M.

Juvan

World Literature, Translation, Small Literature

Bristol, 9 Sept 2015

Marko Juvan (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana)

World Literature, Translation, and a Small Literature

The presumed universality of world literature is always already inscribed in particular literary
systems through different variants and perspectives articulated by translations. Compared to
the original production, translations are traditionally discarded as minor literature,
although they enable world reading in national literary systems (Eysteinsson 2006). In the
long nineteenth century, cultural nationalism deemed vernacular literacy the pillar of
national identity and creative originality. Reproducing artworks from abroad was dismissed
as derivative the others speech, disguised in native language. When Josip Stritar reviewed
the state of Slovenian letters in the light of the world canon in 1870, he thus rejected
translation as foreign, borrowed goods, which do improve the Slovenian language, but do
not contribute to national literature proper: A nation is entitled to call its property only
what has grown from its soil (Stritar 1955: 119). As the editor of the literary journal Zvon,
Stritar refused to publish translation altogether (Stanovnik 2005: 53).
On the other hand, certain intellectuals of the period stressed the role of extensive cultural
transfer from foreign literatures to demonstrate superiority of their language and
international prestige of their literature. For example, Philarte Chasles writes in 1835 that
France is the center of sensitivity; it directs civilization [...] What Europe is to the rest of the
world, France is to Europe; everything reverberates toward her, everything ends with her
(qtd. in Schulz and Rhein 1973: 212). Even in peripheral literatures, the quality of
translations occasionally figures as a touchstone of linguistic capacity, while the extent of
translated repertoire measures the level of a particular cultural development in comparison
with competitors from the inter-state system. Thus, Slovenska matica, central institution of
the Slovenian national movement, ventured to enrich local literature with a prestigious
supply of translations. From 1904 to 1937, the book series Translations from world literature
(cf. Prijatelj 1907) presented classics such as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Njego, Goethe, Pushkin,
Dostoevsky, Shaw, Reymont, and Cervantes. Commenting the collections launching, Josip
Tominek emphasizes that slovenianized masterpieces of world literature strengthen
national identity. Transplanted into Slovenian, the world literary canon gauges the aesthetic
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World Literature, Translation, Small Literature

Bristol, 9 Sept 2015

autonomy and linguistic perfection of the receiving literature: Every nation striving for
independence has to make every effort using domestic resources to provide compatriots
with all most important achievements of other nations that enjoy world recognition. [...]
Therefore, translations stand for cultural criterion of every nation. (Tominek 1905: 376) On
the same occasion, the literary historian Ivan Prijatelj argues that translations, being
productive junctions between peoples, enhance the aesthetic development of any national
literature (Stanovnik 2005: 6887). Finally, in his pioneering Theory of Comparative Literary
History of 1936, Anton Ocvirk discusses translation as the leading intermediary in crossnational literary exchange (Ocvirk 1936: 231).
Having been subordinated to the original literary production for centuries, translation
studies established literary translating as a paradigm entitled to reconfigure the approach to
the overall literary system. Susan Bassnett famously declared translation studies an umbrella
discipline ready to bring the defunct comparative literature back to life (Bassnett 1993: 47,
13861). Among other factors encouraging current valorization of translation, I focus on the
rebirth of Goethean idea of world literature in the context of globalization.
The shares of translation rebounded on theory markets at the turn of the millennium, with
writings that began to globalize Goethes conception of Weltliteratur. World literature was
advertised as a paradigm sublating national literary history, comparative literature, and
postcolonial criticism in a unified, transcending framework (Thomsen 2008: 532; D'Haen
2012: 1). In a synoptic approach to globalized literary life, translation comes as a key concept
because it fosters the active presence of literary works beyond the linguistic borders and
socio-cultural environment they have originally addressed. Although translations, in David
Damroschs (2003: 15) humanist perspective, open up intercultural windows and doors to
the world (the former for readers, the latter for writers), they are in fact subject to
asymmetries of the world systems of economy, languages, and literatures (Casanova 1999;
Moretti 2000). As such, they do not simply pave the way for transnational literary traffic and
dialogue with otherness, but may also be complicit in the globalization of Western geoculture and aesthetic discourse.
In the late modern inter-literary relations, Pascale Casanova (1999) and Franco Moretti
(2000, 2003) recognize growing inequality between stronger and weaker literary fields. The
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World Literature, Translation, Small Literature

