Turismo en Chambo

To have foreign scholars take an interest in a minor culture like Belarusian is, almost whatever is written, considered a great boon and encouragement to those many creative people and, particularly, writers who may feel they are working in a vacuum and wonder how they can reach a wider audience. The way to greater recognition for writers in little-known languages has to be through translation, although, as we know, this activity is not smiled upon by those who fund academic activity in this country. I myself translate Belarusian texts given as examples in my monographs, but separate translations, apart from their lack of academic esteem, are very hard to publish, particularly when the author is unfamiliar (McMillin 2006, xli).

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In the preface to Nationalism and Minor Literature, David Lloyd highlights the uniqueness of Ireland as a ‘minority’ nation and former colony in the European context:

If it remains true that Ireland’s history offers peculiarly significant paradigms for developments in Europe and elsewhere, this is no doubt due to its anomalous position as at once a European nation and a colony. In consequence of its geographical proximity to England, Ireland underwent, earlier than any other colony, a process of hegemonic domination which was as experimental as pragmatic (Lloyd 1987, ix).

Lloyd goes on to say that the numerous reforms which marked English

domination of Ireland led the latter to become “a testing ground for state apparatuses later adopted both within Britain and throughout the Empire” (ibid., ix), practically implying within the rest of the colonised world or, at least, the Commonwealth. This thought is made explicit in his next claim, where the Irish national movement is claimed to be “powerful enough to lead one of the first successful independence struggles within the British Empire, a struggle which in turn became a model for other colonized nations” (ibid., ix). In fact, as postulated earlier, Ireland’s example is not unique as the balance of powers in Europe has never been equally distributed (cf. earlier discussion of the status of Eastern Europe), and Baer acknowledges this fact by including Russian literature to counteract the stereotype of Eastern European literatures as being those of oppressed nations (Baer 2011)60.

Undoubtedly, Lloyd is right in that the Irish experience is valuable to other former colonies “in the account of one particular set of reactions to the attempt by an imperial power to produce identity as the cultural counterpart to the material and political homogenization of its subject peoples” (ibid., xi). However, the experimental ground for

60 _{It may, however, be suggested that he includes Russia precisely because of its problematic}

identity of being neither East or West; for the same reason Moore (2006) finds it problematic to include it in the list of colonisers.

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the application of the Irish nationalistic experience and its decolonization strategies was placed a bit closer to Éire and its application had already happened – decades before Lloyd’s observation was written. Thus, in the early 1900s, Belarusian political and literary activists spotted the similarities between the two countries’ colonial legacy as both of them became independent at about the same time. In 1907, Ivan Lutskevich, a representative of the Belarusian Revolutionary Society (Belaruskaya Revalutsyinaya Hramada, BRH61) met with a representative of Sinn Fein at a convention for the representatives of revolutionary parties of all nationalities of the Russian Empire. He received a symbolic gift of a shamrock and later BRH received a small donation towards its publishing activities (Rudovich 2000, 39). The Belarusian press published articles about the general situation in Ireland, including such famous pro-Belarusian periodicals as Nasha Niva (1908-1920) and Novaye Zhyccie (1923). In 1923 in Vilna a translation of Seumas MacManus’ Irish folk tales (“Ірландскія народныя казкі”) was produced under the pseudonym ‘Dobry Karlik’ (‘Kind Dwarf’). This interest in Ireland continued for a while in Soviet Minsk (for instance in newspaper articles on Irish literature by Dvorkina). However, in the mid-1930s the Soviet authorities spotted a dangerous connection and, unwilling to further sustain Belarusian interest in a former European colony mirroring the Belarusian past, stopped any further developments in this regards (Maldzis 2000, 11 – 12)62.

What is significant here is the realisation that Ireland was not the only European country whose national language and identity was minorised, as both Belarus and Ireland (as represented by their revolutionary parties) recognised these similarities as early as 1900. In fact, the idea of European power differences is not that new – particularly, in the light of Enlightenment writing on Eastern Europe discussed earlier. In terms of not-so-

61

The sister of one of the founders of BRH, Helena Iwanowska, was involved in the project of the first translations from Belarusian into English (Iwanowska and Onslow, 1914a, b; 1924a, b).

