TRANSLATING SCANDINAVIA

SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE IN ITALIAN AND GERMAN TRANSLATION 1918-1945

ABSTRACTS

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ROME 20-21 OCTOBER 2016

 

Ingrid Basso, Catholic University of Milan Søren Kierkegaard in the Italian anti-Fascist Propaganda of the 1930s The paper I would like to present focuses on the first Italian translation (from the German edition by Christoph Schrempf, 1909) of Søren Kierkegaard’s polemical newspaper Øjeblikket (1855) by the Italian rationalist philosopher and politician from Milan, Antonio Banfi (1886-1957). The choice of translating the still controversial writing Øjeblikket – L’ora Atti d’accusa al cristianesimo del Regno di Danimarca (Editrice Doxa, Milano-Roma 1931) is pretty strange, since in Italy until 1914 Kierkegaard was considered more as a writer, a man of letters, than a philosopher. Namely, as Nicola Abbagnano wrote in 1950, «in Italy the first manifestations of interest for Kierkegaard had a literary character and they arose from the desire to understand the work of some foreign artists, particularly Ibsen» (Kierkegaard in Italy, in «Meddelelser fra Søren Kierkegaard Selskabet», 1950, 2, nn. 3-4, p. 49). The very first Kierkegaard’s work translated into Italian was indeed a fragmentary version of Enten-Eller in 1907 – the short writing Den Ulykkeligste, in the Florentine review «Leonardo», translated by the Danish Knud Ferlov (1881-1977), a friend of Giovanni Papini, director of «Leonardo»: this produced a misunderstanding in the interpretation of the Dane’s thought. This work was considered only from a literary point of view that gave shape to the origin of Kierkegaard’s studies in Italy. Immediately after Den Ulykkeligste, appeared actually writings like Forførerens Dagbog, In vino veritas, Diapsalmata in 1910, Ægteskabets æsthetiske Gyldighed in 1912 and in 1913 De umiddelbare erotiske Stadier eller det Musicalsk-Erotiske, all “aesthetical” writings. Then, from 1914 to the beginning of the 1930s there is in Italy a kind of stagnation in Kierkegaardian studies and suddenly, in 1931, the philosopher Antonio Banfi translates Øjeblikket. There are various interpretations about the Italian interest in Kierkegaard’s polemics in these years, but almost all of them trace this interest back to the Italian philosophical and political situation of the 1930s. The philosopher Eugenio Garin (Kierkegaard in Italia, «Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia», 1973, 28, pp. 454-455) speaks openly about the translation of Kierkegaard’s newspaper as a kind of comment on the agreement between Mussolini and the pope Pio XI ratified by the Patti Lateranensi in 1929, and he mentions the name of the journalist, theologian and philosopher Giuseppe Gangale (1898-1978), who had recently converted to Protestantism. He wrote indeed the first preface to Banfi’s translation and collaborated with him on several publishing initiatives. Gangale, member of the Baptist Church and since 1922 the leading force of the weekly «Conscientia», had assumed a more and more anti-Fascist position and during his collaboration with «Conscientia», Banfi also wrote about Kierkegaard in some articles of 1926. Øjeblikket will be in Italy the only work of Kierkegaard that has been translated in full and that will have a second and a third edition. The image of Kierkegaard derived from this work was that of a revolutionary and individualist spirit, who attacks the institution of the Church. Ingrid Basso is fixed term research assistant in Theoretical Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Milano, Italy. She also teaches Philosophy of Communication for the Master degree program in Digital Asset and Media Management (G.E.C.O.) at the Catholic University of Brescia, Italy. Her main research interests lie in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard connected with the decline of the German Idealism. She has been PhD research fellow at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen and at the Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library of the St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota - USA. Besides several articles in English and Italian, she is the author of the monographs: Kierkegaard uditore di Schelling (Mimesis, Milano 2008), Søren Kierkegaard e la metafisica di Aristotele (AlboVersorio, Milano 2013) and published the Italian critical edition of Kierkegaard’s notes from F.W.J. Schelling’s course on Philosophy of Revelation in Berlin 1841-1842

 

(Bompiani, Milano 2008). She also collaborates with several Italian publishing houses as translator from Danish and Norwegian literature.

