A Cold War Literary Mystery: Agents, Manipulation and Patterns of Ideology in the Translated Oeuvre of Theun de Vries

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper deals with how ideological factors influence the transfer of literature through translation between what translation sociology calls ‘peripheral languages’. The international dissemination of the literary oeuvre of the Dutch communist writer Theun de Vries (1907–2005) in translation stands in the centre of this investigation, which focuses on three questions: 1.) How the transfer of literary products from a peripheral language into both peripheral and central languages takes place, and what specific dynamics can be shown to shape these translation flows. 2.) How ideology plays a role in shaping translation flows. 3.) How methodological tools from translation sociology can and cannot be used to investigate literary export from peripheral literatures. Through the case study of the translation of De Vries’ novel Hoogverraad [High Treason] (1950) into Hungarian the details and dynamics of Cold War cultural transfer and literary manipulation are analysed.