Team members:
The project focuses on translation and cultural transfers, using the example of Emil Saudek, a prominent translator of Otokar Březina, J. S. Machar, Vojtěch Rakous and T. G. Masaryk, in the context of the "creative environment" of Vienna in the first quarter of the 20th century. The subject of the research is Jewish-Czech-German interactions, the intermingling and linking of different groups and circles through translation, both in the field of art and politics in Vienna and in literature between Vienna, Prague and other spaces (Berlin, Leipzig, the Highlands, Brno, etc.).
We will examine translation both as a means of Saudek's socio-cultural integration and in its significance for the development of Czech and German literature, especially at the moment of aesthetic transformations around 1910. We will trace the formation of Saudek's concept of Vienna as a "bridge to Europe" for Czech literature and the changes in the convergence program caused both by World War I and 1918 and by the transformations of aesthetic modernism (Symbolism, Expressionism, post-war avant-garde).
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Lucie Merhautová presented Emil Saudek's translation activities in her lecture "Wien als Brücke nach Europa" at the Austrian Cultural Forum. Emil Saudek und die Wiener Literaten, which took place as part of a lecture series organised in cooperation with the RKF and the Kurt Krolop Forschungsstelle für deutsch-böhmische Literatur. The moderator of the evening was Štěpán Zbytovský, and excerpts from Saudek's translations of works by O. Březina, J. S. Machar and O. Fischer were read by German studies students Barbora Bendíková and Ladislav Bílý. The lecture focused mainly on Saudek's translation of the highly symbolist poetry collection The Hands of Otakar Březina and its reception by Viennese and German writers (S. Zweig, H. Bahr, R. Dehmel, etc.).
The Masaryk Institute and the Archives of the CAS managed to acquire the estate of Emil Saudek under a deposit agreement. Among the documents are letters by Otokar Březina, Růžena Svobodová, Emanuel Chalupný, J. S. Machar and T. G. Masaryk, as well as a number of manuscripts, translations and family photographs. We are very grateful to Prof. František Saudek for making them available.
International Conference Found in translation? Aesthetic and socio-cultural functions of literary translation between 1890 and 1939 in Europe.
Lucie Merhautová presented a paper on Czech literary modernism at the turn of the 19th and 20th century at the Rainer Maria Rilke conference. Prager Erzählungen, organized by the Rilke Gesellschaft in Friedberg, Bavaria.
In her lecture Vermittelte Moderne, Lucie Merhautová addressed the topic of intermediaries and translations of Czech literature into German in Vienna, focusing in particular on a comparison of the activities of Eduard Albert and Emil Saudek. The lecture was held at the invitation of the Adalbert Stifter Verein in Munich.
Lucie Merhautová, Michal Topor and Václav Petrbok presented a grant project at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS as part of a series of research seminars.