Bruno Berni, Italian Institute of Germanic Studies «Really an Ultima Thule»: Giuseppe Gabetti and Scandinavian Studies in Italy In April 1932, the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies was opened with Giuseppe Gabetti (1886-1948) as its director. Gabetti was a professor of German literature in Rome and the choice seemed almost inevitable, but unique was the strategy to expand the activities beyond Germany: in his short speech Gabetti makes specific references to northern cultures and in the first issue of the magazine «Studi Germanici», in 1935, the program is justified by the fact that «the interest in German culture has already a long tradition in Italy», but «of course things are worse with regard to the other peoples of the North, made even more distant by the limited knowledge we have of their languages [...] If we exclude, [...] Ibsen’s and Björnson’s plays and – a little of − Strindberg, and some works of fiction − Jacobsen and Lagerlöf − all the rest is really an Ultima Thule». Gabetti’s awareness from the beginning − the task of working with Nordic literature − is unique among professors in German literature of his generation and also in the later ones. But taking a look at his production, we can see that in the mid-twenties he began working with Jens Peter Jacobsen and other Northern authors in essays and translations. For more than a decade, he stopped in fact writing on German authors and quickly translated all Jacobsen’s works and published two essays on Gustaf Fröding. Indeed throughout Gabetti’s life the only translations he made were those of Jacobsen. From 1926 until his death in 1948, we find few contributions on German literature, many projects on the Nordic literatures. Gabetti had the intention to mediate the little known and very fascinating Nordic literatures. His work with Nordic literatures, even before they became an academic subject in Italy, was a long and intense mediation activity. Bruno Berni (1959) is a research manager at Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, has published essays on Danish literature and translated a large number of classic and modern writers, fiction as well as poetry, such as Ludvig Holberg, Hans Christian Andersen, Karen Blixen, Peter Høeg, Inger Christensen, Henrik Nordbrandt, Morten Søndergaard. For his translations he was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2004, the Danish Translation Award in 2009 and the Italian Translation Award in 2013.

Massimo Ciaravolo, University of Florence The First Edition of August Strindberg’s Chamber Plays in Italian (1944): Relay Translation and Cultural Reconstruction after Fascism The first Italian edition of the major Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s chamber plays (1907) came out in 1944, thanks to the efforts of the new and short-lived publishing house Rosa e Ballo, which operated in Milan while the city was still devastated by World War II. The translator and introducer of this fundamental contribution to Modernism was the Germanist Alessandro Pellegrini. He translated Strindberg from Emil Schering’s German standard edition of Strindberg’s Werke. Deutsche gesamte Ausgabe. In addition, the introductions Pellegrini wrote in each of the five booklets (the four chamber plays and the play Easter) were rewritten to become, always in 1944, the first Italian monograph about Strindberg:  

Il poeta del nichilismo. In my paper I would like first of all to highlight the importance of Strindberg’s and Schering’s collaboration with reference to the Swedish writer’s clearly transnational agenda. When Strindberg became, through Schering, part of the German literary and dramatic canon at the beginning of the twentieth century, more of his works, especially his late and more experimental plays, could reach Italy. Furthermore, I would like to give evidence that Pellegrini’s translation is based on Schering’s German translation, using Strindberg’s first chamber play, Storm (Oväder, Wetterleuchten, Lampi) as an example. Finally, I would like to focus on Pellegrini’s relevant work of interpretation in the paratext, by which Strindberg’s radical bourgeois pessimism can explain the present condition of mankind. Massimo Ciaravolo is associate professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature at the University of Florence. He has published books on Hjalmar Söderberg as a literary critic (1994) and on the reception of the flâneur among the Finland-Swedish writers at the beginning of the 20th century (2000); he has also written on this generation of writers in Finlands svenska litteratur (2000, new edition 2014). He has co-edited the anthologies L’uso della storia nelle letterature nordiche. Le lingue nordiche fra storia e attualità (2011), Forms of Autobiographical Narrations in Scandinavian Literature (2015), and edited Strindberg across Borders (2016). He has published several scholarly articles on major Scandinavian writers such as Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Herman Bang, Hjalmar Söderberg, Knut Hamsun, Sigbjørn Obstfelder, Edith Södergran and Runar Schild, and on their representation of the experience of modernity at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. He has also written on the Swedish literature of the Holocaust (Cordelia Edvardson and Annika Thor). He translates Scandinavian literature into Italian.

