Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Rundle Sturge Translation Under Fascism
Rundle Sturge Translation Under Fascism
Rundle Sturge Translation Under Fascism
Edited by
Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge
Translation under Fascism
Also by Christopher Rundle
PUBLISHING TRANSLATIONS IN FASCIST ITALY (2010)
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
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First published 2010 by
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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
Part I Introduction 1
1 Translation and the History of Fascism 3
Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge
Part II Overview Essays 13
2 Translation in Fascist Italy: ‘The Invasion of Translations’ 15
Christopher Rundle
3 ‘Flight from the Programme of National Socialism’?
Translation in Nazi Germany 51
Kate Sturge
4 It Was What It Wasn’t: Translation and Francoism 84
Jeroen Vandaele
5 Translation in Portugal during the Estado Novo Regime 117
Teresa Seruya
Part III Case Studies 145
6 Literary Exchange between Italy and Germany:
German Literature in Italian Translation 147
Mario Rubino
7 The Einaudi Publishing House and Fascist Policy
on Translations 178
Francesca Nottola
8 French–German and German–French Poetry
Anthologies 1943–45 201
Frank-Rutger Hausmann
9 Safe Shakespeare: Performing Shakespeare during the
Portuguese Fascist Dictatorship (1926–74) 215
Rui Pina Coelho
v
vi Contents
Bibliography 252
Index 270
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Tables
vii
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).
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Recent research has placed cultural policy and practices at the very
centre of our understanding of fascism,1 revealing much about the ideo-
logical 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 dif-
ferent 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 liter-
ary 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
4 Translation and the History of Fascism
Publishing history
Censorship
and censorship has shown, translated works are magnets for censorship,
since they make manipulation possible at several stages, from the selec-
tion 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 ade-
quately 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 interven-
tion in culture during the periods concerned, and in a more far-reaching
respect because they hint at the ideological complexities that often under-
pinned 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 preven-
tive approach applied to books as well. Italy maintained the pretence
that Italians enjoyed a freedom of speech and that no preventive cen-
sorship 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 moni-
tored 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.
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 Translation and the History of Fascism
Racism
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 transla-
tions which were apparently harmless, and he was even told unofficially
to avoid publishing translations of Anglo-American works – the only evi-
dence to date of a Fascist translation policy that targeted a specific source
language, and a case that highlights the ambivalent and often contradic-
tory nature of Fascist policies of censorship and cultural control.
In Chapter 8, Frank-Rutger Hausmann’s essay on two poetry antholo-
gies from the 1940s continues the theme of literary exchange as a politi-
cally 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 pre-
1933 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 particu-
lar imported author through the choice of particular texts for transla-
tion, 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 demoni-
zation, and ideologically motivated textual intervention (see, for exam-
ple, 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
12 Translation and the 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 ‘semi-
fascist’ 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
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2
Translation in Fascist Italy:
‘The Invasion of Translations’
Christopher Rundle
gave the lie to the myth that Italy under Fascism was enjoying a period
of renewed cultural prestige and influence. Furthermore, just as the sta-
tistics 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.
Table 2.1 Total book production and number of translations published in Italy,
France and Germany
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 Translation in Fascist Italy
Table 2.3 Number of translations into and from Italian and German
2011-02-21
Into and From Italian Into and From German
Trans into Italian Trans from Difference Trans into Trans from Difference
Italian German German
1927 584 1267 1648 ⫹381
1928 444 1477 1996 ⫹519
1929 717 1222 2143 ⫹921
1930 1135 1235 2479 ⫹1244
1931 977 1024 2546 ⫹1522
1932 903 63 ⫺840 726
1933 1295 536 1252 ⫹716
1934 1112 190 ⫺922 397
1935 1173 203 ⫺970 558 1964 ⫹1406
1936 912 159 ⫺753 617 2175 ⫹1558
1937 851 195 ⫺656 680
19
1938 919 171 ⫺748 730
10.1057/9780230292444 - Translation Under Fascism, Edited by Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge
20 Translation in Fascist Italy
2011-02-21
Total of Trans of total Novels Avg. Total Novels Avg. Total
(col.1) (col. 4)
Col. 1 Col. 2 Col. 3 Col. 4 Col. 5 Col. 6 Col. 7
1926–1930 6637 692 10.3
1930–1936 10145 1072 10.6 1125 10.9 384 34.9
1936–1941 9716 767 7.9 773 8.0 283 36.3
21
10.1057/9780230292444 - Translation Under Fascism, Edited by Christopher Rundle and Kate Sturge
22 Translation in Fascist Italy
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 eventu-
ally 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 maga-
zines 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.
