Obtaining World Fame from the Periphery

ABSTRACT

Although book translations are overwhelmingly made from English and a small number of other central languages, translations occasionally also flow in the opposite direction, i.e. from peripheral countries and languages to more central ones. This article explores the translation and international recognition of Dutch writers. It identifies a general pattern structured by three successive circuits of selection, diffusion, valorization and recognition. The first is the semi-official Dutch circuit outside of the Netherlands, socially based on Dutch-speaking groups abroad, dependent on Dutch foreign policy, and institutionally tied to embassies, institutes for Dutch culture, and university departments for Dutch language and literature. After having achieved some degree of visibility and recognition in this protected circuit, some writers succeed in obtaining access to a second circuit consisting of the respective national literary fields of the receiving countries. Selection and recognition here depend on editors, publishers, critics, and audiences of the receiving country. The last circuit – the one in which international fame can be obtained – represents an even more selective, transnational universe institutionally tied to world book fairs, international publishing houses, and international prizes. The process by which writers can pass from the first to the second and third circuit is, for most, one of progressive elimination.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation sociology
• Dutch literature
• centre-periphery model
• literary consecration

‘Stop writing Dutch, and start writing English. Someone like you can learn it within a year. Of course your style will change a bit, and turn more sober, but you will not suffer real losses.’

Gerard Reve to W.F. Hermans, 28 January 1952

‘Voilà bientôt deux semaines que je t’ai écrit une lettre et tu me laisses demeurer sans réponse. C’est sans doute parce que je t’ai écrit en néerlandais et que tu refuses de lire un seul mot de cette langue-là. Je me suis donc décidé à te dactylographier en français, bien que ma maîtrise de cet bel idiome ne soit pas suffisante pour m’exprimer avec cette verve stercoraire, qui fait tellement plaisir à mes critiques.’

W.F. Hermans to Gerard Reve, 25 April 1952¹

Just like material goods, cultural products are increasingly finding their way to people in the furthest corners of the globe. The most popular music, films and television programmes can be heard and seen on every continent and are part of what has become a cultural world system. Time and again, the circulation patterns at the basis of this world culture exhibit a consistent structure. The cultural products most highly valued worldwide can be traced back to a remarkably small number of centres, where the most successful or most influential producers are concentrated and whence their work is distributed over vast distances. Hollywood films are the canonical example of this, but the same can be said, with a few variations, for books, art and popular music.² Existing alongside these world centres is a larger collection of less prominent and less successful locales and regions. Often, they have a similar concentration of cultural activities but their international market share is smaller and, from a global perspective, they hold a less prominent position. In sociological terms, they are not central but rather ‘semi-central’ or ‘semi-peripheral’. Cultural products from smaller locales and lesser-known regions rarely reach people outside their own sphere. Although they may be highly valued locally, internationally they belong to the periphery of the cultural world system.³

The World System of Translation

The translation of books and the translation flows that result are a striking example of such a centre-periphery structure. Six out of every ten book translations published in the world since 2000 were sourced from one single language: English. In the translation hierarchy, ‘hypercentral’ English is followed by two central languages, German and French, each with a share of around ten percent of the world market for translations. These are followed by several semi-central languages (Russian, Spanish, Italian, Swedish), each of which account for between one and three percent. All remaining languages, including Chinese and Arabic, have a share of less than one percent and can be described as belonging to the periphery of the international translation system.⁴

Contrary to what is often assumed, the increase in international exchange and communication possibilities resulting from globalization has by no means diminished structural inequalities between countries and regions. World culture has not developed along the lines of what Zygmunt Bauman sees as a kind of generalized ‘liquidity’ in which borders and boundaries disappear.⁵ Nor have exchanges on a global scale led to the world becoming ‘flat’, as Thomas Friedman has similarly argued, where traditional hierarchies between and within countries somehow dissolve into global communication flows.⁶ These prophecies, which can be traced back to the heyday of the globalization debate, are at odds with research that shows that globalization has increased rather than reduced inequality in many areas. The Dutch sociologist Nico Wilterdink demonstrated this early on in his studies of income and wealth ratios in western countries, and his findings have been overwhelmingly confirmed by economists.⁷ In terms of culture, too, there are indications that the inequalities between countries and language groups have increased rather than decreased. Since 1980, the number of book translations worldwide has grown but the number of languages from which these books are translated has decreased, as have the connections between these languages, while the share of the most dominant world language – English – has only grown. Whereas in 1979 43 percent of all book translations were books from English, this swelled to more than 60 percent in 2002.⁸ In this case, globalization has not led to overall ‘liquidity’, a diminishing of differences or a ‘flatness’ but rather to the exacerbation of power asymmetries and a decrease in language diversity.

