Nike K. Pokorn
University of Ljubljana
The article investigates the mechanisms of self-censorship at work in translations of children’s literature in a Socialist state: the Socialist Republic of Slovenia that used to be a constituent part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The survey of the historical period shows that the Communist-led regime in the first decade after the Second World War systematically focussed on ideological (re)education of children, in particular it attempted to eradicate the influence of Christian religion. This ideological struggle is often clearly visible in retranslations of children’s literature that were created in this period. In this article the translational expression of the Socialist ideological imperative is then analysed by comparing two Slovene translations of the work for juvenile audience Rolf in the Woods by the founder of the Boy Scouts of America, Ernest Thompson Seton: the first translation was created before WWII, the second soon after it.
key words: self-censorship in children’s literature in Socialist states, Scouts, E. T. Seton, Marxist ideology
Rolf en los bosques eslovenos. La obra clásica del escultismo y del movimiento Woodcraft en las traducciones pre-socialista y socialista
El artículo analiza los mecanismos de autocensura en las traducciones de obras literarias infantiles en un estado socialista: la República Socialista de Eslovenia que otrora fue parte constitutiva de la República Socialista Federativa de Yugoslavia. El estudio del periodo histórico muestra que en la primera década después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial el régimen comunista se centraba sistemáticamente en la (re)educación de los niños, sobre todo con la intención de erradicar la influencia de la religión cristiana. Esta lucha ideológica se deja ver a menudo en las nuevas traducciones de las obras literarias infantiles realizadas en aquella época. A continuación este artículo analiza la expresión traslaticia del imperativo ideológico socialista comparando dos traducciones eslovenas de la obra destinada al público juvenil Rolf in the Woods (Rolf en los bosques) de Ernest Thompson Seton, fundador de los Boy Scouts de Estados Unidos.
palabras clave: autocensura en la literatura infantil en los países socialistas, scouts, E. T. Seton, ideología marxista
Introduction
The article is going to focus on the expression of Communist ideology in translations of children’s literature by comparing two Slovene translations of the work for juvenile audience Rolf in the Woods by the founder of the Boy Scouts of America, Ernest Thompson Seton. First of all, it is going to be argued here that the Socialist retranslation of this work for children reflects very clearly the dominant ideological position of the target society, secondly, that in the Socialist Yugoslavia the ideological pressure was mainly directed against the presence and influence of Christian religion, and finally, that translational shifts were the result of self-censorship of the Socialist translator. In order to explain the ideological shifts in translation, some insight into the historical situation and the state publishing policy will be provided. The article is therefore divided into 9 sections. In section one the historical background is given and the ideological focus of the period is defined. Through reference to archival and historical material, section two provides insight into how the Communist Party exercised its ideological intervention. In the next section a brief biography of the author of the analysed work, Ernest Thomson Seton, is provided, which is followed by the presentation of the analysed work, Rolf in the Woods, in section four. Then a differential analysis of the source text and the two Slovene translations are made in sections five and six. Since it is argued here that the creation and the form of a translation is influenced by various and multiple factors (see also Pym, 1998: 144) and that there is no reason why one of those factors should a priori be given a dominant or prevalent role (Brownlie, 2003: 112), not only texts and historical and archival investigation, but also biographical research of the Socialist translator and the influence of patrons, the Yugoslav Socialist Scout Association, were taken into account in sections 7 and 8. In the final section, the causes for the fact that the book has not been retranslated again in the post-Socialist period are suggested.
The article will thus attempt to provide a partial insight into the functioning of the translatorial field in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). SFRY was formed in 1945 and consisted of six republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia). The country officially recognised multilingualism, so that Slovene in Slovenia and Macedonian in Macedonia were given the status of official languages, in addition to Serbo-Croat which was official in all other republics. The Second World War in this region was won by the Communist-led Partisans; consequently, the post-war Yugoslavia became a Socialist state with political and economic power firmly in the hands of Tito’s Communist Party. In the first years after the war, i.e. from 1945 to 1948, Yugoslav Communists closely modelled their manner of political control on that of the Soviet Union. After 1948, when Yugoslav leader Tito quarrelled with Stalin, the state control of cultural life weakened slightly and became less visible, but still remained very effective. However, one thing that the Yugoslav and Soviet Communists had in common did stand the test of time: even after the political break with the USSR, the Yugoslav Communist Party retained the Soviet attitude towards religion. This particular ideological issue and the Communist attempt to eradicate religious sentiment, in particular among the young Yugoslav citizens, is clearly visible in (re)translations of children’s literature. In order to explain the translational shifts in this period, however, a reference to historical events and documentation is essential.
Attitude towards Religion by Yugoslav Communists
Yugoslav Communists and their branches in all republics followed the Soviet denunciation of religion as «prejudice and superstition» and the Christian church as the «ideological weapon of imperialism» (cf. XXI. Congress of the Communist Party of Soviet Union; for more on persecution of religion in the USSR, see Boeckh 2006). The archives of the Communist Party of Slovenia reveal that in the 1960s seminars with the title «Socialist forces, religion and the Church in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia» were organised in various towns across Slovenia, in which religion was defined as an aberration that lingers in «specific historical conditions of the material and spiritual backwardness of the people» (16 October 1967 (AS1 1589, a.u. 215)).