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 threaten-
ing the livelihood of Italian authors. Much was also made of the newly
Christopher Rundle 23
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 accu-
sations, 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:
The following year, another investigation into the state of Italian lit-
erature was conducted by the Giornale di politica e di letteratura [Journal
of politics and literature] and the results published in March. The jour-
nal 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
Christopher Rundle 25
Union after the Ethiopian war (Ben-Ghiat 2000: 106–12). His article
complained that
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 del-
egates a report on the previous year, in which he posed the question of
translations in unusually stark and pessimistic terms:
Here Vallardi was citing the international statistics that had only
recently become available (the Index Translationum only started publish-
ing 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 indica-
tion 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 Translation in Fascist Italy
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:
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 unpat-
riotic privileging of private profit over national interest were much more
damaging to the publishers. How could they both join the call for a cul-
tural 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 – responsibil-
ity 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 Translation in Fascist Italy
All the members of the Union have responded promptly and sponta-
neously 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
The proper way to restore Italian cultural prestige, then, was to expand
abroad without falling into the trap of imposing a culturally short-
sighted, 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 publish-
ing 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:
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 con-
cern 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 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:
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 commis-
sion, 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 respec-
tive 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
Christopher Rundle 37
crime fiction. In December 1940 the MCP informed the Federation that
translations published in magazine format must be included in the sur-
vey 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 cir-
cular 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 Translation in Fascist Italy
Italian works abroad. The quota would, however, include ‘literary, politi-
cal and philosophical works, classics or not’ [‘opere letterarie, politiche
e filosofiche – classiche o non’], a more restrictive remit than was origi-
nally 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
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
Christopher Rundle 41
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 cinemato-
graphic 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 protec-
tionism, but conscious of her own eternal role as disseminator rather
than receiver.62
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
Abbreviations
Notes
1. See Billiani (2007a) for a detailed account of the literary debate on transla-
tion 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 produc-
tion, 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 publi-
cations, fiction and non-fiction, but not sheet music or government acts. In
order to fill in certain gaps and obtain a reasonably consistent and compara-
ble series of data, I have integrated these figures with figures that I have per-
sonally 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 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 pub-
blicazioni 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.
5. See Sturge in this volume.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. For a more detailed analysis of the statistics on translation in Fascist Italy see
Rundle (2010: Ch. 2).
9. See Decleva (1993: 152), Pedullà (1997: 349, 368, 375–6), and Tranfaglia and
Vittoria (2000: 311–12).
10. See De Donato and Gazzola Stacchini (1991).
11. ‘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.
12. The letter was published in Il Torchio, no. 33, September 1928: 3. Reproduced
in Sfondrini (1997: 264–5).
13. ‘L’invasione dello straniero’, Il Torchio, no. 31, August 1928: 3. Cited in
Sfondrini (1997: 47–56).
14. AME, SAM, ‘Federazione Nazionale Fascista degli Industriali Editori’. A key of all
the abbreviations used is provided at the end of this chapter.
15. ‘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.
16. ‘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.
17. ‘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
Christopher Rundle 45
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 met-
tere 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 edito-
riale stimolando una produzione nazionale scientifica, artistica e letteraria
sempre più copiosa, mercé la quale, pur non disimpegnandosi dalla neces-
sità 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 clas-
sics, 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 defini-
tiva, 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 scar-
tare 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 ali-
mento.’ 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 specu-
lativo 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 particolar-
mente attaccati i rappresentanti degli autori e dal quale sembra si ripromet-
tano 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 legisla-
tion 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 pub-
lished 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 sig-
nifica 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.
48 Translation in Fascist Italy
Judging by this and the similar remarks that characterize the state-
controlled literary and publishing journals of the time, a radical reduc-
tion 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 anti-
Semites 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
Kate Sturge 53
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 transla-
tion 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
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.
