarquía (1940–54), desarrollismo (‘developism’, 1955–69) and late Francoism (1970–5)33 – Fernández López’s 2000 study surveys the editorial and administrative landscape and the often drastically adaptive translation strategies. Similarly, Craig (1998: 157) claims that the censorship was ‘harsher than Francoist literary censorship generally’. Original gender roles were confirmed, racist stereotypes were enhanced, and some types of irony were forbidden (Fernández López 2000). Fernández López finds that the values underlying Francoist censorship more closely resembled Italian Fascist poetics than German Nazi aesthetics, because Francoism focused on family and gender roles.34 In future research, this claim may need to be refined and substantiated. As always in Francoist Spain, translators were supposed to accept the moral guidance of the Roman Catholic Church (Fernández López 2007: 29). The ‘grand Inquisitor’ of children’s literature was Enrique Conde. Other readers included Valentín García Yebra, Leopoldo Panero and Darío Fernández Flórez (ibid.: 41). As a censor, Darío Fernández Flórez did not limit himself to children’s fiction. A ‘university friend of the prominent Falangists Antonio Tovar, Dionisio Ridruejo […] and Pedro Laín Entralgo’, he was ‘less firmly Falangist’, Jacqueline Hurtley writes (2007: 63). Fernández Flórez censored D. H. Lawrence’s story ‘None of that!’ because it contained such sentences as ‘He was not clever at all, he was not even clever enough to become a general’, or ‘She is as easy to embrace as an octopus, her gate is a beak. What man would put his finger into that beak? She is all soft with cruelty towards a man’s member’ (ibid.: 66). Yet at the same time he used his knowledge to write a 20-page review of the story for the pro-Falangist Escorial (1942).35 Fernández Flórez worked for a long time at the Delegación Nacional de Propaganda but gradually became alienated. In Catholic times, he yearned for ‘flesh and blood characters’ (quoted in Hurtley 2007: 69). Hurtley hypothesizes that this lost – but still lingering – poetics originally

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led Fernández Flórez in 1945 to authorize Rosamond Lehmann’s The Weather in the Street (1939), a novel about divorce, adultery and even abortion (translated as Intemperie; note that even in 1945, divorce and abortion would have been impossible in film, and any adultery would have had to be severely punished). It was the Janés house which published Lehmann’s work, as part of its constant challenge to the regime (Hurtley 2007: 73). In 1942 another highly adapted translation promoted by Janés, Charles Morgan’s Retrato en un espejo (Portrait in a Mirror), was authorized by the Falangist Patricio G. De Canales – who would later say that Some Like It Hot was about ‘poofs’ – and praised in a press article by Fernández Flórez. A study by Alberto Lázaro (2005b: 123) also stresses the role played by Janés in bringing Huxley, Joyce, Woolf and many more writers to Spain. In 1951 a censor rejected Janés’ proposal to publish Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London because the language was too crude, despite ‘the literary and thematic interest’ (to wit, class exploitation). Four years later, however, an Argentinian translation of the book was authorized without restrictions, perhaps because only 300 copies were to be imported or because the censors considered it a work of fiction. Lázaro rhetorically asks if these censors were actually aware that Orwell had been a member of the Marxist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) and had fought Franco’s forces on the Aragon front (ibid.: 124). Yet, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his collections of essays could not be published until the pieces on the Spanish War and the ‘Notes on Nationalism’ had been deleted, and until ‘fascist’ had been replace by ‘francoist’, ‘loyalist’ by ‘government-supporting’, and ‘revolt’ by ‘uprising’ (ibid.: 127ff.). Discussing the Francoist reception of James Joyce, Lázaro (2001) quotes the Spanish novelist Torrente Ballester, who explained that it was hard to get hold of Argentinian versions of Joyce in the 1940s because private purchasers were not allowed to share them (Lazaro 2001: 40). Actually, Lázaro explains, Joyce’s work encountered relatively few problems with Spanish censors. Ulysses came late to Spain (1947), in an Argentinian translation, but was favourably received. It was the Argentinian translation of Stephen Hero (as Steban héroe) that led to negative reports because it was about ‘a rebel against the ideas, traditions and religious feelings of his homeland, Ireland’ (Lázaro 2001: 47; his translation of a 1960 report). The treatment of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man gives us an unflattering picture of the Franco administration. On 13 February 1963, Editorial Biblioteca Nueva was allowed to publish an unabridged second

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edition of the 1926 translation, whereas three months later Editorial Vergara was obliged to make deletions before publishing its version of the same translation (an example was the sentence ‘Did the idea ever occur to you, Cranly asked, that Jesus was not what he pretended to be?’ ibid.: 52). It is unclear whether pure chaos, administrative discontinuity or a change of guard was the cause of this incoherent stance. After Francoism, Spanish cultural producers often complained about the supposed arbitrariness of Francoist censorship criteria, which generally diminished confidence in the publication process and hence the desire to produce. While this claim is truthful as an insiders’ account of Francoist production, it should be handled with caution in a scholarly study of macrocultural processes: in fact, Francoist censorship norms were much more robust and predictable than cultural criticism in pluralist societies (or, indeed, than in the regimes of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany; see Rundle’s and Sturge’s chapters in this volume). However, since the Francoist norms determined the very presence of particular repertoires, whereas criticism in open societies could at most contribute to determining their success in certain sectors, any deviance from absolute predictability could be experienced under Francoism as a personal and financial trauma, whereas in a democracy it might be merely a surprising or disappointing (or even negligible) part of a work’s reception. Cristina Gómez Castro (2009) finds a high degree of predictability in the censorship criteria applied to translations of US bestsellers, at least towards the end of the period. And for film, too, reception under Franco is remarkably consistent. However, much remains to be discovered in the literary field. Apart from important work by Behiels (2006), for example, translations from the French are conspicuously absent from current investigations.

Conclusions Many have warned against sloppy use of the terms ‘fascism’ and ‘fascist’. In Spain Rodríguez Puértolas has been severely criticized for calling his volume on Francoist literature Literatura fascista española (1986). On the other hand we should not avoid these terms if they are useful. Fascism was not a movement for export, Paxton (2004) argues, yet fascism also allowed (or obliged) each ‘people’ to choose its own ‘destiny’. Some sectors of the Falange had clearly chosen religion as the destiny of the Spanish but the Falange was also imperialist, anti-Marxist, corporatist, male chauvinist and violent. It copied Italian laws and institutions, and modelled its translation and language laws on Mussolini’s politics. In

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this sense, the early Falange was at least ‘para-fascist’. The Falange was unsuccessful in the 1936 elections but it took part in government in early Francoism (1940–45) and harboured fascists and religious parafascists who exerted much control over the importation of foreign repertoires. It is perhaps too early to say how Spanish para-fascism differed from (national-) Catholicism in its treatment of the foreign. But Falangist censorship of foreign repertoires certainly seems to have been less moralizing and more political than Catholicist poetics. The period between 1945 and 1950 shows many examples of these conflicting ‘poetics of importation’. While Catholicists feared modernity (especially in 1950–62), Falangists loved it if it had ‘good origins’ or if it did not attack them or their friends – remembering Eco’s (1995) claim that perceived humiliation-by-enemies is an essential trait of ur-fascism. As a paradoxical result of these norm conflicts, old or ‘converted’ or ‘liberal’ fascists contributed to the formation of a counterculture in the 1950s which would lead to a relative broadening of the repertoires during the Apertura (1963–69). Biographies of censors and of agents in general – their ties and their religious affiliations – help us understand their cultural agency; conversely, their cultural acts throw light on who they were – despite the apparent circularity of such hermeneutics. As Paxton (2004) argues, we should study what (para-) fascists did, not just what they said they would do. What Francoist censors did in matters of translation and importation seems to have been determined by their ideological affiliation: Falangist or Catholicist (or both, as national-Catholics). Or, inductively: what Francoist censors did may tell us more about their ideology. By studying translational acts (translation, selective translation, translation for a selective audience, and nontranslation) we begin to see differently the ‘negativities’ or non-dits of Francoist cultural politics. Francoist culture in general was what it was not, but Catholicists excluded more and different repertoires than Falangists or ex-Falangists. Different exclusions were, arguably, based on different ideologies.

Notes 1. To be more precise, the Second Republic was installed after elections organized by King Alfonso XIII in a vain attempt to find democratic support for a monarchy. 2. The ‘Spanish Traditionalist Phalanx and [Phalanx] of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive’.

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3. Invited to Rome in 1928 for a series of academic lectures, the writer and diplomat Giménez Caballero found in Fascist Italy what the humiliated, ex-colonial Spanish nation needed: an athletic appeal, a Duce and disciplined enthusiastic masses (Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 53, paraphrasing Giménez Caballero). 4. An Andalusian journalist and politician, Aparicio wrote for Giménez Caballero’s Gaceta Literaria (published between 1927 and 1932). He was also the person who later proposed that the Falange adopt the yoke and arrows as its main symbol (Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 53). See note 10 for the link between Francoist censorship and Giménez Caballero and Aparicio. 5. Ledesma (2003: 47), the author of ¿Fascismo en España? (1935), was in Carbajosa and Carbajosa’s view ‘the most genuinely fascist’, Germanyoriented and revolutionary of the leaders of Spanish fascism. He was executed by the Republicans in 1936. 6. The group’s manifesto in La Conquista del Estado, 14 March 1931, No. 1, pp. 1–2, was published one month before the elections which would force the King into exile and install the Second Republic. The manifesto is available at www.filosofia.org/hem/193/lce/lce011b.htm. 7. The writer, ex-reporter of the Rif War (like Giménez Caballero), and (later) politician Sánchez Mazas was a correspondent for the monarchic newspaper ABC in Rome between 1922 and 1929, where he also fell for Mussolini’s Fascism (Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 44). 8. Even-Zohar speaks of ‘system’ rather than ‘culture’. His cultural theory is known as Polysystem Theory (or Polysystem Hypothesis). There are at least two reasons why Even-Zohar prefers ‘system’ to ‘culture’. First, the notion of system comes with the assumption that there are always important links between the elements (here: cultural repertoires) of a system (e.g. a ‘hispano-fascist’ system), and that there are possible links between systems (e.g. fascism, ultra-Catholicism) of a broader polysystem (e.g. the Francoist polysystem). Polysystem theory is thus a working hypothesis of manifold relatedness – an initial assumption to be tested empirically. Although I will not always use ‘system’ for ‘culture’, in this essay culture is generally intended in a similarly systemic way. Second, unlike ‘culture’, the concept of ‘system’ is less prone to exclude political, economic and social issues from scholarly investigation into cultural products. In other words: as a cultural theory, system theory is contextual. 9. I will use ‘Catholicist’ in the following to refer to persons or practices that turn Catholic religion into an active state ideology. A person can be Catholic or ultra-Catholic without being Catholicist. Conversely, under Franco a Catholicist was usually an ultra-Catholic. 10. Among these followers I count high-profile personalities who strongly influenced the importation (or not) and translation (or not) of foreign films. The following are among the most important of these: Dionisio Ridruejo (in 1938 a fascist and the first director of the Dirección General de Propaganda, answerable to the Minister of Internal Affairs Serrano Súñer), Augusto Manuel García Viñolas (director of the Departamento Nacional de Cinematografía, answerable to Ridruejo), the viejofalangista or ‘old-school Falangist’ Patricio G. de Canales (first director in 1936 of Falange Española [Payne 1985:143]), Javier de Echarri (director of the Falangist journal Arriba

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11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

between 1939 and 1949), Carlos Fernández Cuenca (who in 1942 wanted to model the film review Primer Plano on the Italian Cinema, lead by ‘none less than Vittorio Mussolini, the son of the Duce’; Primer Plano, s.n., 1045, 23 October 1960), Luis Gómez Mesa (film censor representing the Falange between 1938 and 1942; a critic writing for Giménez Caballero’s La Gaceta Literaria), David Jato (‘histórico fundador del Sindicato Español Universitario’ [Gracia 1996: 39], ‘Escuadrista de la Vieja Falange’ [Primer plano 290, May 1946]), Pedro Mourlane Michelena (writer for Vértice. Revista Nacional de la Falange; one of the literary predecessors of Spanish fascism [Rodríguez Puértolas 1986: 75]; very close to Rafael Sánchez Mazas, founder of the Falange; after the Civil War Mourlane Michelena had ‘una sucesión de cargos en los medios más relevantes del periodismo falangista y del Régimen’ [Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 257]), Jesús Suevos (‘Participa en 1933 en el mitin de Villagarcía, al lado de [=standing next to] José Antonio’; Suevos was considered ‘uno de los oradores clásicos de la Falange’ by Primer Plano and as a Galician youngster he was the ‘primer jefe territorial de la región, con la camisa azul de combatiente de la guerra de la Liberación’ [Primer Plano 543, 11 March 1951]). These agents would not necessarily remain fascist but most of them did not become ultra-Catholic after 1945. ‘Una de las cosas en que nuestra época se distingue de las anteriores es por su mayor capacidad analítica. La fenomenología y sus consecuencias (por entre ellas, si quieres, la instrucción del buen existencialismo, el de Heidegger, no el del imbécil de Sartre), la bomba atómica y todo lo demás, son una prueba de ello.’ All translations from the Spanish are my own unless otherwise noted. ‘La condenación de la Iglesia es del año 1948, quizá entonces la filosofía existencialista se consideró más peligrosa.’ El prólogo del traductor está muy bien en el sentido de encuadrar esta obra en el pensamiento del autor. Abellán’s otherwise groundbreaking study of Francoist censorship (1980) suggested that the ultra-Catholic and other censors of 1950–75 were somehow intellectually mediocre compared to the gloriously academic censors operating before 1950. See Vandaele 2006 for a critique of these frequently quoted views. In fact, not even Plato was free from Francoist suspicion. Uribarri (2007a: 156) mentions that Diálogos de Platón (Ediciones Ibéricas) were manipulated (file 3209–68). However, no date or further details are given. File number 36/3279 in the AGA, Archivo General de la Administración. ‘digna de un pueblo de tenderos, incapaz de la menor elegancia espiritual’. See File number 36/3453 in the AGA, Archivo General de la Administración; board ‘preview’ of 28 April 1953. Not to be confused with the more important José María García Escudero (see later). In Bourdieu’s sense (1972: 178–9). Translators also have such a habitus, a disposition to follow certain norms in practice – in Simeoni’s words, a servitude volontaire (1998: 23). Sidney Lumet’s The Fugitive Kind (1959), Henry King’s Beloved Infidel (1959), Marc Robson’s From the Terrace (1960), Marc Lawrence’s Nightmare in the Sun (1965), and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965).

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23. Gómez Mesa was a high-profile censor and journalist with strong Falangist connections. Film critic of the Falangist Arriba and La Gaceta Literaria, deputy of Falangist García Viñolas in the Junta Superior de Censura Cinematográfica, and a censor from 1939 onward, Gómez Mesa is praised for his ‘militante pluma’ [militant pen] in the Falangist film journal Primer Plano (286, April 1946). He also worked for the non-Falangist press, such as the newspaper ABC and the ultra-Catholic Revista Internacional de Cine (Vandaele 2006). 24. Fernández Cuenca was a very high-profile censor, journalist, writer and professor at the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía. From March until June 1942, he was the director of the Falangist Primer Plano. In 1954, he became director of the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas, and remained an important censor during the Apertura. 25. Raza is a celebration of Francoist Spain, based on a scenario by ‘Jaime de Andrade’, the pseudonym of Francisco Franco. The para-fascist symbolism of its 1942 version (including fascist-inflected greetings) was censored in a new 1950 version. 26. A prolific Spanish filmmaker (1913–86) whose repertoire was clearly acceptable for Francoism. 27. González Ruiz was also a film censor. 28. Francoist censorship was abolished between 1976 and 1978 (González Ballesteros 1981: 195–8). Nonetheless the TRACE project includes the period 1975–85 because – according to project leader Rosa Rabadán – some ‘control’ was still exerted until 1985 (Rabadán 2000a: 9). I believe, however, that a clear distinction should be made between the practice of censorship and some irrelevant administrative remnants of it. 29. ‘pieza casi escatológica y de descomposición social’. 30. In Francoist theatre adaptations, a crucifix might, for instance, be added to the set. 31. See also Merino (1994: 96) on Miller’s A View from The Bridge (1955). 32. At the time of writing, the full Spanish version of Bandín (2007) was not yet available. 33. Fernández’ periods follow Francoism’s economic evolution. The periodization offered in this paper (and Vandaele 2006: 46–7) is slightly different, focusing on censorship ideology. Although culture is of course connected to the economy, the evolution of Francoist cultural ideology is not a mere reflection of economic changes. 34. According to Paxton (2002: 215), however, ‘[t]he macho restoration of a threatened patriarchy […] comes close to being a universal fascist value’, even though ‘Mussolini advocated female suffrage in his first program, and Hitler did not mention gender issues in his 25 Points’. Although their gender policies were comparable in many respects, a cardinal difference between Nazism and Falangism was the latter’s insistence on female shame. Girls and women were to be modest and shameful (Richmond 2003: 26). 35. On Francoist censorship of D. H. Lawrence, see also Lázaro (2004).

5 Translation in Portugal during the Estado Novo Regime Teresa Seruya

Introduction The invisibility of Portugal in translation history Without denying responsibility on the part of Portuguese scholars, it is a fact that the history of translation in Portugal remains non-existent to most translation studies experts. The most striking example are the two editions of Mona Baker’s Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2009), in the second part of which, ‘History and Traditions’, Portugal is totally absent. The present brief study aims to help fill this gap in the world map of relations between cultures and traditions, although on the relatively small scale of a four-decade period. Research on translation and censorship in fascist systems started several years ago without a Portuguese contribution, although some work has now begun to make up for this conspicuous absence.1 In view of the lack of existing research, I will first outline the political and cultural frame of the study, before moving on in the second section to a general survey of the translation of literature published in book form between 1940 and 1970, including the status of translation and translators in the period. The third section addresses the censorship system and its impact on translation in general, including the legal framework and the modus faciendi of the Censoring Commission. I will offer an overview of banned books and discuss the criteria applied by the censors, based on the findings of former studies (Seruya and Moniz 2008b) and argue that these convey a realistic picture of the period’s dominant values. Some comments on the efficacy of censorship in the Estado Novo will close the chapter.

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Translation during the Estado Novo

The Estado Novo, 1933–74 The few, and very unstable, years of the first Republic in Portugal (1910–26) ended with the coup d’état which led to a military dictatorship in the subsequent seven years. The founding moment of the Estado Novo, as the regime called itself, was the new Constitution approved in 1933, the legal basis of Western Europe’s longest dictatorship in the twentieth century. Salazar himself ruled as Prime Minister from 1932 to 1968, when he was replaced by Marcelo Caetano due to ill health. For more than a decade the Estado Novo was contemporary with German National Socialism (which found followers in Portugal among certain politicians and especially youth organizations) and Italian Fascism. As regards Spain, official Portuguese support was accorded to Franco, both during and after the Civil War (1936–39), which is not surprising, considering their common enemy, Communism. Whether the Estado Novo should be termed a fascist regime or not was for a long time a controversial issue, discussed mainly according to political positions (after 1974, former opponents of the regime would always refer to the period as fascist). Nowadays, after extensive historical and sociological research, there is a consensus that the Portuguese situation was a dictatorship, but also that it does not fully match the characteristics of European fascisms (for example, the sole party, União Nacional, founded in 1930, was not a fascist party, and programmatic, organized anti-Semitism did not exist; see Costa Pinto 1992).2 It was Salazar himself who, as early as 1930, referred to ‘our Dictatorship’ as ‘an event similar to many others that, at this moment, either with or without the participation of parliaments, are taking place all over the world. For the object of all these movements is to invest the ruling powers with prestige and force, enabling them to withstand disorder, and to provide suitable working conditions for the nation’ (Salazar 1939: 91).3 A few years later, in 1936, he made himself very clear as regards the features of the ‘New Portuguese State’: ‘We are anti-parliamentarians, anti-democrats, anti-liberals, and we are determined to establish a corporative State’ (ibid.: 29). The political police repressing political, social and moral deviance, official propaganda mainly concerned with a national identity and with the regime’s image abroad, and institutionalized censorship were crucial instruments in the implementation of the regime’s policies. Historians also mention ‘social Catholicism’ as a spiritual basis of Salazar’s thought and action.4 The nation’s identity is Christian and Catholic, which holds true even today: according to a survey on national identity carried out by the International Social Survey Programme in 2008, 68.5 per cent of Portuguese respondents said that to be Portuguese is to be Catholic.5

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Salazar’s thought was deeply shaped by devotion to the ideal of the nation, which underlay all theory and political praxis of the period and was expressed in 1929 in the famous slogan: ‘All for the nation – nothing against the nation’ (Salazar 1939: 59).6 Salazar justified the nation’s greatness by the historical fact of its being the oldest state in Europe. In a 1936 interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said: Portugal is the only state in Europe existing for eight centuries which can be proud of still being today how it was at its beginning; its frontiers have not changed since the first kings drew them with the sword in the 12th and 13th centuries in the Iberian Peninsula: it is how it was. (In Henriques and Mello 2007: 42) The priority given to the nation meant rejecting all political pluralism: ‘Anyone who is placed on national ground has neither parties, nor groups, nor schools: he/she takes advantage of all materials […] to reconstruct the country’ (Salazar 1935: 263).7 Salazar ruled alone over the National Union, as he did over the state. The Caetano years (1968–74) did not change much on the whole. They are today considered a ‘failed transition’ (Rosas and Oliveira 2004). The overseas territories (or Ultramar) were considered part of the national whole, part of the Portuguese Empire derived from the Golden Age of Discoveries. Its military defence, when the colonial war started in 1961, had never been questioned at governmental level, either after the end of the Second World War or in the late 1950s, when the African independence movements emerged. In 1974 the colonial question had come to a deadlock. The significance of its role in the regime’s identity is indicated by the fact that the regime’s overthrow was mainly caused by the military’s organized protest against the war (called the Captains’ Movement, which led to the coup d’état on 25 April 1974). Culture and politics under Salazar and Caetano In his discussion of the concept of culture planning, Gideon Toury (2003: 403) does not mention the case of dictatorships, where very deliberate acts of ‘intervention in a current state of affairs within a social group’ occur at state level. By definition, the Estado Novo sought to create a new order, Salazar having defined the situation he had encountered as ‘disorder’ in all domains (Salazar 1935: 47).8 With the help of legislation and the establishment of several institutions on the one hand, and the launch of a fight against illiteracy on the other, the new order was to be

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extended to the domains of education and culture. Nevertheless, very soon – already in the early 1940s – some oppositional groups resisted being integrated into the regime’s ‘intervention’ and advanced their own plans. We can speak therefore of a dichotomy of ‘Establishment’ versus ‘opposition’ with their respective strategies of culture planning. What Portuguese literary history calls ‘neo-realism’ (1943–53) – the ‘hegemonic culture of the 1940s in Portugal’ (Lourenço 1994: 288), ideologically shaped by Marxism, albeit an emotionally oriented Marxism (ibid.: 288–9) – is an interesting case of an anti-culture coexisting with the official culture. Salazar’s ‘dark shadow’, it was kept under surveillance but not considered subversive by the dictator (ibid.: 290–1). Based on its nationalist ideals, the regime had been aspiring to institutionalize its portugalidade [Portugality] since the early 1930s. The success of this lofty goal depended on an identification between the rulers and the people and mutual acknowledgement. The rulers, beginning with Salazar himself, propagated this identification at the discourse level, using the first person plural as a subject to signal a shared viewpoint, the absence of conflict. But there were other, more concrete instruments at the service of Portugality. The Propaganda Secretariat (SPN, later SNI)9 had ‘the great mission of raising the spirit of the Portuguese people in the knowledge of its identity and of its own worth as ethnic group [and] as civilizing capacities’ (SPN, cited in Ó 1996: 894) The ‘amiable aspects’ of a rural country were to be represented, deploying what Salazar, in a speech in 1936, called ‘the comfort of the great certainties’: ‘We do not call in question God and virtue, the country and its history, authority, and its prestige, the family and its moral rights and obligations, nor the glory and the responsibilities of the worker’ (Salazar 1939: 287).10 Both the emphasis on rural values and the cluster of values to be followed at all levels appeared in the concept of ‘regionalism’, the new key orientation for cultural policy (Ó 1996: 895; see also Ó 1999; Rosas 1994). This concept, pointing to a ‘particular Portuguese style’, was not only to be applied to the domains of ballet, theatre and cinema but also to be clearly displayed in posters, public events and even in window-dressing (Ó 1996: 895). Books are not mentioned in the policy statements on regionalism, probably because the regime was well aware of the difficulty of winning over writers and intellectuals to its ideology. It nevertheless tried to exert some influence on the production of arts and literature by creating awards in all artistic and literary genres. The SPN/ SNI Prizes 1934–66, initially promoted by António Ferro (1895–1956) as head of the Propaganda Secretariat and in the context of his Política do Espírito [intellectual policy], were meant to launch new authors and

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make them famous, but Ferro himself later admitted that many contemporary writers had other ways to achieve success and did not need official prizes. Analysing the lists of the SPN/SNI Prizes in the different genres, the historian Ramos do Ó concludes that ‘only very late and slowly did the regime manage to present works by authors who created exclusively at its service’ (Ó 1999: 128). Illiteracy, one of the main reasons for Portugal’s backwardness, was a problem which brought shame on the regime. The policies to diminish it were relatively successful: between 1930 and 1970 the literacy rate rose from below 39 per cent to about 76 per cent (Melo 2004: 68). In the 1950s the Ministry for National Education started to implement the ‘Plan for the People’s Education’ and in 1957 the Gulbenkian Foundation initiated its itinerant library service. Both events contributed to the increase in reading over the next decade, though in the early 1970s a certain decline could already be observed. The Foundation tried to transfer its responsibilities regarding public reading to the state when oil receipts declined (ibid.), and the success of the book collection Livros RTP – Biblioteca Básica Verbo, a joint venture between a publishing house and the state television, may be explained by the void left when the Gulbenkian’s influence faded (Faria and Campos 2007: 12; Seruya 2007).

Translation and translators Ideas about translation The field of translation in the Estado Novo comprises, besides literature (in a broad sense), the translation of human and social sciences, translation in all fields of natural science and technology, films (the practice of subtitling, not yet researched, as well as the ‘cuts’ prescribed by censorship; see António 2001), theatre performances (see, for example, Santos 2004), and translations published in newspapers and magazines and on the radio. It would also be interesting to consider the peculiar case of the translation of Salazar’s speeches or of tourist brochures from Portuguese into European languages, where translation out of Portuguese was clearly a vital propaganda tool regarding the regime’s image abroad. The present study will only deal with translated literature published in book form. I will look at translation as an ‘institution’. Although at the time there were neither translators’ associations nor translators’ training institutes, which would later come to attach prestige to the profession, the ‘public face’ of translation can be studied: I consider translation a social action linked to a form of behaviour called ‘translating’, with agents – translators – who are ‘active decision-maker[s] within

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complex structures of power’ (Hermans 1997: 5–6). My intention is to take a historicized approach that tries to analyse ‘how translations and ideas about translation relate to their socio-cultural environment’ (ibid.: 6). It is certain that publishers and booksellers on the one hand, critics and writers in the press and in prestigious magazines on the other, were well aware of the strong presence of translations on the market. The ‘ideas about translation’ they expressed varied according to their specific interests. Publishers and booksellers complained of the scarcity and low quality of domestic production (Seruya 2005a: 39), a judgement which was, incidentally, shared by Salazar himself, who deplored the lack of national artistic talent: I much regret that Portugal is at present so poor in the field of arts. I am pleased with the progress achieved by our sculptors and people in the decorative arts, but I have to admit that nowadays we don’t have famous painters or architects who have won converts, and both the theatre and the literary production have been unable to enlarge their horizons. (Salazar cited in Garnier 1952: 191)11 Writers and critics, in contrast, more often regarded translation as a means of internationalizing Portuguese literary life and taste (for example Simões 1937). In the first half of the 1940s translation was a visible fact, but not necessarily seen by all as a blessing – Epidemia de traduções (epidemic of translations) was the title of an article in the monthly Ocidente denouncing the ‘denationalizing impulse’ [‘ímpetos desnacionalizadores’] and the ‘mental laziness’ [‘preguiça mental’] revealed by the increasing volume of translations.12 Not only was the number of translations conspicuously high, complained Ocidente, but their path onto the market not always particularly commendable. What was considered unfair competition led the publishers and booksellers’ corporation, the Grémio Nacional de Editores e Livreiros (GNEL), to draft a ‘translation statute’ (Livros de Portugal, hereafter ‘LP’, 15–16/1943).13 The preamble described one problematic aspect of the situation clearly: ‘translations of the same work are published by several publishing houses at the same time’ (final text of the Statute, LP, 17–18/1943: 5). To obviate this, the GNEL required publishers to report the list of books outside copyright that they wished to publish in the following 12 months (ibid.: Article 1). Having received this information, the GNEL would organize a file containing all

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the requests, and decide according to the order of submission (Article 3). In the case of duplicates, the competing publishers had to seek agreement on which of them would publish the translation, and all this ‘in order to avoid commercial competition’ (Article 4) – commercial competition being contrary to the economic doctrine of a corporative state. Another article in the statute unintentionally reveals something about the ‘state of the art’ in translation publishing: it requires books in translation to include data on the original title and ‘if it is missing, the title of the French or English translation’ (Article 11). This indicates the common disrespect for original works, a habit dating back at least to the nineteenth century and one reflected in the tendency to ‘domesticate’ foreign works as a method of translation. It also confirms which source languages were predominant (see also Figures 5.1 and 5.2). In the 1960s the negative view of translation had not changed substantially. An LP editorial in 1960 includes a remarkable statement by the leaders of the publishers and booksellers, expressing a very negative opinion on the translation of literature, which is considered to be often ‘incredibly’ unfaithful to the original. This is ascribed to the linguistic incompetence of translators. Cuts, additions, wilful reinterpretations on the one hand, bad Portuguese and a lack of concern for the text’s aesthetic value on the other, were said to be further aspects of current translation practice, which should be faced as a problem by the publishing houses (LP 19/1960). A second problem was addressed in the regional press as well, which commented on the small number of readers – or at least of readers who chose ‘good’ literature; other genres were very successful. In an article from the regional press reprinted in LP, the lament runs as follows: ‘The Iberian Peninsula is becoming a paradise for dealers of bad literature’, meaning ‘collections of small, cheap books […] so badly written, lacking imagination and all artistic prudence […] that they are a permanent danger’ (A. P. da Silva 1967: 15). Silva was probably referring to the large number of Wild West, detective, sentimental and war novels, mostly from Spain and Britain, that had been flooding the Portuguese market since the 1940s (see below).14 There was also concern that films, football and TV were already the preferred means of leisure: ‘The book is forgotten; lying on dusty shelves, it keeps its cover pristine’15 (A. da Silva 1967: 17). Finally, book prices were considered too high by many; much hope was placed in paperback books by journalists of the era (Pereira 1967: 13ff.). Translations were obviously present in the literary universe described. The quality of translations – which tended to sell more copies per title than Portuguese books (see LP 108/1967: 11) – was now being discussed

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more openly – in those days, translations had the greatest share in book production (Rosa 1968: 17). In 1969, the evening daily A Capital surveyed publishing houses and translators ‘in order to clarify this important aspect of Portuguese cultural life’, namely ‘the problem of translations’. The answers of important publishing houses like Ulisseia, which published many translations (including highbrow titles), express a concern with the low quality of translations, ascribing this to problems with the selection of translators (LP 123/1969: 14–15). This is a significant point, as it shows a growing awareness of a need to improve the status of the translation profession. Right at the beginning of the decade, publishers had noted that translating was not a regulated profession, that there were no professional translators, and that translating, while widespread, was not undertaken from artistic motivations but as a means of earning extra money (see LP 19/1960: 2).16 At the end of the decade, they were still trying to increase the prestige of the activity and its agents. Bearing in mind that only in the second half of the 1960s did university-level translator training begin, we may consider the 1960s as a sort of turning point in Portuguese ideas about translation. The translators of literature in this period include anonymous people (this is the case for translators of Spanish and English titles in the field of adventure and sentimental novels), well-known writers and personalities (Aquilino Ribeiro, José Saramago, Maria Lamas, Fernanda Botelho, Urbano Tavares Rodrigues, poets like Vitorino Nemésio, Jorge de Sena, Alexandre O’Neill, Ruy Belo, Ramos Rosa; painters like Lima de Freitas and many others), or professionals from other areas, such as the sociologist Vasco Pulido Valente or the philosopher of culture Agostinho da Silva (see Pinho 2006). Translation of literature between 1940 and 1970 In the present chapter I consider a corpus pertaining to the three main decades of the Estado Novo, 1940–70.17 It covers translations of literature published in book form (regardless of whether a first or subsequent edition), without making distinctions between ‘high’ or ‘popular’ literature. This inclusive concept of literature accepts detective novels and science fiction as well as adventure stories and sentimental novels. The following points draw on data collected for the project Intercultural literature in Portugal 1930–2000: A critical bibliography, an ongoing bibliographical study within the Portuguese Catholic University’s Centre for Communication and Culture Studies, in collaboration with the University of Lisbon’s Centre for English Studies.18 In my initial analysis of the available information only the question of the dominant foreign culture could be addressed: which were the main source cultures for

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translation? In our data authors are identified geographically, by their country of origin. The implicit identification of a culture with a country is debatable, but the traditional Portuguese perception of foreign influences as coming from certain countries means that the country criterion seems acceptable as one way of measuring the ‘dominant’ source culture. The key category to do so is the number of titles by author and country.19 Figures 5.1 and 5.2 show the evolution of the main source culture for translations between 1940 and 1970, considering the seven most influential countries only.20 The practice of Portuguese publishers, along with the political history of the Estado Novo, justify the distinction made here between Britain (noted in the figure as ‘GBR’) and the USA, as opposed to considering one anglophone culture. Whereas the ancient Anglo-Portuguese Alliance (dating from 1373) was always a decisive priority in Portuguese foreign policy, the US was, until 1944 and the creation of the American military base in the Azores, merely a ‘marginal, overseas reference point’ (Antunes 1991: 22). Moreover, Salazar himself and parts of the regime elite held a deep anti-American prejudice, which went along with a widespread ignorance about the US among the population, as attested by American official sources.21 The two countries have therefore been considered separately (for more detail on methodology, see Seruya 2009: 69–86). If we now compare the numbers of translated titles per country over the three decades, illustrated in Figure 5.2, the following development can be observed. France and Britain started in the 1940s with the

Authors per decade 600

1940s

1950s

1960s

ITA

GER

RUS

500 400 300 200 100 0 Figure 5.1

GBR

FRA

SPA

USA

Number of translated authors published per decade

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Translation during the Estado Novo Titles per decade 4000

1940s

1950s

1960s

ITA

RUS

GER

3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 Figure 5.2

SPA

GBR

FRA

USA

Translated titles per decade

highest rate, together accounting for 31 per cent of translated titles and followed at some distance by the US (13%) and Spain (7%), whereas Russia and Italy only reached 5 per cent and Germany 3 per cent. In the 1950s, the outstanding feature is the increase in the titles of Spanish origin (now 38%), a higher proportion now than Britain (24%) and the US (9%) (although in terms of the number of different authors, Britain still leads). France decreases significantly, with 21 per cent of translated titles; Italy remains stable at 5 per cent; Russia and Germany fall to 2 per cent each. In the 1960s, Britain continues to lead clearly in terms of the number of authors (507), followed by France (378), Spain (317) and the USA (168), but the highest proportion of translated titles is provided by Spain (53%) and only far behind by Britain (19%), France (12%) and the US (10%). The countries with the lowest rates of the top ten are Italy, Russia and Germany, each with 2 per cent. If we look at the period as a whole, then, the dominant source culture for translation into Portuguese is Spain, at least after the 1940s. This result clearly questions the common perception of a French hegemony, a hegemony which in fact was mainly restricted to intellectuals, artists and the universities. It should be noted that the predominance of Spain arose from translations of popular literature, not the canonical authors, who, apart from Cervantes, were rarely translated until the 1980s (see Soler 1999). Which authors and what kind of literature were translated? To start with the 1940s, the over one hundred French authors translated in this

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period include some traditional canonical ones such as Zola, Balzac, Maupassant, Hugo, Mérimée, Voltaire, Flaubert and in one case Sartre.22 Other genres are more significantly represented, above all the sentimental novel (Delly, Magali, Albert Bonneau, Léo Dartey, Déo Duvic, Max du Veuzit), followed by children’s and youth literature (Comtesse de Ségur, Berthe Bernage) and adventure stories (Ponson du Terrail, Dumas père and fils). While the number of English authors far exceeds the number of French, the number of titles is slightly lower. Among the canonical authors we find Stevenson, Wilde, Dickens, Austen, Mansfield, Somerset Maugham, Shaw, the Brontë sisters, Conrad, Jerome, and so on. Detective stories are a very strong presence in the decade. The many pseudotranslations (that is, books by Portuguese authors using English pseudonyms and purporting implicitly or explicitly to be translations) are not counted in the statistics, though they are accounted for by the prestige of the English (and American) source culture in the genre; translated detective fiction in the narrower sense includes Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Richard A. Freeman, Dorothy L. Sayers, Edgar Wallace, and so on. The sentimental novel shows an English contribution through Hall Caine and others. Other genres less easy to categorize are also represented, for example by Charles Richter, H. S. Keeler and E. Philips Oppenheim, or Freya Stark’s travel narratives. Most American titles appear in the second half of the 1940s, showing an interesting correspondence with the change of role played by the US within Portuguese foreign policy. Jack London, William Saroyan, Pearl S. Buck and Erskine Caldwell are the most frequently named authors, followed by Mark Twain, Vicky Baum (writing in English), Thomas Maine Reed, Poe, Hawthorne, James, and so on. Detective fiction is represented by Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner and Carter Dickson. Spanish contemporary authors are not particularly visible in the 1940s, with the exception of Pio Baroja and Miguel de Unamuno (d. 1936), who had developed a special relationship to Portugal and Portuguese literature, and W. Fernandez Florez. The most frequently named author is a nineteenth-century one, Blasco Ibañez, followed by Concha LinaresBecerra (who wrote sentimental novels) and another well-known nineteenth-century author, Enrique Pérez-Escrich. What is interesting about German authors, considering the sympathy of certain sectors of the regime for Nazi Germany, is the fact that of those usually linked to the ‘Conservative Revolution’ and later to National Socialism, only Rudolf Binding was translated at the time. Canonical authors include those from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

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(Raspe, Goethe, Grimm, Hölderlin, Hauptmann, Otto Ludwig, Storm) and from the twentieth century (Carossa, Fallada, Huch, Kellermann, Klabund, Thomas Mann, Remarque, Rilke, and others). As it is not possible to go into detail on all decades, I will now briefly address the 1960s, with selected comments on the 1950s in the background. In the 1960s, new French authors arrived, such as Henri Troyat, Proust, de Sade, de Beauvoir, Elsa Triolet, Boris Vian, Duras, Claude Simon; the number of titles by Robbe-Grillet, Françoise Sagan, Sartre and Camus increased significantly from a low number in the 1950s. Classics like Voltaire, Hugo and Zola remained steady, but Balzac titles rose from 9 to 20. Children’s and youth literature included new French authors such as René Guillot, Jean Bruce, Georges Bayard and Henri Vernes. In the field of detective fiction Simenon rose from 17 to 59 titles and Maurice Leblanc from 2 to 12, whereas the sentimental novel saw a decline of the French presence. British highbrow authors like Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Lawrence Durrell, H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley are well represented in the corpus, but detective and spy stories (the first John Le Carré, Agatha Christie, Carter Brown, John MacDonald, Leslie Charteris, to name only those with 18 or more titles), youth literature (led by Enid Blyton) and science fiction are the domains where British sources stand out. The 1960s were the decade for those American writers nowadays considered canonical. In order of the number of titles, the list is headed by Erskine Caldwell, followed by Steinbeck, Pearl S. Buck, Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Poe, Hemingway and Dos Passos. However, pulp writers are also strong, with Frank Gruber the most frequent. In the field of adventures and Westerns, Zane Grey alone occupies a whole series of the popular publishing house AGP (Agência Portuguesa de Publicidade); while the most translated detective novelists are Erle Stanley Gardner, Richard Deming, Mickey Spillane, Jack London and Ed Lacy. American science fiction also helps to compensate for the lack of domestic Portuguese production, with names such as Clifford Simack, Paul Anderson, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. As mentioned before, Spain leads in terms of the number of titles, but among nearly 4000 titles there are only five canonical authors: Calderón de la Barca, Cervantes, José Cela, Felix Cucurull and Alfonso Sastre share nine titles altogether. The rest are spread over three domains: the sentimental novel (Corin Tellado with 329 titles, Sérgio Duval with 116, Trini de Figueiroa with 70, Maria Adela Durango with 51), the Western, a surprisingly large presence (for example M. A. Lafuente Estefania with 231 titles and Keith Luger with 109), and detective stories, where several

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authors had dozens of titles translated (Lou Carrigan, Mortimer Cody, Donald Curtis). Most contributors to the latter two genres used English pseudonyms, which stresses the prestige of the anglophone culture in the field and at the same time raises the interesting question of the circumstances under which the Portuguese publishers decided to import them.

Translation and censorship The legal and institutional frame of censorship As far as the legal and institutional frame of censorship is concerned, the most relevant legislation was produced in the 1930s and 1940s (see Rodrigues 1980; Ó 1999). Although the Constitution proclaimed in 1933 granted ‘freedom of expression by any means whatever’, Decree No. 22469, issued on the very same day, maintained that censorship had a necessary social function to prevent the perversion of public opinion as a social force; it shall be carried out in such a way as to defend public opinion from all factors that may misguide it against truth, justice, morals, efficient administration, and the common good, and to prevent any attack on the basic principles of the organization of society.23 Previously, censorship had applied to periodical publications, leaflets and bills whenever they dealt with political or social matters, and the new legislation was initially directed against the press, but as early as 1933 Salazar himself showed great concern about books, having asked the director of the Censorship Office, Major Álvaro Salvação Barreto, to write a report on the matter. This document, ‘Leituras Imorais – Propaganda Política e Social Contrária ao Estado Novo – sua Repressão’ [Immoral Readings – Political and Social Propaganda against the Estado Novo – Its Repression], was to become the frame for the censorship procedures affecting non-periodical publications.24 The Censoring Commission for books (Portuguese books, foreign books, and translations) started its work in 1934. Unlike the press, books were not subject to pre-publication censorship, so they reached the Commission after publication through the active collaboration of the political police PIDE/DGS (who ‘visited’ bookshops, for example), the Post Office and, occasionally, the regular police (PSP). Sometimes, publishers and authors themselves would present their works, more or less willingly, to the Commission.