But it was not only a matter of following the Soviet model, the negative attitude of Yugoslav Communists towards any kind of religious sentiment was also philosophical and ideological in its origin, and it had its historical reasons. Ideologically, the Yugoslav Communist rejection of religion found its inspiration in Karl Marx’s introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843), where Marx defines religion as a social phenomenon that stems from and renews itself through the individual’s alienation, which is in turn created by the contradictory world in which that individual functions. According to Marx, «religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself,» «the opium of the people», «the self-consciousness of a person who has not found himself yet or who has lost himself again» (Marx 1843). For Yugoslav Communists, following Marx, religion is something which does not belong to the essence of man: on the contrary, it is a phenomenon that characterised a specific historical period in man’s development, but which does not constitute man’s real nature. Therefore, any progress in human culture and civilization required the repudiation of idealism and religion (cf. 1969 (AS 1589/62, a.u. 193-194)).
And finally, the negative attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church in Slovenia and in other Yugoslav republics was also historical. During the Second World War some prominent members of the Catholic Church supported the occupying forces, in particular in their fight against the partisan forces, and openly worked against the Communists. After the war, some of the clergy (in particular in Croatia) kept close contact with émigré political groups and various terrorist groups that were sent to Yugoslavia (Gabrič, 2005: 854). Despite these sporadic counter-revolutionary activities, after the war the new Yugoslav and Slovene governments allowed the functioning of the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian denominations, and Islam, also because during the war the partisan forces were supported by various Christian parties and Muslims in Bosnia. In addition, a large proportion of the population remained devoted to the Church: for example, in 1953 83% of the Slovene population declared themselves to be Catholic. Despite this nominal openness of the Socialist state to freedom of conscience, the activities of the Church were closely monitored and the Church was treated with suspicion (Gabrič, 2005: 852).
The general population was not aware of the intensity of the ideological struggle, since there was a considerable discrepancy between what was said officially and what went on behind the scenes (Gabrič, 2005: 853, Griesser, Pečar 2005). In the late 1960s the attitude towards the Church changed and the former hostility towards the Roman Catholic Church abated: in 1970 diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Yugoslavia were restored (Režek, 2005: 1052). This is also reflected in the work of different party committees: while the emphasis on the fight against religion was very present in the 1950s and 1960s, the 1970s still saw some seminars within the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Slovenia on the topic of the church and religion (AS 169, a.u. 402; AS 173, a.u. 407; AS 367, a.u. 2542-2546), but the former atheist fervour abated. The archival material reveals that in the early 1980s the Communists called for greater tolerance for religious sentiment (e.g. AS 1589, a.u. 697), and in 1986 the Slovene Catholic archbishop was given the opportunity to appear on public television for the first time since the war (Gabrič, 2005: 1165; for more details on the historical background see Pokorn, 2012).
The mechanisms of ideological intervention
In the early post-war years party members were installed in every important position in society (Drnovšek, 2000: 9). The highest governing body in each republic was the Central Committee of the Communist Party, which had various departments, among them the department for agitation and propaganda (agitprop), which also covered publishing activity and education (ibid.: 11). All pre-war publishing houses were closed down in 1945 and their assets nationalised, and the new publishing houses came under the direct control of the Communist party.2 The agitprop department functioned behind the scenes: officially it did not exist, but everyone was aware of the fact that without agitprop approval a work could not be published (Gabrič, 2005: 903).
When in 1952 the Yugoslav Communist Party changed its name to the League of Communists, agitprop and its sub-committees were abolished, and ideological control was transferred to the newly established Socialist Alliance of the Working People (SAWP), which from 1954 onwards established various committees that monitored publishing activity. The control, however, was not exercised through any kind of officially established censorship body: the ideological pressure was maintained through the management structure of the publishing houses. After 1955, each publishing house in Slovenia was obliged to have a publishing council whose members were selected by the SAWP print committee (Gabrič, 1995: 72-73), and the decisive positions in these councils were given to trustworthy party members. The main goal of publishing councils was to approve the yearly publishing programme – in that way the appropriateness of the selection of publications was monitored (cf. Žnideršič, 1995: 129; Gabrič, 1995: 23). The editors, working at the state publishing houses, were aware of the ruling ideological position and selected the translators for their publications accordingly. The selected translators responded to the expectations and created their translations in line with the tenets of the ruling ideology – consequently, no censorial office was needed. The Socialist Yugoslavia thus did not have a censor’s office at the state level such as the one Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth (2009) describes in East Germany, since the Communist party found another (and less visible) way to control everything that was published in this period.