62 _{Information on Belarusian-Irish ties, including literary (Chamiarytski 2000) and political}

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distant scholarly explorations, in the mid-1970s Hechter ([1975] 1999) established a term “internal colonialism”, developing a model not dissimilar to that of Even-Zohar. However, instead of focussing on the inequalities of literary statuses, this model outlined the

inequalities in Western countries. In it, one group was established as a core, dominant group, while the others were seen as dominated, peripheral, “internal colonies”, such as Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. In Translating Ireland Cronin subsequently used the term to discuss internal colonialism in application to the Irish complexities (Cronin 1996, 3). A more striking connection here is that one of the first responses to Irish independence from a Belarusian perspective was via literary translation. Thus, the phenomenon of the combination of a history of systematic oppression and translation activities in a European context can be easily transplanted from Irish Anglophone

conditions into Eastern European ones. This is the reason for the validity of the Irish case for Belarusian literature as it allows the latter to raise the question of the application of postcolonial models to describe its own experience and thus establish a polylogue within the existing Anglophone postcolonial frameworks. Similar mechanisms of suppression employed by both the British and Russian empires stem from the common goal, as the “reduction to a single common form for human identity is the end that hegemonic colonialism is forced to pursue in the face of the multiplicity of resistant cultural and social forms contained within any empire” (Lloyd 1987, x). In other words, every empire ideally wishes to denounce heteroglossia and complicated divisions for the sake of transparency gained by using the official language in all of its communication with its subjects. Ideally, it wishes to abandon translation at all (or at least limit it in favour of the official language). Speaking of continual multilingual settings, Paulston singles out three possibilities of the language contact: language maintenance, bilingualism, or language shift (Paulston 1992, 55). However, she is highly sceptical of the prolonged

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The major point about multilingualism, which is not readily recognized in the literature, is that maintained group bilingualism is unusual. The norm for groups in prolonged contact with a nation-state is for the subordinate group to shift to the language of the dominant group, whether over three generations or over several hundred years. Where the shift does not take place, there are identifiable reasons of which the major two are lack of incentive (usually economic) or lack of access to the dominant language; another one is that the political unit may not be a nation-state as is the case with the federated soviets (ibid., 70).

Obviously, in case of the USSR it was not entirely true, as ‘national’ languages were still recognised as valid de juro, however, de facto the preference in the

multinational and multilingual empire was pro-Russian, a legacy of the linguistic policies of the Russian Empire (Dalby 2002, 120-127)63. Thus, the internal translation policies of the Soviet Union were serving to strengthen the hegemony of Russian: translation from the fourteen languages of the Soviet republics into Russian was encouraged, while translation from Russian into those languages was considered excessive due to

‘transaction cost’ (Pym 2000). Moreover, all translation from other foreign, ‘non-Soviet’, languages was done solely into Russian and published in Moscow under strict censorship. As a result, at the beginning of the 1990s, most of the newly independent post-Soviet

63 _{Dalby states: “Imperial Russia promoted attachment to the emperor and to the Orthodox Church,}

but also promoted Russian as the linguistic vehicle for these. Publication in minority languages required approval from the censor – those who wished to start journals and newspapers needed approval from the emperor himself – and the approval was often withheld. Higher education was in Russian (with German and French, both of them favoured international languages) and not in minority languages of the Empire. If the government communicated with its subjects, it did so in Russian. [...] Thus, the Communist revolution led to a total reversal of language policy. The Soviet Union established itself as a nationalistic yet decidedly multilingual state” (Dalby 2002, 120). The nationalists’ joy was, however, short-lived: “Gradually, however, policies and practices were adjusted, and the adjustments nearly always favoured the advance of Russian: in these ways, at least, Soviet linguistic policy began to resemble rather more closely that of most other countries of the contemporary world. [...] It was under Stalin (himself, as Joseph Djugashvili, a member of the Georgian minority) that the policy of ‘Russification’ gathered force. In 1938 Russian became a compulsory subject in every school, and all those languages that had

previously used Latin alphabets were required to adopt a new Cyrillic alphabet. By the 1980s party (rather than national) policy was promoting Russian even more openly, channelling extra funds to the Russian- language schools. Ph.D. candidates found that doctoral dissertations could be written only in Russian” (ibid., 121 – 122).