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Salazar clarified his thinking as early as 1933, when he inaugurated the Propaganda Secretariat (SPN): Men, individually and collectively, see and interpret things in the light of their own interests, but there is only one entity which can see everything in the light of its duty and capacity to serve the interests of all. (Salazar 1939: 183)25 Indeed, many censors made a habit of using the first person plural in their verdicts, so as to convey the impression of a unified national thought. The 1933 decree was reinforced three years later by Decree No. 26589, published together with a Regulamento dos Serviços de Censura, which forbade the distribution and sale in Portugal of newspapers, magazines and any other foreign publication dealing with matters the diffusion of which would not be allowed in Portuguese publications. (Rodrigues 1980: 71) The members of the Censoring Commission were mainly army officers. This role had been carried out by the military since the 1926 coup d’état.26 Only long after the Second World War did some civilians join the censors’ team (Gomes 2006: 12). Censorship became an official organ of political training and propaganda in 1944, as from this date it was subject to the renamed SPN, now SNI, which in its turn reported directly to Salazar (Decree No. 33545). The last important change in the legislation occurred after Salazar’s death in 1968, when Marcelo Caetano was appointed his successor. Despite the hopes of some liberalization placed in the ‘Primavera Marcelista’ or Marcelist Spring, Decree No. 150/72, of 5 May 1968, while abolishing the main censorship organ (Direcção Geral dos Serviços de Censura), maintained the whole philosophy of the social role of censorship – ‘the need to defend the highest interests of the nation’ – as established in 1933 (Azevedo 1999: 463ff.). Nevertheless a real change in the censors’ decisions concerning some authors and subjects, for example Marxism, can be observed in the 1970s. Censorship and foreign books in Portugal Research on censorship during the Estado Novo has included some more or less systematic work on Portuguese books (Azevedo 1999; Livros

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Proibidos no Regime Fascista, 1981), the press (Carvalho 1999; Franco 1993; Tengarrinha 2006), theatre performances (Santos 2004), radio (Ribeiro 2005) and cuts in films (António 2001; to my knowledge nothing has been published on subtitling). The censorship of translation is a wholly new research area, which nonetheless has produced some results (Seruya and Moniz 2008b, especially Chapter 1; Seruya, Moniz and Rosa 2009). However, those results are restricted to literature, failing to reflect the fact that the percentage of literary works among the foreign books submitted to the Censoring Commission is actually quite low. It is therefore important to discuss all foreign books when assessing the situation of translation censorship in the Estado Novo. The Commission reports show that the decision to approve or ban a foreign book was a decision on whether it could be circulated, and hence in most cases on whether it would ever be translated. If quite a lot has already been written about the censorship of domestic literature (for example Azevedo 1999), very little is known yet about the decisions to ban or approve foreign books, except for some lists of banned books (Azevedo 1999; Comissão do Livro Negro 1981) and an illustrated exhibition catalogue (Livros Proibidos no Estado Novo, 2005). Foreign books presented to the Commission covered such important fields as politics, ideology, social sciences, religion, and others that have not yet been addressed by translation studies in Portugal. One reason for this dearth of research may be the lack of organized archives at the National Archives in Torre do Tombo. Considering the deficiencies of the documentation on the Censoring Commission’s work, the results of the present research can only be provisional.27 However, the corpus can be considered representative: the percentage of missing reports is not high – 22.4 per cent of the 10,011 reports written between 1934 and April 1974 – and the continuity of procedures and criteria across the four decades indicate that what is missing should not significantly change the conclusions. The procedures of the Censoring Commission Reading the Censoring Commission reports has shed some light on the question of how, and how systematically, PIDE and CTT (and the Customs Services from 1953 onwards) gathered information on which books could potentially be dangerous. It seems that the police and customs focused on books displayed in advertisements or bookshops (for example Sá da Costa and Bertrand in Lisbon), where the title, topic and cover of the book could be decisive. The role of the Post Office in bringing books to the censors’ attention must lead us to assume that private mail was regularly violated on the basis of ‘suspicious’ signs: either the recipient or the

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source of the book (publishing houses, like the French Éditions Sociales, or countries like the Communist countries of Eastern Europe). In some cases, the name and address of the recipient are specifically mentioned in the report, often names with no public relevance. Sometimes delivery of a book was permitted in spite of a ban. Some books originally written in Portuguese (either from Portugal or Brazil) had to be ‘presented’ for censorship, that is, publishers, as well as authors themselves, sent their books for approval before publication. Alternatively, the Commission itself might ‘request’ that books in Portuguese or Portuguese translations be submitted for consideration. The subjects and individual books likely to be censored, whether through cuts or outright bans, can be inferred from the frames of reference in the laws and decrees concerning censorship, and also from such central ideological sources of the regime’s political praxis as Salazar’s speeches. Throughout the decades, the three main areas attracting the censors’ attention never really changed, apart from shifts in emphasis according to the political moment (for example the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the beginning of the colonial war, Salazar’s death and the subsequent changes in power). These were ‘politics/ideology’, ‘morality/sex’ and ‘religion’. They were feared as the most dangerous and, if treated in ways that did not suit the regime, they were labelled as topics which encouraged ‘social dissolution’. Criteria for banning books in the censors’ reports The censors wrote their reports on the basis of specific legal requirements: the rationale for their verdicts was meant to reveal which contents in the books opposed the Estado Novo’s values, either as set down in law or as known from the regime’s daily political praxis. As trustworthy readers of ‘suspicious’ books, the censors were not supposed to make subjective judgements or apply personal criteria. As a result, despite some minor stylistic differences, they eventually came to use much the same discourse. One very general assessment criterion of the Censoring Commission must be noted at the outset: no author or theme was a priori and categorically to be rejected, that is, each case was specific. Examples are D. H. Lawrence, Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertolt Brecht, or even the more ‘harmless’ Paul de Kock in the 1930s: these were banned or approved according to the work in question. Several factors were taken into consideration besides the chief goal of not shaking the regime’s foundations, such as the damage a ban could cause to the regime’s external image,28 the fact that certain topics were already known through the

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press, the fact that a film based on the book was being or had already been shown in Portugal (see R6942/6129 on Howard Fast’s Spartacus or R6991/62 on Moravia’s A Ciociara), the fact that the author was an acknowledged ‘classic’, like Hemingway or Gorki, or a famous person, like Einstein. The latter argument would also apply in the 1960s to authors such as Camus, Bertrand Russell and G. B. Shaw. Turning more specifically to translation, it was clearly considered subversive since, unlike foreign-language work, it could give ‘the many’ access to dangerous reading. In fact, the cultural gap between the ‘elites’ or ‘the educated’ and ‘the many’ was acknowledged and supported by the authorities, who would sometimes (unwillingly) allow the circulation of a foreign book on the grounds that it was published in a foreign language. This was the case with some of Françoise Sagan’s works, such as Les Merveilleux Nuages, which was circulated in French but the translation of which was expressly forbidden (R6944/61); Colette’s Chéri was ‘most unworthy of publicity, at least in a Portuguese translation, which would promote the expansion and assimilation of the work’s intrinsic evil’ (R8567/69). In fact, from the early 1960s, the belief that ‘educated’ people were not easily influenced led the censors to tolerate even the possession of banned books by certain professional groups such as doctors,30 jurists, and well-read and educated people in general, ‘as long as they are neither Communist nor sympathize with Communist ideas’ (R6932/61, on Patrice Lumumba’s Le Congo, terre d’avenir, est-il menacé?). The initial phase of the censors’ work (1934–40) already reveals the basic arguments for decisions about a book’s circulation. Politically, the most relevant context was the Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War, followed by the beginning of the Second World War. Few titles from and about Spain were presented to the censors in this period (13.5% of all titles presented for censorship, of which 41% were political titles) but apart from a few ‘lapses of attention’, the censors always decided against Republican writings, which not unexpectedly made up the bulk of texts submitted to the Commission, since texts supporting Franco were not considered suspicious and could circulate freely (see Seruya 2008). Books on Marxist theory (considered to be spreading ‘advanced ideas’, hence labelled as ‘propaganda’) met with a mixed response. For example, one text by Lenin was approved (R207/36), another was approved with cuts (R281/36), and a third was banned altogether (R340/36). In the area of sexuality, the verdicts were inflexible when it came to any perceived defence of abortion, birth control or homosexuality, or to sexual diseases or sadism – though in cases where these topics were considered to have been treated in a ‘scientific’,

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hence ‘serious’, manner, they were allowed to circulate. Charles Royer and Pitigrilli were the most frequently banned literary authors in the period from 1934–40. The ban on some canonical authors is worth mentioning: André Malraux’s L’éspoir (R551/38), Heinrich Mann’s O Anjo Azul (R585/38), George Bernanos’ Les cimetières sous la lune (R638/38) and D. H. Lawrence’s L’Amant de Lady Chatterly (R940/39).31 The latter is evaluated as ‘a rather pornographic book’, containing ‘overrealistic descriptions of love scenes’ which ‘are not counterbalanced by a sound moral in the conclusion’. The main source language for banned books in this decade is clearly French, but there are also many Spanish titles about sexuality and married life arriving in the censors’ office. The most striking reports of the first half of the 1940s are those on propaganda writings from Germany and Britain (rarely from France, and even more seldom from Italy and Japan).32 It must be recalled that Salazar defined a policy of ‘geometric neutrality’ towards the belligerent countries33 and that, in those years, Lisbon was a privileged centre for the intelligence services of both sides in the conflict (Telo 1990). If there was an undeniably strong current within the regime that sympathized openly with National Socialism (the youth and workers’ organizations Mocidade Portuguesa and Fundação Nacional para Alegria no Trabalho, for example, were overtly inspired by their Nazi counterparts), the censors tried to maintain an equidistant position between Britain and Germany: each party could defend and praise its own policies, but not attack or slander its enemy (see R1528/42). Hitler must not be offended (R1192/40), but neither must the Germans offend Britain or Churchill (R2324/43; R2336/43). Sometimes the German Embassy would object to the Commission’s decisions, and the Commission would comply with an Embassy request (R1217/40; R2319/43). In fact, the Commission could not help revealing its preference for the German regime (not even allowing books on the persecution of Catholics by the Nazis, see R2417/43)34 or its mistrust of democracy: Emil Ludwig’s La Nouvelle Sainte-Alliance was banned because ‘it attacks authoritarian regimes and extols democracy’ (R771/39) – words such as ‘anti-fascism’ or ‘pacifism’ meant a negative judgment on a book, as both positions were considered ‘Communist propaganda’. As far as fiction is concerned, this made up only a rather low percentage of all the books presented to the Commission, and included several canonical authors such as Dos Passos, Vittorini and Ehrenburg (see Seruya 2006: 326). The 1950s (discussed in more detail in Seruya and Moniz 2008a) were called the ‘Years of Lead’. The expression refers to the apparent political calm after 1949, when the regime, through the outcome of

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that year’s presidential elections achieved the establishment of ‘order in the streets’ and ‘peace in the minds’ after ruthless police action (Rosas 1994: 408). Once the opposition had been defeated and an apparent unity re-established, and under the effects of the Cold War, the ‘grey and apparently almost apolitical drowsiness of a monotonous life’ was restored (ibid.: 503). On the other hand, Rosas shows that, thanks in part to Western support for Portugal’s foreign policy and for the dictatorship itself, Salazar’s regime gained a certain political and ideological arrogance, which went hand in hand with a revival of the ‘anti-Communist, corporative, Catholic, nationalist and ultra-conservative’ discourse (ibid.). The ideological climate of the ‘Years of Lead’ led to a certain reduction in politics and ideology as subjects submitted for censorship (now 15%), with a corresponding increase in literary and cultural works (now 50%). There is less difference in the rate of bans (38% for political works, 32% for literary works) (Seruya and Moniz 2008a: 9). Books dealing with morals and sex made up only 3 per cent of the titles submitted, but 18 per cent of the banned titles. The most common arguments for a ban derived from the official labels discussed earlier. The label ‘propaganda’ was attributed to books dealing with Marxism and the USSR, and to fiction writers like Paul Éluard (R5215/54) or Pablo Neruda (R5273/55). Anti-Communist propaganda was of course welcome, so that a book like Ainsi fut assassiné Trotsky, by S. Salazar and J. Gorkin, was allowed to circulate in French. In the field of politics, the discomfort of the censors in relation to the topics of National Socialism, democracy and war should be underlined, as it shows continuities with the 1940s and indicates that the defeat of National Socialism was never really digested by most members of the Censoring Commission. Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte, seen as a ‘vigorous opponent of fascism’, was considered unsuitable by the censors because it did not seem ‘appropriate to bring to light again facts that should be forgotten in the context of current international politics’ (R5481/55). Pacifism and anti-militarism are unwanted issues as well: the first pages of Louis Aragon’s L’Enseigne de Gersaint ‘consist of an apology for the concept of humanity overcoming the concepts of Fatherland and Nationality. The book also conveys lax, morbid defeatism and numerous anti-militarist and pacifist ideas influenced by Communism’ (R5208/54). Like the 1940s, the 1950s saw bans on literature considered pornographic and otherwise offensive in the light of Christian morality, on the grounds that it constituted a doctrine of social dissolution. Two frequently banned authors were Louis-Charles Royer and the Italian

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Pitigrilli, whose Caras Pintadas prompted the censor to write: ‘it is full of dissolute social thoughts and narrations’ (R4613/51). Another stigmatizing judgement often applied to literature was its ‘realism’. Authors like Niven Busch, D. H. Lawrence, Jean Genet and John Dos Passos had some of their books banned because they described, in the censors’ view, how things ‘really are’. This association of realism with immorality reveals the censors’ purpose of imposing a fanciful, alienated image of the world, which always plays an important role in the political agendas of dictatorships. The manipulation of words, as in ‘propaganda’ and ‘realism’, is thus a recurrent and striking feature in the censors’ reports. The 1960s opened a new historical phase with the beginning of the colonial war in Angola in 1961. Anti-colonialism emerges as a new subject in the Censoring Commission. For the most part,35 it was considered Communist propaganda (pertaining to Cuba or to the Algerian Revolution, for example) that aimed to slander the Portuguese colonies. The label ‘propaganda’, which was also attributed to a very large number of Marxist works during the decade, meant an immediate ban of the book. ‘Propaganda’ was the opposite of ‘history’, which was deemed to record facts beyond all subjectivity and prejudice (see, for example, R7828/66 on Joel Carmichael). As the censors were hardly naïve – they cannot have ignored the fact that they themselves were working in a propaganda department – we must read their distinction between propaganda and history as an assertion of their power to determine the ‘correct’ viewpoint on ‘facts’. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Oeuvres, published in French by Éditions du Progrès in Moscow and brought to the Censoring Commission by PIDE (unsurprisingly, in view of the edition’s geographical provenance), was approved for circulation in French: ‘In today’s Russia, educated people want to read something different from Communist propaganda. That is proved by this book, since it was clearly not supposed to be available to everybody, and therefore was published in French for a very restricted readership’ (R7855/66). Clearly, as in the 1950s, there was also ‘good’ propaganda, the anti-Communist version. There is a striking irony in the argument made in favour of Lucien Goldmann’s Introduction à la philosophie de Kant: ‘The right to culture and to thought justifies the free circulation of this book’ (R8554/69). ‘Realism’ continued to be a stigmatizing label in the 1960s, still associated with immorality. It was now often applied to Italian neo-realists. The books in question dealt with poverty, ‘moral distress and derangement’, and were thus ‘socially ill-natured’ (R6621/60, on Elio Vittorini’s Consideram-se mortos e morrem, a banned translation). The same applied

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to Simone de Beauvoir’s memoir La force de l’âge: ‘the whole book mirrors the author’s immorality and anti-social ideas, which she displays condescendingly’ (R7066/62). Political subjects in neo-realist works met with the censors’ strongest disapproval. Their rationale for banning the translation Um herói do nosso tempo by Vasco Pratolini is a paradigmatic example: [I]t analyses critically the Italian people’s life at the end of the last war […] terrible fights, usually between Communists and Fascists […] moreover, we meet speculation concerning sexual liberties, hence the novel seems immoral, but it is not pornographic […] the main part is an intense political speculation, extolling the Communist guerrilla groups as being the best elements from the social, political and human viewpoint, whereas Fascists and the youth brought up and shaped by fascism are the worst elements from all viewpoints. (R7806/66) The quotation shows not only the continued discomfort in relation to Fascism, National Socialism and the war – more than 20 years after its end – but also the continued use of the negative label of ‘speculation’ for sexual matters deemed too liberal or political positions sympathizing with Communism. But the censors’ use of language also included subtleties such as the distinction between sexualidade [sexuality] and sexualismo [sexualism]. Books labelled as being about sexuality are considered to reveal usually serious, scientific approaches to the subject and are therefore not objectionable (La sexualité, by Dr Willy and C. Jamont, is described as ‘a thorough study of sexuality, conceived in purely scientific terms’, R8349/69), whereas ‘sexualism’ tends towards immorality or even pornography: Nymphomania, by the American authors Albert Ellie and Edward Sagarin, ‘deals with sexualist matters’, but is approved because, having been presented to the Censoring Commission in its German translation, ‘it is beyond the reach of most readers’ (R8368/69). We can observe a certain liberalization of censorship in this field – as indicated, for example, by the approval of Wilhelm Reich’s La fonction de l’orgasme (R8477/69). Very little fiction was assessed in the second half of the 1960s, but the most striking cases were those that fell under the suspicion of ‘sexualism’, such as Henry Miller, repeatedly presented for censorship and almost always banned.36 John Updike was another author who did not benefit from the more liberal atmosphere. In contrast, Graham Greene (R8363/69) and Jorge Amado (R7882/66; 7889/66) were

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permitted, at least in some cases, and despite their realism and sexual themes, apparently because of the quality of their writing. How effective was translation censorship? An evaluation of the effectiveness of the censorship of translations will require further, more systematic study of the fortunes of individual banned books. Their origin was diverse: in terms of the prospective circulation of a foreign book, it made a difference whether the book presented for censorship had been ordered by an individual reader (who probably wanted to read it in the original, not translate it) or by a publishing house hoping to translate the book. If a translation was envisaged, how far would a publisher ‘obey’ the censors’ decision, whether cuts or a ban? For the moment, as long as the missing reports of the Censoring Commission are not found, no definitive statements about the fate of banned books in general is possible, but some points may indicate limits to the efficacy of censorship. First, book confiscation was such a complex procedure that, years after a particular book was banned, the police could still be looking for copies in bookshops. Booksellers would, additionally, always find a way to hide and keep banned or suspect books for special clients, so that private libraries were likely to evade censorship to a significant extent.37 As for publishers, the absence of pre-publication censorship on books meant it was quite a risk to order translations in certain fields or by certain authors. Publishing houses did take the risk, however: after all, the police could not always be everywhere. When Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour tristesse was banned for circulation and translation in 1954, ‘many copies had already been sold’ (Azevedo 1997: 203). The ‘Rififi’ series, a mixture of detective and erotic stories that was a great commercial success, angered the censors for its ‘incredible impudence’. They could not understand how it was possible ‘regularly to publish such works in our country’; ‘if a few volumes of this series were banned, one wonders about the quality of all the others that were not examined’ (R7834/66). Erskine Caldwell’s Gretta was approved in Portuguese with the following argument: despite the fact that ‘the work is not pornographic, but rather obscene’, it ‘was translated into Portuguese […] and is now in its fourth edition, without having given rise to any protest so far’ (R7847/66). The Censoring Commission is admitting its own inability to control the whole book market, and the censors were well aware of the many ways used to evade their judgements, at times attributing them to Communist forces. When Burchett’s Vietnam, Segunda Resistência was banned in 1966, it

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was already in its second edition, ‘although only now has it been put on sale in bookshops. Ever since I heard of the book I tried to buy it, but I was not successful. Later, I discovered that books published by Seara Nova are first distributed to their subscribers and supporters, to whom they are sent without advance payment, because such propaganda is financed by the Communist Party’ (R7925/66). Although we have access to lists of banned books and banned translations, the real impact of the censors’ decisions still has to be carefully assessed, title by title. If, for example, George Bernanos’ Les grands cimetières sous la lune was banned in its French version (R638/38) and not translated until 1974, other banned works were translated quickly despite an explicit prohibition. Such was the case for Caryl Chessmann’s Cellule 2455. Couloir de la mort, a book translated in 1959 (as 2455 – A Cela da Morte) in contravention of a 1956 ban (R5618/56) and yet enjoying lasting success with both readers and the press.38

Conclusion In writing the history of translation in Portugal’s Estado Novo regime, it must be borne in mind that translation covers many domains other than literature, domains that played a crucial role in informing and supplying the Portuguese public with a scientific production they could not find at home. One eloquent example is ‘BAB – Biblioteca Arcádia de Bolso’ (1962–70), a paperback series published by Arcádia, which filled entire sections, such as philosophy, psychology, pure and applied sciences and social sciences, with translations (see Seruya 2005a).39 In fact, the percentage of translations in these domains was very high during the Estado Novo – perhaps 50 per cent or above, although reliable statistics are not readily available. As regards literature the rate is likely to have been at least 40 per cent. Further research must be undertaken to arrive at more conclusive results. There is no doubt, however, that genres such as detective and adventure stories, science fiction and the sentimental novel saw very high percentages of translations; in the case of science fiction, even 100 per cent for a long period. The main source culture for translations, in quantitative terms, was Spain, followed by Britain and the US, a somewhat surprising fact, as the common perception, even at the highest political level, was that France was the epitome of culture.40 As regards censorship, if we follow the official information about banned books, we come to about 3550 titles banned (Comissão do Livro Negro 1981), out of a total of 10,011 reports issued by the Censoring

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Commission. Bearing in mind that fiction was not the major area of work submitted to the Commission, and that a high number of translations of literature were published, it seems that, quantitatively, literature was not particularly affected. Doctrinal or ideological (especially Marxist) writings and, secondarily, sex-related matters tending towards eroticism or pornography were the main sources of disapproval by the censors. Whether a ban meant that Portuguese readers had no access to Marxist or erotic/ pornographic writings still has to be carefully assessed – for example, we know that at least seven translations of Stalin’s works were published in Portugal before the April Revolution of 1974. Compared with censorship of the press and other media, the censorship of foreign and Portuguese books (including translations) was on a much smaller scale. This is not surprising, considering how the two reading publics differed both numerically – newspapers, radio and television obviously had a much greater impact on public opinion, which was one of Salazar’s great concerns41 – and in terms of the high illiteracy rate, unfavourable to book consumption. The fact that books were not subjected to pre-publication censorship, as were the media, also signals their relative unimportance. For the Portuguese case, the strong presence of non-translated foreign books is important: these were only accessible to a minority, hence were not a major source of concern for the authorities. PIDE did play an important role in confiscating books and delivering them to the Censoring Commission, but in Pimentel’s (2007) history of the political police this activity was not worth a chapter.

Notes 1. More systematized research on translation studies in Portugal started in 1998 with the project ‘Literary history and translations. Representations of the Other in Portuguese Culture’, which has resulted in five books (Seruya and Moniz 2001; Seruya 2001; Lopes and Oliveira 2002; Seruya 2005b, 2007). Previously, individual scholars such as Almeida Flor, Ferreira Duarte and Fernanda Gil Costa had contributed through some case studies. As far as censorship and fascism is concerned, I refer to the conference at the University of Bologna (Forlì campus) in April 2005, ‘Translation in Fascist Systems: Italy, Spain, Germany’. 2. Costa Pinto himself (among others) reserves the designation ‘Portuguese Fascism’ for the National Syndicalist Movement, based on the Integralismo Lusitano, a political and intellectual movement founded on the eve of the First World War, whose ‘most obvious inspiration’ was Charles Maurras’s Action Française (Costa Pinto 1991: 238). After some failed attempts at a compromise with Salazar, the ‘Blue Shirts’, as the ‘integralistas’ were known,

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4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

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were banished in 1934 and became part of the opposition against the regime (see Costa Pinto 1994: Chapter 5). I quote here from the English translation (Salazar 1939), to which Salazar himself wrote an explanatory preface dated 1936. The original is dated 30 June 1930, and reads: ‘a Ditadura […] é um fenómeno da mesma ordem dos que por esse mundo, nesta hora, com parlamentos ou sem eles, se observam, tentando colocar o Poder em situação de prestígio e de força contra as arremetidas da desordem, e em condições de trabalhar e de agir pela nação’ (Salazar 1935: 73). Unless otherwise indicated all translations from the Portuguese are my own. According to Jaime Nogueira Pinto the first influential source in Salazar’s thought was ‘organic democracy’ or ‘Christian Democracy’, a world view departing from a religious position. Its doctrinal corpus are the papal encyclicals of the second half of the nineteenth century. Its enemies are laicism, Freemasonry, anti-clericalism, internationalism, Communism, democratic government. It must be remembered that Salazar had a vivid recollection of the persecution of Catholics and the Catholic Church during the first Republic in 1910–26 (Nogueira Pinto 2007: iv–v). Público 10 June 2008: 6. ‘Nada contra a Nação, tudo pela Nação’, from a speech of 21 October 1929 entitled ‘Política de verdade, política de sacrifício, política nacional’ (Salazar 1935: 34). ‘Quem se coloca no terreno nacional não tem partidos, nem grupos nem escolas: aproveita materiais conforme a sua utilidade para reconstruir o país’, from a speech of 26 October 1933 at the inauguration of the SPN (Propaganda Office) (Salazar 1935: 263). ‘Antes de haver entrado no trabalho de reorganização, uma palavra só – desordem – definia em todos os domínios a situação portuguesa’, from a speech of 28 May 1930 to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the National Dictatorship. The Propaganda Secretariat SPN was renamed SNI – Secretariado Nacional da Informação, Cultura Popular e Turismo in 1944, and SEIT – Secretaria de Estado da Informação e Turismo in 1968. ‘Às almas dilaceradas pela dúvida e o negativismo do século procurámos restituir o conforto das grandes certezas. Não discutimos Deus e a virtude; não discutimos a Pátria e a sua História; não discutimos a autoridade e o seu prestígio; não discutimos a família e a sua moral; não discutimos a glória do trabalho e o seu dever.’ This speech, called ‘As grandes certezas da Revolução Nacional’, was delivered in Braga to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the National Dictatorship (Salazar 1937: 130). Christine Garnier was a well-known French journalist who interviewed Salazar several times and was for a while on very friendly terms with him. Her book Férias com Salazar [Holidays with Salazar] was first published in 1952 and was frequently reprinted. This view of translation as exerting a negative influence on a national literature is neither original nor specific to Portugal. One of many examples is Korpel (1993: 116–19). Livros de Portugal was a monthly magazine belonging to the booksellers’ association GNEL.

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14. In 1968 this kind of literature was described by one of the official dailies, O Século, as ‘distorting and highly dangerous literature’, especially because it was read by children and young people (Livros de Portugal 116/1968: 22–3). 15. ‘O livro, esquecido, descansa a lombada nas estantes empoeiradas’. 16. This justification for resorting to translations is not uncommon in the history of translation, and is no doubt one of the reasons for the lack of prestige often attached to translation. Again, this is not a specifically Portuguese phenomenon. 17. The last volume of Gonçalves Rodrigues’s translation bibliography A Tradução em Portugal (Rodrigues 1999) ends in 1930. Data on translations of literature pertaining to the five years 1930–35 is currently being collected by the project Intercultural literature in Portugal 1930–1974: A critical bibliography. The years 1935–40 are already covered, but as the decade is not complete it will not be considered here. The same applies to the first half of the 1970s, ‘naturally’ divided by the April Revolution of 1974. It would be interesting to observe the evolution of the translational landscape after the dictatorship, but for methodological reasons I will retain the decade criterion. 18. There is no exhaustive data collection, but the data on which the present comments are based is nonetheless representative. The sources consulted are: the Boletim de Bibliografia Portuguesa, the Index Translationum, the National Library catalogues, second-hand booksellers and a few private libraries. 19. Within the research project mentioned above we defined 12 criteria as to what counts as a single title (see Seruya 2009: 79–80). They are based on Toury’s view of translation as causing change in the target culture: ‘Being an instance of performance, every individual text is of course unique; it may be more or less in tune with prevailing models but in itself it is a novelty. As such, its introduction into a target culture always entails some change, however slight, of the latter’ (Toury 1995: 26). For example, if one title is published twice in the same year, with the same translator, but in different publishing houses, it counts twice. The slightest difference in the context of a title is considered a change and thus a ‘novelty’. 20. This necessary selection hides relevant authors and countries such as the Austrian Stefan Zweig, who had been an enormous success in Portugal since the 1930s and across five decades. Countries are identified by the Standard Code designation, which raises some problems, for example concerning Germany (so far we have not distinguished the Federal Republic from the GDR) or the name ‘Russia’, still prevailing over ‘USSR’ due to the strong presence of classical Russian authors. 21. José Freire Antunes quotes an ‘Office of Strategic Services Report 1942’, from the National Archives in Washington DC: ‘In Portugal there is a most complete ignorance about America and the Americans. Most people only know Americans from what they see in films and read in sensationalist newspapers about millionaires, gangsters, scandals with movie stars, etc. Neither those films, which shock the conservative Portuguese morals, nor the contact with American companies have favoured the image of the USA in Portugal’ (Antunes 1991: 22). 22. Authors and genres are listed in descending order of the number of titles. 23. In the English translation by António de Figueiredo (2001). 24. I am grateful to Joaquim Cardoso Gomes for this information.

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25. ‘Os homens, os grupos, as classes vêem, observam as coisas, estudam os acontecimentos à luz do seu interesse. Só uma entidade, por dever e posição, tudo tem de ver à luz do interesse de todos’ (Salazar 1935: 260). 26. ‘António Costa Pinto has pointed out the important military component of the censorship machine during the Military Dictatorship and the Estado Novo, as well as in other areas of public administration […] such as the lead of the political police. […] As regards censorship, he refers to the maintenance of a “very strong group of Army officers”, which he traces back to the military origins of the Estado Novo and its very low demilitarization. Already in 1933 Salazar had made clear how convinced he was that the “military origin of the Portuguese Dictatorship would always confer a special quality on our revolution”, a statement which particularly suits Portuguese censorship as compared to Italian Fascism, National Socialism or even Francoism’ (Gomes 2006: 97). 27. The reports of the Censoring Commission concerning Portuguese and foreign books, which have been examined and sorted by Maria Lin Moniz (to whom I am most grateful) and myself, are kept in large cardboard boxes identified as ‘Caixas da Censura’. The reports are all numbered and signed by two censors, the author of the report and the decision-taker. They are not yet catalogued. 28. For example, Colette’s Chéri (translated by José Saramago) was banned in 1950 because it contained ‘pornography and illustrations’ (R 4484/50), but when it was presented again 15 years later (6/5/1965), the reason was not only that the era was more ‘daring in the field of immorality’, but also the fact that ‘she is a very famous writer, a member of the Goncourt Academy and of the Royal Academy of Belgium, to whom the French government paid homage through an official funeral’. This did not persuade the decisiontaker to rescind the ban, which was later reinforced: acknowledged as a masterpiece, the novel was, however, ‘a masterpiece of immorality and shamelessness’ (R8567/69). 29. The numbering of the censors’ reports indicates report number and issuing year. In the following, the book titles will be reproduced as they appear on the reports; when in Portuguese an English translation will be provided. 30. In the late 1960s a book about male impotence (Wilhelm Stekel’s Impotência masculina, a Brazilian translation), was allowed to circulate but only if ‘destined for the medical profession’ (R8595/69). 31. The titles are given as they appear in the censors’ reports, which may have been based on original source texts or intermediary translations. 32. The whole corpus of propaganda writings deserves special attention, not so much on account of the content, but rather because they are either translations made in Germany/Britain (or already in the embassies in Lisbon), or originally written in Portuguese. In all cases, the question of their authorship is interesting. 33. Later replaced by ‘cooperative neutrality’ favourable to the Allies. 34. Although anti-Semitism was not part of the regime’s ideology, it is a subject worth investigating within the Censoring Commission. There is no doubt, however, that information about the persecution of Jews by the Nazis was banned (for example Victor Gollancz’s Let my People Go, R2295/43). 35. Of course there were also respectable African leaders, such as Sékou Touré (R6473/59).

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36. The exception is The Air Conditioned Nightmare. The novel’s Brazilian translation, confiscated by PIDE, was passed by the censors for circulation (R8574/69). 37. In fact, the source mentioned for front covers reproduced in the catalogue Livros Proibidos no Estado Novo (2005) is usually ‘private collection’. 38. The strong impact of Chessmann’s novel led the Portuguese Writers’ Association to write an open letter to the US ambassador in Lisbon stating the country’s opposition to the death penalty and asking the American authorities to grant Chessmann the right to live (LP 12/1959). 39. Among the book series of repute in well-known publishing houses, the ‘Biblioteca Cosmos’ (1941–8) was a rare case in which translations were the exception. 40. When asked by Serge Groussard in 1958 if ‘the French culture still maintains its traditional influence in Portugal’, Salazar replied: ‘Definitely, not only because French is compulsory in the secondary school, but also because it is the vehicle for translation of foreign scientific and literary works. I myself am deeply indebted to the French culture’ (Salazar 1967: 42). 41. Public opinion was often used by Salazar as an argument for censorship. One telling example is an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, given to Serge Groussard on 2 and 3 September 1958. When asked when censorship might end Salazar answered: ‘Anyone who accepts, as we do, that public opinion is, according to the Constitution, a fundamental element of politics and the administration of our country, can’t help assigning to the state the duty of defending it against all factors that could mislead it about truth and justice. The big problem is to know which is the best defence, since the press, which is, together with the radio and television, the principal means of training public opinion, operates as a capitalist company, where private interests may surpass the public interest’ (Salazar 1967: 45; my translation).

Part III Case Studies


6 Literary Exchange between Italy and Germany: German Literature in Italian Translation Mario Rubino

In May 1933, just a few months after Hitler’s coming to power, there was a ‘purification’ of public libraries, and in the quadrangles of most German universities all the books by ‘un-German’ authors, either Jews or anti-Nazis, were burnt. Strangely enough, however, in 1933 Fascist Italy was the country which translated and published the greatest number of books by these same authors. The present study began with the intention of examining the causes of this apparently paradoxical situation, identifying the background which gave rise to it, and then following its evolution, which was greatly conditioned by international affairs, especially by the Italian attack on Ethiopia and the Italian-German alliance that followed, a situation that would have been judged highly unlikely only a few years before. With these aims in mind I have attempted to build up an idea of the Erwartungshorizont (the ‘horizon of expectation’, the key idea of Gadamer and Jauss) of the Italian public regarding contemporary German fiction during and after the Weimar Republic. I have identified some of the reasons behind the extraordinary success of German fiction despite the innumerable difficulties created by Fascist censorship. This has involved investigating the various stages of the progressive restrictions applied to the importation of books after the German-Italian cultural agreement of 1938 and the racial laws adopted in Italy that year. I also describe some examples of the sort of passive resistance enacted by Italian publishers between 1940 and 1945 against the philo-Nazi fiction that Germany attempted to impose on its ally.

German literature in Italian in the late 1920s Looking back at the beginnings of her activity as a mediator between the German and Italian cultures in a paper published in the collection 147

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German Literature in Italian Translation

Die andere Achse (1964), the Italian scholar of German Lavinia Mazzucchetti1 gave an outline of the presence of German literature in Italy before 1920: At the time, contemporary German literature was given very little consideration. It was the period of D’Annunzio, and Italy’s own literature was renaissance-oriented and decadent. In Italy, German literature was considered to be heavy and difficult, not something to be read for entertainment. For both France and Italy, countries with Latin roots, the land over the border was truly foreign: hic sunt leones. […] It is true that a few ambitious youngsters devoured works by Stirner and Nietzsche, Nordau and Weininger, translated and published by the excellent Bocca (Turin) editions (with black-and-white covers), but that was not literature! Still less so were the numerous books by Marlitt and her friends, nor were the slightly better novels produced by other women, such as Clara Viebig or Helene Böhlau, published by the Milanese publishers Treves.2 (Mazzucchetti 1964: 10) Objectively, Mazzucchetti’s observations on the few translations of contemporary German literature in early twentieth-century Italy could easily be extended to almost all foreign modern literature, with the exceptions of French and Russian works. French was the only foreign language taught in schools and was relatively widely studied, at least among the educated classes, while Russian literature was normally retranslated into Italian from the French versions available. For the rest of foreign literature it was first necessary to educate a new generation of experts in the language and contemporary culture of the other countries, people with enough in-depth knowledge to be able to render unnecessary any mediation through the French publishing houses and reviews. This is what actually took place in the period before and immediately after the First World War – when publishing houses, newspapers and magazines took on a good number of young scholars or candidates for future university posts who had lived abroad for their studies or more personal reasons. These young people had been in direct contact with the literary novelties of other nations. They could bring these to the attention of editors and, if required, also translate them competently. For the diffusion of foreign literature, however, the presence of qualified cultural mediators is not enough. There must also be the interest of the publishing world and, above all, an audience of readers.

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The experience of war, among other things, awakened a new desire to be informed of what was happening inside and outside the nation, a mass phenomenon absolutely new in Italy which brought about a trebling of the circulation of newspapers between 1915 and 1918 (Paccagnini 1997: 261). Books too, aroused greater interest than ever before, both for information and for entertainment. In 1918, the Florentine publisher Piero Barbera observed that today people who didn’t read in the past have begun to do so: in families, reading distracts the mind from obsessive worrying due to the war, and the cinema is not sufficient for this; books are read in the trenches in the pauses, behind the lines, in the hospitals.3 (Barbera 1997: 279) The Italian publishing industry responded to this new thirst for literature partly with ‘escapist literature’ by Italian authors who ‘limited themselves to transpositions for the lower and middle classes of literary models inspired by the late romanticism of D’Annunzio’4 (Giocondi 1978: 14). This was the moment of authors such as Guido da Verona,5 Pitigrilli6 or Mario Mariani,7 the most representative of the schools of ‘obscene or armistice or Milanese literature’8 (Albonetti 1994: 23–27), which continued to be ‘longsellers’ until after the Second World War. However, Italian authors rarely if ever produced any of the many genres of ‘escapist fiction’, such as detective, adventure or colonial novels, and it was necessary to draw from the enormous library of foreign narrative, especially English and French, in order to satisfy the growing demand for this type of ‘literary imagination for the masses’9 (Ragone 1999: 112). Gian Dàuli,10 who lived through this period, described the situation in the following terms: In authors such as London, Conrad and Kipling, there is a spirit of adventure, action and life lived dangerously that corresponds deeply with the state of mind of the new Italian, and that can give a valid contribution in educating our young folk to the ‘strenuous life’ required by the new age.11 (Quoted in Billiani 2007a: 98) Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Maurice Leblanc, Rudyard Kipling, Gaston Leroux, G. K. Chesterton, Jack London and Pierre

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Benoît were the most frequently translated authors, but often the translations were rather approximate and there was no precise strategy on the part of the publishers. Kipling’s Kim, for example, was published by six different publishing houses in the space of a few years (Vallardi in 1913, Quintieri in 1920, Corticelli in 1922, Monanni in 1928, Bietti in 1928 and Barion in 1929), and London’s The Call of the Wild by five (Modernissima in 1924, Sonzogno in 1928, Bietti in 1928, Corticelli in 1929 and Delta in 1929) (Billiani 2007a: 314–20). Despite the rather experimental and haphazard nature of the publishers’ initiatives up to then, the readers’ response was extremely positive. By the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, the conditions were right for the first series specifically dedicated to contemporary foreign literature, organized by publishers, editors and translators of proven experience. In 1926, on the initiative of Alfredo Polledro,12 the Slavia publishing house was founded in Turin. Availing itself of the collaboration of young scholars of Balkan literature such as Ettore Lo Gatto and Leone Ginzburg, Slavia started to present the works of authors in unabridged versions translated directly from the originals, an absolute novelty for an Italian book market inundated, as far as Balkan literature was concerned, with rewrites, extracts and manipulations of French translations which in themselves were often rather dubious. However, 1929 was the year that saw the real launch of the new publishing strategy, with the appearance of three new series of foreign literature: ‘Scrittori di tutto il mondo’ [Writers of the World], directed by Gian Dàuli on behalf of the Milanese publisher Modernissima, ‘Narratori nordici’ [Northern Narrators], edited by Lavinia Mazzucchetti for Sperling & Kupfer, Milan, and ‘I romanzi della vita moderna’ [Novels of Modern Life] published by Bemporad, Florence. One of the novelties of these three series was that alongside the usual English, American and French authors, the works of contemporary German novelists were also to be offered to the public. Between 1919 and 1928, only eight works of contemporary German literature had been published,13 perhaps due to the impression of German literature that Italian readers had formed on the basis of pre-war works written in the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm: deep and complex, but certainly not very accessible to the average reader. Furthermore, even after the war, Italian tastes in literature still prioritized elegance and harmony of form, and remained hostile to the experiments of the expressionist avant-garde.14 By the end of the 1920s this attitude had undergone radical changes.

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The interest in German literature was evident in the very name of the ‘Northern Narrators’ series published by Sperling & Kupfer. In the space of a single year, 1929, the series included the following German works: Leonhard Frank’s Carlo e Anna (Karl und Anna, 1926), Thomas Mann’s Disordine e dolore precoce (Unordnung und frühes Leid, 1926) and Cane e padrone (Herr und Hund, 1919), Wassermann’s Le orecchie del signor marchese (Sturrenganz, 1922) and Werfel’s La morte del piccolo borghese (Der Tod des Kleinbürgers, 1927). More telling still was the choice of Volume 2 of Bemporad’s ‘Novels of Modern Life’ series (‘Modern novels for modern readers’ was the advertising slogan): Ernst Glaeser’s Classe 1902, 1930 ( Jahrgang 1902, 1928). The editor’s note in the Appendix reads as follows: ‘A true and meaningful book: one may observe the downfall of imperial Germany and the birth, behind the scenes, of the new German spirit.’15 In the same series, Glaeser’s work was followed, between 1930 and 1933, by Vicki Baum’s Grand Hôtel, 1932 (Menschen im Hotel, 1929), which became a bestseller partly due to Edmund Goulding’s 1932 film of the same name and Tre di tre milioni, 1933 (Von drei Millionen drei) by Leonhard Frank, a novel published in Germany in 1932 which dealt with the tragic phenomenon of mass unemployment. The very first volume of Modernissima’s ‘Writers of the World’ series was a translation from German: Il diavolo, 1930 (Der Teufel, 1926) by Alfred Neumann, a historical novel set in fifteenth-century Flanders and written in a flowing style that created few difficulties for the reader. This was immediately followed by Süß, l’ebreo ( Jud Süß, 1925) by Lion Feuchtwanger and Thomas Mann’s La montagna incantata (Der Zauberberg, 1924), both published in 1930. One of the major successes of the series was Berlin-Alexanderplatz (Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929) by Alfred Döblin, published in 1931. The public’s interest in German literature becomes very clear if we consider that between 1929 and 1934, 15 out of the 35 translations published in the ‘Writers of the World’ series were of German literature, while only eight were of American novels (among these, Lewis’ Babbitt and Don Passos’ Manhattan Transfer give an idea of the literary quality of the series), four English, three French (including Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit), three Hungarian and two Russian.16

Italian views of Weimar Germany All this demonstrates the interest of the Italian public, and consequently of the publishing world, towards contemporary German literature at

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the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. Something had changed in the expectations of Italian readers. A passage from Emilio Castellani’s17 memoirs may help enlighten us: And contemporary Germany? The news we receive from there is very confused. We were stuck with the idea of a nation impoverished by inflation, still haunted by the ghost of Wilhelm II and his hateful spiked helmets. Obviously we had heard of a revolt, of desperate social risings and their failure, but we were still unable to imagine the new reality over on the other side of the Alps. We were told there was a certain Stresemann who dominated the political debates, but for us he was really just one more of that multitude of gentlemen in top hats and tails who all met up at international conferences, but in whose usefulness we had long ceased to believe. Friends who came back from periods of study at Munich, Frankfurt or Heidelberg told us of strange contradictions: free love and duels between students, Georg Grosz and Max Liebermann, lectures on psychoanalysis and endless debates on the revision of Marxism. The Ufa studio’s films – Lang’s Dr Mabuse, Pabst’s Kameradschaft, Pommer’s Der Kongreß tanzt – gave us a vision of a world that went from the paroxysm of hallucination to an exaltation of human solidarity, abandoning itself the next minute to the most carefree hedonism.18 (Castellani 1964: 29–30) In this passage Castellani succinctly describes some of the basic elements of the idea young Italians (and not only Italians) had formed of the new Weimar Republic. Even more than the elements themselves, however, what is important are the contradictions between them, as Castellani correctly observed. It is these which stimulate the reader’s curiosity. Another fundamental ingredient is the reference to the brand new world of cinema, to which I will give more attention later in the chapter – it was the period of maximum glory of the German film industry and many legendary films were produced. For the first time cinema took its place alongside literature in shaping the ideas foreigners had of Germany, and from then on gradually pushed literature into the background. The disquieting and enigmatic contradictions of Weimar reality were a characteristic which also emerged in another, much more traditional form of communication, the journalistic report. The turbulent social, economic and political events of post First World War Germany, such as inflation or the liberalization of social behaviour in Berlin, the ‘new

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Babylon’, were considered all the more ‘sensational’ when compared with the stereotype of Prussian order and rigour associated with pre-war Germany; this gave rise to the presence of hordes of correspondents whose job was to inform Italian newspaper readers of what was going on on the other side of the Alps. Of the authors of the period’s numerous newspaper and magazine articles,19 I have chosen two of the most significant, the first of whom wrote on the beginnings of the Weimar Republic and the second on the years in which the signs of its decline and fall were becoming evident. Articles like these played a fundamental role in destroying the old stereotypes regarding Germany and the Germans, sparking off a lively curiosity for what was happening there. Journalism One of the most famous correspondents from Germany in the first half of the 1920s was Paolo Monelli.20 Monelli made a clear distinction between Berlin, described as ‘modern to the point of neurosis’ (Monelli 1927: 27) and as ‘a bilge of the most filthy vices’ (ibid.: 169), and the rest of Germany, ‘the Germany we used to love’, with ‘its naive medieval feeling, its beer-brewing bourgeoisie, its romantic young lasses’ (ibid.: 182), ‘the easy-going Germany liked so much by our shrewd and ironic fathers’ (ibid.: 257).21 Even a large city like Munich seemed to him ‘exceedingly sweet and perfect’, ‘a delicious refreshment for the eye and for the spirit of those fleeing from Berlin, a Babylon gone bad, a republican trollop with a ragged Frisian beret covering her unkempt hair’22 (ibid.: 253). In his descriptions of the ‘Babylonic capital’23 (ibid.: 257), many pages of one chapter are dedicated to the ‘business of the perverts, the sinners and the abnormal’24 (ibid.: 108), with anecdotes and atmospheric details of ‘a thousand ambiguous little coffee shops in western Berlin, full of men dressed as women, women with caramel-coloured locks and trousers, many Russians, many artists, many professors, many adolescents’25 (ibid.: 109). After a further denunciation of the explosion of licentious writings, he felt obliged to deduce that ‘there is something rotten in the land of Brandenburg’26 (ibid.: 237). On the other hand, and here Monelli is struck by the same contradictions that struck the young Castellani, even in the ‘exceedingly sweet’ and ‘easy-going’ provinces he could not help but notice the anachronistic student traditions, the student duel or Mensur being the most conspicuous among these, which ‘not even the new era and the experience of the war’ had managed to do away with, ‘let alone the recent laws which forbid it, given that they are the laws of the much hated democratic republic with its headquarters up in red Berlin’27 (ibid.: 259).