Sara Culeddu, University of Florence Giacomo Prampolini, Translator of Scandinavian Literature and his Storia Universale della Letteratura My proposal for the International Conference «Translating Scandinavia» concerns the writer and intellectual Giacomo Prampolini, who, starting in the Twenties, was a multi-faceted figure in the Italian publishing milieu, both as a translator and a mediator. He was a very active publishing consultant working especially with foreign literature for many publishing houses (in particular Mondadori during the Thirties), and he appears to have translated from about sixty different languages. My presentation is going to explore his relationship with Scandinavian languages and literatures, and it aims at first to present a short prosopographical profile of the intellectual, then to elaborate on some specific issues regarding his main work, the Storia Universale della Letteratura (UTET 1932-1938, 5 volumes. New editions followed after the war). I would like to propose the following: 1) some considerations about the work, both in terms of “world literature” and as an anthology. Due to its anthological nature, the work has to be considered as a mode of “rewriting” that shows those mechanisms of selection (exclusion and inclusion), which contribute to the creation of a canon and reflect a specific poetic and ideology; 2) a discussion about the idea of authorship in a work which, although appearing personal and autonomous, deeply reveals a multiplicity of actors and voices; 3) a reflection on the translational practice, taking into account the translator’s plurilingual competence as well as the possibility of indirect translations, focusing on a selection of translated Swedish text in prose and verse (i.e. Lagerkvist, Almqvist, Atterbom, Bellman, Fröding, Geijer, von Heidenstam, Karlfeldt, Ossiannilsson, Stagnelius). Giacomo Prampolini is a key actor in the reception of Scandinavian literature in Italy, but very few scholars have studied him, so my work will be mainly based on the consultation of letters and other supporting material conserved by his son, prof. Gaetano Prampolini, and not yet organised in an archive.

 

Sara Culeddu is Temporary Researcher in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Florence and at the Italian Institute of Germanic Studies in Rome. She has been Temporary Researcher in Comparative Literature and Language Studies at the University of Trento (2012-2013), where she earned a PhD in Comparative Literature and Language Studies in 2011. Since 2008 to present she has been adjunct professor in Scandinavian Literature, Contemporary Scandinavian Literature and Theory and Technique of Scandinavian Translation at the University of Milan. In the same years she has also been working as literary translator from Norwegian, Swedish and Danish and she published academic articles in the field of Nordic and Comparative Literature. Her other research interests include Philosophy, Anthropology and Translation Studies. Through Translation Studies, and the actual work as translator, she has become increasingly engaged in the complex of problems of translated literature, circulation and sociology of literature.

Davide Finco, University of Genoa Scandinavian Poetry as “World Poetry”: the Anthology Poeti del mondo (1939) by Massimo Spiritini Literary works by foreign authors always acquire a double meaning for readers (and scholars): not only do they witness the single authors’ contribution to literature, but also – implicitly – the impact of the foreign culture to the overall literary canon, which can be seen as a medium to better understand this culture. Translated literary works can therefore help shape the image of a foreign culture and for the common reader they are often a unique opportunity to come in contact with it; this is particularly true when said culture is not so well known, as is the case of Scandinavia for the Italian public in the first half of the 20th century. Anthologies may offer the chance of a comparative reading of authors and literatures, despite the obvious disadvantage of an arbitrary selection of the texts in lieu of a complete work. Scandinavian poetry was hardly translated into Italian in the period 1870s-1940s: the first attempts were made by the numismatic Solone Ambrosoli with small collections of mainly Swedish poets (1879-1882), but for a long time very little was to be found in Italy. On the contrary, with over twenty authors from Denmark, Sweden or Norway, the anthology edited by Massimo Spiritini for Garzanti in 1939 was the most extensive collection of Scandinavian poems translated into Italian before 1958. Furthermore, it was the only one presenting a number of authors from the three countries before the 1960s and the first one to place Scandinavian texts beside European ones. In my paper, I intend to consider these texts from different perspectives, e.g.: what image of Scandinavia they convey; what relevance the authors have in comparison with Scandinavian literature translated in Italy until then (particularly during the 1930s); what relationship can be established between Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian texts in the anthology; finally, how good and effective the translations can be valued. Davide Finco has been (since 2011) Assistant Professor in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Genoa, where he has taught courses in Scandinavian culture and literature at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures. He obtained a degree (2005) in German literature with a study on Jens Peter Jacobsen’s influence on Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910). His doctoral thesis (2010) dealt with children’s literature between Scandinavia and Italy in the 20th century. He published a monograph on the Swedish socialist children’s writer Sven Wernström (2010) and, among others, essays on Rilke’s relationship with Scandinavian literature (2009; 2010; 2016), August Strindberg’s Sagor (2013); Lennart Hellsing and Gianni Rodari (2014); Tove Jansson (2015); Emil Bønnelycke and the avant-garde in Denmark (2015). He is currently working on the representation of society – particularly urban spaces – in Scandinavian literature from 1870 to 1930. His research interests concern literature and society, history, children’s literature, modern Scandinavian prose and the relationship between modern German and Scandinavian writers.  