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 meas-
ure 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 pro-
portion 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, sug-
gests 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 adven-
ture 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
Kate Sturge 55
500
450 Flemish/Dutch
400 Scandinavian
French
350
English/American
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Source languages by year, 1933–44
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
Kate Sturge 57
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 unaccept-
able translated authors like Joseph Stalin or Marie Stopes quickly disap-
peared 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, aes-
thetically 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 trans-
lated 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 ideologi-
cal acceptability were some Flemish writers, including Stijn Streuvels,
Gerard Walschap and Felix Timmermans.
Nineteenth-century or earlier ‘classics’ from a range of source lan-
guages 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
58 Translation in Nazi Germany
the controversy on how far the troops should be allowed to read their
preferred light entertainment as opposed to indigestible fascist fare).
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
Kate Sturge 65
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 inconsist-
ent 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
Kate Sturge 67
versions playing at the same time defused Wilde’s anarchism and indi-
vidualism 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 quantita-
tive 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, com-
munity 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 pre-
ferred 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 contextu-
alization, to its macrostructure and characterization, to the very choice
of individual lexical items that support or subvert particular world
views.
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 con-
trol 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 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 trans-
lation 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 specu-
lated 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:
translatedness also brought it into the line of fire. In the view of the
prophets of ‘flooding’, the very fact of Norwegian novels’ popular suc-
cess 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 band-
wagon 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 band-
wagon, 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 easy-
reading 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 poli-
cymaking. 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’ fac-
tion proposing the absorption of popular culture into the educational
Kate Sturge 77
Raimund Kast traces the holdings of the forty commercial libraries reg-
istered 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 compet-
ing 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, con-
trasting 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 nar-
rowing 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 valu-
able writing that serves understanding between the nations and respect’
(Warmuth 1938: 197).39
80 Translation in Nazi Germany
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 müh-
sam 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).
Kate Sturge 81
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 nationalsozial-
istischen 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 censor-
ship: 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
82 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 transla-
tion reviews).
25. ‘Ein Jude, der dichtet und in Schweden wohnt, ist noch bei weitem kein
nordischer Dichter.’
26. ‘Literatursalat’; Die Weltliteratur October 1937: 385. See Sturge (2004: 104–16).
27. ‘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 den-
noch 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).
28. ‘[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.
29. 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).
30. ‘In einem geheimen Winkel seines Herzens ist jeder Deutsche ein Wiking.
Das Erlebnis fremden Menschentums und fremder Landschaft hat für ihn
magischen Reiz.’
31. ‘[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.’
32. ‘[Z]weifellos dazu beitragen, daß sich das deutsche und das italienische Volk
gegenseitig besser kennen und verstehen lernen’, Die Weltliteratur, February
1942: 31.
33. ‘[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.
34. ‘[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 ver-
stößt man damit wohl gegen Grundsätze, die noch wichtiger sind als jene
Beziehungen.’
35. Nazi discourse, where ‘racial’ were more important than linguistic categories,
defined Finnish as a Scandinavian language.
36. 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.
Kate Sturge 83
84
Jeroen Vandaele 85
(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’, ‘nationaliza-
tion 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 organiza-
tion’ (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 person-
alities 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 upris-
ing, 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.
86 Translation and Francoism
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 geopoliti-
cal 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 ‘sub-
group’ (often called ‘ideological family’) – fascists, ultra-Catholics, mon-
archists, 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 gen-
erally, the ideological subperiods of Francoist politics often reflect or are
responses to political and socio-economic changes on an international
Jeroen Vandaele 87
level, however much Franco isolated Spain from the rest of the world. In
terms of censorship, Francoism can be tentatively periodized as follows.
(1) 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 cen-
sorship needs much more research and is hard to study precisely
because it was not as centralized and systematic as subsequent
periods.
(2) 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.
(3) 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).
(4) 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.
(5) 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 censor-
ship 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 rein-
forced post-publication censorship and self-censorship, because
88 Translation and Francoism
Within translation studies, the Tel Aviv School of Poetics (Itamar Even-
Zohar, Gideon Toury) has been particularly influential in framing these
questions and proposing concepts for partial answers. Specifically, Even-
Zohar’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 censor-
ship 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 prod-
ucts. 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 inter-
nal 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.
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 devel-
oped 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-fas-
cists) 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 domi-
nance 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
Jeroen Vandaele 91
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 phi-
losopher’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 philo-
sophical scene, away from France and towards Germany.