Focus on children
This system allowed ideological control to be exercised subtly through the mechanism of self-censorship, and consequently the reading public in Yugoslavia largely ignored the fact that translated works were adapted, in particular because literature for the adult public was not ideologically changed. This difference in approaches is most clearly visible if we look at those works that were originally written for adults, but were then often adapted for children. For example, all Yugoslav translations of Robinson Crusoe for children were more or less radical adaptations, and the majority of them took as their original Kornei Chukovsky’s Russian adaptation (e.g. Defoe, 1946, 1965), which seemed to be ideologically closest to the Yugoslav Socialist ruling class. On the other hand, the translations of Robinson Crusoe for an adult readership (e.g. the Slovene translation from 1975 (Defoe, 1975) or the Serbian translation from 1962 (Defoe, 1962)) used the original text by Daniel Defoe and did not change the translation ideologically (cf. Pokorn, 2012).
This ideological focus on children’s literature was, as archival material shows, in line with the policy of the Communist Party. As early as in November 1950 the minutes of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovenia note that: «Religion is the main question for the Association of Slovene Youth, we won’t succeed much with the older generation, except within the Party.» (Drnovšek, 2000: 235). The Party seemed to think that ideological reformation of the older generation is a lost battle, but they were convinced, on the other hand, that the youth could still be oriented in the ideologically right direction. In order to achieve this goal, the ideological pressure from the Communist Party in the form of dialectical-materialistic indoctrination was the strongest on education and on publishing activity. Thus, on one hand, nothing was printed that was not in line with the new ruling ideology: one of the items in the action plan of the meeting of the Politburo of the CC CPS on 20 December 1951, for example, states: «They [publishing houses] have to be given a general manager that shall not let anything into print without our knowledge.» On the other hand, the translations and re-translations of the works for children were textually changed in order to support the ruling ideological position.
This practice of ideological manipulation of translations, which was never openly adopted (at least there is no evidence of it in the existing archival material) was, paradoxically, officially abandoned in 1983 when the committee of the Presidency of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovenia for information and propaganda declared that the ongoing practice of eliminating religious elements in literature was «morally and legally unacceptable and pernicious, because it undermines the integrity of the artistic work and of copyright. Translations have to be authentic and professionally well-done or in accordance with the norms of translatorial activity in all fields, i.e. in translations for TV, in film and television subtitling, in books or any other printed matter» (AS 1589, a.u. 697).
Let us look now at the translation shifts that reflect the Communist worldview in the Socialist retranslation of one of the classic works of the Scout movement: Rolf in the Woods by Ernest Thomas Seton.
Ernest Thompson Seton
Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946) was born as Ernest Thompson in South Shields in England, and later added the name Seton, which he claimed reflected his descent from the Scottish Lord Seton. When he was only 6 years old, his family immigrated to Canada where Seton received his early education. He graduated at the Ontario College of Art. In 1888, after spending a year at the Royal Academy in London on a scholarship, he returned to Canada and joined his brother on a homestead in Manitoba where he made a close study of animal behaviour. During this time he supported himself as an illustrator, creating pictures of animals. He continued to pursue his career in art by studying painting in Paris for several years, where his work gained some recognition. However, he decided to leave Paris and return to Canada in 1892 when one of his paintings «Triumph of the Wolves», depicting a pack of wolves devouring a man, was received by a public outcry. For the rest of his life he mainly lived in New Mexico in the United States and in 1931 he became an American citizen (Read, 1962).
Although he worked as an illustrator all his life, it was his animal stories that ensured his artistic fame. His career as a writer started as early as in 1898 when he published his first collection of animal stories Wild Animals I Have Known (1898). The book was an immediate success and it was followed by 20 similar collections from 1898 to 1930, often including the previously published stories. He also wrote a novel and a drama, but he is best known for the creation of a distinctive literary genre: the realistic animal story, in which strong influences of the Romantic notions of the noble savage and of the glorification of nature can be found (cf. Redecop, 1983, 1997).
Seton was also deeply involved in the development of a youth organization called the «Woodcraft Indians» (later renamed as the Woodcraft League of America). The organisation was first developed in 1902 for boys, but later allowed girls to join as well. Finding the ideas of the Woodcraft movement very similar to those of scouting, in 1910 Seton decided to join Lord Baden-Powell and Daniel Beard in establishing the Boy Scouts of America. For five years he held the post of Chief Scout in America (the same position held by Baden-Powell in England) and enjoyed immense popularity. However, Seton became increasingly dissatisfied with the administration of the Association, which he accused of militarism, while the administration accused Seton of pacifism. Finally, in 1915, the Association expelled Seton on the pretext that he was not an American citizen. Seton then continued to work with his Woodcraft Indians, but remained bitter about this episode until his death (Redekop, 1983, 1997).
