Survival of the Fittest. Translations in Periodicals Aiming at the Canon.

Survival of the Fittest Translations in Periodicals Aiming at the Canon During the 1850-1950 timeframe periodicals harvested large amounts of translated fiction. Are these (often serialized) novels and stories ephemeral consumer items that operate outside the canon, or do they reflect an ongoing process, and should they be considered a first attempt of canonization? Or do they merely reproduce translations by already established canonical authors? The interaction of translated Russian literature with the literary canon in Dutch newspapers is the focal point of my paper. Focusing on translations of Russian literature in Dutch newspapers during the 19th and 20th centuries I draw on a large set of data (2.100 translations) to argue that different patterns are at work. Throughout the corpus reveals a hidden branch of the literary pedigree: highly topical authors that never make it into the canon because, in retrospect, they were firmly rooted in their own time and place and their lifespan proved too limited. On the other hand, there is an undercurrent of authors that do end up being canonical. Within the range of these authors (the likes of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, and Pushkin) the data shows that the translation of canonical-authors-to-be does not equal canonical-novels-to-be. In the late 19th century and early 20th century fashionable authors make their way into newspapers, but these dailies show a tendency to focus on the lowbrow segment of their oeuvre. A second feature is the adaptability of a writer’s novels and stories: the extent to which newspapers can draw on e.g., Chekhov’s portrayal of civil servants to illustrate and metamorphize news items on Russia. Drawing on Darwinism I suggest that authors whose work was adaptable to the periodical format and its news environment were reproduced more than others and this eventually added up to these authors receiving canonical status