Queering Translation History

Shakespeare’s Sonnets in Czech and Slovak Transformations

Eva Spišiaková

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000401608
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This innovative work challenges normative binaries in contemporary translation studies and applies frameworks from queer historiography to the discipline in order to explore shifting perceptions of same-sex love and desire in translations and retranslations of William Shakespeare's Sonnets.

The book brings together perspectives from poststructuralism, queer theory, and translation history to set the stage for an in-depth exploration of a series of retranslations of the Sonnets from the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The complex and poetic language of the Sonnets, frequently built around era-specific idioms and allusions, has produced a number of different interpretations of the work over the centuries, but questions remain as to how the translation process may omit, retain, or enhance elements of same-sex love in retranslated works across time and geographical borders. In focusing on target cultures which experienced dramatic sociopolitical changes over the course of the twentieth century and comparing retranslations originating from these contexts, Spišiaková finds the ideal backdrop in which to draw parallels between changing developments in power and social structures and shifting translation strategies related to the representation of gender identities and sexual orientations beyond what is perceived to be normative.

In so doing, the book advocates for a queer perspective on the study of translation history and encourages questioning traditional boundaries prevalent in the discipline, making this key reading for students and researchers in translation studies, queer theory, and gender studies, as well as those interested in historical developments in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

1 Queering Czechoslovakia’s History

While the reclaiming of a non-heterosexual past in the Western countries such as the United States has its roots in the 1970s and became an acknowledged part of academic research in the 1990s (Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey 1989: 1–2), a similar movement in the Czech Republic and Slovakia only started in the last few decades. As in most other countries of the former Eastern Bloc, the search for a gay, lesbian, or a transgender past is further obscured by the taboo which was imposed on all non-normative sexualities and identities, and the ensuing lack of written records on these subjects. Fortunately, recent years have brought several studies from both Czech and Slovak scholars that attempt to fill the gaps in the two countries’ queer past, many of which rely on oral histories as its primary sources of information. This chapter uses these histories together with a chronology of the legislative changes that shaped the official discourse on same-sex desire in order to reconstruct a brief history of the lives of Czechoslovakia’s non-heterosexual population in the past century.

The First Czechoslovak Republic and the Second World War

The term ‘First Republic’ commonly refers to the period from Czechoslovakia’s Declaration of Independence on 28 October 1918 until the forceful and temporary dissolution of the country in 1939. Like many other Central and Southeast European nation states, Czechoslovakia was established from the debris of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, and many laws in the new republic were directly adopted from the Austro-Hungarian penal code. However, as the two nations belonged to different parts of the former monarchy, the First Czechoslovak Republic had dual legislation for a number of subjects, including laws addressing same-sex intercourse. In the Czech lands, article 129b of penal code based on Austrian law dating back to 1852 defined same-sex acts as necudnost contra naturam [indecency against nature] and could result in imprisonment for up to five years (Zavacká 2001: 95). The Slovak penal code based on former Hungarian legislation from 1878 considered same-sex acts as sodomy, and those found guilty under the corresponding articles 241–42 could be punished with up to one year in prison (ibid.). The dual legislation remained in place largely unchanged until the Second World War, which means that same-sex acts continued to be illegal during the First Czechoslovak Republic. The reality of this status quo can be illustrated by the mass investigation and lengthy interrogations of men accused of same-sex acts in the Czech city of Pilsen in 1932 (Nozar 2013). However, Czechoslovakia of the 1920s and 1930s was also a comparatively progressive and open-minded country, and these attitudes allowed for the emergence of the first movements to campaign for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The Czechoslovak League for Sexual Reform, a local branch of Magnus Hirschfield’s World League for Sexual Reform, was established in the 1930s (Jusová and Šiklová 2016: 70), and a group of intellectuals started publishing a bi-weekly journal named Hlas sexuální menšiny [Voice of the Sexual Minority], succeeded in 1932 by Nový Hlas [New Voice] (Lorencová 2006: 106). The field of sexology, which later became instrumental in the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Czechoslovakia, was officially established in 1921 with the world’s first Medical School with a separate Institute of Sexology at Charles’ University in Prague (Sokolová 2015: 252). This was followed by the first Czech monograph addressing homosexuality from a medical perspective, František Jelínek’s Homosexualita ve světle vědy [Homosexuality in the Light of Science] (1924). All of these were part of a larger, Europe-wide movement towards liberalisation including the decriminalisation and de-medicalisation of homosexuality which was gaining momentum particularly around large urban centres such as Berlin, London, and Paris. All of these movements, including the grassroots attempts in Czechoslovakia, were cut short and in many cases set back by several decades by the rise of fascism in Central Europe.