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Corrado Alvaro,28 who wrote articles for the weekly L’Italia letteraria, the Stampa of Turin and L’Ambrosiano of Milan, made several visits to Germany between 1928 and 1931. Unlike Monelli’s witty and conversational pieces, Alvaro’s articles are more thoughtful – asking, and trying to answer, a number of serious questions. The two did concur on several points: the Americanization of the Berlin lifestyle, the prominence of the Jews in the intellectual and financial worlds, the parallel growth of anti-Semitism, the novelty of German cabaret, and more. From the very first, however, Alvaro did not express the self-satisfied presumption of the Italian Fascist Monelli towards the Germans’ unresolved problems. His attitude was a more reflective one: I was offered the chance to visit one of the parts of Europe that people say are tormented by the thousand demons of modernity, the result of experiences totally different, completely opposite in nature, from our own, open to all that the world has brought to life in the last ten years, nationalism, Communism, industrialization, and to that American lifestyle that seems strangely to sum up all the tendencies of the modern world: Germany with its new internationalist and Europeanist myth.29 (Alvaro 1995: 233) In Alvaro’s eyes, this condition of being the sole true European home of the ‘thousand demons of modernity’ put Germany on a par with the US and Soviet Russia. The Germany-Russia-America and the BerlinMoscow-New York trio appeared often in his reports on the culture of the Weimar Republic whenever he wished to indicate a sort of geographical area of the ‘modern’: ‘Anyone who compares the literature of Russia, Germany and America will be surprised to find the same tendencies towards realism and the documentary: topical, it’s true; but temporary’30 (ibid.: 226–7). Regarding the new ‘photographic art’: ‘Many of these examples are to be found only in Berlin, Moscow and New York; together they create a completely new atmosphere’31 (ibid.: 253). Summarizing his views, he notes: ‘In Germany these characteristics [of the art of modernity] are similar to those of Russia and America, two bourgeois nations with the same sort of approach to life as a proletarian nation. Something to bear in mind’32 (ibid.: 225). The new forms of art which have emerged are described as follows: In art and in literature: realism, concreteness, documentary value, art as a mirror of the surrounding reality, but fundamentally confrontational

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and critical; the same revisionism with respect to the old world that can be observed in social customs and behaviour. All this is the antithesis of the art of the Latin nations, where art is seen rather as an escape from the world of today.33 (Alvaro 1995) We have perhaps paid too much attention to the reports of Monelli and Alvaro, but this is because they may be taken as containing an almost complete compendium, including most of the nuances, of the elements on which the Italian public based its ideas of the Weimar Germany. Cinema Alongside this type of article, however, the new films arriving from the Weimar Republic also played an important role. It is well known that films can contain and transmit far more information than print. The reception of this information, as Walter Benjamin observed, takes place in a peculiar ‘dimension’, in which a ‘distracted passivity’ (Benjamin 1966: 46) combines with an unconscious process of elaboration in some ways similar to a dream. Films, therefore, communicate sensations and emotions which, though he or she is not always aware of it, become part of the spectator’s life experience with the same intensity as his or her own personal experiences (ibid.: 41). A sense of the new German reality was transmitted by the Weimar film directors and reached an enormous audience, offering easy entertainment in the countless cinemas of Italy, not only in big cities but also in the provinces. At first, in a phase that Alvaro calls ‘Hoffmannian’ (Alvaro 1995: 265), the hallucinatory expressionist fantasies of films such as Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari (Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1920), Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (Fritz Lang, Dr Mabuse: The Gambler 1922), Das Wachsfigurenkabinet (Paul Leni, The Three Wax Works, 1924) and Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926), were interpreted, at least by the better educated viewers, as stereotyped popular expressions of the Northern strangeness, or ‘German morbidity’ typical of that homeland of Romanticism; for Croce, following in the footsteps of Goethe, Romanticism represented without doubt a pathological degeneration of idealism (Croce 1948: 43–4). Yet despite this attitude, in Metropolis, notwithstanding its fantastically surreal language, the viewer could not escape the impact of questions far more directly linked to a menacing and realistic modernity than the symbolic omens of future catastrophe expressed in previous films. The message of films like Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924)

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by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau or Die freudlose Gasse ( Joyless Street, 1925) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst could be perceived by spectators as referring directly to the tragic reality of the former Central European Empires in that period. In Der letzte Mann, the magnificently uniformed porter of the Hotel Atlantic in Berlin is demoted to bathroom attendant, becoming a clear symbol of the loss of prestige and identity of a defeated Germany; the psychological drama of the main character, impressively interpreted by Emil Jannings, reflects the human drama of the entire population. Die freudlose Gasse, in turn, was considered scandalously realistic in its gloomy representation of Vienna and the unemployment, hunger and consequent moral corruption even of those middle classes that had been so proud of their respectability. The films which came out in the following years show a Weimar Germany which was once again stable from an economic point of view, but subject to sinister threats rooted in society itself, as in the notorious M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M, 1931) by Fritz Lang. Other kinds of obscure menace may be concealed in the individual, as in the case of the young brigadier Albert Holk in Asphalt (1929) by Joe May. Holk allows himself to be seduced by a fascinating female thief and fails in his duty as a defender of law and order, all in the setting of a Berlin dedicated to sensuality and the achievement of pleasure at any cost. Elsa Kramer, the seductress, is just one more variation on the theme of insatiable femmes fatales, like Lulu in Pabst’s Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box, 1928) and Lola Lola in Josef von Sternberg’s Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1930). The male characters who regularly succumbed to their destructive beauty became emblematic representatives of a world which had lost its traditional reference points and which was going though a deep crisis. The same sense of dissolution and questioning of traditional social conventions is also present in Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform, 1931) by the Viennese director Leontine Sagan, in which a girls’ college founded on the rigid educational principles of traditional Germany is turned upside down by a new wind of romantic but transgressive homosexual sentiments. Italian cinema-goers were thus subjected to scenes in which the old Prussian order and legendary sense of discipline had completely disintegrated. The opinions expressed by soldier Karl and his comrades in the trench in Pabst’s Westfront 1918 (Comrades of 1918, 1930) certainly did not concur with the cliché of the legendary military qualities of the Germans, and neither did the example of solidarity between French and German troops in Kameradschaft (Comradeship, 1931), by the same director.34

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According to the journalistic articles at the time, these films offered an illustration of change. The emotive form of the film together with the more detached and analytical newspaper articles reinforced each other in documenting these changes and the rebellion against ancient stereotypes. The Weimar myth Defeated Germany, and above all Berlin, appeared to have completely eliminated all the values that had permitted the establishment and growth of Wilhelm’s Reich. While some conservative elements still resisted in the provinces, in the ‘red’ capital Berlin pacifist, internationalist and hyper-libertarian ideas were introduced and became rapidly established, with very obvious effects in both social conduct and artistic expression. Despite military defeat, inflation and unemployment, the vitality of the German manufacturing and commercial systems stood up to the test; for industry especially, ‘Americanization’ had progressed compared to the pre-war situation. By now, the Berlin metropolitan population differed very little from that of Moscow or New York. Its intellectuals were more than open to any novelty from the US or the Soviet Union, and especially in the fields of cinema and literature their innovations began to have an influence on these two advanced countries; more importantly, these new art forms were more comprehensible for the general public than the expressionism which had preceded it. In this aspect and in many others, the metropolis of Berlin emerged, despite all its contradictions and its atmosphere of temporariness, as a sort of laboratory of all that was modern. In politics, Germany appeared to Italians as a sort of long-term experiment with the tensions between the right and the left, an experiment that had been abruptly broken off in Italy after the advent of Fascism. For 11 years after this event, Germany was regarded as an enormous stage on which the various coups de théâtre between right and left were played out in a drama on which, in Italy, the curtains had long been drawn. Despite some distinguishing factors, this mythical idea of the Weimar Republic held many points in common with the idea being formed by Italians in the same period about the ‘American myth’. The new forms of social behaviour and the new literature, whether German, American or Soviet Russian, began to be seen as a possible alternative to the narrowminded and backward-looking horizons of Italian politics and culture, tied as they were to the old-fashioned values and ideas of a classical, Roman and Catholic universalism and the Fascist pseudo-revolution this had produced.

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The pioneer phase of translation from German This, then, was the context in which the Italian public viewed the new German literature which started to appear in increasing quantities in Italian bookshops from the late 1920s onwards. As I have noted, if we limit ourselves to literature by authors born after 1875, the ten years between 1919 and 1928 saw only eight works of German literature translated into Italian. Suddenly, however, in 1929, ten works were translated in a single year, and 16 in 1930. There were 12 translations in 1931, eight in 1932, while 1933 was a peak year with 35 works of German literature translated into Italian. The translations then continued until 1938 at an average of around 20 a year (Rubino 2002: 109–19). It is true that in this period there was a generalized increase in publishing, with three times as many books being published in 1930 as in 1928,35 but the increase of German fiction translations far exceeded this average. This is also the period in which Italian publishing houses were transformed from their handcrafted artisan origins into a true cultural industry, constantly monitoring the tendencies of the market, always ready to follow these tendencies and indeed often giving rise to them. The older establishments, such as Treves and Sonzogno, did not manage to change with the times, while three new publishers emerged, Mondadori, Rizzoli and Bompiani, which all maintained a dominant position almost until the present day.36 One of the key sectors in this renewal and in the emergence of new masses of readers was popular literary fiction, which marked a turning point in the translation of foreign works. In practice, German literature could begin to compete with French, English and American literature only once the Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, writers had started offering novels accessible to a large public – whose new interest in social and political events in Germany had grown for the reasons I have just discussed. In importing so many foreign works, it seems clear that the publishing houses identified a profound lack of interest of the general public in contemporary Italian literature.37 This was probably due to an excessive emphasis on style, expressed in the language of the return of the Strapaese or the flight towards the Stracittà, almost always arrogantly smug in satisfying the ambition of a ‘beautiful page, closed within its own circle of formal perfection’ (Manacorda 1980: 237). However, it should not be forgotten that this ‘invasion of translations’ (Rundle 2004: 292) happened in a country ruled by a dictatorship – perhaps not quite from 1922, but certainly from 1925–26 onwards, after

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the dismissal of Parliament. Fascist censorship initially paid attention mostly to journalism, but at the same time it started extending its control to cover the publication of books as well, with a series of progressive restrictions culminating in the constitution of the ‘Commission for the Purifying of Books’ in 1938 (Rundle 2000: 75). This obliged publishers to undertake constant work of negotiation and compromise with the Fascist authorities. Especially in the field of translations, publishers frequently carried out preventive self-censorship, making cuts or changes to the original text in order to avoid topics, such as abortion, incest or suicide, that did not meet with the approval of ‘Fascist morality’. The first literary genre to begin to demolish Italian prejudices regarding German literature was the war novel, and it was the most famous war novel of them all, Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) by E. M. Remarque, that provoked the most serious incident between a publisher and Fascist censorship, as we will see below. In April 1929, the critic Pietro Solari, writing from Berlin for the weekly review L’Italia letteraria [Literary Italy], announced the most recent successes on the German book market: Im Westen nichts Neues by E. M. Remarque, a war diary Solari calls ‘the monument to the German Unknown Soldier’, with ‘half a million copies in six months’; Jahrgang 1902 by Ernst Glaeser, ‘a synopsis of the war on the internal front’; and Krieg by Ludwig Renn, ‘a photographic report of life in the trenches’38 (Solari 1929: 1). In his preface to his own translation of Renn’s Krieg (1928), Paolo Monelli implicitly identifies one of the reasons behind the success in Italy of German literature dealing with war, the recent shared experience of war, but seen through the eyes of the enemy: Naturally, we must not forget that this is a German book, written by a German soldier. […] The Italian reader should keep this in mind: if he too participated in the war, he will penetrate behind the mysterious enemy lines and see how those mysterious enemies acted and reacted, invisible as they almost always were behind a mortal barrier of fire, at most perceived as inanimate targets to be shot at.39 (Monelli 1929: IX–X) Furthermore, there was also the unexpected discovery that some Germans were not only pacifists but also authors able to write ‘without artificial devices, psychologizing or rhetorical emphasis’40 (Vincenti 1929), with a ‘style that in itself was an elementary form of analysis, like a dry stone wall, made up of short sentences, no imagery, all instantaneous

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sensation, all fact’41 (Benco 1929: 765–6), a ‘faithful mirror of the facts, places and times that are to be portrayed’42 (Raimondi 1930: 100). Together with earlier stereotyped ideas of Prussia and the Prussians, what fell now were the prejudices about the unreadability of German fiction. In a report from Berlin, Giovanni Battista Angioletti registered this change of attitude: ‘It’s time to change the obsolete clichés that tell us that everything German is heavy, that everything from Northern countries must lack in grace. Time moves on, and men with it’43 (Angioletti 1932: 3). In the second half of the 1920s the German Kriegsromane [war novels] were written after a time lapse sufficient for the experiences of ten years earlier to have been digested; they became one of the most important genres of the Neue Sachlichkeit literary school, born as a reaction against the neurotic subjectivism of the earlier expressionist literature. These volumes had the function of documenting, recording and accepting both the events that had characterized recent German history and the state of affairs these had generated. Together with the war novels there were, until the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, several other genres with similar functions: Großstadtsromane [metropolitan novels] such as Berlin Alexanderplatz by Döblin and above all Zeitromane [novels of the era] such as Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum or Kleiner Mann – was nun? by Hans Fallada. The term Zeitromane was used for fiction in which attention was focused not only on the characters but also on the situation of a certain period and how this situation was experienced. In contrast to the historical novel, the setting was that of the period in which the novel was written, so Zeitromane could thus be translated as ‘novels of the present day’. The realistic, rapid and nervous style of these genres, as well as their documentary intentions, demonstrate the great influence of American post-naturalist works such as Sinclair’s Oil!, Lewis’ Babbitt, Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers and Manhattan Transfer, Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey or Hemingway’s Fiesta and A Farewell to Arms. The German derivatives, however, were more familiar and digestible, and allowed for a greater degree of identification and personal memory than the ‘exotic’ American novels. For the Italian reader, the new Weimar novels provided not only marked realism but also a quantity of information on the contradictions of the Germany of the time, which were so difficult to comprehend. As the idea of the unreadability of German literature as a whole was gradually superseded, other genres of contemporary German literature started to be introduced in Italy – those which appeared less inclined towards an investigation of the sentiments of the defeated enemy (Germany), as in the war novels, and did not glorify themselves in the

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seductive but infernal light of a surprising and scandalous present, as in the metropolitan novels. Readers and publishing houses were infected by an impatient fervour respecting this vast but unexplored literary territory, which seemed to possess an almost inexhaustible reserve of truly engrossing fiction. It was as though the discovery of the antimilitary and scandalous German texts had given rise to a desire for deeper understanding of other aspects of a country in precarious equilibrium between contradictions that never ceased to surprise. To give just a few examples of the more successful publications, the period between 1931 and 1934 saw the arrival of the fictional legal chronicle and generational conflicts of Wassermann’s Il caso Maurizius, 1931 (Der Fall Mauritius, 1928), the Jewish problem and its historical roots in Feuchtwanger’s Süss, l’ebreo, 1930 (Jud Süß, 1925) or in one of its contemporary aspects in Roth’s Giobbe, storia di un uomo semplice, 1932 (Hiob, 1930), and the tragedy of unemployment outside Berlin, as in Frank’s Tre di tre milioni, 1933 (Von drei Millionen drei, 1932). Furthermore, most of Thomas Mann’s works, the early works of Hermann Hesse and one of the first European translations of Franz Kafka’s Il processo, 1933 (Der Prozeß, 1925) were published in the same period.44

German fiction and the publishing industry By the beginning of the 1930s this pioneering phase had run its course. A substantial number of passionate translators and specialists had enabled editors such as Polledro, Dàuli and Mazzucchetti to create foreign literature series that could compare with those of other European countries. From this time onwards, much the same thing happened with other literary genres or with single authors: small and mediumsized publishing houses were the first to explore the new territory, after which, as in many industrial processes, the time became ripe for the larger houses to join the fray. Until 1930 the Arnoldo Mondadori house, which in the following decade was to become the largest publisher of foreign works, had about 60 translations in its catalogue, but these were mostly books on history, fictional memoirs, travel diaries, a few books of poetry or theatre scripts by writers such as G. B. Shaw or Maxim Gorky: ‘it could be said that in these early years that was it, or almost’45 (Decleva 1993: 154). The year 1929 saw the arrival of the first four translations of works by S. S. Van Dine, Edgar Wallace, R. L. Stevenson and A. K. Green in the new, bestselling ‘Libri gialli’ [Yellow Books] series of detective novels, which still exists today. In the first month 50,000 copies were sold,

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an absolute record for the Italian book market. The publisher totally ignored the field of contemporary foreign novels, however, at least as far as middle or highbrow literature was concerned, giving preference to Italian authors – for example by acquiring the exclusive rights to all of D’Annunzio’s and Pirandello’s works. However, after the success of the publication of Renn’s Krieg by Treves (1929) and Glaeser’s Jahrgang 1902 by Bemporad (1930), Mondadori initiated a whole new series, ‘I romanzi della guerra’ [War Novels], dedicated to this type of work. The first volume of the series was Arnold Zweig’s La questione del sergente Grischa, 1930 (Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grisha, 1927), followed closely by Remarque’s Niente di nuovo sul fronte occidentale, 1931 (Im Westen nichts Neues, 1929) and La via del ritorno, 1932 (Der Weg zurück, 1931) and Adrienne Thomas’ Caterina va alla guerra, 1931 (Die Katrin wird Soldat, 1930). Fascist censorship imposed cuts of about 150 pages on Zweig’s book and confiscated Remarque’s Niente di nuovo sul fronte occidentale (Albonetti 1994: 61–6), which a critic faithful to the regime had condemned for its ‘decomposing, dissolving, fomenting, anarchic and nihilist spirit’46 (Piazza 1929). At this point Mondadori engaged in a legal battle with the Prime Minister’s Press Office, one of the bodies dealing with book censorship, arguing that a large number of prohibited works were already circulating in Italy in their French versions, for which the restrictions on sales were less rigid. In this way, Italian publishers and their workers were losing work and profit. Mondadori claimed, perhaps with a little exaggeration, that he had lost the profits on 200,000 copies of Remarque’s book alone. This recourse to nationalistic feelings was evidently more of a pretext than anything else, but the battle against the importation of French translations was one of the main foundation stones of Mondadori’s expansion in the foreign literature section. The same idea is to be found in his Editor’s Note in the Almanacco della ‘Medusa’, the noteworthy volume published to celebrate the first anniversary of the ‘Medusa’ series: The ‘Medusa’ is, in fact, above all an important work of Italian patriotism, contributing to effectively free our country from its subjugation to other European languages, through which the Italian public normally came to know the books published in the rest of the world, often only after a long time and chosen according to rather dubious criteria.47 (Mondadori 1934: 9–10) The ‘Medusa’, which began in 1933, took its place beside Mondadori’s other foreign literature series ‘Romanzi della palma’ [Palm Tree Novels],

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a well-bound illustrated magazine which started to invade newsagents and bookshops in 1932, at first monthly and then, in response to its initial success, twice a month. The difference between the ‘Medusa’ and ‘Palma’ series lay not so much in the authors they included, nor even in their literary quality, as in what today we would call its ‘target audience’. The works published in the ‘Palma’ series were more ‘readable’: wellconstructed stories full of tension and surprises on themes capable of entertaining the reader, especially the female reader. The typical reader of a ‘Medusa’ title was more interested in literature as such, and was prepared to read about more profound ideals or social and historical issues. That the difference was not between ‘high’ and ‘trivial’ literature becomes obvious when we observe that the ‘Palma’ authors included authors of the status of Saint-Exupéry, Mauriac, Maurois, Hauptmann, Shaw and Scott Fitzgerald. The real difference – the target audience – becomes evident when we look at the type of publication and the price: 3.50 lire for a copy of a ‘Palma’ novel in magazine format, 10 lire or more for a ‘Medusa’ bound volume. However, each with its own audience, both publications enjoyed a similar level of success: the ‘Palma’ novels were soon being printed regularly in about 30,000 copies, and the ‘Medusa’ in 20,000 (Albonetti 1994: 100–1). The ‘Medusa’ series started dramatically: in the Almanacco della ‘Medusa’, printed in late November 1933, 27 volumes were listed as having been published, a figure which implies a rate of three books a month if we consider that the first volume, Henri Alain-Fournier’s Il grande amico (Le grand Meaulnes, 1913) was only published in March of the same year. The interest aroused by German fiction among the Italian readership, and hence in the publishing world, is illustrated by the fact that in this series, which presented itself as the leader in foreign literature, eight of the 27 volumes, almost a third, were by German authors (Fallada, Feuchtwanger, A. Zweig, H. Mann, Wassermann, Hesse, T. Mann); the series also included eight translations of French works (by Alain-Fournier, Mauriac, Maurois, de Lacretelle, Morand, Colette, Gide), seven English (Galsworthy, Huxley, Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, O’Flaherty), two Danish (Lauesen, N. Petersen) and only two American (Buck, Dos Passos). The literary events of 1933 as they impacted upon German literature in translation can only be explained as the result of the two major factors I have presented: the widely felt desire to grasp the sense of the new political and social scenario in Germany, and the idea that the novels written by German authors could be an important tool to understand the deeper psychological motives that had given rise to these changes. The bestselling book among the first few of the series, in fact, was

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Fallada’s E adesso, pover’uomo? (Kleiner Mann – was nun? 1932),48 which in the publisher’s presentation of the fourth reprint was described as ‘the most humane and moving story to be set against the dramatic background of unemployment in Germany’.49 Between 1932 and 1935, Mondadori rapidly became Italy’s leading publishing house, but at the same time two other publishers, Bompiani and Frassinelli, opened new series of contemporary foreign literature. Bompiani concentrated its attention essentially on the works of Erich Kästner, publishing four of his books, among them Emilio e i detectives (Emil und die Detektive, 1928) and Fabian (Fabian, 1931), between 1931 and 1935. It also had a major success with Transatlantico, 1932 (Die Überfahrt, 1931) by Gina Kaus. Frassinelli launched Franz Kafka in Italy, with translations of Il processo, 1933 (Der Prozeß, 1925) and Il messaggio all’imperatore, 1935 (Eine kaiserliche Botschaft, 1931). The unassailability of Mondadori’s position is, however, evident if we examine the statistics. Of the 234 books, identified during this research, of contemporary German literature translated into Italian between 1922 and 1945, 95 were published by Mondadori. Its closest competitor was Sperling & Kupfer, with 30, followed by Modernissima/Corbaccio with 20, while Bompiani and Frassinelli published ten books of German literature each (Rubino 2002: 109–22). As for the most translated authors, the undoubted leader is Stefan Zweig, with 19 books translated, followed by Jakob Wassermann and Vicki Baum with 13, including one translated and published by two different publishers, Thomas Mann with ten plus one that was translated twice, Erich Kästner and Hans Fallada with eight each, Franz Werfel with six, and Hans Carossa, Lion Feuchtwanger, Leonhard Frank, Bernhard Kellermann, Joe Lederer and Ernst Wiechert with five each. Except for Mann, Carossa and Wiechert, all the other authors wrote books which read easily and quickly.

The impact of 1933 Looking at this list, the first thing that strikes one is that among the authors most frequently translated into Italian, the vast majority (S. Zweig, Baum, T. Mann, Werfel, Feuchtwanger, Frank, Lederer) had been obliged to leave Germany in 1933, being either Jewish or antiNazi. Jakob Wassermann, a Styrian Jew, died in Austria in 1934, but in Germany his works had already been burnt. Among the authors translated into Italian, those who remained in Germany were either boycotted (Kellermann, Wiechert) or maltreated, for example with temporary arrests, as in the case of Kästner. Only Hans Carossa and Hans

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Fallada were partially exempt from persecution, given their ambiguous position after the consolidation of the Nazi regime. In this context we should remember that the relations between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism underwent several modulations during the 1920s and 1930s.50 In the first stages, during the mid1920s, the Italian Fascists nurtured a thinly veiled superiority complex regarding Hitler’s new party, as can be seen in the sarcastic description of Hitler in one passage of Paolo Monelli’s reports from Germany, discussed earlier: This Viennese ex-upholsterer and painter has the typical face of his profession, and that crested upturned nose that is the ideal of blond Germans as opposed to the meditative hooked nose typical of the Jews, and under that nose two blond toothbrushes mount the guard, with Austrian obsequiousness, to a fish-like mouth. […] Hitler is often described as a clown. Certainly, the outcome of his November adventure [1923, the attempted coup d’état with Ludendorff] does not encourage us to form a better opinion. It is however necessary to consider that the moral status of Hitler is irreparably damaged by the comparison that both his supporters and his adversaries draw with Mussolini. These comparisons are crushing, and the man who began as a good but modest imitator has become a grotesque impostor.51 (Monelli 1927: 56–7) Even after Hitler rose to power in 1933, and if the two dictatorships held many points in common, among other things the way they presented themselves, there were profound differences between them in their ideological motivations for pursuing dominance: the Germans believed in the superiority of the German race, while in Italy the appeal was to the imperial universalism of the Roman empire of antiquity, and was devoid of racial connotations. One example of this difference and of how it was perceived by the European public can be found in the fact that in 1933 a large number of German Jews persecuted by the Nazis (among whom the writers Alfred Neumann, Joe Lederer and Franz Werfel were perhaps the most famous) chose to emigrate to Mussolini’s Italy. The Fascist regime gave them a new home and ‘in contrast to the majority of countries, allowed them to work legally’52 (Voigt 1989: 26), at least until 1938. During this period there were some moments of tension, such as that in 1934, immediately after the assassination of Chancellor Dollfuß by Austrian Nazis, when Mussolini moved four divisions of the army to the Brennero border in order to discourage Germany from

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annexing Austria. Relations between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany started to move in the direction of a future alliance only in 1936, when Italy attacked Ethiopia and subsequently resigned from the League of Nations, and when Italy along with Germany joined the Spanish Civil War on the side of Francisco Franco’s Falangist Party.53 The alliance was eventually concluded in 1938. Before this date, however, in the period between 1931 and 1937–38, there was a particularly favourable climate for the diffusion of contemporary German literature in Italy: publishing houses were interested in exploiting this extremely successful line, and did not have to trouble themselves about the ethnic origins of the authors, while Fascist censorship posed no particular problems as yet apart from the safeguard of ‘moral standards’. If we restrict our enquiry only to the field of so-called EmigrantenLiteratur, the works of authors obliged to abandon Germany due to the Nazi dictatorship, the Index Translationum of the League of Nations Institute for Intellectual Cooperation reveals that in the period between 1933 and 1938, Italy was in third place in the world for the number of translations of works prohibited by the Nazis, with 59 such books published, as compared to 66 in the US and 64 in Poland. Italy was followed by Hungary with 58, and then by France and Britain with 53 translations each. In 1933 Italy actually led the table, having published 19 works of Emigranten-Literatur compared to 14 in Poland and France and 11 each in the US and Czechoslovakia (Berendsohn 1946: 156). This is no real surprise, given the irrelevance and lack of international appeal of openly Nazi authors like Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer or Werner Beumelburg. Arnoldo Mondadori was fully aware of this situation from the start. In a letter dated October 1933 and addressed to Enrico Rocca, one of his editors in the translation sector, he wrote: ‘Writers of international fame in today’s Germany are few and far between – most of them have fled or have been sent away’54 (quoted in Albonetti 1994: 86). The result was that, from 1933 onwards, the translation rights of works by authors such as Lion Feuchtwanger, Vicki Baum, Heinrich Mann, Arnold Zweig, Gina Kaus, Irmgard Keun or Katrin Holland were acquired by Mondadori from the publishing houses – such as Querido and Allert de Lange of Amsterdam, Paul Zsolnay of Vienna, and Bermann-Fischer of Stockholm – which had published the German originals by authors banned in Nazi Germany (ibid.: 249–471); and the Fascist censorship authorities made no objections. After this first season of translations, however, the changes that took place both in the political climate in Italy and in the relations between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany inevitably had serious consequences for the reception of German literature.

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The turning point of 1938 For contemporary German authors in Italian translation, the situation came to a head in November 1938, after the stipulation of a specific agreement between Italy and Germany, the ‘German–Italian Cultural Agreement’, which was part of the growing solidarity between the two totalitarian states, the ‘Rome–Berlin Axis’ imagined by Mussolini in 1936, and given international status with the ‘Pact of Steel’ in May 1939. The preparations for this pact and the new Italian racial laws of autumn 1938 rapidly cleared the Italian bookshops and publishing houses of any publication by Jewish authors or those who might in any way cause displeasure to the German allies. Article 26 of the Cultural Agreement explicitly stated that both parties ‘should block the translation or the diffusion of works that, in falsifying historic truth, attack the other country, its form of government or people in government, and also deforming works (tendentious literature) by authors exiled from the other country’55 (Petersen 1988: 59). Certain books, however, did continue to circulate covertly for some time, and this aroused the fury of German diplomats.56 The Italian authorities were therefore obliged, during the meeting of the Italian-German Cultural Commission, to ask for patience, since ‘the economic situation of the book sector did not allow for such radical and sudden changes’57 (Voigt 1989: 103), and since the Italian publishing houses needed to finish selling the books they had already printed. By November 1940, however, the German Ambassador in Rome, Hans Georg von Mackensen, was able to assure his superior, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, that ‘even the last few books [had] disappeared from the bookshops’58 (ibid.). By now Fascism was obsequiously following the German National Socialist example. Between 1938 and 1939, the number of translations of foreign literature fell to half the number published in 1934 (Ragone 1989: 1100). The evolution of Fascism and the developments in its international policies, then, disrupted the balance that the publishers had managed to maintain for almost ten years, between their commercial interests and the public’s demand for entertainment and information on the one hand, and the requirements of the censor on the other – requirements which the publishers had learnt to negotiate with considerable shrewdness. What is significant in this context is that the main targets for restriction were translations of contemporary German literature: the titles published diminished from 19 in 1937 to 11 in 1938, seven in 1940 and six in 1941 (Rubino 2002: 117–22). As the successful fiction of Jewish

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or anti-Nazi writers was now forbidden, the only ‘legal’ source of new literature became the literature deemed admissible within the Third Reich. The substitution of Emigranten-Literatur with pro-Nazi works was what the German authorities had long desired and now, on the basis of the Cultural Agreement, demanded. Lecture tours of writers close to the regime and exhibitions of ‘The German Book’ were organized by the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry for Propaganda, with a naïvely stubborn refusal to accept the fact that certain authors were simply not exportable. They made huge efforts to publicize, in Italy and in the rest of Europe, ‘authentically German literature’59 (Petersen 1988: 67) that would be capable of offering an ‘undistorted’ idea of the new Germany (see Barbian 1995a: 431–6). In 1937, Will Vesper, a member of the literary committee of the Prussian Academy of Arts, had already made a heartfelt appeal: Can we allow ourselves to hope that Italian intellectuals will finally, finally, understand that they must, to a greater degree than they have so far, make every effort to get to know the intellectual side of Germany today, and [will they understand] how seriously they are offending the new Germany in insisting on presenting to the Italian people, as though they were the only ‘German writers’, Jews, associates of Jews, and exiles?60 (Quoted in Petersen 1988: 67) Within the publishing houses a sort of passive resistance to the pressure exerted by Nazi Germany began, and this was hardly surprising given the low expectation of success for philo-Nazi fiction on the Italian market, as well as the fact that many of the editors’ consultants and translators, who played a vital role in this strategy – people like Luigi Rusca, Lorenzo Montano, Lavinia Mazzucchetti, Barbara Allason or Enrico Rocca – all harboured profound anti-Fascist convictions, while a few were anti-racist due to their Jewish origins. This resistance consisted above all in choosing, from all the works distributed in Germany, those which were least ‘political’, sometimes even by authors who had adopted a sort of critical standpoint within the Nazi state. This was the case for Ernst Wiechert, of whom Lavinia Mazzucchetti wrote in her reader’s report on La vita semplice, 1940 (Das einfache Leben, 1939): ‘A man of the right in internationalist times, he was carried to fame by the new regime, but then rendered himself impossible with his sincerity in refusing to deny his past and ended up in a concentration camp; he now once again lives in peace with today’s Germany’61 (quoted in Albonetti 1994: 480–1).

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Another case was that of the conservative writer Hans Grimm who, because of his dissent with some aspects of the development of Nazism, was threatened with imprisonment by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and withdrew from public life. In proposing the translation of his collection of short stories Il tribunale nel Karru, 1939 (Der Richter in der Karu, 1930), Mazzucchetti describes him as ‘an author who would be an excellent […] flag without the swastika but purely and simply German, and at the same time artistically truly respectable’.62 She added that ‘on the other hand, in Germany itself there seem to be no readable and exportable authors. The authorities put up with Fallada, but if we take him it would certainly not meet the approval of the Kulturkammer! And we cannot throw National Socialist bricks on the guiltless heads of Italian readers’63 (quoted in Albonetti 1994: 443). Another approach was to accept authors close to the Nazi regime, but to translate only their least ideological works. In 1942 Mondadori and Bompiani finally published some of Ernst Jünger’s works, but significantly these were his least militaristic: Sulle scogliere di marmo (Auf den Marmorklippen, 1939) and Giardini e strade (Gärten und Straßen, 1942). Hanns Johst, an SS general and from 1935 to 1945 President of the Reichsschrifttumskammer, was famous in Germany for his decidedly nationalist and anti-Semitic plays and stories. In 1943 Frassinelli of Turin translated, of all his works, one of his few pre-Nazi sentimental novels, Un amore stravagante (Die Torheit einer Liebe, 1931). There were sporadic exceptions to this boycotting campaign. Between 1942 and 1944 several works by notoriously Nazi authors, such as Ina Seidel, Bruno Brehm, Rudolf Binding, Hans Friedrich Blunck, Richard Billinger and Ernst von Salomon, were published by small houses such as Corticelli, Salani or Guanda (Rubino 2002: 120–2). In 1943, short of resources, Mondadori managed to bring out Il villaggio sepolto nell’oblio (Das vergessene Dorf, 1934) by Theodor Kröger, a terrifying ‘psychopathic and nationalistic’ novel which had already aroused Mazzucchetti’s disapproval: ‘If we wanted to put together a collection of documents that proved all the most irritating and hateful qualities of Germans, this would work very well’64 (quoted in Albonetti 1994: 341). Among these concessions, though, every so often there were a few courageous sorties which managed to find gaps in the siege of censorship. For example, in 1942 Mondadori published Las Casas, l’apostolo degli Indios (Las Casas vor Karl V. Szenen aus der Konquistadorenzeit, 1938) by Reinhold Schneider, a member of the Catholic opposition to Nazism whose publications had been forbidden in Germany in 1940. In 1943 Albrecht Haushofer’s Scipione. Sulla. Augusto (Scipio, 1934; Sulla, 1938;

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Augustus, 1939) also saw publication, again by Mondadori. Haushofer had been arrested for the first time in 1941, and was part of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944. In 1942, Bompiani published Germanica, an anthology edited by the German scholar Leone Traverso, as one of the ‘Pantheon letterario’ series of anthologies, the same in which the more famous Americana appeared, edited by Elio Vittorini. The ‘transgression’ represented by Germanica began with the illustrations, in which contemporary German painting was represented solely by reproductions of Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Albert Müller and Oskar Moll, all artists whose ‘degeneration’ had been officially certified by their inclusion in the Entartete Kunst exhibition organized by Goebbels in Munich in July 1937. The most recent literature was represented only by Rilke, Hofmannsthal and Binding, only the last of whom could lay claim to any official Nazi approval. The limit was reached, however, in the critical introduction to the series titled ‘Vie nuove’ [New Roads], in which Traverso, without attempting much in the way of diplomacy, sang the praises of authors such as the Mann brothers, Döblin, Frank, Werfel, Toller, Brecht, and so on, as ‘restless in revolt’, products of a ‘renewed “Sturm und Drang”’; for this reason ‘the majority of these authors have been banned by the political movement which later assumed the command of the Reich, for whom the idea of internal revolution must be coupled with the desire for a national revanchism’65 (Traverso 1942: 105). Immediately after this, however, he went on to praise the ‘fluid human pleasantness of a Werfel’ and, above all, ‘the painful nakedness of a Kafka and the Kantian rigour with which, in his hallucinated prose, he denounces the impossibility of living in this way on this earth, and appeals for a justice from other spheres’66 (ibid.). Traverso concludes with what would seem a heavy verdict, only thinly veiled by a sort of coded language: ‘Of the most recent and accepted literature, which includes names such as Carossa and Wiechert, Strauss and Hesse, Mell and Kolbenheyer, as well as a dozen others – we can only say that it follows honestly and cautiously the indicated path’67 (ibid.). In the last few years of Nazism, as the course of the war progressively blocked international literary circuits, the series dedicated to foreign literature took on a strange appearance. The agencies within the ‘new European order’ started proposing almost unknown authors from European countries already subjected to the Nazi regime or which had remained neutral but with generally pro-Nazi positions. These authors held pro-Nazi opinions or at least were not obviously against Nazism. Some of these belonged to the Europäische Schriftstellervereinigung

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[European Writers’ Association] founded by Goebbels in 1941, whose members came from 14 nations sharing the ‘then fairly widespread antiBolshevism, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism’68 (Hausmann 2004: 12). In the intentions of the Germans at least, the European Writers’ Association was to ‘convince Europe of the spiritual power of the new Germany’ and ‘reinforce the domination achieved at the military level’69 (Barbian 1995a: 440–1). Then came the turn of the Danish, Hungarian and Norwegian authors of novels set in exotic backgrounds, as well as Spanish followers of Franco (for example, Venceslao Fernandez Flores) or previously unknown Turkish writers such as Yakup Kadri. As demonstrated by the names of the translators, books in the less common languages were translated directly from the German editions.70 For a public ever more hungry for entertainment or distraction, these authors were in some way the equivalent of the various coffee substitutes, wooden clogs or rabbit wool with which one had to make do, given the lack of the genuine products from before the war. Everybody’s hopes, however, were already turning towards the future. On 22 February 1943, Luigi Rusca, one of the editors of ‘Medusa’, added an extremely significant note in the margin of Mazzucchetti’s report on Werfel’s Das Lied von Bernadette, 1941. She found the subject matter ‘new and fascinating’, defining the book as ‘a noteworthy work which it would give us great pleasure to publish if possible, and which would find a wide audience’.71 Rusca added a hand-written note: ‘Could we not buy it and then wait for better times?’72 (quoted in Albonetti 1994: 479–80). In 1946, Bernadette was one of the first post-war volumes of the ‘Medusa’ series.

Notes This chapter, ‘Literary Exchange between Italy and Germany: German Literature in Italian Translation’, has been translated by Neil Walker. 1. In the first half of the twentieth century, Lavinia Mazzucchetti (1889–1965), translator and editorial consultant for Mondadori, Sperling & Kupfer and Sansoni, was the most important cultural mediator for German literature in Italy. 2. ‘An die zeitgenössische deutsche Belletristik dachte man damals kaum. Es war ja die Epoche D’Annunzios, Italien exportierte selbst Renaissance- und Dekadenz-Literatur, las aber nicht zum Vergnügen die als schwerfällig und abstrus geltenden Werke der Teutonen. Für Frankreich und Italien, die lateinischen Schwestern, war das Nachbarland im Norden mehr oder weniger terra incognita: hic sunt leones. […] Zwar lasen ehrgeizige Jünglinge durcheinander Stirner und Nietzsche, Nordau und Weininger, die damals in den

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3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

German Literature in Italian Translation weiß-schwarzen Bänden des verdienten Verlags Bocca in Turin in italienischer Übersetzung erschienen, aber das war keine Literatur! Und noch weniger zählten zur Literatur die zahllosen Erzeugnisse der Marlitt und Genossinnen oder die Romanreihen der immerhin noch etwas besser schreibenden Frauen wie Clara Viebig oder Helene Böhlau, die auf italienisch meistens in den populären Reihen des Mailänder Verlags Treves landeten’. Here and throughout, all translations from German and Italian are my own. ‘Oggi leggono anche coloro che prima non leggevano: si legge nelle famiglie per divagare la mente dall’ossessione delle preoccupazioni dipendenti dalla guerra, non bastando a tutti gli spettacoli cinematografici; si legge nelle trincee, durante le soste; si legge nelle retrovie, negli ospedali.’ ‘Si limitò a svolgere opera di volgarizzazione e di trasposizione a livello piccolo e medio borghese dei modelli letterari tardo-romantici e dannunziani.’ Guido da Verona (pseudonym of Guido Verona, 1881–1939), was a ‘stylish’ writer of novels oscillating between eroticism and sentimentalism: Mimì Bluette, fiore del mio giardino (1916), Sciogli la treccia, Maria Maddalena (1920). The favourite theme of Pitigrilli (pseudonym of Dino Segre, 1893–1975) was the love lives of the upper classes with intonations of moralistic humour: Mammiferi di lusso (1920), Cocaina (1921), La vergine a 18 carati (1924). Mario Mariani (1884–1951) was the author of often rather risqué novels in which he intended to underline the moral corruption and the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie: Le smorfie dell’anima (1919), Le adolescenti (1919), Purità (1920). ‘Letteratura oscena o d’armistizio o milanese’. ‘Immaginario letterario di consumo’. Gian Dàuli (pseudonym of Giuseppe Ugo Nalato, 1884–1945) was a prolific novelist and translator from English. Above all, however, he was known for his activity as an editor (Modernissima) and editor’s consultant. An ‘explorer of unknown literary worlds’ (David 1989: 32), he was the first to bring authors such as Döblin, Celine, Dos Passos and Sinclair Lewis to the attention of the Italian public. ‘Vi è poi in autori come il London, il Conrad, il Kipling uno spirito d’avventura, d’azione, di vita vissuta pericolosamente che trova profonde corrispondenze nello stato d’animo dell’italiano nuovo e che molto può giovare ad educare i giovani alla “strenuous life” che richiedono i tempi nuovi.’ ‘Ex revolutionary unionist, journalist, author [together with his wife, an exile from the Empire of the czar] of a Russian grammar book, translator of Russian writers’ (Vittoria 1997: 214). These were Die Armen and Der Untertan by Heinrich Mann (1919), Das Grauen (1921) and Absonderliche Geschichten (1927) by Hanns Heinz Ewers, Der Mensch ist gut by Leonhard Frank (1922), Fairfax by Carl Sternheim (1922), Tonio Kröger and Erzählungen und Novellen by Thomas Mann (1926) (Rubino 2002: 109). For a very detailed essay on the lack of acceptance of German expressionism in Italy during the 1920s, see Mazzucchetti (1966: 307–17). ‘Un libro vero e significativo: vi si assiste al tramonto della Germania imperiale e alla nascita, nelle retrovie, del nuovo spirito tedesco.’