rolf in the woods
Rolf in the Woods is a historical novel for the young and one of the 13 books written by Seton that were dedicated to the Woodcraft movement. The novel, which first appeared in 1911, depicts the adventures of an adolescent orphan boy, Rolf Kittering, who is abused by his drunkard uncle in a New England village and therefore seeks refuge in the woods, where he is taken care of by Quonab, «the profoundly religious, highly moral, and friendly Indian» (Read, 1962: 53). Quonab teaches Rolf how to survive in the wilderness and introduces him to the virtues of simple religious faith. Rolf thus learns how to camp, canoe, hunt, lay traps – in general, he learns the Indian way of life. Despite his admiration for life in the wilderness, Rolf maintains contacts with the white settlers. For example, he regularly visits a Dutch family farmstead, where he helps with the farm work and also falls in love with the farmer’s daughter Annette. Since the story is set in the time of the border war of 1812-1814, the last chapters of the novel are dedicated to Rolf and Quonab acting as scout and guide for American forces along the Canadian border, and being rewarded for their services with a medal. The novel concludes with a description of Rolf’s prosperity as a local farmer, owner of the local store and mill, married to Annette, politically active in the councils of the state, and an account of Quonab’s solitary death on the rock singing praises to Wahkonda, the Great Spirit.
The First Slovene Translation from 1938
Seton’s Rolf in the Woods was first translated into Slovene in 1938. The book was published by the publishing house Založba Sled, the official publishing house of the Yugoslav Woodcraft League. The translation had two prefaces: the first one is written by Dr. Vilko Marin, a senior member of the Yugoslav Woodcraft League. Dr. Marin rejoices at the fact that the Slovene readership will finally be able to read «one of the most beautiful classics of world juvenile fiction» written by the «spiritual leader» of the Woodcraft movement. The second introduction is not signed: It provides a short biography of E. T. Seton and praises him as an «apostle of nature» (N.N. 1938: 8). Most probably this second introduction was written by the translator of the pre-war version, Peter Donat (1910-1959). Peter Donat was a pseudonym of Miran Deržaj, a relatively well-known author from the interwar period who wrote novels, essays and short critical works, but who also devoted a lot of energy to translating. Although he learned German and French at school, and then added English, Spanish and Italian to his repertoire, he translated mainly from English and German – also because he spent some time in London. His friends, who were also convinced he knew some Arabic and Chinese, praised his general knowledge and had a very high opinion of him (Bartol, 1959: 1033). With the approach of the Second World War, Donat became increasingly mentally unstable to the extent that, at the beginning of the conflicts on Slovene territory, he was confined to mental asylum and was never fully released until his death (Bartol, 1959, cf. Stanonik and Brenk 2008).
A comparison of the first Slovene translation of Rolf in the Woods with the original reveals that although the translator did follow the original work closely in the majority of cases, he still left out a considerable part of the text. In total, Donat omitted 22 chapters, most of which can be divided into two groups:
The omissions of the chapters focussing on historical events seem to be the result of the fact that the intended Slovene audience, i.e. the members of the local Woodcraft League, were not familiar with these events and were also unlikely to be interested in them. The translator and the editors seemed to have thought that these chapters were not vital for the development of the Slovene Woodcraft movement. We can also assume that the chapters describing the importance of learning and some basic social manners were omitted because the audience, again, did not need that kind of encouragement.
Donat’s translation also leaves out a chapter that could not be classified into the two categories above – Chapter 7, «Rolf Works Out with Many Results», where we learn how the rock where Quonab used to live acquired its name «Bible Rock». In this chapter we learn that Rolf tried to pay Quonab for his hospitality by working occasionally on a farm in the nearby little town of Myanos, where the local population becomes aware of the fact that Rolf lives with a Native American. The narrator in a humorous way describes how Ketchura Peck, a local spinster, becomes outraged «that a Christian boy should be brought up by a godless pagan» and decides «to carry the Bible into the heathen’s stronghold». She soon gets lost in the woods and arrives at the rock above Quonab’s camp. She looks down in horror to see that Rolf and Quonab are roasting something before the fire. Believing she saw a tiny hand with five fingers on the stick (in fact Rolf and Quonab were roasting a raccoon), she decides to flee, but leaves the Bible behind on the rock. In the evening when Quonab climbs the rock to pray, he finds the Bible, but because Rolf and Quonab think that the book was the property of someone who meant to return for it, they left it untouched – and the rock is thereafter named Bible Rock.
It might be assumed that the decision not to include this ironical description of an overzealous spinster on a missionary quest seemed to have been the result of the translator and the editor deciding that this chapter offers too strong a criticism of religious fervour for the intended readership at the time of publication.
Otherwise, the translation closely follows the original with one further exception: in the Slovene version no varieties of the target language are used, the translation is written throughout in standard Slovene. In the original work Quonab speaks, in Seton’s terms, «Indian English», the Dutch settlers speak Dutch English, and other people Rolf meets on various occasions speak colloquial English (for example, Hoag and Si Sylvanne) – in the translation, however, these sociolects are reduced to the standard version of Slovene.