Steen Bo Frandsen, University of Southern Denmark After the Great War: German-Nordic Relations Between Tradition and a New Beginning Labelled as “interwar” years the 1920s and 1930s are seldom described and interpreted on their own premises. The protagonists of those years are not admitted an open end, but they are judged in the light of what happened later. This also goes for developments like the relations between Denmark, the Scandinavian countries and Germany. In this paper especially the 1920s are discussed as a period between continuity and a new beginning, traditionalism and modernism, nationalism and internationalism. It will focus on the overall climate in cultural relations. The point of departure will be the fact that politicians and diplomats would pay much more attention to the role of cultural activities in the foreign relations after the World War than they had ever done before. Denmark and the Scandinavian countries did not participate in the Great War. Consequently they did not share this terrible experience with most other Europeans. This absence had strong effects upon the relations. The defeat of the apparently invinsible German Empire opened up new possibilities in the relationship between the Germans and their Nordic neighbours. This led to a number of initiatives and contacts that show how not only national ideologies but also political conviction and milieu influenced the relations. Being encircled by their enemies many Germans considered the Nordic countries to be the only way out. Ideas of a common Nordic ground saw a revival. At the same time however the Germans were once again frustrated to discover that their neighbours were not that interested in coming closer. They realised that their relatives were more and more attracted from British and French culture. Steen Bo Frandsen is Professor and Head of the Centre of Border Region Studies at the Department of Political Science of the University of Southern Denmark. His main research interests lie in 19th and 20th century regional history (Danish, German and Italian), in relations between Denmark and Germany, and he has published books and articles on fascist planning (Agro Pontino). Currently he is writing a monograph about Danish-German relations.

Marlene Hastenplug, Goethe University Frankfurt Mathilde Mann (1859-1925): Mediating Literature. Translating as a Living In my paper I want to focus on the translator Mathilde Mann (1859-1925) and examine her role as a mediator of literature between Scandinavia and Germany. Mathilde Mann has received rather scant attention in Scandinavian studies hitherto, despite her extensive work as a translator of Scandinavian literature and crucial role as a literary agent of her time: She translated more than 500 literary works from Danish to German. Among the authors are some of the most important of the era such as Jens Peter Jacobsen, Karin Michaëlis, Martin Andersen Nexø and the two Nobel-Price winners Henrik Pontoppidan and Johannes V. Jensen, to name only a few of them. In addition she translated Swedish and Norwegian heavyweights such as Bjørnson, Hamsun and Strindberg, but she also translated a wide range of popular and late-romantic books, in order to be able to make a living. She worked with a large number of publishers and had good contacts in both Denmark and Germany. However, after 1914 Mathilde Mann translated mainly older works of already well-known authors. The translation of Martin Andersen Nexø’s Pelle the Conqueror (1920) was an exception and yet very successful. The last years of her life, 1921-24, she worked as a Danish lecturer at the University of Rostock and tried to make money with this job. However,  

she did not succeed with that, but 1924 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in Rostock as a compensation of the lack of salary. The story of Mathilde Mann’s life reflects the problems of the period: she being a divorced, independent woman, who tried to make a living of her own. In my paper I will attempt to examine her role as a mediator of literature between Scandinavia and Germany with particular attention to the circumstances of her work from a gender point of view. Marlene Hastenplug is a Danish lecturer at the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main and teaches Danish language and literature on both the BA and Master level. She is the author of the textbook Dänisch mit System. Das praktische Lehrbuch (Langenscheidt: Munich 2011) which is soon being published in a Second Edition. Her teaching includes numerous cooperative and externally financed projects, including a German translation of the website www.henrikpontoppidan.dk and an anthology of contemporary Danish poetry in German. She has organized several workshops and conferences at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main, including four translation workshops and conferences on contemporary Danish literature and Scandinavian identity. Her research interest includes the cultural exchange between Denmark and Germany in a historical context.