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16. Here, and throughout, the bibliographical data regarding the book series have been extracted from the publishers’ catalogues or from the last pages of the first editions. 17. Emilio Castellani (1912–87) was an essayist, literary critic and translator from German. After the Second World War he edited the Italian edition of the complete works of Bertolt Brecht on behalf of the Einaudi publishing house. 18. ‘Und das zeitgenössische Deutschland? Was an Nachrichten darüber zu uns drang, war reichlich verworren. Mehr oder weniger hielten wir noch bei der Vorstellung von einem durch die Inflation verarmten Land, in dem das Gespenst Wilhelms II. und seiner gräßlichen Pickelhauben umging. Wir hatten wohl etwas von einer deutschen Erhebung, von verzweifelten sozialen Aufständen und ihrem Scheitern gehört, doch von der neuen Wirklichkeit dort jenseits der Alpen vermochten wir uns kein Bild zu machen. Wir wußten, es gab einen Stresemann, der die politische Bühne beherrschte, allein für uns war er nur einer unter den so und so vielen Herren in Gehrock und Zylinder, die auf internationalen Konferenzen zusammenkamen, an deren Nutzen wir längst nicht mehr glaubten. Von Freunden und Freundinnen, die von einem Studienaufenthalt in München, in Frankfurt oder Heidelberg zurückkamen, vernahmen wir sonderbar Widersprüchliches: freie Liebe und Studentenduelle, Georg Grosz und Max Liebermann, Vorträge über Psychoanalyse und unendliche Debatten über Revision des Marxismus. Die Ufa-Filme – Langs Dr. Mabuse, Pabsts Kameradschaft, Pommers Der Kongreß tanzt – brachten uns Visionen von einer Welt, die vom Paroxysmus der Halluzination zur Verherrlichung der menschlichen Gemeinschaft überging, um sich zuletzt einem gedankenlosen Genießen zu überlassen’ (Castellani 1964: 29–30). 19. As well as the two to which I refer in this chapter, there were many more important reports from the ‘new’ Germany, including Guido Stacchini’s Straordinarie avventure nella nuova Germania, Milan, Modernissima, 1924; Luciano Magrini’s La Germania d’oggi, Milan, La Promotrice, 1926; Corrado Pavolini’s ‘Germania svegliati’, Rome, Libreria dl Littorio, 1931; Pietro Solari’s Berlino, Milan, Agnelli, 1932. It is significant that these items were almost immediately grouped together in a volume aimed at a huge audience of interested readers. For a summary of the publications not contained in this volume, see Rubino (2002: 12–40). 20. Paolo Monelli (1891–1984) was a journalist and writer. He was an officer in the Alpine regiment during the First World War and afterwards he wrote of this experience in a memoir, Le scarpe al sole (1921) [Shoes in the Sun], which was a great success. An expert in German (he translated Ludwig Renn’s Krieg for Treves in 1929), he visited Germany several times between 1922 and 1926, sending articles to the Stampa, the Corriere della Sera and Illustrazione Italiana. These articles were published in 1927, in a book titled Io e i Tedeschi [The Germans and I]. 21. ‘Moderna fino alla nevrastenia’, ‘sentìna dei più sozzi vizii’, ‘la Germania che amammo’ con ‘il suo medioevo ingenuo, i suoi borghesi birraioli, le sue ragazzòle romantiche’, ‘la Germania bonacciona che piacque ai nostri vecchi saputi ed ironici’.

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22. ‘Soavissima e perfetta’, ‘refrigerio enorme all’occhio ed allo spirito di chi venga da Berlino, Babilonia inacidita, virago repubblicana con il berretto frigio male acconciato sulle chiome sfatte’. 23. ‘Babelica capitale’. 24. ‘Faccenda dei pervertiti, dei viziosi, degli anormali’. 25. ‘Mille caffeucci equivoci dell’ovest di Berlino, dove bazzicano uomini vestiti da donna, donne in caramella zàzzera e pantaloni, molti russi, molti artisti, molti professori, molti adolescenti’. 26. ‘C’è del putrido nella marca di Brandenburgo’. 27. ‘Nemmeno il nuovo tempo e l’esperienza della guerra’, ‘e tanto meno le nuovissime leggi che la proibiscono, visto che son leggi dell’odiata repubblica democratica che siede lassù nella rossa Berlino’. 28. Corrado Alvaro (1895–1956) was a novelist and essay writer who achieved international fame with a book of short stories inspired by the region of his birth, Calabria, Gente in Aspromonte (1930), which was followed by several other works of fiction. His works were also translated into English (Revolt in Aspromonte, Man is Strong). His newspaper articles from Germany have recently been re-published in a volume collecting all his articles, to which I refer in this paper. See Rundle in this collection for his contribution to the campaign against a perceived invasion of translations in the mid1930s. 29. ‘Mi si offriva l’occasione di vedere una di quelle parti d’Europa che dicono travagliata dai mille demoni della modernità, uscita da esperienze tutte diverse dalle nostre, per natura addirittura agli antipodi, aperta a tutto quello che nel mondo si è agitato negli ultimi dieci anni, nazionalismo, comunismo, industrialismo, e a quella forma di vita americana che stranamente riassume tutte le tendenze del mondo moderno: la Germania col suo nuovo mito internazionalista ed europeista.’ 30. ‘Chi confronti la letteratura della Russia, della Germania, dell’America, rimarrà sorpreso dalla stessa tendenza realistica e documentaria: attuale, sì, ma provvisoria.’ 31. ‘Molti di questi esempi corrono soltanto fra Berlino, Mosca e New York, e formano tutto un clima insospettato.’ 32. ‘Questi caratteri [dell’arte della modernità] sono comuni alla Germania come alla Russia e all’America: due nazioni borghesi che si trovano sullo stesso piano di orientamento di una nazione proletaria. Fatto da considerare.’ 33. ‘In arte e in letteratura: realismo, concretezza, documentarismo, arte come specchio della realtà immediata, ma in fondo di contenuto polemico e critico, lo stesso revisionismo del vecchio mondo che si sta compiendo nel costume; e questo è all’antitesi con l’arte dei paesi latini dove essa è un’evasione dal mondo di oggi.’ 34. On German cinema before Nazism some useful sources are Kracauer (1947), Griffagnini and Quaresima (1978), Spagnoletti (1993). 35. The number of books published doubled every year between 1925 and 1931, with an acceleration particularly in 1929–30, the years of the great revival of the novel (from 478 books in 1928 to 1469 two years later) (Ragone 1989: 1060). See also figures in Rundle in this volume. 36. On the development of the book market in the 1920s and 1930s see Ragone (1989: 1047–78), Forgacs (1992: 84–94), Rundle (2004: 305).

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37. A fact that inspired more than one note in Gramsci’s Quaderni: he talked of ‘the intellectual and moral hegemony of other populations’, asking himself, for example: ‘Is it true that there are no really widely read books? They do exist, but they are foreign, and there would be still more if they were translated, books such as Remarque’s. […] In Italy there is a gap dividing the public and writers; the public looks for “its” literature abroad, in that it feels more “their own” than the literature produced in their own country’ (Gramsci 1975: 2252–3; my translation). 38. ‘Il monumento del Milite Ignoto tedesco’, ‘mezzo milione di copie in sei mesi’; ‘ragguaglio della guerra sul fronte interno’, ‘un fotografico rapporto della vita delle trincee’. 39. ‘Non si deve naturalmente dimenticare che questo è un libro tedesco, scritto da un soldato tedesco. […] Il lettore italiano tenga presente questo: e se è stato combattente, penetrerà con emozione nelle misteriose linee nemiche, vedrà come agivano e reagivano questi misteriosi avversari quasi sempre invisibili oltre una mortale barriera di fuoco, o simili tutt’al più a inanimate sàgome di bersaglio.’ 40. ‘Senza artifizi, senza psicologismi, senza tumidezze’. 41. ‘Stile di forma analitica elementare, murato a secco, di periodi brevi, senza immagini, tutto sensazione istantanea, tutto fatto’. 42. ‘Specchio fedele dei fatti, dei luoghi, e dei tempi che vuol ritrarre’. 43. ‘E’ tempo di correggere il decrepito assioma, per il quale tutto ciò che è tedesco dev’essere pesante, tutto ciò che è nordico deve mancare di grazia. Il tempo cammina, e gli uomini lo seguono’. Giovanni Battista Angioletti (1896–1961) was a novelist and essay writer. 44. The Italian edition was published in 1933, the same year that the French and Norwegian translations were published. The British and American translations appeared only in 1937. 45. ‘Si può dire che per i primi anni questo fosse stato tutto, o quasi.’ 46. ‘Spirito decompositore, dissolvitore, sobillatore, anarchico e nichilista’. 47. ‘La Medusa infatti ha, in primo luogo, compiuto un’alta opera di italianità, contribuendo efficacemente a liberare il nostro paese dalla soggezione verso altre lingue europee attraverso le quali il pubblico era solito conoscere, sovente con grande ritardo e dubbi criteri di scelta, i libri pubblicati nel mondo.’ 48. ‘E adesso pover’uomo by Hans Fallada, the second volume of the series […] was reprinted in five editions and sold 20,000 copies in the following four years, and other editions appeared still later’ (Decleva 1993: 189–90). From the publicity note on the fourth edition, published in the 3° supergiallo on 8 June 1935, we learn that of the 27 volumes in the ‘Medusa’ series, only three had so far been reprinted in a second edition: La buona terra by Pearl Buck; Giovane donna del 1914 by Arnold Zweig (‘This novel, part of the same phase as La questione del Sergeant Grischa, is dedicated to the second year of the World War’); L’avvocato Laudin by Jakob Wassermann (‘The most humane novel of the great novelist, recently deceased’). 49. ‘La più umana, suggestiva vicenda inquadrata sullo sfondo drammatico della disoccupazione tedesca’. 50. On the parallels and differences between Fascism and National Socialism, see De Felice (1974: 418–533), Nolte (1963: 288–99), De Grand (1999: 81–109) and Ben-Ghiat (2000: 207–77).

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51. ‘L’ex tappezziere e verniciatore viennese ha la faccia della sua professione, e quel naso a cresta e all’insù che è l’ideale dei biondi germani in contrasto con l’uncino meditabondo dei nasi ebrei, sotto il quale naso due spazzolini biondi montan la guardia, con untuosità austriaca, alla bocca di pesce. […] Hitler è volentieri descritto come un pagliaccio. Certo l’esito della sua impresa novembrina non incoraggia ad attenuare questo giudizio. Ma bisogna notare qui che la posizione morale di Hitler è guastata irrimediabilmente dal paragone che i suoi, e gli avversari, ne fanno con Mussolini. Ci son confronti che schiacciano. Chi poteva essere un modesto e bravo imitatore diventa un grottesco impostore.’ 52. ‘[...] und bot ihnen im Gegensatz zu den meisten anderen Ländern zugleich legale Arbeitsmöglichkeiten’. 53. On the first conflictual phase of the relations between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, see Petersen (1973). 54. ‘Gli scrittori della Germania d’oggi che abbiano fama internazionale sono pochi – la maggior parte è rappresentata da quelli che sono fuggiti o allontanati.’ 55. ‘Die Übersetzung oder Verbreitung von Werken, die sich unter Verfälschung der geschichtlichen Wahrheit gegen das andere Land, gegen seine Staatsform oder Staatsführung richten, und von entstellenden Werken (Tendenzliteratur) politischer Emigranten des anderen Landes verhindern würden’. 56. For a complete description of the methods and history of anti-Semitic censorship in Italy, see Fabre (1998). 57. ‘Um Nachsicht baten, weil die wirtschaftliche Lage des italienischen Buchgewerbes keine plötzlichen und einschneidenden Veränderungen zulasse.’ 58. ‘Auch die letzten wenigen Werke aus den Buchhandlungen verschwunden sind.’ 59. ‘Das wirklich deutsche Schrifttum’. 60. ‘Dürfen wir hoffen, daß endlich, endlich auch das geistige Italien begreift, daß es sich redlicher als bisher bemühen muß, das geistige Deutschland von heute kennenzulernen, und daß man das neue Deutschland beleidigt, wenn man immer noch Juden, Judengenossen und Emigranten dem italienischen Volk als die einzigen “deutschen Dichter” präsentiert?’ 61. ‘Uomo di destra in tempi internazionalisti, fu accolto alla fama dal nuovo regime, ma poi si rese impossibile con la sua sincerità nel non voler sconfessare il passato, finì persino in campo di concentramento, rifece poi la pace con la Germania di oggi.’ 62. ‘Un autore che sarebbe un’ottima […] bandiera non crociuncinata, ma schiettamente tedesca e nello stesso tempo artisticamente rispettabilissima.’ 63. ‘D’altra parte nella stessa Germania non riescono a scoprire narratori leggibili e esportabili. Tollerano Fallada, ma non si fa certo cosa grata alla Kulturkammer prendendo quello! E non possiamo gettare mattoni nazionalsocialisti sulla testa incolpevole dei lettori italiani.’ 64. ‘Se si volessero raccogliere documenti per provare tutte le doti più irritanti ed odiose dei tedeschi, sarebbe un ottimo libro.’ 65. ‘Inquieti in rivolta’; ‘“Sturm und Drang” rinnovato’; ‘il bando dato alla maggior parte di questi autori dal movimento politico impostosi successivamente alla testa del Reich, il quale all’idea di rivoluzione interna accoppia la volontà di riscatto nazionale’.

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66. ‘La fluida simpatia umana di un Werfel’; ‘la nudità dolorosa di un Kafka, il rigore kantiano con cui nella sua allucinata prosa si denuncia l’impossibilità di vivere così, su questa terra, e si reclama una giustizia d’altre sfere’. 67. ‘Della letteratura più recente e accettata, che conta nomi come Carossa e Wiechert, E. Strauss e H. Hesse, M. Mell e Kolbenheyer, accanto a una dozzina d’altri – si può qui solo dire che segue onesta e cauta la via indicata.’ 68. ‘Aus einem damals weit verbreiteten Antibolschewismus, Antisemitismus und Antiamerikanismus’. 69. ‘Europa von der Geistesmacht des neuen Deutschland zu überzeugen’; ‘die militärisch errungene Hegemonie des Deutschen Reiches in Europa [abzusichern]’. 70. This is the case of Marku e la sua stirpe, by the Finn Unto Seppänen, translated by Cristina Baseggio, or Terra matrigna, by the Turkish author Yakup Kadri and translated by Alessandra Scalero. Both books were published in 1942 by Mondadori in the ‘Medusa’ series. 71. ‘Nuovo e affascinante’; ‘una bell’opera che sarebbe molto bello poter pubblicare e che avrebbe un gran pubblico’. 72. ‘Non si potrebbe acquistare e poi attendere tempi migliori?’

7 The Einaudi Publishing House and Fascist Policy on Translations Francesca Nottola

The history of the Einaudi publishing house, particularly the relationship between Giulio Einaudi – as a citizen and a publisher – and the regime, has been widely explored and discussed (Turi 1990; Mangoni 1999; d’Orsi 2000). Important information about the publishing house in its early years can also be gathered from some of the memoirs of the people involved (Einaudi 1988, 1998, 2001; Ginzburg 1963, 1988; Cesari 1991) and from the many individual works about editors, writers and translators who worked with Casa Einaudi. In this chapter, I will analyse the way in which Giulio Einaudi managed to publish translations in Fascist Italy and the influence of domestic and foreign policies on the translation and publishing process. One of my purposes is to compare Einaudi with other Italian publishers that have been studied in this respect, mainly Mondadori and Bompiani (Rundle 1999, 2000, 2010; Billiani 2007a). The impact of political power significantly affected the plans of publishers, and the history of each publisher tells a unique story of freedom from or obedience to the state. Giulio Einaudi’s relationship with political power was not smooth, and it evolved over time. A direct consequence of this troubled relationship was his exclusion on the many occasions when the regime supported publishers through public funding, especially in the early 1930s. It is important to stress, however, that rather than Einaudi’s actual political positioning, what is relevant here is how the publishing house was perceived by the regime, since his being able to continue publishing largely depended on the perceptions the Fascist apparatus had of him. Of course, politics is only one aspect affecting the production of culture. Research on the culture industries (particularly Forgacs 1990) has reminded us that publishing under Fascism was affected most of all by the taste and interest of readers. Einaudi – like publishers Gobetti 178

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and Laterza – chose to avoid strictly commercial products and limited his production to quality fiction and non-fiction, with modest print runs but targeting the widest possible reading public. The other focus of this study is on the ways in which translation was affected by the intervention of censorship and by the ideological pressure put on translators and publishers. The Einaudi archive provides us with interesting clues about how translations had to be carried out in order to produce ‘authorizable’ texts. As we will see, Fascist policies influenced publishing both in the choice of authors and texts and in the process of translation and adjustment of texts for a mediated reception. My chapter will therefore address the following questions: In what ways did Einaudi differ from other publishers? To what extent did Einaudi and his collaborators’ political status affect the work of the publishing house? To what extent did Einaudi accept the regime’s interference? How did the war affect his publishing and, specifically, translations? What were the criteria for choosing texts and modifying them to make them acceptable? How did Einaudi translators manage their ambivalent role as both promoters of foreign culture and instruments of censorship? What was the translation policy at Einaudi?

Einaudi’s early production and the importance of translations It was Luigi Einaudi, Giulio Einaudi’s father, who passed on to his son an interest in translation, long before the project of the publishing house was conceived. An important scholar and journalist who was well known abroad, Luigi had seen translation as a crucial means for promoting cultural exchange and keeping Italian culture up to date. It was no coincidence that the publishing house was co-founded by two important translators, Cesare Pavese and Leone Ginzburg. The lack of data on print runs for the years 1933–45 means we cannot form any accurate evaluation of the economic importance of translations for the publishing house. However, from the huge number of translations planned and discussed in the correspondence, we must infer that the house relied on them heavily. Documents in the Einaudi archive provide evidence of a much larger number of translations being planned, carried out and submitted to censorship offices than those that were actually published. Proposals usually came from translators, editors and external collaborators, but Giulio Einaudi himself also participated actively in the choice of texts.

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Einaudi and Fascist Policy on Translations

Einaudi’s early production included many books by authors from Luigi Einaudi’s entourage – either fellow economists or journalists – in the series ‘Problemi contemporanei’ (1934–44), a quarter of whose titles were translations.1 In June 1934, the first text published in the soonto-be-aborted series ‘Ricordi e documenti di guerra’, Diario di guerra by Leonida Bissolati, was seized because the author had criticized the behaviour of Italian generals during the First World War (though it was later authorized with no modifications, probably thanks to Luigi Einaudi’s intervention).2 The historical series ‘Biblioteca di cultura storica’ was launched in 1935 and had been planned by Leone Ginzburg before he was arrested in 1934 for involvement in anti-Fascist activities. According to Turi, Einaudi’s ‘Biblioteca’ was of exceptional prestige and academic value; it had also received Gramsci’s praise in his Prison Notebooks. However, some books in the collection which appear to be out of tune with the rest of the series have been interpreted by historians as a necessary compromise with the regime, at a moment when the very existence of the publishing house could no longer be taken for granted.3 Up until 1945, 50 per cent of the series was made up of translations. Other important series launched in those years were ‘Saggi’ (from 1937 to the present) and ‘Biblioteca di cultura scientifica’ (1938–55). ‘Saggi’ was an eclectic collection which included essays about literature, history, philosophy, science, visual arts, psychology, current events and memoirs. About half the series were translations (the first literary translations to be published by Einaudi), from both European and nonEuropean languages. ‘Saggi’ gives us an important indication of the publishing strategies the house was developing and testing. Its eclecticism was, however, also due to the fact that it included titles which did not fit into any other series and texts with complicated authorization processes (Mangoni 1999: 36–40). The series ‘Biblioteca di cultura scientifica’ (launched in 1938 and mostly made up of translations – 11 out of the 13 titles) was the expression of a growing interest in scientific issues in the publishing house, especially physics, and would later (1940) result in the scientific journal Il Saggiatore. The series which is more interesting for our purposes, however, is ‘Narratori Stranieri Tradotti’ [Foreign Authors Translated]. This series began with a translation of Goethe’s Werther, and included four translations from German in the period up to 1945, although most translations in the series were from English, followed by French and Russian. The ‘Poeti’ series (from 1939) and the ‘Narratori contemporanei’ [Contemporary Authors] series (from 1941), included only one translation each: a collection of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems (1942) and a novel by Vercors (pseudonym of Jean Marcel

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Bruller), Le Silence de la mer. Finally, the series with the largest number of translations before 1945 was ‘L’Universale’, which was launched in 1942 and mainly directed by editor Carlo Muscetta. Half of its titles were translations from modern languages, including fiction and nonfiction. Einaudi’s translations of fiction, in both the ‘Saggi’ and ‘Narratori Stranieri Tradotti’ series, were chosen mainly from the European classics of the nineteenth century and, less frequently, from North American literature. This brief overview shows that by the outbreak of war Casa Einaudi, despite only having been created in 1933, was already competing with the giants of Italian publishing – if not in terms of sales (for Einaudi print runs rarely exceeded 5000 copies), then certainly in terms of prestige and the positive feedback its volumes received from reviewers and readers. Einaudi aimed high and from the very beginning appointed many of the most important and well-known Italian authors, scholars and translators. The publisher’s purpose was to combine pleasurable reading with quality content, and his policy for both fiction and nonfiction was to choose texts that were relevant to the new readership growing and developing in those years. The house expressed this aim by offering classic texts but also promoting talented new authors, both Italian and foreign.

The effects of Fascist policy on translations at Einaudi One of the earliest documents in the Einaudi archives concerning translations is a 1938 authorization of Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), translated by Pavese and included in the ‘Saggi’ series in 1938. It is remarkable that in the months when the Fascist government was preparing to enforce the anti-Jewish laws, and long after lesbianism had become a matter for police investigation, a book written by a writer originally from a German Jewish family and part of one of the most famous lesbian couples in the history of literature was authorized for publication. Interestingly, Stein’s book was in fact temporarily blocked, in 1942, for being written by an American author, as we can see in a letter by Mario Alicata to Giulio Einaudi in which Alicata suggests, probably following advice from some functionary at the Ministry of Popular Culture, that they should not mention it was a new edition but should instead claim it was a reprint.4 This case introduces a series of themes: problems with American authors, a certain degree of flexibility regarding reprints, and the common praxis of negotiating authorizations with MCP functionaries. As far as reprints

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are concerned, since September 1940 MCP minister Pavolini had asked publishers to send a list of all their publications; his intention was to draw up a survey of what was being published in Italy at the time in an attempt to curb the high number of translations. Reprints, were, however, excluded from the report.5 As to the problems with American authors, these began when Italy declared war on the US in December 1941. From that date, the anti-American criterion for censorship became semi-official at Einaudi. Works by authors from countries that had applied the League of Nations sanctions against Italy following the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, such as Britain and the US, had been considered ‘unwelcome’ even before the Second World War (Bonsaver 2007: 116–19). Nevertheless, until 1940 American texts had not, in fact, posed major problems, and Einaudi had written to translator Luigi Berti proposing Melville’s White Jacket and saying that Pavese was translating Benito Cereno; he was also waiting for an authorization for Pierre: or The Ambiguities, which was indeed granted.6 However, there is evidence that Einaudi was already applying considerable caution with American authors some months before the hostilities started. In the Einaudi correspondence, the first mention of a ‘ban’ on British and American authors appears in March 1941, though no evidence of a specific government directive has been found to date. It was, then, an unofficial ban, though Bonsaver (2007: 223–4) reports that a number of books were rejected by the censor around this time, ‘many of which [were] American’, something that Bompiani, too, mentioned in his memoirs (ibid.). In the same month, the translator Aldo Camerino had written to Einaudi proposing Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Hardy and the autobiography of the ‘greatest living architect’, Frank Lloyd Wright. Einaudi replied: I really like the idea of Wright’s autobiography, which I have heard spoken very well of. But, we will have to get around the ban on British and American works, both contemporary and classic! In the worst case we can prepare the texts and then publish them at the end of the war.7 The interesting point is that Einaudi was more confident about the possibility of publishing the biography of the American architect than a British classic: ‘Given that Tess has already been translated in full, given that Hardy is subject to a ban, considering all this, I would definitely go for Wright at the moment.’8 According to Circular no. 1135 of 26 March 1938, issued by Minister Alfieri (the first document aimed at monitoring translations), universally

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recognized classics were exempt from the need to seek prior approval (Fabre 2007: 28), but this exception was rarely applied to Einaudi’s proposals. In his letter of June 1941, Einaudi said that Hardy was subject to censorship, yet The Mayor of Casterbridge was easily authorized in December of the same year. The arbitrariness, unpredictability and inconsistency in the granting or denying of permission has been recorded for other publishers, too, and has mainly been attributed to the desire of functionaries and ministers to retain the possibility for themselves of applying ad hoc solutions in specific circumstances (Rundle 2010: 90–1; Bonsaver 2007: 261–6). It would appear, however, that other publishers were treated with a greater flexibility than that shown towards Einaudi, at least where this unofficial ‘anglophobic’ ban was concerned. This is indicated by the surprised reactions of translators, who did not seem to understand why Bompiani could publish contemporary American authors while Einaudi could not publish British classics. In May 1941, Einaudi confirmed the unofficial ban on British and American authors, even classics, in some letters to the translators Carlo Linati, who also worked for Mondadori and Bompiani, and Luigi Berti. Linati suggested to Einaudi that he should remind the functionaries that many contemporary American authors were currently being published by other houses and that, after all, Henry James could be considered a ‘classic’, was a great admirer of Italy and had written a beautiful book about the country. In his reply, Einaudi explained that books published by other firms had been authorized before the war.9 The translator Aldo Camerino was also perplexed by Einaudi’s claim that Anglo-American authors could not be published. Camerino asked him to clarify the criteria he was applying and whether Spanish texts could be translated. Einaudi replied confirming that any translation proposal was fine except for British and American texts.10 Sometimes Einaudi’s self-censorship itself was inconsistent. In spring 1941, in response to Paolo Schweitzer’s suggestion of translating several American authors, Einaudi replied: ‘we can’t take translations from English into consideration right now’,11 but at the same time he accepted Schweitzer’s proposal of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels some time between May and July, probably considering him safe because of his ‘classic’ status.12 In a subsequent letter, Einaudi added that the authorization for Swift had not been granted,13 and Schweitzer replied that the publisher should tell the Ministry that Swift was Irish and had died two centuries earlier.14 Einaudi in turn told Schweitzer that he ought to be aware of the problems with translations from English by now and that he would do better to propose something from German

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instead.15 To be sure, we should not assume that everything Einaudi said to translators was true: he may have had other reasons for declining a proposal. However, the number of letters in which he mentions this anti-Anglo-American criterion seems to support the hypothesis that the unofficial ban was enforced quite strictly in his case. In early 1941, the house was planning the new ‘Universale’ series and, in the discussion about which translations might be included, Einaudi wrote to Alicata saying that, having to exclude American and British works, they should count only on Russian and German authors.16 Yet in the autumn, in response to Muscetta’s argument that they should include more British and Russian authors,17 Einaudi replied: FOREIGN AUTHORS. … Your eagerness to publish Russian and British authors, right now, seems inappropriate to me. […] As to British and French authors, be careful, for I would not be surprised if they rejected Goldsmith (whom they probably do not know at the Ministry) and Gobineau, despite the fact that they would perfectly align the Universale series [with Fascist ideology].18 In fact, the Ministry had become even stricter than this. To novelist and translator Elsa Morante, who had offered to translate Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Einaudi replied, through Mario Alicata, that they should wait until they had the authorization, since the MCP functionary Bruno Gaeta had become increasingly inflexible.19 Italy was almost at war with the US, and wartime propaganda was fierce. Accordingly, another censorship criterion concerned any text that criticized war. Stephen Crane was rejected by Einaudi for precisely this reason.20 Another interesting instance of rejection of anglophone authors took place in the spring of 1942 and involved Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the President of the Indian National Congress. Einaudi wanted to publish a collection of writings by Nehru and he had thought that, as an opponent of the British government (with which Italy had been at war since June 1940), Nehru should have been approved immediately. He was wrong: the Fascist censors denied authorization and the publisher suggested that Mario Alicata should try and persuade Bruno Gaeta ‘by means of press cuttings’ that Nehru’s policy was very close to Gandhi’s and, therefore, in opposition to the British government. Not even this strategy worked, and Nehru was not published.21 In subsequent months Einaudi continued to try to publish American authors, and Cesare Pavese was particularly interested in having Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology authorized (in Fernanda Pivano’s

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translation). Einaudi (or Pavese) – anticipating difficulties – wrote to Alicata: ‘Dear Alicata, we are going to send to the Ministry the manuscript of a selection from Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. We opted for this method because otherwise, without a persuasive introduction, the book would have been doomed.’22 The MCP refused authorization, as expected, but was eventually persuaded to reverse this decision thanks to the intervention of the literary critic Emilio Cecchi, who was also a reader for the Ministry.23 The correspondence between Giulio Einaudi and anti-Fascist scholar Ernesto Rossi, writing from his internal exile in Ventotene (Italy), provides us with further evidence of the ‘anglophobic’ criterion being applied to Einaudi’s requests for authorization. In July 1942 Rossi sent Einaudi a long list of texts about economic planning and the Soviet experiment. Einaudi replied that, as they were written by Anglo-American or French authors, they were unlikely to be authorized, but that the house should consider translating some of them at the end of the war.24 In late 1942 and early 1943, more anglophone authors were being considered by Einaudi for publication. Hawthorne had been rejected, and Einaudi asked Luigi Berti and Aldo Camerino to translate Edgar Allan Poe’s critical essays. Einaudi considered D. H. Lawrence impossible to publish in spring 1943, but Lidia Storoni Mazzolani had proposed to translate a selection of Lawrence’s letters – stressing the fact that if Einaudi did not publish them, Mondadori or Bompiani would. Significantly, Storoni Mazzolani supported her argument by noting that Lawrence might be authorized since he often criticized Britain and praised Italians.25 The unofficial ban on anglophone authors and the disregard of the official exemption of ‘classics’ or ‘scientific texts’ is also recorded in the correspondence of other publishers like Bompiani (D’Ina and Zaccaria 1988: 126–30), but the severity and consistency with which this problem was experienced at Einaudi is not comparable to other publishers, as is apparent from the puzzled reactions of translators. Somehow, Einaudi was more seriously affected than other publishers, and the reason for this is not easy to interpret given that Einaudi translated considerably less than these very same publishers, who managed to publish contemporary American authors – the famous case of Bompiani’s Americana anthology is the most striking example – even in the most dramatic years of the conflict.26 Further evidence that Einaudi was a special case comes from an episode in early 1942. The house had been harshly attacked by the classicist Goffredo Coppola in the Fascist paper Popolo d’Italia of 15 January in an article titled ‘Guerra di religione’ [Religious

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War]. Coppola criticized the publishers for promoting the literature of enemy states, and a vitriolic remark targeted Einaudi in particular for having just published War and Peace by Tolstoy, or rather, ‘Lev Tolstòi, as Einaudi has printed it with the Jewish scrupulousness of a foreigner’.27 Luisa Mangoni, commenting on the episode, writes: [T]he reference to Leone Ginzburg, who had been deprived – due to the racial laws – of his Italian citizenship, was clear for those who could read between the lines. And it was even more significant since the name of Ginzburg, who had edited the translation bought from Slavia and written the foreword, could not be written on the book for obvious reasons. It was a warning that the Einaudi house still had the same association with Cultura, Ginzburg and Turinese antiFascism.28 Mangoni is referring to the political background of Einaudi, his collaborators and especially Leone Ginzburg, which had created serious problems with the regime in the early years of the publishing house’s life. Einaudi and many of his collaborators were arrested in May 1935 for suspected anti-Fascist activities connected to the literary journal Cultura, managed by Giulio Einaudi. After the arrests, the publisher decided to personally cease all direct political involvement (despite joining the Resistance a decade later) and to officially ‘ignore’ the antiFascist activities his collaborators were involved in. Nevertheless Giulio Einaudi and his entourage were kept under strict police surveillance until the fall of the regime and even afterwards, during the Cold War, due to his connections with the Italian Communist Party.29 Coppola’s article triggered an immediate reaction in the house, and Einaudi recommended that a prompt reply be published in the journal Primato, founded in 1940 and co-directed by the Education Minister, Giuseppe Bottai.30 Despite the seriousness of the attack, which is quite revealing also of Einaudi’s growing commercial success and his strong connections with Bottai, editorial work continued to be planned and, indeed, Einaudi was still looking for new translations. With a reference to Coppola’s article and a possible meeting with Gherardo Casini (the head of the General Directorate for the Italian Press at the MCP), Alicata reported that Casini had promised to approve the list of French, British and Russian classics they had presented, but had stressed that they should forward requests for Italian authors first, and only then for translations – from ‘friendly’ and neutral nations first and only then, with caution, others – and place no advertisements in the press.31

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As is apparent from much of the available documentation, the actual contents of books were a minor issue that could be easily solved with some careful editing. Despite the circulars aimed at monitoring texts and censoring contents contrary to the principles of Fascism,32 the issue was rather that the high number of translations being published created an image of Italy as a receptive country, something that was unacceptable for Mussolini.33 The regime encouraged publishers to support and promote Italian culture, at home and abroad. Publishers had to be nationalists first, and then they could indulge in their cosmopolitanism – in moderation. Nevertheless despite Einaudi’s effort to promote Italian culture, classic and contemporary, at home and abroad – out of a genuine interest in Italian culture rather than out of obedience to Fascist requests – this did not result in any practical advantage for him. The criterion of reciprocity which emerges from Rundle’s study of Mondadori and Bompiani is confirmed for Einaudi as well, and many letters insist upon reciprocity as a condition to obtain authorizations for translations.34 Following Mondadori’s example, Einaudi had learnt that it could prove fruitful to echo Fascist rhetoric and underline his own merits in promoting Italian culture as a way of obtaining authorizations for the translations he wanted to publish. The reason for the increasing difficulty in obtaining authorizations was that the debate about translations had resulted in the approval, in 1942, of a measure that required publishers to include no more than 25 per cent of translations in their catalogues.35 As far as translations from Russian are concerned, a tangible hostility on the part of censors can be seen in the Einaudi documents only after the Nazi invasion of the USSR and the consequent state of war with the Axis powers, that is, after June 1941. Until April 1941, as we have seen, the choice of translations was indeed limited to Russian and German texts. The first relevant piece of evidence emerges in a letter dated 26 November 1941 from Alicata to Einaudi, a letter rich in information on translations. Alicata informed Einaudi of the rejection of Berdyaev’s Dostoevsky, which was not due to the text itself, but to the fact that other books by the same author published by Laterza had been withdrawn from bookshops following a seizure order. Berdyaev’s rejection was confirmed a few days later and the text was not published until 1945.36 In the same letter, however, we are told that Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov could be reprinted. In 1942, several translations from Russian were in progress, among which were some essays about Dostoevsky by Vissarion Belinsky and an edition of Leo Tolstoy’s correspondence with Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoy by Olga Resnevic Signorelli and Alfredo Polledro.37 In a letter to translator Eva Kuhn Amendola, a reader for the MCP,

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Einaudi wrote that he could not publish Russian novels at the time. We do not know which titles Kuhn had proposed, but this letter provides us with evidence of an unofficial ban on Russian texts, at least for Einaudi.38 Further difficulties with publishing Russian authors are demonstrated by the correspondence with translators Alfredo Polledro and Renato Vecchione, and by a letter from Mario Alicata to Einaudi in which Alicata reports on a meeting with MCP functionaries Tosti and Mezzasoma and mentions a ‘rigorous’ government measure to limit texts of Russian literature and about Russia. In the same letter, Alicata urges Einaudi to write to the Minister explaining that, given the problems following the bombing of Turin (where the house was, and is, based), it would have been useful to be able to publish at least some reprints, perhaps including William Henry Chamberlin’s book about the Russian Revolution.39 As for translations from French, until 1941 no special instance of censorship occurred, and canonized nineteenth-century novelists (Hugo, Flaubert, Stendhal) were published without problems. However, a curious criterion for censorship involved Napoleon, presumably because of the potential for drawing comparisons with the Duce.40 The case that held the publishing house in suspense and fed the correspondence among editors was Memoires by Madame de Rémusat, proposed by Einaudi to Aldo Camerino in July 1941 with the warning that the Ministry would authorize the translation only with the required changes and with all negative comments on Napoleon removed.41 The book was authorized, but after a few months the authorization was revoked.42 Things were complicated by the fact that in September 1942, at the Book Division of the MCP, many members of the office had been called to arms and the staff turnover had resulted in a chaotic change in the praxis regulating the work of readers, functionaries and publishers but also, and most importantly, a disruption of the network of trusted functionaries upon whom the house had relied in the last few years, such as Bruno Gaeta. Alicata replied that the denial had come from outside the office and that, therefore, it was ‘useless to insist upon the reprint of Rémusat: a warning [had] come from outside the Ministry’.43 It is noteworthy that even a nineteenth-century book of memoirs about Napoleon received such a degree of attention, to the extent of going even beyond the censorship office. It is not clear from whom the objection came, but it may possibly have been Mussolini, given that – according to Bonsaver – he often intervened personally in censorship matters (Bonsaver 2007: 201). Some French texts were rejected for being

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too licentious (Laclos, probably Les liaisons dangereuses; La Princesse de Clèves by Madame de La Fayette; and La vie des dames galantes by Pierre de Bourdeilles). Sometimes it was the translators that would censor themselves, like Elsa Morante with Le chant de Maldoror by Lautréamont. On another occasion it was Einaudi who decided not to request authorization for Le bal du Comte d’Orgel by Raymond Radiguet.44 Another criterion that made texts ‘unwelcome’ seems to have been related to authors from the French Enlightenment (Diderot, Voltaire) or relating to their philosophy in a broader sense, like Tocqueville, rejected in December 1941.45 Other French authors who proved very complicated to publish were Guy de Maupassant and Proust, who was published after the Second World War.46 Somewhat similar to the Napoleon taboo might be any mention of the fall of the Roman Empire, to which Fascist Italy liked to compare itself. Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, for which Einaudi had appointed the translator Storoni Mazzolani in 1941, was rejected by censorship offices. In this case though, authorization may have been denied due to the author’s nationality. In fact, in the letter in which the publisher informs the translator that the book has been blocked, he (or Pavese) also confirms the problems with classic British/anglophone authors (Peacock, Shelley, Browning, Conrad).47 Contrary to the usual practice of not restricting reprints, essays, classics or scientific texts, Einaudi found that even essays he sought to publish could be denied authorization. Even Thomas More had been rejected in 1940, as is clear from the correspondence with Mario Vinciguerra.48 In 1942, more essays were denied approval, among them History of Civilization in England by Henry Thomas Buckle, leading Alicata to suggest Einaudi arrange another meeting with Minister Bottai to save some of their texts for the historical collection.49 It was not the first time that Einaudi would ask for Bottai’s help to rescue books.50 The publisher was particularly worried about the high number of essays that were failing to be authorized, so he wrote to Alicata urging him to improve relationships with the new staff.51 Another letter from Carlo Muscetta to Alicata confirms the praxis of negotiating in person with MCP functionaries to obtain authorizations: As far as authorizations are concerned, we have to insist. The rejection of Chesterfield is too much! We have to ask them to clarify the reasons for the rejection and try to persuade the functionaries. Do you remember that we succeeded, eventually, with Robertson?52

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Confident that scientific books would undergo smoother procedures, Einaudi had planned a new series with Ludovico Geymonat. However, new problems arose, since one of the authors under consideration, Karl Popper, was Jewish and therefore his works could not be published, despite the exceptions listed in the regulations established by the Commission for the Purging of Books [Commissione per la Bonifica Libraria] that was supposed to ‘purge’ Italian culture of Jewish influence.53 Several scientific texts were denied authorization, such as Science and the Modern World by mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and The Foundations of Arithmetic by Gottlob Frege, because they had both received a negative review by the Royal Academy of Italy (Reale Accademia d’Italia), from which the Ministry had requested an opinion.54 The MCP functionary Amedeo Tosti had explained to Alicata that it was true that scientific books did not require authorization, but that it would have been better if the publisher kept away from texts that combined scientific and philosophical issues, which were likely to draw attention to themselves and be criticized.55 Tosti’s remark introduces us to another censorship criterion emerging from the correspondence: ‘Freudism’.56 In 1941, Einaudi had planned to publish a German author, Kilian Kerst (pseudonym of Wilhelm Fath). Alberto Spaini – who had received the book from the Ministry for evaluation – sent a positive opinion to the Ministry saying that the book could be published, since ‘the psychological analysis in the book did not necessarily mean approval of Freudism’.57 However, as Einaudi had foreseen, despite a second positive report, the book was blocked due to a suicide in the plot.58 Another author who raised censorship issues in 1942 was Jung. His essays had been proposed to Einaudi by Giovanni Bollea in October 1940 since no Italian translations were available at that point. In January 1942, Einaudi had sent Psychologische Typen to the MCP for evaluation, and Alicata was confident it would be authorized because Bruno Gaeta was particularly friendly in that period. Some months later, Alicata wrote that, among other books, most scientific books had been approved, but that ‘G.’, probably Gaeta, had thought it would be difficult to get Jung authorized. One month later, Alicata confirmed this pessimistic forecast, but Einaudi encouraged him nevertheless to do his best to get the approval. Einaudi published Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart in 1942 and Psychologische Typen was printed by publisher Astrolabio in 1948.59 It would be reasonable to think that Mussolini’s alliance with Nazi Germany would have resulted in easier authorizations for German or Austrian texts compared to English or French ones.60 That was Giulio Einaudi’s judgement, and he tried to exploit the political alliance