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nations had poorly developed national translation schools and a virtual absence of translated literary classics in their national languages. While the Soviet ‘empire’ does raise questions in terms of applicability of postcolonial paradigms, the history of Belarusian-Russian unequal power relationship dates back to Belarus’s annexation to Russia in the 18th century and therefore predates the Soviet period’s controversies. However, rather than engaging with the historical evidence here64, this research’s focus at this stage is on the present situation in which Belarus finds itself.

As a country, Belarus shares a similar disadvantaged past with politically minoritized nations who were forced to adopt linguistic and cultural policies at the national level which actively discouraged their distinctive identity. Thus,

‘Belarusianness’65

(Bekus 2010) possesses some characteristics also shared by countries with a ‘typical’ colonial past66

. As such, this research argues, they indicate that

Belarusian literature can be considered a ‘minority’ literature in the ‘world republic of letters’ and suggests they will bear a direct influence on the translation of Belarusian ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu 1986) into English. However, as the next chapter will endeavour to show by providing historical evidence, ‘minority’ here does not denote quality of literature, but, rather, the positionality of the country and its literature on the axis of ‘weak’ to ‘strong’ (in Even-Zohar’s terminology) without suggesting any qualitative assessment. If anything, it only suggests the ‘geographical’ distance in the

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The historical account of ‘Belarusianness’ and its negation within Belarusian literary space is provided in Chapter Two.

65 _{In the traditional understanding of national identity.} 66

Such parallels are illustrated by a poem from Puscha, chosen by Adamovich to outline the resistant tendencies of Belarusian literature to ‘Sovetization’, or, more precisely, Russification. The poem is titled “To Rabindranath Tagore” who was to travel via Minsk in 1926. In it, Puscha “warmly greets the dear, excepted guest, “far away in mile but close in songs”, even addressing him as “father”” (Adamovich 1958, 94). He paints a graphic picture of violence in Belarus carried out by foreign oppressors:

Foreigners have sought to deprive my people of glory And to stain their hearts with bloody wounds. Oh, Pride of Bengal, Glory of Bengal! Oh, Genuis of annexed peoples!

Through the elements I pray in my song to thee, And bend my knee on a wild burial mound. Flowers of blood have sprung in Belorussia,

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scheme suggested by Casanova regarding the ‘Greenwich meridian of literature’ (2007, 87), the distance suggested by power and supported by indifference.

Low Awareness of SL Culture in TL Culture

The implications of the subaltern position of Belarus and other ‘minor’ Eastern European countries likewiseprimarily include a low level of awareness of those cultures outside of their immediate surroundings and in the Anglophone countries in particular. Until quite recently the nation of Belarus and its literature remained terra incognita for the English-speaking world67. Despite the country’s long history, this status is typical of many minor European states. The reasons for this may include the numerous political and geographical transformations in those nations’ turbulent histories which span several centuries. For Belarus, as indeed for many other minor cultures, this meant numerous alterations of the country’s official names as outlined in the introduction from Lithuania (16thc.) to the Republic of Belarus (1990)68. Discussing the problem of attributing the legacy of Adam Mickiewicz to a particular culture, Irena Grudzińska Gross notes: “He was born in a place that cannot be called by only one name – the Russian empire? Belarus? Lithuania? Poland?” (1995, 295). Understandably, for an English TL monolingual speaker trying to keep up with the historical complexities of a country which, after centuries of colonial subordination and peripheral status, has only just become independent, it can be rather tedious, as “the information load of translations of such marginalized texts is often very high – in fact it is at risk of being intolerably high” (Tymoczko 1995, 12-13). The confusion experienced by a monolingual English speaker

67 _{This position clearly distinguishes Belarus from Russia, whose literary classics is of high}

international regard. Interestingly, though, translation from Russian became less intensive after the 1920s and Russian is considered by Branchadell and West to be a ‘lesser-translated language’ (2005). In terms of the UK, Anglo-Russian cultural ties have been dependent on the countries’ diplomatic relationship, which at times varied from open animosity (such as during the Crimean War) to allies (in the case of World War II).

68 _{The pro-Russian segment in ‘Belarus’ has been a major issue of concern for the left-wing}

political parties, with the name ‘Cryvia’ (after the major Slavonic tribe in that land) being offered instead since the early 1900s.