Karin Hoff, University of Göttingen Avantgarde, neo-Romanticism and Ideology: Translations of Swedish and Norse Literature Between 1918 and 1933 In the late 19th and early 20th century Scandinavian literature was popular all over Europe: Especially Ibsen’s and Strindberg’s dramas were known as examples of typical modern Scandinavian theatre, discussing social problems such as marriage, gender, women’s liberation, the church’s influence on modern society as well as economic questions. Modern Breakthrough literature became successful all over Europe – in Germany Ibsen and Strindberg were regarded nearly as Germans authors – and young German playwrights like Arno Holz and Johannes Schlaf published their first dramas under the pseudonym “Bjarne P. Holmsen” hoping to be more successful with the signature as a Scandinavian author. This history of international success with a tremendous number of translations and theatre performances changed significantly after World War I. German translations of Swedish and Norwegian during the World Wars seem to concentrate on a limited array of texts other than social realistic novels and dramas. Now the image of Scandinavia transported via literature focusses on neo-Romantic novels. Nature, landscape, traditional values, and a nearly anti-urbanic and anti-modernist attitude seem to dominate this kind of literature which becomes more and more popular particularly in Germany. This kind of romantic renaissance indicate an ideological change as well. Authors like Selma Lagerlöf, Sigrid Undset, and Knut Hamsun take over the place of e.g. Henrik Ibsen. On the other hand it is obviously that Strindberg’s late modernist plays and the aesthetics of modernist authors such as Pär Lagerkvist and Edith Södergran are no less important in Germany. Many of these authors represent a completely different political position than the more conservative neo-Romantic writers. In my paper I would like to go into these very different streams of Scandinavian literature in German translations. The leading questions will be: Which image of Scandinavian culture transports via literary translation in the 1920s and 1930s? And which kind of ideological implications dominate the discourses of literature? Karin Hoff, Studium der Germanistik, Skandinavistik und Geschichte in Bonn und Växjö/Schweden. 1993 Promotion an der Universität Bonn, 2000 Habilitation an der Universität Kiel mit einer Arbeit über Die Entdeckung der Zwischenräume. Literarische Projekte der Spätaufklärung zwischen Skandinavien und Deutschland (Göttingen, 2003), seit 2007 Professorin am Skandinavischen Seminar der Universität Göttingen. Forschungsschwerpunkte und  

Publikationen zu: Skand. Literaturen vom 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert, Deutsch-skandinavischer Kulturkontakt, Drama und Theater.

Angela Iuliano, University of Naples L’Orientale Nordic Soundscapes and Italian Fantasies: Riccardo Zandonai Rewrites Selma Lagerlöf Italian translations of Selma Lagerlöf’s novels date back to the 1910s, after Lagerlöf had been awarded the Nobel Prize. Critics and scholars praised her works, but almost exclusively focused on the atmosphere they evoke. For a long time, in fact, Lagerlöf’s opus has been described according to critical paradigms that recall those of the ‘orientalism’ later theorized by the US scholar Edward Said: they were celebrated, indeed, for producing a static, conventional or even idealized image of Northern Europe. Social aspects in Lagerlöf’s works, on the contrary, were often underestimated by Italian critics. This paper moves from the reception and translation of Lagerlöf’s works in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s, with special regard to Italian cultural and political climate, and focuses on Italian musician Riccardo Zandonai’s I cavalieri di Ekebu, a rewriting of Gösta Berlings saga. Performed for the first time in 1925, I cavalieri di Ekebu met with great success by the audience in Milan and Rome. In this paper I want to focus on Nordic exoticism as an essential trait in Zandonai’s process of rewriting. The atmosphere evoked in the opera is reminiscent of a mythicized and romanticized medieval Nordic past, though the plot is, in fact, set in the 1820s. Music is also noteworthy, since Zandonai made use of Nordic folk-songs. I wish to show, first of all, that Zandonai’s opera features a process of cultural adaptation, making use of stereotypes commonly (and often superficially) associated with Swedish and Scandinavian culture to meet the Italian audience’s expectations. I thus wish to investigate the reasons why, more broadly speaking, Northern Europe was perceived at the time as still surrounded with an aura of conventional romanticism. Angela Iuliano graduated in Swedish Language and Literature at L’Orientale University of Naples. She obtained a PhD in Germanic Philology and Linguistics with a thesis on Erikskrönikan’s prologues at the University of Siena/Arezzo. She is presently a post-doctoral Research Fellow in Swedish Language. Since 2010 she has held a position as Swedish Language Adjunct Professor at L’Orientale University of Naples.