Bristol, 9 Sept 2015

international copyright legislation (cf. Domnguez 2013) and triumphant transnational

publishing add to systemic imbalance. In Morettis catchphrase, the world literary system is
just like global capitalism one and unequal, so that the study of world literature is
inevitably a study of the struggle for symbolic hegemony across the world (Moretti 2000:
556, 64). As a rule, global centers possess developed media and cultural resources they
have accumulated due to their economic-political supremacy as colonial or imperial powers.
Innovations selected and reinforced by the mechanisms of the literary market, normally
spread from core systems to peripheral zones equipped with poorer publishing-media
infrastructure (Casanova 1999: 2840, 6365; Moretti 2003: 7577). Thus, opening or
shutting intercultural windows on the world becomes the privilege of political powers, core
economies, cultural metropolises, and world languages. The possibility of a literary text in a
language of lesser diffusion to make its way to worldwide circulation depends on whether it
is available in a language of wider diffusion and consecrated by metropolitan publishers,
critics, and media (Casanova 1999: 2840, 6365). Whereas in modern core literatures the
share of translation in their overall literary production is relatively small (from 3% in the US
to 15% or 20% in France and Germany), it is higher on the margins (around 65% in Sweden).
That literary traffic regularly flows from centers to peripheries, is evidenced by the fact that
the majority of target languages translate mostly from English in the 1980s, more than half
of all translated books reproduces English originals (Sapiro 2011: 229, 233).
Originally conceived as multilingual polyphony of the best of national literatures, world
literature subjects itself to omnipotent languages that absorb and globally distribute
artworks produced in all the remaining idioms. Decades ago, Erich Auerbach knew all too
well that we would have to accustom ourselves to existence in a standardized world, to a
single literary culture, only a few literary languages, and perhaps even a single literary
language. And herewith the notion of Weltliteratur would be at once realized and
destroyed (Auerbach 1969: 3). In addition to post-colonial advocates of languages of the
global south and east, comparatists from smaller European nations also attempt to
overcome the world-system inequalities. While post-colonial and Asian peripheries,
supposedly featuring radical otherness, come into focus to neutralize Eurocentrism endemic
to world literature studies, small European literatures according to Theo Dhaen (2013)

M. Juvan

World Literature, Translation, Small Literature

Bristol, 9 Sept 2015

experience even further marginalization, being perceived as insignificant variation of

western models.
Now, do the authors that a peripheral literary system considers canonical and equivalent to
world-class masters, actually conquer the literary planet? Let us examine the Slovenian
national poet France Preeren (180049). According to Virgil Nemoianu (2002: 2545), the
function of a national poet from romanticism onwards is to compete with world classics;
establishing a national poet was a kind of shorthand, a summary of the achievements and
of the profile of a particular nation on the imagined Olympian plateau of Weltliteratur.
Romanticism is arguably the first artistic current that, spreading across Europe with the help
of modern print media and the book market, used literary discourse to articulate
individualism in the public space (cf. Izenberg 1992). Drawing on Schlegelian universalism,
Preeren himself conceived his poetry with an eye to participating in the emerging system of
world literature. His poetry allegorizes the efforts of the local national movement to
individualize its national character among modern nationalities, especially in the
predominantly German Habsburg Empire. Intertextually transferring the repertoire of world
literature into Slovenian lands, Preeren saturates his vernacular with the polyphony of
foreign forms, themes, and registers. Of this material, he poetically contrives an imaginary
chronotope of world literature in which he places his individual fictional persona and voice.
In his Sonnet Wreath of 1834, Preeren rewrites the classical topos of Orpheus and,
narrating the historical decline of the medieval Slavic state, interprets the origins of
subalternity characterizing both his nation and the melancholy of his poems. Faced with
depressing pre-revolutionary realities of his country, Preeren imagines himself as Orphean
redeemer of the defeated, historically dead nation. With its transcendental aesthetic
powers, the singing of the poet is to awaken the enslaved Slovenes, unite them with a
cultivated vernacular, and finally bring them back on the stage of history as equals to great
European nations. Paraphrasing Orpheanism in his 1866 critical commentary of Preerens
oeuvre, Stritar (1955: 27) finally declares Preeren the Slovenian national poet, comparable
with the greatest names of European literary canon.
The imaginary worlding (Kadir 2004) of the Slovenian national poet briefly outlined above
proves to be ideologically successful from the late nineteenth century onwards: every

