Nederlandse Letterkunde - Volume 29, Issue 3, 2024

Over the past two decades, the field of Dutch Studies has repeatedly reflected on its status quo and formulated desiderata for its future. This article focuses on three international research projects that have met these desiderata. The preliminaries as well as the results of these projects are discussed, not only in terms of publications and follow-up projects, but also in terms of the insights they offered, as these have increasingly found acceptance in the study of Dutch literature. The article then goes on to describe how the contributions to the present special issue reflect those insights, continue to build on them, and draw attention to less studied issues in Dutch Studies – in particular the ways in which translation and censorship functioned in the former Eastern Bloc and how these influenced the dissemination and reception of Dutch-language literature in this region.

This article describes the transfer of Dutch literature to Czechoslovakia in the period 1945-1990. After 1949, private publishing houses were abolished or merged. Emphasis on socialist realism and Soviet literature severely limited the number of Dutch-language titles. After 1956, the system became freer, publishers developed their own identity but de facto censorship persisted. The agency DILIA/DILIZA regulated all contacts abroad and checked ideological admissibility. The selected books were controlled once more by the secret censorship agencies HSTD/PIO and ultimately the Central Committee of the KSČ/KSS had the final say. This system was abolished during the Prague Spring, but reintroduced in a milder form after 1968. Main translators were Olga Krijtová and Ella Kazdová in Czechia and Júlia Májeková in Slovakia. Krijtová was also a lecturer in Dutch at Charles University, while Májeková was editor-in-chief at the important Slovak literary publishing house Tatran. By taking up different positions in the literary field, the latter two had a great influence, which Kazdová lacked. The case study of two works by A. den Doolaard that were problematic from a socialist point of view, but were eventually published for literary reasons – namely Het verjaagde water (1947), published in Czech as Spoutaná voda (1964) and De goden gaan naar huis (1966), published in Slovak as Bohovia sa vracajú (1974) – demonstrate the bottlenecks of socialist transfer.

This article will examine the cultural transfer between the Netherlands and Hungary in the period from 1945 to 1989. First, the political and economic balances of power in Hungary, the influence of communist ideology and the operation of censorship will be presented. Next, I chart the distribution of Dutch literature in Hungary during the mentioned period. Then, based on Petra Broomans’ hypothesis concerning the canonization of cultural mediators, I examine the career of five Hungarian cultural mediators and reflect on what made them successful or less successful in cultural transfer.

Research into the transnationality and reception of Dutch-language literature in Yugoslavia is relatively new and still in process. As a multinational, multiconfessional, multireligious and multilingual country, Yugoslavia has a rich history of different literary systems. This makes it difficult to use a holistic approach. Moreover, the number of works translated from Dutch is insufficient to suggest a certain pattern. Yet, it is safe to conclude that Yugoslavia was open to influences from peripheral cultures and literatures, especially after the break with Stalin in 1948. There is no evidence that programmatic guidelines existed among publishers, but ideological preferences did occur, even after 1948. Anti-fascist and progressive writers were more likely to be translated. Until the 1990s, the cases of translated Dutch and Flemish literature were mostly initiated by translators. No translators have more than two works to their name, however, and there are hardly any Dutch-language authors with more than one book translated. Among the cultural mediators, the Dutch and Flemish literary foundations and agents played a significant role in promoting the literature of the Low Countries. Thanks to their archives, some of their correspondence with Yugoslav publishers and authors is available for research. Unfortunately, the transition in the nineties caused the loss of most of the archives in former Yugoslavia. The real flourishing of Dutch-language literature in translation starts only from 1990 onwards after the establishment of departments of Dutch and the founding of the literary magazine Erazmo. As in other spheres of social and cultural life, Yugoslavia owes much to enthusiastic individuals.

Between 1945 and 1990, relatively few Dutch and Flemish dramatic texts were translated into Czech, compared to a high number of translated fiction texts. The Czech theatre had a rich tradition, but it went through fundamental changes after the Second World War: the theatres were nationalised and were managed by the authorities in such a way that the productions would be an ideological school for masses. The so-called golden sixties brought some liberation, followed by a period of stagnation and restored censorship. This article investigates to what extent we can consider the dramaturgy and the reception of the productions at that time as a reflection of the communist ideology and to what extent other factors were involved, such as development of the dramatics in the Low Countries, the role of literary mediators (especially translators), the competition with dramatic texts from other countries, the limited function of the theatre critics, and the changing relations between the centre and the periphery of the Czech theatre field. These aspects are reflected upon in four case studies – the Czech productions of The Fourposter by J. de Hartog, No News From Father by L. Huizinga, Uilenspiegel by H. Claus, and Back to Warsaw by J. Staal – all Dutch and Flemish plays that reached the centre of the Czech theatre field in the period considered.

This article examines the transfer of Czech dissident literature in translation into the Dutch literary sphere during the 1970s and 1980s, a period when computers and the Internet were still in their infancy. It explores how translators, working under these circumstances, managed to obtain original texts that were officially banned and often textually flawed due to a lack of editorial control by official domestic publishers. As communication over telephones and through letter correspondence were risky for both authors and translators, personal communication on the spot played an important role in this process. Finally, the article assesses the success of these translations in the Netherlands and to what extent they stimulated public debate.