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by planning several translations from German. However, against all expectations, and despite the close relationships with important Germanists like Gherardo Casini and Alberto Spaini, translations from German also faced difficulties. The correspondence with Spaini is interesting for our purposes because he was inside the censorship system and knew well what would be authorized and what would not. In 1941, Einaudi asked him to translate Schiller’s Geschichte des Abfalls der Niederlande, which he had proposed some years before. While translating it, Spaini wrote to Einaudi that he thought the work was untranslatable due to the many sensitive references in the text, especially to ‘the Church, Germany, the Reich, the Empire, the Army and the Navy’.61 He commented that he had had to cut so many references that only the title was left, and the title too was ‘quite heretical’. He also added that he thought the book would anyway be rejected by the Ministry. In the same year, Einaudi was very interested in publishing a muchdebated book, Volk ohne Raum by Hans Grimm, a ‘renowned German colonial novel’62 (and a bestseller in Germany), and proposed it to the translator Schweitzer. In November 1941, Einaudi wrote to Alicata saying that Spaini had been asked by the Ministry to evaluate their proposals and that Spaini had written to Einaudi confirming he had approved Grimm’s work, with the warning that the author’s comments on Italian military intervention in the First World War and the mention of a massacre by the Portuguese would have to be cut. Spaini recommended that the book be re-checked by the translator for any dangerous references he might have missed during his first reading of the book. The letter reminds us that another sensitive issue for the Ministry was any criticism of the regime of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. Five months later, Schweitzer handed in the manuscript, specifying that he had been very respectful of the text, but had modified it in several points and had also cut a long reference to German domestic policy that would not have interested Italian readers. Schweitzer asked the publisher not to publish his name in the translation, and signed the letter ‘P. Elvezio’, probably one more victim of the racial persecution in Italy. Schweitzer’s comments are interesting because they coincide with those made by Spaini, which indicates that, despite the lack of official documents about the way translations had to be modified and censored, the translators were clearly aware of what the sensitive issues might be. In April 1942, however, Volk ohne Raum was blocked for unspecified political reasons and Einaudi asked Alicata to have the author, Grimm, write to Minister Pavolini expressing praise for Fascist Italy. The authorization was obtained in September 1942 but despite all these efforts, the book did not appear in any Einaudi series.63

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Conclusion The quantity and availability of documents in the Einaudi archive from its foundation to the fall of the regime is considerable if compared to other Italian publishers, even though there is little trace of any correspondence with the MCP, the government, other publishers or the Publishers Federation, and no data on print runs or sales figures. Nevertheless the correspondence between publisher, editors and translators allows us to draw a reasonably clear picture of the process of publishing translations in Italy in the 1930s and early 1940s. As research on publishing and censorship has shown, the regime did not feel the need to establish any new censorship procedures concerning books until April 1934, when the regime made it a requirement to obtain prior authorization before the distribution of a new publication.64 Translations started to receive special treatment only from March 1938. Research on Fascist nationalism, racial policies and translation has shown that there was a close connection between the measures regarding publications and the development of a strong nationalist, colonial and racial agenda. In fact, even if publishers’ primary concern was the response from readers and, as we have seen, the Fascist government strongly supported the growth of the publishing industry and especially those publishers who aligned themselves with the regime, in the 1930s politics became an increasingly ‘disturbing’ factor in publishers’ plans. Both domestic and foreign policies deeply affected, on the one hand, the planning of series and the choice of texts and authors and, on the other, the texts themselves, with heavy intervention through cuts and modifications of the original texts. Fascist domestic policies provided publishers, including Einaudi, with a series of official and unofficial censorship criteria: anti-Fascism, socialism, Communism or anything culturally related to the Enlightenment or the French Revolution, liberalism or the bourgeois revolutions; disrespect for the Savoy royal family or the Roman Catholic Church; incompatibility with Fascist moral principles or policies on family, birth control and sexuality. There could be no negative reference to the Roman Empire or to Napoleon and no criticism of war. Finally, Freud and psychoanalysis were regarded with suspicion. Foreign policy also provided publishers and translators with new censorship criteria: no criticism of allies (Germany, Portugal, Spain), no praise of enemy states, particularly Britain and the US, especially after they supported and implemented the League of Nations sanctions against Italy in 1935. No criticism of Italy or any mention of its economic and social problems could be made by both national and

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foreign authors. Authors unwelcome in Nazi Germany because they were Jews or political dissidents, officially became unwelcome in Italy as well.65 Thus, the documents at Einaudi mostly confirm what has been written about other publishers in terms of the effects of Fascist policies on translations. However, the case of Einaudi highlights something which has not emerged in studies on other publishers. Despite a general disapproval from the regime of their tendency to publish too many British and American authors, other publishers were able to publish them even during the early years of the Second World War. Documents from the Einaudi archive, in contrast, mention an explicit ban on Anglo-American authors – particularly apparent from spring 1941 onwards – which has not been recorded for other publishers explored to date. The strictness with which this restriction was applied for Einaudi is surprising, and it did have a significant impact on the choice of texts Einaudi was able to publish, as we have seen from the correspondence. In addition, the ban applied not only to fiction but also to non-fiction texts, contrary to all the usual exceptions applied to recognized literary classics and scientific texts. The puzzled reactions of many translators who also worked for other publishers testify to the uniqueness of the restrictions applied to Einaudi. If, in some cases, it was Giulio Einaudi himself who avoided risks by rejecting proposals for translations from English, it is also true that many proposals the house sent to the Ministry were rejected, regardless of century, author, country of origin, genre and content. Even non-fiction texts that should have been politically acceptable, such as anti-Soviet or anti-British texts, were rejected just because they were written by English-speaking authors. Interestingly, although this anglophobic criterion was applied very frequently, it was not always consistent, since sometimes – and inexplicably – texts from English were authorized. Fascist censorship, in general, was inconsistent and rejections and approvals were often arbitrary, and no publisher could anticipate what the decision would be, since the regime never provided publishers with a well-defined system of rules and instructions to which they could conform in order to have their texts authorized. There were some well-known general criteria to comply with, but each problematic case could be discussed and negotiated with authorities depending on the circumstances, the publisher and the functionary involved. The lack of an explicit set of rules was part of an intentional and effective strategy that allowed functionaries to modulate their intervention according to the degree of collaboration established with each publisher. This implied, though, that publishers were exposed

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to considerable uncertainty and risks and they would often try to balance this by voluntarily seeking prior authorizations or, even more frequently, through self-censorship, in order to avoid financial loss. Good personal relationships were therefore essential, and Einaudi was able to establish close relations with Gherardo Casini, Giuseppe Bottai and Bruno Gaeta, especially in the 1940s after the opening of the Rome branch of the house, which allowed him to manage negotiations through Mario Alicata. A change in the MCP staff, however, could create considerable confusion and previously granted authorizations would be withdrawn without explanation. In contrast, at times apparently risky books would be authorized without problems. As far as translation practices are concerned, many documents refer to ministerial directives as to how to write prefaces and how to adjust translations, but no evidence has been retrieved yet, even though it is apparent that translators knew perfectly well what was acceptable and what was not and would censor themselves autonomously. In terms of general translation practice, there were two policies at Einaudi: Ginzburg adopted an author-oriented policy which was very respectful of the original text, while Pavese had a ‘freer’ approach to translation and would often intervene heavily on original texts and appropriate them to develop his own writing style as an author. However, ‘respectful’ translation of the original text was what Einaudi most frequently required from translators, although letters from translators show how, at the time, they had the most disparate translating styles, ranging from word-by-word translations to arbitrary transformations of the original. Sensitivity towards authors’ styles or source cultures was often a minor issue and the changes required by censorship certainly did not help. The position of translators at the time was, then, ambivalent because they were often committed promoters of foreign culture, but were at the same time censors themselves. This did not seem to be a major cause for concern, however, given that the political, social and economic issues, particularly after the approval of the racial laws and during the war, were the priority even for translators, who, as freelance professionals, were among the most precariously situated of cultural workers. Nevertheless Einaudi documents show that Giulio Einaudi considered translation and translators to be very important, despite a lack of financial reward lamented by most translators. To conclude, what does the Einaudi case tell us about Fascist policy on translations? If, based on what emerges from the correspondence, censorship criteria were largely the same as those applied to other publishers, the particularly harsh treatment Einaudi and his publishing

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house suffered reminds us that the anti-Fascist mark cast on the house was never really forgotten by the Fascists. While most other publishers openly sided with the regime (or maintained a polite neutrality), Einaudi, his family and his collaborators were well-known anti-Fascists and this is the feature that makes him stand out. The number of anti-Fascist and Jewish workers Einaudi employed was significant, and, being the son of Luigi Einaudi, Giulio Einaudi’s choices were not invisible.66 Everybody knew whom he worked with, despite his personal ‘official’ political neutrality following his arrest and subsequent release in 1935. Einaudi was closer to the liberal positions of philosopher Benedetto Croce and publishers Laterza and Gobetti than to Mondadori or Bompiani, and his good relationships with Bottai and Casini could not make up for the ‘bad’ reputation he had acquired by recruiting most of the dissident publisher Piero Gobetti’s anti-Fascist collaborators.67 One factor, in my view, is not to be underestimated. Einaudi was a young publisher who was able to establish himself as a leading light of the publishing industry in just ten years by proposing a cultural project centred on quality and accessibility. This might be worth taking into consideration when wondering why Einaudi was subjected to so many restrictive measures: he was not far from becoming threatening for those publishers that had sealed their alliance with the regime, and it is probable that proposals coming from a publisher who was so clearly unaligned will have been considered differently from those coming from more openly compliant publishers. On the other hand, it is interesting that, despite all the difficulties we have described, for a whole decade Einaudi was indeed able to publish not only translations but also the works of dozens of anti-Fascists. Could it be that, targeting a limited and loyal audience, Einaudi was not particularly threatening from a political point of view? It is possible that the retention of ‘pockets’ of anti-Fascism gave support to Mussolini’s claim that Fascist Italy was a free country. The explanation could also be that, unlike openly anti-Fascist publisher Piero Gobetti, Giulio Einaudi had shown that he understood the warning he was given in 1935 and, after his arrest, he wisely kept within the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ behaviour. One element from the editorial correspondence is significant: most letters, particularly those from Giulio Einaudi and particularly in the war years, seem to suggest an awareness that the Fascist regime would not last long. The evidence for this is the ongoing strategic planning of new series, new translations and translation deals with forbidden

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authors – as if Einaudi and his board knew that the war was going to end and Italy was soon going to be free. The seeds of what Casa Einaudi became after the war were sown under Fascism, and many of the projects postponed because of the war would later help make Einaudi one of the most prestigious cultural enterprises in post-war Italy.

Abbreviations AE PNF MCP DGSI inc.

Archivio Einaudi Partito Nazionale Fascista Ministero di Cultura Popolare Direzione Generale della Stampa Italiana incartamento (file)

Notes 1. On Luigi Einaudi’s contribution in the early years of the publishing house, see Turi (1990: 26–61). 2. D’Orsi (2000: 300), Mangoni (1999: 19–20), Turi (1990: 85), Bonsaver (2007: 137–8). 3. Turi (1990: 76, 86), d’Orsi (2000: 300–1), Mangoni (1999: 20–2, 77), Vittoria (2005: 58); Bonsaver (2007: 139–40). 4. Prefettura to Einaudi, 2 March 1938, AE, inc. Pavese; Alicata to G. Einaudi, 30 March 1942, AE, inc. Alicata. Quoted in Mangoni (1999: 136–7) and Billiani (2007a: 226–7). For further information about the anti-Jewish laws approved in November 1938, see De Felice (1961: 290–1, 350–2). On Fascism and lesbianism, see Passerini and Milletti (2007: 135–70). Milletti reports the case of a woman who had been sentenced to internal exile in 1928 for being lesbian. Mario Alicata was an editor in the publisher’s Rome branch, which Einaudi had founded in 1941 in order to be closer to the political centre and enlarge his range of collaborators. It was mainly managed by Mario Alicata and Carlo Muscetta, who also wrote on Primato, La Ruota and Oggi (Turi 1990: 109–27; Mangoni 1999: 70–87). 5. Fabre (1998: 32; 2007: 27–8). 6. Einaudi had proposed Pierre in 1939. Einaudi to Berti 25 May 1939, 29 March 1940, 16 May 1940, AE, inc. Berti. The correspondence is discussed in Billiani (2007a: 269–70, 290–1). 7. ‘Mi piace molto l’idea dell’autobiografia di Wright, di cui avevo già sentito dir molto bene. … Sarà necessario poi vincere l’ostacolo del divieto di opere inglesi e americane, sia moderne che classiche! Al peggio prepareremo con calma i lavori, e vareremo i volumi a guerra finita.’ Letter from G. Einaudi to A. Camerino, 25 March 1941, AE, inc. Camerino. See also Camerino to Einaudi, 21 March 1941, AE, inc. Camerino. Aldo Camerino also translated for Bompiani. See Billiani (2007a: 2234). Here and in the following, all translations from Italian are my own.

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8. ‘Visto che Tess è già tradotto integro, visto che Hardy è soggetto a censura, visto tutto quanto, starei senz’altro per ora per il Wright.’ Einaudi to Camerino, 16 June 1941, AE, inc. Camerino. 9. Einaudi to Berti, 16 May 1941, AE, inc Berti; Linati to Einaudi, 13 November 1939, 23 May 1941, Einaudi to Linati, 16 November 1939 and 27 May 1941, AE, inc. Linati. 10. Camerino to Einaudi, 28 June 1941 and Einaudi to Camerino, 1 July 1941, AE, inc. Camerino (also quoted in part in Billiani 2007a: 283, 296–7). In 1939, as we saw, there was no ban on American authors. When Linati proposed a non-literal translation of Henry James, Einaudi replied that, however reasonable the modifications the translators wanted to make, he wanted his audience to read accurate and respectful [integrali] translations of novels. Henry James had also been rejected by the ministry for Bompiani in January and August 1941 (Bonsaver 2007: 223). 11. Schweitzer to Einaudi, 24 April 1941, and Casa Einaudi’s reply is undated, but presumably between late April and early May 1941, AE, inc. Schweitzer. 12. Schweitzer’s letter is undated, but the reply from the publishing house accepting his proposal is dated 29 July 1941, AE, inc. Schweitzer. 13. Casa Einaudi to Schweitzer, 19 August 1941, AE, inc. Schweitzer. 14. Schweitzer to Einaudi, 23 August 1941, AE, inc. Schweitzer. 15. Casa Einaudi to Schweitzer, 12 September 1941, AE, inc. Schweitzer. 16. Einaudi to Alicata, 26 April 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. 17. Muscetta to Einaudi, 21 November 1941, AE, inc. Muscetta. 18. ‘STRANIERI … La tua smania di far russi e inglesi, proprio ora, mi pare fuori posto. […] Per gli inglesi e francesi sii molto cauto, ché non mi stupirei di veder bocciare proprio Goldsmith (che al Ministero non conosceranno) e Gobineau, sebbene sembrino fatti apposta per mettere in linea anche l’Universale.’ Einaudi to Muscetta, 25 November 1941, AE, inc. Muscetta. 19. Alicata to Einaudi 14 November 1941 and Einaudi to Alicata, 18 November 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. For more information on Bruno Gaeta, see Bonsaver (2007: 197) and, on the MCP structure in general, Ferrara (1992). 20. Einaudi to Camerino, 25 June 1941, AE, inc. Camerino. For censorship of anti-militarist texts, see Fabre (2007: 48–9) and Bonsaver (2007: 52, 90). 21. Einaudi to Alicata, 28 April 1942 and 27 June 1942, AE, inc. G. Einaudi. 22. ‘Caro Alicata, oggi mandiamo al Ministero la versione dattiloscritta di una scelta dell’ Antologia di S. River di Lee Masters. Abbiamo scelto questo metodo giacché senza una prefazione arrufianante [sic] il libro era condannato’, Einaudi to Alicata, 27 August 1942, AE, inc. G. Einaudi. 23. Alicata to Einaudi, 21 November 1941, 24 October 1942, AE, inc. Alicata; Pavese to Pivano, 7 January 1943 in Pavese (1966: 663), quoted in Mangoni (1999: 115). 24. Rossi to Einaudi, 1 January 1942, and Einaudi to Rossi, 31 November 1942, AE, inc. Ernesto Rossi. 25. Unsigned letter, probably Muscetta to Aldo Camerino, 10 December 1942, Camerino to Muscetta, 22 December 1942, AE, inc. Camerino; Storoni Mazzolani to Pavese, 4 March 1943, AE, inc. Storoni Mazzolani. 26. On the censorship of Americana, see Rundle (2000, 2010), Bonsaver (2003: 176; 2007: 221–31), Fabre (1998: 294), Billiani (2007a: 218–19).

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27. ‘Lev Tolstòi come casa Einaudi stampa con giudaica scrupolosità di forestiero’, Coppola 1942, quoted in Mangoni (1999: 121–2). 28. ‘Il riferimento a Leone Ginzburg, privato dalle leggi razziali della cittadinanza italiana, era chiarissimo per chi sapesse leggere ed era tanto più significativo dal momento che il nome di Ginzburg, che aveva rivisto la traduzione rilevata dalla Slavia e steso la prefazione, non appariva, per ovvie ragioni, nel volume. Era un ammonire gli ambienti interessati che la casa editrice Einaudi era pur sempre quella della ‘Cultura’, di Ginzburg, dell’antifascismo torinese’, Mangoni (1999: 121–2). 29. On the political activities of Giulio Einaudi and his collaborators, see De Luna (1996), Turi (1990), Mangoni (1999), d’Orsi (2000), Bobbio (2000), Cesari (1991). 30. Einaudi to Alicata, 21 January 1942, AE, inc. G. Einaudi (also quoted in Mangoni 1999: 121–3). 31. Alicata to Einaudi, 25 February 1942, AE, inc. Alicata. Quoted by Mangoni (1999: 123), Billiani (2007a: 226) and Bonsaver (2007: 246). 32. Bonsaver (2007: 174). 33. Rundle (2010: 5, 45–54, 182–4, 209–10), Bonsaver (2007: 116–19). 34. See also Einaudi to Muscetta, 8 April 1942, AE, inc. Muscetta, part of which is cited in Mangoni (1999: 125). On the importance attributed by the regime to the export of Italian books abroad see Rundle (1999), and Rundle (2010: Chapters III, IV and V) on Mondadori and Bompiani, and Bonsaver (2007: 224) on Bompiani. 35. See Rundle in this volume for more details on the imposition of a quota. 36. Alicata to Einaudi, 26 November 1941 and 7 December 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. 37. Einaudi to Polledro, 17 September 1942, AE, inc. Polledro. The publisher had asked for Polledro’s help, not being able to count on Ginzburg, who was then an exile in Pizzoli, in Southern Italy. 38. Einaudi to Amendola Kuhn, 18 February 1942, AE, inc. Amendola Kuhn. 39. Casa Einaudi to Polledro, 20 June 1942, AE, inc. Polledro; Muscetta to Vecchione, 23 July 1942 and Vecchione to Muscetta, 3 January 1943, AE, inc. Vecchione; Einaudi to L. Ginzburg, 13 October 1942. AE, inc. L. Ginzburg; Alicata to Einaudi, 26 November 1942, AE, inc. Alicata. 40. Bonsaver (2007: 204) quotes an entry from Bottai’s diary supporting this hypothesis. Another book dealing with Napoleon which was rejected for publication was Souvenirs et Anecdotes de l’île d’Elbe by André Pons de l’Hérault. See Einaudi to Alicata, 18 November 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. 41. Einaudi to Camerino, 7 July 1941, AE, inc. Camerino. Quoted in Billiani (2007a: 223–4). 42. Einaudi to Alicata, 8 October 1942, AE, inc. G. Einaudi quoted in Mangoni (1999: 136–7). 43. ‘Per la ristampa della Rémusat è inutile pensare ad insistere: è venuta una segnalazione extra-ministeriale’, Alicata to Einaudi, 21 October 1942, AE, inc. Alicata. Parts of this correspondence are quoted in Mangoni (1999: 136–7) and in Billiani (2007a: 223–7). On 5 March 1942, the trusted Gherardo Casini had been replaced by the stricter Fernando Mezzasoma (Mangoni 1999: 139; Bonsaver 2007: 205). For more information about the structure of the Ministry of Popular Culture, see Ferrara (1992).

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44. Alicata to Einaudi, 26 November 1941 and 20 November 1942, AE, inc. Alicata; Einaudi to Alicata, 13 January 1942 and 21 January 1942, AE, inc. G. Einaudi; and Morante to Einaudi, 15 July 1942, AE, inc. Morante. See also Mangoni (1999: 118). 45. Einaudi to Natoli, 31 August 1943, AE, inc. Natoli; Einaudi to Berti, 22 June 1943, AE, inc. Berti; Alicata to Einaudi 7 December 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. This criterion might be at the origin of the seizure (later revoked) of Manlio Ciardo’s Illuminismo e rivoluzione francese published by Laterza and mentioned in Bonsaver (2007: 216, 352). 46. Pavese to Alicata, 14 March 1942, AE, inc. Pavese; Alicata to Einaudi, 21 February 1942 and 30 March 1942, AE, inc. Alicata; Einaudi to Alicata, 1 April 1942, AE, inc. G. Einaudi. Also quoted in Mangoni (1999: 115) and Billiani (2007a: 272). 47. Casa Einaudi to Storoni Mazzolani, 22 September 1941, AE, inc. Storoni Mazzolani. On this, see also Mangoni (1999: 107–8). 48. Einaudi to Vinciguerra, 24 September 1942, and Vinciguerra to Einaudi, 25 September 1942, AE, inc. Vinciguerra. 49. Alicata to Einaudi, 24 October 1942, AE, inc. Alicata. Also quoted in Mangoni (1999: 147–51). 50. As mentioned in a letter from Einaudi to Pavese dated 16 October 1941, AE, inc. Pavese. 51. Einaudi to Alicata, 4 September 1942, AE, inc. G. Einaudi. 52. ‘Per la faccenda dei permessi bisogna insistere. La bocciatura di Chesterfield è un’esagerazione. Bisogna chiedere spiegazioni in merito e cercare di persuadere i solerti funzionari. Ti ricordi che per Robertson, in fine, la spuntammo!’ Muscetta to Alicata, 3 September 1942, AE, inc. Muscetta. The correspondence is also quoted in part by Mangoni (1999: 147–51). For essays and scientific texts, see Fabre (1998: 32) and Fabre (2007: 27–8). 53. Einaudi to Geymonat, 30 August 1941, AE, inc. Ludovico Geymonat. See Fabre (1998) for a detailed account of the anti-Jewish legislation and its effects on publishing, and Rundle in this volume for more details on the commission. 54. Einaudi to Schweitzer, 4 October 1941 and 19 November 1941, AE, inc. Schweitzer; Einaudi to Alicata, 27 October 1941, 31 July 1942, and 27 August 1942, AE, inc. Giulio Einaudi; Pavese to Geymonat, 25 September 1942, Casa Einaudi to Geymonat, 30 October 1942, Geymonat to F. Severi and A. Carlini of Reale Accademia d’Italia, 14 November 1942, AE, inc. Ludovico Geymonat; Pavese to Alicata, 9 October 1942, AE, inc. Pavese; Alicata to Einaudi, 21 October 1942, AE, inc. Alicata. 55. Alicata to Einaudi, 7 December 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. Tosti was the head of Division III, or Book Division, at the MCP. See Ferrara (1992), cited in Fabre (1998: 3) and Bonsaver (2007: 196). 56. Freud would later be included in the list of unwanted authors sent by the MCP to all prefectures and publishers on 23 March 1942. Interestingly, he did not appear in the list of unwanted authors prepared by Nazi Germany and distributed in October 1941 to Italian publishers (Fabre 1998, quoted in Bonsaver 2007: 209–12). See Sturge in this volume on Nazi attempts to influence what was translated in Italy. 57. ‘L’analisi psicologica non significa di necessità, anzi non può significare, freudismo.’ Spaini’s comment appears in a letter from Alicata to Einaudi,

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58.

59.

60.

61.

62. 63.

64. 65. 66.

67.

Einaudi and Fascist Policy on Translations 14 November 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. Alberto Spaini was a literary critic, translator and journalist, and an appointed reader for MCP. On Spaini and the reception of German literature in Italy between the wars, see Giusti (2000) and Rubino (2002); also Mangoni (1999: 21–2). See Einaudi to Alicata, 18 November 1941, and Alicata to Einaudi, 26 November 1941 and 7 December 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. Quoted in Billiani (2007a: 243) and Bonsaver (2007: 346). For more information about Jung at Einaudi, see Mangoni (1999: 103) and the following correspondence: Einaudi to Alicata, 13 January 1942, Alicata to Einaudi, 3 February 1942, document no. 172 (undated but probably 22–24 April 1942), Alicata to Einaudi, 22 May 1942, AE, inc. Alicata; Einaudi to Alicata, 26 May 1942, AE. inc. G. Einaudi. This was Bompiani’s opinion, but even a German anthology was censored and modifications added because of a comment by Thomas Mann and because of the inclusion of a short story by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff titled Die Judenbuche (Bonsaver 2007: 225). ‘La Chiesa, la Germania, il Regno, l’Impero, l’Esercito e la Marina’, Spaini to Einaudi, 31 July 1941, AE, inc. Alberto Spaini. Quoted in Mangoni (1999: 22), Billiani (2007a: 223) and Bonsaver (2007: 203, 345). ‘Celeberrimo romanzo coloniale tedesco’, Einaudi to Schweitzer, 31 October 1941, AE, inc. Schweitzer. Einaudi to Schweitzer, 31 October 1941 and 13 April 192, and Schweitzer to Einaudi, 6 April 1942, AE, inc. Schweitzer; Spaini to Einaudi, 6 November 1941, AE, inc. A. Spaini; Einaudi to Alicata, 24 November 1941, 28 April 1942 and 4 September 1942, AE, inc. G. Einaudi. See also Mangoni (1999: 115, 138) and Bonsaver (2007: 204). Circular No. 442/9532, dated 3 April 1934. See Fabre (1998: 22–8; 2007: 31). See Rubino’s and Sturge’s chapters in this collection. Liberal senator Luigi Einaudi, despite early mild support of the Fascist movement because of its anti-Bolshevist stance, became an anti-Fascist as soon as the early signs of the anti-democratic and illiberal tendencies of the movement appeared. He had been deprived by Mussolini of most of his public appointments and had chosen, in 1931, to swear loyalty to the regime in order to keep lecturing at the University of Turin – certainly not because he supported the Duce. The Turin publisher Piero Gobetti, active in the 1920s, was an inspiring model for Giulio Einaudi (Cesari 1991: 14–18) and his legacy was passed on to him through Leone Ginzburg, who had worked with Gobetti as translator from Russian. Gobetti and his wife, Ada Prospero, had also translated from Russian. Gobetti’s production – both his journals and books – was heavily censored and frequently seized by the Fascist police for its boldly anti-Fascist content (Fabre 1998: 450–1), and he himself was repeatedly threatened and physically attacked by Fascist squadristi. He moved to France to pursue his editorial career, but died soon after his arrival in Paris due to ill health. For more information about Piero Gobetti, Leone Ginzburg and the relationship between the two publishers, see Frabotta (1988), Turi (1990: 21), d’Orsi (2000: 53–8, 67–78, 101–2).

8 French–German and German–French Poetry Anthologies 1943–45 Frank-Rutger Hausmann

The Anthologie de la poésie allemande In autumn 1943, the Parisian publisher Stock brought out a bilingual Anthologie de la poésie allemande des origines à nos jours1 compiled by the Germanist and translator René Lasne in collaboration with Georg Rabuse, an employee of the German Institute in Paris.2 Lasne, a teacher at a Paris lycée who for a while had fought with the Wehrmacht on the eastern front,3 had translated most of the poems into cautiously metrical French prose. Where respected translations already existed, for example by Gérard de Nerval, Édouard Schuré, Catarina Pozzi and others, he restricted himself to reprinting these. The anthology opens with the ninth-century German Wessobrunn Prayer, the ‘Lorscher Bienensegen’ charm and other Old High German incantations,4 and closes with the Nazi poets Hans Baumann and Herybert Menzel.5 It was the first comprehensive collection of its kind, allowing French readers to gain familiarity with what the Institute considered to be the most important currents of German poetry from the Middle Ages to the present day. To be sure, no Jewish or other proscribed poets were included – no Heine, Wolfskehl, Brecht or Becher, no Else Lasker-Schüler or Gertrud Kolmar, to name but a few significant omissions. Instead, we find particularly numerous contributions from Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Rilke, George and Weinheber, and even Richard Wagner with excerpts from Tristan und Isolde in his own translation, along with several folk songs. Even so, within the narrow limits set by the political circumstances of the day the anthology is to a certain degree representative and objective, giving a voice to renowned representatives of the strand of German writing that would later be called the ‘inner emigration’ (see Schnell 1976) such as Hans Carossa, Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Ina Seidel, Werner Bergengruen and Friedrich Georg Jünger. 201

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French–German and German–French Poetry Anthologies

The proportion of clearly Nazi poetry is fairly limited, though most of the contemporary poets are represented. If the volume was published by Stock and not Gallimard or Grasset, the more illustrious belles-lettres specialists at the time, this was because since 1921 Stock had been part-owned by the poet Jacques Boutelleau, alias Jacques Chardonne,6 who had entered deeply into collaboration with the German cultural institutions within occupied France. Accordingly, the driving force behind the anthology was Karl Epting, from 1941 to 1944 the director of the German Institute in Paris, an institution which acted as the centre of active German–French cultural cooperation – then as now described as ‘collaboration’. A certain amount of research is available on the history of the Institute in Paris.7 It was the second of 16 Institutes that were established in all continental European capitals – whether occupied, dependent or neutral – from 1940 to 1945. Their administration was shared between the Reich Ministry for Education, Science and Popular Instruction, the Foreign Ministry, and the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. These German Institutes, sometimes called German Scientific Institutes (Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Institute), were intended to act as an interface for scholarly and cultural exchange with Nazi Germany, while also gathering together all the bilateral initiatives that had previously been undertaken by the cultural sections of the German embassies and various academic and international associations. Before 1933, Epting had worked for the international student association in Geneva, then for the Paris branch of the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD, and had headed the Paris ‘Goethehaus’. He was a close associate of the ambassador, Otto Abetz, and in the first months of the occupation administered the embassy’s cultural section. His ideal was that after the French defeat a new form of cooperation between Germany and France would emerge, one where, at least initially, Germany would be the giver and France the taker: not relations franco-allemandes, then, but relations germano-françaises. German intellectuals close to National Socialism often argued that German culture was superior to French; if history was taken into account, they added, French culture in fact owed more to the Germanic than to the Latin race.8 It was for this kind of enrichment that Epting organized the many activities of the various sections of the German Institute, in association with the branches in larger provincial cities such as Rennes, Bordeaux, Marseille and Besançon. Together with the language assistants exchange service, they organized German language classes (popular enough to attract around 12,000 Parisians in 1941), arranged concerts, theatrical events, commemorative events, exhibitions, poetry readings and academic lectures, looked after exchange

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visits from artists, professors, language assistants, students, apprentices and craftsmen, and edited the journal Deutschland–Frankreich with an associated series of monographs (Cahiers de l’Institut Allemand, published by the collaborationist house Sorlot) that reprinted the lectures held at the German Institute. The Institute also prepared translations of ‘suitable’ German books; in fact, all the German Institutes set up committees to select German authors, both classic and Nazi-approved contemporary writers, for translation into the language of the country concerned. As for translation into German, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels insisted that only those foreign writers who were prepared to join the ‘Europäische Schriftsteller-Vereinigung’ [European Writers’ Association], the German counterpart to the PEN Club that Goebbels set up in Weimar in 1941, should be translated (see Hausmann 2004: 73–80). The transmission of German culture was served not only by translations themselves, but also by a large-scale bibliography of German–French translations, compiled by Liselotte Bihl and Karl Epting from the holdings of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris though not published until 1987 (Bihl and Epting 1987). The German–French poetry anthology compiled and published by the Institute, as well, aimed to boost cooperation within the framework of the re-conceived Franco–German collaboration. In his foreword Epting emphasized, in the style of the time, the necessity of building bridges between the intellectual elites of the ‘New Europe’, which must draw closer together in the ongoing ‘struggle for survival’ by Western civilizations against the threat of Bolshevism. The true soul of the German Volk, which was spearheading this battle, could only be grasped through its poetry, continued Epting. Regrettably, German poetry had never really found a home in France, a lack attributable to the complexity of the German language. ‘Over and above its common and practical meaning, each word has a deeper sense, one that is rooted in the metaphysics of the language and can only be illuminated by the light of poetry. A genuine translation must not only render the word in itself, but also re-create the mystical world view that lies hidden beneath its surface.’9 The much-cited axiom of the untranslatability of poetry here hardens into the claim that German poetic language is in principle untranslatable. However, Epting noted, the anthology had tried to achieve the impossible and built a bridge to reach every average, uninitiated Frenchman. In view of this, it is not so surprising that the anthology’s first print-run was 6000 copies, a remarkably high number for a crisis period which accorded strict priority to books serving the war effort. A hardback edition using standard paper was accompanied by a numbered, india-paper special edition with a full leather binding that

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alluded to the prestigious classics of Gallimard’s Édition de la Pléiade. These costly volumes were sent out to friends of the German Institute, a veritable ‘who’s who’ of the political, artistic and cultural circles of Franco–German relations. A collection of expressions of thanks and acknowledgements of receipt can be found in the estate of Karl Epting, kept in his old holiday home in the Black Forest at Murg-Hänner. As far as the French recipients are concerned, these proved rather disappointing; Epting did not achieve the goal he had set himself. It is all too clear that the recipients had at most leafed through the anthology and quickly set it aside. Their polite notes, most of them miniature diplomatic masterpieces, do not go beyond general praise. The German addressees, for whom the anthology was intended only secondarily, reacted with much more interest, read the bilingual texts in detail and made substantial suggestions for improvement in a potential second edition. Epting’s immediate superior, the ambassador Otto Abetz, was full of praise. The Wagner conductor Franz von Hoesslin, who was in Paris in late 1943, expressed the hope that ‘as a counterpart an anthology of French poetry with German translations will also soon appear’.10

French poetry in German translation After the success of the first anthology, Epting took up this wish – also expressed by other friends of the German Institute and recipients of complimentary copies – for a French–German anthology. The undertaking was less innovative than the German–French version, since many such anthologies already existed.11 Neither did this kind of project tally with the trend of the cultural policy of the day, which, as I have said, was directed at promoting the German contribution to French culture rather than the other way around. Furthermore, the important Symbolists of the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century were defined by Nazi ideologues as decadent poètes maudits, no longer to be countenanced in Germany – decadence being understood by leading, ‘decent-minded’ Nazis as the glorification of sexual debauchery, while Hitler himself in Mein Kampf had already attacked some Germans’ ‘nauseating’ praise for the ‘great culture-nation’ as erbärmliches Französeln, a ‘wretched pandering to France’ (Hitler 1933: 30). And yet an anthology of French poems that entirely omitted these poets’ work would be unthinkable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the catalogue of French translations into German, the counterpart to the Institute’s bibliography of German translations into French (Bihl and Epting 1987), was drawn up only after the war.12


Yet if poetry translation was viewed as a contribution to improved understanding of foreign-language texts and an aid to the interpretation of foreign cultures, then the publication of a French–German anthology during wartime could be justified even in the face of pressure from a xenophobic Nazi ideology. A key goal, of course, had to be the clear demonstration to the French of just how deficient their reception of German literature had previously been, by contrasting it with the rich tradition of German translation – and particularly of German translation of French literature. Germany is generally considered one of the nations most dedicated to translation, and not only the great French poets but also the minores have almost without exception been translated into German, most of them repeatedly. The challenge of translating the great names of French poetry has been taken up time and again by distinguished German poets – Franz Blei, Rudolf Borchardt, Emanuel Geibel, Stefan George, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Paul Zech or Stefan Zweig being among the most prominent. One of the reasons for the wealth of German translations of French poetry can doubtless be found in Goethe’s famous appeal, made in conversation with Eckermann on 31 January 1827: I like to look at foreign nations and advise everybody to do the same. National literature no longer means very much; the age of world literature is beginning, and everybody should contribute to hasten its advent. (In Eckermann 1955: 278) Since no one can know every language, this call inevitably implies the call to translate – including, or perhaps especially, to translate poetry. Epting again entrusted Rabuse and Lasne with the task of assembling this second anthology, a project that was begun in the spring of 1944 but remained unfinished due to the liberation of France and the resultant closure of the German Institute in late August the same year. By chance we have a considerable amount of information on the anthology’s evolution, in particular a collection of letters to the Coburgborn poet Georg Schneider (1902–72).13 Several of these, from various correspondents (Karl Epting, Gerhart Haug [1896–1958], Bernt von Heiseler [1907–66], Wolf von Niebelschütz [1913–60], Kurt Reidemeister [1893–1971],14 Georg Rabuse [1910–76] and Franz von Rexroth [1900–69]), concern the French–German anthology, although they do not allow us to fully reconstruct the thinking behind it.15 In addition to these letters there is the lively 30-year correspondence between

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Schneider and the writer and librarian Helmut Bartuschek (1905–84), now located in the Munich city library.16 All Schneider’s correspondents named above were supposed to participate in the planned anthology, but the search for a suitable German publisher in the final phase of the war proved extremely difficult. Schneider, initially a teacher in his hometown of Coburg, made his debut as a poet in 1925 with the volume Die Barke. In 1933 the Nazis banned him from publishing because of his liberal ideas, but the ban was not consistently enforced as he did not openly attack the regime, and in 1937 he was able to publish an anthology of poems about Franconia with a somewhat völkisch tinge, Franken – Hochklang einer Landschaft.17 Basing himself on Joseph Nadler’s monumental literary history Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften, Schneider applies the concept Franken in a very wide sense, expanding it to cover not only poets from the actual region of Franconia but also numerous authors who might more usually be defined as coming from the Rhineland, Hesse or the Upper Palatinate. At the same time Schneider was preparing a collection of his own translations from French, which appeared only after the war and then in a greatly reduced form.18 He had previously sent manuscript versions of his translations to friends and interested acquaintances asking for their comments, and had published various pieces in journals and newspapers.19 As a poet, translator and editor of anthologies,20 stationed as a Wehrmacht soldier in Provence not too far from Paris, Schneider was an interesting figure for Epting. Epting had heard of him through Wolf von Niebelschütz, a poet and writer of stories and novels who had been sent to Etampes near Paris in 1940 and who exchanged poems with Schneider. In a letter of 17 February 1944, Niebelschütz praised Schneider for his poems, promising to put him in contact with the German Institute in Paris.21 The collection in question was entitled Zwanzig Gedichte [Twenty Poems]22 and was rather traditional in form and content, its themes being nature through the seasons and the different phases of human life. As director of the Institute, Epting suggested to Rabuse and Lasne that Schneider might be a possible associate in the second anthology project, and that they should contact him. The contact in fact came via two personal letters from Epting dated 1 March23 and 1 May 1944. In his letters Epting congratulated Schneider on his translations of poems by Valéry, Verlaine and Desbordes-Valmore, all of which were to be included in the anthology, and asked him to come to Paris to discuss


matters of detail in person. A letter on the same topic from Lasne to Schneider, dated 6 May,24 was included in the envelope, Rabuse having already written on 19 April 1944.25 It seems that this anthology, like its German–French predecessor, was designed to present the history of French poetry from its beginnings in the twelfth century to the present day by means of selected ‘exemplary’ translations. However, Schneider and his correspondents, with the exception of Rexroth (1946) and Bartuschek (1957),26 had mainly translated nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets, with a special focus on Verlaine and Valéry. The discussion in the letters concerned on the one hand the selection criteria to be applied, and on the other the comparison and critique of existing translations, the principles behind the correspondents’ own translations, and general questions of poetry translation. Schneider, Rexroth and Bartuschek all published their own anthologies in a burst of anthologizing activity immediately after the war27 that seems to have responded to a long-frustrated demand for translated poetry – foreign poetry having been rarely published in the Nazi period. Their publications clearly show the fruits of their work on the unfinished German Institute anthology.28 In fact, Schneider may well already have been planning a large-scale anthology of his own when Epting approached him.29 Because Rabuse had been sent to the Italian front as an interpreter, it is also possible that Epting gave Schneider the main editorial responsibility for the German Institute’s anthology, although there are only indirect indications of this, such as the fact that in the summer of 1944, after Epting, Rabuse and Lasne had all written to him, Schneider sent round a successful set of requests to renowned translators for permission to use suitable pieces for a ‘planned anthology’.30 He seems also to have considered recruiting the Verlaine expert Gerhart Haug as a co-editor.31

Schneider’s poetics of translation Schneider was particularly fascinated by Valéry’s poetry. It had previously been accessible to the German-speaking public chiefly through Rilke’s translations – which, however, were mainly restricted to the collection Charmes.32 Schneider actually visited Valéry, either in his hometown Sète on the Mediterranean coast or in Paris. Unfortunately the correspondence between them is lost except for one letter, which concerns the plan to translate Valéry’s most famous poem, previously untranslated into German, ‘La jeune Parque’ (the poem would later,

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in 1960, find a sympathetic translator in Paul Celan).33 In his letter to Schneider Valéry writes: As regards ‘La jeune Parque’ and ‘L’Abeille’, I would be happy to have you translate them into German.34 They are difficult texts, particularly ‘La jeune Parque’, which has been called the most obscure poem in the French language.35 If you require any clarifications, you need only ask me by letter. I am very glad to authorize you to undertake this work and will be obliged if you could send me two copies once the book has appeared.36 Valéry’s high opinion of Schneider is worth discussing. Schneider had already translated some shorter poems by Valéry – ones not translated by Rilke, against whom it seems he did not wish to have himself measured.37 In his work he had tried ‘to convey something of that originary darkness […] into my own language’ (Schneider 1947: 21). He goes on, using the third person to describe his own activity: The image, the metaphor, the sound, the sense, the form were sacred to him, and sacred too was the poet’s word, that in its deepest mystery has nothing to do with philological faithfulness.38 (Ibid.) Schneider read his translations to Valéry, who spoke no German, in the course of a later visit.39 He comments that the master approved their sound and rhythm, which is saying a lot for a writer like Valéry, for whom individual words functioned equally through both sound and meaning in order to become poetry. The mediator between Valéry and Schneider appears to have been the Franco-Romanian poet and philosopher Pius Servien. Schneider had also translated some of his poems, including ‘Sibylle’, and Servien complimented him on his work: I have seen these lines live a new life, like a new work, like a work written directly in your beautiful language. A line like this, which is more yours than mine, and which is yet essential to that new life: Gehen durch die Wohnungen der Götter deine Schritte [Walk through the apartments of the gods thy steps; French original: Parcourant les demeures / Tes pas pèsent la terre et se sont mesurés] – conjures up for me the limpid gravity of Goethe’s Iphigenia.40


From conversations like this Schneider derived a vibrant translational poetics: Every true translation is a vita nuova, or else it is unreal like a wilted leaf and does not exist. There are no other measures or weights for the translator.41 (Schneider 1947: 22–3) Testing his theory against the few poems he translated in the Album des vers anciens and comparing these with various other German translations,42 it soon becomes clear that Schneider has translated into a slightly archaized, ceremonious language which remains close to the original in content and form. Take for example the opening of ‘Orphée’: Je compose en esprit, sous les myrtes, Orphée L’admirable It is translated by Schwanz as: Unter Myrten bild ich in Gedanken mir den Ohnegleichen, Orpheus [beneath myrtles I picture for myself in thought the incomparable, Orpheus] and as Schneider more elegantly as: Orpheus, Bewundernswürdiger … dich formt mein Geist im Myrthenhain [Orpheus, thou admirable … my mind shapes thee in the myrtle grove]. Despite the quality of Schneider’s work, space constraints imposed by the publisher meant that these and the other poems Schneider selected, by Victor Hugo, Stéphane Mallarmé, Alfred de Musset, José-Maria Heredia, Tristan Corbière, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul-Jean Toulet, Charles Maurras, Paul Fort and Jean Cocteau (in addition to Valéry and Servien), remain solitary samples: two hands reached into the dark urn, as he put it, and drew out the lots ‘like leaves from a great, dark beech’ (Schneider 1947: 22) The chaos of the last phase of the war severely impeded all sustained intellectual work. Schneider arranged for

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an edition of his Valéry translations, under the title Rein steigt der Geist [Pure rises the spirit], to be published by the Coburg house Winkler, founded in 1945 and later merged with Artemis of Zurich, but it never appeared.43 Valéry’s death on 20 July 1945 robbed Schneider of any further dialogue with the poet.