The Second Slovene Translation from 1958
The post-war translation of Rolf in the Woods was created in 1958, 20 years after the first translation, and was published by Mladinska knjiga, the main publishing house for children and young people in the Republic of Slovenia. This translation was then twice reprinted in 1964 and 1973. The translation from 1958 and its reprint in 1964 have the same afterword that is not signed, but which was identified to have been written by Avgust Petrišič (1901-1980) (Hönn, 1975: 652, Stanonik and Brenk, 2008: 833): his interpretation of the book emphasizes the oppression of the Native Americans by the white settlers, and the superiority of the Native Americans compared to the «civilised» white people (Petrišič, 1958: 214). Petrišič argues that Quonab, not Rolf, is the real hero of the work: he is not only described as a member of an oppressed nation, but also as the victim of capitalist oppression in the form of various white traders who exploit him and his work. The concluding prayer uttered by the dying Quonab is interpreted as the expression of his ardent wish that a great warrior will come and free his oppressed nation (Petrišič, 1958: 218). It is not surprising, then, that the post-war translation fails to make use of sociolect for the language of Quonab, who in this version, like in the first translation, also speaks a grammatically correct, standard variant of Slovene.
The translator of the post-war Socialist translation was Rudolf Kresal (1905-1975), who before the war worked as a journalist and published some short stories in literary reviews. In 1945 he became the editor of the Official Gazette in Belgrade (Republic of Serbia), then worked as a journalist for the main newspapers in Ljubljana (Republic of Slovenia), and from 1949 onwards he became a free-lance writer and translator (Stanonik and Brenk, 2008). Today, he is mainly remembered as the translator of Andersen’s fairy tales into Slovene.
His Slovene version of Seton’s work is even more abridged than the pre-war one. Almost half the text is omitted: out of the approximately 104 000 words of the original more than 43 000 are removed. A large part of the omissions in Kresal’s version are the same as the ones detected in the pre-war version by Peter Donat:
Despite this similarity, Kresal’s translation is undoubtedly a new one and not a modified older one (see Koskinen and Paloposki, 2010): it is characterised by the quite obvious aim «to make an appreciable difference» (Venuti, 2004: 29), since the choice of words and syntax seems to be deliberately different from the first translation. Although the above-mentioned omissions appear to follow closely the pattern introduced by the first pre-war translator, the most substantial omissions in the post-war translation, however, are different and could be classified into three groups:
All the chapters describing Rolf’s encounter with the Dutch family and his friendship with their daughter Annette are left out. Since the first reprint of the post-war translation from 1964 makes it clear in the blurb that the book is primarily intended for the members of the Association of Scouts, it might be assumed that the translator therefore focussed on the woodcraft skills and deliberately omitted the historical parts and the parts that added a romantic tone to the text.
But there was one thing more for Quonab; he went up alone to the rock. Rolf knew what he went for, and judged it best not to follow.
The Indian lighted his pipe, blew the four smokes to the four winds, beginning with the west, then he sat in silence for a time. Presently the prayer for good hunting came from the rock:
«Father lead us!
Father, help us!
Father, guide us to the good hunting.»
Since Quonab is presented as the noblest of human beings, a heroic member of an oppressed nation, descriptions of his religious practice that could resemble witchcraft were also left out, such as the following passage from Chapter 33:
«He is an evil Manito», and he looked toward the dead buck; «we must not eat him. (…) Quonab took the fateful horn that Rolf had chopped off, and hung it on a sapling with a piece of tobacco and a red yam streamer to appease the evil spirit that surely was near. There it hung for years after, until the sapling grew to a tree that swallowed the horn, all but the tip, which rotted away. (…) Not that day, not the next, but on the first day of calm, red, sunset sky, went Quonab to his hill of worship; and when the little fire that he lit sent up its thread of smoke, like a plumb-line from the red cloud over him, he burnt a pinch of tobacco, and, with face and arms upraised in the red light, he sang a new song:
«The evil one set a trap for my son,
But the Manito saved him;
In the form of a Skookum he saved him.»
Albany, the first chartered city of the United States; Albany, the capital of all the Empire State; Albany, the thriving metropolis with nearly six thousand living human souls; Albany with its State House, beautiful and dignified, looking down the mighty Hudson highway that led to the open sea. Rolf knew his Bible, and now he somewhat realized the feelings of St. Paul on that historic day when his life-long dream came true, when first he neared the Eternal City – when at last he glimpsed the towers of imperial, splendid Rome. The long-strung docks were massed and webbed with ship rigging; the water was livened with boats and canoes; the wooden warehouses back of the docks were overtopped by wooden houses in tiers, until high above them all the Capitol itself was the fitting climax. (emphasis added)
Sometimes whole chapters are omitted. For example, all references to the fact that Rolf was religious were left out of the text, such as the following passage from Chapter 43 «Sunday in the Woods»:
Rolf still kept to the tradition of Sunday, and Quonab had in a manner accepted it. It was a curious fact that the red man had far more toleration for the white man’s religious ideas than the white man had for the red’s. Quonab’s songs to the sun and the spirit, or his burning of a tobacco pinch, or an animal’s whiskers were to Rolf but harmless nonsense. Had he given them other names, calling them hymns and incense, he would have been much nearer respecting them. He had forgotten his mother’s teaching: «If any man do anything sincerely, believing that thereby he is worshipping God, he is worshipping God.» He disliked seeing Quonab use an axe or a gun on Sunday, and the Indian, realizing that such action made «evil medicine» for Rolf, practically abstained. But Rolf had not yet learned to respect the red yarns the Indian hung from a deer’s skull, though he did come to understand that he must let them alone or produce bad feeling in camp.