Strange as it might seem, Maeztu writes, he owed to Kant the ‘the rock-
solid foundation of my religious ideas’ [‘fundamento inconmovible de
mi pensamiento religioso’] (quoted in Uribarri 2005: 379). The existence
96 Translation and Francoism
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)
Even after the 1966 Press Law, officially presented as being a relaxa-
tion 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 merid-
ional 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 liter-
ary essays, which will be discussed later.
Marx himself remained absent from 1936 until 1966. In the last dec-
ade 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 cre-
ating 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 categoriza-
tion among the censors (Nietzsche the existentialist) and similar catego-
rizations 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
98 Translation and Francoism
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 impor-
tance 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 iden-
tity 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 compul-
sory 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
Jeroen Vandaele 99
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
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) ver-
sions with subtitles (Gutiérrez Lanza 2007: 228). Unlike the members-
only 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 cen-
sorship 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 stead-
ily 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 exter-
nal 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
Jeroen Vandaele 101
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 for-
eign 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 innova-
tive, 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)
106 Translation and Francoism
was based on a new hero, the common man, and was spoken in a
more spontaneous register. The most successful pieces were automati-
cally 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 dra-
matic 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
Jeroen Vandaele 107
Table 4.2 The translated plays most frequently presented to the censors,
1936–62
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 mid-
1950s 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) suit-
able for the stage, yet still in 1945 its performance was authorized when
another company with better connections submitted the same transla-
tion 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 ver-
sions 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).
Jeroen Vandaele 109
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, relat-
ing 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 innu-
endo 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 nationaliz-
ing 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
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
Jeroen Vandaele 113
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 para-
fascists 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 per-
ceived 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; con-
versely, 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 importa-
tion 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 cul-
tural 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 organ-
ized 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’.
114 Translation and Francoism
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 disci-
plined 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’, Germany-
oriented and revolutionary of the leaders of Spanish fascism. He was exe-
cuted 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 avail-
able 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
Jeroen Vandaele 115
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.
11. ‘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.
12. ‘La condenación de la Iglesia es del año 1948, quizá entonces la filosofía
existencialista se consideró más peligrosa.’
13. El prólogo del traductor está muy bien en el sentido de encuadrar esta obra
en el pensamiento del autor.
14. Abellán’s otherwise groundbreaking study of Francoist censorship (1980)
suggested that the ultra-Catholic and other censors of 1950–75 were some-
how intellectually mediocre compared to the gloriously academic censors
operating before 1950.
15. See Vandaele 2006 for a critique of these frequently quoted views.
16. 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.
17. File number 36/3279 in the AGA, Archivo General de la Administración.
18. ‘digna de un pueblo de tenderos, incapaz de la menor elegancia espiritual’.
19. See File number 36/3453 in the AGA, Archivo General de la Administración;
board ‘preview’ of 28 April 1953.
20. Not to be confused with the more important José María García Escudero (see
later).
21. In Bourdieu’s sense (1972: 178–9). Translators also have such a habitus, a dis-
position to follow certain norms in practice – in Simeoni’s words, a servitude
volontaire (1998: 23).
22. 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).
116 Translation and Francoism
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 accept-
able 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 periodiza-
tion 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
117
118 Translation during the Estado Novo
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 recon-
struct 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).
make them famous, but Ferro himself later admitted that many con-
temporary 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 responsi-
bilities 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 televi-
sion, may be explained by the void left when the Gulbenkian’s influence
faded (Faria and Campos 2007: 12; Seruya 2007).
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 reinter-
pretations 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, senti-
mental 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 con-
sidered 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
124 Translation during the Estado Novo
500
400
300
200
100
0
GBR FRA SPA USA ITA GER RUS
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
SPA GBR FRA USA ITA RUS GER
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 ori-
gin (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
Teresa Seruya 127
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
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 refer-
ence 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’.
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 circula-
tion 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 transla-
tion 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 pos-
session 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 politi-
cal 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 inflex-
ible 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’,
134 Translation during the Estado Novo
[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)
permitted, at least in some cases, and despite their realism and sexual
themes, apparently because of the quality of their writing.
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 transla-
tions, 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
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 por-
nography 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 censor-
ship 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 tele-
vision 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 pres-
ence 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 cen-
sorship 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,
Teresa Seruya 141
were banished in 1934 and became part of the opposition against the regime
(see Costa Pinto 1994: Chapter 5).
