Squandered opportunities
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László Scholz
Abstract
This chapter opens with a brief historical overview of the reasons behind the striking uniformity of literary translations from Spanish into Hungarian (scarcity of translators, asymmetrical cultural relations, strong prewar translation canon), and then offers a detailed picture of the ideology, theory, and practice of translating literature under communism. A great number of examples and statistics, taken mainly from modern Latin American fiction, suggests why translations played a key role in promoting this fiction, why uniformity was inevitable, and finally, why planned art is always old fashioned.
Abstract
This chapter opens with a brief historical overview of the reasons behind the striking uniformity of literary translations from Spanish into Hungarian (scarcity of translators, asymmetrical cultural relations, strong prewar translation canon), and then offers a detailed picture of the ideology, theory, and practice of translating literature under communism. A great number of examples and statistics, taken mainly from modern Latin American fiction, suggests why translations played a key role in promoting this fiction, why uniformity was inevitable, and finally, why planned art is always old fashioned.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Contexts
- Shifting contexts 19
- Nation and translation 33
- Vasilii Zhukovskii as translator and the protean Russian nation 55
- Romania as Europe’s translator 79
- Translating India, constructing self 97
- The water of life 117
- Translation trouble 137
-
Part II. Subtexts
- Between the lines 149
- Translation theory and cold war politics 171
- The poetics and politics of Joseph Brodsky as a Russian poet-translator 187
- Squandered opportunities 205
- Meaningful absences 219
-
Part III. Pretexts
- Translated by Goblin 235
- “No text is an island” 249
- Russian dystopia in exile 265
- Between cosmopolitanism and hermeticism 277
- The other polysystem 295
- Translation as condition and theme in Milan Kundera’s novels 317
- Index 323
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Notes on contributors ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Contexts
- Shifting contexts 19
- Nation and translation 33
- Vasilii Zhukovskii as translator and the protean Russian nation 55
- Romania as Europe’s translator 79
- Translating India, constructing self 97
- The water of life 117
- Translation trouble 137
-
Part II. Subtexts
- Between the lines 149
- Translation theory and cold war politics 171
- The poetics and politics of Joseph Brodsky as a Russian poet-translator 187
- Squandered opportunities 205
- Meaningful absences 219
-
Part III. Pretexts
- Translated by Goblin 235
- “No text is an island” 249
- Russian dystopia in exile 265
- Between cosmopolitanism and hermeticism 277
- The other polysystem 295
- Translation as condition and theme in Milan Kundera’s novels 317
- Index 323
