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Literary Translation and Ideology: The Example of Translations from German into Slovak and from Slovak into German during the Slovak State (1939-1945)

The dissertation project is devoted to the research of literary translation in the period of the Slovak State. Its starting point is to problematize the still widespread belief in “leaky totalitarianism” (Vladimír Clementis), according to which pluralism and freedom of aesthetic expression prevailed to a large extent in the field of culture during those years, as opposed to politics. As recent literary-translatological research has shown, such a view is misleading because the structure and quantitative growth of literary translations largely corresponded to the state ideology of “Christian nationalism”. The intention of the dissertation project is, on the one hand, to broaden this scope to include the tensions arising from the incompatibility of religious argumentation with the ideology of “national socialism” (whether of the German original or the Slovak modification), which were manifested in the choice of authors, their works, and, last but not least, the reception of the translations themselves in the form of literary criticism. This primary focus is complemented by the reconstruction and interpretation of translations from Slovak into German, whether initiated by the Slovak or the German side. While in the first case it will be an interpretation of identification mechanisms, in the second case it will focus on issues of stereotyping of difference. The project will cover the whole genre spectrum of literature, but the emphasis will be on translations of poetry, especially the works of Rainer Maria Rilke.