3. 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 obser-
vam, 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.
4. 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 encyc-
licals 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).
5. Público 10 June 2008: 6.
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).
7. ‘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).
8. ‘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.
9. 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.
10. ‘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).
11. 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.
12. This view of translation as exerting a negative influence on a national lit-
erature is neither original nor specific to Portugal. One of many examples is
Korpel (1993: 116–19).
13. Livros de Portugal was a monthly magazine belonging to the booksellers’
association GNEL.
142 Translation during the Estado Novo
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 his-
tory 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 pres-
ence 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 com-
plete 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.
Teresa Seruya 143
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
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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 condi-
tioned 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 extraor-
dinary 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 pas-
sive resistance enacted by Italian publishers between 1940 and 1945 against
the philo-Nazi fiction that Germany attempted to impose on its ally.
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 lit-
erature 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 nov-
els, 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:
Benoît were the most frequently translated authors, but often the trans-
lations 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 publish-
ers’ 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 publish-
ing 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 con-
cerned, 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 pub-
lishing strategy, with the appearance of three new series of foreign litera-
ture: ‘Scrittori di tutto il mondo’ [Writers of the World], directed by Gian
Dàuli on behalf of the Milanese publisher Modernissima, ‘Narratori nor-
dici’ [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 expression-
ist avant-garde.14 By the end of the 1920s this attitude had undergone
radical changes.
Mario Rubino 151
All this demonstrates the interest of the Italian public, and consequently
of the publishing world, towards contemporary German literature at
152 German Literature in Italian Translation
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:
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 medi-
eval 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 cara-
mel-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 conspicu-
ous 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).
154 German Literature in Italian Translation
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 conversa-
tional 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’ unre-
solved problems. His attitude was a more reflective one:
I was offered the chance to visit one of the parts of Europe that peo-
ple 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 tenden-
cies 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 Berlin-
Moscow-New York trio appeared often in his reports on the culture of
the Weimar Republic whenever he wished to indicate a sort of geo-
graphical 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 characteris-
tics [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 prole-
tarian nation. Something to bear in mind’32 (ibid.: 225). The new forms
of art which have emerged are described as follows:
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 informa-
tion 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 proc-
ess 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 entertain-
ment 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 patho-
logical degeneration of idealism (Croce 1948: 43–4).
Yet despite this attitude, in Metropolis, notwithstanding its fantasti-
cally surreal language, the viewer could not escape the impact of ques-
tions 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)
156 German Literature in Italian Translation
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 pub-
lishing, 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 for-
eign 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 publish-
ing houses identified a profound lack of interest of the general public
in contemporary Italian literature.37 This was probably due to an exces-
sive 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
Mario Rubino 159
Furthermore, there was also the unexpected discovery that some Germans
were not only pacifists but also authors able to write ‘without artifi-
cial 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
160 German Literature in Italian Translation
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 eve-
rything 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 famil-
iar 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
Mario Rubino 161
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 for-
eign 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 medium-
sized 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 his-
tory, 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,
162 German Literature in Italian Translation
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 con-
demned 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 prohib-
ited 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 nation-
alistic 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 litera-
ture 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 patriot-
ism, 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],
Mario Rubino 163
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 anti-
Nazi. 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 tem-
porary arrests, as in the case of Kästner. Only Hans Carossa and Hans
Mario Rubino 165
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 ide-
ological 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
166 German Literature in Italian Translation
or anti-Nazi writers was now forbidden, the only ‘legal’ source of new lit-
erature 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:
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 dis-
approval: ‘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 censor-
ship. 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;
170 German Literature in Italian Translation
Notes
This chapter, ‘Literary Exchange between Italy and Germany: German Literature
in Italian Translation’, has been translated by Neil Walker.
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 hat-
ten 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 gedanken-
losen 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’.
174 German Literature in Italian Translation
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 transla-
tions 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).
176 German Literature in Italian Translation
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 [abzu-
sichern]’.
70. This is the case of Marku e la sua stirpe, by the Finn Unto Seppänen, trans-
lated 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 pub-
blicare 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
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.
180 Einaudi and Fascist Policy on Translations
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 non-
fiction. 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 pres-
tige 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 non-
fiction 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.