Sunday had become a day of rest and Quonab made it also a day of song and remembrance.
Similarly, all comparisons between Quonab’s religious fervour and that of Rolf were deleted. For example, in Chapter 6, the description of Rolf’s failing devotion compared to the steadfast worship of his Indian mentor is left out:
«Where are you going, Quonab?» he asked one morning, as he saw the Indian rise at dawn and go forth with his song drum, after warming it at the fire. He pointed up to the rock, and for the first time Rolf heard the chant for the sunrise. Later he heard the Indian’s song for «Good Hunting», and another for «When His Heart Was Bad». They were prayers of praise, all addressed to the Great Spirit, or the Great Father, and it gave Rolf an entirely new idea of the red man, and a startling light on himself. Here was the Indian, whom no one considered anything but a hopeless pagan, praying to God for guidance at each step in life, while he himself, supposed to be a Christian, had not prayed regularly for months — was in danger of forgetting how.
Yet there was one religious observance that Rolf never forgot — that was to keep the Sabbath, and on that day each week he did occasionally say a little prayer his mother had taught him. He avoided being seen at such times and did not speak of kindred doings. Whereas Quonab neither hid nor advertised his religious practices, and it was only after many Sundays had gone that Quonab remarked:
«Does your God come only one day of the week? Does He sneak in after dark? Why is He ashamed that you only whisper to Him? Mine is here all the time. I can always reach Him with my song; all days are my Sunday.»
The Habitus of the Post-War Translator
Some of the changes and omissions in Kresal’s translation could be explained by looking at the translator’s habitus. Kresal’s translation strategy and his attitude towards Christianity reflected the societal change. Although his pre-war original prose writings reveal numerous positive references to Christian religion (for example, the motto of the main character in his short story Andrew’s Confession is: «I want God» (Kresal, 1933: 236) or in his short story Capital Sin the narrator compares the work of an artist to God’s work (Kresal, 1931: 796)), after the war his work manifests a clear rejection of religious worldview. This changed and explicitly negative attitude towards Christian religion can be seen from his introduction to his translations of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, where he uses a completely new discourse, very much in line with the ruling ideology:
Of course, as a child of his age, he [i.e. Hans Christian Andersen] paid his debt to his own time, to false romanticism; he succumbed from time to time to religious mysticism and made concessions to it; however, it is interesting that his work is weakest in those points, forced, «not reserved in the use of resources, not healthy and without natural freshness» as he himself admitted, which is why he then focussed on nature as the purest source. His sharp, penetrating spirit, always just to everyone, did not ignore the milieu from which he came and developed. His works reveal that he saw and deeply felt the backwardness of his people, their misery, the growing reactionary character of his own age: of different aristocrats, of the new bourgeois capitalists, of bishops and saints, whom he attacks in The Galoshes of Fortune – a fairy tale that shows his progressive mind. How marvellously he dismisses the Inquisition bishop in The Wild Swans: this story, which manifests horrible superstition, serves him as a backdrop against which he pertinently reveals wickedness and injustice. (Kresal, 1950: 22)3
Kresal’s translation of Rolf in the Woods was created in 1958, i.e. eight years after he wrote the introduction quoted above, and it is safe to assume that his attitude towards religion had not changed.
Another possible explanation of why these changes were made can be found if we look more closely at the patrons (as understood by Lefevere, 1992) and the intended readership of the post-war translation.
Yugoslav Scouts
On the back flap of the 1964 edition of Rolf of the Woods, the editors of this reprint clearly state that the book is primarily intended for the members of the Association of Slovene Scouts:
A book that surely every boy and girl scout who loves nature, woodcraft, hunting, deer and other animals, camp fires and listening to merry and sad adventures would like to have.