Because cultural goods, like other commodities, are unevenly distributed and because this inequality has increased in a number of respects, much of what transpires in world culture can be understood in terms of the centre-periphery dynamic. Research on cultural globalization therefore tends to focus on the hegemony of the international centres – with the United States at the top of the list – as well as on the consequences this entails for cultural production. However, despite the hegemony of the United States and the cultural homogenization to which this leads, cultural goods nonetheless flow in the opposite direction as well: sometimes cultural products from the periphery make their way to the centres, gain recognition there and then spread to other (semi)peripheral zones.

How to Obtain World Fame from the Periphery?

For artists and authors from the peripheries, there are two possible paths to obtaining global recognition. They can either relocate themselves to an international centre and engage in the artistic fray there or they can work diligently from their home base and try to push their boundaries by accruing local recognition. World-renowned Dutchmen usually opted for the first path. As Abram de Swaan notes, after Bosch and Breughel only one generation of Dutch artists achieved world fame without leaving the Netherlands: that of Rembrandt and his contemporaries. And, adds de Swaan, ‘they just happened to live during a period when the Netherlands was itself the centre of the world-system of its day. Van Gogh had to go to Paris to find fame. And the Dutch painters that accrued world fame in the twentieth century – Mondriaan, De Kooning, Appel – did so in New York.’⁹

Writers, too, can try their luck in a global city but in comparison with painters, composers and choreographers they must overcome an extra barrier: their native language. Some may attempt to acquire and work in a foreign language but – despite the famous exceptions (Beckett, Conrad, Nabokov) – few pull it off. Most are forced to return to the language and culture they were so keen to escape. After a short-lived English adventure, Gerard Reve returned to the Netherlands and the Dutch language. W.F. Hermans, who saw little in Reve’s attempts to write in English, moved to Paris but remained true to his mother tongue and oriented his literary criticism and essay-writing mainly towards the ‘suffocating’ country he had fled. Leo Vroman lived his life in the United States and wrote his scholarly works in English but nonetheless remained a Dutch poet. Arnon Grunberg, who has led a more international career than those of previous generations of Dutch authors, lives in New York but, save his blog, continues to write in Dutch.

At the same time, despite the limits of their language area and the lack of international recognition for Dutch literature, Dutch authors have been increasingly translated in the course of the twentieth century. Moreover, their works found their way to an increasing number of languages and Dutch writers have enjoyed more interest from foreign publishers, critics and readers than ever before.¹⁰ This development, which has attracted more attention in recent years, raises the question of how the international reception of authors from a relatively small and rather peripheral language area like Dutch transpires. In providing an answer to this question, emphasis is placed on the factors that contribute either to the continuation or the overcoming of barriers faced by writers from smaller language areas.¹¹ The central question addressed in this article is not so much which languages Dutch authors are translated into, who is more or less successful in that respect, or which factors facilitated or impeded this, but rather whether a general pattern can be observed in the international reception of Dutch authors.

Circuits of Diffusion and Recognition in the Cultural World System

We can indeed identify a general pattern in the reception of Dutch-language writers beyond their national borders. Three successive circuits can be distinguished, each with its own structure and dynamics. Almost without exception, the process begins in the first circuit; for some authors this is followed by access to and recognition in the second circuit; after which a lucky few succeed in penetrating the third circuit. The dividing lines that exist between these circuits rely on various selection and reputation-making mechanisms.

The first circuit is the protected, Dutch-language circuit outside the author’s own country. It includes Dutchmen and Dutch speakers abroad and is traditionally interlinked with foreign policy, the activities of embassies, Dutch cultural institutions and clubs and, as far as language and literature is concerned, professors and students of Dutch Studies at universities abroad.¹² For the visual arts, we can add biennials and other exhibitions that take place in the framework of diplomatic affairs or are otherwise centred around the principle of state representation on the international stage. The core of the first circuit consists of Dutch and Dutch-speaking enclaves abroad, which are sustained with the support of the Dutch government and whose audience mainly consists of Dutch speakers. Historically, this circuit developed out of a combination of migration and foreign policy. Dutchmen abroad and their families form the social basis for this audience, and foreign cultural policy provides an institutional framework. The international cultural policy of the Dutch government can be traced back to the nineteenth-century politics of cultural and scientific internationalization. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, this has taken the form of national pavilions at world fairs and national delegations at international organizations.¹³ The forms of international circulation that emerged from this were the result of national politics transposed on a higher, international level and were based – directly or indirectly – on the principle of national representation. In one way or another, exhibited artists and delegate-scholars were expected to represent their country. This notion has since faded in the arts and sciences, but dependence on the cultural policy of national states has persisted, especially in the first circuit.

