Tamizdat translation agent as cultural mediator: an archival exploration of trajectories in the case of Ota Filip

ABSTRACT

This study explores the trajectories of cultural mediators and their movements between various literary circulations, namely official, samizdat (self-published), or tamizdat (produced in the country of exile and smuggled to the homeland). Following Pierre Bourdieu, a trajectory is understood here as a series of positions that the specific agent occupies, in this case within the tamizdat distribution of Czech literature in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. Trajectories are traced through an analysis of the activities of Czech author Ota Filip during his time in exile in the Federal Republic of Germany. Findings are based on archival materials from the Czechoslovak Security Services Archive and the Bavarian State Library and focus on three main positions within the literary field: Filip's role as author, promoter, and translator.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation history
• tamizdat
• Czech literature
• agent approach
• Ota Filip

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Non-digital data supporting this study are curated at the Czechoslovak Security Services Archive and the Bavarian State Library.

Notes

1 All translations of the archival material are the author’s own.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Czech Science Foundation; Grantová Agentura České Republiky [grant number GJ20-02773Y]. This text was proofread within the project Development of Research and Popularisation Resources of the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_054/0014701, co-funded by the EU. During the work on this text, use was made of Czech Literary Bibliography resources (ORJ identifier: 90243).

Notes on contributors

Anna Gnot

Mgr. Anna Gnot, Ph.D. is a researcher at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences with scientific interests in autobiographical literature, Czech-German and Czech-Polish literary transfer.