And indeed, this seems to be in line with the original intentions of the author, who also wrote the book for the members of his Woodcraft League and the Scout Movement. However, there was one important distinction between the international Scout movement and the Yugoslav Socialist Scout movement – and it touched upon the very fundamental ideas of the movement itself: the Woodcraft League and the Scout Movement originally placed much emphasis on the spiritual development of their members. For example, Seton in his The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft League of America (1906), where he describes the origin and the idea of the movement of Woodcraft Indians, emphasizes that the association promotes «development along the four ways: the Body Way, the Mind Way, the Spirit Way and the Service Way». Following these goals, Seton also defines 12 Woodcraft laws, including: «Be reverent. Worship the Great Spirit, and respect all worship of Him by others, for none have all the truth and all who reverently worship have claims on our respect.» (Seton, 1906)
A similar emphasis on the spiritual can be found in the three main principles on which the international Scout Movement is based, i.e. on the Duty to God (adherence to spiritual principles, loyalty to the religion that expresses them and acceptance of the duties resulting therefrom), Duty to others (loyalty to one’s country, participation in the development of society) and Duty to self (responsibility for the development of oneself). The World Organization of the Scout Movement demands from all members of the Scout Movement «to adhere to a Scout Promise and Law reflecting, in language appropriate to the culture and civilization of each National Scout Organization and approved by the World Organization, the principles of Duty to God, Duty to others and Duty to self, and inspired by the Promise and Law originally conceived by the Founder of the Scout Movement in the following terms:
The Scout Promise
On my honour I promise that I will do my best —
To do my duty to God and the King (or to God and my Country);
To help other people at all times;
To obey the Scout Law» (World Organization of the Scout Movement official website)
The translations we have analysed reflect the changing political profile of the Scout associations in Slovenia: when the first Scouts in Slovenia appeared in 1922, and the first Woodcraft Indians in 1925, they had no problems adhering to the main ideas of the movement, until in 1941 the German occupying forces prohibited Woodcraft and Scout associations and their activities (Grašič and Matjašič, 1990). However, when ten years later, in 1951, the new Association of Slovene Scouts was established (Zveza tabornikov Slovenije), this new organization had to be in line with the ruling ideology.
The post-war Association of Slovene Scouts was far from being politically neutral; while the association had no problems in adhering to two of the basic principles (Duty to others and Duty to self), it could not accept Duty to God. Consequently the Socialist Scouts’ promise differed considerably from the original Scout promise and ran as follows:
On my honour I promise that
I will safeguard the brotherhood and unity of our peoples,
The liberty of my Socialist country the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia and the other benefits of the people’s revolution,
That I will always fight for the construction of socialism and for everything that is progressive, noble and fair and that I will live and work according to the scouting laws.4 (Ali poznaš 1960)
The transparent political and ideological position of the association was also visible in its 8 main goals and aims:
Particularly interesting is the 6th goal, where it is insisted, in line with Marxist criticism of religion, that scientific understanding of natural laws should be emphasized. Also the laws of the organisation were explicitly based on dialectical materialistic principles: for example, out of 12 laws, law 6 stipulated: «The scout fights against all conceptualisations that are against science» (Ali poznaš, 1960: 24).
Indeed, the Association of Slovene Scouts was a kind of Marxist Sunday School, which is also reflected in the fact that works dedicated to the ideological education of Scouts were in line with the Communist worldview and ideological position. For example: Tone Simončič, in his Ideopolitical Work in the Association of Scouts, emphasizes the importance of linking the work of the Association of Slovene Scouts with the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and proposes different ways of how to do this (Simončič, 1970: 29-35).
Conclusions
It has recently been confirmed through extensive research in the archives of the Communist Party and additional historical documents that there was no officially regulated censorship at work in the Socialist Yugoslavia (Pokorn, 2012). Similarly, there is no historical evidence to suggest that there was a censorship office in the pre-war period that would monitor children’s translation. The lack of documentation and the fact that all agents involved in the production of the pre-war translation are no longer available for interviews do not allow us to support or dismiss the possibility of editorial intervention in the case of the pre-war translation. With the post-war translation, however, the situation is different. The post-war translation was published by Mladinska knjiga, the major Slovene publishing house for juvenile fiction. At the time of the publication, the editor in charge of the section for children’s literature and juvenile fiction was Kristina Brenk (1911-2009), who held the office from 1948 to 1973. In an interview I made with her on 8 November 2006 Kristina Brenk, at that time aged 98, confirmed that there was no censor employed at the publishing house and that there was no censor’s office at the state level either. When asked directly whether she checked the translations she commissioned, she replied that she had selected her translators carefully and that she had trusted them completely to have done their work well. Therefore, it can be assumed that the Socialist translator of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Rolf in the Woods was subject to self-censorship, i.e. to a form of preventive or prior censorship which shifts the ideological pressure to the inner life of the individual who consequently internalizes the censorship and conforms to ideological dictates (cf. Gambier, 2002, Wolf, 2002).
The comparison of the pre-war translation from 1938 with the original text shows that the translator, Peter Donat, changed the text, mainly through omission. The first translation was financed by the newly established Slovene Woodcraft League, which in Slovenia was mainly in the hands of one political party: the republic’s National Socialists, a social-democratic party that had in its programme also the peaceful unification of all Slovenes into one state (Dolenc, 1990: 139). Although at first the Woodcraft Movement had much in common with the already existing Scout Movement, after 1929 they dissociated: the Scout movement became increasingly militaristic and under the direct influence of Belgrade which favoured Yugoslav unification, while the Slovene Woodcraft League insisted on pacifism and was more focussed on the national Slovene component. For both movements, however, religious faith was one of the basic tenants of their associations. The Woodcraft League also believed that Native Americans led an ideal life that should have been taken as an example by westerners. This belief is reflected in the first Slovene translation of Rolf in the Woods where Quonab, Rolf’s Indian mentor, speaks in a dignified, standard language and is thus not portrayed as being in any way inferior to the white settlers. The wish to please the intended readership is also visible in the strategy used by the translator: the most substantial omission is thus the one referring to the historical events that were of no interest to the members of the Slovene Woodcraft League. The only ideological omission is the omission of the entire chapter 7, where the ironical description of a failed missionary quest by an overzealous spinster seems to have been too harsh a criticism of religious fervour for the intended readership. The decision to omit this chapter, taken by the translator or the editor, does not reflect the criticism of religious sentiment as such, but on the contrary, it censors the criticism of religious fervor and avoids ridiculing religious zeal.
