Page 187 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 187
The Functions of Socialist Realism: Translation of Genre Fiction in Communist Romania 187
not created by the masses but was formulated in their name by well-edu-
cated and experienced elites” (1992, 9). As recent studies show, “the deci-
sion as to which Soviet authors were canonized was determined not only
by Stalin but also through the popularity of these authors among Soviet
readers and fellow writers” (Safiullina 2012, 559–560), i.e. by what Evge-
ny Dobrenko has called ‘the power-masses’ (1997, 135), a hybrid between
political power and tastes of the reading public. “In sharp contrast,” Nai-
lya Safiullina continues, “in the canonization of foreign authors, political
considerations dominated entirely”.
My thesis is that for the postwar cultural logic, socialist realism itself
was in fact one of the most important managers of global genre literature
and one of the most diverse literary phenomena, in terms of subgenres,
through translation and Soviet production. A fact not very often debat-
ed or, in the Romanian case, totally neglected up until recently, but one
that is crucial for understanding the cultural production in Eastern Eu-
rope during the Cold War.
World Genre Fiction in Romanian Translation during Stalinism
Stalinism’s relationship with world literature has always been difficult to
describe. This is, on the one hand, due to the necessary assumption of a
selection paradox: while annexed cultures are starting to translate litera-
tures of faraway countries with no precedent in their translation process,
such as African, Asian, and South American literatures (Baghiu 2018),
the political agenda limits the possibilities of translation to a very small
number of authors and titles. In 1946, a decree published in Adevărul
vremii [The Truth of Our Time] set the parameters of translated litera-
ture in Romania by presenting an account of world fiction published in
the Soviet Union. The subchapter “Literatura străină în URSS” [Foreign
Literature in the USSR] provided a list of authors officially authorized
by socialist realism. This list restricted a lot the possibilities of transla-
tion, but featured many a foreign writer of French, English, and Amer-
ican literatures, among which were primary Jules Verne, Victor Hugo,
Guy de Maupassant, Emile Zola, Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, Paul
Lafargue, Anatole France, Honoré de Balzac, Prosper Mérimée, Gustave
Flaubert, Jack London, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Seton Thomson,
Charles Roberts, O. Henry, John Steinbeck, James Fenimore Cooper,
Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, Jon-
athan Swift, William Shakespeare, John Galsworthy, Daniel Defoe, Je-
rome K. Jerome, Walter Scott, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson
etc. (Simion et al. 2010–2018 I, 203).
not created by the masses but was formulated in their name by well-edu-
cated and experienced elites” (1992, 9). As recent studies show, “the deci-
sion as to which Soviet authors were canonized was determined not only
by Stalin but also through the popularity of these authors among Soviet
readers and fellow writers” (Safiullina 2012, 559–560), i.e. by what Evge-
ny Dobrenko has called ‘the power-masses’ (1997, 135), a hybrid between
political power and tastes of the reading public. “In sharp contrast,” Nai-
lya Safiullina continues, “in the canonization of foreign authors, political
considerations dominated entirely”.
My thesis is that for the postwar cultural logic, socialist realism itself
was in fact one of the most important managers of global genre literature
and one of the most diverse literary phenomena, in terms of subgenres,
through translation and Soviet production. A fact not very often debat-
ed or, in the Romanian case, totally neglected up until recently, but one
that is crucial for understanding the cultural production in Eastern Eu-
rope during the Cold War.
World Genre Fiction in Romanian Translation during Stalinism
Stalinism’s relationship with world literature has always been difficult to
describe. This is, on the one hand, due to the necessary assumption of a
selection paradox: while annexed cultures are starting to translate litera-
tures of faraway countries with no precedent in their translation process,
such as African, Asian, and South American literatures (Baghiu 2018),
the political agenda limits the possibilities of translation to a very small
number of authors and titles. In 1946, a decree published in Adevărul
vremii [The Truth of Our Time] set the parameters of translated litera-
ture in Romania by presenting an account of world fiction published in
the Soviet Union. The subchapter “Literatura străină în URSS” [Foreign
Literature in the USSR] provided a list of authors officially authorized
by socialist realism. This list restricted a lot the possibilities of transla-
tion, but featured many a foreign writer of French, English, and Amer-
ican literatures, among which were primary Jules Verne, Victor Hugo,
Guy de Maupassant, Emile Zola, Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, Paul
Lafargue, Anatole France, Honoré de Balzac, Prosper Mérimée, Gustave
Flaubert, Jack London, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Seton Thomson,
Charles Roberts, O. Henry, John Steinbeck, James Fenimore Cooper,
Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, Jon-
athan Swift, William Shakespeare, John Galsworthy, Daniel Defoe, Je-
rome K. Jerome, Walter Scott, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson
etc. (Simion et al. 2010–2018 I, 203).
