World Literature in Socialist Czechoslovakia: The Case of Světová Literatura

• In Event: Periodicals Unbound I: Communities across Borders

Abstract

As Josef Škvorecký, member of the editorial team of Světová literatura from 1956-1958 and later an émigré author, has argued, the formation of a Czechoslovak journal for literature in translation was based specifically on the circulation of Soviet authority. The existence of the Moscow-based Inostrannaia literatura authorized the formation of the sister publication in Prague, and the publication of certain texts in Moscow could serve as the justification for their Czech translation. But Světová literatura was more than a satellite of the Soviet literary system. Based on archival sources and close readings of select journal issues, this paper reveals how the periodical provided its own version of Czechoslovak engagement with world literature in a key that was, at times, affirmative of socialist ideology and, at others, created significant space for subversion.

Author

• Philip Tuxbury-Gleissner, Ohio State U