Conclusion A full history of German–French and French–German poetry anthologies has yet to be written.44 Such a history would teach us much about Franco-German intellectual exchange and the changing cultural relationships between the two countries. In it, Karl Epting and the German Institute he headed during the Nazi occupation of Paris would certainly play an important role. The German–French anthology of 1943 that he initiated appeared in France and was of relatively little interest to the German censors – who, incidentally, were advised by Epting. The French–German counterpart did not appear, though it would have been able to benefit from a change in policy: after the debacle of Stalingrad in February 1943, German propaganda designed a ‘New European’ alliance against Bolshevism, the price of which was a more liberal attitude to foreign cultures. If the German–French anthology is still strongly informed by the spirit of National Socialist hegemony and collaboration, the unfinished French–German one begins to point the way to a democratic future: it acknowledges the exceptional quality of French poetry and tries to help it gain its rightful place. At the same time, the planned anthology shows how even in those dark days German poets and translators worked with French poetry, took inspiration from it and tried to share it with those Germans who could not read French.

Notes This chapter, ‘French–German and German–French Poetry Anthologies 1943–45’, has been translated by Kate Sturge. 1. Lasne and Rabuse 1943. The volume is subtitled as follows: ‘Avec le concours de J.-F. Angelloz, Eugène Bestaux, Maurice Betz, Maurice Boucher, Marcel Camus, Jean Chuzeville, G. Claretie et S. Joachim-Chaigneau, Maurice Colleville, Pierre du Colombier, André Gide, Pierre Grand, E.P. Isler, André Moret, Robert Pitrou, Armand Robin, J. Rouge, Albert-Marie Schmidt, Jean Tardieu, André Thérive, Patrice de La Tour du Pin, Alexandre Vialatte et des traductions de Catherine Pozzi, Gérard de Nerval, N. Martin, Édouard Schuré, Richard Wagner. Préface de Karl Epting, Éditions Stock, Delamain


2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

et Boutelleau, 6, Rue Casimir Delavigne, 6 Paris, 560 S. [⫽ double pages] Achevé d’imprimer sur les Presses de l’Imprimerie Darantière, à Dijon, le trente juillet M.CM.XLIII. Cet ouvrage a été tiré dans le format in-16 double couronne, réimposé en un volume, sur vélin Bible des Papeteries Prioux, à 1650 exemplaires numérotés, plus 50 exemplaires, hors commerce, marqués H.C. sur les presses de l’Imprimerie Darantière à Dijon.’ The present article is based on Exemplaire No. 1355. Rabuse took over Karl Heinz Bremer’s role at the German Institute in Paris in 1941; from 1965 he taught Romance Studies in Vienna. See Loewe 2002. The relevant reference books do not list Lasne. Deutschland-Frankreich Vol. 1, No. 3, 1943, 54, contains an essay of his, ‘Trois mois avec une unité allemande’, and names him as Professor René Lasne, Paris XVIIIe, 3, rue Etienne-Jodelle; cf. Burrin (1995: 356–7). In contrast, the German anthologies commonly used today begin only with the New High German period (see, for example, Reiners 1955; Conrady 1991; Krolow 1982). The best overview of literature in German in the Nazi period is Sarkowicz and Mentzer (2002) (on Baumann: 80–82, on Menzel: 309–11). On Chardonne, and in general on the collaboration of French poets and writers, see Hausmann (2004: 389, passim). In some detail in Michels (1993) and Hausmann (2002: 100–30). On Epting, see also Hausmann (2008). See Hausmann (2007: 293–364). ‘Outre sa signification courante et pratique, chaque mot a un sens intérieur, qui relève de la métaphysique du langage et ne s’éclaire qu’à la lumière de la poésie. Une véritable traduction devrait non seulement rendre le mot lui-même, mais recréer le monde mystérieux qui est caché sous l’apparence’ (Lasne and Rabuse 1943: XI). Page X includes a short note of appreciation for the existing French anthologies of German poetry. Unpublished ms., Hänner, NL Karl Epting, Briefe 67/1–3. See the overview in Kuhk, Schöning and Schulze (2002). The Bibliographie deutscher Übersetzungen aus dem Französischen: 1700–1948 was made by Hans Fromm, a specialist in early German literature and FinnoUgric studies, mainly using the collections of the Bavarian State Library (Fromm 1950–57). On Georg Schneider, see Kosch (1993: 562–3), Pörnbacher (1981: 1011–14, 1076), Schuldt-Britting (1999: 214–15, with a photo on 220). Reidemeister’s translations of Valéry were to have been represented in the anthology, but there is no mention of them in Kuhk, Schöning and Schulze (2002). See Autogr. 86 (Marburg, 7 July 1944): ‘Herr von Heiseler’s explanation is not quite correct in that I only translated two poems by Valery [sic] […] I have passed these lines, along with others of my own, to the publisher Suhrkamp and can thus no longer really dispose over them.’ (Marburg, 17 December 1945): ‘Suhrkamp has not yet been back in touch here in western Germany. My poems have not yet appeared.’ Reidemeister’s own poems were published in 1947, under the title Von dem Schönen: Essays, Gedichte, by Claassen & Goverts of Hamburg. Kuhk, Schöning and Schulze (2002) do not mention any Valéry translations by Reidemeister.

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15. In 2004, Eberhard Köstler, a specialist in antiquarian books in Tutzing, describes the 115 lots for sale in an excellent online catalogue: www.autographs.de/pdf/Schneider_Korr1.pdf (Autographen. Die Sammlung des Dichters Georg Schneider). Unfortunately, apart from the correspondence with Gerhart Haug all the lots were sold to buyers who remain anonymous due to data protection regulations. However, as Köstler’s descriptions include crucial passages of text, the story of the French–German poetry anthology can be reconstructed at least in outline. I would like to thank Eberhard Köstler for helpful discussions and for permission to cite from his catalogue. The letters are cited using Köstler’s numbering as ‘Autogr. (Sammlung Georg Schneider)’. I was able to buy Haug’s letters (Autogr. 42). This collection is particularly fruitful for the history of poetry translation. It consists of six letters from Haug to Schneider (Ingolstadt 17 July 1944; Munich 20 October 1945; Munich 21 November 1945; Munich 17 December 1945; Munich 29 December 1945; Munich 15 January 1946). See Hausmann (2009). 16. Munich city library, Monacensia Bibliothek und Literaturarchiv. My thanks to Frank Schmitter from the Munich city library for his help. 17. Würzburg: Triltsch, 1937. 18. Schneider 1947. The volume is only 24 pages long. 19. See three letters from the Monacensia Bibliothek und Literaturarchiv, Munich city library, in the Schneider estate. In a letter to him dated 29 February 1944, the head of the cultural policy department of the newspaper Brüsseler Zeitung, Dr Erwin Wäsche, writes that he has ‘retained the two Verlaine poems about Brussels for possible future publication’ (these can be found in Schneider 1947: 9). On 15 April 1944 Wäsche thanks Schneider for a fresh manuscript submission; he says he will publish ‘In Arles’ by Paul-Jean Toulet (the poem can be found in Schneider 1947: 10). Dr Albert Buesche of the Pariser Zeitung, writing on 14 April 1944, is less definite, but he too expresses great interest in Schneider’s poetry translations and promises to make a selection with the help of his colleague Schaeffer. 20. Schneider later planned an anthology of facsimile manuscript poems, and set out to collect sample texts from numerous fellow poets, who were generally more than ready to oblige. This collection was published only in part (Penzold 1946; the reference to Schneider is in the bibliographical information on the inside back cover), but was later summarized in another of Eberhard Köstler’s well-researched sales catalogues, www.autographs. de/pflegetool/Dokumente/Kat06_Sommer_web.pdf. Schneider also achieved reasonable success with his anthologies Chansons: Altfranzösische Liebes- u. Volkslieder (1955) and Salut Silvester: Deutsche Neujahrsgedichte (1960). 21. Autogr. 80 (Etampes, 17 February 1944): ‘I will take your poems with me to Paris. I will also give your name to the German Institute, which is preparing a two-volume parallel-text edition of the best German translations of French poetry (analogous to the Anthologie de la poésie allemande published by Stock). […] I imagine they will contact you.’ 22. Schneider (1940). I used the copy held in the Deutsche Bücherei Leipzig, 1948B1497. The poems are dedicated to Schneider’s wife. 23. Autogr. 37 (Paris, 1 January 1944). At the same time Epting was contacting Schneider’s military superior asking for permission for Schneider to


24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

make a journey to Paris to discuss the translations. The original of this letter was bought by the bookseller Rainer Feucht of Munderkingen, but is now lost. Ibid. Autogr. 84 (Wiesbaden, 19 April 1944): ‘I have read your translations and congratulate you warmly on the new Toulet and Verlaine pieces. The other suggestions I have passed on to Lasne. As soon as fate allows me, I plan to set about assembling the counterpart to our German anthology, and am glad already to be able to consider you a very valuable associate in this matter’. Toulet is misspelled ‘Tonlets’ in the internet version of the letter. Schneider translated some of Paul-Jean Toulet’s (1867–1920) Contrerimes. In an afterword, Bartuschek describes the anthology as the fruit of decades of work. Metrical accuracy and faithfulness to the meaning were, he writes, particularly important to him. Already as a soldier he sent handwritten versions in calligraphy to Schneider. Some of them were sold and are still being sold, once again by Eberhard Köstler. I was able to buy ‘Der Liebende’, a translation of ‘L’Amant’ by Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (1536–1606), which is found in an identical form in Bartuschek (1957: 96–7). It bears the note ‘28 July 1944 in the field (Pyrenees)’. The two men maintained a lively correspondence on problems of poetry translation; only Bartuschek’s letters survive. Bartuschek worked as a librarian in Leipzig during the GDR regime. See Hausmann (2009). See Kuhk, Schöning and Schulze (2002). See the letter from Rexroth dated 7 January 1949 (Autogr. 87): ‘What a shame that I didn’t meet you in 43/44 in Paris, where I was an interpreter right till the end! You mention your plans for a French anthology. Naturally I will be glad to participate, especially since the one I created is out of print and will probably not be reissued. […] To give you some orientation I am sending you the table of contents from my anthology. The underlined titles are the ones I translated. […] By the way, what is happening with [Wilhelm] Hausenstein’s planned nineteenth-century anthology? He wrote to me last year about it, but it doesn’t seem to have been published yet after all, which is hardly surprising given the miserable state of the publishing sector. By the way, will you not come into conflict with Insel [publishers] about Valery [sic], since as far as I know they own the rights?’ Hausenstein’s bilingual anthology Das trunkene Schiff appeared in 1950. See the letter from Wäsche (15 April 1944) cited in note 19: ‘As we are greatly interested in the French–German anthology which is being prepared, I would like to ask you to give us a review copy when it is ready. We published a detailed review of the German–French anthology when it appeared.’ Autogr. 42, Haug to Schneider (17 July 1944); see Hausmann (2009). See Hausmann (2009); original Autogr. 42, Haug an Schneider, 15 January 1946. The year 1947 saw the publication of Haug’s full translation Illuminations (Rimbaud 1947). Best known is his book on Verlaine (Haug 1944), which combines biography, interpretations and translations. The book could not be published within Germany due to the war, but Haug found a Swiss publisher, Benno Schwabe, and clearly wished to remain loyal to him once the war was over.

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32. See Valéry (1988), Lang (1960), Wais (1967) (which offers a comprehensive view of the topic and reconstructs the correspondence between the two poets). 33. This letter from Valéry, dated 2 April 1944, was sold by Köstler to the Paris bookshop Thierry Bodin, which subsequently auctioned it. 34. ‘L’Abeille’ was translated by Schneider as ‘Die Biene’ in Das XX. Jahrhundert 1944, reprinted in Rasche (1947: 36). On p. 37 there is a translation by Schneider, found nowhere else in print, of ‘Les Grenades’. It is the only Valéry poem which was translated by both Rilke and Schneider. 35. Valéry is here quoting Albert Thibaudet, ‘Poésie de Paul Valéry’, Revue de Paris, 15 June 1923: ‘La Jeune Parque passe pour le poème le plus obscur de la poésie française, beaucoup plus obscur que l’Aprés-midi d’un Faune’. 36. ‘En ce qui concerne la Jeune Parque et l’Abeille, je serai heureux de vous les voir traduire en allemand. Ce sont des textes difficiles, la Jeune Parque en particulier, dont on a dit que c’était le poème le plus obscur de la langue française. Si vous aviez besoin de quelque éclaircissement, vous n’aurez qu’à me les demander par lettre. Je vous autorise donc bien volontiers à faire ce travail.’ 37. In Schneider 1947 we find ‘Helena’ (‘Hélène’), ‘Die Badende’ (‘Baignée’), ‘Gesicht’ (‘Vue’), ‘Ein deutliches Feuer’ (‘Un feu distinct’), ‘Orpheus’ (‘Orphée’) from the Album des vers anciens, which are linguistically simpler than the Charmes poems translated by Rilke. There are also some poems from Charmes omitted by Rilke: ‘Die Biene’ (‘L’Abeille’) and ‘Die Granaten’ (‘Les Grenades’) (see Rasche 1947). 38. ‘Das Bild, die Metapher, der Klang, der Sinn, die Gestalt waren ihm heilig, und heilig war ihm das dichterische Wort, das in seinem tiefsten Geheimnis nichts mit philologischer Treue gemein hat.’ 39. To determine the location we would have to know where Schneider was stationed. His post was sent to the poste restante in Paris. On the question of where Valéry stayed during the German occupation, see the ‘Introduction biographique’ in Valéry (1957: 11–71, here 67). 40. ‘J’ai vu ces vers vivre ainsi d’une vie nouvelle, comme une œuvre nouvelle, comme une œuvre écrite directement dans votre belle langue. Tel vers, qui est plutôt vôtre que le mien, et qui est pourtant essentiel a cette vie nouvelle: – Gehen durch die Wohnungen der Götter deine Schritte – me fait songer à la gravité limpide de la gœthéenne Iphigénie.’ 41. ‘Jede wahre Übertragung ist eine vita nuova, oder sie ist unwirklich wie ein welkes Blatt und existiert nicht. Andere Maße und Gewichte gibt es für den Übersetzer nicht.’ 42. Blüher and Schmidt-Radefeldt (1992, here in Peter Schwanz’s translation). 43. Reference on the last page of Schneider (1947). According to Gabriele Kalmbach of the publisher Patmos, which now owns Artemis Winkler, no correspondence on this issue could be found in the publisher’s archive. I received the same information from Erika Grimme of Heinrich Ellermann, Hamburg. 44. Existing work on the subject includes Bark and Pforte (1969, 1970), Essmann and Schöning (1996), Bödeker and Essmann (1997).

9 Safe Shakespeare: Performing Shakespeare during the Portuguese Fascist Dictatorship (1926–74) Rui Pina Coelho

‘Censorship’ has become a common-sense catchword; since everyone knows what it means, merely to name it is to proclaim it. Janelle Reinelt, ‘The Limits of Censorship’ (2006: 3)

Ignoring, blocking and surveilling the experiment The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed diverse and abundant changes in theatre throughout Europe. New experiments and ideas that contributed to the renewal of theatre practice came from all over Europe – Paris, Moscow, Berlin, and London, among others. In Portugal, these efforts to renovate were constantly ignored, blocked or subjected to surveillance. At the beginning of the century there were some brief theatrical adventures (in both a naturalistic and a slightly experimental vein), such as Araújo Pereira’s Teatro Livre (1904) and Teatro Moderno (1905); the outdoor experience of the Teatro da Natureza (1911) and Teatro da Juvénia (1924), an amateur theatre school again directed by Araújo Pereira, who is considered by many to be the first modern Portuguese director; and Teatro Novo (1925), a controversial though ephemeral initiative created by António Ferro (the future director of Salazar’s Ministry of Propaganda) in 1933. But they were all soon forgotten. The Portuguese cultural situation would not change for many decades to come. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century and, more precisely, right up to the mid 1970s when democracy was restored, Portugal only came into contact with experimental theatre through the work of amateur or student groups. During this period many plays remained 215

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unwritten and performances unstaged, while venues continued to be dominated by bourgeois dramas and comedies that neither posed any questions nor allowed for any questioning of the status quo or prevailing moral values. The tastes and preferences of the audience also helped maintain this situation. Portuguese critic Armando Martins brutally described this public as ‘a poor ignorant animal that, depending on what it has eaten for supper, wants to be moved and shed a tear or to have a good belly laugh’ [‘um pobre animal ignorante que, consoante o que comeu ao jantar, quer enternecer-se e espremer uma lágrima, ou apanhar uma pançada de riso’] (Martins 1951: 20). The audiences’ resistance to new aesthetic ventures led to financial disasters, financial disasters led to cautious repertoires, and so forth. A productive way to look more closely at the situation of Portuguese theatre during the fascist dictatorship (1926–74) is to consider the presence of William Shakespeare’s plays, since these were, all around Europe, a fertile field for the introduction of new staging techniques and for debate on new theatrical concepts. Possibly the most significant and long-lasting innovation across Europe was the altered role of the so-called history plays and their reflection of political trends and theatrical ideas (especially through the influence of Brecht’s theatre). However, in Portugal this rediscovery of Shakespeare was neither possible nor permitted. Although the backwardness of Portuguese theatre cannot be entirely attributed to the mechanisms of censorship, these were crucial and laid the foundations for many future crises. In this chapter I aim to evaluate the presence of Shakespeare’s plays on the Portuguese stage during the fascist dictatorship, in the light of restrictions on theatre performances and the consequences of those restrictions for repertoire choices. I will consider the staging of Shakespeare’s plays in Portugal in the context of wider trends in Shakespearean dramaturgy all around Europe. My aim is to contribute to a characterization of Portuguese theatre during this period and to observe how the ideas of theatrical renovation were translated by the Portuguese scene.

Definitions of ‘censorship’ Concerned with the imprecise uses of the concept of censorship and its limitations, Janelle Reinelt (2006) has attempted to establish a definition that might prove effective in dealing with this transhistorical and transnational phenomenon. According to Reinelt: Today it seems prudent to acknowledge both a narrow and a broad definition of censorship. Narrowly defined, it is state suppression of

Rui Pina Coelho 217

expression or information where state surrogates might be oversight panels and bodies or governmental agencies. […] A broader definition, however, would see censorship as suppression of expression or information by anybody, including even the potential creator (‘self-censorship’). (Reinelt 2006: 3–4) Setting out to systematize different categories of censorship, Reinelt also illuminates the processes by which censorship may be carried out. In her analysis, there are five different categories of censorship: (1) military, in times of war; (2) political, in times of peace; (3) moral; (4) religious; and (5) corporate. The first category involves ‘acts of sedition […] but also control of information on public airways’; the second category includes blocking ‘criticism of regimes in power’, while moral censorship ‘appeals to public decency’. Religious censorship prevents ‘certain groups from worshipping in their own way’, and corporate censorship ‘uses economic power to protect its interests’ (ibid.: 6). Although Reinelt deals mainly with contemporary artistic production and events, her categorization may lead to a better understanding of mechanisms of censorship under the repressive regime of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970). The Portuguese dictatorship began on 28 May 1926 and lasted until the Carnation Revolution on 25 April 1974. Salazar joined the government as Minister of Finance in April 1928 and was appointed Prime Minister in 1932–33. In 1933 the censorship legislation was passed and the SPN (National Propaganda Secretariat) created. Salazar fell ill in 1968 and was replaced by Marcelo Caetano, who governed until 25 April 1974. It was only after Salazar was named Prime Minister that surveillance and censorship became truly severe, but years before, on 6 May 1927, Decree Law No. 13564, published in the Diário do Governo, had created the Inspecção Geral dos Teatros [General Inspectorate of Theatres]. The Inspectorate was empowered to inspect all theatres and public entertainment venues, and had the authority to prohibit any event deemed offensive to the law or public morality, in some cases preventing the premiere of a play or even banning it outright. Furthermore, even though Salazar was succeeded in 1968, Marcelo Caetano’s rule (1968–74) was still overshadowed by his figure. I will therefore not just focus on the years when Salazar was Prime Minister (1933–68) but will also consider the full extent of the Portuguese dictatorship, from 1926 to 1974. Censorship was a time-honoured Portuguese practice (if we recall the Catholic Inquisition, for instance), and during this period it came to embody almost all the meanings listed by Reinelt. It worked with a

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nationalist and propagandistic agenda to control and block the expression of every dissident opinion1 and enforce religious and political unity. It was supported by the ruling class, namely the upper-middle class, who owned the most important industrial units and banks and felt safe with a domestic policy that clearly assisted the process of capitalist accumulation. A strict – though unwritten – code of moral behaviour was imposed, and political surveillance prevented authors from creating in full liberty, inducing a habit of ‘self-censorship’. Censorship in this instance fulfils both Reinelt’s narrower and broader definitions of the term. The influential Portuguese theatre historian and playwright Luiz Francisco Rebello (1977) categorizes Portuguese censorship as ‘ideological’, ‘economic’ and ‘geographical’: ideological censorship because the authors, texts, directors and practitioners that the regime considered offensive or subversive were banned; economic because repertoire options and expensive theatre tickets excluded the working class and peasantry; and geographical because theatrical activity was mainly based in Lisbon (1977: 25–6). Teresa Seruya and Maria Lin Moniz, dealing with the procedures of the Censoring Commission and the discourse of censorship in the 1950s, have listed the most common criteria for banning authors and their works. These were ‘propaganda’ (including ‘proselytizing’ and ‘apologia’), a lack of sexual morality or a ‘doctrine of social dissolution’, ‘realism’ (a negatively weighted judgement in this case), a distinction between the ‘learned’ or elite and ‘the many’, ‘speculation’, and unacceptable references to National Socialism, democracy or war (Seruya and Moniz 2008a: 3–20). In this study, part of a wide-ranging investigation of literature translated under the Portuguese dictatorship, Seruya and Moniz are referring specifically to the 1950s, but the censorship procedures would remain in place for many years to come. The emphasis given to the different categories may have changed according to historical circumstance (war or peace time, international pressure, internal opposition), but we find them all at one time or another during the period of dictatorship. These criteria – and censorship itself – had two important consequences for the staging of Shakespeare’s plays. First, an unwillingness to represent political issues led to the almost complete absence of the ‘history plays’ from Portuguese theatres during the dictatorship, and second, the regime’s almost obsessive preoccupation with the apparent lack of sexual morality and the corresponding danger of social dissolution meant that certain plays were stripped of their more ‘questionable’ passages, thus giving rise to a farcical, ‘dumbed-down’ Shakespeare.2

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The threat posed by Shakespeare’s history plays If we consider which of Shakespeare’s plays were performed during the 1926–74 period by Portuguese groups,3 the absence of the ‘history plays’ is quite remarkable.4 In fact, Portuguese audiences were only able to see these plays performed by foreign groups: the prestigious English theatre group Old Vic’s Henry V, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, was presented in Lisbon in 1939 during a European tour sponsored by the British Council and organized by Lewis Casson, which visited cities such as Lisbon, Milan, Florence, Rome and Cairo. In Lisbon, the tour also included performances of Sheridan’s The Rivals and Shaw’s Man and Superman. In 1939 British public opinion did not favour having the Old Vic perform in fascist countries such as Portugal or Italy, but the company claimed ‘that art has no frontiers’ (Tempera 2004: 115). Notwithstanding the prestige of the event – the President of the Republic and the Minister of National Education attended the performance – it resulted in several awkward (or rather, amateurish) episodes. Soon after arriving, the group watched perplexed and powerless as their stage scenery sank into the River Tagus. Anthony Quayle, performing the leading role, confessed that the Portuguese extras’ chain mail ‘hung down beyond their fingertips’ and their ‘helmets rested on their shoulders like coal scuttles’ (ibid.: 115). During the period this was the play’s only staging in Portugal, and it was never performed by a Portuguese group.5 In 1964, the New Shakespeare Company Limited presented Twelfth Night, directed by Collin Graham, and a public reading of extracts from various plays including Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Richard III, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, Antony and Cleopatra, As You like It and Henry IV, all devoted to the theme of ‘Love’. Celebrating the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth and sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the performances were presented at the Lisbon University Arts Faculty, and were accompanied by a series of conferences in the Universities of Lisbon, Oporto and Coimbra. The Gulbenkian Foundation, responsible for hosting the productions, explained to the Commission for Examining and Classifying Performances that they possessed ‘an interest that is limited to a enlightened and qualified audience’ [‘um interesse que se limita a um público esclarecido e qualificado’].6 Being delivered in English and consequently reaching only a very small, elite audience, the performances did not present the threat to the establishment that a Portuguese translation would have done. The same did not, however, seem to apply in the case of Julius Caesar: a ‘Roman play’ with some points of contact with the English history plays, even if only

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metonymically. Also in 1964, the Teatro do Ateneu de Coimbra sought permission to stage this tragedy, where the noble Roman leader is stabbed to death by his fellow citizens, an act that will lead to a fratricidal war. If the Roman senators who assassinate Julius Caesar begin by advocating liberty and democracy, thus freeing Rome from a dictator, Shakespeare’s play goes on to denounce the abuses and misuses of their new power. Nevertheless the Commission for Examining and Classifying Performances refused permission to stage the play, using a rather paradoxical argument: ‘This play […] could only be authorized after severe cuts. It is commonly agreed that texts by authors such as this one ought not to suffer cuts.’7 There are two kinds of arguments implicit in the Commission’s words: one is the status of the Shakespearean canon, and the other is the threat that a play dramatizing the assassination of a political leader must represent for a dictatorship. On the one hand, Shakespeare is presented as an author who grants prestige to the actors or the groups which stage him (a perceptible legacy of the Romantic staging tradition). This author is also understood as a synonym for high culture and as a safe choice in box-office terms. On the other hand, the rediscovery of the history plays (especially through the Brechtian lens) might permit a debate on contemporary political leaders and social circumstances, leading to the censors’ more cautious approach to the Shakespearean text in this case. It was the rediscovery of the history plays that altered significantly the way Shakespearean dramaturgy was perceived in post-war Europe. As Dennis Kennedy explains:8 Shakespeare’s history plays have been taken as a grand epic of the English Theatre, especially in the period after World War II. […] As a group, these works investigate and question the meaning of authority, kingship, and nation in an unparalleled way. (Kennedy 2005: 319) Kennedy recognizes that the history plays, unlike the comedies and tragedies, do not straightforwardly establish a dialogue with a non-British public, but argues that this changed with the advent of Bertolt Brecht’s ‘epic theatre’ and, especially, the publication of Jan Kott’s Shakespeare our Contemporary, which appeared in Polish in 1961 with a French translation in 1962 and an English translation in 1964. James N. Loehlin proposes a range of factors that contributed to this new interest: The Shakespeare quatercentenary in 1964 prompted directors to explore lesser-known plays. A trend in the European theatre away

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from star-centred commercial production and toward ensemble companies facilitated the staging of such large-scale works. Jan Kott’s influential essay ‘The Kings’, in Shakespeare our Contemporary, provided a vivid modern reading of the plays as a study of the cyclical nature of tyranny, relevant to a Europe struggling with the legacy of Hitler and Stalin. But perhaps the single greatest factor in the rediscovery of the Henry VI play was the widening influence of Bertolt Brecht on the European theatre of the 1960s. (Loehlin 2004: 133) Loehlin considers one of the key moments of this turn to have been the tour of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble in 1956, though he argues that despite the tremendous importance of Brechtian theatre in the revision of Shakespeare’s history plays, ‘Kott’s work had, perhaps, a more immediate and obvious impact’. Kott’s essay ‘The Kings’, with its ‘view of history that is bleak, cyclical and grimly fatalistic’ (ibid.: 135), clearly influenced three of the most important performances of the 1960s – important, that is, in respect of the re-evaluation of the history plays: Peter Hall and John Barton’s The War of the Roses (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1963), Giorgio Strehler’s Il gioco dei potenti (Milan, 1965) and Peter Palitzsch’s Der Krieg der Rosen (Stuttgart, 1967). After these seminal productions, others rediscovered the possibilities and potential of Shakespeare’s history plays. As Kennedy puts it: ‘A wide European re-evaluation of Shakespeare followed in Kott’s wake, and he and Brecht continued to affect Shakespeare production in general well into the 1980s’ (Kennedy 2005: 324).

Translating the political and theatrical renovation In Portugal this new reading of Shakespeare was not possible. First of all, Bertolt Brecht’s plays were banned, and the censors made every effort to hold off the major changes that were occurring all around Europe in the late 1950s and during the 1960s. Despite all the restrictions, men and women in the Portuguese theatre did struggle to translate the new theatrical ideas that were flourishing throughout Europe. But these changes had to be made indirectly. As I have argued elsewhere (Coelho 2008), the introduction of Brechtian epic theatre had to be made with considerable caution. One example is Luzia Maria Martins’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as Anatomia de uma História de Amor [Anatomy of a Love Story] in 1969 with her Teatro Estúdio de Lisboa. This was presented as a performance of epic or narrative theatre, where the

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analysis of the social conflicts involved in the play was the determining dramaturgical key, and most critics today acknowledge Brecht’s decisive influence on the production. Some other significant approaches to epic theatre were also undertaken. Three years before Martins’ production, in 1966, the Brazilian student theatre group from the Catholic University of São Paulo, TUCA, had presented the play Morte e vida Severina, by the Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto, in Lisbon, Oporto and Coimbra. This ‘nativity play’ narrates the misfortunes of the poor peasant Severino as he searches for a better life. It inflamed a Portuguese theatre hungry for renewal and renovation. The performance echoed Brecht’s principles: it had Chico Buarque’s original songs performed live by a chorus that commented while singing; it was presented without any sets; all the characters were dressed in white; the lighting was white, with moments in green or red. This was one of the high points of Portuguese theatre in the 1960s. The enthusiastic critical reception can be summarized in the words of theatre reviewer Almeida Faria: ‘I must confess that I have never seen in Portugal a theatrical event like this one. Even abroad only Brecht’s Leben des Galilei and Peter Weiss’s Marat-Sade can be compared to it’9 (Faria 1966: 213). But the struggle for renovation did not only take place on stage; theatre criticism was also an important field for renewal. Luiz Francisco Rebello, reviewing Peter Zadek’s staging of Shakespeare’s Henry V – entitled Henry the Hero (Theatre of Bremen, 1964)10 – praises a performance that ‘wrenches Shakespeare from the flat, dead pages of the chronicle and places him squarely in the uninterrupted course of history’ (1971: 105). Rebello underlines the modernity of the performance and establishes parallels with Beckett and Brecht, labelling Shakespeare as ‘the most modern of classical dramatists’ (ibid.: 102). The influence of Kott’s wellknown work is unmistakeable. Translation, too, provided a locus for renovation. Some theatre practitioners adopted a didactic approach, translating and disseminating the most significant texts – not only plays but also theoretical works. They organized talks, published essays and wrote guides and manuals. Their aim was to enlighten their professional peers. Pursuing this almost educational goal, in 1962 António Pedro published his Pequeno Tratado de Encenação [Small Essay on Theatre Direction], which soon became de rigeur for anyone who advocated experimentation. This same principle underlies work such as the publications of the Grupo de Teatro Moderno do Clube Fenianos Portuenses, A encenação e a maioridade

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do teatro [Theatre Direction and the Adulthood of Theatre], 1959, and Panorama do teatro moderno [Overview of Modern Theatre], 1961, both by Redondo Júnior; or História do Teatro Europeu: Desde a Idade Média e até aos nossos dias [History of European Theatre: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day] by G. N. Boiadzhiev et al., translated by the actor and director Rogério Paulo (1960), among others. Two of the most significant works were probably Redondo Júnior’s O teatro e a sua estética [Theatre and its Aesthetic] of 1963/4 and Luiz Francisco Rebello’s Teatro Moderno: Caminhos e figuras [Modern Theatre: Paths and Figures] of 1957. The first is an anthology of writings by several authors who wrote on subjects such as theatre aesthetics, theatre architecture, decoration, direction and actors’ work. All of the texts were selected, translated, introduced and commented on by Redondo Júnior, a journalist, drama critic, theoretician and playwright. Rebello’s Teatro Moderno: Caminhos e figuras was a seminal work that introduced, collected, translated and explained some of the most important authors of twentieth-century theatre, using a compilation of essays, prefaces, plays, illustrations and performance pictures. Redondo Júnior also translated and presented to Portuguese readers Adolphe Appia’s The Work of Living Art (1963), Gordon Craig’s On the Art of the Theatre (1964), and a French anthology of Meyerhold, Le Théâtre Théâtral (1962). All these efforts stemmed from the same motivation: to introduce modern theatrical ideas and to promote innovation on the Portuguese stage. With this same agenda, Norberto Ávila, a playwright and poet, translated Jan Kott’s Shakespeare our Contemporary in 1968, with a foreword by Peter Brook. These are just some examples of the significant efforts to change the Portuguese theatrical landscape. Although they were almost all frustrated, they represented an urge to translate and implement in Portugal the new ideas that were flourishing in contemporary theatre throughout post-war Europe.

Chronological overview of Shakespeare’s plays under Portuguese fascism Examining the Shakespearean plays performed between 1926 and 1974 in Portugal by Portuguese companies, we can conclude that there was little variety – only 11 plays were staged.11 These were A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and Hamlet. If the most striking feature is the absence of the

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history plays, it is noticeable that there is a strong presence of comedies – well suited for inclusion in a popular repertoire – and some tragedies, excellent ways of conferring prestige on their performers. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the paradigm had been the French and Italian actors who travelled around the main European capitals interpreting the major Shakespearean characters. Ermette Zacconi, Ernesto Rossi or Sarah Bernhardt came to inspire Portuguese actors such as Eduardo Brazão or Ângela Pinto – thus continuing the Romantic tradition of a system where the actor was the most important element. Despite this interest in the classics, however, during these years Portuguese theatre was hamstrung by the repetition of overworked formulas and imported repertoires, mostly of Spanish or French origin, adapted to an ambiguous ‘Portuguese taste’. A reaction against this state of affairs was one factor in the almost complete disappearance of Shakespeare’s plays from Portuguese stages in the following decades, 1920–40.12 The 1940s The first significant production of a Shakespearean play by a Portuguese group after 1926 thus premiered as late as 1941. The Companhia Rey Colaço-Robles Monteiro gathered a cast that included some of the best known actors of the time and presented Sonho de uma noite de Verão (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) in an open air performance. During the 1940s there were only two more productions of a Shakespearean play. Othello ou o Moiro de Veneza (Othello, the Moor of Venice) was directed by Amélia Rey Colaço and Robles Monteiro in 1945 at the National Theatre Teatro Nacional D. Maria II. This production made use of stunning visual effects and complex sets remarkable for the time, in a bid to compete commercially with the cinema. In 1949, again in a garden, this time at the British Embassy, the Lisbon Players – an amateur group of English players based in Lisbon – performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Charles Fyfield. This apparent lack of interest in Shakespeare’s plays can be explained in two respects: first, the Shakespearean canon – synonymous with a much revered, untouchable author – did not lend itself easily to modernization; and second, after the Second World War – a time when the Iberian dictatorships softened their politics with the defeat of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany – theatre practitioners seized the opportunity to explore more experimental paths, trying out new texts and new staging with a focus on authors such as Lorca, Priestley, O’Neill, Shaw, Anouilh, Giraudoux and José Régio. This experimental movement was led by

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amateur groups formed by intellectuals, students, artists and young actors. Their area of influence was naturally restricted due to the fact that they worked in small venues, and this limited scope allowed them to work with greater freedom than their professional colleagues. The amateur-led ‘experimental movement’ was to have an enormous impact on the professional theatre. Many actors trained in these experimental groups would later become professional actors who made a contribution to the much awaited renewal of Portuguese theatre. Their influence meant that repertoire options would not necessarily give priority to Shakespeare. For example, Fernando Amado, the director of Casa da Comédia and one of the leading figures of the experimental movement, never attempted to direct a Shakespeare play, excusing himself on the grounds that his players needed to learn more and ‘evolve’ before dealing with the Shakespearean word. The 1950s After some apparently permissive years, the 1950s saw a hardening of censorship and political vigilance. Interest moved back to the ‘harmless’ Shakespeare. In 1952, A fera amansada (The Taming of the Shrew) was staged by Virgílio Macieira for the Empresa Vasco Morgado, a company with evidently commercial interests. Also in 1952, the Companhia Rey Colaço-Robles Monteiro staged Sonho de uma noite de Verão (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) once again. This time it was performed at the National Theatre, under the direction of Erwin Meyenburg. In 1955, Rei Lear (King Lear) was directed by Francisco Ribeiro for the Teatro do Povo, the theatrical vehicle for António Ferro’s cultural agenda. With the dissolution of the group in that same year the play passed into the repertoire of its successor company, the Teatro Nacional Popular. Again we see a manifest desire to simplify or ‘dumb down’: according to Francisco Lage’s statements on the programme notes, his version aimed to reduce dialogue and lighten the play without changing its essential structure. Macbeth, performed in 1956 by the most long-lived experimental Portuguese group, Teatro Experimental do Porto (TEP), is quite a different case. This performance echoed some European aesthetic landmarks (the work of Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia, for example) and it inaugurated the Teatro de Algibeira (the future Teatro de Bolso), a small venue where the production values of simplicity and intimacy could be achieved. The freedom given to this group by the regime can in part be explained by its being based in Oporto and not in Lisbon, the capital. Throughout the 1950s, the TEP was the only significant group from the experimental boom of the late 1940s to survive.

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In 1957, Noite de Reis (Twelfth Night) was performed by Francisco Ribeiro’s Teatro Nacional Popular. The adaptation, from a French version, was made by Ribeiro and Lage, but the play did not benefit from their attempts at simplification. To the influential Portuguese scholar, author and critic Jorge de Sena (1919–78), the result was ‘a text that we cannot consider as Shakespeare’s because all that remains of the author and his thoughts is merely the sequence of the scenes and the immediate meaning of the lines’ (Sena 1988: 170).13 For Sena, the 1959 performance by the Oxford Playhouse Company in the Ajuda Palace Park was infinitely superior. Even if it did not arouse great enthusiasm among the majority of the critics, it was clear to Sena that this performance had nothing in common with the customary Portuguese staging of Shakespeare: This marks the difference between an authentic text and a poor literary adaptation; […] it also shows the difference between a powerful stage presence, characteristic of whoever steps on to an English stage, and our own actors’ air of ‘masked players’ whenever they perform the classics. (Sena 1988: 252)14 The 1960s Throughout the 1960s and up to the end of the regime, two directions in Portuguese theatre were followed: ‘a theatre that we can conventionally designate as the Theatre of the Absurd and epic theatre with a Brechtian form’ (Rebello 2000: 148).15 In the Portuguese context, we should regard Beckett’s absurdist and Brecht’s epic forms not as antagonistic, but as complementary. The difficulties in pursuing a politically engaged theatre led theatre practitioners to take refuge in the elliptical texts of authors like Samuel Beckett, Fernando Arrabal, Eugene Ionesco and Harold Pinter. Political comment was made in an oblique manner.16 Once again Shakespeare’s plays did not present themselves as the most obvious way of fulfilling this urgent task. As for ‘epic theatre’, the Shakespeare-Brecht relationship centred on the history plays, which were notably absent from the Portuguese stage. In both respects, therefore, Shakespeare seemed ill-suited to the pursuit of innovative agendas. Nevertheless the 1960s were the decade when the greatest number of Shakespeare plays were performed. This was due especially to the quatercentenary celebrated in 1964. There were eight performances in the course of that year: The Taming of the Shrew was directed by Luís de Sttau Monteiro with the Empresa Vasco Morgado; Romeo and Juliet was staged

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by the amateur group from the Sociedade de Instrução Tavaredense; and Measure for Measure was adapted by Luiz Francisco Rebello under the title Dente por Dente (echoing the Biblical ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, Exodus 21: 23–5), directed by António Pedro for the Teatro Moderno de Lisboa and marked by a strongly Brechtian verve; A Tragédia de Macbeth was presented by the Companhia Rey Colaço-Robles Monteiro and directed by Michael Benthall. Following this premiere, awaited with considerable interest, the generally accepted view was that a performance had finally been staged in Portugal that did justice to its author. In 1964, the theatre group Teatro de Ensaio Raul Brandão presented a collage of translated passages from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor. There were also three other English-language performances by foreign groups of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice (both The Shakespeare Festival Company), and Twelfth Night (New Shakespeare Company Limited). It was an outstanding year for productions of Shakespeare plays. In the 1960s Portuguese audiences could also see Tanto barulho para nada (Much Ado about Nothing), directed by Bessa de Carvalho and broadcast by RTP in 1960, at a time when live broadcasts were the norm. Romeu e Julieta (Romeo and Juliet) was performed by the Companhia Rey ColaçoRobles Monteiro in 1960. Cayetano Luca de Tena directed the play. In 1963, O mercador de Veneza (The Merchant of Venice) was directed by António Manuel Couto Viana in his Companhia Nacional de Teatro. Goulart Nogueira’s 1963 translation of this play underwent some changes that ‘lightened’ the text and emphasized its farcical aspects. In 1969, Pedro Lemos directed Rei Lear (King Lear) for Proscenium, an amateur group. Closing the decade, in 1969, Pedro Martins directed Norberto Ávila’s adaptation of Othello made for Portuguese State Television’s own theatre company. 1969 was also the year of the ‘Brechtian’ Luzia Maria Martins’ adaptation of Romeo and Juliet as Anatomia de uma história de amor. The early 1970s In the next decade, the need for renewal in the theatre was perceived as both urgent and inevitable. The oblique political comments provided by absurdist texts were no longer enough. As the fascist regime moved towards its close, theatre critics and practitioners hardened their positions and started to demand more explicit social intervention – and in some cases, Shakespearean texts provided fertile soil for such endeavours. Sonho de uma noite de Verão (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) was performed in 1970, by the Coimbra University theatre group CITAC, directed by the Argentinian Juan Carlos Oviedo, followed by their

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controversial adaptation of Macbeth as Macbeth: que se passa na tua cabeça? [Macbeth: What’s Going on in Your Head?] (1970). Their transgressive and provocative production challenged the law and public morality, drawing the attention of the PIDE (the ‘International Police for the Defence of the State’) and eventually causing several rifts within the group. Indeed, CITAC ceased its activities and only resumed performances after 25 April 1974. In 1971, the Coimbra University student company TEUC performed Hamlet, directed by Carlos Cabral, in a production that foregrounded the ‘need to act against an unjust order’ (Porto 1973: 265). Also in 1971, Ruy de Matos directed The Taming of the Shrew for the amateur theatre group of Plinay/Plessey Automática Eléctrica Portuguesa.