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with regard to the Eastern European complexities addressed in the introduction is also coupled with the UK’s concerns regarding recent immigration flows (as exemplified by Gillian Duffy’s question quoted earlier). Hence, it would generally be impractical to expect any prior knowledge of Belarusian culture and literature of a target language audience mostly unaware of distinctions between Eastern European countries69.

In translation practice, the low level of awareness of ‘minority’ European

cultures means that the same cultural information (cultural symbols, historical facts, and personalities) needs to be constantly put forward and explained in virtually every

published translation as it does not form part of the general knowledge of the TL recipient. Various explanations of ‘Belarusianness’ and different interpretations of its history have occurred regularly in translators’ prefaces from the 1970s until the present day as will be seen from the discussion of translations in Chapters Five, Six and Seven.

Confusion of the SL Culture Image(s)

Low awareness of the source culture can also be linked to another issue in translation from ‘minority’ cultures: confusion of cultural stereotypes or merging of ethnic identities with the cultural Other. In the case of Belarus, most Anglophone readers would potentially place it in Russia70 (mainly because of the ‘-rus’ element as well as due to the popularity of the pre-World War II ethnonym “White Russia”) and would therefore

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Other Anglophone countries are equally confused when it comes to terminology. As Kipel observes, “Because the Belarusans’ ethnic territory is divided among several neighboring states, it is difficult to present a clear picture of a Belarusan state, nationhood, and historical development. Part of the confusion stems from terminology. As political concepts, the terms “Byelorussia,” “Byelorussian,” and since 1991, “Belarus” and “Belarusans,” are all relatively new. For most Americans, the term

“Byelorussia” was not known until the end of World War II, when the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic became a charter member of the newly forming United Nations. Prior to World War II the terms more familiar to Americans were “White Russia” and “White Russians” or “White Ruthenia” and “White Ruthenians.” The term “White” in these various formulations is simply the literal translation of “byelo- ”

or “byela-. ” (Kipel 2011).

70 _{A telling example of the confusion would be some of the letters the author has received from her}

well-meaning Anglophone friends addressed to ‘Belarus, Russia’ (even after prolonged conversations about Belarus).

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naturally extend their cultural stereotypes of Russia to include Belarus71. While

recognising the two countries’ cultural similarities, including shared literary beginnings, it is necessary to mention their substantial differences, including the fact that they fought each other during the Livonian wars as well as Belarus’ later uprisings in several ‘Polish’ revolts after its annexation to the Russian Empire72. Numerous differences can be noted in their national symbols (e.g. Russia’s powerful and aggressive bear compared with Belarus’ mobile and timid stork), chronotopes (the wide steppes of Russia vs. the very local ‘nook of my forefathers’ in Belarus73

), and national myths74.

The confusion of cultural stereotypes, and thus an ongoing endeavour to revisit the issue of national identity are typical features in the available discourse on minor European cultures (Clancy 1999; Cronin 2006; Shäffner 2000; May 2008; Woodsworth 1996). In the case of Eastern European cultures, this issue is exacerbated by the perceived European peripheral literary position. For example, in Cultural Hierarchies, Secondary Nations, Silvana Mandolessi notes of Poland:

71 _{Cf. the earlier discussed interchangeable usage of the ethnonym Russian both for citizens of the}

Russian Empire and for the Russian ethnos.

72_{These included the Kosciuszko Rebellion of 1794 and the Polish Rebellion of 1863-64, which in}

Belarus was organised by Kalinouski. Alexander Suvorov, the famed Russian Field Marshal and the first of only three ‘generalissimuses’ in the whole of Russian history, took part in suppressing Kosciuszko’s rebellion. The official Soviet hero’s name was given to a large network of military academies for young cadets across the USSR, including Belarus, where a century prior he would have been vehemently opposed (Gigin 2009, 86 - 95; Hrytskevich 2007, 414 - 417).

73 _{Examples taken from two famous Russian and Belarusian songs respectively (‘O , d step}

krugom / Oh, this wide steppe all around and Moi rodny kut/ My Native Nook.

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Examples include Russia’s self-identification as ‘the Third Rome’ with a high calling of Messianism (Gumiliov), i.e. of ‘saving other nations’, compared with the tragedy of faded glory (the