Henrik Johnsson, University of Aarhus Translating Catholicism: Johannes Jørgensen in Italy The Danish author Johannes Jørgensen (1866–1956) presents an interesting case study of how an author’s religious beliefs can come to influence the translation of his works. Having converted to Catholicism in 1896, Jørgensen thereafter dedicated the majority of his oeuvre to subject matter relating to the history and theology of the Catholic church. He relocated to Italy in 1915, spending most of his remaining years in Assisi. Translations of his biographies of Francis of Assisi (1907), Catherine of Siena (1915), and Bridget of Sweden (1941-43) helped ensure his popularity among the Italian reading public, as did editions of his travel writings, autobiography, and poetry. This paper will examine the publication history of Italian translations of Jørgensen’s works, focusing on translations appearing during the height of his popularity in the 1920s. The paper investigates the factors involved in translating Jørgensen, such as the choice of works, translators, and publishing houses. Furthermore, the paper will seek to explain the apparent  

cessation of editions of Jørgensen’s works during the period 1931–1947, and outline the post-war resurgence of interest in his oeuvre. Henrik Johnsson is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. He received his doctoral degree from Stockholm University in 2009. His second monograph, The Infinite Coherence. August Strindberg’s Occult Science, was published in 2015. His research interests revolve around the intersection of esotericism and Modernism, with an emphasis on Scandinavian Modernist literature.

Outi Paloposki, University of Turku Needles, Haystacks and the Problem of Locating Translations Sifting through bibliographical data one comes across a lot of ‘unwanted’ information: often there is very little on the actual topic of our choice and very much on something completely different. Translations, in the first place, are often unmarked in bibliographies and they can only be found through tricky searches. Take one step further: retranslations are even harder to find; they are usually not categorized as such, and can only be found once you know which retranslation to look for (but not if you just want to scan the files and see what has been retranslated). Researchers are thus drawn into painstakingly slow bibliographical work, or they have to be satisfied with what they get through other sources. Both are valid options and have produced a lot of useful information. But maybe we could, just for once, turn the issue upside down? Why would a needle be in a haystack if the hay did not have something to do with it? In my presentation, I will look at some of the concrete issues around translations: the focus on originality and ageing that constantly surrounds retranslations on one hand; and the position and problematic of non-retranslations (translations of works that have only been translated once into a language). By looking at the hay and not the needle I am hoping that it might be possible to find out why the needle got there in the first place. Outi Paloposki is professor of English at the University of Turku, Department of Languages and Translation Studies. Her research interests include retranslations, non-fiction translation, translators’ agency, translating and writing practices, and the linguistic profiles and role of translations in Finland. She was one of the editors of the two-volume history of literary translation into Finnish (Suomennoskirjallisuuden historia I–II), published by the Finnish Literature Society in 2007, and of its companion volume, history of non-fiction translation into Finnish (Suomennetun tietokirjallisuuden historia, 2013). Methodology in Translation Studies, especially historical studies, figures as one of her teaching priorities.

Clemens Räthel, Humboldt University of Berlin “Could you change the fifth act?” Henri Nathansen’s (Un-)Successful Continental Reception In a letter to Henri Nathansen, dated from December 1915, the director of the renowned Thalia-Theater in Hamburg signals his interest in staging the author’s play Dr. Wahl. The play’s protagonist is modelled after the well-known Danish intellectual Georg Brandes. Thus, the German theatre principal finds the drama to be entertaining and interesting for his audience, fitting perfectly into the theatre’s repertoire – with the exception of the fifth act: Unnecessary, unintelligible, uninteresting and, above all, mentioning  

