Curating the foreign canon: literary translations in illustrated Russian émigré periodicals in the Interwar period (1919-1939).

A society-in-exile settled in different host countries around the world, the Russian First Wave Emigration (1919-1939), or Russia Abroad (RAEFF 1990) was a scattered community, for whom the printed word was quintessential in maintaining and spreading cultural life. This explains the emergence of many different types of émigré periodicals in almost every host city. Having to navigate between their own culture and that of their hosts, Russian émigrés had to rely on different types of cultural mediation, with constant negotiation between different spheres of influence (pre-revolutionary Russia, the emigration community, the host country, and the Soviet Union). Turning to the émigré periodical as a site where this mediation becomes visible, this paper will examine the literary translations in one type of popular middlebrow periodical, namely the illustrated literary journal. As the mapping and analysis of translations can help understand the infusing of foreign input in national and literary identities and constructing of cultures (GOMES 2017), I will offer a taxonomy of literary translations published in illustrated journals Illyustrirovannaya Rossiya (Illustrated Russia; 1924-1939, Paris), Rubezh (Frontier; 1926-1945, Harbin) and Novaja Niva (New Grainfield; 1926-1927, Riga). Which authors, texts and genres were published in journals in different host cities? Did Western or Eastern canonical authors or topical popular writers find their way onto the pages of middlebrow magazines? Were the published authors popular in Imperial Russia and consequently ‘migrated’ with the émigrés? It is notable that certain authors were published in multiple journals of the corpus, e.g.: Rabindranath Tagore, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Edgar Wallace, Frédéric Boutet. By answering these questions, this paper will aim to curate the ‘Foreign literary canon’ in Russia Abroad as it was constructed on the pages of the illustrated periodical