During the Second World War, Czechoslovakia was divided into two parts for the first time. Following the Munich agreement in September 1938, the Czech lands, mainly due to their large German minority, were occupied and gradually annexed by Nazi Germany as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Slovakia declared de facto independence as the Slovak State but was led by a Nazi-controlled puppet government. These fascist regimes were opposed by resistance groups and uprisings in both divided areas. The countries were liberated in May 1945 by joint US and Soviet troops, and Czechoslovakia was restored to its pre-war form, with the exception of the easternmost area of Subcarpathian Ruthenia which became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

The Nazi persecution of homosexuals inevitably impacted both countries; however, as Fanel (2000: 432–33) describes, there was a difference between the treatment of homosexuals of German origin and of those who did not belong to this group. Homosexuality was perceived as a threat primarily to the ‘dominant race’ and was therefore not persecuted as intensely in the Czech Lands or Poland as it was in Germany itself. This fact, of course, did not translate into a period of freedom during the war, and many former leaders of the movement were killed or sent to concentration camps, although usually for reasons unrelated to their campaigning for homosexual rights (Seidl 2016: 175). Unfortunately, the lack of archival and other historical sources does not allow us, as of yet, to correctly assess the scale of Nazi persecution in Czechoslovakia, nor its impact on the surviving non-heterosexual population.

Socialist Czechoslovakia

In February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia overtook the government in a Soviet-supported coup d'état, which soon led to the closure of borders with West Germany and Austria and the definitive inclusion of the Czechoslovak Republic into the Eastern Bloc of Cold War Europe. The country was governed by the totalitarian Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa, KSČ), a member of the Comintern organisation and largely controlled by the Soviet Union. The most immediate changes that the country underwent were the shift to a planned and centralised economy and the nationalisation of private property, and Chapter 2 will explore the impact of these changes on the publishing industry.

The post-war re-establishment of Czechoslovakia and the newly installed Communist regime prompted a thorough overhaul of the country’s legislation. The years 1948 to 1951 were designated as a transitional period during which the legal code from the First Republic was reassessed and adapted so as to suit the purposes of the newly established socialist state. In the hope of utilising these transitions, pre-war activists for the rights of sexual minorities who survived the war briefly campaigned for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the new legislation. While the suggestion was initially considered, it was ultimately decided not to proceed with this step and homosexuality remained a criminal offence in the new penal code. The reasons for this decision remain unclear; however, oral testimonies gathered by František Schindler (2013) suggest that the responsible committee decided that Czechoslovakia could not legalise homosexuality if the Soviet Union continued to view it as a criminal offence and a “bourgeoise phenomenon” (282). The pre-war articles were merged into article 241 now applicable to the whole republic, and sexual acts involving persons of the same sex were now deemed a criminal offence against human dignity, and punishable by up to one year in prison (Zavacká 2001: 95).