The second, broader sphere of reception consists of the cultural fields of the receiving countries, their organizations and their audiences. It differs from the first circuit in that selection, gatekeeping and processes of reputation-making are controlled by non-Dutchman. This circuit consists of curators, editors, publishers, critics and connoisseurs from national artistic spaces in the receiving countries and the readers, listeners and enthusiasts that make up their audience. Here the artistic work being exhibited, performed or published is intended for a non-Dutch audience. Whereas in the first circuit writers and artists can accrue only limited international notoriety, it is in the second circuit that the conditions for international artistic recognition and commercial success emerge. In Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological analysis, fields of cultural production have a bi-polar structure with, on the one hand, the pole of large-scale production governed by commercial success in the short run, and, on the other, the pole of the restricted production governed by literary norms proper as defined by insiders and often driven by an art-for-art sake orientation. Translations from foreign languages and their recognition can take place at either pole of the publishing field. However, at the pole of large-scale production translations tend to be almost exclusively made from English, whereas at the restricted pole they tend to be made from a large variety of languages.¹⁴

The third, even broader public space is accessed via the most selective circuits in the international art world. Access is limited to the most successful artists and writers – those that not only have found followings in multiple foreign countries but have also won prizes, sold well and, as a result, reached an audience that is no longer bound by the borders of national cultural fields. This is the world of big names and international stars, Nobel Prize hopefuls, artists who exhibit in the most prestigious museums and performers who play the most coveted concert halls in the world.

Passages to Global Recognition

Almost all Dutch writers and artists to obtain world fame began in the first circuit, including those who progressed to the second and third circuits. Only those who emigrated early on, such as Willem de Kooning, could afford to forego the protected first circuit and start immediately in the second. All others began their international careers with an exhibition in the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennial, a reading at the Dutch cultural institute or an invited lecture at a Dutch Studies department abroad. The very existence of such a well-established, widespread first circuit is the privilege of wealthy countries. Artists from these countries therefore have a better chance of accruing international recognition than their peers from poorer countries, who must make do without a first circuit of any real significance.

Because the core of the second circuit consists of national cultural fields, the chances of foreign writers and artists depend directly on how these fields function. There are major differences across national and, for some language areas, supranational fields, not least when it comes to receptiveness to foreign artists. The most dominant cultural centres are generally much less open to cultural products from the periphery than less prominent centres. The latter seek to improve their international position and compete to this end with other similar centres, which often means a greater interest in foreign works. One indicator of a language area’s receptiveness to foreign works is its ratio of incoming versus outgoing translations. Translation ratios diverge strongly across languages and are directly related to a language’s dominance in the world translation system. Proportionately more books are translated into German and French than into hyper-dominant American and British English. For Russian, Italian and Spanish, the translation ratio is higher than for German and French. For Swedish and Greek, the ratio is still higher than for Russian, Italian and Spanish.

For the second circuit, it holds that the more central a language is in the world translation system, the more resistant it is to incoming translations. It also holds that once translation into a central language does occur, the chances of being translated into other languages increases. These are characteristics of centrality or domination in the cultural world-system. Being translated in the most central world language is relatively rare and once it happens there is a strong chance that this translation will prompt translations in other languages.¹⁵

When one compares translation ratios by language area, one may get the impression that writers from the periphery are more likely to be translated into another peripheral language area, since most translations occur from one peripheral language to another. However, this view obscures what is actually going on: what gets translated in peripheral languages very often depends on the selection that takes place in the centres. This is where international symbolic capital is accrued and distributed and where the most important hierarchies of prestige are formed.

Because there is not one but several international centres and because globalization manifests in a process of polycentric concentration, competition between different centres is an important factor in international cultural exchange. Authors from peripheral or semi-peripheral language areas have the strongest chances of being translated in a cultural centre that is not too dominant and that is geographically ‘close to home’. Since the end of the nineteenth century, most translations out of Dutch were published in German, and it is there that Dutch-language writers have had the most success. Less is translated from Dutch to French or Italian, and Dutch authors enjoy much less literary recognition in these areas than in Germany.