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 translat-
ing 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 corre-
spondence, 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’, some-
thing 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:
The interesting point is that Einaudi was more confident about the pos-
sibility 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
Francesca Nottola 183
recognized classics were exempt from the need to seek prior approval
(Fabre 2007: 28), but this exception was rarely applied to Einaudi’s pro-
posals. 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 them-
selves 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 contem-
porary American authors while Einaudi could not publish British clas-
sics. 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 sev-
eral 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
184 Einaudi and Fascist Policy on Translations
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 function-
ary 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 pub-
lish 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
Francesca Nottola 185
Einaudi wrote that he could not publish Russian novels at the time.
We do not know which titles Kuhn had proposed, but this letter pro-
vides 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 prob-
lems 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 cen-
sorship occurred, and canonized nineteenth-century novelists (Hugo,
Flaubert, Stendhal) were published without problems. However, a curi-
ous 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 correspond-
ence 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 func-
tionaries 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
Francesca Nottola 189
Conclusion
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 estab-
lish 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
Francesca Nottola 195
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 main-
tained 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 pub-
lish 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
196 Einaudi and Fascist Policy on Translations
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 Archivio Einaudi
PNF Partito Nazionale Fascista
MCP Ministero di Cultura Popolare
DGSI Direzione Generale della Stampa Italiana
inc. 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 lesbi-
anism, 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 trans-
lations from Italian are my own.
Francesca Nottola 197
8. ‘Visto che Tess è già tradotto integro, visto che Hardy è soggetto a cen-
sura, 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 pro-
posed 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).
198 Einaudi and Fascist Policy on Translations
27. ‘Lev Tolstòi come casa Einaudi stampa con giudaica scrupolosità di foresti-
ero’, Coppola 1942, quoted in Mangoni (1999: 121–2).
28. ‘Il riferimento a Leone Ginzburg, privato dalle leggi razziali della cittadi-
nanza italiana, era chiarissimo per chi sapesse leggere ed era tanto più signifi-
cativo 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).
Francesca Nottola 199
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 men-
tioned 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 persua-
dere i solerti funzionari. Ti ricordi che per Robertson, in fine, la spuntammo!’
Muscetta to Alicata, 3 September 1942, AE, inc. Muscetta. The correspond-
ence is also quoted in part by Mangoni (1999: 147–51). For essays and scien-
tific 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,
200 Einaudi and Fascist Policy on Translations
14 November 1941, AE, inc. Alicata. Alberto Spaini was a literary critic, trans-
lator 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).
58. 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).
59. 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.
60. 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).
61. ‘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).
62. ‘Celeberrimo romanzo coloniale tedesco’, Einaudi to Schweitzer, 31 October
1941, AE, inc. Schweitzer.
63. 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).
64. Circular No. 442/9532, dated 3 April 1934. See Fabre (1998: 22–8; 2007: 31).
65. See Rubino’s and Sturge’s chapters in this collection.
66. Liberal senator Luigi Einaudi, despite early mild support of the Fascist move-
ment 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 move-
ment 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.
67. 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 relation-
ship 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
201
202 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 inter-
face 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 vari-
ous 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 provin-
cial 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, exhi-
bitions, poetry readings and academic lectures, looked after exchange
Frank-Rutger Hausmann 203
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 undertak-
ing 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 debauch-
ery, while Hitler himself in Mein Kampf had already attacked some
Germans’ ‘nauseating’ praise for the ‘great culture-nation’ as erbärm-
liches 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 cata-
logue 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
Frank-Rutger Hausmann 205
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 assem-
bling 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 Coburg-
born 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
206 French–German and German–French Poetry Anthologies
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.)
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
Frank-Rutger Hausmann 209
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’:
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
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
Frank-Rutger Hausmann 211
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
Definitions of ‘censorship’
Concerned with the imprecise uses of the concept of censorship and its
limitations, Janelle Reinelt (2006) has attempted to establish a defini-
tion that might prove effective in dealing with this transhistorical and
transnational phenomenon. According to Reinelt:
Kennedy recognizes that the history plays, unlike the comedies and trag-
edies, 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 transla-
tion in 1962 and an English translation in 1964. James N. Loehlin pro-
poses a range of factors that contributed to this new interest:
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 revi-
sion 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).
