Publication details
Paratexte, ohne die es keine Literatur gäbe Zur Rezeption des Werkes von Paul Celan und der Funktion von Paratexten in der totalitären Tschechoslowakei (1948-1989)
| Title in English | Paratexts without which there would be no literature On the reception of the work of Paul Celan and the function of paratexts in totalitarian Czechoslovakia (1948-1989) |
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The reception of Paul Celan's work in the Czechoslovakia, as with many modern German poets of the post-war period, was complicated. The communist regime with its censorship apparatus largely determined cultural life in Czechoslovakia on all levels. The reception of Celan's work was not helped by the fact that the regime was fundamentally anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. Nevertheless, Celan's poems were translated into Czech and his texts found their readers. The Brno poet Ludvík Kundera made a good contribution to the reception of Celan's works in the Czech Republic. Like other Celan translators, he not only had to be able to translate Celan's texts in a co-genius manner, but also to be able to convincingly assert them in front of the censorship apparatus of the totalitarian regime. This article analyzes forewords, afterwords to Czech translations of Celan's texts and reviews in literary journals. In doing so, strategies are examined which the respective authors of paratexts have chosen to make Celan's texts possibly acceptable to the censorship on the one hand, and on the other hand not to reduce their literary value for the Czech readership in meaningless, regimen-related phrases. The translators and critics have dealt with this challenge in different ways, as is illustrated in this article using individual text examples. The present contribution builds on extensive research carried out in this field by literary scholars at Palacký University in Olomouc and Masaryk University in Brno, and offers the fascinating story of the reception of one of the most important German-speaking poets of the 20th century in paratexts in the time of 1945 to 1989. |