the war! As Nathansen refuses any changes the play ends up in the (German) drawer. Starting from this example my paper aims to investigate Nathansen’s complex oeuvre and his interactions with Germany: While some of his plays get staged, his novels are more or less ignored abroad. I will focus on the aspect of in-between-ness of his works and in his oeuvre. I want to argue that Nathansen’s intermediate position as playwright, theatre director, biographer, novelist etc. mirrors and interacts with the (im-)possibilities of translation and/or adaptation. Clemens Räthel finished his PhD at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2014 with a work on Jewish stage characters in Denmark, Sweden and Norway during the 18th and 19th centuries, outlining the interactions between written drama, actual performances and the political as well as social situations of Jews in Scandinavia (Clemens Räthel: Wie viel Bart darf sein? Jüdische Figuren im skandinavischen Theater. Tübingen: Francke 2016). Since 2015 he has been working as a post-docs at the Department for Northern European studies (Nordeuropa-Institut) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin with a focus on Scandinavian literature and theatre of the 20th and 21st century. In addition to his academic work Clemens Räthel is also active as a producer and director for a number of theatres and festivals (Salzburg Festival, Burgtheater Wien, Berliner Ensemble, Ruhrtriennale etc.) and has worked with directors such as Peter Zadek, Andrea Breth and Claus Peymann.

Grethe Rostbøll, writer and former minister Karen Blixen and Germany Karen Blixen’s relationship with Nazi Germany was a rather controversial issue both before and after the Second World War. The question has repeatedly been posed if the writer was sympathetic to the Nazi regime. In this paper I will explore Blixen’s complex and many-faceted relationships with Germany, from her sojourn in the country in Spring 1940 (immediately preceding the German occupation of Denmark) and her correspondence with the German-Swedish literary agent Lena Gedin to the translations of her works into German from the late 1930s to the early 1940s. As for Blixen’s personal idea of Nazism, it is my analysis that she certainly had no positive opinion of the Nazi regime. Grethe F. Rostbøll is a writer and has been active in politics for many years. She holds an MA degree in Comparative Literature and has worked as a journalist and commentator. She is the author of several books about Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen and her works, including Længslens vingeslag: analyser af Karen Blixens fortællinger (1995), Mod er svaret: Karen Blixens udgivelser i USA og England (2005) and Karen Blixen og Sverige (2011).

Christopher Rundle, University of Bologna & University of Manchester The Threat of Translation: Translation in Fascist Italy The aim of this paper is to look in detail at the ways in which translation became an ideological and political issue in Fascist Italy, particularly in the 1930s. I shall also show how the attitudes of the regime itself evolved over the decade from an initial indifference to concerted and explicit attempts to curb the number of translations being published in Italy. Newly available international statistics on translation made it easy in the 1930s to compare the “performance” of different countries – and the Italian cultural and political establishment was disappointed to discover that Italy published more translations than any other country in the world (closely followed by Germany and France); and also that it was strikingly  

unsuccessful in exporting its own literature abroad. There was a strong reaction against this perceived “invasion of translations” on the part of the Authors and Writers Union, led by the Futurist poet F. T. Marinetti, who accused the Italian publishers, represented by the Publishers Federation, of unpatriotically favouring their private economic interests over the cultural and political interests of the nation. The commercial success of translated popular fiction, in particular, came to be perceived as a threat by many in the Italian cultural establishment and a series of campaigns were launched to try and restrict their flow into the Italian market. The initially detached attitude of the regime towards the issue of translations changed after the establishment of the Italian Empire in East Africa and the introduction of official racism. I will show how it gradually sought to restrict what had become a politically embarrassing symptom of its failure both to establish a recognizably fascist culture at home and to expand the impact of Italian literature abroad: a betrayal of Italy’s “eternal role as disseminator rather than receiver”. I will also show how there was a clear evolution in its rhetoric concerning translation: seen first within a geopolitical paradigm as a form of cultural invasion, and then within a racist paradigm as a form of cultural pollution or disease. Christopher Rundle is a tenured researcher in Translation Studies at the Department of Interpreting and Translation of the University of Bologna, Italy. He is also Honorary Research Fellow in Translation and Italian Studies at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures of the University of Manchester, UK. His main research interests lie in the history of translation, in particular translation and fascism. He is the author of the monograph Publishing Translations in Fascist Italy (Peter Lang, 2010), and co-editor with Kate Sturge of the volume Translation Under Fascism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). He is also the editor of the recent Special Issue of The Translator (Vol. 20 No.1, 2014) on Theories and Methodologies of Translation History. He is the coordinating editor of the online translation studies journal inTRAlinea (www.intralinea.org).