Conclusion Despite these subversive ventures, during the period from 1926 to 1974 in Portugal, Shakespeare’s plays were synonymous with the innocuous and the non-threatening, far removed from the re-evaluation taking place elsewhere in Europe. The favourite repertoire options were those comedies or other plays that could favour a noteworthy leading role or a lavish production. But even these did not escape the surveillance of the censors. Article 4 of Decree Law No. 13564 stated that all performances that were offensive to the law, morals and good conduct should be banned. It was these vague criteria that gave rise to a major concern with sexual morality. According to Seruya and Moniz (2008a: 11), this affected not only literature that was considered ‘pornographic’ but also ‘everything taken as offensive in the light of Christian morality, regarding marriage, homosexuality, adultery and divorce (but concerning women alone), sexual satisfaction, birth control’. Thus in the 1960s Romeo and Juliet was approved only for adults (over 17 years old) with small cuts from Mercutio’s speech (II.1): ‘By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh/and the demesnes that there adjacent lie’, and ‘Now we will sit under a medlar tree/and wish his mistress were that kind of fruit’. These examples show an almost obsessive concern with sexual innuendo. In 1960, Othello, too, was subjected to censorship in the passages where its moral values were questionable. As the censors put it, some cuts were required, ‘but also the death scenes of Desdemona and Othello should be treated with dignity in order (this is a mere suggestion) not to upset public sensibilities’.17 In 1964 The Taming of the Shrew, translated by Luis Sttau Monteiro, lost the line ‘Madam, undress you, and

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come now to bed’ (Induction, scene 2) and a later reference by Grumio to finding someone to get Katherina into bed is also removed (I.2).18 In Much Ado about Nothing, translated by Manuel Lereno, in 1960, the following line was cut: ‘But when shall we set the savage bull’s horns on the sensible Benedick’s head?’(V.1).19 And the TEP’s 1963 attempt to stage The Merry Wives of Windsor in a translation by Domingos Ramos was subjected to several cuts due to obscenity – this production never premiered.20 Censoring sexual innuendos, allusions to adultery, cuckoldry or obscenities, even if in the guise of wordplay, indicates a moralistic strategy to control behaviour. However, as these few examples indicate, it was carried out rather naïvely. In conclusion, during the Portuguese fascist dictatorship the presence of Shakespeare’s plays on the Portuguese stage was maintained essentially through the comedies and some tragedies, deprived of their ‘spicier’, more suggestive or salacious lines. The most remarkable fact is the complete absence of any of Shakespeare’s history plays: a clear indication of the backwardness of Portuguese theatre during this period. On 25 April 1974, a military uprising that became known as the Carnation Revolution put an end to all these constraints. That same year, on 14 May, the theatre professionals issued a manifesto. Portuguese theatre was about to change – at last: The undersigned, having learned of the MFA (Movement of the Armed Forces) Programme and supporting the abolition of the prior examination of plays and censorship, hope to begin their professional and artistic activity immediately and under the conditions they had been deprived of since 1926. Those among us who belong to the generation that was sacrificed by the outgoing regime during their most creative years salute the new generations who are coming of age and fervently desire that their recently won freedom will never be lost again.21

Notes I would like to thank Dr. Patricia Odber de Baubeta for her insightful advice and thorough revision of this work. I am also indebted to Professor Maria Helena Serôdio for her thoughtful suggestions. This chapter reprises some of the arguments addressed in Coelho (2008). 1. One example of this situation is the prohibition of Time Magazine in Portugal, after the publication of an article that was harshly critical of the Portuguese government (titled ‘How Bad is the Best?’), in the issue of 22 July 1946,

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4. 5. 6.

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8. 9.

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Safe Shakespeare featuring on the cover a picture of Salazar and a rotten apple. The case is well documented in Comissão do Livro Negro Sobre o Regime Fascista (1982). For a study of Shakespeare’s theatre in Portugal within the area of performance and translation studies, see the recent contributions by Francesca Rayner, João Almeida Flor, João Ferreira Duarte, Maria Helena Serôdio, Paulo Eduardo Carvalho and Rui Carvalho Homem, among others. Therefore excluding the performances presented by foreign groups on Portuguese stages, such as Twelfth Night (Oxford Playhouse Company, 1959), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Shakespeare Festival Company, 1964), The Merchant of Venice (The Shakespeare Festival Company, 1964), Twelfth Night (New Shakespeare Company Limited, 1964), Othello (Haileybury College Student Group, 1965), Hamlet (Dramatic Group of the University of St Andrews, 1970). For further information on each of these performances, see the Lisbon University Centre for Theatre Studies database on Portuguese theatre history at www.fl.ul.pt/CETbase/default.htm. For all statistical claims in this paper, see the Centre for Theatre Studies database at www.fl.ul.pt/CETbase/default.htm. This play was not staged until 1993, directed by Pedro Wilson with Cénico de Direito, the university group from the Lisbon University Law Faculty. Arquivos da Comissão de Exame e Classificação de Espectáculos [Commission for Examining and Classifying Performances Archives] (Torre do Tombo / Museu Nacional do Teatro), Record no. 7588. Here and in the following, all translations from the Portuguese are my own. ‘Esta peça […] só poderá ser aprovada com inúmeros cortes. Considera-se pouco conveniente fazer cortes em textos de autores como este’. Ibid., Record no. 7620. See also Hoenselaars (2004: 1–8). ‘Por mim, devo confessar que nunca vi, em Portugal, acontecimento de teatro comparável a este. E que mesmo no teatro visto lá fora, só o Galileu Galilei de Brecht e o Marat-Sade de Peter Weiss se lhe poderiam comparar.’ This review was published in the literary supplement of the newspaper Primeiro de Janeiro and later in a collection of Rebello’s writings, in 1971. Rebello attended this production in Paris as part of the French celebrations of the Shakespearean quatercentenary. I exclude from this analysis operas based on Shakespeare’s plays presented in Portugal (1926–74). For further information, see the Lisbon University Centre for Theatre Studies database on Portuguese theatre history at www. fl.ul.pt/CETbase/default.htm. To my knowledge only three performances were undertaken: O mercador de Veneza/The Merchant of Venice (Companhia Dramática da Sociedade Theatral, 1920), La mégere apprivoisée (by a French company on tour, 1923) and the Old Vic Theatre’s Henry V (1939). ‘um texto que não podemos considerar de Shakespeare, visto que deste, e do seu pensamento na peça, apenas ficaram a sequência das cenas e o sentido imediato das deixas’. ‘É toda a diferença que vai de um texto autêntico a uma adaptação sem categoria alguma de ordem literária […] de uma presença em cena, que é apanágio de quem pisa um palco em Inglaterra, ao ar de ‘mascarados’ que os nossos actores têm quase sempre quando representam clássicos.’

Rui Pina Coelho 231 15. ‘a de um teatro que poderemos convencionalmente designar por teatro do absurdo e a de um teatro épico, de matriz brechteana’. 16. See the groundbreaking work by Fadda (1998). 17. ‘mas também de que as cenas da morte de Desdémona e de Otello [sejam] tratadas com toda a dignidade e de modo a (por simples sugestão) não ferir a sensibilidade dos espectadores.’ Arquivos da Comissão de Exame e Classificação de Espectáculos, Record no. 8751. 18. Ibid., Record no. 7507. 19. Ibid., Record no. 6153. 20. Ibid., Record no. 7162. 21. ‘Tendo tomado conhecimento do Programa do MFA, os abaixo assinados, apoiando os pontos referentes à abolição do exame prévio e da censura, esperam poder desde já exercer a sua actividade profissional e artística em condições de que estão privados desde 1926. Os que entre nós pertencem à geração sacrificada pelo regime cessante no período de vida de maior criatividade saúdam as novas gerações que começam a entrar na maioridade e fazem calorosos votos para que a liberdade agora conquistada não volte a perder-se.’


Part IV Response


10 The Boundaries of Dictatorship Matthew Philpotts

1 The title of this concluding chapter alludes to a collection of essays which I first read more than ten years ago when I was working on the cultural politics not of the fascist dictatorships, but of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By focusing attention on what they termed Die Grenzen der Diktatur – the ‘boundaries’ or ‘limits of dictatorship’ – Richard Bessel and Ralph Jessen (1996) were breaking new ground, not only in the social history of the recently defunct East German state but also in the study of dictatorships more generally. At that time, emphasis on the limits of the dictatorial power was unusual. The fall of the Soviet Bloc in 1989 had prompted a renaissance in totalitarian theory and a revival of the accompanying preoccupation with the mechanisms of dictatorial power and control. Above all, the astonishing revelations concerning the sheer extent of the GDR state security service, the Stasi, had rekindled superficial, top-down comparisons with the Hitler dictatorship and reinforced perceptions of two states fundamentally different from the western liberal democracies. The comparison is a highly instructive one. For all the very fine scholarship which has emerged on the cultural practices of dictatorial regimes, this inflationary usage of highly problematic labels remains commonplace, especially in more traditional strands of literary studies and art history. Whether it is ‘totalitarianism’ or ‘fascism’ – and the introduction to this volume refers directly to the problems associated with this latter term – categories are deployed which privilege the claims made by the regimes themselves, rather than the cultural-historical reality on the ground. The result is an often distorting emphasis on control and coercion and a marked reluctance to treat cultural production as anything other than at the service of political 235

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power, or else heroically raised up against it. For a young researcher seeking to elaborate a comparative cultural history of the GDR and the Third Reich, the methodological impetus signalled by Bessel and Jessen’s programmatic title and, above all, by the insightful essays of Thomas Lindenberger and Mary Fulbrook left a profound impression. Exploring the ‘limits of dictatorship’ became a guiding principle. The significance of these ideas for the study of the cultural history of dictatorships should be clear enough, especially in a comparative volume such as this. There remains an understandable and abiding fascination with the highly politicized cultural mechanisms established in dictatorships – typically forms of propaganda and censorship – so that the political boundaries placed on cultural production (another way of understanding the Grenzen der Diktatur) continue to exercise considerable influence on the writing of cultural history. One need only think, for example, of the periodization of German culture in the twentieth century to realize how starkly those boundaries can be drawn and how persistent they can be in literary histories and textbooks. It is the political turning points of 1933 and 1945 which usually function as chronological boundaries between periods. It is political categories – the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich or exile, the GDR or the Federal Republic – which continue to dominate our conceptualizations of German culture in the twentieth century. But, as a wealth of research has shown (see Parker, Davies and Philpotts 2004), those chronological boundaries were anything but rigid, and it is cultural continuities across the boundaries which emerge as one of the most important limitations on the capacity of the German dictatorships to shape culture. In fact, cultural practice reveals a particularly striking tendency to escape the political boundaries imposed upon it. In this sense, the boundaries of dictatorship carry a double meaning in cultural history. They are at once the limits imposed on culture by the regimes in their attempts to instrumentalize it and, at the same time, the limits which culture places on the realization of that aim. There is a further sense in which this collection of essays problematizes the ‘boundaries of dictatorship’. Analysing translation activity associated with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Francoist Spain and the Estado Novo in Portugal, this volume encourages reflection on the viability of comparison between four fundamentally different historical entities. In other words, it prompts us to consider the boundaries of legitimate comparative analysis. With considerable justification, for example, one might argue that the uniqueness of National Socialism precludes meaningful comparison even with its closest relative and contemporary, Italian Fascism, let alone with the semi-fascist or para-fascist Iberian dictatorships. The capacity of the

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two latter regimes to settle down and reproduce apparently stable and essentially conservative governmental systems into the 1970s is scarcely comparable to the self-destructive revolutionary dynamism of the Hitler regime. But to draw our conceptual boundaries so narrowly around specific instances of dictatorship would be to deny ourselves the insights which can accrue from the comparative or, perhaps better, contrastive method. If we understand the notion of ‘fascism’ as a provisional starting point for the contrastive analysis of intuitively similar entities, rather than as a final and constraining categorization, then the chapters collected here are able to throw into sharp relief the distinctive peculiarities of each regime, as well as their commonalities. Indeed, in the course of this chapter I shall go further and argue that the boundaries of comparison here have been set too narrowly. While generic fascism places emphasis on ideological commonalities among ultra-nationalist dictatorships (see Griffin 1991), a host of alternative categories focus attention on the organizational dynamics of regimes and open up comparison with ideologically divergent, socialist dictatorships. Certainly the most recent scholarship on totalitarianism is scarcely recognizable from its crude, Cold War incarnation and provides a range of more variegated terminology to conceptualize regimes which made comparable ‘total’ claims, even if those aims could never be realized in practice. As we shall see, historiographical comparisons between the Third Reich and the GDR can be particularly instructive in this respect: the charismatic and dynamic ‘totalitarianism’ of the former contrasts starkly with the bureaucratic ‘totalitarianism’ of the latter, which increasingly developed into a post-totalitarian or authoritarian form of rule. To go further still, one might even argue that we should erase such boundaries altogether, that treating the culture of dictatorships as a separate object of enquiry only hinders our attempts to understand how these systems functioned. It may be that the broadest axis of comparison – that between dictatorial and non-dictatorial cultural systems – offers the most productive perspectives, particularly from a theoretical point of view. As I shall suggest later, the work of cultural theorists such as Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, preoccupied for the most part with the intersection between culture and power in ‘free’ societies, has much to offer to cultural historians of dictatorship. This is the territory that I wish to cover in the two sections that follow, using the pliable notion invoked in my title – the boundaries of dictatorship – as a central point around which to organize my response to the eight studies which make up this volume. In the first section, I shall draw out the most significant common ground between the

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chapters, primarily from an empirical point of view. All the time the focus will be on the extent to which the four regimes were able to set limits on translation activity and the extent to which translation escaped those limits. From there, in the second section, I shall seek to develop a variety of theoretical perspectives which open up approaches to cultural production under the distinctive conditions of dictatorial rule. Here, particular emphasis will lie on an application of Bourdieu’s work, stressing the value-laden exchange across national boundaries which these dictatorships could not prevent, so that translation emerges as an embodiment of the cultural limits which operate on all instances of political dictatorship.

2 So, to pose our central question directly: what do the chapters in this volume seem to reveal about the commonalities of translation activity in these four regimes? First and foremost, and at the risk of stating the obvious, the contributions here show clearly that translation activity did not function free of state intervention. Rather, it was in each case directly and overtly steered through a variety of mechanisms of power, often institutional, and in each case this led to quantitative and qualitative reductions in the range of translations which circulated. More specifically, heavily ideologized discourses about the threat posed by translation were promoted by senior cultural figures, usually in the context of more general nationalist rhetoric originating from the individual dictator himself. To judge from the chapters in this volume, these were at their fiercest in the racialized discourse of the Third Reich, which was concerned with ‘cleansing alien elements’ and combating an ‘intellectual swamping’ (Sturge in this volume: 52), but even in the less ideological case of the Estada Novo, there was a reaction against a perceived ‘epidemic of translations’ and their accompanying ‘denationalizing impulse’ (Seruya in this volume: 122). Similarly, the two campaigns against translation in Italy in 1933–34 and 1936–38 were characterized by public pronouncements in periodicals and in speeches denouncing the flood of foreign titles (Rundle in this volume: 23–6, 26–9). Interestingly in both these latter cases, the poor quality of translated literature was also invoked by those with a professional stake in the debate. In turn, legal and institutional frameworks were established or existing frameworks mobilized to counter the influx of translation. As the Overview Essays indicate, the Ministry for Propaganda in Germany, the Ministry for Popular Culture in Italy, the Propaganda Office in Portugal and the Censorship Board in Spain

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acted as the principal state institutions which restricted translation. In addition, writers’ unions, booksellers’ organizations and publishers were aligned in a more or less formal way with the regime, and often it was these institutions which took the lead. As Teresa Seruya (122) and Christopher Rundle (27) make clear, this was certainly the case for the ‘translation statute’ drafted by the GNEL in Portugal in 1943 and the campaign orchestrated by Marinetti through the Writers Union in Italy. A variety of lists, registers and commissions sought to regulate translation activity across the four regimes, both before and after publication. And as Seruya describes in the Portuguese case, a variety of other statealigned agencies were mobilized to enforce anti-translation measures, notably in that instance the political police, the regular police, the customs service and even the postal service. These were the typical mechanisms of dictatorial power brought to bear against the perceived threat posed by translation, a threat which was felt particularly acutely by regimes driven by ultra-nationalist ideologies. What the chapters also demonstrate is the very significant effect that these measures had on translation activity. In this respect, Kate Sturge’s chapter on Nazi Germany is systematic in its analysis of the quantitative and qualitative trends in translation during the periods in question. In quantitative terms, the regime’s opposition to the alien influence of translation was clearly felt in the pronounced dip in translations in 1934, the year following Hitler’s seizure of power, and in the collapse of translation after 1939 when the most direct measures were introduced, namely the blanket bans on translation from the English-speaking world. More interesting, though, are the qualitative trends which Sturge uncovers in the remainder of the period, when the numbers of translated works seem to belie official policy. The shift towards reprints and towards safe, conservative choices of source text to fill the gaps left by modernist literature or works which were ideologically unacceptable testifies to the impact of National Socialist cultural policy on translation. Here, the failure to promote translation through libraries and school curriculums after the purges of 1933 is as important as the mechanisms of exclusion and control discussed earlier, and the result is a marked stagnation, or ‘provincialization’ to use Sturge’s term, of the German literary field. More than anything this stagnation is the common element between the four cultural systems. To take a specific example, Rui Pina Coelho’s chapter on stagings of Shakespeare in Portugal reveals a surprisingly healthy quantitative picture, but also a striking qualitative shift towards ‘safe’ choices of play and traditional forms of staging. The result is a cultural sphere largely isolated from the formal innovations of post-war theatre.

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This, too, is the central thrust of Jeroen Vandaele’s detailed consideration of censorship in Spain. The Francoist cultural field was a defective system which lacked innovative repertoires. By blocking translation into Spain, censors were blocking sources of cultural innovation and renewal, and the same could clearly be said of Italy after the mid-1930s. Francesca Nottola’s careful analysis of the archives of the Einaudi press offers a vivid picture of the restrictions imposed in this period, most obviously on anglophone authors but also on French and Russian authors and in specific areas of content such as Freudian psychology or Enlightenment philosophy. And yet for all this, the abiding impression from these studies is the shortfall between an inflexible rhetoric of exclusion and a rather more inconsistent reality of cultural practice. In particular, a common strand running through the chapters in this book is the apparent toleration of officially unacceptable forms of translation in the elite intellectual domain where circulation was small. Vandaele, for example, considers research on the translation of philosophy under Franco’s regime, concluding that ‘deviant thinkers were sometimes tolerated for the specialized reader’ (Vandaele in this volume: 94). A number of Spanish-language translations of Kant were authorized over a 30-year period, all in editions of fewer than 1500 copies. Similarly, although Sartre’s writing had been prohibited by the Catholic church, he was translated and published as a philosopher under Franco. A distinction seems to have been made between his existentialist thought, accessible only to specialists, and his more directly politically committed writing, which did not circulate in Spain until the late 1960s. Here one might also mention lenient censorship decisions taken on Nietzsche – ‘tolerated in limited and expensive editions’ (Vandaele: 97) – and Orwell (111), where the size of print-runs seems to have had a decisive influence on the outcome. Significantly, Seruya makes the same claim in relation to Portuguese censorship of imported texts. Works which had been expressly prohibited in translation were allowed to circulate among educated elites in the original source language. And, within certain limits, ‘the belief that “educated” people were not easily influenced led the censors to tolerate even the possession of banned books by certain professional groups’ (Seruya: 133). This is also reflected in the staging of Shakespeare in Portugal, where the most problematic and innovative performances were permitted only by foreign groups in English. The range of performances and events staged, for example, at Lisbon University in 1964 were justified to the controlling cultural apparatus precisely on the grounds that they were of interest only to a limited, educated audience. As Vandaele suggests, there is

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clear evidence for theorizing a hierarchy of discourse realms according to different levels of intervention by the authorities, and it was in the elite sub-domains of cultural production that intervention to block the circulation of imported texts was least pervasive. However, it is clear too that a shortfall between rhetoric and practice characterized translation policy in the more popular cultural realms, especially in relation to anglophone culture. Indeed, the widespread availability of popular translated genres in both film and fiction, in marked contrast to the exclusionary rhetoric of cultural officials, emerges as one of the most striking features of this collection. Above all, Sturge’s chapter suggests strongly that continuities in popular literature across the political date boundary of 1933 are not to be underestimated. Of the three most translated English-language authors of the period 1895–1934 – Oscar Wilde, Edgar Wallace and Arthur Conan Doyle – only the first disappeared from the literary scene under National Socialism; the other two benefited from large numbers of reprint editions, at least until 1939. More generally, Sturge sees translated detective fiction and its array of domestic imitations as a significant line of continuity with the 1920s and 1950s, ‘giving the lie to the common notion that Nazi repression all but obliterated outside influences or non-fascist cultural products’ (58). The publication of new titles is seen to have been successfully eliminated only in the very final years of the regime, while the circulation of existing titles, predominantly through commercial lending libraries, is judged to have been ‘undented for much of the period’ (78). In the case of Fascist Italy, Mario Rubino also makes much of the continuities in translated fiction which existed between the 1920s and the 1930s, this time from Germany as the source culture. Above all, Mondadori’s translations of such authors as Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Erich Kästner and Hans Fallada stand out. Apparently the fascist regimes of both Germany and Italy could do little to seal the chronological and geographical boundary with the Weimar Republic, and there are parallels here also with the Iberian dictatorships. In particular, the flood of popular pseudotranslations from Spain into Portugal is highly reminiscent of the wave of imitations which characterizes popular fiction in Germany in the 1930s. And the many strategies of adaptation and appropriation through which detective fiction was made acceptable in Nazi Germany have obvious counterparts in the strategies adopted by Francoist censors when dealing with Hollywood film. In both film and performed theatre, two of the more highly regulated domains in Vandaele’s hierarchy, innovative discourses clearly did permeate into Spain through translation.

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In all cases, these shortfalls raise a central question in the study of culture and dictatorship. To what extent is the survival of non-official cultural production the result of conscious and tactical toleration, to what extent evidence of blockages and inefficiencies beyond the control of the authorities? Certainly, the authors in this volume tend to be united in viewing the survival of non-official phenomena in elite culture as a question of pragmatic tolerance, rather than as a breakdown of the system of control. Such relative permissiveness could clearly serve a function in ventilating intellectual non-conformity. In the more popular realms, too, pragmatism clearly had a major role to play. As Sturge suggests, the commercial interests of the publishing industry in Germany could not afford to be ignored, while non-ideologized popular entertainment was often encouraged by the Propaganda Ministry as a ‘safety-valve’ in an otherwise closely regulated public sphere. At the same time, this was only part of the picture. For Sturge, the success of translated detective fiction has to be viewed, in part, as ‘a failure of the system’ (79). The logistical difficulties involved in attempts to monitor and control translation were considerable, all the more so when the system of control was so confused and fragmented. As is well known, the Nazi governmental system was polycratic, even chaotic. Overlaps and tensions between rival officials and agencies created an often arbitrary and inconsistent reality on the ground where gaps and spaces could often be exploited. But it is not just in Nazi Germany that translation exposes the messy contradictions of dictatorship in practice. Despite stressing the relative consistency of censorship practice in Spain, Vandaele also places considerable emphasis on factional conflict and divergent poetics between Falangist and Catholicist censors. Indeed, a number of examples cited by Vandaele indicate elements of confusion and personalized arbitrariness in censorship decisions, not least those surrounding two different editions of Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man in 1963, which are attributed either to ‘pure chaos’ or to ‘administrative discontinuity’ (112). Similarly, Nottola highlights for the Italian case the ‘arbitrariness, unpredictability and inconsistency’ (Nottola in this volume: 183) of publication authorizations which derived largely from the personal will of functionaries and ministers. Given the ‘limits to the efficacy of censorship’ highlighted by Seruya in Portugal (138), where publishers exploited the practical limitations of post-publication censorship, it should be clear that confusion and inconsistency characterized all these ‘fascist’ systems of control. Or, to put it another way, translation practice very clearly exposes the boundaries of dictatorial power.

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3 A number of historians have expressed profound scepticism about systemic comparisons between the two twentieth-century German dictatorships, the GDR and the Third Reich, a comparison which is usually framed around the notion of ‘totalitarianism’. When applied across ideological and chronological boundaries, such a comparative category can appear stretched beyond any meaningful insight. With justification, for example, Ian Kershaw (1993) limits the applicability of the term to the short-lived and destructive phases of rule typified by the Hitler regime and by high Stalinism in the 1930s. When applied to post-Stalinist Communist systems like the GDR, the comparison ‘rapidly approaches futility if not downright absurdity’ (Kershaw 1993: 39). Even Jürgen Kocka, a historian who has pursued this comparison systematically, has to acknowledge that the two German dictatorships represent fundamentally different types of totalitarianism (Kocka 1995: 187). The ‘totalitarian’ terror and destructive dynamism of National Socialism contrasts starkly with the more effective ‘totalitarian’ manipulation of culture and society achieved under East German socialism. For Corey Ross (2002: 36), meanwhile, the absence of ideological orientation in the GDR marks it out in its established phase as a regime more ‘authoritarian’ than ‘totalitarian’ in nature. If the latter term has any value at all in relation to the GDR and comparable post-war Soviet regimes, then it is in the related sense of ‘post-totalitarianism’ (ibid.: 25), a coinage which captures the loss of its initial ideological dynamism and the persistence of certain features of Stalinist rule. Indeed, Ross (ibid.: 39–40) sees greater value in the related notion of ‘post-Stalinism’, its ideological specificity offering analytical insight into a system of rule which continued to be shaped by the legacy of that particular form of highly centralized socialist despotism. In all cases, a conceptual gulf separates the pre- and post1945 iterations of German dictatorship. More promising in Ross’s view (2002: 172) is the prospect of ‘sectoral’ comparison between the GDR and the Third Reich. And when limited to the cultural realm, it seems clear that comparison between the two regimes can be fruitful in highlighting the common total claim made by the two regimes. While that claim may have been dropped elsewhere in GDR society after the mid-1960s, it was repeatedly and forcefully re-asserted in the public intellectual sphere. As I have argued elsewhere (Philpotts 2003: 67–70), this observation allows us to distinguish between two variants of totalitarian cultural policy with very different ideological dynamics: the radicalizing, charismatic variant embodied by National

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Socialism; and the stagnating, bureaucratic variant embodied by the GDR. In the latter case, ideological atrophy is accompanied by a mushrooming of the apparatus of control, and the total claim is increasingly a pragmatic one made simply in defence of the system itself. Similarly, and as we have seen earlier, the specific comparison in the realm of translation does highlight a common ‘total’ claim against translation as a highly undesirable element in the four otherwise divergent fascist systems. In turn, that comparable claim had similar and far-reaching implications for all those involved in translation activity under the four regimes. At the same time, the ideological dynamics of the four regimes differed starkly and, as is the case for the Third Reich and the GDR, there is a significant conceptual boundary to be drawn between the dictatorships of the 1930s and their post-1945 successors. The ‘total’ ideological claim made on culture under National Socialism eventually resulted in a situation in the early 1940s where the publication of new translated texts of Jewish or anglophone origin or of modernist orientation was not possible. However, this relatively short-lived, radicalizing, and personalized form of cultural politics differs sharply from the largely predictable and consistent workings of the censorship apparatus in Spain as it is described by Vandaele over a 30-year period after 1945. In particular, the Francoist cultural bureaucracy was not driven and deformed by a radical transformative ideology. Rather, much of the censorship and exclusion practised against translation in Spain seems to have been motivated by much more conventional, conservative attitudes, by a Catholic morality which, tellingly, found a like-minded partner in the Hays Code that governed Hollywood output up until the late 1960s. In Italy and Portugal, too, the exclusionary practice of the ‘fascist’ regimes appears more like a defence of conservative social morality than a drive towards the realization of the utopian political myth of national rebirth which underpinned fascism. In its latter stages, the former regime may have become drawn into the radical, racial project of National Socialism, but the picture of translation activity which emerges from Rubino’s chapter is, for the most part, not one shaped by the distinctive, all-encompassing dynamic of totalitarian ideology. In particular, the Iberian dictatorships seem to be much more readily comparable in this respect with the post-1953 Sovietstyle dictatorships of the Eastern Bloc than with Nazi Germany. Perhaps by analogy with these ‘post-Stalinist’ socialist dictatorships, it is more productive to think of the Iberian regimes as instances of ‘post-fascist’ dictatorships, bearing the mark of the radical ultra-nationalism of the mid-1930s in their underlying attitude to the foreign but long since lacking the ideological vigour to wage total war against it.

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However, even when applied to the National Socialist regime, the term ‘totalitarian’ is apt to mislead, not least because, as we have seen, outcomes of translation policy were so often incomplete and haphazard. Perhaps more importantly, there is evidence that, even in Nazi Germany, the total ideological claim was dropped when it came to translation activity outside the direct auspices of the regime. Finally, the term remains trapped in a methodological paradox. On the one hand, totalitarianism places emphasis on the regime’s own claims. As such, it invites a mode of analysis which is inherently top-down, focusing on mechanisms of mobilization and exclusion. On the other, and as we have seen repeatedly in the earlier analysis, those mechanisms could never operate so as to be effective across the full range of cultural production, especially when the self-destructive nature of totalitarian rule deformed the capacity of the system to operate effectively. Situated in a climate of heavy repression and high risk, but lacking clearly transmitted and specific regulation, cultural agents tended to operate not in top-down patterns of conformity, but in mechanisms which often functioned from the bottom up. Kershaw (1997), for example, has identified ‘working towards the Führer’ as the central mechanism by which the Nazi system operated. Whether out of ideological commitment or pragmatic self-interest, individuals did not follow precise instructions but rather sought to interpret and anticipate Hitler’s will on any particular matter. In Sturge’s chapter, this mechanism manifests itself in the ‘voluntary’ self-censorship practised by the book trade, largely out of economic self-interest, or in the many processes of appropriation and adaptation by which source texts were rendered acceptable in translation, normally by translators or publishers on their own initiative. As Sturge points out (68), some of these processes ‘do not differ in absolute terms from many other phases in translation history’ and include many strategies which ‘are in no way alien to a present-day translation market’. Paradoxically, then, the extreme asymmetry of power present in the exceptional circumstances of totalitarian dictatorship actually places a particular emphasis on cultural strategies which belong to the more symmetrical power relationships of market-led democracies. In this way, the key to understanding the relationship between cultural practice and dictatorial power may lie in methodologies which are not specific to the context of dictatorship. Indeed, in a host of cases discussed earlier, the dividing line between the exercise of dictatorial power and the subordination of cultural practice is not at all clear. The locus of power shifts to these much more complex and ambiguous processes of selfcensorship and adaptation. In this context the micro-discursive theories of a post-structuralist thinker like Michel Foucault may be more useful

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than the macro-political models of political science. To take one specific example from the chapters, Seruya provides an intriguing insight into the discourse of Portuguese censors when she highlights the manipulation of language as a ‘recurrent and striking feature in [their] reports’ (136). This is a linguistic micro-system where the razor-fine and arbitrary distinction between ‘sexuality’ and ‘sexualism’ defines the difference between inclusion and exclusion. However, in highlighting the denunciatory use of such terms as ‘realism’ or the construction of a binary opposition between ‘propaganda’ and ‘history’, Seruya is not exposing a system of language specific to the conditions of dictatorship. Rather, what is laid bare here is the functioning through discourse of the systems of exclusion which Michel Foucault (1981) sets out in his essay ‘The Order of Discourse’, the ‘will to truth’ through which dominant discourses also exercise power in liberal, democratic societies. The implications of this insight are twofold. First, it suggests strongly that we need to look beyond the obvious institutional and physical mechanisms of exclusion in order to understand how dictatorships shape culture, beyond an artificial distinction between culture and power in order to tease out more subtle interactions between the two. Innovation and subversion, for example, may often emerge from the very discourses of repression and coercion. Second, it suggests that by looking at culture in the context of dictatorship we might be able to understand better how culture acts as a vehicle for the exercise of power in our own societies. Different not in absolute terms but in degree, discursive mechanisms of power are rendered visible in conditions of dictatorship where in democracy they can often remain hidden. Many of the chapters in this volume offer an empirical base for this twin undertaking, but, in Vandaele’s treatment of Francoist censorship, this volume also offers an extremely promising theoretical bridge across the conceptual boundaries of dictatorship. More specifically, Vandaele (102) invokes Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’ to help describe and explain the consistency of translation practice in the dubbing of imported films. The durable and transposable dispositions of the translator’s habitus, argues Vandaele, account for the comfort with which those translators negotiated the ideological translation inherent in their role. Although Vandaele does not develop this further, it can be immensely productive to extend this insight and to view the cultural spaces of dictatorial regimes through the lens of Bourdieu’s wider sociology of culture (see Bourdieu 1993, 1996). To undertake translation in these cultural fields is to have to negotiate constantly between the specific cultural capital of the field, the political capital of the dictatorial regime, and the economic capital of the market. Often understood as ‘a feel for the

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game’, the translator’s habitus might be expected to adjust well to the demands of ideology, but the limitations on dictatorial power we have discussed earlier also make it clear that domestic political capital is not always the overriding concern in these exchanges. And again, translation has a particular significance here. Translation activity ensured that these cultural fields were not closed, that is to say, that capital in its various forms continued to flow across the boundaries of dictatorship and between national fields. Most importantly of all, Bourdieu reminds us that cultural goods are, by definition, goods with symbolic value, and this conceptualization helps us to understand the significance attached, for example, by the Italian regime to its translation deficit. As Rundle points out (42), it was precisely the symbolic value of translation which so preoccupied senior Italian cultural figures. For all its rhetoric of cultural autarky, the Italian regime could not help but recognize that it operated within an international cultural field, and the symbolic capital validated in that field was a currency which it prized. Here, Pascale Casanova’s concerted work to theorize the role of translation as a process of unequal capital exchange in an international literary field carries particular resonance. As Casanova argues, translation is an essential part of the ongoing struggle for prestige, or symbolic capital, between different national cultures in the international field. Following Bourdieu, the international literary field is conceived in terms of an opposition between dominant (international) and dominated (strictly national) literary fields: The international field is organized according to the opposition between, on the one hand […] the literary fields which are the most endowed with capital, and on the other hand, the most deprived national fields or emergent fields which are usually dependent on national political authorities. […] The national fields are also structured according to the opposition between an autonomous cosmopolitan pole and a heteronomous national and political pole. The opposition is seen in the rivalry between ‘international’ and ‘national’ writers. (Casanova 2010: 288) When literature is translated from dominant cultures into dominated ones, it is a process of accumulation by which those dominated cultures seek to make up for deficiencies in their own domestic culture. When texts from dominated cultures are translated into dominant languages, it is a process of consecration through which those dominant cultures

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reassert their dominance in the international field. To be translated is to be an author with international standing and to stand apart from national authors who are restricted to the dominated domestic field. This is important for the cultural production of dictatorships, because a cultural field which is subordinated to political interests is one which immediately sacrifices its international standing. Irrespective of its prior status, a cultural field under the conditions of dictatorship is a dominated field. Here we can invoke once more the GDR and the international standing of its culture relative to that its western counterpart, the Federal Republic. While both states were potential inheritors of the established prestige of German as an international literature, the sacrifice of its autonomy by the East German field ensured that only a very small number of its authors could claim that international status. And those that could – Bertolt Brecht, Christa Wolf, Volker Braun – were precisely those who had a reputation for innovation and non-conformity which challenged the inflexible values of the stagnating domestic field. Here again, the chapters collected in this volume provide persuasive evidence of the role translation plays in these processes of symbolic exchange. The ‘provincialization’ of the German literary field under National Socialism, as it is described by Sturge, reflects very clearly the impoverishment of the field and its marginalization from the prestigious world centres of the international literary field. In a more sustained manner, Rubino’s chapter on cultural exchange between Italy and Germany provides compelling evidence of how translation patterns reveal the loss of status experienced by the politicized cultural fields of dictatorship. In the perceptions of Italian journalists and the key cultural mediators who shaped the publishing field, the vibrancy and modernity of Weimar Berlin lent it the status of a world capital, a centre of cultural innovation. And if Germany in the 1920s represented a ‘laboratory of all that was modern’, then the culture of Fascist Italy was restricted by its ‘narrow-minded and backward-looking horizons’, by ‘its old-fashioned values’ (Rubino: 157). To use Casanova’s analogy, Berlin stood on the cultural meridian at which the temporality of the international cultural field was defined; Rome languished, a provincial backwater behind the times. The result was the flood of translation detailed by Rubino, as the Italian literary field sought to make good that cultural lag. As Casanova (2010: 293) puts it, a process of ‘temporal acceleration’ can be observed in dominated European fields, when translations become ‘instruments of struggle of the most autonomous writers’. Wishing ‘to break away from the norms governing their literary fields’, those agents introduce ‘works of modernity as defined in the literary centres’. Used in this way,

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translations enable ‘the importing of central norms which decree and attest to modernity’ (ibid.), and, to judge from the evidence presented by Rubino, it seems apparent that this process was at work in Italy in the late 1920s and early 1930s among the more autonomous publishing houses. Of course, the Nazi seizure of power changed the status enjoyed by Germany as an international cultural centre, and Rubino’s evidence again indicates that contemporary observers were only too aware that the politicized writing from the new German field was of strictly national interest. Mondadori, for example, very quickly noted that ‘writers of international fame in today’s Germany are few and far between – most of them have fled or have been sent away’ (Rubino: 166). Or as Rubino himself puts it, in terms which offer a stark confirmation of Casanova’s claims, ‘certain authors were simply not exportable’ (168). If the fascist regimes themselves had been willing to accept this situation, then this might be little more than a brief theoretical footnote. After all, these were ultra-nationalist regimes whose rhetoric was apt to deny the values of the international cultural field, falling back instead on conservative and inward-looking vernaculars. However, there is plentiful evidence in this volume not only that cultural officials understood this process of provincialization but also that it was a matter of concern for them. What marks the fascist dictatorships out is precisely the importance they attached to culture. To put it another way, the struggle for cultural capital in the international cultural field was a struggle for political capital too. In this way, these regimes which steadfastly rejected internationalism were paradoxically eager to accrue the national prestige which could often only be granted through international recognition. Certainly, this is the context in which to understand the spectacle of the 1936 Berlin Olympics or, on a smaller scale, the cultural diplomacy of the Europäische Schriftstellervereinigung which is charted by both Sturge (70–1) and Rubino (170–1) in this volume. This is also the impetus which lay behind the Franco-German cultural exchange embodied in the poetry anthology projects detailed by Frank-Rutger Hausmann. As the respective authors make plain, the aim of German cultural officials was to make other countries accumulate German culture through translation, in the process recognizing Germany’s dominant status. Above all, Hausmann’s chapter provides a vivid picture of attempts to invert the established dominance of France as a literary nation. The high-quality production and presentation of the German-French volume and its strategic circulation among cultural opinion-formers is strongly reminiscent of the elite cultural diplomacy undertaken by East German cultural officials during the Cold War.

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In the cases of cultural diplomacy discussed earlier, the aim was to secure international cultural capital which could then be converted into much-needed political capital on the world stage, but in these cases that process of capital exchange and conversion was denied. The autonomy of the international cultural field, underpinned by the underlying principle of disinterestedness from the external forces of the economy or politics, ensured that such overt attempts to make political capital out of cultural production were doomed to fail. It may seem curious to deploy Bourdieu in the context of dictatorships where the autonomy of the cultural field was limited. However, the language of capital flows and exchange focuses attention on this vital, and often understated, international dimension of their cultural activity. And the fundamental incompatibility between the autonomous values of the international field and the heteronomy of the respective national fields captures the underlying dilemma of any attempt to generate credible international culture from such a position. As should be clear, the autonomous power of that international field acts as a very significant boundary which constrains dictatorial power, and it is translation, more than any other cultural activity, which exposes this limitation.

4 The interface between culture and dictatorship remains highly contested scholarly terrain. The opposition between cultural production and political power continues to lead to often polarized and evaluative judgements. The chapters collected in this volume chart this territory with admirable care and precision, but even here there can persist an implicit, and sometimes more explicit, valorization of ‘democratic’ culture which is only reinforced by its juxtaposition with the paucity of fascist cultural production. Whether it is the sheer quality of the French poetic tradition or the dynamic modernity of Weimar culture, the interaction through translation of non-dictatorial culture with the fascist other maintains the essential superiority of the former. Indeed, perhaps it is precisely the task of the cultural historian to insist on such stark distinctions. All the same, translation offers fascinating empirical material for those seeking to blur the hard boundaries which are so often drawn around the culture of such regimes. To return to our starting point in this chapter, the permeable boundaries of the GDR – both spatial, through the artificial national boundary with West Germany, and chronological, through the mythologized new beginning of 1945 – functioned as two of the most significant constraints on the exercise of power by the ruling socialist regime.

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However, this is not a phenomenon restricted to the GDR context. The chapters in this volume demonstrate clearly that the questioning of these boundaries is an immensely productive comparative category for the study of culture and dictatorship. The study of translation cannot help but reveal the intrinsic permeability of the national, linguistic and cultural borders across which it flows. In this way, translation holds a particular attraction from the methodological standpoint which I have adopted in this chapter. As an object of enquiry, translation problematizes the conventional boundaries of dictatorship. Studied through the lens of translation, the ‘closed’ societies of dictatorship become, if not exactly open, then at least intriguingly porous.

