From Techne to Device: The Role of Translation in Comintern Aesthetics

• In Event: Provincializing Internationalism: Periodicals, Publishers and Practices I: Translating

Abstract

In the recent literature on internationalist or Comintern aesthetics, the role of translation is typically ignored (see Glaser and Lee 2020) or presented as a problem (see Clark 2021; Tyerman 2022). This paper critically addresses this treatment of translation in two ways. Part I provides an overview of attempts by Soviet translation scholars to theorize translation’s role in internationalist aesthetics, beginning with Fedor Batiushkov’s contribution to the 1920 edition of Printsipy khudozhestvennogo perevoda [Principles of Literary Translation]. The second part analyzes how those theoretical positions were reflected in the many Soviet journals dedicated to translated literature, ranging from Sovremennyi Zapad and Vostok, of the early 1920s, to the journals Vestnik Inostrannoi Literatury (1928-1930), Literatura Mirovoi Revoliutsii (1930-1932) and Internatsional’naia Literatura (1933-1943). This diachronic analysis will show that translation was initially treated as a techne, i.e., a necessary support for internationalist aesthetics and the creation of a Socialist World Literature, but was later treated as a device, used to represent the linguistic and cultural otherness negotiated through translation.

Author

• Brian James Baer, Kent State U