Page 189 - 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. 189
The Functions of Socialist Realism: Translation of Genre Fiction in Communist Romania 189
Yet observations such as these only arise when certain quantitative
facts are brought to light, for example, the fact that Jules Verne is the
most translated author in Romania during the period of socialist real-
ism. He also happens to be the most translated author in Romania of all
times (Ursa 2018) and the second most translated author in the world
according to Index Translationum. However, during Romanian social-
ist realism, which conventionally started in 1948 and dissolved in 1964,
he was as translated as Maxim Gorki or Feodor Gladkov, the pioneers
and most notable figures of Soviet culture. How did socialist realism han-
dle such diverse authors in its struggle to legitimate the Soviet proletari-
an fiction? Second, how were H.G. Wells or Jack London translated and
what social functions did their novels fulfill? It would be quite unpro-
fessional to believe that they had no impact whatsoever on socialist real-
ism, since theorists like Bourdieu (1993, 64) and later on Andrew Millner
(2011, 396) have convincingly shown the important position genre liter-
ature occupies in the French and, to some extent, also the world literary
field, at once close to autonomy and stretching for heteronomy. The ques-
tion should be further directed toward the presence of unnoticed writ-
ers of genre fiction inside socialist realism: in what ways were the novels
of Ivan Yefremov, Vladimir Obruchev or Alexander Belyaev imported to
Eastern Europe during communism, considering that Darko Suvin ar-
gued that the “Soviet SF of the 1920s had … established a tradition rang-
ing sociologically from facile subliterature to some of the most interesting
works of ‘highbrow’ fiction” (1979, 262)?
To contextualize the topic and illustrate the proportions of the phe-
nomenon, I have put together a graph of all novels translated in Roma-
nia between 1944 and 1989 (Baghiu 2018). Exhaustive as it is, it contains
a large number of genre fiction works, in different unidentified propor-
tions; there is no possible way of identifying exact numbers, since a quan-
titative analysis of the corpus in order to establish a genre pattern has
not been put forward of late. The most important instruments in this
area were only created in 2011 by the Stanford Literary Lab (Moret-
ti 2017) and imply computational analysis. But Soviet literature studies
have always been tempted to rely in their research on the novels deep-
ly entrenched in formulaic socialist realism, neglecting, to use Jordan Y.
Smith’s concept, these translationscapes of Soviet cultures.
Yet observations such as these only arise when certain quantitative
facts are brought to light, for example, the fact that Jules Verne is the
most translated author in Romania during the period of socialist real-
ism. He also happens to be the most translated author in Romania of all
times (Ursa 2018) and the second most translated author in the world
according to Index Translationum. However, during Romanian social-
ist realism, which conventionally started in 1948 and dissolved in 1964,
he was as translated as Maxim Gorki or Feodor Gladkov, the pioneers
and most notable figures of Soviet culture. How did socialist realism han-
dle such diverse authors in its struggle to legitimate the Soviet proletari-
an fiction? Second, how were H.G. Wells or Jack London translated and
what social functions did their novels fulfill? It would be quite unpro-
fessional to believe that they had no impact whatsoever on socialist real-
ism, since theorists like Bourdieu (1993, 64) and later on Andrew Millner
(2011, 396) have convincingly shown the important position genre liter-
ature occupies in the French and, to some extent, also the world literary
field, at once close to autonomy and stretching for heteronomy. The ques-
tion should be further directed toward the presence of unnoticed writ-
ers of genre fiction inside socialist realism: in what ways were the novels
of Ivan Yefremov, Vladimir Obruchev or Alexander Belyaev imported to
Eastern Europe during communism, considering that Darko Suvin ar-
gued that the “Soviet SF of the 1920s had … established a tradition rang-
ing sociologically from facile subliterature to some of the most interesting
works of ‘highbrow’ fiction” (1979, 262)?
To contextualize the topic and illustrate the proportions of the phe-
nomenon, I have put together a graph of all novels translated in Roma-
nia between 1944 and 1989 (Baghiu 2018). Exhaustive as it is, it contains
a large number of genre fiction works, in different unidentified propor-
tions; there is no possible way of identifying exact numbers, since a quan-
titative analysis of the corpus in order to establish a genre pattern has
not been put forward of late. The most important instruments in this
area were only created in 2011 by the Stanford Literary Lab (Moret-
ti 2017) and imply computational analysis. But Soviet literature studies
have always been tempted to rely in their research on the novels deep-
ly entrenched in formulaic socialist realism, neglecting, to use Jordan Y.
Smith’s concept, these translationscapes of Soviet cultures.