The post-war Socialist translation from 1958 was a new translation, and not merely a modified version of the old translation. The question why a new translation of this work (together with retranslations of Grimm’s and Andersen’s fairy tales, and other children’s best-sellers like Heidi, Bambi and Karl May’s adventure stories) was created in the time of severe shortages of paper and printing ink (see e.g. the 1952 report of the Print Committee at SAWPS, AS 531, a.u. 139) can only be answered by the fact that the pre-war translation was considered disturbing for the new ruling ideology.
The comparison of the two translations reveals that the post-war translation repeated the omissions that we have detected in the pre-war version, in addition to that also omitted the romantic plot involving Rolf and Annette (most probably because matchmaking was not a part of the goals of the new Socialist Scout movement), and last but not least, systematically purged the text of any religious presence. Undoubtedly, the Socialist translator attempted to remodel the text so that it would, according to him, respond better to the demands of the new readership. The shifts the translator made, however, do not only reveal his understanding of the expectations of the readers, but also reflect his changed horizon of understanding and the changed social and political environment in which the translation was published. Thus, on one hand, the post-war omissions can be explained by the habitus of the translator. The Socialist translator Rudolf Kresal omitted religious elements because he believed, as he has written in his post-war works, that the Christian religion was a «horrible superstition» (Kresal, 1950: 22). It can be therefore assumed that he believed in and actively supported Communist ideological revisionism, internalised the censorship and the typical behaviour of translators of that time, and consequently conformed to ideological dictates of the Socialist society without regarding these dispositions as limitations. On the other hand, Rudolf Kresal also responded to the expectations of the patrons of these new translations, where the patronage in this case was mainly exerted by the newly established Association of Slovene Scouts. His translation was thus «carried out in service of power» (Lefevere, 1992: vii), and was in line with the new ruling ideology: all references to the fact that Rolf had a religious education or that he practised Christianity were consequently deleted from the text.
The study of translations, peritexts (cf. Genette, 1997), biographies of translators and historical documents therefore show that both Slovene translators of Rolf in the Wood were influenced by different agents that all constructed the translatorial field of children’s literature in Slovenia in a particular historical period. While the pre-war translator responded to the expectations of the pre-war Slovene Woodcraft League, the Socialist translator accommodated to the new patron: the Association of Slovene Scouts with whom he shared ideological convictions. And since Rolf in the Wood is a work intended for a juvenile audience, i.e. the work whose role was, in the eyes of the society of the period, primarily to encourage the development of children into «model citizens», such radical ideological interventions and textual manipulation were regarded as acceptable.
A Postscript
And finally, The Slovene Scout Association became a member of the World Organisation of the Scout Movement in 1994. In order to be accepted by the movement, the Slovene Scouts changed their statute and the promise that nowadays runs as follows:
The Scout Promise
VOn my honour I promise that I will
Be loyal to my homeland,
That I will accept the Spiritual reality, develop it,
And live in accordance to the Scout Laws.
(Official Website of the Association of Slovene Scouts)
Despite this new, «New Age» orientation of Slovene Scouts, they have not, however, commissioned a new translation of Rolf in the Woods – perhaps because the Scouts of today tend to read less and less.
ACEPTADO EN FEBRERO DE 2014
VERSIÓN FINAL DE DICIEMBRE DE 2013
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Archival Sources
All the records were studied at the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (National Archives). The citations below include:
a) the name of institution: Archives of the Republic of Slovenia (AS)
b) the serial number of the fund or the collection (AS 537)
c) the document reference, i.e. number of the archival unit (abbreviated as a.u.) which contains the archival records (AS 537, a.u. 139)
Archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovenia (League of Communists of Slovenia)
AS 169, a.u. 402
AS 173, a.u. 407
AS 367, a.u. 2542-2546
AS 1589, a.u. 215
AS 1589, a.u. 697
AS 1589/62, a.u. 193-194
Archives of the Socialist Alience of the Working People of Slovenia
AS 531, a.u. 139
1 The references to archival records are explained in the bibliography section.
2 There was only one exception: the oldest Slovene publishing house, Mohorjeva družba (est. 1851) remained under the strong influence of the Catholic Church and as such was the only publisher that managed to some extent to avoid the ideological control of the Communist Party.
3 All translations from Slovene into English are by the author of the article.
4 This and all subsequent translations into English are by the author of the article, unless otherwise stated.