Gaining access to the third circuit – the circuit in which world fame is obtained – is the most difficult, and only a few Dutch authors can be said to have done so: Anne Frank, a few children’s book authors and cartoonists (Dick Bruna, Annie M.G. Schmidt), one single classic author (Multatuli) and a handful of contemporary authors headed up by Cees Nooteboom. The pursuit of world fame, that is, the passage from the second to the third circuit, captures the fascination of many. However, in the final analysis, the passage from the first to the second circuit is no less intriguing. Which authors and artists from the periphery manage to enter the first circuit and transit to the second and perhaps even the third? How? And how to explain why the happy few make it while the rest, albethey no less esteemed at home, do not?

Acknowledgments

Translated from the Dutch by Jack McMartin. This article is an extended and updated version of an essay originally published as “De weg naar wereldroem,” in: C. Brinkgreve, M. van den Haak, B. van Heerikhuizen, J. Heilbron, and G. Kuipers (eds.), Cultuur en ongelijkheid, Diemen: Uitgeverij AMB, 2011, pp. 261–268.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johan Heilbron

Johan Heilbron is a historical sociologist trained at the University of Amsterdam and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Currently professor of sociology of education at Uppsala University, he is professor emeritus at the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique (CESSP-CNRS-EHESS) in Paris, and Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Having been affiliated with several academic institutions in Europe, he held the Norbert Elias Chair (2000–8), was visiting professor at the University of Michigan (2009) and New York University (2015), and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton (2017–18). Recent books include French Sociology (2015), Nederlandse kunst in de wereld (co-authored, 2015), De zaak Organon, (co-authored, 2018), New Directions in Elite Studies (co-edited, 2018), and The Social and Human Sciences in Global Power Relations (co-edited 2018).

Notes

1. Hermans and Reve, Verscheur deze brief!, 86, 114 [The original quotations are in English and French. My translation of Hermans’ (imperfect) French: ‘Almost two weeks have passed since I wrote you a letter and you let me stay without a reply. This is probably because I wrote to you in Dutch and you refuse to read a single word in this language. I have therefore decided to type you in French, although my mastery of this beautiful idiom is not sufficient to express myself with that stercorary verve, that so pleases my critics.’].

2. For various cultural domains, see for example Achterberg et al., “A Cultural Globalization,” 589–608; Casanova, World Republic; and Crane, “Cultural Globalization,” 365–382; Quemin, Les stars.

3. The notion of a cultural world system was coined by Abram de Swaan, see De Swaan, “Alles is in beginsel overal,” 93–120. Also in id., De draagbare De Swaan (2nd revised edition). Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2008: 243–263.

4. For these data, based on UNESCO’s Index Translationum, see Heilbron and Sapiro, “Translation,” 373–402. On the sociology of languages and the global language system, see De Swaan, Words of the World. On the sociology of translation and the global translation system, see Heilbron, “Toward a Sociology,” 429–444; Heilbron and Sapiro, “Outline for a Sociology,” 93–107; and Heilbron and Sapiro, ‘Translation,’ 373–402.

5. Bauman, Liquid Modernity.

6. Friedman, The World is Flat.

7. Wilterdink, “Ongelijkheid,” 3–42; and Piketty, Capital.

8. See Barré, “La globalización de la cultura,” 183–217. The rise of American dominance holds not only for popular culture but also for the “higher” art forms. See, for instance, Quemin, Les stars.

9. De Swaan, Abram. 2008. “Hier heerst de mentaliteit van de voorstad: veilig, comfortabel maar ook onbeduidend.” NRC Handelsblad, 5–6 January.

10. For a historical overview, see Heilbron and Van Es, “In de wereldrepubliek,” 20–54; for recent case studies, see Brems et al., Doing Double Dutch; Franssen, How Books Travel; McMartin, Boek to Book; Voogel, Bon ton of boring?; and Wilterdink, “Breaching the Dyke,” 45–65.

11. Van Es and Heilbron, “Fiction from the Periphery,” 296–319.

12. See Heilbron and Sapiro, “Politics of Translation,” 183–208.

13. The organizations involved were initially International Governmental Organizations (IGO’s); after the Second World War, International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO’s) became dominant. See Lechner and Boli, World Culture; and Boli and Thomas, Constructing World Culture.

14. Bourdieu, “A Conservative Revolution,” 123–53; Sapiro, “Translation and the Field of Publishing,” 154–67; Sapiro, “Globalization and Cultural Diversity,” 419–39; and Sapiro, “Translation and Symbolic Capital,” 320–46.

15. Heilbron, “Toward a Sociology of Translation,” 429–44; and Heilbron, “Responding to Globalization,” 87–197.