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
222 Safe Shakespeare
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 under-
taken. 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 ‘nativ-
ity 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 well-
known work is unmistakeable.
Translation, too, provided a locus for renovation. Some theatre prac-
titioners 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 prin-
ciple underlies work such as the publications of the Grupo de Teatro
Moderno do Clube Fenianos Portuenses, A encenação e a maioridade
Rui Pina Coelho 223
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 stun-
ning 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 mod-
ernization; 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
Rui Pina Coelho 225
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 dissolu-
tion 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 differ-
ent 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.
226 Safe Shakespeare
This marks the difference between an authentic text and a poor liter-
ary 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 conven-
tionally 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 antago-
nistic, but as complementary. The difficulties in pursuing a politically
engaged theatre led theatre practitioners to take refuge in the ellipti-
cal 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 thea-
tre’, 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 qua-
tercentenary 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
Rui Pina Coelho 227
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, trans-
lated by Luis Sttau Monteiro, lost the line ‘Madam, undress you, and
Rui Pina Coelho 229
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 argu-
ments addressed in Coelho (2008).
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).
2. For a study of Shakespeare’s theatre in Portugal within the area of perform-
ance 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.
3. 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.
4. For all statistical claims in this paper, see the Centre for Theatre Studies data-
base at www.fl.ul.pt/CETbase/default.htm.
5. This play was not staged until 1993, directed by Pedro Wilson with Cénico de
Direito, the university group from the Lisbon University Law Faculty.
6. 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.
7. ‘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.
8. See also Hoenselaars (2004: 1–8).
9. ‘Por mim, devo confessar que nunca vi, em Portugal, acontecimento de tea-
tro 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.’
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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).
13. ‘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’.
14. ‘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
235
236 The Boundaries of Dictatorship
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 spe-
cific 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 start-
ing point for the contrastive analysis of intuitively similar entities, rather
than as a final and constraining categorization, then the chapters col-
lected 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 cat-
egories 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 rec-
ognizable from its crude, Cold War incarnation and provides a range of
more variegated terminology to conceptualize regimes which made com-
parable ‘total’ claims, even if those aims could never be realized in prac-
tice. 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 bounda-
ries 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
238 The Boundaries of Dictatorship
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 bounda-
ries 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.
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 obvi-
ous, 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 institu-
tional, 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 pro-
moted 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 transla-
tions’ 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
Matthew Philpotts 239
252
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270
Index 271
morality 105, 110–1, 113, 132, 135, Nietzsche, Friedrich 97, 148, 171,
159, 172, 190, 217–18, 228, 244 201, 240
moralism 85, 87 NO-DO News Service 101
Morand, Paul 163 Nogueira, Goulart 227