M. Juvan

World Literature, Translation, Small Literature

Bristol, 9 Sept 2015

Slovenian pupil regards Preeren as equal to the greatest world masters. In reality however,
the Slovenian cultural saint makes his way in the world with much hesitation.
As early as 1832, the Czech poet Frantiek elakovsk recognized Preerens international
significance. To illustrate Preerens transnational importance, he translated four of his
poems for the Journal of the Czech Museum. He was the first to open to the Slovenian poet
the way to a broader regional circulation, probably aiming to attract Carniolan literary
periphery to the Austro-Slavic interliterary community with Prague as emerging capital. It
was through elakovsks publication in a more advanced, semi-peripheral literary culture,
that Preerens long-lasting path towards the core of the world literary system started (Juvan
2014). Believing that their national saint deserves the prestige of a world-class poet,
Slovenian intellectuals attempted to endorse his poetry abroad with the help of eminent
foreign intermediaries. Such a strategy characterizing international marketing of
peripheral classics first appeared in Slovenia with Preirenklnge (1880) by the Austrian poet
Edward Samhaber (18461927). His is a free German translation of excerpts from Preeren
framed into an emotionally laden, almost hagiographic narrative about the Slovenian
national poet. With the help of Samhabers translation, Slovenian intellectuals demonstrated
cultural equivalence of Slovenian language with that of the monarchys hegemonic nation.
Such a cross-national promotional strategy appeared to be promising. In his 1881 history of
world literature, Johannes Scherr mentioned Preeren, while A. E. Schnbach listed his name
among the must-read authors for European intellectuals (ber Lesen und Bildung, 1888
1913).
Paradoxically, in Samhabers germ for Preerens success story, the inadequacy of translation
starts to hinder Preerens foreign reception. Preerens poetic language is extremely
difficult to translate, since it blends classical topoi and cosmopolitan romantic registers with
puns and vernacular idiom. How shallow Preeren may sound in another language, Glonars
harsh criticism of Preirenklnge reveals: In Samhaber, Preeren appears to be but a dwarf
counterfeit: initially conceived as a translation, the book gradually transforms into a diluted
reworking, into a symphony redacted for the accordion. (Glonar 1927) In several English
translations, too, Preeren appears as a washed-out classicist and sentimentalist epigone (cf.
Stanovnik 1997). Thus, Preerens singular voice drowns in universality, instead of expressing
it in an unrepeatable way. Facing the same problem, Georg Brandes complains in 1899 over
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World Literature, Translation, Small Literature

Bristol, 9 Sept 2015

the necessity of necessarily imperfect translations in the case of minor literatures endeavors
for world recognition: When an author is acknowledged in France, he is known across the
entire earth while writers of minor languages (Finnish, Hungarian, Greek, etc.) are clearly
positioned most disadvantageously. In the contest for world renown these authors lack their
own weapon, their language (Brandes 2012: 25). Since hardly anybody outside their country
understands the nuances of their minor language, they are fully dependent on translations,
which are necessarily imperfect mere surrogates of the original textual power.
In 1889, Preeren did for the first time cross what Damrosch calls the threshold of world
literature that of an active presence in another, larger literature. The translation of his
Sonnet Wreath by Fedor Kor (18421915) influenced Russian Symbolists to adopt this artful
Italian form, which had not been appreciated there before (Novak 2001: 57). Outside
Slovenia, however, Preeren remains poorly recognized as a poet of the romantic hypercanon. The question is whether this will ever happen. European romantic canon has evolved
from the social capital authors have accumulated during their lifetime from their media
image, popularity among readers, translations into major languages, and publicity in
metropolises. Compared to Mickiewicz, Preeren did not work in any European capital, his
contacts with European intellectuals and artists were scarce. In comparison with Byron, the
superstar, Preeren lacked charisma and could not influence anybody outside Slovenia.
Preerens chances for European reputation were nonexistent, not only due to his class
deprivation (compared to the most prominent European Romantics, mainly nobles and
bourgeois), but even more so because of his involvement in Slovenian literary life, whose
position in the international competition was that of a marginal newcomer.
From 1877 to 1970, however, translations of Preerens poems were listed in 33
supranational anthologies, including Selwers Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature,
published 1918 in London (Bulovec 1975: 13336). From 1865 to 1969, 31 books of
Preerens poetry were printed in ten foreign languages. Nevertheless, with the exception of
six German, two British, two Russian, and one Chinese and the Bengali translation, the target
languages are of lesser diffusion, usually South Slavic. Moreover, translated books were
mostly published in Slovenia or in the countries to which Slovenes once belonged. Typically,
the leading target language until the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was German,
whereas during the existence of Yugoslav states, it was Croatian or Serbian. The first book of
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World Literature, Translation, Small Literature

Bristol, 9 Sept 2015

Preeren to be translated into English was published only in 1954 in Oxford, but even here
with the help of Slovenian intermediaries. The UNESCO translation index for the period
19792007 surprisingly shows that Preeren belongs to romantics still alive in foreign
languages. Granted, he cannot compete with thousands of Pushkins and Hugos, neither with
hundreds of Byrons, but he is translated more often than many other European romantics:
he records 28 individual books of translations, and three publications in transnational
anthologies.
From the map of Preerens publication places, we can decipher a meaningful spatial
pattern. Forming an arrow directed to the West, translations of Preeren concentrate in the
arms of the Slavic world, while almost disappearing west of Munich. Slovenian publishers
printed as many as 40 percent of them, largely to celebrate Preerens Jubilee Year of 2000.
The title of the recent collection of translations, Preerens way into the world, tells us that
the old nineteenth-century strategy is still at work to seek the recognition of the central
cultural powers. Preeren continues to travel the world primarily with the support of his
country.

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