Delfina Sessa, University of Turku Translating Finnish Literature in Fascist Italy. A Case Study: Aino Kallas. The study of translated texts as socio-cultural products and of translating as cross-cultural communication has provided both a new viewpoint to the history of translation and a standpoint for analysis. The aim of my research is to contribute to the study of the development of translation under Fascism by focusing on a specific area of study, the translation of Finnish literature into Italian, and on a specific translation performance herein. The textual corpus of the research is the trilogy Surmaava Eros (Eros the slayer), written by the Finnish Aino Kallas between 1923 and 1928, composed of the novels Barbara von Tiesenhusen, Reigin pappi (The Pastor of Reigi, 1926) and Sudenmorsian (The Wolf’s Bride, 1928) and published in Italy respectively in 1934 (La sposa del lupo and Barbara von Tiesenhusen) and in 1941 (Il pastore di Reigi). Since the process of cultural exchange giving way to translations takes place between the two cultures involved as well as inside the receiving culture, the analysis includes extra-textual sources, with a view to investigate the role of the “patron” Paolo Emilio Pavolini and the intervention of the translator, Paola Faggioli. In order to establish whether the Italian translator translated the text directly from Finnish, I examine the translation mistakes and the idiosyncrasies of the translated text and make a comparison with the English and the German translations. The comparison singles out the peculiar features of the Italian text which give an insight into the image of the foreign culture and literature the translated text intended to convey. Owing to the specific features of the source texts and, at the same time, to the development of the Italian language and textuality, the question of the language of the translation, namely the choices related to style, is highly relevant.  

Delfina Sessa is a PhD student at the University of Turku, Finland. The topic of her dissertation is the translation of Finnish Literature in Italy under Fascism, and, in particular, the translation of a trilogy written by the Finnish Aino Kallas. Delfina has worked as a literary translator from Finnish into Italian for fifteen years. The works she has translated range from adult to children and YA literature as well as scientific works. She has also been a sworn translator from Finnish into Italian, with specialization in legal texts, since 1999, as approved by the Finnish Ministry of Education. She currently works on a freelance basis mainly for publishers, and occasionally as a legal translator for translation agencies. Her work experience includes teaching translation courses from Finnish into Italian as well as Italian as a foreign language at the University of Turku for several years. She has also taught foreign languages in Italian schools – which she is still engaged in – and worked as a translator at the European Parliament in Luxemburg.

Anna Wegener, Danish Academy in Rome Mondadori as a Publisher of Scandinavian Literature The Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation holds the extremely rich archive of the Mondadori publishing company. Since it was first catalogized and made available to scholars in the mid-1990s, this archival material has been the object of a number of studies concerned with the publication of translations in fascist Italy (e.g. Albonetti 1994, Cembali 2006, Rundle 2010). In this paper, I will take a closer look at Mondadori as a publisher of Scandinavian literature. In the period from 1930 to 1945 Mondadori issued twenty-five books by Scandinavian authors, most of them novels. However, over the years many more Scandinavian novels were evaluated for publication at the publishing house without ever being translated into Italian. These works were scrutinized in the original language or in German or French translation and eventually rejected. I explore Mondadori’s process for filtering Scandinavian literature, basing my inquiry on the approximately one hundred reader’s reports pertaining to Scandinavian literature that I have so far located in the archive. Assuming that the selection process is part of the translation process, I will identify the persons who proposed the books to the publishing house, the identity and linguistic competences of the readers and the image of Scandinavia and Scandinavian literature they held. Finally, I will provide some examples of how Italy’s entrance into the war impinged on the publisher’s selection of Scandinavian literature. Anna Wegener holds a PhD in Translation Studies from University of Copenhagen (2014) and is Assistant Director of the Danish Academy in Rome. She has co-authored a Danish grammar for Italian Speakers (Milan 2013), edited a bilingual volume (Italian and Danish) on the myth of Orpheus (2013) and co-edited two volumes (Authorial and Editorial Voices in Translation, with Hanne Jansen) on the various agents involved in the translation process (Montréal 2013).

The conference is supported by the Carlsberg Foundation.