Although this decision seems to suggest that Czechoslovakia had little jurisdictional autonomy during the four decades of communist rule, it is necessary to keep in mind that the Soviet Union maintained different relationships with different countries of the Eastern Bloc and these relations underwent their own historical transformations. These countries’ adherence to Soviet models was by no means consistent throughout the socialist period, which is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that, while homosexuality remained a criminal offence in Russia until 1993, it was decriminalised in Czechoslovakia as early as 1961. This change was largely connected with the work of the Czech sexologist Kurt Freund, which highlights the pivotal role of this new medical field in the lives of the non-heterosexual population. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to subject men who were sexually attracted to other men to behavioural therapy (in line with the contemporary belief that homosexuality was a behavioural issue), Freund concluded that homosexuality is not curable and ultimately harmless to others and renewed the campaign for its exclusion from the penal code (Schindler 2013: 285–86; see also Seidl 2016 for a detailed account of the legislative changes). His efforts proved successful, and a revision of legislation in 1961 brought a new article 244 which partially decriminalised homosexuality between two consenting adults. Intercourse with persons younger than 18 years old, acts that were deemed gross public indecency, and those that involved any kind of reward (not necessarily financial), remained a criminal offence. This is particularly striking when compared to the United Kingdom, where the Sexual Offences Act that partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales was only passed in 1967. While this change appears singularly benevolent for a regime known for its restrictive hold on the society, it would be incorrect to interpret this as a sign of open-mindedness towards Czechoslovakia’s non-heterosexual population. According to oral testimonies collected by Schindler, while the new legislation brought a general sense of relief as it removed the immediate danger of legal repercussions, it was not followed by any noticeable shifts in the attitudes of the wider Czechoslovak society (Schindler 2013: 291). The freedom from persecution granted by the new legislation too was relative, as the Czechoslovak secret service StB/ŠtB continued to keep a detailed index of homosexual citizens (Schindler 2013: 362, 368) and without laws addressing homophobic hate crimes, police violence against homosexual men (and, to a lesser extent, women) was not unusual (Sokolová 2012: 260). Above all, the new legislation did not bring any visible changes to the regime’s official stance on non-normative sexualities, and homosexuality continued to be seen as an undesirable element that had no place within the future ideological aspirations of a socialist country. As Věra Sokolová sums up, “the leading communist party did not support variety and feared all identities that endangered the heteronormative order of society and challenged the ideological foundation of state socialism” (2015: 244). The regime’s approach to this issue followed the same pattern as its dealing with many other unwelcome and societally non-compliant phenomena, which was to simply pretend that homosexuality did not exist within Czechoslovakia, with the exception of a few unhappy, isolated individuals living on the outskirts of the society. This meant that homosexuality was virtually absent from public discourse, politics, or popular media, and this taboo was only removed with the Velvet Revolution of 1989 (Schindler 2013: 283, 292).

The only area where homosexuality could, and indeed was, discussed was the medical sphere in the field of sexology, which retained its popularity despite the regime change. Here again the official stance clashed with the actual opinions of the practitioners; while the state-approved publications uniformly declared homosexuality to be a sexual deviation, many experts had a much more sympathetic view of the issue in private. Sokolová’s study shows that several prominent sexologists not only helped their patients with the frequently difficult road of self-discovery, but also aided them in finding sexual or romantic partners (2015: 257). However, as these acts of support were necessarily secretive, it is likely that the only information about homosexuality which reached the wider population aligned strictly with the official state-approved stance. Moreover, sexological discourse at this stage was ingrained in predictable gendered stereotypes, with frequent claims about the relative effeminacy of homosexual men or the aggressive character of homosexual women, which likewise contributed to the societal expectations and prejudices regarding non-normative sexualities (Sokolová 2015: 258).

This state-imposed silence naturally presented substantial problems for the lives of non-heterosexual citizens of Czechoslovakia. Without any overt representation of same-sex couples in books or television, it was difficult to make sense of non-heteronormative feelings and desires, which is why books with lesbian themes such as The Well of Loneliness (Hall 1928), further discussed in Chapter 2, played such a pivotal role in many of these roads of self-discovery. The taboo surrounding homosexuality likewise presented considerable difficulties in finding sexual and/or romantic partners. Both Schindler (2013: 314) and Viera Lorencová (2006: 104) report that some of their respondents frequented public toilets and parks that were accessible overnight for this purpose. These places, known in Czech as holandy, were a local version of the phenomenon of cruising, identified at around the same time in many Western countries where homosexuality was not tolerated. Despite the difficulties, a clandestine homosexual subculture did exist within some parts of Czechoslovakia, particularly in larger urban centres. Many of these were small networks of friends organised by wealthy patrons and artists whose non-normative behaviour was tolerated to a certain degree, and were associated with particular clubs and venues, such as the Carlton Hotel in Bratislava (Lorencová 2006: 118) and a number of places in Prague (Schindler 2013: 327).