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Index Note: where a name is followed by (publ.) this indicates a reference to a publishing house. Abetz, Otto 202, 204 Action Française 140 adventure fiction 20, 58, 77, 78, 110, 124, 127, 128, 139 agreements, bilateral cultural 71 Alain-Fournier, Henri 163 Albee, Edward 105 Alfieri, Dino 31–2, 35–7, 182 Alfonso XIII, King 113 Alicata, Mario 181, 184–91, 194 Allason, Barbara 168 Allert de Lange (publ.) 166 Alonso-Pesquera, José María 101 Álvarez Turienzo, Father Saturnino 98 Alvaro, Corrado 24, 154, 174 Amado, Fernando 225 Amado, Jorge 137 American literature in translation into Portuguese 125, 127, 128, 137 into German 8, 19, 55, 56, 59, 63, 68, 77–8, 151, 158, 160 into Italian 11, 41, 50, 151, 170, 181–3, 184, 193–4, 196 into Spanish 91, see also theatre translation Amt Schrifttumspflege see censorship in Germany Anderson, Maxwell 105 Angelis, Augusto de 72 animal stories 57 Anouilh, Jean 24 anthologies 11, 57, 170, 201–2, 204, 206–8, 210–2, 214 anti-Communism 86, 101 anti-Nazi authors 8, 44 n.7, 60, 70, 72, 101, 164 Emigranten-Literatur 166, 168 anti-Semitism 5, 7, 9–10, 35–7, 41, 42, 110, 118, 154, 169, 171 see also purges, racial laws

Antunes, José Freire 142 Aparicio, Juan 92, 114 Apertura see censorship Apostel, Leo 97 Appia, Adolphe 223, 225 Aragon, Louis 135 Arcádia (publ.) 139 Arias Salgado, Gabriel 93, 104, 106 Arrabal, Fernando 107, 226 Artemis (publ.) 210, 214, 225 Astrolabio (publ.) 190 Aubry, Octave 58 Aufwärts (publ.) 58 autarky economic autarky 22–3, 51 cultural autarky 8, 26–7, 30–1, 34, 247 see also reciprocity Authors and Writers Union 17, 33, 36, 38, 39 anti-translation campaign 26–31 see also Autori e scrittori Autori e scrittori 27 Ávila, Norberto 223, 227 Axis 71, 167, 187 Balkan literature in translation 150 Balzac, Honoré de 57, 127, 128 Barreto, Álvaro Salvação 129 Barton, John 221 ‘Battle for Wheat’ 47 Baum, Vicki 127, 151, 160, 164, 166 Baumann, Hans 201, 211 Beauvoir, Simone de 128, 137 Becher, Johannes R. 201 Beckett, Samuel 222, 226 Belinsky, Vissarion 187 Belo, Ruy 124 Bemporad (publ.) 150, 151, 162

270

Index Benito, Father Eugenio 104 Benjamin, Walter 97, 101, 155 Benoît, Pierre 150 Benthall, Michael 227 Berdyaev, Nikolai Alexandrovich 187 Bergengruen, Werner 201 Berliner Ensemble see Brecht Bermann-Fischer (publ.) 166 Bernanos, George 134, 139 Bernhardt, Sarah 224 Berti, Luigi 182, 183, 185, 196, 197, 199 Besteiro, Julián 95 bestsellers see statistics Beumelburg, Werner 166 Bibliographie de la France 44 Billinger, Richard 169 Binding, Rudolf 127, 169, 170 Bissolati, Leonida 180 Blei, Franz 205 Blue Shirts, the 140 Blunck, Hans Friedrich 169 Blyton, Enid 110, 128 Böhlau, Helene 148, 172 Boiadzhiev G. N. 223 Bollea, Giovanni 190 Bollettino delle pubblicazioni italiane 44 Bompiani (publ.) 10, 41, 158, 164, 169–70, 183, 185 Bompiani, Valentino 26, 49, 182, 195, 196, 197 Bonaparte, Napoleon 188–9, 192, 198 bonifica see purges Book Corporation (Italy) 24, 44 Book Division/Division III see Ministry for Popular Culture book prices 123 book series ‘Biblioteca Arcádia de Bolso’ 139 ‘Biblioteca Cosmos’ 144 ‘Biblioteca di cultura storica’ 180 ‘Deutsches für Deutsche’ 65 ‘[I] libri gialli’ 20, 23, 32, 39, 49, 161 ‘I romanzi della guerra’ 162 ‘L’Universale’ 181, 197 ‘Medusa’ 162–3, 171, 175, 177

271

‘Narratori Stranieri Tradotti’ 180–1 ‘Poeti’ 180 ‘Ricordi e documenti di guerra’ 180 ‘Rififi’ 138 ‘Romanzi della Palma’ 32, 39, 162 ‘Saggi’ 180–1 booksellers 30, 52, 59, 62, 122–123, 138, 141, 239 Boor, Ellen de 74, 76, 83 Borchardt, Rudolf 205 Borrás, Tomás 109 Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel 44 Börsenverein der Deutschen Buchhändler 62 Botelho, Fernanda 124 Bottai, Giuseppe 34–5, 47–8, 186, 189, 194–5, 198 Bourdeilles, Pierre de 189 Bourdieu, Pierre 115, 237–8, 246–7, 250, 254 Boutelleau, Jacques see Jacques Chardonne Brand, Max 79 Brasillach, Robert 71 Brazão, Eduardo 224 Brecht, Bertolt 132, 170, 201, 247, 316 Berliner Ensemble 221 epic theater 220, 221–2, 226 in Portugal 221–2, 227 Brehm, Bruno 169 British Council 71, 219 Broadway 105–6, 268 Brook, Peter 224 Buarque, Chico 222 Buck, Pearl S. 63, 127, 128, 163, 175 Buckle, Henry Thomas 189 Buero Vallejo, Antonio 109 Burchett, Wilfred G. 138 Bureau International pour la protection des Oeuvres littéraires et artistiques 44 Cabral, Carlos 228 Caetano, Marcelo 11, 118–19, 130, 217 Caldwell, Erskine 127–8, 138

272

Index

Camerino, Aldo 182–3, 185, 188, 196–8 campaigns against translation see translation Camus, Albert 96, 128, 133 Cardoso Gomes, Joaquim 142 Carlists 84 Carnation Revolution 119, 217, 229 Carossa, Hans 128, 164, 170, 177, 201 Carroll, Lewis 184 Carvalho, Bessa de 227 Casa da Comédia 225 Casanova, Pascale 247–9, 254 Casini, Gherardo 33, 36, 47, 186, 191, 194, 195, 198, 254 Casson, Lewis 219 Castellani, Emilio 152–3, 173, 254 Catholic Church 84, 86, 141, 192, 240 Catholic opposition 169 Catholicism 84–5, 92, 101, 113, 118 Catholicists 90, 92, 96, 100–3, 109, 113–14, 242 CB Films 103 Cecchi, Emilio 185 Céline, Louis Ferdinand 151, 172 Cénico de Direito theatre group 230 Censoring Commission see censorship in Portugal censorship 6–7, 238–9 definitions of 216–17 preventive 7 quantitative and qualitative research methods 102 self-censorship 89, 107, 159, 183–4, 194, 218, 245 see also purges Censorship Board see censorship in Spain censorship in Germany and adaptation 67–8 and copyright 57, 63 and publishing strategy 53, 57 and reprints 54–5, 239 anti-Semitic see purges blanket bans 56, 63, 73, 239 failures of 58–9, 78–9 indexes/blacklists 60–3, 78

institutions: Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission 59, 61; Amt Schrifttumspflege 59; Sicherheitsdienst 59; Gestapo 59; Propaganda Ministry 60, 63, 72, 76, 79, 242; Reich Chamber of Writers 51, 60–3, 70, 79–80, 82, 169 of left-wing authors 56 of popular fiction 78–9 permission for translations 61 pre-publication versus postpublication 61, 64 self-censorship 62 wartime bans 53, 56, 58, 59, 63–4 censorship in Italy and reprints 181–2, 188, 189 anti-Semitic see purges criteria 182, 184–90, 193 institutions see Ministry for Popular Culture of classics see classics translation quota 37–8, 39–40 translation restrictions 37–40, 186–8 ban against Anglo-American literature see Einuadi ban against Russian literature see Einaudi Mussolini’s involvement 188 preventive 23, 47 n.37 censorship in Portugal abolition of 229 criteria 132, 217–8, 228: anti-colonialism 136; antimilitarism 135; ideological/ political dissidence 135, 218; political neutrality 134; pornography 135–6, 137; realism 136; morality and religion 217, 228; sexuality 133–4, 137, 228 effectiveness of 138–9 flexibility towards elite 133 history of 217–8 institutional framework 129 institutions: Censoring Commission 129–30, 131–8, 140; Censorship Office 129;

Index Commission for Examining and Classifying Performances 219–20, 230; General Inspectorate of Theatres 217; [National] Propaganda Secretariat 120, 130, 217 of books 129 of Shakespeare 218, 221–3, 228–9 of translation 131, 138–9 no a priori ban on authors 132 Regulamento dos Serviços de Censura 130 reports 131–8 censorship in Spain Apertura 87–8, 103–4, 106, 113 censors 90, 92–3, 97–9, 101, 103–4, 106–7, 113 Cine-clubs 99–100 children’s literature 109–10 Conversaciones de Salamanca conference 100 Falangist and Catholic standards 103, 113 imposition of dubbing 99, 246 imposition of Spanish in theatres 105 institutions: Censorship Board 87, 91, 100, 108, 238–9; Comisión de Censura 100; Delegación Nacional de Cine y Teatro 106; Dirección General de Propaganda 100, 106; Junta Superior de Censura 100; Junta Superior de Orientación Cinematográfica 100; Delegación Nacional de Propaganda 100, 106, 110, 114; Subsecretaría de Prensa y Propaganda 90 of Hollywood see Hollywood periodization of in Francoist Spain 87–8 Salas Especiales 100 see also Ley de Prensa Censorship Office see censorship in Portugal Cernuda, Luis 108 Chardonne, Jacques 202, 211 Chessmann, Caryl 139, 144 Chesterton, G.K. 149 Chomksy, Noam 97

273

Christian Democracy 141 Christian literature 60 Ciardo, Manlio 199 Ciarlantini, Franco 26, 29, 36 see also Publishers Federation cinema/film 99–105, 155–157 in Germany 7, 74, 152, 174 in Italy 41, 172 in Portugal 120, 121, 123, 131, 133 in Spain 87, 88, 90, 91–2, 99, 105, 106–7, 115 see also dubbing, film industry Claes, Ernest 61 classics 25, 33, 46, 59, 183, 185, 186, 189, 193, 196, 204, 222 from Scandinavia 65 ‘internal’ translations 40 recognized ‘classics’ 57, 183 theatre classics 224, 226 Cocteau, Jean 209 Coimbra University student company (TEUC) 228 Coimbra University theatre group CITAC 220, 227–8 Cold War 86, 135, 186, 237, 249 Colette 133, 143, 163 collaboration 35, 129, 193, 202–3, 210 colonialism 8, 26–7, 41, 95, 132, 136 Italian East Africa 9, 23, 26–7, 147, 166, 182 Portuguese Empire 119, 136 Roman Empire 165, 189, 191–2 comic fiction 57, 103, 105, 216, 224, 228, 229 Comisión de Censura see censorship in Spain Commission for Examining and Classifying Performances see censorship in Portugal Commission for the Purging of Books see Ministry for Popular Culture Communism 85–7, 96–7, 118, 132–9, 141, 186, 192, 243 Communist Manifesto 97 Companhia Dramática da Sociedade Theatral 230

274

Index

Companhia Nacional de Teatro 227 Companhia Rey Colaço-Robles Monteiro 224–5, 227 Conan Doyle, Arthur 55, 77, 127, 241 Conde, Enrique 110 Confederation of Professionals and Artists (Italy) 28, 31, 37 Confiscation 60, 138 Conrad, Joseph 127, 149, 172, 189 conservative revolution 75, 127, 265 contamination see translation, metaphors of continuity with pre-fascist traditions 55, 58, 64, 67, 241 Coppola, Goffredo 185–6, 198, 255 copyright 28, 57, 63, 73–4, 80, 122 Corbaccio see Modernissima (publ.) Corbière, Tristan 209 Corporation for Paper and Printing (Italy) 44 Corporation of Professions and Arts (Italy) 34 corporativism 12 n.2, 85, 118 Corticelli (publ.) 150, 169 cosmopolitanism 53, 169, 187, 247 Coster, Charles de 65 Couto Viana, António Manuel 227 Cozzani, Ettore 72 Craig, Gordon 223, 225 Crane, Stephen 187 crime fiction 6, 40, 52, 58, 77–9, 127–8, 241–2 ‘I libri gialli’ see book series Critica fascista 34, 47, 49 Croce, Benedetto 26, 155, 195, 255 Crompton, Richmal 110 Cronin, A. J. 68 cross-gendering see sexuality cultural autarky see autarky cultural exchange 5, 8, 20, 28, 33–5, 43, 179, 202, 248, 249 cultural expansion 8, 15, 20, 34–5, 42–3, 71, 85 cultural policy 3–5, 8, 10, 51–2, 79, 87–8, 120, 204, 212, 239, 243 cultural prestige 9, 15–16, 26, 30, 35, 40, 41, 42

cultural renewal 8, 20, 158, 215, 222, 227 cultural/racial purity 9, 35–6, 41 currency, foreign 30, 63, 247 Customs Services (Portugal) 131 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 148–9, 162, 171 D’Errico, Ezio 72 da Silva, Agostinho 123–4 Dahl, Roald 110 Daily Telegraph, The 119 Danish literature in translation 58, 163, 171 Daranas, Mariano 101 Dàuli, Gian 149–50, 161 De Canales, Patricio G. 104, 111, 114 de Kock, Charles Paul 132 De Vecchi, Cesare 47 Declaración de Principios Fundamentales del Movimiento Nacional 86 degenerate art 170 Delegación Nacional de Cine y Teatro see censorship in Spain Delegación Nacional de Propaganda see censorship in Spain Departamento Nacional de Cinematografía 10 Desbordes-Valmore, Marceline 206 detective novels see crime fiction dictatorship, limits of 118, 235–8 Diederichs (publ.) 54, 57, 65, 75 Díez de Corral, Luis 92 Dine, S.S. van 161 Dirección General de Propaganda see censorship in Spain Döblin, Alfred 151, 160, 170, 172 Domínguez de Igoa, Luis F. 101 Dos Passos, John 61, 128, 134, 136, 160, 163, 172 Dramatic Group of the University of St Andrews 230 Droit d’Auteur 44 Droste-Hülshoff, Annette von 200 dubbing 99, 102, 105, 245, 246 Dutch literature in translation 55–6

Index Echarri, Javier de 101 Eckart, Dieter 67 economic autarky see autarky Editorial Biblioteca Nueva (publ.) 111 Editorial Vergara (publ.) 112 Eher (publ.) 64, 74 Einaudi (publ.) 10, 178–96, 240 authorization denied 187–90 ban against Anglo-American literature 11, 182–5, 193 ban against Russian literature 187–8 Einaudi, Giulio 11, 26, 178–96 Einaudi, Luigi 26, 179, 180, 195 Einstein, Albert 133 elites, allowed more freedom 7, 90, 92, 240–2 Ellie, Albert 137 Éluard, Paul 135 emigrant literature see anti-Nazi authors Empresa Vasco Morgado 225–6 English literature in translation 6 into German 54, 55–6, 58, 59, 63, 73, 77–8, 239, 241 into Italian 149, 150, 151, 163, 183, 193 into Portuguese 123, 127, 128 into Spanish 105, 108–9 see also Shakespeare entertainment 20, 58, 67, 74–5, 77, 78, 155, 167, 171, 217, 242 see also escapism epidemic see translation, metaphors of Epting, Karl 202–7, 210–2 escapism 79, 91, 149 Escorial 110 Escuela Oficial de Cinematografia 116 Estado Novo 12, 117–19, 121, 124–5, 129–32, 139, 236 Ethiopia, invasion of see colonialism European Writers Association 170, 249 expansionism 7–8, 27, 41, 71 expressionism 150, 155, 157, 160, 172

275

Falange Española (FE) 5, 113–14 falangism 92, 116 Falangist Party 166 Falangists 84, 86, 97, 101, 110–112, 166 impact on Spanish censorship 87, 90–5, 98–100, 103, 109, 113, 242 Fallada, Hans 128, 160, 163–5, 169, 241 Faria, Almeida 222 fascism 3–5, 236–8 and aesthetics 101, 110 and renewal 5, 7–8, 33, 36, 244 and totalitarianism 7, 235–7, 244–5 defined by anti-Communism 86 expansion 8–9 gap between rhetoric and reality 113, 240–1 in Spain 84–86, 112–13, 244 in Portugal 118, 137, 244 para-fascism 4, 85, 93, 113, 236 semi-fascism 4, 236 ultra-nationalism 237, 244, 249 Fascist Grand Council 26, 34 Fascist Party (PNF) 26, 34, 43, 118, 196 Fast, Howard 113 Faulkner, William 59, 128 FE de las JONS 85–7 Fernández Cuenca, Carlos 103–4, 106, 115 Fernández Cuesta, Raimundo 85 Fernandez Flores, Venceslao 171 Fernández Flórez, Darío 110–1 Fernández López Zúñiga, Guillermo 104 Fernando XIII, King 84 Ferro, Antonio 120–1, 215, 225 FET y de las JONS 84–7, 92–3 Feuchtwanger, Lion 151, 161, 163–4, 166 Feuerbach, Ludwig 97 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 97 Fiera Letteraria, La 23, 44 film distribution companies 102–3 film industry 22, 152 Weimar Republic 155 US see Hollywood

276

Index

film industry – continued Spanish 92–3, 99, 101–3 see also cinema film noir 90, 101 film translation 99–100, 107 First World War 67, 105, 140, 148, 152, 173, 180, 191 Flemish literature in translation 57, 65, 68 see also Dutch literature Fleuron, Svend 58, 71, 73 Fort, Paul 209 Foucault, Michel 98, 237, 245–6 Fraga Iribarne, Manuel 104 Francisco Lage 225–6 Franco, Francisco 3, 8, 84–7, 89, 92–3, 96–9, 101–3, 104, 118, 133, 166, 171 his rule 94, 97, 111, 240 Franco-German relations 202–4, 210, 249 Francoism 84, 87–91, 98, 104–6, 110, 112–13, 116, 143 fascist nature of 4, 84–5 Frank, Leonhard 151, 161, 164, 170, 172 Franke (publ.) 65–6 Frankh (publ.) 66 Frassinelli (publ.) 164, 169 Frege, Gottlob Friedrich Ludwig 190 Freitas, Lima de 124 French literature in translation 250 into German 6, 55–6, 58, 73, 201, 204–210 into Italian 148–51, 162–3, 180, 184–6, 188–9, 240 into Portuguese 105, 126–7, 128, 133–4, 139, 144 into Spanish 105, 226 Frente Popular 84 ‘Freudism’ 190 Freya (publ.) 66 Fundação Nacional para Alegria no Trabalho 134 Gaeta, Bruno 184, 188, 190, 194 Galsworthy, John 54, 63, 163 Garaudy, Roger 97 García del Figar, Father Antonio 101

Garcia Escudero, José Maria 103 Garcia Escudero, Pio 101 García Morente, Manuel 95 García Viñolas, Augusto Manuel 90, 100, 114, 116 García Yebra, Valentín 110 Garnier, Christine 122 Gazzetta del Popolo 134 Geibel, Emanuel 205 General Directorate for the Italian Press see Ministry for Popular Culture General Inspectorate of Theatres see censorship in Portugal George, Stefan 201, 205 German Democratic Republic (GDR) 142, 213, 235–7, 243–4, 248, 250–1 German Institute, Paris 11, 201–7, 210 German literature in translation 8, 18–20, 69–71, 248–9 into Italian 10, 70, 72, 147–51, 157–171, 180–1, 187, 190–3, 241 in occupied areas 11, 201–4, 210, 249 into Portuguese 125–127, 128 into Spanish 90–1, 96–7 Gestapo see censorship in Germany Gevers, Marie 65 Gibbon, Edward 189 Gide, André 163, 210 Gil, Rafael 104 Giménez Caballero, Ernesto 71, 85, 92, 115 Ginzburg, Leone 150, 179–180, 186, 194 Ginzburg, Natalia 178 Giornale della Libreria 30, 43–4, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 Giornale di politica e di letteratura 24 Giraudoux, Jean 24 Giustizia e Libertà 26 Glaeser, Ernst 151, 159, 162 Gleichschaltung 62 globalization 6 Gobetti, Piero 178, 195 Goebbels, Josef 76, 169–71, 203 see also Propaganda Ministry

Index Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 52, 128, 155, 180, 205, 208 Goldmann (publ.) 54, 58, 78, 81 Goldmann, Lucien 136 Gollancz, Victor 114 Gómez Mesa, Luis 103–4, 115 Goncharov, Ivan 187 Goncourt Academy 143 González Ruiz, Nicolás 105–6, 109 Gorki, Maxim 61, 133 Gorkin, Julían 135 Govoni, Corrado 31, 33 Gramsci, Antonio 97, 175, 180 Gray, Ezio Maria 34 Green, A.K. 161 Greene, Graham 128, 137 Grey, Zane 79, 128 Grimm, Hans 128, 169, 191 Groussard, Serge 144 Grupo de Teatro Moderno do Clube Fenianos Portuenses 222 Guanda (publ.) 169 Guitart, Enrique 109 Gulbenkian Foundation 121, 219 Gulbranssen, Trygve 58, 74–7, 80 Gunnarsson, Gunnar 73, 75 Guthrie, Tyrone 219 Hall, Peter 221 Hall, Radclyffe 55, 59 Hamsun, Knut 73, 75 Hardy, Thomas 182–3 Hašek, Jaroslav 97 Haug, Gerhart 205, 207, 212 Hauptmann, Gerhart 128, 163 Haushofer, Albrecht 169–70 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 127, 185 Hays Code 91, 104, 106, 244 Hedin, Sven 61 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 97 Heidegger, Martin 96 Heine, Heinrich 201 Hemingway, Ernest 59, 128, 133, 160 Heredia, José-Maria 209 Hesse, Hermann 161, 162, 170, 205, 206 ‘Hispanidad’ 95–6 historical romance 58–9, 151, 160

277

history plays see Shakespeare Hitler, Adolf 3, 59, 67, 86, 93, 116, 134, 147, 165, 170, 204, 221, 239, 245 his regime 235, 237, 243 Hoesslin, Franz von 204 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 170 Hölderlin, Friedrich 128, 201 Holland, Katrin 166 Hollywood 64, 66, 90–1, 100–1, 104, 106, 108, 241, 144 homosexuality see sexuality Hugo, Victor 127, 128, 209 Hungarian literature in translation 171 into German 55, 69 into Italian 151 Huxley, Aldous 111, 128, 163 Ibsen, Henrik 67 Il Saggiatore 180 Il Bargello 37 Il Torchio 23 illiteracy 119, 121, 140 Index Translationum see statistics Indian National Congress 184 industrialization of publishing 6, 16, 22, 26, 192 Insel (publ.) 65, 213 Institut français 71 Institute for Cultural Cooperation, Paris 43 Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas 116 Instrucciones y Normas para la Censura Moral de Espectáculos 106 Insula (publ.) 108 Integralismo Lusitano 140 n.2 invasion of translations see translation, metaphors of Ionesco, Eugène 226 Italian Communist Party 186 Italian Copyright Agency (SIAE) 28 Italian literature in translation 8, 16, 18–20, 27–8, 30, 34, 36–40, 42–3, 187, 198, 247 into German 55, 59, 72, 162 into Portuguese 135–6

278

Index

Italian–German relations 72, 165–7 Italo-German Association 40 Jahn, Moritz 71 James, Henry 127, 183, 197 Janés (publ.) 111 Jato, David 101, 115 Johst, Hanns 51, 169 JONS see FE de las JONS and FET y de las JONS Jonson, Ben 109 Joyce, James 59, 111, 242 Jung, Carl Gustav 190 Jünger, Ernst 169 Jünger, Friedrich Georg 201 Júnior, Redondo 223 Junta Superior de Censura see censorship in Spain Junta Superior de Orientación Cinematográfica see censorship in Spain Juntas Castellanas de Acción Hispánica 85 Kadri, Yakub 171 Kafka, Franz 161, 164, 170 Kant, Immanuel 94–6, 98, 103, 136, 170, 240 Kästner, Erich 57, 164, 241 Kaus, Gina 164, 166 Kellermann, Bernhard 128, 164 Kerst, Killian 190 Keun, Irmgard 166 King, Henry 115 Kipling, Rudyard 149–50 Kivi, Aleksis 73 Kolbenheyer, Erwin Guido 166, 170 Kolmar, Gertrud 201 Kott, Jan 220–3 Krause, Christian F. krausismo 91 Kröger, Theodor 169 La Fayette, Madame de 189 la Rosa, Alfonso de 100 La Sera 24 La Stampa 24, 44, 154, 170 Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de 189 Lacretelle, Jacques de 163

Lagerlöf, Selma 61, 73, 75 Lain Entralgo, Pedro 110 Lamas, Maria 124 Lang, Fritz 152, 155–6 Langen, Albert 73 Langen-Müller (publ.) 58, 74, 75 Lasker-Schüler Else 201 Lasne, René 201, 205, 206–207, 210–211, 213 Laterza (publ.) 26, 179, 187, 195, 199 Lauesen, Marcus 163 Lautréamont, Compte de (Isidore Lucien Ducasse) 189 Lawrence, D. H. 110, 116, 132, 134, 136, 163, 185 Lawrence, Marc 115 Le Figaro 144 League of Nations 27, 43, 166 sanctions against Italy 23, 182, 192 Leblanc, Maurice 128, 149 Lederer, Joe 164, 165 Ledesma, Ramiro 85, 92, 114 Lefebvre, Henri 97 Lefevere, André 4, 51, 64 Legion of Decency 91–92 Lehmann, Rosamond 111 Lemos, Pedro 227 Lereno, Manuel 229 Leroux, Gaston 149 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 97 Lewis, Sinclair 64, 151, 160 Lewis, Wyndham 64, 68 Ley de Prensa 87, 97 Liala (Amalia Liana Cambiasi Negretti Odescalchi) 22 liberal bourgeoisie 85 libraries 51, 61–3, 70, 74, 77–9, 138, 142, 147, 206, 213, 219, 241 ‘Libri gialli’ see book series Linati, Carlo 183, 197 Linklater, Eric 66 Lisbon Players, The 224 literary series see book series Livros de Portugal (LP) 122–24, 144 Lloyd Wright, Frank 182 Lo Gatto, Ettore 150 Loehlin, James N. 220–1

Index London, Jack 68, 127–28, 149–50, 172 longsellers 149 López Rodó, Laureano 86 see anti-Communism Lorca, Federico Garcia 224 Loriga, Francesco 48–49 Luca de Tena, Cayetano 227 Ludwig, Emil 134 Lumet, Sidney 104, 115 Lumumba, Patrice 133 Macieira, Virgílio 225 Maeztu, Ramiro de 85, 95–96, 98 Malaparte, Curzio 135 Mallarmé, Stéphane 209 Malraux, André 134 Manifesto of Portuguese theatre professionals 229 Mann, Heinrich 134, 166, 172 Mann, Thomas 128, 151, 161, 163–4, 170, 172, 200, 241 Marcelist Spring 130 Mariani, Mario 149, 172 Marín, Astrana 109 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso 27, 31, 33, 37, 239 marketing 77–78 Marlitt, Eugenie 148 Martín Vara, Pablo 104 Martins, Armando 216 Martins, Luzia Maria 221–2, 227 Martins, Pedro 227 Marxism 85–86, 96, 111–2, 120, 130, 133, 135–6, 140, 152 mass culture 6–7, 22, 77, 85, 101, 149, 158 Masters, Lee 184–5 Matos, Ruy de 228 Maupassant, Guy de 127, 189 Mauriac, François 163 Maurois, André 163 Maurras, Charles 140, 209 May, Joe 156 Mazzucchetti, Lavinia 148, 150, 161, 168–9, 171 Melville, Herman 182 Menzel, Herybert 201 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 97

279

metropolitan novel (Großstadtroman) 160–1 Meyenburg, Erwin 225 Meyerhold, Vsevolod E. 223 Mezzasoma, Fernando 188, 198 Michaelis, Karin 61 Miller, Arthur 105, 107, 108, 128 Miller, Henry 137 Ministry for National Education (Portugal) Ministry for Popular Culture (Italy) 31–3, 37–8, 45 n.25 Book Division/Division III 188 Commission for the Purging of Books 35–7, 190 General Directorate for the Italian Press 33 Prime Minister’s Press Office 40, 45 n.25, 162 State Under Secretariat for Press and Propaganda 45 n.25 Ministry for the Press and Propaganda 29, 45 n.25 Ministry for Propaganda see censorship in Germany Ministry for the Press and Propaganda see Ministry for Popular Culture Ministry of Education (Italy) see Bottai miscegenation see translation, metaphors of Moberg, Vilhelm 65 Mocidade Portuguesa 134 Modernissima (publ.) 150–1, 164, 172, 173 modernist literature 57, 59–60, 73, 105, 239, 244 modernization of publishing see industrialization of publishing Mondadori (publ.) 20, 40, 158, 161–4, 169–70, 183, 185, 187, 241 see also book series Mondadori, Arnoldo 26, 48 n.45, 49 n.52, 166, 195, 249 minimizes no. of trans. 32, 39 Monelli, Paolo 153–55, 159, 165 Montano, Lorenzo 168 Monteiro, Luís Infante de Lacerda Sttau 226, 228

280

Index

morality 105, 110–1, 113, 132, 135, 159, 172, 190, 217–18, 228, 244 moralism 85, 87 Morand, Paul 163 Morante, Elsa 184, 189 Moravia, Alberto 133 More, Thomas 189 Morgan, Charles 111 Mourlane Michelena, Pedro 101, 115 Movimiento 86 Müller, A. (publ.) 72, 170 Mura (Maria Volpi) 22 Murnau, Friedrich Wilhem 156 Muscetta, Carlo 181, 184, 189, 196 Musset, Alfred de 209 Mussolini, Benito 3, 22, 26, 59, 99, 113, 165, 167, 176, 187–88, 190, 195, 200 National Socialism 5, 51–2, 73, 118, 127, 134–5, 137, 165, 167, 169, 202, 218, 236, 241, 243–5, 248 policies of 62, 239 programme of 51, 80 National Union (Portugal) 118–19 national-Catholicism 85, 92, 96, 101, 103, 104, 113 nationalism 5, 9, 23, 27, 90, 99, 101, 111, 120, 135, 154, 162, 169, 187, 192, 238 cultural nationalism 33 ultra-nationalism 85, 237, 239, 244, 249 Nazi Party (NSDAP) 78 Nehru, Pandit Jawaharlal 184 Nemésio, Vitorino 124 neo-Nietzschean movement 97 neo-realism 120, 136–7 Neothomism 94 Neruda, Pablo 135 Nerval, Gérard de 201, 210 Neto, João Cabral de Melo 222 Neumann, Alfred 151, 165 New Europe/New European 70, 170, 203, 210 New Shakespeare Company Ltd 219, 227, 230 Niebelschütz, Wolf von 205, 206

Nietzsche, Friedrich 97, 148, 171, 201, 240 NO-DO News Service 101 Nogueira, Goulart 227 Nordic ideal 67, 69, 73, 75, 77, 150, 175 Norwegian literature in translation into German 52, 59, 67, 69, 73–6 into Italian 171 O Século 142 O’Flaherty, Liam 163 O’Neill, Alexandre 124 O’Neill, Eugene 105, 107, 224 occupied nations 8, 59, 68 France 11, 202 Oggi 196 Old Norse literature in translation 54, 57, 65, 75 Old Vic 219, 230 Ortiz Muñoz, Francisco 92, 100 Orwell, George 97, 111, 240 Oviedo, Juan Carlos 227 Oxford Playhouse Company 226, 230 Pabst, Georg Wilhelm 152, 156 Palitzsch, Peter 221 Panero, Leopoldo 110 paper shortages 53–4, 61, 64, 73, 105 para-fascist see fascism paratexts 66 Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission see censorship in Germany Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) 111 passive resistance 147, 168 Paulo, Rogério 223 Pavese, Cesare 179, 181, 182, 184, 185, 189, 194 Pavolini, Alessandro 31, 37–40, 182, 191 racialized view of translation 40–2 pressured by Mussolini 48 n.49 Pedro, António 222, 227 Pemán, José María 109 Pereira, Araújo 215 permission procedures 54, 61

Index Petersen, Nis 163 philosophy, translation of 26, 40, 88, 90, 91, 93–7, 136, 139, 190, 240 Pinter, Harold 226 Pinto, Ângela 224 Pirandello, Luigi 162 Pitigrilli (Dino Segre) 22, 134, 136, 149 Pivano, Fernanda 184, 197 ‘Plan for the People’s Education’ 121 Plato 99, 115 Plinay/Plessey Automática Eléctrica Portuguesa amateur theatre group 228 Poe, Edgar Allan 127, 128 Polanski, Roman 115 Polledro, Alfredo 150, 161, 187–8 pollution see translation, metaphors of Polverelli, Gaetano 40–1 Pons de l’Hérault, André 198 Popolo d’Italia 185 popular fiction 224, 241–2 in Germany 54, 58, 59, 76–7, 79, 81, 241 in Italy 6, 16, 20, 22, 25, 27, 32, 33, 38, 39, 158 in Portugal 123, 124, 126 in Spain 91 pornography 60, 137, 140, 143 Portugality (portugalidade) 120 Portuguese Empire see empire Portuguese First Republic (1910–26) 118 Portuguese police (PSP) 129 Portuguese political police (PIDE/ DGS) 118, 129, 131, 136, 140, 228, 239 Portuguese State Television Theatre Company 227 Pozzi, Catarina 201 Pratolini, Vasco 137 press, translation in the 93 Prezzolini, Giuseppe 23 Priestley, J. B. 224 Primato 186, 196 Prime Minister’s Press Office see Ministry for Popular Culture Primeiro de Janeiro 230

281

Primer Plano 90, 101, 115, 116 Primo de Rivera, José Antonio 84, 85, 92 Primo de Rivera, Miguel 84 print runs see statistics private translations 91 promotion of translations see translation Propaganda Ministry see censorship in Germany Propaganda Secretariat see censorship in Portugal Proust, Marcel 128, 189 provincialization 54, 55, 239, 248–9 pseudonyms 6, 58, 78, 91, 127, 129 pseudotranslations 6, 58, 66, 76, 77–8, 91, 93, 127, 241 Publishers and Booksellers Corporation (Portugal) 122–3, 239 Publishers Federation (Italy) 17, 24–6, 28, 35, 40, 192 manipulates statistics 30 preemptive purge 36–7 translation quota 37–8, 39–40 under attack 29–32 see also Giornale della Libreria purges 238 of German literature 52, 56, 61, 64, 78 of Italian literature 33, 35–7, 42, 190 of Italian educational literature 35 see also anti-Semitism, censorship, racial laws Quayle, Anthony 219 Querido (publ.) 166 Rabuse, Georg 201, 205–7 racial laws 9–10, 35, 42, 147, 167, 181, 186, 194 see also anti-Semitism, purges Radiguet, Raymond 189 Ramos, Domingos 229 Ramos, José María 104 realism 136, 138, 154, 160, 218, 246

282

Index

Rebello, Luis Francisco 218, 222–23, 226–27 receptiveness see translation, metaphors of reciprocity 28, 34, 38,187 Reclam (publ.) 57, 65 recontextualization 64, 65 Redondo, Onésimo 85, 92 Régio, José 224 regionalism 120 Reich Chamber of Writers (RSK) see censorship in Germany Reich, Wilhelm 137, 157 Remarque, Erich Maria 128, 159, 162 Rémusat, Madame de 188 Renn, Ludwig 159, 162 repertoires 88–9, 91, 93, 101, 103–5, 112–13, 114, 116, 216, 218, 224–5, 228, 240 representation of cultures 4, 10, 102, 140 reprints 53–5, 57, 59, 63, 68, 72, 76–7, 164, 181–2, 188–9, 239 Resnevic Signorelli, Olga 187 Revista Internacional de Cine 93, 116 Rexroth, Franz von 205, 207 Ribeiro, Aquilino 124 Ribeiro, Francisco 225–6 Rice, Elmer 105 Ridruejo, Dionisio 100, 105, 110, 114 Rilke, Rainer Maria 128, 170, 180, 201, 205, 207–8 Rimbaud, Arthur 209, 213 Ring, Barbra 73 Rivera Pastor, Francisco 94 Rizzoli (publ.) 158 Robson, Marc 115 Rocca, Enrico 166, 168 Rodrigues, Urbano Tavares 124 Rodríguez-Puértolas Julio 112, 115 romances 6, 20, 80 Rosa, António Vítor Ramos 124 Rosenberg, Alfred 59, 68, 73, 76–7 Rossi, Ernesto 185, 224 Roth, Joseph 161 Rowohlt (publ.) 57, 59 Royal Academy of Belgium 143

Royal Academy of Italy 190 Royal Shakespeare Company 221 royalties 63 Royer, Charles 134, 5 Rusca, Luigi 168, 171 Russell, Bertrand 133 Russian literature in translation 172, 240 into German 55 into Italian 148, 151, 180, 184, 186, 187–8 sadism see sexuality Sáenz de Heredia, José Luis 104 Sagan, Françoise 128, 133, 138 Sagan, Leontine 156 Sagarin, Edward 137 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de 136, 163 Salani (publ.) 169 Salazar, António de Oliveira 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 118–20, 129, 134, 140, 191, 215, 217 his regime 7, 135 his speeches translated 121–2, 130, 132 Salazarism 4 Salomon, Ernst von 169 Sánchez Bella, Alfredo 104 Sánchez Mazas, Rafael 85, 114–15 Sánchez Salazar, Leandro A. 135 Sanz del Río, Julián 91 Saramago, José 124, 143 Sarfatti, Margherita 22, 48 Sartre, Jean-Paul 94, 96, 115, 127–28, 132, 240 Scerbanenco, Giorgio 72 Schalit, Leon 63 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Josef 97 Schiller, Friedrich 191 Schneider, Georg 205–10 Schneider, Reinhold 169 schools 35, 38, 61, 65–6, 76, 119–20, 144, 148–49, 239 Schopenhauer, Arthur 97 Schröder, Rudolf Alexander 201, 205 Schuré, Édouard 201, 210 Schweitzer, Paolo 183, 191 Scott Fitzgerald, F. 163

Index Second World War 5, 8, 87, 95, 100, 130, 133, 182, 193, 220, 265, 224 Seidel, Ina 169, 201 self-censorship see censorship semi-fascist see fascism Sena, Jorge de 124, 226 Servien, Pius 208, 209 sexual diseases 133 ‘sexualism’ see sexuality sexuality 134, 192 cross-gendering 104 homosexuality 108, 133, 228 lesbianism 181, 196 sadism 133 ‘sexualism’ 137, 246 Shakespeare Festival Company 227, 230 Shakespeare, William in Portugal 215–29: comedies 223; history plays 216, 219–21; impact of censorship on staging 218; only eleven plays performed 223; quatercentenary celebrations 226–7; status of canon 220; tragedies 223 Shaw, G.B. 127, 133, 161, 163, 219, 224 Sheldon, Edward 107 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 219 Sicherheitsdienst see censorship in Germany Sinclair, Upton 160 Sindicato Español Universitario 99, 115 Sindicato Nacional del Espectáculo 109 Slavia (publ.) 150, 186 social Catholicism 118 Sociedade de Instrução Tavaredense 227 Solari, Pietro 159, 173 Sonzogno (publ.) 150, 158 Soria, Florentino 106 Soriano, Joaquin 101 Sorlot (publ.) 203 Sotelo, Calvo 85, 95 Soviet Union 43, 142, 157, 187 Spaini, Alberto 190, 191 Spanish Civil War 1936–39 132, 133, 166 Spanish literature in translation into Italian 183

283

into Portuguese 6, 124, 125–9 pseudotranslations 91, 93 Spanish Second Republic 84, 86, 95, 114 Sperling & Kupfer (publ.) 150, 151, 164, 171 Stalin, Josef 57, 140, 221 post-stalinism 243, 244 Stalingrad 210 State Under Secretariat for Press and Propaganda see Ministry for Popular Culture statistics bestsellers 22, 75, 112 Germany 53–4, 69–70 Index Translationum 6, 25, 142 n.18, 166 Italy 16–22, 43 n.4, 164, 181 Portugal 121, 125–9, 139 Spain 95, 107–10 Stein, Gertrude 181 Stekel, Wilhelm 143 Sternberg, Josef von 156 Stevenson, Robert Louis 127, 149, 161 Stirner, Max 148, 171 Stock (publ.) 201, 202, 212 Stopes, Marie 57 Storoni Mazzolani, Lidia 185, 189 Strapaese/Stracittà 158 Strehler, Giorgio 221 Streuvels, Stijn 57 Strodtmann, Adolf 67 Subsecretaría de Prensa y Propaganda see censorship in Spain Suevos, Jesús 115 Suhrkamp 211 Swedish literature in translation into German 9, 55, 65, 69, 73 Swift, Jonathan 183 Symbolism 204 Teatro da Juvénia 215 Teatro da Natureza 215 Teatro de Algibeira (later Teatro de Bolso) 225, 255 Teatro de Ensaio Raul Brandão 227 Teatro do Ateneu de Coimbra 220 Teatro do Povo 225

284

Index

Teatro Español 109 Teatro Español Universitario (TEU) 103, 106 Teatro Estúdio de Lisboa 221 Teatro Experimental do Porto (TEP) 225 Teatro Livre 215 Teatro Moderno 215, 222 Teatro Nacional D. Maria II. 224, 225 Teatro Nacional Popular 225, 226 Teatro Novo 215 Teatros de Cámara y Ensayo 103, 107 Theatre of Bremen 222 Theatre of the Absurd 226 theatre translation in Spain 105–9 in Portugal 222–3 see also Shakespeare Third Reich see National Socialism Thomas, Adrienne 162 Time Magazine 229 Timmermans, Felix 57, 61, 71 Toller, Ernst 170 Tolstoy, Alexandra Andreevna 187 Tolstoy, Leo 186, 187 Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo 111 Tosti, Amedeo 188, 190 totalitarianism 7, 167, 235, 237, 243–5 Toulet, Paul-Jean 209, 212, 213 tourist brochures, translation of 121 Tovar, Antonio 110 TRACE (Translation and Censorship Project) 90 translation as danger for the masses 133 as instrument of cultural exchange 8, 10, 19–20, 210, 238, 247–8 as instrument of cultural penetration 8, 35, 49 n.61 as instrument of internationalization 121–2 as political problem 23–6, 36, 38–9, 124 as safety valve 79, 242 as sign of weakness 16, 20, 25, 27, 30, 40–1

as subversion 80, 133, 228, 246 as threat 6, 8–9, 10, 16–17, 20–3, 40–2, 51–3, 78, 219–21, 238–9 as unfair competition 122 campaigns against 22–3, 23–6, 26–9, 52–3, 69–70, 77, 238–9 commercial success of 6, 9, 16, 20–2, 38, 42, 54, 73, 76–8, 138, 149–51, 162–4, 242 craze for 52, 66, 76–8, 80 deficit, trade balance 16, 18, 69, 247 from enemy nations 27, 53, 56, 64 idea of 15, 41 in wartime 53, 56, 58, 59, 63–4, 205 ‘internal’ translations 40 of classics see classics promotion of 56, 58, 61, 67–71 propaganda effect of 8, 18, 40, 42–3, 68–71 quality of 20, 23, 28, 31, 122, 123–4, 163, 179, 181, 210, 238, 249 quota see censorship in Italy reciprocity of see reciprocity translation statistics see statistics translation studies and historiography 3 contribution to fascism studies 88–9 Polysystem Theory 89, 114 n.8 Portugal neglected 117 translation, metaphors of as bridge-building 203 as contamination/pollution 8–10, 35, 40–2, 69, 72 as epidemic 122, 238 as invasion 16, 20, 23–6, 34, 39–40, 158 as miscegenation 9, 35, 52 as penetration 8, 35, 49 n.61 as poison 40–1, 52 as receptiveness 9, 18, 187 as seduction 52 as smuggling 52 as source of knowledge 30, 56, 71, 77

Index translators competence of 123–4, 181, 194 contribution of 16, 150, 168, 179, 210 habitus of 102, 107, 246–7 persecution of 62–3 register of see Authors and Writers Union Traverso, Leone 170 Treves (publ.) 148, 158, 162 TUCA 222 Ulisseia (publ.) 124 ultra-Catholicism 84, 85, 87, 92, 93, 101, 102, 114 ultra-conservatism 104 ultra-nationalism see nationalism Unión Monárquica Nacional 84, 95 Updike, John 137 Valente, Vasco Pulido 124 Valéry, Paul 206, 207–8, 209–10 Vallardi (publ.) 25, 26, 150 Vallardi, Antonio 25, 46 Vallecchi (publ.) 26 Vercors (Jean Marcel Bruller) 180 Verlaine, Paul 206, 207, 209, 212 Verona, Guido da (Guido Verona) 22, 149 Vesper, Will 70, 168 Vicesecretaría de Educación de FET y de las JONS 92 Vicesecretaría de Educación Popular 106 Victor Aúz, Víctor 106 Vidor, Charles 101 Viebig, Clara 148 viejofalangistas 86 Vigilanti Cura 90, 106 Villares, Father Manuel 101 Vinciguerra, Mario 189 Vittorini, Elio 41, 134, 136, 170 Volk 9, 52, 62, 69, 72, 80, 83, 203, 206 spirit of 53, 59, 95 Voltaire 97, 127, 128, 189

285

Wagner, Richard 201, 204, 210 Wallace, Edgar 54, 58, 77, 78, 79, 127, 161, 241 Waln, Nora 66 Walschap, Gerard 57 war novels 123, 160, 162 Wassermann, Jakob 151, 161, 163, 164 Weimar Republic bestsellers in 54, 77 Italian views of 147, 151–5, 157, 160, 241, 248 Weinheber, Josef 201 Weiss, Peter 222 Wells, H.G. 62, 128 Werfel, Franz 151, 164, 165, 170, 171 westerns 6, 76, 128 Whitehead, Alfred North 190 Wiechert, Ernst 164, 168, 170 Wilde, Oscar 55, 66–7, 127, 241 Wilder, Billy 100–3, 104, 106 Wilder, Thornton 105, 107, 160 Williams, Tennessee 104, 105, 106, 107 Wilson, Pedro 230 Winkler (publ.) 210 Wolfe, Thomas 59 Wolfskehl, Karl 201 Woolf, Virginia 81, 111, 163 xenophilia 31, 34 xenophobia 5, 24, 27, 51, 205 ‘Years of Lead’ 134–5 Zacconi, Ermette 224 Zadek, Peter 222 Zech, Paul 205 Zeitromane 160 Zsolnay (publ.) 54, 62, 63, 65, 68, 166 Zweig, Arnold 162, 163, 166, 175 Zweig, Stefan 142, 164, 205, 241

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