Morante, Elsa 184, 189 Nordic ideal 67, 69, 73, 75, 77, 150,
Moravia, Alberto 133 175
More, Thomas 189 Norwegian literature in translation
Morgan, Charles 111 into German 52, 59, 67, 69, 73–6
Mourlane Michelena, Pedro 101, into Italian 171
115
Movimiento 86 O Século 142
Müller, A. (publ.) 72, 170 O’Flaherty, Liam 163
Mura (Maria Volpi) 22 O’Neill, Alexandre 124
Murnau, Friedrich Wilhem 156 O’Neill, Eugene 105, 107, 224
Muscetta, Carlo 181, 184, 189, 196 occupied nations 8, 59, 68
Musset, Alfred de 209 France 11, 202
Mussolini, Benito 3, 22, 26, 59, 99, Oggi 196
113, 165, 167, 176, 187–88, 190, Old Norse literature in
195, 200 translation 54, 57, 65, 75
Old Vic 219, 230
National Socialism 5, 51–2, 73, 118, Ortiz Muñoz, Francisco 92, 100
127, 134–5, 137, 165, 167, 169, Orwell, George 97, 111, 240
202, 218, 236, 241, 243–5, 248 Oviedo, Juan Carlos 227
policies of 62, 239 Oxford Playhouse Company 226,
programme of 51, 80 230
National Union (Portugal) 118–19
national-Catholicism 85, 92, 96, Pabst, Georg Wilhelm 152, 156
101, 103, 104, 113 Palitzsch, Peter 221
nationalism 5, 9, 23, 27, 90, 99, 101, Panero, Leopoldo 110
111, 120, 135, 154, 162, 169, 187, paper shortages 53–4, 61, 64, 73,
192, 238 105
cultural nationalism 33 para-fascist see fascism
ultra-nationalism 85, 237, 239, paratexts 66
244, 249 Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission see
Nazi Party (NSDAP) 78 censorship in Germany
Nehru, Pandit Jawaharlal 184 Partido Obrero de Unificación
Nemésio, Vitorino 124 Marxista (POUM) 111
neo-Nietzschean movement 97 passive resistance 147, 168
neo-realism 120, 136–7 Paulo, Rogério 223
Neothomism 94 Pavese, Cesare 179, 181, 182, 184,
Neruda, Pablo 135 185, 189, 194
Nerval, Gérard de 201, 210 Pavolini, Alessandro 31, 37–40, 182,
Neto, João Cabral de Melo 222 191
Neumann, Alfred 151, 165 racialized view of translation 40–2
New Europe/New European 70, 170, pressured by Mussolini 48 n.49
203, 210 Pedro, António 222, 227
New Shakespeare Company Ltd 219, Pemán, José María 109
227, 230 Pereira, Araújo 215
Niebelschütz, Wolf von 205, 206 permission procedures 54, 61
Index 281
Second World War 5, 8, 87, 95, 100, into Portuguese 6, 124, 125–9
130, 133, 182, 193, 220, 265, 224 pseudotranslations 91, 93
Seidel, Ina 169, 201 Spanish Second Republic 84, 86, 95,
self-censorship see censorship 114
semi-fascist see fascism Sperling & Kupfer (publ.) 150, 151,
Sena, Jorge de 124, 226 164, 171
Servien, Pius 208, 209 Stalin, Josef 57, 140, 221
sexual diseases 133 post-stalinism 243, 244
‘sexualism’ see sexuality Stalingrad 210
sexuality 134, 192 State Under Secretariat for Press and
cross-gendering 104 Propaganda see Ministry for
homosexuality 108, 133, 228 Popular Culture
lesbianism 181, 196 statistics
sadism 133 bestsellers 22, 75, 112
‘sexualism’ 137, 246 Germany 53–4, 69–70
Shakespeare Festival Company 227, Index Translationum 6, 25, 142
230 n.18, 166
Shakespeare, William Italy 16–22, 43 n.4, 164, 181
in Portugal 215–29: comedies Portugal 121, 125–9, 139
223; history plays 216, 219–21; Spain 95, 107–10
impact of censorship on Stein, Gertrude 181
staging 218; only eleven plays Stekel, Wilhelm 143
performed 223; quatercentenary Sternberg, Josef von 156
celebrations 226–7; status of Stevenson, Robert Louis 127, 149,
canon 220; tragedies 223 161
Shaw, G.B. 127, 133, 161, 163, 219, Stirner, Max 148, 171
224 Stock (publ.) 201, 202, 212
Sheldon, Edward 107 Stopes, Marie 57
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 219 Storoni Mazzolani, Lidia 185, 189
Sicherheitsdienst see censorship in Strapaese/Stracittà 158
Germany Strehler, Giorgio 221
Sinclair, Upton 160 Streuvels, Stijn 57
Sindicato Español Universitario 99, 115 Strodtmann, Adolf 67
Sindicato Nacional del Espectáculo 109 Subsecretaría de Prensa y Propaganda
Slavia (publ.) 150, 186 see censorship in Spain
social Catholicism 118 Suevos, Jesús 115
Sociedade de Instrução Tavaredense 227 Suhrkamp 211
Solari, Pietro 159, 173 Swedish literature in translation
Sonzogno (publ.) 150, 158 into German 9, 55, 65, 69, 73
Soria, Florentino 106 Swift, Jonathan 183
Soriano, Joaquin 101 Symbolism 204
Sorlot (publ.) 203
Sotelo, Calvo 85, 95 Teatro da Juvénia 215
Soviet Union 43, 142, 157, 187 Teatro da Natureza 215
Spaini, Alberto 190, 191 Teatro de Algibeira (later Teatro de
Spanish Civil War 1936–39 132, 133, Bolso) 225, 255
166 Teatro de Ensaio Raul Brandão 227
Spanish literature in translation Teatro do Ateneu de Coimbra 220
into Italian 183 Teatro do Povo 225
284 Index