It is also necessary to acknowledge that the apparent blindness of the regime towards the subject of homosexuality sometimes brought unexpected advantages. Oral histories about non-heterosexual lives in socialist Czechoslovakia which have been collected by Sokolová offer an interesting example in the story of one of her respondents who lived in a shared household with her female partner while taking care of the partner’s young son (2015: 237). The boy’s frequent mentions of another woman who was not a family member but obviously spent a lot of time with him aroused the suspicion of his teachers, and the two women were asked to visit the school in order to explain who this additional member of the household was. During an interview with the headmaster, the respondent simply explained that she was a family friend who helped to take care of the child, and once the school had ascertained that the boy was well cared for, the matter was dropped. The respondent reflected on her partner’s anxiety prior to the interview:

For god’s sake, what else could they have said? It was unthinkable that someone would directly ask us if we were lesbians. Impossible! I never really feared that question. Who would dare to ask? And how would they ask?

(Sokolová 2015: 237)

While such possibilities for cohabitation were outside of the reach for most same-sex couples as housing was to a large degree assigned by the state and almost exclusively to young, married, and of course heterosexual families, this example illustrates the lack of discursive strategies that the regime possessed in order to speak about this taboo subject. If we take into account the fact that homosexuality was limited to articles within sexological journals and strictly associated with sexual intercourse, it is easy to see why the lack of any ‘proofs’ of such conduct meant that homosexuality itself could not be ascertained. This labelling of homosexuality as a strictly medical issue framed as sexually deviant behaviour, together with a complete lack of representation of same-sex couples in popular media, led to the fact that non-sexual displays of physical and verbal affection between two people of the same sex were almost never seen as manifestations of homosexual desire. This becomes particularly interesting within the gendered frameworks of socialist societies and the role of male and female bonding entrenched at its core. Although the regime issued frequent claims about the complete equality of its citizens, the system retained a strong gendered binary with men and women viewed as separate groups with separate pursuits and interests (Fodor 2002: 248). Under the banners of universal fellowship, these groups were expected to create close, personal bonds, which were frequently promoted in popular media and public discourse; as the Dutch scholar Gert Hekma suggests, “The communist states were largely organized along homosocial lines, always an interesting playground for homosexual desires” (2007: 9). While bonding between women was certainly seen as an important element within the society, it was male friendship, the ultimate symbol of two working-class comrades who would give their life for each other and whose relationship was ostentatiously more important than any heterosexual romance in their lives, that became one of the most persistent tropes of the era. These bonds seem so prominent in retrospect precisely because they were frequently expressed with passionate words and gestures that are now, after 1989, much more likely to be associated with romantic relationships, as was noted by several studies of this phenomenon. Wojciech Tomasik in his paper “The Motif of Male Friendship in Stalinist Mythology” (2001) documents “the primacy of high-spirited masculine relations over the traditional, heteroerotic love” (67) and its role in communist propaganda. He explains the crucial role of male bonding such as between Lenin and Stalin or between Marx and Engels, and how these pairs of men were frequently depicted in imagery suggesting their particular closeness and intimacy (ibid.). They also regularly appear overlooking groups of young children, which easily bring to mind the image of a family with same-sex parents when viewed from a contemporary perspective. Propaganda pictures depicting two men holding hands or locked in a close embrace go well beyond portraits of these leaders, as is the case in a number of posters celebrating friendships between communist countries or military victories. A cover of the magazine SSSR na Stroike [USSR in Construction, n.2–3] from 1940 features an illustration from the famous Russian artist El Lissitzky ¹ depicting a male civilian passionately kissing a Soviet soldier in gratitude over liberation. Another display of male solidarity that appears unusual to current Western standards is the socialist fraternal kiss that was a frequent greeting between Soviet officials, perhaps most famously performed by Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev and immortalised on the Berlin Wall. While these depictions and greetings differ in their origins as well as in their reception, and while some of them, like the fraternal kiss, were sometimes privately ridiculed by the citizens of these countries, they nonetheless helped to normalise physical affection between men as well as emphasise the importance of close, intimate male bonds as one of the core elements of society. Various sources suggest that Czechoslovakia was no exception, and the country had an equally strong tradition of close and intimate male friendships. Lissitzky’s propaganda poster is echoed in the famous Liberation Statue which stands to this day near Prague’s Central Train Station, likewise depicting a male civilian passionately embracing a Soviet soldier. Similar imagery can still be seen around the two countries as some of the l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Queering Czechoslovakia’s History
• 2 A Century of Sonnets
• 3 The Master Mistress of My Passion
• 4 I Love Thee in Such Sort
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendix A
• Index